Roland Kelts's Blog, page 51
November 27, 2012
Island disputes damage cultural ties in Asia
Hard Times for Soft Power
Roland Kelts
for Number 1 Shimbun:
Three days after Prime Minister Yoshihiro Noda announced that his administration had purchased the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, municipal authorities in Beijing ordered a prohibition of Japanese imports – not of cars or electronics, but book content. Chinese publishers were asked not to release books by Japanese authors and those related to Japan by authors of any nationality, and also to cancel cultural promotional events.
The economic damage to the automotive and manufacturing sectors stemming from Japan’s territorial disputes with Asian neighbors China, South Korea and Taiwan has been widely analyzed and measured in recent weeks, with some pointing to Japanese makers losing out on sales and others noting the losses to Chinese workers employed by Japanese firms. News reports in Japan repeat the meme of Japanese corporations fleeing China for the more stable environs of nearby Southeast Asian nations.
But the impact on the region’s cultural markets, its so-called “soft power” interchange of ideas, entertainment and imagery, is both harder to quantify and, potentially, more meaningful and deeply felt.
“When political disputes with other countries arise, the entertainment business is always one of the first industries to feel the negative effects,” says Yuji Nunokawa, founder and former president of anime studio Pierrot, producer of such global mega-hits as Naruto and Bleach, and Chairman of the Association of Japanese Animation (AJA). “The AJA was invited to a recent ceremony celebrating the 40th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, but [the invitation] was rescinded at the last moment. We had been working hard on building trust and good relationships with China on a non-governmental level, but it was all ruined very quickly when politics came into play.
The conflict between Japan and China has been the most newsworthy and vociferous. International television broadcasts in September showed Chinese protesters hurling bottles, eggs and other items at Japanese embassies in several Chinese cities. “Enough is enough,” said one Beijing agitator last month on CCTV. “We’re not going to take this from Japan anymore.”
Samuel Pinansky, Chief of the International Media Strategy Division of Yomiuri Television Enterprise in Tokyo, and a former staffer of Tezuka Productions, Osamu Tezuka’s posthumous company, says that the timing of Japan’s latest rift with China is particularly troubling. After years of rampant piracy, he says, “direct sales to China were just barely starting to happen in a serious way. Legal media licensing is still in its infancy in many respects, and this is a major setback. But at least there wasn't as much progress to reset as there is for the automotive industry, for example, where Japan had made huge gains. Manga and animation from Japan were already highly restricted by the government before this flare-up.”
The dustup is ongoing, Pinansky notes, and doesn’t look like it will be quelled any time soon. Earlier this month, the Tokyo International Film Festival was notable for China’s absence. Chinese films were pulled, and “the booth space usually reserved for their delegation was completely empty, changed to an awkward ‘meeting space,’” adds Pinansky. “I would also expect the Chinese area for next year's Tokyo Anime Fair to be gone, especially if [right-wing former Tokyo Governor] Shintaro Ishihara continues to be involved.”
The filaments of cultural transactions are slippery. Books about Japan, and by Japanese authors, are not being shelved in China’s cultural centers, but that doesn’t mean they are outlawed.
“The ban on Japanese books in China was more of a direction than a command,” says one Japanese publishing agent who specializes in transactions with China and, understandably, wants to remain anonymous. “There was never any document that could be traced or verified. But some publishing houses in Beijing said they got the news that the ban should be put into practice. Many national book stores won’t sell books translated from Japanese, some publishing houses won't buy Japanese books’ translation rights, and some won’t publish translated books, or are delaying their release dates.
“The decision of whether to publish editions of Japanese books seems more dependent on the publishing houses’ policies than the kinds of books in question. Even with bestsellers like Haruki Murakami, they may choose to remain loyal to the government,” she says.
The self-restraint on behalf of culture purveyors in the Asian region at odds with one another politically seems to be at the heart of the collateral damage. People working in Japanese media are “made aware” of a trend to ignore Chinese and Korean artists and themes. Chinese and Korean factions are quietly feeling the same pressures.
“It’s little spiteful stuff right now,” says Leo Lewis, Beijing Bureau Chief of The Times of London. “Performance cancellations, no Japanese books on the bookshelves, stuff like that. But if we’re having this conversation in six months’ time, it will become substantial.”
Lewis notes that ardent consumers of culture in the Asian region are Internet savvy: Even if the books and DVDs and broadcasts are not available officially, fans will find them online. China’s recent censorship activities bear him out. Twitter and Facebook are blocked, as are stories from U.S. media stalwarts like The New York Times, if they run afoul of government sensitivities. But popular culture on domestic sites like youku.com is largely left alone.
