Interview With Chalmers Johnson

Chalmers Johnson: And I was chairman of the Chinese society in Berkeley. I studied Chinese after I returned to the University. Work on Japan is really an intellectual or even though I did have a biographical experience that led me into the field. I think that the thing that causes the interest in Japan is intellectual. It is precisely the fact that the western mind did not anticipate great wealth in East Asia. Still cannot explain it in terms that are consistent with our particular theory and to a certain extent it is very clearly seriously threatened by it. Threatened intellectually in the sense that for we know of at least two Nobel prizes in economics held by Americans that on the Japanese data ought to be given back. They were wrong. But that basically how I started. I taught at Berkeley for twenty six years and then another five years at UC San Diego and the it seems that it is the answer to the question as I am being responsive to one of the biggest issues of our times.
Mark Joseph: What do you see as the future of Japan and US relations as being. What direction do you see this going?

CJ: I have to be pessimistic. That is I believe that Japanese American relationship was essentially based on the Cold War. That is it is a mutual interest that put this two together was the Cold War. The Cold War existed for about approximately 1950-1990. Today, it seems to me that, that phases anti-communism and in some ways our purchasing Japan's support as a grand strategy against the USSR. We talk about gap the general agreement on tariffs and trades as if it were an economic agreement here. To another extent the American trading access to their markets in return for support in the Cold War for phasing rights things as this sort. That basis is over now and the relationship runs on inertia. Waiting for some incident. It could have been North Korean nuclear weapons, it could be the death of Deng Xiao Ping in China, it could be any number of things but some incident that would make the intrinsic situation extrinsic by which I mean the tremendous shift in the balance of power that Japan is today three-fifths the size of the United States, two Germany's in North-East Asia. The two countries are drifting apart. In a sense not necessarily as a matter of hostility, but they do not have the same things in common as they did in the past. So that I would have to say one could imagine giving a new basis to the Japanese-American relationship but it has not been done yet. It would require very considerable leadership, leadership of almost the 1949 Marshall plan variety. We don't see that coming from Japan, we don't see it coming from the United States. In another sense I didn't go further to say, I think Japan and America are on a collision course. Now, when a navigator identifies a collision course, he is not predicting a collision, he is asking for a change of course, but we don't see that change of course. That is the fundamental contradiction is the Americans are defending people to whom they are simultaneously going deeply into debt. I mean Americans troops based in Japan can afford to buy a bowl of Udon if they leave their base at exchange rates of 94 Yen to the dollar. Doesn't take a Theucidities (sic) to say this is unstable and will not go on too long in the future. How it will change we don't fully know, but we do know it will change.

MJ: I like your colors on recent administration. About President Clinton, how has the Clinton administration handled the foreign policy?

In my view, it has been an unmitigated disaster. We did not expect the governor of Arkansas to be a Japan specialist. We assuredly expected him to hire somebody, particularly somebody who ran on a ticket of economic reform when the United State's biggest foreign economic policy is Japan. To a certain extent, we do not believe, in the United States we have a trade problem. We believe we have a East Asia problem. That is if you add in our trade deficit with Japan, China, Taiwan, South East Asia. It turns out to be pretty much an East Asia problem. We should have appointed, this is the thing with the control, we should have appointed people who were genuine specialist in East Asia. He didn't do that and it is been a matter of drift. We've had several different policies toward Japan since he has been in power and I believe that this has led to kenbei in Japan, this glowing sense of contempt from Ambassador Mondale.

MJ: How do you value that choice?

CJ: Well, a well-established politician. A former vice-president in over his head on Japan. That is Japan, from my point of view, not just as an academic, but somebody looking at Japan I would say a place as old, as complex and as rich as Japan, anybody who wants to actually work on it has got to have done three things. They have to have studied the place. They have to have experienced working there, sort of testing what they have learnt and studied. And they have to be able to read Japanese periodicals accurately. I am not saying read fast, or be very fluent but to be able to read accurately. Mondale doesn't have any of these qualifications. Normally the Japanese would have preferred our ambassadors to don't have these qualifications. I mean the Japanese prefer them because they can manipulate them. I have nothing against ambassador Mondale. I think he is tactlessly in over his head and not up to the challenges of the world's two richest countries to have in some ways gotten rich because in part of the relationship between each other but who are drifting apart and require genuine knowledge, not just access to the President. That is from an American point of view, Japan is as complex a problem as for China and Russia during the Cold War. We did not send just ex-politicians to either of those places, we took them much more seriously.

