For Japan's new leaders, cooperation and bridging alliances between the Atlantic and Pacific powers is the key to a better world, writes Abdel-Moneim Said The world has changed a lot since my first visit to Japan. That was over a quarter of a century ago, in 1986. The Cold War was still with us, although there were signs of fissures in the Soviet order as Gorbachev and his reformist colleagues began to talk about "perestroika" and "glasnost". Not that anyone had imagined at the time that the fissures would ripple throughout the whole Soviet edifice, bring it tumbling down, and consign the world's first communist empire to the dustbin of history. On the other hand, when observers turned their sights to Japan they saw a country that had forged the second strongest economy in the world and was poised for greater things to come. I was in the US at the time, and the newspapers and other political literature were constantly making comparisons between sturdy compact Japanese cars and oversized rapidly obsolescent American gas-guzzlers, and between sophisticated Japanese robots that had begun to proliferate through various Japanese industries versus the relatively few and rudimentary American robots that served little purpose apart from firing the wonder of children. It was the era of the rising Japanese star, and the subject that intrigued everyone was when that economic power would complete its metamorphosis and start flexing its muscles in the field of international relations. In the Arab world, at least, the inevitability of this transformation seemed axiomatic, so much so that Arab participants in various international political or intellectual conferences would barely give time to Japanese (or European Union) colleagues to catch their breath before firing at them the question: "So when is your country (or union) going to become a great power and lock horns with the US and the USSR?" The Japanese, themselves, didn't seem particularly concerned with the question or interested in answering it. Perhaps they wondered why the Arabs cared so much about other countries' power and so little about their own. Certainly they did not see why they should court troubles with a country whose markets were instrumental to the growth of their economic might, or why they should butt heads with a country that had more than enough nuclear weapons to sink Japan's islands into the Pacific. Yet the Japanese did care about the status they had achieved and were probably quite proud of it. On the other hand, maybe they were too busy to indulge in such thoughts and feelings, so much so that they had almost stopped producing children. After my first visit to Japan -- a democratic country -- I described it as a cross between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. It was the generally stark and utilitarian urban architecture that conjured up the first attribute; the second was inspired by the thought that Japanese society was so regimented that it was like a vast army perpetually marching in long tightly disciplined lines towards glorious goals. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, as they say. Like the first time, my second visit was in response to an invitation from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Unlike the first time, this invitation gave me access to numerous interviews with high-profile figures, up to and including the prime minister. Indeed, Yokio Hatoyama epitomises some of the major changes that have swept Japanese society. He is the man who broke the age-old monopoly of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that, with the exception of a brief interlude in the 1990s, had governed Japan uninterruptedly since the end of World War II, for which reason Japan had often been ironically referred to as a one-party democratic state. Hatoyama's victory in 2009, at the head of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), furnished tangible proof of the constitutional provision for the peaceful rotation of authority, pretty much as Obama's victory in the American presidential elections marked a breakthrough for the rotation of power among ethnic groups in the US. In Hatoyama's opinion, his election marked a revival of political life in Japan through a confirmation of the power of the exercise of free choice at the ballot box. Some political observers have likened Hatoyama to John F Kennedy. Born into a prominent and wealthy political family, his mother is heir to the founder of the Bridgestone Tyre Cooperation and he, himself, is a graduate of a prestigious Ivy League university, Stanford. However, more important, as far as the recent Japanese elections are concerned, is the fact that he championed an electoral platform that departed from the decades-old political norm as symbolised by the LDP. Heavily reliant on powerful business magnates, the LDP was captive to the interests of big business and its conservative values. Although it played a major role in the post-World War processes of reconstruction and economic development, it proved increasingly incapable of accommodating to Japan's needs following the end of the reconstruction period and the end of the Cold War. By contrast, the more youthful DPJ, untainted by the corruption that had long infested the LDP, and more familiar with the contemporary world, offered a package of policies, dynamism and know-how that seemed more capable of steering Japan in this critical phase. While the DPJ also represents business interests, it is the interests of small and mid-size firms, instead of the gigantic corporations that seemed to spread more of their benefits abroad than in Japan. Also, the DPJ is driven more by the efforts and initiatives of individuals, instead of by the economic/bureaucratic behemoth that a senior Japanese official I spoke with likened to a mighty engine pulling weak and dilapidated wagons. In other words, as strong as the Japanese economy is (at least until the recent global economic crisis), its machinery is so demanding that marriage rates have plunged drastically while suicide rates have soared (over 30,000 a year). The more youthful party also promises to lead Japan to a newer outlook in foreign policy. The balance of international powers is no longer so heavily skewed in favour of the US, as it was in the aftermath of World War II, which compelled a special type of relationship between Tokyo and Washington. Today, the rise of the Chinese and South Korean economies have opened the prospect for a huge economic bloc that would enable these two countries plus Japan to rival the American economy. In fact, the booming Chinese economy brought to the fore a crucial difference between the attitudes of the two parties and their leaderships. Now that the Chinese GDP has reached $4.9 billion compared to Japan's $5.075 billion, Japan no longer has such a significant lead over China. Unlike his former rivals, the new prime minister sees this as less than a challenge and more of an opportunity. In his opinion, since China's population is 10 times as large as Japan's, it is virtually inevitable that the Chinese economy will surpass Japan's to become the second largest economy in the world. Instead of fighting over second place, he believes it would be more productive to cooperate with both China and the US in order to create a different and better world. Therefore, he sees Japan as the potential linchpin between a trans-Pacific alliance between the US and Japan and an Asian alliance that consists of Japan, China and South Korea. If the two parties see eye-to-eye on anything it is on the state of the younger generation of Japanese. However, again this issue casts into relief divergent attitudes between the victorious DPJ and the defeated LDP. Whereas the LDP believes that the decline of youth is the product of an era of prosperity that caused the younger generations to lose traditional values and the spirit of industry, perseverance, risk and self-sacrifice needed to lift Japan to a higher place in the world order, the DPJ maintains that human development has not received sufficient resources and effort in recent decades. As Prime Minister Hatoyama put it, stone and cement mattered more than people to several previous governments. They could shell out millions on major construction projects but were tight-fisted when it came to building human beings. Of course, this type of prioritising is not new to us in this part of the world. The Japanese may feel that they have not dedicated as much attention as they should to human development, but how do Arab countries fare in comparison?