The South Korean angle is more complicated. One veteran music journalist in Tokyo tells stories of Japanese deejays being pressured to reduce Korean stars on their playlists. Global sensation Psy’s “Gangnam Style” song and video have barely dented Japanese charts, and some theorize that it’s due to Japan’s national rejection of Korean soft power. The president of the Korean Wave Research Institute, Han Koo-hyun, recently labeled Japan’s inability to embrace the hit “a primary school kid’s jealousy and envy.”
Envy aside – it’s clear that Korean pop music in Japan is not nearly as welcome as it was just a year ago.
“I’ve heard that spots to promote new singles by K-pop stars on the various song and variety shows have been canceled because the Japanese TV networks get complaints from viewers saying they don’t want to see Koreans on TV,” says a features editor at a top-shelf Japanese fashion magazine. “It seems to be coinciding with a wane in the K-pop boom in general, so it’s really hard to say. Many star acts will remain, but I think it's tougher for newer stars to break into the market.”
Pop music industry insiders tell me the same story. The island dispute has cast a pall over the Asian cultural exchange, darkened by top-down hierarchies.
“A lot of the Korean media are blaming the drop in sales to the island issue,” one prominent music producer tells me. “But the fact is: sales were dropping before this happened. Still, there’s clearly a reaction to the disputes. It’s not like the U.S., where Internet sales can make or break you. Here in Asia, you need TV to market your product. And if TV decides they won’t feature you, you don’t have a platform.”
The cultural effect of Japan’s territorial disputes with its Asian neighbors will remain vague – who knows why nationals like a song or video from another country, let alone why they might re-tweet it to thousands of followers? Still, the latest conflagrations between Asian nations provide a revealing keyhole view on how culture and politics fast become personal, and history is intimate.
“If I go to the countryside in China, I don’t have to look too far to find people over a certain age with vivid memories of being tortured by Japanese soldiers,” says Lewis. “They were held down while a vehicle rode over their stomachs, for example, and they remember. There is no proper valve or outlet for that rage and humiliation.”
Perhaps the most depressing result of these island arguments is the multilateral costs they are exacting in an otherwise vibrant region. As in a playground brawl, indifferent players are being asked to take sides, even when they don’t want to.
“The Taiwanese National Symphony Orchestra was set to play in Beijing,” adds Lewis, “when three or four of the instrumentalists in the orchestra were identified by officials as Japanese. Their visas weren’t approved. The concert went on, but without three key musicians who have nothing to do with this pathetic political mess.” ❶
Roland Kelts is a writer, editor, essayist and lecturer specializing in contemporary culture who divides his time between New York and Tokyo. He is the author of .
Island disputes damage cultural ties in Asia
Hard Times for Soft Power
Roland Kelts
for Number 1 Shimbun:
Three days after Prime Minister Yoshihiro Noda announced that his administration had purchased the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, municipal authorities in Beijing ordered a prohibition of Japanese imports – not of cars or electronics, but book content. Chinese publishers were asked not to release books by Japanese authors and those related to Japan by authors of any nationality, and also to cancel cultural promotional events.
The economic damage to the automotive and manufacturing sectors stemming from Japan’s territorial disputes with Asian neighbors China, South Korea and Taiwan has been widely analyzed and measured in recent weeks, with some pointing to Japanese makers losing out on sales and others noting the losses to Chinese workers employed by Japanese firms. News reports in Japan repeat the meme of Japanese corporations fleeing China for the more stable environs of nearby Southeast Asian nations.
But the impact on the region’s cultural markets, its so-called “soft power” interchange of ideas, entertainment and imagery, is both harder to quantify and, potentially, more meaningful and deeply felt.
“When political disputes with other countries arise, the entertainment business is always one of the first industries to feel the negative effects,” says Yuji Nunokawa, founder and former president of anime studio Pierrot, producer of such global mega-hits as Naruto and Bleach, and Chairman of the Association of Japanese Animation. “The AJA was invited to a recent ceremony celebrating the 40th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, but it was rescinded at the last moment. We have been working on building trust and good relationships with China on a non-governmental level, but it was all ruined very quickly when politics came into play.
The conflict between Japan and China has been the most visible and vociferous of the Asian arguments. International television broadcasts showed venomous protestors hurling bottles, eggs and other items at Japanese embassies in several Chinese cities. “Enough is enough,” said one Chinese agitator last month on CCTV. “We’re not going to take this from Japan anymore.”
Samuel Pinansky, Chief of the International Media Strategy Division of Yomiuri Television Enterprise in Tokyo, and a former staffer of Tezuka Productions, Osamu Tezuka’s posthumous company, says that the timing of Japan’s latest rift with China is particularly troubling. After years of rampant piracy, he says, “direct sales to China were just barely starting to happen in a serious way. Legal media licensing is still in its infancy in many respects, and this is a major setback, but there wasn't as much progress to reset as, for example, the automotive industry where Japan had made huge progress. Manga and animation from Japan were already highly restricted by the government before this flare-up.”
