Gaijin Leading Companies in Japan
There have been a lot of changes in Japanese society since we started J-List in 1996. First, the old concept of lifetime employment, that Japanese workers will generally stay at a firm their entire lives without ever changing jobs, fell by the wayside when iconic companies like Sony started eliminating jobs and laying off employees, something that had never been done in the past (although companies would often force layoffs in their subsidiaries when times got tough). Another big change was the idea that Japanese companies could be headed by (gasp!) foreigners, a trend which probably started when Brazil-born Lebonese-French Carlos Ghosn assumed leadership of Nissan in June of 2000, turning the company around by eliminating jobs that the company's core business couldn't support. Now it seems that many of the most visionary Japanese companies are headed by foreigners, for example Shinsei Bank, a popular Internet-based bank that's breaking rules and taking names in the extremely conservative Japanese banking world, introducing concepts like not charging a $6 fee to transfer $20 to someone's account, letting Japanese use ATMs without fees when traveling in other countries, and having bank branches that stay open past 3 pm. (My theory is that banks in Japan close so early in Japan to encourage young men to get married, so they'll have wives who can do their banking for them.) Foreigners have taken the lead in sports, too, for example Coach Bobby Valentine, who made a name for himself as the talented coach of the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.
There's another company in Japan run by a foreigner which you may have heard of: it's J-List. When we founded the company, Japan was really at the dawn of the Internet -- I mean they were tapping stones together to send TCP/IP packets. When we incorporated, we asked our bank we could go about setting up an account for credit card processing, and our request was so bold and unexpected that one of the vice presidents of the bank came out to personally apologize, saying they didn't believe the Internet would be appropriate for processing financial transactions, forcing us to do our banking through the U.S. instead. I sometimes reflect on what it's been like for the Japanese staff who have worked at normal companies to come to J-List and suddenly have an American for a boss. My staff tells me that it's interesting working for a gaijin because I don't play games with the concepts of tatemae (something we pretend is true even though we all know it's not) and honne (the truth; the way things really are); we're more likely to call a duck a duck. (Although, me suddenly asking my staff what it's like to work for an American all but guarantees whatever they're going to tell me is also a tatemae, and I'm fully aware that it was a pretty difficult thing to ask them.) Also, foreigners have a way of doing things that would be impossible for Japanese, and that strange latent power that gaijin seem to have in Japan has helped us make J-List what it is today -- almost by definition, we don't know what can't be done because we don't know what the hell is going on around us. Personally, I'm sure it's challenging for them working for a person who's more emotional and less organized than a straight-laced Japanese shacho (company president) might be, but hopefully the fun we have bringing wacky and fun products to customers around the world make up for it.
Do you work for a foreigner, or otherwise challenging person because he comes from a significantly different background from you?
posted by Peter in Japan at 6:57 PM
26 Comments:
The closest thing I have to a foreigner boss is the VP in my department is from Ireland. And because he has a thick Irish accent coupled with a very soft voice, it makes for very interesting meetings to figure out what he's saying.
But since we create programs for libraries to use all over the world, having someone who frequently travels abroad gives us a good perspective of what others are doing in the profession to improve library services.
3:42 AM
isn't it also true, peter, that j-list cannot sell anything to nihonjin, only to foreigners? seems that puts a whole different spin on things ,as well.
5:24 AM
Sailoralphacentruai, interesting, a boss from Ireland. I'd guess that'd be closer culturally to the U.S. in terms of management style, although I don't know for sure. I've worked for British bosses, and they seemed pompous, but that might have been me projecting my father onto them (since he was British, and pretty pompous ^_^).
Timo, we can do whatever we want, although we limit ourselves to not selling anything inside Japan as a matter of policy. I get a lot of mails from companies wanting us to help them move some product here, but it's too difficult knowing what will catch on here, since the perceptions of everything are so totally different.
8:10 AM
I think it should be put into perspective that Shinsei Bank is owned by a US investors, so not truly a "Japanese" bank if we are to interpret "created or ran by Japanese".
(Shinsei Bak is the name name of Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which was bought by US investors after crashing during the economic crisis of the 90s).
9:42 AM
You Americans never change; years you've been in Japan, Peter, and learned the language so thoroughly - and yet you have never lost the condescension of the Ugly American - or perhaps more accurately, the Ugly White Man. Your self-congratulatory waxing lyrical of how foreigners are finally 'breaking' Japan harks back to nothing more than the colonialist arrogance of your forbears who found it unacceptable that any society should be left alone without being thoroughly raped and mined by the West's hand and tongue.
You people never change; it is horrendous that you white people have through sheer brutality managed to rape the non-white world in your image. Your hypocrisy about the war astounds and your double standards as to white defines a war crime and criminal when it comes to whites and non whites revolting.
Your self-congratulatory tone in how you do things differently from the strait laced idiot Japanese is revoltingly masturbatory. Why do yo never reserve the same criticism for your imperialist, oppressive, raping homeland? Never do you speak ill of US society in comparison, and your hypocrisy is laid as bare as the naked whore you wish to make Japan.
And of course you spelled it 'Lebonese' - the Arabs count for even less to your white mentality than even the loathsome Japanese of WWII ever did.
12:26 PM
elmimmo, that's true. It was bought out by foreign investors who smartly put in a clause that all the really bad debt had to be taken back by the Japanese government, hence they made a mint.
