Page Two
" . . . at the grassroots level in the United States, American sentiment regarding Japan is still quite positive. . . "
After
the end of the war and after I graduated from senior high school, I
decided that I did not want to go on to college in Japan. I decided
that I would try to grab the first opportunity to go to the United States
to see for myself what made America tick. Also, I wanted to continue
my education in the United States. But I told myself that I would have
to learn your language first. I did so by listening to armed forces
radio; Japan was under the Allied Occupation then, as you know. I also
read the only English-language newspaper published in Japan, the Japan
Times. I tried to read aloud, imitating the radio announcer, normally
a GI. I also tried to memorize so many English words a week. I wrote
down sentences in my notebook as I learned them. During the day, I had
to work on my father's farm. My father being an absentee landlord, the
land would have been taken away by our tenants under MacArthur's new
agricultural reform program. So by day I worked on my father's farm;
at night, I studied English.
When I became reasonably proficient in the language-in about a year
and a half - I went to work for the U.S. military government in Nagoya.
Many of my military government friends tried to get me a scholarship
to U.S. colleges, but in vain. Finally, I was working with a young American
in his mid-30's a civilian employee of the military government. His
name was David Walterhouse, and he was from Ladoga, Indiana. Ladoga
is a small community of some 500 people - people in Indiana don't even
know where it is. One day, he became violently sick. He had bulbar-type
polio, which affected his neck. He was taken to the military hospital
in Osaka, where he remained in an oxygen tent for 10 days. But he died
there. It just so happened that a few days before he was stricken, I
had taken his picture at the office. When I wrote a letter of condolence
to his mother back home in Indiana, I thought she would like to have
his picture, so I enclosed it. At the end of my letter I said, "Someday
I would very much like to come to your country to continue my schooling,"
Of course, she had heard about me from her son, and so she was good
enough to drive all the way to Wabash College in Crawfordsville- 11
or 12 miles away-to talk to the admissions director. Finally, Wabash
gave me a scholarship. Only because her son did not make it back to
the United States was I able to come to this country to study
. I also count myself fortunate to have gone to Wabash College because
in those days it had, as Earl Johnson said, the best speech professor
in all of America. This was W. Norwood Brigance, who claimed to have
authored something like 16 textbooks on speech. In fact, I started out
as a political science major with a speech minor, but I switched my
major and minor around so that my major would be speech. During the
last three years of college, I became a member of the Speakers' Bureau
of the college. The Speakers' Bureau would send out brochures to interested
organizations, and on requests alone, I had the pleasure of speaking
on over 200 occasions. I had always wanted to talk about how Japan had
changed in the postwar years, or how Japanese women had changed during
the postwar years, and things of that sort, in an attempt to build a
bridge of understanding between America and Japan.
" . . . in the last couple of years ... Japan has been changing a great
deal, though perhaps not as fast as Washington would like."
I don't think I need to say what I did at Nissan Motor Company since
Earl kindly described what I used to do there, but one thing I really
enjoyed was the site search for Nissan's investment project in the United
States. I did that from the fall of 1974 to November 1980, when Nissan
finally selected Smyrna, Tennessee, as the site of its $850 million
investment. In the meantime, I had occasion to meet many governors and
mayors. Just the other day, I tried to count how many governors and
ex-governors I met in the process-I have met maybe 45 governors and
negotiated hard with some of them. In the meantime, there were protectionist
pressures on the Hill, so while I was seeing some of these governors,
I also went from Tokyo to Washington once a month to see the senators
and congressmen from those states in which Nissan was considering investment
to try to get them on our side. I think that was the work I enjoyed
very much. In March of last year, I took an early retirement from Nissan
Motor Company, when a Japanese contemporary of mine by the name of Tadashi
Yamamoto, who organized the Japan Center for International Exchange
(JCIE) some 18 years ago, invited me to join his organization as managing
director. Nissan, Toyota, and some 40 other Japanese companies have
been supporting JCIE's activities. Among other things, JCIE, maybe once
every two years, organizes a U.S.-Japan dialogue called the U.S.-Japan
Shimoda Conference. Shimoda is the historic port town where Townsend
Harris' ships called in 1853 to open up Japan's door.
We have also been organizing the conferences of the Trilateral Commission,
which is the brainchild of David Rockefeller. In fact, in April of this
year we organized the 15th Trilateral Commission meeting in Tokyo, which
brought together some 170 top leaders from North America, Europe, and
Japan. We discussed, among other things, what role Japan should play
in the community of nations-or more specifically, what role Japan ought
to play in the security of the Third World countries as well. At the
end of the conference, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita invited all the
conferees to a cocktail reception at the prime minister's residence.
We also organize an annual exchange of your senators and congressmen
with Japanese Diet members. And we organize dialogues with the leaders
of the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
One research project JCIE has undertaken in the last two years is titled
"Strengthening the Regional Underpinnings of the U.S.-Japan Partnership."
We selected some two years ago four U.S. states-namely, Indiana, North
Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia-and seven Japanese prefectures for
the study. We went to the local university Japanologists in each of
the selected states to have them conduct research. There were three
areas covered. First was the effect of Japanese direct investment in
those particular states-good and bad, and how far the U.S.-Japan partnership
had gone. Second, they identified the colleges, universities, and even
high schools at which something about Japan is taught and who the professors
and teachers were. And they asked whether any of these colleges or universities
had ties with a school in Japan and what was being done between them.