The dustup is ongoing, Pinansky notes, and doesn’t look to be restrained any time soon. Earlier this month, the Tokyo International Film Festival was notable for China’s absence. Chinese films were pulled, and “the booth space usually reserved for their delegation was completely empty, and changed to an awkward ‘meeting space,’” adds Pinansky. “I would also expect the Chinese area for this year's Tokyo Anime Fair to be gone, especially if [anti-Asia, right-wing former Tokyo Governor] Shintaro Ishihara continues to be involved.”
As usual, the filaments of cultural transactions are slippery. Books about Japan, and by Japanese authors, are not being shelved in China’s cultural centers, but that doesn’t mean they are outlawed.
“The ban on Japanese books in China was more of a direction than a command,” says one Japanese publishing agent who specializes in transactions with China and, understandably, wants to remain anonymous. “There was never any document that could be traced or verified. But some publishing houses in Beijing said they got the news that the ban should be put into practice, many national book stores won’t sell books translated from Japanese, some publishing houses won't buy Japanese books’ translation rights, and some won’t publish translated books, or are delaying their release dates.
“The decision of whether to publish editions of Japanese books seems more dependent on the publishing houses’ policies than the kinds of books in question. Even with bestsellers like Haruki Murakami, they may remain loyal to the government,” she says.
The self-restraint on behalf of culture purveyors in the Asian region at odds with one another politically seems to be at the heart of the collateral damage. People working in Japanese media are “made aware” of a trend to ignore Chinese and Korean artists and themes. Chinese and Korean factions are quietly feeling the same pressures.
“It’s little spiteful stuff right now,” says Leo Lewis, Beijing Bureau Chief of The Times. “Performance cancellations, no Japanese books on the bookshelves, stuff like that. But if we’re having this conversation in six months’ time, it will become substantial.”
Lewis notes that the ardent consumers of culture in the Asian region are internet savvy: Even if the books and DVDs and broadcasts are not available officially, fans will find them online. China’s recent censorship activities bear him out. Twitter and Facebook are blocked, as are stories from media stalwarts like The New York Times, if they run afoul of government sensitivities. But popular culture on domestic sites like youku.com is largely left alone.
The South Korean angle is more complicated. One veteran music journalist in Tokyo tells stories of Japanese deejays being pressured to reduce Korean stars on their playlists. Global sensation Psy’s “Gangnam Style” song and video have barely dented Japanese charts, and some theorize that it’s due to Japan’s national rejection of Korean soft power. The president of the Korean Wave Research Institute, Han Koo-hyun, recently labeled Japan’s inability to embrace the hit “a primary school kid’s jealousy and envy.”
Envy aside – it’s clear that Korean pop music in Japan is not nearly as welcome as it was just a year ago.
“I’ve heard that spots to promote new singles by K-pop stars on the various song and variety shows have been canceled because the Japanese TV networks get complaints from viewers saying they don’t want to see Koreans on TV,” says a features editor at a well-known Japanese fashion magazine. “It seems to be coinciding with a wane in the K-pop boom in general, so it’s really hard to say. Many star acts will remain, but I think it's tougher for newer stars to break into the market.”
Pop music industry insiders tell me the same story. The island dispute has cast a pall over the Asian cultural exchange, motivated by top-down hierarchies.
“A lot of the Korean media are blaming the drop in sales to the island issue,” one music producer tells me. “But the fact is: sales were dropping before this happened. Still, there’s clearly a reaction to the disputes. It’s not like the U.S., where internet sales can make or break you. Here in Asia, you need TV to market your product. And if TV decides they won’t feature you, you don’t have a platform. That’s a big deal.”
The cultural effect of Japan’s territorial disputes with its Asian neighbors will remain vague – who knows why nationals like a song or video from another country, let alone why they might re-tweet it to thousands of followers? Still, the latest conflagrations between Asian nations provide a revealing keyhole view on how culture and politics become personal, and history is never far away.
“If I go to the countryside in China, I don’t have to look too far to find people over a certain age with vivid memories of being tortured by Japanese soldiers,” says Lewis. “They were held down while a vehicle rode over their stomachs, for example. And there’s no proper valve or outlet for that rage and humiliation.”
Perhaps the most depressing result of these island arguments is the multilateral costs they are exacting in an otherwise vibrant region. As in a playground brawl, indifferent players are being asked to take sides, even when they don’t want to.