Ame Otoko, er, thanks for your comments. I would say that you can always look at Japan (or any subject) from different directions, e.g. you could view the history of the 20th century as a struggle of labor vs. capital if you wanted, or as a political timeline, and so on. So your comments are great, although I can't agree with them.
I'd personally say that the near complete lack of visible leadership by any non-Japanese in the business world until the bursting of the bubble is roughly similar to the lack of any females in leadership in the "enlightened" west. And just like, say, the story of Avon is important in the context of empowering women in business, having one of Japan's most famous companies (Nissan) headed successfully by a foreigner is, to me, quite interesting. By the way, virtually all Japanese have a huge amount of respect for Ghosn-san, and are glad they saved the company that they will generally admin no Japanese could save.
(There's a fairly interesting book I've read called Successful Gaijin in Japan, which is actually about gaishi-kei companies, not foreigners per se, and how names like Goodyear, Coca Cola, AFLAC and so on broke into the Japanese business scene. In every example I remember, foreign entities like Levi's had to find really talented Japanese who fit the mold of the business world so poorly they either had to be erased or join a foreign company where they would, and did, shine. There are no examples of foreigners themselves being the leaders of these organizations back in the 60s and 70s. Hence, I think the subject of foreigners doing new and interesting things in post-bubble Japan, even if they are very few in number, is a valid one to bring up.)
Can I ask for some background information on you if that's okay? I'd be interested if you were from a country that was colonized/raped/whatever, like [fill in just about any country in Asia] or if you feel that the tiny smattering of white people doing anything of interest in any way in Japan is is improper due to other reasons.
2:50 PM
Peter!
For so many years now I've been following J-list, but surprisingly this is my first comment to post to your (awesome) blog. ~はずかしい~ My name's Jen, and I work at what can easily be called a "reverse J-List" company, except that we only deal with DVDs. Our business is a privately owned retailer, and our customer base is solely Japanese consumers. Out of only 5 employees (my boss is a "strong Sendai woman"), I am the only "gaijin", even though we are located in Manhattan, NYC! I fully chose this job in hopes of being able to continue to use my Japanese language skills after finishing college, and everyday is a bit like a tatemae/honne struggle to want to be a regular American full-timer, but at the same time I feel sick when thinking about how I'll be able to politely ask for use of my vacation days when I know how much it will stress my co-workers.
As a side note: We actually have many discussions about your J-List blog postings, and nearly every day you post my boss comes to ask me "Whats the latest news from Peter?" We even looked for you at the J-List booth at last years NYC Anime con at the Javitts, but even though we couldn't find you we did get some awesome J-list pocket tissues! Keep up the great work at J-List!
~Jen *^_^*
2:30 AM
my mother is korean and even i have a hard time with her. she speaks perfect english but she has an accent that her employees have a hard time following.
ame otoko, that is a horrible attitude to have! korea was 'raped' in a way by japan itself, but i do not harbor any hard feelings over it. nor does my family.
8:36 AM
Jen, thanks for the comment. That sounds like an interesting company. I do see many examples of "reverse" J-List of course, like there's a shop in Karuizawa where they sell Wal-Mart clothes for kids. The lady goes and buys what she thinks will sell in the next season, and sells them in her little shop. You might have seen me at the con in New York, we were there with the Domo-kun people, so we weren't there officially. I hope your business is doing well -- there are so many opportunities between Japan and America.
Rina, you have the same name as my daughter ^_^ And thanks for the comment, too. Yes, I agree that it's terrible, what Japan did. And I know a lot more about it (having bothered to look into the details) than 99% of Japanese, which is sad. Still, it's good to be positive about the future since it's the only direction worth looking towards. My grandfather, also, had issues when I told him I was going marry a Japanese woman, although living through an actual war will probably change your views forever. Happily he was the only member of my American/British/slightly Irish family that had any objections.
Accents can be hard. My wife also had an accent that can be a challenge, despite the fact that she can talk about difficult account terms that I can't follow myself.
9:10 AM
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
9:54 AM
Eric, replying to you privately.
10:59 AM
I don't see how your comments reflect a response to my own, Peter. I say, regardless of whether you bind yourself to the imbecility of Marxist thought or to traditional white capitalist thought, or any other strain of thought, broad and basic history remains that, and oppression remains that. What did Japan do to deserve to be forced to stand up or be raped as was China next door?
So regardless of the ideological lenses you may fashion, what remains is that the white societies of the West saw fit to encroach themselves upon the world as on as having discovered the means to do so, imposing themselves violently and very thoroughly on India, China, and all of Asia. Japan (quite unlike then-America's consistently hollow claims to isolationism with its meddling fingers always assisting death and colonialism in some part of the world) was isolated, forced open, forced to fight, forced ot negotiate racist, humiliating terms, force to put up with white arrogance, and forced to play the White Man at his own game or be drawn and quartered and butchered as were China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and every other Asian nation around it.
With the near-unanimity of white thought on Japan, I have come to believe, and be forced to believe, that it is centuries of white domination that have made the white population of the world, and being born into a world where the White Way in every sphere of life dominates, that make the white populations of the world so myopic to their own wrongs. Your waxing lyrical of America's vaunted 'freedom' is very typical - America has stood for anything but since its inception, and has at very point in its history had one segment of its population outright or implicitly denied these vaunted rights and freedoms. It is poignant the Obama, who claims to stand for all that is the antithesis of Bush - even this man refuses to be associated with the enemy fifth column du jour - this is, after all, the American way - selective application of rationale and rights.
