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Letter from Japan: Achilles Heel
Japan's entrenched xenophobia is its downfall in the New Economy
By PETER McKILLOP
May
5, 2000
Web posted at 2:00 p.m. Hong Kong time, 2:00 a.m. EDT
Japan is learning an increasingly painful lesson of the New Economy: ignoring entrenched racism and xenophobia is hindering its ability to pull out of a decade-long economic slump. Its refusal to open its borders to new immigrants and its continuing racist behavior towards non-Japanese residents is fast becoming the nation's new economic Achilles heel.
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A 150-year 'rope-a-dope' strategy of absorbing periodic foreign incursions, but keeping its influence at bay, has been a flawed but politically popular social strategy. Before World War II, Japan absorbed just enough Western technology and know-how to strengthen the cabals of militant Japan-firsters who led the nation on a suicidal rampage through Asia that eventually ended in a nuclear holocaust.
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After World War II, Japan wisely abandoned militarism, but ferociously clung to its "Wara Wara Nihonjin" (We are Japanese) roots. That worked as long as Japan was able to conduct a mercantilist economy that created a world-class export engine, but limited foreigners to token economic roles inside Japan. However, the economic turmoil of the past decade has rattled this cozy, members-only business club.
Japan's historical comfort with racial isolationism is increasingly at odds with a new borderless economy. While American and European corporate culture has struggled with the profound, and often, painful implications of cultural diversity, Japan's refusal to embrace a new culturally diverse global marketplace make the nation feel like a kimono-clad tourist in New York City's Times Square.
While Asian immigrants from Bangalore to Guam have made fortunes on everything from software in Silicon Valley to fashion in Paris, Japan has slammed the door shut on non-Japanese when it comes to economic advancement in Japan. Non-Japanese remain relegated to work in the ethnic economic ghettos of pachinko parlors, shoemaking and television entertainment. While there are no definitive statistics (no surprise there) one has to wonder if the plunging birthrate and economic malaise of the last decade is in part due to the refusal of Japan to dilute its economic gene pool.
Sadly, bigotry in Japan is getting worse, not better. Recently, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, perhaps the most powerful politician in Japan today, warned that Koreans and Chinese would riot if there was an earthquake. Such cruel racist gibberish would have instantly ended his political career in another democracy. Not in Japan. Polls showed that a vast majority of Japanese actually believe this horrible lie (After the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, it was the Japanese, not the Koreans, who went on a rampage slaughtering Koreans they feared might riot.)
This week, the world's largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun confirmed Ishihara's worst fears, proclaiming a "crime wave" being perpetrated mostly by Chinese and Koreans. This does not surprise longtime foreign residents. I cannot tell you the number of conversations I have had with educated elite Japanese who will openly say that Jews control the world financial system, that the Holocaust in Germany never happened, and that Blacks have natural rhythm.
Japan's newest and most exciting entrepreneurs are now feeling the wrath of this entrenched xenophobia. Masayoshi Son of Softbank may be the poster boy for Japan's New Economy in the West. But in Japan, he is a Korean who cannot be trusted. His Tokyo office is a regular stop for convoys of sound trucks blasting hysterical, right-wing and racial epithets at the Japanese entrepreneur.
The latest victim of Japanese bigotry is not even foreign or Korean;. Japanese mobile phone titan, Yasumitsu Shigeta. founder of Hikari Tsushin is 100% Japanese. But that has not stopped a vicious rumor campaign that tars Shigeta as Korean. Proof? None of course, but his decidedly un-Japanese 'in-your-face' business style clearly means he can't be Japanese, so he must be Korean or Chinese, says a whispering campaign that has now polluted the columns of leading Japanese publications.
The message is out: act too much like a typical Silicon Valley entrepreneur and you can expect to be tarred by incestuous and jealous "Wara Wara Nihonjin" businessmen.
Slapping down new entrepreneurs with whispered bigotry may offer momentary xenophobic relief, but by doing so, Japan is refusing to accept a vital corollary of the New Economy: Nations that confront past racism and strive towards open minds and open borders are better able to tap the rich vein of educated brain power that is driving the New Information Order. Nations that don't are like two-cylinder automobiles racing against a 12-cylinder Formula One sports car.
Ignorance, bigotry and hatred are neither good for business or your soul.
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