The uncertainty of the self: Japan at century's end

World Policy Journal, Summer, 1999 by Masaru Tamamoto

In other words, the psychology of Japanese society today does not reflect the large proportion of the world's wealth the country commands. The outside world increasingly appears as an unwelcome intrusion: Why must Japan continue to dole out large sums for foreign economic aid when the economy is doing badly? Why must the economy be deregulated if the majority of the people are content with things as they are? Why must Japan break its postwar policy of "pacifism in one country" and dispatch troops abroad for United Nations peacekeeping operations and become embroiled once again in international politics?

Caught between society's willful innocence of international politics and America as the model of shutaisei, Japanese thought on national identity floundered, unable to reconcile the two. Meanwhile, notably since the early 1960s, the meaning of modernity for society at large became increasingly associated with material culture, the production and consumption of things. In this context, modernity could be arrived at when Japanese products based on advanced technology attained world standard. In this context, too, America served as the model. And because of the Japanese tendency to associate models with specific countries, the proof of arrival at modernity had to come from America; it was not something Japan could simply claim.

Modern at Last

In the late 1980s, Japan's nominal per capita gross national product surpassed that of the United States. At about the same time, the American government began to deal with Japan primarily as an economic competitor. When Washington categorized Japan as a major economic threat, notably under the Clinton administration, the Japanese saw this as a concession of equality. Japan had become modern at last.

But the arrival at modernity is at once intellectually liberating and onerous. So long as modernity was at issue, by definition Japan could seek models in the outside world and, through these models, articulate directions for the nation's future. But in the contemporary Japanese view, Japan has now arrived at modernity because there are no more outside models; as a result, Japan has lost any sense of how to imagine the future.

The dissipation of America as model has led to the Japanese recognition of the variety of American life. So long as America was heralded as the model, there was a strong tendency to ascribe to America monolithic characteristics. Different Japanese harbored different images of America, but each image, whether it was of America as the model for capitalism, democracy, or imperialism, tended to be a gross simplification and reduction. Now, with the arrival of modernity, Japanese views of America are increasingly nuanced and complex, reflecting the realities of American life. This recognition, the ability to consider complexity in others, comes in large measure from the growing diversity in Japanese life itself. What this does is to prod Japanese thinkers to reconsider the plurality of cultures and the plurality of modernity.