You speak consistently of Japan and how the Japanese are ignorant of history - yet the Japanese are far more informed and willing to seek truth on wartime matters than the rancidly military-worshipping American population whose true religion is not Christianity - as you can defile God and Jesus and Mary so much as you like, freedom of speech and all that - but Military Worship-ism : speak ill of the 'troops', of the wrongs they have committed, of trends of torture and abuse and rape and arrogance and dehumanization of occupied populations since their military’s inceptions - and you are a heretic. You are insane, you are a traitor, you wish death to America, and to white 'civilization'.
On the other hand, it is expected to be accepted that the Japanese Imperial troops were uniformly inhuman and rabidly genocidal. The validity of the laughable 'war crime' "trials" conducted by arrogant, white supremacist Americans which saw thousands sent to their deaths for 'crimes' such as daring to down the TIME magazine-adored B29 harbingers of fiery hell and death, with or without executing their perverted crews who would read porn while raining fire on children - the validity of these trials is unquestioned. To consider the Japanese troops as vaguely human is incredulous. To do so on the condition that you humanize only those who went to America and learned white ways as did Clint Eastwood is 'testing' and revolutionary. To concur with n ay part of Justice Radhabinod Pal's or the partial objections of the other three dissenting justices to the falsity, falsehood, hearsay-as-evidence and violations of justice that defined the Tokyo Trials presided over by an often 'inebriated' Joseph Keenan - is idiocy - because it would question the logic of how it is that it came to be seen that the vast array of war crimes committed by white men in the War were....not crimes.
Which American dares question why men who were for all intens and purposes the worst kinds of white supremacists, anti-Semitics, racists who openly wished for and carried out death upon innocent civilians - are interned at the hallowed ground of Arlington?
Which white Brit will dare defy the worship of Churchill, who openly bit back at those who criticised him and reiterated that he wholly supported the use of poison gas on Iraqi 'uncivilised tribes'?
Which white Canadian dares question Mackenzie King's wartime leadership, though he expressed relief the nuclear bombs were dropped on the Japanese people, and the not the 'white races of Europe'?
I don't come to this conclusion about the white populations of the world with prejudice and malice against them and wish for their harm - though they ever more tilt far more to right-of-fascist as in Italy, and become increasingly aggressive with their neo-colonialism and excuses for the same. I believe they are merely a product of a race that went from being some of the most uncouth peoples on Earth to suddenly engorged with power and dominion borne of violence and military supremacy - and above all, arrogance and myopia to their own wrongs. This shift produced the fusion of civilization, barbarity and notions of supremacy that they are simply born into and conditioned with, to this day. It is only the ascendance of some non-white power, and the decline of white powers, as well as reversal of all they have imposed on the world onto themselves, that would reverse this trend, as has been the case in the past with other tyrannical civilizations.
As for you, Rina, I would advise you clarify what you mean about Japan having 'raped' Korea - if even you accept fully the accusations of uniform forced sexual slavery - I bid you try to compare this with the horror of mass rape of not only sexual slaves abut of women all over the countryside of Korea, of her little girls and young brides and widows, of the indiscriminate bombings and strafing and civilian massacre brought upon in such horrific torrents upon Korea - by America, by American troops, encapsulated by events such as No Gun Ri. And above all, the brutal cleaving of Korea into two halves by...white men....along lines of white ideologies....who cared nothing for what the Korean people wanted. Espouse equal standards for those who truly decimated your nation, or you espouse hypocrisy.
And Peter, I am appalled, though not surprised, per all of the above that you would claim you know better than '99%' of the Japanese population about the War. What you know is what your white supremacist forbears wrote for you - victor's history. You have 'actually' 'looked into' one argument of the very valid comfort women debate, I'm sure - but do you care for the same fate that befell tens of thousands of Japanese women at America's implicit demand?
Do you know better than the very women who remember Americans and Australians forcing girls and women from their homes and raping them in the hills where their 'screams could be heard all night'?
Do you demand justice for them?
It is estimated that over 10,000 women were raped on the mainland by Allied mongrels - also known as 'forces'. Do you know better than the researchers who have studied this?
Surely you repeat the claims made by the Americans that Imperial forces 'forced' Okinawans into mass suicide through 'lying' to them that the Americans were barbaric and would rape and kill them - but do you know better than the Okinawan women's organizations who have documented the fact of widespread rape of Okinawan women, over ten thousand of them? Being such a Japanophile, do you demand why it is that Japan has been forced by the American occupation and its subsequent lapdogs of the LDP to forget this massive horror? Why does no one remember them - do you wonder? You married a Japanese woman – do you not care to know the plight of Japanese women just like your wife only decades ago?
Since you are so much more well-informed than the Japanese on the war, have you also demanded to know why the obvious and unnecessary slaughter of the Great Tokyo Air Raid has been so forgotten? Why little to no memorials stand to those who were 'burned, baked, and boiled' as so proudly proclaimed by Curtis LeMay? Why the only museum dedicated to its victims only opened in 2006, and more outrageously was cut off from government funding midway through its construction, and saved only by private individuals who stepped in to save it and fund its completion - as a tiny, remote, unknown little building that no one knows anything of anyway?