MJ: What about some other recent Presidents like Reagan and Bush?

CJ: Well, they were more of the same and above all trapped by our ideology in the Cold War. In the Cold War we discovered in the mid fifties that the USSR was a third rate economy with the world's best ideology. We had to match the idealism of Marxism in a sense it was inspiring to Chinese people inspiring wars of national liberations around the world. We used laisseze-faire theory, ala Adam Smith, and turned it into a fighting ideology. It was effective against the Russians but are dangerously started to believe our own ideology. The economic lesson from East Asia is that State guided capitalism can produce results unimaginable in either socialism or laisseze-faire. Unfortunately, Reagan and Bush were both wild enthusiasts for Laisseze faire and as they continued the drift in the Japanese-American relationship as Japan continue to get richer as America continue to get poorer as the shift from Military power to economic power advanced. As we are one of the profits in the United States today, we remain, we like to flatter ourselves as the Union Polar superpower. These are actually technically meaningless terms in a world of which we have got only one superpower, all conflicts become local. But I think that the most important issue here is that we have not paid attention to the industrial foundation of military power. And the period to which they really began to weaken were in the Reagan and Bush administration. We became the world's leading net-debtor nation, thanks to Ronald Reagan's foreign policy.

MJ: Which post-war President do you think pay the most attention to Japan?

CJ: That's a hard question isn't it? Since in some ways all of the Americans have learnt that is, the way the Japanese prospered was by the fact that the Americans never really believed that they were going to be a new challenge. Because we go back to John Foster Dulles we thought the Japanese could only sell us cocktail napkins and a few others such things. I would suppose, the person who took it the most seriously was John Kennedy and this was because he came in after the ampo. The security treaty struggles and riots of 1960 which, led to General Eisenhower's canceling his visit to Japan. I mean the first American President to ever ... sitting President to visit Japan with Jerry Ford, is always worth reminding yourself that. It was, it is to say the ampo incident was sort of our Hungry, the Japanese revolted against that. We were shocked by it and we sent Reischauer to come and fix things up. Again, I think Reischauer did a good job. I believed it was always a danger of the Americans believing their own propaganda too much. And that the idea that Japan was a clone of United States is a conceit, and implausible on the surface level. Japan is 1500 years older than the United States, is unlikely that they would ever evolve to look like United States simply because we occupied them for 7 years after World War II. But since General Eisenhower, there has not been (meaning Americans) who took Japanese as seriously as it always deserve to be taken.

MJ: What about Japan, caused you to develop such an interest in the country and to study it for so many years?

CJ: Well as I say, I first came to Japan in 1953, in those days; no one would have read an interest in Japan because of competitive capitalism. That is one, like everyone else; I was first attracted to Japan by aspects of its philosophical and religious sculpture and enormously drawn to it and intrigued by it. It is, however I actually shifted full time to the study of Japan during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, that is between 1967 and the death of Mao Tse Tung Dong in 1976. It seems to me then that we knew China was making a great mistake. That it was digging a hole, that would be very costly to it. In just about the same time around 1972, that Japan was truly beginning to emerge as a formidable economy. And we became impressed; I became impressed from a Chinese point of view that Japan looked like successful socialism. I mean here was, State goal setting in the context of private ownership of properties. And "phenomenally" rapid growth. That's when I became interested in Japan was the fact that we had not anticipated this. We didn't still fully understand it. We need to explain something that is enormously disturbing to Americans; the idea that the government could actually be effective. That, the real "asymmetry" between Japan and America is governmental effectiveness. Not, quality to work force, or energy, or anything else. It is above all, Japan has a "elitist" government, that is to say that it has been staffed by the top 10% of the best law school in the country Todai Hougakubu for the last century. It is recently well coordinated. It is by competitive terms, inexpensive. The American government by contrast is unimaginably expensive, without coordination, and in the areas of economic policy, very largely corrupt. "These are the signs to stop.

MJ: How many times do you travel to Japan over the years. Could you remember how many times?

CJ: I was there in the Navy between 1953 and 1955. I then returned with my wife for the first time in 1961, when I was working at the Boueicho Seishishitsu on using Japanese army archives on Chine. We were living in Kichijoji then. Then were back again in the spring of 1966 for an extended period of stay and I have been in Japan every year since 1968. Usually a couple of times a year but sometimes just once or twice. But it has been very important to go back and forth.