“The Taiwanese National Symphony Orchestra was set to play in Beijing,” adds Lewis, “when three or four of the instrumentalists in the orchestra were identified by officials as Japanese. Their visas weren’t approved. The concert might go on, but without three key musicians who have nothing to do with this pathetic political mess.” ❶
Roland Kelts is a writer, editor, essayist and lecturer specializing in contemporary culture who divides his time between New York and Tokyo. He is the author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US.
November 25, 2012
Romney vs. Asians in America
from The Weekly Standard :
Why Romney Lost the ‘Asian Vote’
Drill down into the numbers, and it’s not a surprise.
Michael Warren
December 3, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 12
Falls Church, Va.
Turning off U.S. 50 at a chaotic six-way intersection onto Wilson Boulevard, you can just see the red roof of the clock tower at Eden Center. A replica of the Ben Thanh market in old Saigon, the clock tower peeks out above the shops of this Asian shopping mall seven miles west of Washington, D.C. Buildings here go by names like “Saigon East,” “Saigon West,” and “Saigon Gardens.”
The colorful and ornate Imperial-style gate entrance into the parking lot is impressive. Two stone lions maintain sentry posts beneath the pagoda-like tiled roofs of the entryway. Flanking the lions are two flags, American and South Vietnamese. A few weeks ago, I pulled into Eden Center for a banh mi sandwich and noticed about 20 Romney-Ryan yard signs lining the driveway just past the gate. Minh Duong, 57 and a proud Republican, says she put the signs there.
“Everybody loved it,” Minh says, adding that most in the Vietnamese community in Northern Virginia supported Mitt Romney. “I asked an old [person] that retired already,” she reports. “And she just said, ‘I have to vote for Romney.’ She can’t even speak ‘Romney’!”
Minh owns a cosmetics store, Eden Skin Care, inside Eden Center’s original pedestrian mall. It doesn’t take much prompting to get her to talk about why she’s a Republican.
“We work hard,” she says. “The first time, we got help from government. But later on, we have to go step by step. We’ve got to work! But some people, sometimes, they’re just lazy. It’s easy money. Go on welfare or whatever. They get money from us. We work hard. We pay tax. I work seven days a week. I don’t take off. Sometimes, I want to take off, but I can’t because if I take off, we lose [money]. I can’t afford it.”
Most days, Minh’s American-born 21-year-old son, Jonathan, works in the store, too. Jonathan, who like his mother votes Republican, agrees with her assessment of heavy Romney support in the community. “Everybody around here, in this area, is a small-business owner,” Jonathan says. “And lately, the past four years, business has been pretty slow. It’s affecting everybody, so we just wanted to see a difference.”
That goes for 48-year-old Hung Hoang, who owns two barbershops at Eden Center with his family. He says he votes GOP because he believes lower taxes will help his businesses. “We think about the economy,” Hung says.
Any support for Romney in liberal Northern Virginia is notable—Barack Obama won Fairfax County by just under 20 points. But among Asian Americans specifically? That’s unusual. According to the 2012 national exit polls, Obama won 73 percent of U.S. Asians, an 11-point improvement from his performance in 2008. That was the largest swing in any direction among any racial group. Obama won a higher proportion of Asian Americans than he did Hispanics, 71 percent of whom voted to reelect the president. The swing was pronounced enough to garner media attention in the wake of the election.
“Asian-American voters show growing clout, leftward turn,” read one headline in the San Jose Mercury News. “The GOP’s Asian erosion,” read another at Politico. “Erosion” has it about right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush actually won a majority of Asian Americans at 55 percent, and as recently as 1996, Republicans were pulling a plurality of the Asian vote (48 percent for Bob Dole to 43 percent for Bill Clinton). But that reversed sharply in 2000, when Al Gore won 54 percent of the Asian vote to George W. Bush’s 41 percent. The Democratic share of the Asian vote has increased since then: 56 percent in 2004, 62 percent in 2008, to 73 percent this year. It’s true U.S. Asians are a small portion of the electorate, accounting for only 3 percent of the overall voting population in 2012. But Asians are now the fastest-growing immigrant group, after supplanting Hispanics in 2009. All that has Republicans wondering exactly what happened.
The Pew Research Center’s June study, titled “The Rise of Asian Americans,” may contain some answers. According to Pew, 50 percent of U.S. Asians either identify as or lean Democratic, compared with only 28 percent who identify as or lean Republican. Asian Americans are more liberal than the general public (31 percent to 24 percent conservative) and say they prefer a bigger government with more services to a small government with fewer services (55 percent to 36 percent). On social issues, U.S. Asians are more or less aligned with their fellow Americans: 53 percent believe homosexuality “should be accepted” by society (compared with 58 percent of the general public), and 54 percent believe abortion should be “legal in all or most cases” (compared with 53 percent of the general public).