I suspect you do not. After all, even Richard Minear, the American who wrote 'Victor's Justice : The Tokyo War Crime Trials' which systematically and dispassionately deconstructs and demolishes those very trials, their fallacious basis, their false 'evidence', their double standards for defense and accused, their supremely obvious white supremacism, and concludes Japan conducted war in legitimate self-defense (atrocities did occur - no party in war has a monopoly on morality, only a higher ground - and by far in the Pacific War, this was Japan's) - still, in the end, though saying America was horrifically wrong - in the end, sides with America.
I am sorry to be so harsh; I dislike to be so. But the scale of these injustices - they demand nothing less. After all, anger is but the meanest form of protest.
2:53 PM
Ame Otoko, again, I'd like to know more about you -- where did you grow up, what kind of education have you had? Also, your age, if you are willing to let us know. Your views are interesting -- nothing I can agree with at all, but eye-opening, which is the point of discussion I guess. Although it's hard to follow what you mean since you attack everyone and everything all at once.
I'd say you should get to know some Japanese people, since you clearly don't know any at present. As far as your original comments about the "white" attitudes living inside Japan, I'd say that Japan was completely bowled over by Western culture (specifically British, American, Prussian and French, in that order) twice: first, when Perry's Black Ships came to force trade, and the second time, at the loss of World War II. This is why Japan considers America/Europe to be the center of society and definitely feels themselves to be slightly below this level culturally. We aren't projecting this, it's coming from the Japanese themselves. Is it wrong? I can't say for sure.
I think it's entirely unconstructive to be so venomous about any subject, and you should reflect for a while on the opposite side of your arguments, if only as a mental exercise. Being so angry about the whites this and the Japanese that (how is it you're able to actually use "mongrel" in a sentence? Most people can't summon up the anger to do this, in my opinion) really isn't the way to be happy or productive in your own life. How about you let your ideas simmer for a while and see how they turn out with a little more life experience?
3:20 PM
Certainly, but first, Peter – please explain why it is why you wish to know more about myself when you seem so ready to make your own conclusions about things so specific as how many (real, live, actual, non-PVC/hand-drawn/pixellated/’language exchange/chat buddy) authentic Japanese people I have acquaintance with - for all the effort involved, you'll be disappointed to know how inaccurate the conclusion arrived at was. That and the accusation of 'anger' seem petty shots. Certainly with conlcusions as you've made you can come to ones you believe are accurate about my ethnicity, age, and education - very strange thing to ask, that last one.
On a less sardonic note, I had actually hoped for some sembalnce of a response, at the very least to the mass rape of Japanese women post-war. I am not surprised, sadly, when even my well-educated, ardently feminist and claimed humanist Japanese ex-girlfriend was utterly uninterested.
You ascribe a great deal too much to this imagined benign white, Western influence of the past - certainly there was awe of Western culture - and this was strongly influenced by awe of Western military might, particularly from a society familiar with warfare.
There was also great revulsion at many of the ways of the Westerners who came demanding from Japan what they would truly believing it was their birthright, do not forget. Aping of the West was a worldwide phenomenon borne of a sudden inferiority complex that again stemmed from military inferiority and perceived societal inferiority to the West - where a notion of 'mightier in arms' existed, other aspects of the 'mightier' society, inferior as they may be, are easily seen in a positive light as well. Ridiculous tight pants and hairstyles superior to kimonos and yukatas? Check. Bland, unoriginal and tasteless Western cuisine superior to the long culinary tradition of Japan? Check.
The same applies to Japanese society postwar. To an extent, certainly - society was awed and made to feel inferior to the victorious, rampaging American army that had reduced their great nation to a burned out hollow. But to underestimate the American Occupation's potent psychological occupation and MacArthur's official policy of 're-education' of the Japanese populace - from imprisnoning those who posted posters protesting American military rape of Japanese women to banning Fuji-san's portrayal in art to stamp out any possible notion of nationalism, to introducing cheese and bread in American-style hot lunch programs in schools, to enforcing mixed schools and spandex in gym uniforms for girls, to a blanket ban on any negative press regarding anything the United States and mention of the atomic bombings in the Trials - and so very much more, the American occupation and policy of re-education was far, far more thorough than the standard inferiority complex to all things Western that plagued the entire Eastern world in general - infinitely moreso. Kores sustained a far briefer occupation, if it could even be called that, by the Americans - decimate them as they did, and rape them in their thousands, and strafe them in their cilvian centers, the Americans did not 're-educate' them. The result is that Korea is significantly less worshipful of America above the lower common denominator of standard inferiority complex than Japan is - though Korean society pathetically ignores as a whole the litany of atrocities that were American in the Korean war 0 their youth are still at least willing to protest American miliatry presence in their nation. And their women do not labour under such a powerful self-hate that the moement they leave high school they mutilate their hair into hideous shades of brown and blonde as sadly do Japanese women.
So no, Peter, though you see otherwise through your selective lens of America as wholesome, pure and good - the Japanese bring so innoculously 'bowled over', as they let out a collective 'WOW! LET US APE ALL THIS INNATE BEAUTY!' - is disingenious. America's occupation was thorough - so powerfulyl thorough, because Japan was the only non-white power left standing in the world, whilst the Arabs were being triablist idiots slaving after their Brit masters, the Ottomans mimicking the worst of the West in Germany, India suffering under the brutal Raj, and China being made into a constantly redrawn puzzle map - to stand up, and state that it would not allow this happpen to it.
