Soft Power Superpowers

Yasushi Watanabe, David L McConnell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317459644
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economia
• Subtopic: Macroeconomia

The term "soft power" describes a country's ability to get what it wants by attracting rather than coercing others - by engaging hearts and minds through cultural and political values and foreign policies that other countries see as legitimate and conducive to their own interests.This book analyzes the soft power assets of the United States and Japan, and how they contributed to one of the most successful, if unlikely, bilateral relationships of the twentieth century. Sponsored by the U.S. Social Science Research Council and the Japan Foundation's Center for Global Partnership, the book brings together anthropologists, political scientists, historians, economists, diplomats, and others to explore the multiple axes of soft power that operate in the U.S.-Japanese relationship, and between the United States and Japan and other regions of the world.The contributors move beyond an "either-or" concept of hard versus soft power to a more dynamic interpretation, and demonstrate the important role of non-state actors in wielding soft power. They show how public diplomacy on both sides of the Pacific - bolstered by less formal influences such as popular cultural icons, product brands, martial arts, baseball, and educational exchanges - has led to a vibrant U.S.-Japanese relationship since World War II despite formidable challenges. Emphasizing the essentially interactive nature of persuasion, the book highlights an approach to soft power that has many implications for the world today.

I

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Perception

1

Anti-Americanism in Japan

Watanabe Yasushi

Anti-Americanism is on the rise across the globe. The world’s reaction to the predominance and ubiquity of the United States has exposed the multiplicity and complexity of antipathy toward the nation. It is a mixture of hatred and fascination, repulsion and attraction, present equally on the Right and on the Left, and a matter of legitimate and pressing concern to both industrial and industrializing societies in the age of globalization. Many traits Americans most revere, such as democracy, freedom, and individualism, can be construed in a negative light and encounter substantial expressions of local resistance, even as they become global standards. As various localities around the world struggle, one way or another, to make sense of this historically and culturally unique locus of the United States, the repercussions of anti-Americanism on the construction and practice of local identities bear close scrutiny. Japan, one of the closest allies of the United States, is no exception.

This chapter focuses on Japan’s new anti-Americanism since the late 1990s—a new combination of nationalism, resentment against what Japanese perceive to be an isolationist United States that is ignoring Japan, and fear of American domination. I have explored the ways in which “America” is construed in recent popular literature on the United States and how it is propagated, consumed, and appropriated in contemporary Japan. My goals are to locate this phenomenon within a wider sociocultural and historical milieu and investigate its theoretical and policy implications. While Joseph Nye’s accounts of Japanese perception of the United States in Soft Power (2004) are relatively short and positive, I aim to examine it in more depth in this chapter.

“Anti-Americanism” is used here interchangeably with, and as shorthand for, anti-American sentiment and discourse. Less coherent and tangible than an ideology, it is as vague and heterogeneous as “Orientalism,” “racism,” and “anti-Semitism.” While mere opposition to U.S. policies and attitudes should not in itself be sufficient to constitute anti-Americanism, the term is based on the idea that “something associated with the United States, something at the core of American life, is deeply wrong and threatening to the rest of the world” (Caesar 2003, para. 3). Nye more concisely defines anti-Americanism as a “deeper rejection of American society, values, and culture” (Nye 2004, p. 38) and treats it as undermining American soft power.

Comparative and Transnational Perspectives

According to the most recent Cabinet Office (2006) poll on foreign affairs in Japan, 75.3 percent of the respondents feel “an attachment” to the United States. This figure has changed little in recent years, and the percentage is quite high when compared to that for those who feel an attachment to Russia (15.4 percent), China (34.3 percent), South Korea (48.5 percent), Southeast Asia (45.5 percent), southwest Asia (25.5 percent), Western Europe (60.3 percent), Australia and New Zealand (61.8 percent), and the Middle East (17.5 percent).

The same poll shows that 82.7 percent of the respondents regard Japan’s current relationship with the United States as good. This figure has remained more or less the same in recent years, and, again, it is remarkably high when compared to the percentages of those who regard as good Japan’s relations with Russia (21.0 percent), China (21.7 percent), South Korea (34.4 percent), Southeast Asia (52.3 percent), southwest Asia (37.1 percent), Western Europe (64.4 percent), Australia and New Zealand (65.8 percent), and the Middle East (25.7 percent).

The Yomiuri-Gallup polls, which have been conducted since 1978, have consistently demonstrated that Japanese respondents select the United States as the “most reliable” other country in the world. These polls indicate that the Japanese public’s perception of the United States has been rather positive and stable, and that the United States holds a special status in the public consciousness of the Japanese.