The National Asian American Survey, released in September, shows U.S. Asian voters identified more with Obama than Romney on several issues, including women’s rights, health care, education, immigration, jobs, and foreign policy. Romney’s only advantage was a small one on the budget deficit. The NAAS also found that the “economy in general” was the most important problem for likely Asian-American voters (54.5 percent), with unemployment coming in at a long second (13 percent).
As it turns out, the Vietnamese are one of the more Republican-leaning Asian subgroups, along with Filipinos. But poll data show most other Asian groups vote differently. Here’s Pew’s Democrat-to-Republican breakdown: Vietnamese, 36 percent to 35 percent; Filipinos, 43 percent to 40 percent; Koreans, 48 percent to 32 percent; Chinese, 49 percent to 26 percent; Japanese, 54 percent to 29 percent; and Indians, 65 percent to 18 percent. (The rest were unaffiliated or third party.)
The U.S. census provides the other half of the picture. In 1990, there were 6.9 million Asian Americans, most of whom were Chinese and Filipino. The Japanese, Korean, and Indian populations were roughly even at around 12 percent of the Asian population each, while Vietnamese were only 8.9 percent. But those relative percentages changed drastically over the next 20 years. By 2010, the share of Japanese dropped by more than half. The share for more Republican-friendly Filipinos and Koreans fell, too, though by much less. The Democratic-leaning Chinese remained stable at around 23 percent, while the Vietnamese increased their share to 10.6 percent. But Indians (by far the most liberal and most Democratic bloc of Asian Americans) upped their share by nearly two-thirds between 1990 and 2010, so that they now make up over 19 percent of the U.S. Asian population—just about 2.8 million people.
What’s more interesting, a separate Pew study on religion shows that Asians who are evangelical Protestants or Roman Catholics lean more Republican than their coreligionists among all Americans. But as Razib Khan of Discover magazine points out, in 1990, 60 percent of Asian Americans were Christian, but two decades later, only 40 percent are. Looking at all these numbers, it’s no wonder Asian Americans went so strongly for Obama in 2012.
Still, like most things demographic, the concept of the “Asian-American vote” is complex and messy. The NAAS found that Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Japanese Americans are more likely to vote, while Indian Americans are less likely. Consider, too, the cultural diversity among what we call “Asian Americans.” Japanese and Filipino Americans intermarry with non-Asians at high levels, while Indian and Vietnamese Americans don’t. Sixty percent of Korean and Vietnamese Americans say it is very important that future generations speak their native language; only 29 percent of Indian Americans and 25 percent of Japanese Americans say the same thing. Japanese and Filipinos are more concentrated in the western part of the country, while only about a quarter of Indian Americans live on the West Coast.
None of this even considers the expanding ranks of immigrants from the Middle East and Central Asia. The truth is, trying to understand the overarching political attitudes of a group that lumps together Koreans, Indians, and Arabs is counterproductive.
So how can we make sense of the pro-Romney outliers of Northern Virginia Vietnamese? The Census Bureau reports there are about 41,000 Vietnamese Americans in the region, and almost 70 percent live in Fairfax County, which borders Falls Church. That’s 2 percent of the more than 1.8 million Vietnamese Americans in the United States, most of whom live in the western half of the country. One poll of California voters suggests the Vietnamese community in that pervasively liberal environment is much more Democratic.
Back in Northern Virginia, Jonathan Duong says the key lies in understanding his community’s culture. Hard work, individualism, family—that’s what attracts his people to the GOP. “From our culture in Vietnam, that’s what it’s about. You go to work, you make whatever amount per hour, enough to take care of everybody. That’s what matters,” he says.
But for the Vietnamese Republicans here, the reason may just as likely be historical. Hung Hoang, the barbershop owner, immigrated to the United States in 1989, where he already had family. He says the older generation that first came to the U.S. in 1975, after the Vietnam war, influenced the politics of the next generations. “The first time we came here, the old people . . . said the Republican party was for human rights in Vietnam,” Hoang says.
One of those “old people” is Bich Nguyen. At 75, Bich is a popular leader in the D.C.-area Vietnamese community. He helped develop Radio Free Asia, which combats propaganda in Asian countries with grants from the federal government, and was its first director. A Fulbright scholar who attended Princeton and Columbia, Bich began working for the South Vietnamese government’s news service. As the North Vietnamese crept toward Saigon in April 1975, he was sent to the United States in a last-ditch effort to convince the American government to continue providing support to the South Vietnamese. Bich says he knew the mission was futile when he spoke with South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, who for some reason started talking about Korea. “Uh, no, Vietnam,” Bich recalls himself thinking as he spoke to Thurmond, then already in his seventies.