Because it dared do so, America and her Allies decided everything that made Japan must be destroyed - just as everything that made Turkey Ottoman must be destroyed. The results are two states labouring under the saddest of wish-we-were-white self-loathing with pathetic governments doing their colonialist masters bidding decades after they have left.
So certainly - the whites in Japan today on business or agog on aimne in Akiba or genuinely seeking solace and peace in trying to find some small corner of Japan that resembles what it once was and in its non-aggressive society - are not 'projecting' this. 'This' was done long ago.
You once asked in one of your posts why it was the Japanese had no sense of their suffering in the war, the horror of the firebombings where they now walk only decades ago. I was amazed you had to ask.
“Throughout the conflict, the Japanese were depicted and treated as a lower race. These attitudes predated Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. America’s president Roosevelt, the leader of Western liberalism, seriously considered the proposition that the Japanese were evil because their skulls were 2000 years less developed than the white man’s civilised cranium, and that the solution might be to encourage some cross-breeding to create a new ‘Euroindoasian’ race that could isolate the Japanese. On the British side, Churchill was always noted for espousing the blunt racial attitudes of his Edwardian background, disparaging Asian peoples as ‘dirty baboos’ and ‘chinks’ in need of a good thrashing with ‘the sjambok’. And Churchill was far from the exception. In the months before the Pacific War began, the diary of Sir Alexander Cadogan of the British Foreign Office records Cadogan’s own views of the Japanese as ‘beastly little monkeys’ and ‘yellow dwarf slaves’.”
“The American press branded Japan ‘a racial menace’, and routinely depicted the Japanese as monkeys, mad dogs, rats and vermin. Hollywood war movies emphasised the sadistic character of Japanese soldiers, who seemed to break the rules of ‘civilised’ warfare in every film. Allied propagandists made a clear distinction between their two major enemies. They showed the problem in Europe not as the whole German nation, but as Hitler and the Nazis. In Asia, by contrast, the enemy was ‘the Japs’ - an entire malignant race. As one of the best studies of the race war in the Pacific points out, ‘Western film-makers and publicists found a place for the “good German” in their propaganda, but no comparable counterpart for the Japanese’ (J Dower, War Without Mercy, 1986, p322n).”
Do you recall those I called mongrels were forces who participated in mass rape? Certainly a kind word for them - epsecially when they were saying the above and worse about the innocent Japanese population.
You may see this as my being venomous. I would see the same of your ignoring at least my points regarding the mass rape of Japanese woman any thinking human needs to care about, and the strange saga of the musem dedicated to the Tokyo Air Raid, but being willing to accuse of 'anger' and venom. Certainly I am angry, but not frothing and wanting to go on witch hunts of non-white populations (see America's treatment of Obama as a possible Muzzie) as is the trend among white socities right now. Constructive, informed anger, again, is, after all, the meanest form of protest.
Right now I hear a white colleague barking loudly and insolently at one of our Japanese clients at his desk on the phone and saying all manner of cringeworthy things…and I am reminded all the more of everything I have said.
4:25 PM
Also, I am absolutely appalled you would actually say that you are not sure as to whether it was a good thing or not that the Japanese labour under a worship of the West and sense of inferiority to it. Did you actually mean to say you think this may be a good thing because Western society is, after all, inherently superior?
4:31 PM
I'm just trying to figure out your background. I once met a 17 year old girl from Australia who was totally on fire with American feminism, and I had to try to translate a discussion between her and a very conservative Japanese women. It was rather interesting. Anyway, I'd like to know if you're a young person with (less than mature, IMO) passions and opinions, as I know I was once, or if you're from a country that was occupied by the Japanese, or what. (Your penchant for both vilifying the Japanese for what they did in World War II and doing the same for the Americans for defeating and disarming them is kind of hard to follow.)
As for the rape of Japanese women, please state your historical facts. Living in Japan, I have never heard mention of this by Japanese people, hence I doubt your source's accuracy. Remember that MacArthur had the wisdom to only send American troops from the European theatre to Japan, hence the ones that had been fighting and might have serious issues with the country weren't here at all. I honestly don't believe there was widespread rape of Japan by U.S. soldiers, although I have seen pictures of women who had been forced into prostitution, presumably due to the economic problems after the war. Do you think the Japanese could have received a Nanking-like treatment from the U.S. forces yet the memory was suppressed from the cultural awareness?
I don't think it's good that Japan worships the West, however it's what is, and it's very much Japan's choice. They made a conscious choice to imitate the nations of Europe and (to a lesser extend until the postwar period) America, which is neither good not bad. What else could they have done, not industrialize? Seriously, your point of view is really hard to grasp. The West certainly was superior to Japan when the Black Ships arrived so Japan had no choice but to look to the West, which it did to its great profit. Japan also looks very much to China, much as Europe looks to Ancient Rome. This is all very logical and reasonable to me.
I would say without a doubt that no harm was done to Japan as a result of the occupation, and temporary banning of Sumo Wrestling or martial arts meant nothing since they're all around as peaceful arts. I base this on a fair reading of history books and on talking with Japanese people, who fairly fall over themselves with praise for MacArthur. I'm sure there were problems, and I'm also aware of the fact that perception of historical events is skewed in the direction of the victor (hence the Koreans ability to pretend that everything the Japanese did to their peninsula was done without the aid of a single Korean going along with them, which of course wasn't true at all).