According to a recent report by the Japan National Tourist Organization (2007), the United States was the most popular destination for Japanese overseas travelers until 2001. In 2000, 5 million Japanese visited the United States, while 3.6 million traveled to China (including Hong Kong), 2.5 million to South Korea, 1.2 million to Thailand, and 1 million to France. In 2002, China became the most popular destination, with 4.3 million visitors, followed by the United States (3.6 million), South Korea (2.3 million), and Thailand (1.2 million). In 2006, 3.7 million visited the United States, while 5 million traveled to China, 2.3 million to South Korea, and 1.3 million to Thailand.

According to the most recent report by the New York–based Institute of International Education (2006), the number of Japanese studying in the United States has tripled over the past two decades and stayed around 38,000–40,000 in recent years. Japanese constitute the fourth-largest population of foreign students in the United States.

According to a recent report by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (2006), this figure is exceedingly high when compared to the number of students from Japan studying in China (12,765), the United Kingdom (5,729), Australia (3,462), France (2,490), Germany (2,438), Taiwan (1,825), Canada (1,460), and South Korea (938); it represents about 60 percent of Japanese studying overseas.

It is worth noting that the number of students, unlike that of tourists, has remained little changed in spite of economic recession, a decrease in the number of schoolage children in Japan, and the whole complex of consequences of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. These facts are only a few examples that illustrate the special status of the United States in terms of acceptance and permeation in Japan.

At the same time, in spite of (or perhaps because of) this special status, the United States has been a constant reference of new vocabularies in Japan, both positive and negative. In the books and articles consulted for this chapter, I encountered a multitude of words coined to depict Japanese attitudes toward the United States, including such popular terms as the following:

知米 (chibei: well-informed about the United States)

親米 (shinbei: pro-American)

好米 (kobei: favoring the United States)

拝米 (haibei: admiring the United States)

反米 (hanbei: anti-American)

嫌米 (kenbei: hating the United States)

排米 (haibei: rejecting the United States)

侮米 (bubei: despising the United States)

哀米 (aibei: pity for the United States)

飽米 (hobei: enough of the United States)

厭米 (enbei: weary of the United States)

倦米 (kenbei: tired of the United States)

恐米 (kyobei: fearful of the United States)

怯米 (kyobei: scared of the United States)

脱米 (datsubei: leaving the United States)

離米 (ribei: distancing from the United States)

従米 (jubei: obeying the United States)

追米 (tsuibei: blind obedience to the United States)

These rhetorical expressions clearly exemplify the ingenuity and struggle of the Japanese in making sense of the special status of the United States as a preeminent cultural “other.” They are also evident in the sheer volume of popular literature—including a whole range of negative and provocative titles—on the United States in recent years. No other country holds such a special status in the literary imagery of the Japanese. Of particular interest to us is the locus and implication of anti-American discourse and sentiment manifested in this literary practice.

The latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2007), conducted among 45,200 people in forty-seven countries in spring 2007, reveals that discontent with the United States had grown during the previous six years.

Japan is no exception, with a favorable view dropping from 72 percent to 61 percent. Still, popular approval of the United States remains higher in Japan than in India (59 percent), South Korea (58 percent), Mexico (56 percent), Canada (55 percent), and Great Britain (51 percent), and significantly higher than in Russia (41 percent), France (39 percent), China (34 percent), Germany (30 percent), Indonesia (29 percent), Egypt (21 percent), Pakistan (15 percent), and Turkey (9 percent).

Unlike in South Korea, another longtime U.S. ally in northeast Asia, there was no boycotting of American products in Japan, and protests against U.S. military bases were far less massive and violent than elsewhere. In recent years in Japan, physical attacks against Americans, the U.S. flag, or U.S. government offices have rarely been undertaken as a collective action against the United States. The way in which Japan has expressed its anti-Americanism appears to be more indirect, subdued, and intricate.

To clarify the locus and implication of this distinctive (if not unique) feature, the following section explores the varied contexts and expressions of anti-American discourse and sentiment in contemporary Japan.

Historical Perspectives

Anti-Americanism, as articulated in literary practice in Japan, is by no means new. In 1909, for example, the historian Asakawa Kan-ichi expressed a concern that the Japanese tended to take more pleasure in pointing out U.S. shortcomings as they became more cultivated. Ten years later, the scholar and diplomat Nitobe Inazo related that there was a tendency in Japan, even among top diplomats and military officers, to despise the United States. More recently, Honma Nagayo (1995), a noted expert on U.S.-Japanese relations, in warning about the rise and spread of anti-American discourse and sentiment of late, pointed out that a sense of respect for the United States had been lost among well-educated Japanese by the time of World War I. Kamei Shunsuke (2000), another eminent Americanist, echoed Honma’s concern in arguing that the dichotomy and oscillation between “拝米 (haibei: admiring the United States)” and “排米 (haibei: rejecting the United States)” has been conspicuous in the social imagery of the Japanese ever since the Meiji period.