So he returned home, taking the last commercial flight into Saigon on April 26, to collect his wife and escape—he was one of the “vulnerables” whose life was about to get much worse once the Communists were in charge. Bich and his wife fled to the small island of Phu Quy and on April 30, the day Saigon fell, they were picked up by an American barge, the American Challenger. He remembers American helicopters dropping food onto the crowded ship as it made its way across the Pacific.
Almost all Vietnamese Americans have some connection to 1975. Some fled as Bich did or soon after, often on crudely constructed boats. Others came over the years as families reunited in the United States. The younger generations, those born in America, have parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who remember the persecution in Communist Vietnam. Bich is a Republican, like many of his generation, because of his experiences opposing communism in his home country.
“Issues of national security and defense tend to be quite important to us,” he says. “Eventually, over two million Vietnamese fled the Communists and those, you know, were unhappy because they had their property confiscated, they were sent to very inhospitable land to remake their lives. Several hundred thousand were put in concentration camps and all this kind of thing. So that was the kind of background that makes us open to the Republican ideology.”
The downturn in the economy and its effect on a relatively recent immigrant group, Bich says, has also affected the Vietnamese way of life and, in turn, their politics.
“People lost jobs, and therefore instead of going to work for the big American companies, that’s no longer available. So you turn back from being an engineer, Ph.D. and all of that, you go and open a restaurant. So in a way, the Vietnamese economically tend to think very independently. You don’t try to rely on welfare or something like that,” Bich says.
All these characteristics of Vietnamese-American culture are on display at Eden Center. The community doesn’t just work and shop at the nearly 120 Vietnamese-owned businesses here. There are restaurants and delis, karaoke bars and billiard rooms, tax preparation centers and a gym. Business owners sponsor local school sports teams. Children work at their parents’ stores, and business is a family affair. Throughout the year, the community holds traditional festivals and cultural events at the center, such as the annual Miss Vietnam D.C. pageant and the mid-autumn Moon Festival. The center’s parking lot has street signs honoring fallen heroes of South Vietnam like Tran Van Hai and Le Nguyen Vy.
In this little pocket of Northern Virginia, small-town, middle-class values—with a Vietnamese flair—thrive. And not unrelatedly, so does the Republican party.
Michael Warren is a reporter at The Weekly Standard and a 2012 Robert Novak Journalism fellow with the Phillips Foundation.
Romney vs. Asians in America
from The Weekly Standard :
Why Romney Lost the ‘Asian Vote’
Drill down into the numbers, and it’s not a surprise.
Michael Warren
December 3, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 12
Falls Church, Va.
Turning off U.S. 50 at a chaotic six-way intersection onto Wilson Boulevard, you can just see the red roof of the clock tower at Eden Center. A replica of the Ben Thanh market in old Saigon, the clock tower peeks out above the shops of this Asian shopping mall seven miles west of Washington, D.C. Buildings here go by names like “Saigon East,” “Saigon West,” and “Saigon Gardens.”
The colorful and ornate Imperial-style gate entrance into the parking lot is impressive. Two stone lions maintain sentry posts beneath the pagoda-like tiled roofs of the entryway. Flanking the lions are two flags, American and South Vietnamese. A few weeks ago, I pulled into Eden Center for a banh mi sandwich and noticed about 20 Romney-Ryan yard signs lining the driveway just past the gate. Minh Duong, 57 and a proud Republican, says she put the signs there.
“Everybody loved it,” Minh says, adding that most in the Vietnamese community in Northern Virginia supported Mitt Romney. “I asked an old [person] that retired already,” she reports. “And she just said, ‘I have to vote for Romney.’ She can’t even speak ‘Romney’!”
Minh owns a cosmetics store, Eden Skin Care, inside Eden Center’s original pedestrian mall. It doesn’t take much prompting to get her to talk about why she’s a Republican.
“We work hard,” she says. “The first time, we got help from government. But later on, we have to go step by step. We’ve got to work! But some people, sometimes, they’re just lazy. It’s easy money. Go on welfare or whatever. They get money from us. We work hard. We pay tax. I work seven days a week. I don’t take off. Sometimes, I want to take off, but I can’t because if I take off, we lose [money]. I can’t afford it.”
Most days, Minh’s American-born 21-year-old son, Jonathan, works in the store, too. Jonathan, who like his mother votes Republican, agrees with her assessment of heavy Romney support in the community. “Everybody around here, in this area, is a small-business owner,” Jonathan says. “And lately, the past four years, business has been pretty slow. It’s affecting everybody, so we just wanted to see a difference.”