6:11 PM
I am not from a country that was occupied in Japan, though my ethnic heritage belongs to one that was aided physically and ideologically by many Japanese pan-Asianists in its struggle against white occupiers.
You have misread my words. I do not have a penchant for vilifying the Japanese during World War II; this is the farthest thing form who I am. As I said previously; no side has a monopoly on morality in war, there is only a higher moral ground – atrocities did occur, but that higher ground was entirely Japan’s in the Pacific War versus the brutality and purely colonialist intent of the ‘Allies’. I should clarify this.
I don’t think my background is relevant. What a person has to say is what should be considered above all, without prejudicing it with assumptions based on ethnicity, race, education, and background.
What has happened in Japan regarding mass rape is historical amnesia similar to Korean amnesia regarding American atrocities such as No Gun Ri and civilian strafing, and indeed what the Americans did in the Philippines to boot. In Japan’s case – again, MacArthur’s stated policy was one of condescending ‘re-education’ of this ‘nation of 12 year olds’. The psychological occupation of Japan was that entirely thorough – the press, the censorship, the prohibition on negative speak about the Occupation, the mass rape and the specific prohibition against speaking out such rape – all served to break and mould Japan into what America wanted to see it as.
Do you really think, Peter, that an inferiority complex is something that is willingly chosen, and not something conditioned into? The equation is simple – America feared Japan : America broke Japan.
Hatred for the Japanese reached such fever pitch in the American mindset that to state GIs coming form the European theatre (who treated their Japanese-American comrades there oh-so-nicely) had nothing against the Japanese is foolish. Refer to the famous survey showing how among GIs only a handful surveyed wanted to kill Germans while a huge percentage wanted to kill some Japanese – one white, the other not.
As for historical references, with your fluency in Japanese, you will have no trouble finding source material. Here is some of the documentation in English, thrown hastily together while I am at work:
-According to a review of "The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II", rape is seen as a method for soldiers to bond with each other, and also to enhance their aggressiveness, and it also "reflects a burning need to establish total dominance of the other"[the enemy]. As a consequence U.S. soldiers rape of Japanese women was "general practice". "The estimate of one Okinawan historian for the entire three-month period of the campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone".
Excerpt from “Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II” by Yuki Tanaka, Toshiyuki Tanaka, and John Dower:
“…These forces also participated in the rape of civilians. A Japanese prostitute made the following comment about Australian soldiers who landed at Kure (the port of Hiroshima) in November 1945:
"Most of the people in Kure stayed inside their houses, and pretended they knew nothing about the rape by occupation forces. The Australian soldiers were the worst. They dragged young owmen into their jeeps, took them to the mountain, and then raped them. I haeard them screaming for help nearly every night. A policeman from the Hiroshima police station came to me, and asked me to work as a prostitute for the Australians - he wnated me and other prostitutes to act as a sort of "firebreak", so that young women wouldn't get raped. We agreed to do this, and contributed greatly."
"I stood beside a bed in a hospital. On it lay a girl, unconscious, her long, black hair in a wild tumult on her pillow. A doctor and two nurses were working to save her. An hour before she has been raped by twenty soldiers. We found her where they left her, on a piece of waste land."
The Japanese government had discussed ways of dealing with the anticipated problem of mass rape by occupation forces in the week following surrender and before their arrival. On August 21, 1945, Prime Minister Higashikuni Naruhiko called a meeting of several of his ministers to discuss the issue; attendees included the health, internal affairs, and foreign ministers and the attorney-general. This was dubbed the “comfort-women” meeting. They decided to set up a Recreation and Amusement Assocaition (RAA) for the occupation forces. A special government fund of 30 million yen was allocated to the project, and the head of the Japanese police force was ordered to take all measures necessary to assist such an organization….These young women were also the victims of rape…
…The establishment of comfort-women brothels did little to minimize the incident of mass rape by Japanese forces during the war; the same could be said of the RAA project during the occupation.
…It is a harsh irony that while the accounts of mass rape and rape ion the form of forced prostitution by Japanese forces during the war were being heard in the Tokyo trials….the same practice was continuing throughout occupied Japan with the active participation of the Allied forces and the approval of the high command of the occupying forces.
…Serious analysis of the phenomenon of military mass rape is rare, yet there is ample evidence of it, both from World War II and from the conflicts that have occurred since.”
Kanagawa Police Official History:
“It is expected that women in our home country would blame us , if we asked you to set up pleasure facilities. Therefore we can not request you to do so.. However if you don not provide us with such facilities voluntarily, many troubles tend to occur. As far as these kinds of facilities are concerned , our MP is prepared to co-operate with you if necessary. I presume that the occupation of japan by our troops will be about three years at maximum if no trouble occurs but if there are many troubles, I am afraid that it might be 10 to 15 years.”
Page 149:
According to a survey conducted in 1949 by Isuhima Tsutomu on 500 prostitutes specializing in services for GIs, 26.8 percent said that they had become prostitutes in order to earn a living ...The second most common reason(22. 8 percent) was the despair that women experienced as a result of rape by GIs.
Yuki Tanaka also writes:
“Shortly before the introduction of the the nationwide "off limits" the number of reported cases of sexual crimes committed by GIs in Japan was down to about 40 per day. It is said that the number suddenly jumped to about 330 cases per day from late March 1946. The most well known case was an incident that occurred on April 4, 1946, at Nakamura Hospital in Omori district.....three military trucks stopped in front of the hospital, throwing their headlight upon the hospital building. Then , at the signal of a whistle, about 50 US soldiers dashed out of the trucks and invaded the hospital ....They raped all 17 nurses on night duty , about 20 nursing assistants, and more than 40 female patients, including a woman who had just delivered a baby. A two-day-old baby was thrown out of the mother's bed onto the floor and killed .
