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Letter from Japan: Times Are A' Changing
My advice to Bill Clinton
By
PETER McKILLOP
July
14, 2000
Web posted at 12:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 12:30 a.m. EDT
U.S. President Bill Clinton and his G-8 colleagues arrive for their much-hyped Okinawa summit at a time when economic and social trends in Japan are beginning to outpace the ability of politicians and bureaucrats to handle them. From Okinawa to Hokkaido, an unexpected surge of populist outrage on everything from guns to butter has Japanese citizens hopping mad about how their country is being run.
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This week, one of the nation's leading dairy producers, Snowbrand, saw its dairy sales melt before its eyes as angry consumers boycotted the firm's products following an outbreak of food poisoning that management had initially tried to downplay. In Okinawa, American armed forces are on curfew, unable to leave their bases or swill booze after midnight, following a series of embarrassing incidents involving drunken soldiers. And finally, one of Japan's largest department store chains, Sogo, collapsed after unexpected public criticism triggered cancellation of a sweetheart bailout-deal brokered by Japanese bureaucrats.
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For those eager to see change at work, public reaction to these incidents -- and not last month's election results -- should be closely watched. It's not that these kinds of incidents have not happened before. Consumer boycotts, public resistance to government bailouts, and local anger towards American troops are not new. What is new is the accelerated general sense that the nation's present leaders are not up to the task of leading Japan forward.
Change in Japan in recent years has not been dramatic. There have been no American-styled tax revolts or sweeping electoral mandates. Farmers are not rioting or trashing McDonalds. You won't find Japan's polite politicians throwing fists and chairs at each other, as occasionally happens in Taiwan. Change in Japan is passive aggressive. Quietly and with little fuss, it just happens. It's the polite frustration of tens of millions of Japanese consumers discreetly signaling they have had enough. The results, as this week has proven, can be devastating.
It is a moment that has Japanese and American leaders in a cold sweat. Japanese politicians are scrambling to figure just how to handle a bankruptcy that threatens mass layoffs and more financial difficulties for banks that are key backers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Snowbrand executives by the thousands have been going door-to-door in a desperate grassroots campaign to regain the confidence of Japanese consumers. And American officials both in public and behind the scenes are desperately trying to downplay the seriousness of the incidents in Okinawa. One desperate senior American official even went so far as to ask a group of American journalists whether a Marine with his shirt off was a potential rapist or just a drunken lout, insinuating that the press and perhaps the Okinawans were making more out of the incidents than they should. Lout, or rapist, it does not matter. What does matter is that Okinawans are losing their much-vaunted patience with the ignominies of having to live with an occupying army.
So my advice to Bill Clinton is to ignore all the silly rhetoric and pomp surrounding the G-8, and spend some time listening to real Japanese. Bill, skip the briefing with your Ambassador, station chief, or military commanders. Take a walk on the wild side and get off the bases and putter around Okinawa for a few hours. Surf the web, and talk to Japan's new entrepreneurs. Ask a housewife about her milk. Take a tour of an empty Sogo department store, or the packed 'factory retail outlets' that are taking so much of the business away from traditional stores like Sogo. Japan, Bill, is changing. It's just not changing the way your advisors are telling you.
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