That goes for 48-year-old Hung Hoang, who owns two barbershops at Eden Center with his family. He says he votes GOP because he believes lower taxes will help his businesses. “We think about the economy,” Hung says.
Any support for Romney in liberal Northern Virginia is notable—Barack Obama won Fairfax County by just under 20 points. But among Asian Americans specifically? That’s unusual. According to the 2012 national exit polls, Obama won 73 percent of U.S. Asians, an 11-point improvement from his performance in 2008. That was the largest swing in any direction among any racial group. Obama won a higher proportion of Asian Americans than he did Hispanics, 71 percent of whom voted to reelect the president. The swing was pronounced enough to garner media attention in the wake of the election.
“Asian-American voters show growing clout, leftward turn,” read one headline in the San Jose Mercury News. “The GOP’s Asian erosion,” read another at Politico. “Erosion” has it about right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush actually won a majority of Asian Americans at 55 percent, and as recently as 1996, Republicans were pulling a plurality of the Asian vote (48 percent for Bob Dole to 43 percent for Bill Clinton). But that reversed sharply in 2000, when Al Gore won 54 percent of the Asian vote to George W. Bush’s 41 percent. The Democratic share of the Asian vote has increased since then: 56 percent in 2004, 62 percent in 2008, to 73 percent this year. It’s true U.S. Asians are a small portion of the electorate, accounting for only 3 percent of the overall voting population in 2012. But Asians are now the fastest-growing immigrant group, after supplanting Hispanics in 2009. All that has Republicans wondering exactly what happened.
The Pew Research Center’s June study, titled “The Rise of Asian Americans,” may contain some answers. According to Pew, 50 percent of U.S. Asians either identify as or lean Democratic, compared with only 28 percent who identify as or lean Republican. Asian Americans are more liberal than the general public (31 percent to 24 percent conservative) and say they prefer a bigger government with more services to a small government with fewer services (55 percent to 36 percent). On social issues, U.S. Asians are more or less aligned with their fellow Americans: 53 percent believe homosexuality “should be accepted” by society (compared with 58 percent of the general public), and 54 percent believe abortion should be “legal in all or most cases” (compared with 53 percent of the general public).
The National Asian American Survey, released in September, shows U.S. Asian voters identified more with Obama than Romney on several issues, including women’s rights, health care, education, immigration, jobs, and foreign policy. Romney’s only advantage was a small one on the budget deficit. The NAAS also found that the “economy in general” was the most important problem for likely Asian-American voters (54.5 percent), with unemployment coming in at a long second (13 percent).
As it turns out, the Vietnamese are one of the more Republican-leaning Asian subgroups, along with Filipinos. But poll data show most other Asian groups vote differently. Here’s Pew’s Democrat-to-Republican breakdown: Vietnamese, 36 percent to 35 percent; Filipinos, 43 percent to 40 percent; Koreans, 48 percent to 32 percent; Chinese, 49 percent to 26 percent; Japanese, 54 percent to 29 percent; and Indians, 65 percent to 18 percent. (The rest were unaffiliated or third party.)
The U.S. census provides the other half of the picture. In 1990, there were 6.9 million Asian Americans, most of whom were Chinese and Filipino. The Japanese, Korean, and Indian populations were roughly even at around 12 percent of the Asian population each, while Vietnamese were only 8.9 percent. But those relative percentages changed drastically over the next 20 years. By 2010, the share of Japanese dropped by more than half. The share for more Republican-friendly Filipinos and Koreans fell, too, though by much less. The Democratic-leaning Chinese remained stable at around 23 percent, while the Vietnamese increased their share to 10.6 percent. But Indians (by far the most liberal and most Democratic bloc of Asian Americans) upped their share by nearly two-thirds between 1990 and 2010, so that they now make up over 19 percent of the U.S. Asian population—just about 2.8 million people.
What’s more interesting, a separate Pew study on religion shows that Asians who are evangelical Protestants or Roman Catholics lean more Republican than their coreligionists among all Americans. But as Razib Khan of Discover magazine points out, in 1990, 60 percent of Asian Americans were Christian, but two decades later, only 40 percent are. Looking at all these numbers, it’s no wonder Asian Americans went so strongly for Obama in 2012.
Still, like most things demographic, the concept of the “Asian-American vote” is complex and messy. The NAAS found that Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Japanese Americans are more likely to vote, while Indian Americans are less likely. Consider, too, the cultural diversity among what we call “Asian Americans.” Japanese and Filipino Americans intermarry with non-Asians at high levels, while Indian and Vietnamese Americans don’t. Sixty percent of Korean and Vietnamese Americans say it is very important that future generations speak their native language; only 29 percent of Indian Americans and 25 percent of Japanese Americans say the same thing. Japanese and Filipinos are more concentrated in the western part of the country, while only about a quarter of Indian Americans live on the West Coast.