....Another large scale organized rape occurred in Nagoya...they had come in jeep and truck, they cut off the telephone lines of the entire block and intruded into a number of houses simultaneously, raping many girls and women between the ages of 10 and 55 years.”
Also, refer to the following article in the New York Times regarding mass rape in Okinawa:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E0D7153CF932A35755C0A9669C8B63&scp
Suzuyo Takazato of Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence, documents the following:
When the Battle of Okinawa, a fierce battle described as “ iron storm” was over, the US soldiers started to randomly attack women in Okinawa.
1. Two to six soldiers abduct one woman at gun or knife point.
2. After gang-raping a victim, she would often be given to other groups of soldiers to gang-rap.
3. Soldiers did not hesitate to kill or severely injure those who tried to help victims.
4. Assaults can happen any places including in the field, on streets, around wells, by the water, in front of families.
5. Assaults often showed brutality. Women with infants on her back were raped and killed. Victims’ ages range from 9 months old to 60’s.
6. Victims gave birth. In the four years after the end of the World War II, 450 children were identified to have been fathered by the GIs.
7. Perpetrators were mostly not apprehended, left unpunished.
My point of view, I think, is hard for you to grasp because it does not conform to what white domination has dictated are a range of valid opinions to hold. I cannot believe you actually believe the “West certainly was superior to Japan when the Black Ships arrived so Japan had no choice but to look to the West.” This truly is appalling white supremacist thinking.
The difference in a great civilization – such as the Chinese coming to Japan and the Moors to the Philippines, and brute ones – such as Perry barking at Japan to open up or die, and the Spaniards raping the Philippines so badly they even erased its name - is that the former comes bearing learning and respect and wisdom, and the latter arrogance, guns, and threats. To equate industrializing with needing to ape Western ‘culture’ is appalling. Rome and China were great civilizations. America and Britain and the Netherlands were merely colonialist brutes.
9:53 PM
Peter and ame otoko,
While I understand the points made (agreeable or disagreeable) and the historical and social context, this unfortunately has turned into and off topic out of control situation. Not what I come to the blog for.
If you can take the discussion off-line I'd be appreciative.
(the context from which I am contributing: born in Japan to Filipino national / Japanese mother ... raised in the east coast and in the deep south USA and now living in Hawaii ... which has had its share of imperialism and racism ... but is perfect because here, we "poke fun" at all of it)
Aloha,
/ kahuna ki'i /
1:58 AM
This post has been removed by the author.
3:14 AM
But it isn't a forum, kahuna ki'i, nor has it spiralled into pettiness and personal insults ? It's Peter's own blog, and it certainly isn't an 'out of control' discussion, minor little snide asides here and there. I certainly find it an interesting discussion and welcomed the chance to look further into the things Peter was doubtful about, and as he says for me, so I say that while I cannot agree with much of what he has said I certainly welcome it - for that is what discussion is.
Regardless of agreement or disagreement with my wider point of view, from a purely humanitarian standpoint I think mass rape and the failure to dedicate a memorial/museum to the worst single incident of civilian bombing in history are urgent points for anyone to investigate.
That said, have I said anything personally unkind, I apologize. I certainly wouldn't mind continuing the discussion privately but I think the airing of opposing view on such matters in public does a great deal to inform.
3:23 AM
ame otoko,
If you had your own blog about all of this I might visit it. Then it'd be your platform to stand on and do with it what you want.
I didn't come to PETERPAYNE.NET to get all of this.
Aloha,
/ kahuna ki'i /
3:52 AM
With all due respect, bear in mind Peter personally found the discussion worthwile, and discussed, and allowed it to be discussed. Had he not wanted to further discussion, clearly I would not have.
As I said, it is his blog.
If you find comments on the articles uninteresting, as with anything else on the internet - pass over them, as you may already so with articles on the blog itself, and as we all do with most of what we come across on the internet.
4:45 AM
Ame: war is a terrible business and terrible things happen when that line is crossed. On both sides. The hands of the 'whites' may not be clean, but neither are anyone else's. But this was all long before my time and I'll spend my energies trying to make peace in the present and into the future. (BTW, I am American by birth, but have lived quite happily in Japan and many other places).
5:48 AM
Denial that atrocities in war is not something I recall being made mention of, doctor, nor can aything but the opposite be said of what I have stated.
Noble sentiment as that attitude may try to lend itself, doctor,that is simply excuse-making, and skirting and pleasantly whitewashing the issue.
Such sentiment, if truly sincere, would seek to realize peach through truth and acknowledgment. How much willingness is there to this end in white societies to acknowledge this, to step away from their military worship? I daresay very little, and that the white supremacist mindset that engulfed the Pacific War has not abated, and only set up shop in pleasant goals such as yours, where 'working for peace' is the noble aim - so long as Western domination and victor's history reign supreme. I have already exhausted why previously. Antipathy to the crude horror the supposedly noble troops of the West wrought on Japan through rape and fire is a glaring enough example.
I do not believe it is possible for this to happen, moreover, until what centuries of Western encroachment are reversed.