Third, they identified sister-city arrangements and what was being done
on that level. In general, the researchers found that at the grassroots
level in the United States, American sentiment regarding Japan is still
quite positive, despite the harsh rhetoric we had been hearing from
Washington. Some Japanese had begun to think that the U.S.-Japan relationship
had gone on the rocks because of what we had been hearing from Washington.
But I think that at the grassroots level we are rapidly becoming good
partners.
"Japan provides roughly $2.7 billion a year to offset the cost of
the U.S. forces deployed in Japan. This comes to about $45,000 for every
U.S. soldier, sailor, and airman . . ."
You may have heard the story of the admiral of the fleet. One day, an
ensign saw a small blip on the ship's radar screen. And so he said to
the other ship, "We are on a collision course! You must change course."
The voice from the other side came back saying, "No, you change course!"
And they weren't getting anywhere. Finally, the ensign reported back
to the admiral, and then the admiral, with a microphone in hand, said,
"Whoever you are, change course!" And a voice came back saying, "Goddamn
it, I am the lighthouse! You change course!"
You see, the U.S. government and some of the people on the Hill in Washington
have been asking Japan to further open its doors to U.S. manufactured
goods and to reduce its trade surplus. At the same time, they have been
asking us to share burdens; as you know, "burden sharing" has become
a sort of buzzword in Washington. But I must say in the last couple
of years, under the leadership of our former Prime Minister Yasuhiro
Nakasone and the current Prime Minister Takeshita, Japan has been changing
a great deal, though perhaps not as fast as Washington would like. For
example, our defense spending has increased an average of 5.6 percent
per annum. In testifying before the Senate chamber in December last
year, Senator Jay Rockefeller said, "Japan's defense budget is now the
sixth largest in the world, or second largest of the nonnuclear powers
behind West Germany. Japan now deploys more tactical aircraft than do
the U.S. forces in all of Asia. Japan has already twice as many destroyers
as the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Completion of the current five-year defense
plan will enable Japan, by 1990, to assume responsibility for sea-lane
defense 1,000 nautical miles from Japan's own islands. Japan has also
agreed to the deployment of U.S. Fl6s at Misawa Air Force Base. Japan
provides roughly $2.7 billion a year to offset the cost of the U.S.
forces deployed in Japan. This comes to about $45,000 for every U.S.
soldier, sailor, and airman stationed in Japan. This is a much higher
host country support than what is being provided by any of your North
Atlantic Treaty Organization allies."
Also, at the last Toronto summit Prime Minister Takeshita announced
that Japan would be dispensing as much as $7.5 billion for Official
Development Assistance (ODA). And that will be increased to $10 billion
next year, which will be much more than the ODA that the United States
gives to developing. countries. Most of this aid from Japan will be
given to such strategically important countries as the Philippines,
Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and some of the Gulf countries, such as Oman.
Finally, there are some changes taking place in the economic structure
of Japan. We have really been trying to bend backward to make Japan's
economy more oriented toward imports than exports. We have been encouraged
to spend more. We Japanese, you know, have a penchant for personal savings.
On average, we save 16 percent of our annual income, against your 5
percent or 6 percent. So we have been encouraged to spend more and buy
American goods. Our trade imbalance is being corrected to some degree.
Ambassador Mike Mansfield, who has been our ambassador to Japan for
11 years, has said, "I'm firmly convinced there is no more important
relationship in the world than that between the United States and Japan.
It is the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.
For the United States, no single nation is more important as a friend,
trading partner, and ally than Japan." He goes on to say, 'As we look
ahead to the next century, the century of the Pacific Basin, we can
see clearly the national destinies of the United States and Japan becoming
even more closely intertwined and even more dependent on each other.
Let us seize this moment and move into the next century with mutual
confidence, trust, and fortitude to seek new and creative approaches.
Only in this way can we fulfill the promise that lies in this vital
partnership between our two great nations upon which the economic health
of the world depends." And I fully concur.
Earl Johnson, some weeks sgo, as kind enough to send me the three-volume
set of books titled The Global Twenties. When I opened the front
cover of the book, I saw what he had written: "If we ever go to war
again, heaven forbid, let's be on the same side." I, too, want to be
on your side.
MITSUYA
GOTO
Born in Tokyo in 1929. After graduation from Wabash College in Indiana
in 1955, Mitsuya Goto pursued graduate work at the Woodrow Wilson School
of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. In 1969,
Mr. Goto joined Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., becoming assistant manager,
International Division, and assistant to the president. He rose to deputy
general manager, International Division, and concurrently manager, International
Advertising, Export Division. From 1983 to 1986, Mr. Goto was general
manager of the European corporate office, Brussels, and later served
in London. In 1986, he became general manager of the International Division,
Tokyo. In 1987, he assumed the position of managing director, Japan
Center for International Exchange. He is also executive secretary of
the Ushiba Memorial Foundation. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws
degree from Wabash College in 1983. He is currently the President of
M. Goto & Company - International Partnership.