In recent years, however, the tradition of anti-American discourse and sentiment as a mode of thinking has been reinvented in new contexts. In the late 1980s, with the unprecedented prosperity of the Japanese economy and the prolonged downturn of the U.S. economy, the idea that “we have nothing to learn from the United States anymore” flourished in Japan, and the United States was increasingly perceived as declining, decaying, and falling apart. Paralleling this was the rise of a self-congratulatory tone in public discourse, including the popular literary genre of Nihonjin-ron (theories of “Japaneseness”) (Watanabe 2000). While things that were perceived to be unique to Japan and its people were remembered, invented, and mobilized in making sense of this new development, all that was conjectured as characteristic of the United States was rejected: American policies on crime, diplomatic affairs, the economy, education, energy, the environment, family, finance, human rights, infrastructure, the military, technology, transportation, and welfare were denounced; news reports on crime, drug use, guns, lawsuits, materialism, me-ism, moral corruption, poverty, racial discrimination, and individual bankruptcy were negative in tone. The United States increasingly became the model of how not to be, rather than an example to emulate.

The image of the United States was further damaged by a series of “Japan-bashing” and gaiatsu (outside pressure) incidents in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In particular, sharp American criticism of Japan’s unwillingness to contribute troops and its “checkbook diplomacy” at the time of the Persian Gulf War intensified anti-American discourse and sentiment and stiffened Japan’s national pride as a sovereign state.

It was during this period that the expression “嫌米 (kenbei: hating the United States)” was coined to describe the new feelings of the Japanese toward America. The word became so rampant as to appear in Gendai yogo no kiso chishiki (The encyclopedia of contemporary words) in 1992. The New York Times (October 16, 1991) reported, “Japan has coined a new word to reflect their sentiment toward America: kenbei.” The article described the word as meaning a ”dislike of the United States… . There is a growing feeling that on trade issues, the United States is bullying Japan arrogantly making demands on every trivial matter that does not comply with the American standard of justice… . Those on the U.S. side are still leaning heavily on Japan, never reflecting on their own country’s shortcomings… . And those on the Japanese side are still bowing before the American demands, as if doing so was Japan’s fate.“

In 1991, then-secretary of state James Baker stated in Tokyo, “I want to leave no doubt that the United States is fully committed to working with Japan and others in the region to shape a new era in world affairs and a new order in Asia. Neither of us can afford the narrow self-indulgence of bashing or kenbei. Neither of us will prosper in a world that retreats into protectionism” (Baker 1991).

Mid-1990sto Early 2001

The image of the United States as bashing and pressuring Japan gradually faded as the economic conditions of the two countries began to reverse themselves in the mid-1990s. Instead, the perception of the United States as the sole winner in the new world order of globalization in terms of culture, finance, information, military, politics, science, and technology became the dominant one. The ingenuity of U.S. society and its policies were idealized and held up as examples for Japan to emulate, while at the same time a discourse on its “hidden and dark motivations” was constructed and appropriated to account for Japan’s failure—its “lost decade.”

It was during this period that such sensational expressions as dai ni no haisen (second defeat), zokkoku (tributary country), and gojyu ichibanme no shu (fifty-first state of the United States) appeared in public discourse to describe what Japan was all about, and that books with such provocative titles as Nihon kaimetsu (The destruction of Japan) (Mizuno 1998), Nihon wa naze senso ni ni-do maketaka (Why Japan lost the war twice) (Omori 1998), Nihon sai-haiboku (The re-defeat of Japan) (Tawara and Yamada 1998), and “Nihon-nuki” gemu (Playing the “without Japan” game) (Hamada 1999) crowded bookstore shelves.

The United States was portrayed as the hegemonic super- or hyperpower, which engaged with the world unilaterally, using a double standard. Washington’s refusal to release funds for the United Nations and to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the Landmine Ban Treaty were denounced; “globalization” was apprehended as mere Americanization of money, mass media, and military power. Various national publications began discussing the rise of anti-American discour...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Perception
• Part II: Higher Education
• Part III. Popular Culture
• Part IV: Public Diplomacy
• Part V: Civil Society
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index