6:08 AM
I have to take issue with your focus on 'White' / 'American' / 'Western' war atrocities. Such atrocities began in Asia before the US entered the war. And you should not assume people in the west take any joy in the events of the 1940s in Tokyo, Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It is still a controversial subject and seldom discussed here. I disagree strongly with it all (personally). Any injury to civilians, even in wartime, is a crime and should be treated as such. BTW, I may agree with you. But what would you replace this 'Western influence' with? Perhaps pre-war nationalism (just a guess)?
12:53 AM
Doctor,
And so what of it? If white atrocities began in Asia long, long before the American Occupation - as Tojo Hideki brilliantly pointed out so calmly to the hypocriticial Americans who could do nothing with their rage - what on earth is your argument?
Is America's brutality somehow thereby negated? Of course not. It was but the culmination of White and Christian supremacist bruatality towards Asia.
Sadly, it is not I who stated or needs to claim the imbecilic American people, who fall for lie after after war after lie, found joy in the firebombings and atomic bombings. TIME magazine could no hid eits joy in hw the new incendiary bombs owuld cause Tokyo to burn like a hellish inferno.
And the American people? Refer to rsearch fo John Dower, white, and American, just like you - he mentions a December 1945 Fortune poll that found 23 percent of the respondents wished the U.S. had the chance to use "many more of them [atomic bombs] before Japan had a chance to surrender" (1986, 54). The poll results vividly reveal the depth of the hatred of America - and not just white America.
And Peter, I know you have since left this discussion since you wer confromnted about the mass rape of Japanese women - but I wish to challenge you further on your ignorant claim that the West was 'superior' to Japan when the cockroach Perry arrived. I believ the below, from Noel Perrin's 'Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword', is succinct , and sufficient, enough - to show it was the American and the West that was infgerior in barbaric, and superior only in death and guns:
“There were armoured knights striding around Tokyo and Kagoshima when the Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia – but a letter, or shipment of lacquer tree seedlings, travel dmany times faster between those two cities than mail did between Philadelphia and Savannah….
…In the eighteenth century a few Japanese doctors even took up the study of anatomy; in 1754 one of them published the first local anatomy text, called Zoshi (or, On the Internal Organs). More striking, in 1805 a surgeon named Hanaoka Seishu performed an operation using the new Japanese anaesthetic mafutsusan. Either had not yet come in in the West, and this is generally held to be the first surgical operation in the world performed under general anaesthesia.
…In 1813, Vassily Golovnin, the Russian navy captain mentioned arlier, had a chance to visit several Japanese stores. This was in a minor provincial city in the far north of Japan.
What he found on the counters he could not have found in his homeland or the Unite States for many years to come. That is, row after row after prepackaged and prepiced goods. Captain Golovnin was very impressed to see practically of all the things for sale bore ‘little printed bills, on which there are noted the price, the use, the name of the article, the name of the maker or factory – and very often something in its praise.’
But the vitality of Tokugawa Japan perhaps appears most clearly in the testimony of the first generation of foreigners to visit the country after Perry …Such Westerners as the Boston scientist Edward Morse….on the whole expected to find a backward land – and they didn’t, any more than Don RodrigoViveo y Velasco had in 1610.
Professor Morse, for example, found himself ‘astonished that the death-rate of Tokyo was lower than than that of Boston.’ New York, too. In New York, Typhoid Mary was still to come. In Tokyo, diseases like typhoid were wholly absent.
Morse investigated to find why, it turned out to be because the Japanese were far ahead in sanitary engineering. He was equally startled when he took a sixty-mile cross-country trip to Nikko, and found himself on ‘a much better road than ever I saw in New England’ (20)…
…Other visitors recorded their surprise at finding such things as operating oil wells at Echigowhich ahd been brought in thirty years before the first American oil wells (21), recycling so efficient there was simply no debris to be found in Japan (22), and a merchant marine (composed entirely of sailing ships between fifty and two hundred tons) larger than that of most Western countries (23)…..
…But let them use their own words. Here are five foreign judgments of Japan made just as th feudal age was ending….Japan was then a self-supporting and self-sufficient country of thirty million people, th product of two hundred years of existing in a steady state, and very beautiful. She is none of these things, of course, in 1979.
‘I have heard everywhere the happy laughter of your children, and never been able to discern misery.’
Henry Heusken, First Secretary of the American Legation, 1857.
‘The people all appeared clean, well-fed….well clad and happy looking. It is more like the golden age of simplicity than I have ever seen in any other country.’
Townsend Harris, US Consul Genrral, 1858
I saw peace, plenty, apparent content, and a country more perfectly cultivated and kept, with more ornamental tim,ber everywhere, than can be matched even in England.’
Sir Rutherford Alcock, 1860
‘It is not true that we resort to Japan to civilize, for civilization exists already; or to convert the heathen, for such attempts are strictly forbidden under the terms of the treaty which we have accepted; or to add to the happiness of the people, for a more contented people does not exist; or for any object in the world but to trade with profit to ourselves.’
General Edward Barrington d Fonblanque, R.A., 1861”
A foreigner, after remaining a few months in Japan, slowly begins to realize that, whereas he thought he could teach the Japanese everything, he finds to his amazement and chagrin, that those virtues or attributes which under the name of humanity are the burden of our moral teaching at home, the Japanese seem to have been born with.
Edward S. Morse, Professor of Zoology, Imperial University, Tokyo”
1:59 PM
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