of an ideological opponent of the United States.
The Hawks, the Apologists, and the Japanologists. The Newsweek article described the two schools of thought on “the Japan problem” as a debate between the hawks and “the Chrysanthemum Club” and identified the leading members on both sides. The trade hawks, pejoratively referred to as “Japan bashers,” advocate that the United States adopt a tougher stand on trade and economic issues. In addition to Fallows, they include Richard Gephardt, the Democratic whip in the House of Representatives; John Danforth, the Republican senator from Missouri; Clyde Prestowitz, a former trade negotiator with the Commerce Department and the author of the book Trading Places; Karel van Wolferen, a Dutch journalist who wrote The Enigma of Japanese Power; and Chalmers Johnson, a professor at the University of California at San Diego who wrote MITl and the Japanese Miracle.
What most of these men have in common is that they are hard-liners who know Japan well. Their criticisms are based on a thorough knowledge of Japanese history and Japanese institutions. Clyde Presto witz, for example, as an official in the Department of Commerce, had direct experience in dealing with the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). Karel van Wolferen and James Fallows have both lived in Japan. Their experience lends substance to their criticisms and gives their observations greater validity. Naturally, this has had a strong impact on the American people.
The traditionalists who espouse orthodox views on the importance of the U.S.–Japan strategic alliance and the value of a free-trade economy have been called “the Chrysanthemum Club” or labeled “apologists” for Japan because they defend the Japanese position. Former ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield is a prime example. During his tenure as ambassador, Mansfield insisted that the United States and Japan have “the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none” and maintained that the chief problem between the two countries was the U.S. budget deficit. James Baker, Richard Cheney, Richard Darman, and Michael Boskin were members of the Bush administration who believe that little is to be gained by being overly critical of Japan. Others named in the Newsweek article as members of the Chrysanthemum Club include Ezra Vogel, author of Japan as Number One; Professor James Ableggen of Sophia University in Tokyo; lobbyist Stanton Anderson; and Elliot Richardson, attorney general during the Nixon administration.
These two groups, for good or ill, have the greatest influence on policy- and opinion-making in the United States today. But in addition to the hawks and the Chrysanthemum Club, there is in fact a third group in America who are fluent in Japanese, have a profound knowledge of Japanese history and culture, and are regarded as having a sympathetic understanding of Japan. Perhaps the best known of these scholars and researchers would be the late Edwin Reischauer, the former ambassador to Japan, who wrote:
Certainly much of what the revisionists have pointed out is true. But they take a short-term view of Japan. When they claim that Japan does not change, they are speaking about the period after the Second World War. If one looks at Toku-gawa Japan [1600-1868] or Meiji Japan [1868-1912] or Showa Japan [1926-1989], one can see that Japan has changed radically. I believe Japan is a country of enormous flexibility and resilience; as the times change, it will inevitably change as well and will be able to avoid even seemingly unavoidable frictions. In this respect the assertions of the revisionists are mistaken.
Although these comments, which I have translated from an article in Japanese by Professor Reischauer in the February 28, 1989, Asahi Shimbun, are certainly pro-Japanese, not all Japanologists should be thought of as members of the Chrysanthemum Club.
Japanologists are first and foremost scholars and not mainstream American policymakers. Until recently they have tended to be individuals with a personal interest in Japan, those who were born there perhaps or who lived there in their childhood. Because they do not represent ordinary American interests, they may lecture about Japan or show their understanding of matters Japanese or participate in seminars on Japanese subjects, but with a few notable exceptions—Reischauer himself being one of them—they are in no position to exert any influence on actual government policy-making.
Herein lies the major difference between Japanologists and the members of the Chrysanthemum Club. Whether or not the latter can speak Japanese or have any deep understanding of Japan, they are mainstream politicians or political advisers who can affect the U.S. government’s Japan policy. People like Michael Boskin and Richard Darman know almost nothing about Japan. But others like Mike Mansfield have a thorough knowledge of the country. What these people have in common is that they are part of the American political mainstream and understand its logic. The pro-Japan argument boils down to this: U.S.–Japan relations are based on mutual advantage, so disputes must be resolved in an objective and realistic fashion. Nothing productive can come of Japan-bashing. Bashing on the one side merely invites bashing on the other, and each country ends up hurting its own cause.
Under the Bush administration, the Chrysanthemum Club was in the ascendancy; the Clinton administration is more hawkish toward Japan. The current head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Laura Tyson, is widely considered to be a hawk. As mentioned earlier, many of the hawks are experts on Japan. Most of them have had “Japanese experience” and are the very people one might expect to be sympathetic to Japan because they understand the potential harm that will result if U.S.–Japan relations deteriorate any further. That makes their arguments all the more convincing to the American public, who feel that “if people who have lived in Japan say so, then Japan really must be different.” That they have become outspokenly critical is a tragedy for Japan.
The Conflict between Feelings and Logic. Members of the Chrysanthemum Club come to Japan’s defense out of a sense of rational self-interest. The hawks’ view of Japan, on the other hand, is both more emotional and more deeply grounded in experience because it is derived from what they have actually encountered first hand. This basis in fact, not theory, has helped to strengthen the persuasiveness of their arguments. Japan, too, has a number of America specialists who regularly air their views about the United States, but few of these self-styled experts have actually had the experience of living in the United States with their families for several years. The arguments of Japanese who have no firsthand knowledge of America inevitably seem abstract and superficial and carry as little conviction as the claims that some Japanese commentators with no particular expertise in engineering or technology have made about Japan’s status as a technological superpower. As Professor Fumio Shimura of North Carolina State University noted in the February 1992 issue of This Is Yomiuri, Japanese mass-produced computer chips may be the best in the world, but like nails in the construction of a building, they are not of much use by themselves.
In America today the quarrel between the hawks and the Chrysanthemum Club has evolved into a head-on collision between two groups in the political mainstream responsible for formulating U.S. policy. U.S.–Japan relations have gone far beyond the stage when those who knew something about Japan clashed with those who did not. This fact has extremely serious implications for understanding the true nature of Japan-U.S. frictions. As Japan has emerged as a major world economic power, Japan-U.S. relations have come to be included among America’s main policy concerns. For that very reason, a single misstep in policy on the part of either Japan or the United States could have dire consequences.
From a different perspective, the quarrel between the hawks and the Chrysanthemum Club might be regarded as a conflict between emotional and logical arguments. Against the more emotional hawks, the Chrysanthemum Club resorts to logic to make its point. Which, then, will prevail—feelings or logic? Reason teaches that logic should win, but emotional arguments have often carried the day, and sometimes in the long run the choices based on them have worked out for the best. What, for example, was the rationale behind the Japanese automobile industry thirty or forty years ago when it was still in its infancy? For a small country, with roads little better than farm tracks, an attempt to promote an auto industry flew in the face of reason. That was the logic of the economists of the time, not to mention the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). But the people making cars felt differently. No matter how farfetched their plans seemed to others, they had faith that they could make the Japanese automotive industry the best in the world. Today, it is clear their faith was justified.
Economic