The end of the Cold War has been greeted by most people as not
merely the endof an era, but of an entire wy of life Business, we are
solemnly assured, not war, will determine the future. No one wants war,
and therefore there will be no war, say the sages. Nations have become
too interdependent, business too global, everything too interconnected to
permit the outbreak of war. And so corporations will become more
important than nations, businessmen more heroic than soldiers.
What is extraordinary about this internationalist vision is that it
is intoned not by wild-eyed radicals, not by gentle pacifists, but by the
hard-eyed, tough-minded businessmen and politicians in the world's
leading powers. We are in the giddy springtime of the bourgeoisie.
The basic assumption is that the interests of all the great
powers--stability and prosperity--now coincide. Although undoubtedly
true, this claim is irrelevant. Everyone agrees what the ends are, but
the issue is how compatible are the means toward those ends? The problem
is not that nations choose war, but that they are incapable of getting
out of each other's way. We are now ready to see the next act in
history's tragicomedy unfold.
It is of course difficult for us to imagine a genuine clash between
the United States and Japan. For the last 45 years, the two have been the
closest of allies. But just as it would have been difficult for a GI on
Okinawa to imagine that friendship with Japan could arise out of the
current hatred (certainly not as quickly as it did), then certainly the
opposite is equally implausible--and equally possible. It all depends on
the circumstances, and even now the degeneration of relations between
these two great world powers is under way.
The question we have to address is how we have gone, in just a few
years, from a pretty stable, rather provincial relationship to the
rapidly and noisily deteriorating mess we are seeing today. It is an
extraordinary evolution to take place in such a short period of
time.
The Japanese constantly refer to their relationship with the United
States as a marria'ge. As in all marriages, there are ups and downs,
stresses and strains; but however much the lovers quarrel, the Japanese
assure us that they do not divorce. Apart from displaying a basic lack of
understanding of American marriage customs (and divorce rates), there is
something gruesome in this analogy. If this were a marriage, it was one
whose bridal shower was held at Hiroshima--the place where the old
U.S.-Japanese relationship died and the new one was born.
The Japanese probably don't think of the origin of the marriage
when they invoke the image. All they want to do is placate their own
public--as well as those who think that the squabbles might get out of
hand--with a homey analogy implying that everything is right with the
world. But the Japanese think more about Hiroshima than we do, and it is
difficult to imagine that there isn't more than a bit of irony to the
comparison.
Few relationships have had as many extremes as the one between the
United States and Japan. The shift from the unbridled loathing of
Americans and Japanese for each other during World War II to the genuine
affections that began to emerge in the 1950s is extraordinary. The
Russians learned to live with the Germans, as did the French; the Chinese
dealt with the Japanese, as did the Koreans. However, none of these
nations were constrained to pretend there was affection between them, and
none of them show much affection for each other. They needed to get
along, but other than that, it was always strictly business.
After the war, the Japanese had good reason to be affectionate
about the Americans. The United States was in a position to impose an
annihilating peace on Japan (indeed, this was the initial intention--to
reduce Japan to an unarmed, agricultural nation). The American hand was
stayed, in part by national interest--the rising Communist threat and the
fall of China made Japan an essential part of U.S. global strategy--but
also by a real generosity, if not the American spirit, of the young GIs
on occupation duty, whose youthful friendliness calmed the terrible fears
of the Japanese. They lacked the sustainable rage that the combat vets
(first to be rotated home) would have brought.
It was this strange encounter--when each discovered the other was
not nearly as savage as they had expected--that led to both affection and
a glamorization of each other. The Japanese, defeated for the first time
in their history, had been invaded and occupied. The Americans were
clearly more powerful, and therefore possessed a wisdom and power worth
learning from. That the Americans were generous in revealing their
secrets merely elevated them in their eyes; but at root, as one Japanese
recalled about the occupation: "We would have starved. The Americans made
certain that we did not. We will always be grateful."
But it was more than that. In being able to humble the Japanese,
American power gained a legitimacy in Japan--a phenomenon not materially
different than that experienced in any proud but defeated country. It had
this exception. As with the way in which the Japanese absorbed the
experience of Buddhism, the defeated Japanese set about with grim
determination to accommodate the Americans and assimilate their hidden
teachings.
Tags:
45 years,
allies,
basic assumption,
businessmen,
circumstances,
clash,
Cold War,
corporations,
hatred,
history,
Japan,
Japanese,
life business,
okinawa,
outbreak,
pacifists,
prosperity,
radicals,
sages,
springtime,
War