MJ: What are the greatest "misperceptions" that the Japanese have on Americans and vice versa, in your experience?

CJ: That's a hard question to say what are the greatest misperceptions. I guess in some ways the things that I believe are the greatest dangers that come from these perceptions, are tendency on the Japanese to believe their own propaganda. To believe that the United States is sloppy, indifferent, lazy, crime ridden etc, things of this sort. To fail to appreciate how fast this place can be mobilized. And that was one of the things that happened in the gulf war. That our system is rather sloppy on routines. It is extremely on cardinal decisions. That is what the President's presidency is all about. The Japanese is seem to be by contrast, are extremely good on routine day-to-day life. The trains run on time, the streets are clean, they are safe streets. The Japanese are rather sloppy on cardinal decision. I mean if we like to always comment if a Martian landed in Tokyo and said "take me to your leader", nobody has any idea who to take him to. To the Prime Minister, to the Okura-shou, just what, and it is not at all clear, who that would be. I believe that the danger here is that on the he one hand, the Japanese under estimate, the intrinsic strength of poly ethnic society like the United States because it is so different from their own. The Americans greatest danger of dealing with Japan is to presume that Japan is evolving to look like the United States. It is an American conceit; it reflects the American position in the Cold War, reinforced by the American beliefs (probably erroneously), which they in some sense won the Cold War, what ever that might be. I think they are dangerous here in perceptions. That is to say, the Japanese know more about America but understand it poorly. The Americans probably know very little about Japan, but do have a pretty good understanding about where the Japanese are coming from and where they are going. In a sense the great danger here is the Japanese-American comparisons. They are both very different, that is the United States is a good example of a fairly strong society and a relatively weak State, with a possible exception of the Military Industrial Complex. Japan by contrast is an example of an extremely strong State and a relatively passive society. I don't mean weak society, but a society that is quite prepared to accept political leadership from this famous and elegant State bureaucracy.

MJ: Tell us about your organization

CJ: Ah, the Japan Policy Research Institute. Well, I have recently retired after 30 years working for the University of California. My perception and that of my colleagues is that we did need in America desperately public education about Japan as it is today. That the Universities were not playing that role largely. Well for various reasons, the professors are not well-trained on Japan. They are too complacent, tenure stands in the way. The regional Japan societies are good but they are regional. The old Cold War Japan hands, most of whom lives in Washington DC, haven't really noticed the Cold War is over. So we have been trying to do public education about Japan in a sense of, publish important working papers that are not published elsewhere, to create an online network for people to communicate with each other about Japan. We are also trying to make films for public television to get at the largest possible audience. We do have an unusually good Board of Directors ranging from John Doward M.I.T to Glen Fukushima the vice-president of the American chamber of commerce in Japan. And we are growing very rapidly.

MJ: Could you take us back to your personal background?

CJ: Well, I was born in a place called Busby Arizona SIC, which is a town that could get by with just one city limit sign. It's out in the desert southwest of Phoenix. I came from an old family of Arizonans. My grandfather was the first State treasurer when it first became a State back in 1912. This was before efficient air-conditioning however, and my parents moved to San Francisco at the end of World War II. My father returned to the Navy. And in part because they wanted to leave Arizona and also in part for me to be educated in the University of California. I then lived in California essentially since 1945. My wife and I both did PhD's at University of California Berkeley where we are old blues. I seem to be as far as I know of, the only case of somebody who ever enrolled in Berkeley as a Joe freshman and ended up as chairman of my department. But that's basically our background. Today, I am impressed that young Americans are interested in Japan and East Asia on intellectual grounds. People of my age, I am 63 now, largely the interest in East-Asia was for biographical reasons. That they were born there, they were in my case, came there as a result of the military, or something like that you got interested in East-Asia. In that way, I differ from those of the World War II generation in that my war was the Korean War. A lot people don't believe it, but it was a war. And it did bring a lot people there.

MJ: So today, you are seeing young Americans with no actual connections to Japan being interested in Japan.

CJ: I think it does reflect the much greater international knowledge of young Americans today. That in my age if you are going to study a foreign language, you might have done French because you saw yourself on the beach at San Trope or you might have done Spanish because you might have thought useful if you were in a bad auto accident in Los Angeles one day. Today young Americans are just as likely to do Japanese or Chinese or Russian as they are to do European languages. I think in that sense it is the pacific center.

MJ: I'd like to ask you about Japanese politics.

CJ: Yes

MJ: Do you have any opinions of thoughts or any particular politicians that today, maybe stand out in your mind?

CJ: It reminds me of a conversation that I had with Tsuruda Kameyoshi of the Cabinet Research Board just last month in which I had inadvertently used the term with Mr Tsurada "Political Turmoil". And the looked me straight in the eye and said, "What turmoil?" Which I guess is to say the fact the Japanese government formal constitutional document has changed four times in this past year. It turns out to be of no importance at all. It is essentially meaningless. Japan has remained governed it has been governed since the Meiji era, by a very well trained, elite world of Kasumigaseki. The ministries that govern the place. I have no doubt that there is tremendous pressure for change in Japan today. The main pressure as I see it however probably comes from the growing split in the Zaikai caused by the High yen, by the structural problems of totally unprecedented trade surpluses, things of this sorts. We don't know that Japan will change and I wouldn't want to predict that it is changing. I was at one time planning to write a biography of former Prime Minister, Tanaka. That is still on hold largely because my initial conceptions of Tanaka didn't hold up. My initial conception was Tanaka was a powerful politician who might bring the bureaucracy under control. As a result of the recruit and then Zenekon scandal, I also concluded he was hopelessly corrupt. Corruption and democracy may go together. It is not to say they are separated, but I have had to re-conceptualize the problem. I had a meeting with Tanaka before at Mejirodai before his stroke in1985. And I had very considerable respect for him. But certainly the politician today that has been the man of the hour is Mr Ozawa. And he is quite interesting which is, concept of Futsunokuni and things of this sort. I think what impresses us is how little impact he has had with the public. But generally speaking, the thing that worries us, I think all of us, about Japanese politics is the un-involvement of the broad mass of population. And is given how little say that people actually have and how the country is governed. There is still a very open question about the degree to which Japan is a democracy. And I have no doubt that we are at a turning point in which Japan must change. Japan profited more from the Cold War than any other nations. It read the structure of the Cold War and it profited from it, greatly. The Cold War is now really over and Japan cannot continue the relationships that were developed and created during the Cold War and we do expect change. Probably towards greater leadership in East Asia. But it is not at all clear that a particular political leader is going to bring this off. I think it is much more likely to come from organizations that remain legitimate and trusted in the society, such as, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of International trade industry, even though they have made mistakes.

MJ: Does that include perhaps withdrawing US troops from Japan as part of the future of politics?

CJ: Can you repeat the question?

MJ: ....

CJ: The issue here is clearly, this is one of the most powerful tools we have. It is a wasting tool though. I mean we, the odd thing about it is, we think we know the future. I mean the trend of events in Japan and in a bureaucracy among intellectuals in journalism, in the Zaikai, is towards much greater independence in the United States. We expect that ten to fifteen years from now, Japan will be a fully independent nation state. The size of two Germany's defending itself. What we don't know is how to get there. That is, if we don't begin to withdraw troops, then the free rights simply continues and cynicisms develops. If we withdraw them too fast, we damage the Japanese public's trust in relationship with the United States. This is why, we need in our government, genuine expertise on Japan. There probably we have fewer people with real knowledge of Japan or East Asia in the US government now than in any times since the 1940's. And if this is a prescription for disaster, it worries me terribly that's why I said earlier that I was not particularly optimistic about the trend of events. I believe that inevitably we must begin to alter the relationships with Japan from the Cold War. It is possible that we could still come up with some division of labor in which we carry the primary military burden. But in order for that to happen, the American public needs some answer as to why they are doing it. The fundamental paradox of Pacific International relations today, the Asians are tired of having the American's presence. At the same time, they are aware that the American's provide a kind of Military skeleton that maintain stability in the area, that we are there as a counter foil to Japan's power, to China's power, to anybody else's power. The paradox is that we have no, nobody in Asia and nobody in America knows why we are still there. That above all, we do not have the economic state in East Asia that we need to have to remain militarily. Therefore, there is still question Mr Ozawa's talk about Futsunokuni as a euphemism for a country that defends itself. That's what ordinary country means in this context. That he does accurately portend the future. The arguments seems to be with Mr Ozawa is the speed at which this occurs, the role he plays in it. Things of that sort. But to look at for example the Yomiuri Shimbun just published its draft of a revised constitution. I don't see anything alarming about this. Their essential changes to article 9 are to legalize the GA ties, legalize their self defense point system , and to establish the obligation to citizens to defend the country. I do not find either of those things alarming; I believe they are rakunan that we are not included in the Crisis Constitution of 1927.

MJ: Tell us about your current project?

CJ: Well right now, I am trying to write a little book called "The Empowerment of Asia." That is, the argument of this book is essentially at the enrichment of Asia when something that occurred during the Cold War that was promoted by the Cold War and perhaps most importantly was also disguised by the Cold War. That is to say, the balance of power shifted without the United States fully noticing. Now, the enrichment of Asia is irreversible. It is a continuing self-sustaining process. Japan has agreed to pay surplus for this Asian trading partners today in the Transpacific trade surplus. I believe that this enrichment of Asia is right now turning into the empowerment of Asia, with a series of very complex issues including China's high-speed growth, the China's claims to the allegiance of the overseas Chinese. Whether Japan can truly shift from being an essentially producer driven exporting developing economy. To a domestic demand driven, high consumption headquarters economy of all of East Asia, the unification of Korea and then the role of the Americans in all of this. But this is an essay on, "Post Cold war foreign policy and the future balance of power in the Pacific", that is my main project. For long range project, is as we were saying earlier, on Tanaka Kakuei and Kozo Oshoku structural corruption and why it has occurred so often in Japan, what it means, what the vast series of events from Lockheed through Zenecon. What these all add up to. And this will be a more analytic and academic work.

MJ: And you are working on a movie project?

CJ: Well we are also the main JPRI project we are doing right now, we are trying to raise funds. We need about 250,000 dollars to make a film for 1995, the 50th anniversary for the end of the war. We'd like to make a film about Nagasaki. We believe that with Nagasaki, we could make 2 balance points. 1 is, that the atom bombing of Nagasaki was not necessary. That is we, perhaps you may make the argument about Hiroshima, the bombing of Nagasaki occurred because the Americans had 2 bombs and the bombing of Nagasaki was actually a test of a plutonium weapon. On the other hand, we would also like to put on camera, Mayor Motoshima of Nagasaki and have him say, neither of them believe they would have been atom bombed, if Japan have surrendered when the war resolved. And also then point out that he got himself shot by a Right-Wing terrorist for having said that earlier. And this is a way of both criticizing the Americans for their arrogance about the atomic bombing, and for the Japanese for their wallowing in Higaisha Ishiki and generally tending to exploit the atom bombing without ever putting it in the context of World War 2 in the pacific. But that is the main project we are working on, Alex Gibely, the movie maker who made the 10-part series called the "Pacific Century" has done a very good scenario that we would like to make a film of. We are basically now trying to raise the money in time to put it on the air around August 1995.

MJ: Tell us about you most recent book?

CJ: My most recent book is a collection of essays published by Bokutakusha, a very small two person publisher in Tokyo called Rekishiwa Futatabi Hajimatta, history restarted, which is a clear answer to Francis Fukuyama's victory cry that we won the Cold War and history is over as a result of it. But I believe that history is not over. I think history, to a certain extent, history was suspended during the Cold War and history has restarted today. His collection of essays, as I say was published earlier this year, earlier of 1994. It was very nicely reviewed in the Asahi and various other places. And I have had a good reception. It is then primarily of interest to Japanese academics and people working in the foreign policy process. But I am very pleased with it.

MJ: Now when you say the most important questions we reviewed, can you tell us the names of your cast?

CJ: Oh yes well I do have, this has become sort of famous in Japan. I have two casts called Miti and Mof or Tsusansho and Okurasho. I wish they were around, but they are in the vicinity outside right now. They have now appeared on television and in press and they are becoming as famous as Raymond Chandler's cat. But Miti and Mof are good names in English for cat. They are of course the acronyms for Ministry of International Trade Industry, the Tsushyo Sangyosho for Ministry of Finance, Okurasho. So that when they appear on Japanese TV, they come out as the Nikkei said to be, my god you have actually named your cats after the Japanese state bureaucracy? But indeed I have.

MJ: And please explain the licence plate at the back of you car.

CJ: Oh, I have a license plate from Gakusha, it is simply to say that in California you may buy a personalized license plate, the funds for which go into an environmental protection fund. And that my wife and I both, we have two cars and we bought license plates for both cars, basically because we are interested in environmental issues. But then you get to choose a plate if it has not been previously taken and if it is not obviously sexy or illegal. And so I chose Gakusha and every once in awhile I come across a Japanese who knows what it means but usually somebody thinks it is the name of a bird or a something like that.

MJ: Arigatogozaimashita

CJ: Makatoni Damo