None of this even considers the expanding ranks of immigrants from the Middle East and Central Asia. The truth is, trying to understand the overarching political attitudes of a group that lumps together Koreans, Indians, and Arabs is counterproductive.
So how can we make sense of the pro-Romney outliers of Northern Virginia Vietnamese? The Census Bureau reports there are about 41,000 Vietnamese Americans in the region, and almost 70 percent live in Fairfax County, which borders Falls Church. That’s 2 percent of the more than 1.8 million Vietnamese Americans in the United States, most of whom live in the western half of the country. One poll of California voters suggests the Vietnamese community in that pervasively liberal environment is much more Democratic.
Back in Northern Virginia, Jonathan Duong says the key lies in understanding his community’s culture. Hard work, individualism, family—that’s what attracts his people to the GOP. “From our culture in Vietnam, that’s what it’s about. You go to work, you make whatever amount per hour, enough to take care of everybody. That’s what matters,” he says.
But for the Vietnamese Republicans here, the reason may just as likely be historical. Hung Hoang, the barbershop owner, immigrated to the United States in 1989, where he already had family. He says the older generation that first came to the U.S. in 1975, after the Vietnam war, influenced the politics of the next generations. “The first time we came here, the old people . . . said the Republican party was for human rights in Vietnam,” Hoang says.
One of those “old people” is Bich Nguyen. At 75, Bich is a popular leader in the D.C.-area Vietnamese community. He helped develop Radio Free Asia, which combats propaganda in Asian countries with grants from the federal government, and was its first director. A Fulbright scholar who attended Princeton and Columbia, Bich began working for the South Vietnamese government’s news service. As the North Vietnamese crept toward Saigon in April 1975, he was sent to the United States in a last-ditch effort to convince the American government to continue providing support to the South Vietnamese. Bich says he knew the mission was futile when he spoke with South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, who for some reason started talking about Korea. “Uh, no, Vietnam,” Bich recalls himself thinking as he spoke to Thurmond, then already in his seventies.
So he returned home, taking the last commercial flight into Saigon on April 26, to collect his wife and escape—he was one of the “vulnerables” whose life was about to get much worse once the Communists were in charge. Bich and his wife fled to the small island of Phu Quy and on April 30, the day Saigon fell, they were picked up by an American barge, the American Challenger. He remembers American helicopters dropping food onto the crowded ship as it made its way across the Pacific.
Almost all Vietnamese Americans have some connection to 1975. Some fled as Bich did or soon after, often on crudely constructed boats. Others came over the years as families reunited in the United States. The younger generations, those born in America, have parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who remember the persecution in Communist Vietnam. Bich is a Republican, like many of his generation, because of his experiences opposing communism in his home country.
“Issues of national security and defense tend to be quite important to us,” he says. “Eventually, over two million Vietnamese fled the Communists and those, you know, were unhappy because they had their property confiscated, they were sent to very inhospitable land to remake their lives. Several hundred thousand were put in concentration camps and all this kind of thing. So that was the kind of background that makes us open to the Republican ideology.”
The downturn in the economy and its effect on a relatively recent immigrant group, Bich says, has also affected the Vietnamese way of life and, in turn, their politics.
“People lost jobs, and therefore instead of going to work for the big American companies, that’s no longer available. So you turn back from being an engineer, Ph.D. and all of that, you go and open a restaurant. So in a way, the Vietnamese economically tend to think very independently. You don’t try to rely on welfare or something like that,” Bich says.
All these characteristics of Vietnamese-American culture are on display at Eden Center. The community doesn’t just work and shop at the nearly 120 Vietnamese-owned businesses here. There are restaurants and delis, karaoke bars and billiard rooms, tax preparation centers and a gym. Business owners sponsor local school sports teams. Children work at their parents’ stores, and business is a family affair. Throughout the year, the community holds traditional festivals and cultural events at the center, such as the annual Miss Vietnam D.C. pageant and the mid-autumn Moon Festival. The center’s parking lot has street signs honoring fallen heroes of South Vietnam like Tran Van Hai and Le Nguyen Vy.
In this little pocket of Northern Virginia, small-town, middle-class values—with a Vietnamese flair—thrive. And not unrelatedly, so does the Republican party.
Michael Warren is a reporter at The Weekly Standard and a 2012 Robert Novak Journalism fellow with the Phillips Foundation.
November 19, 2012
Nye on Nationalism in Japan
Professor Joseph S. Nye, who coined the phrase "soft power" thirty-some years ago, on the recent uptick in nationalist sentiment in Japan. From
Project Syndicate
.
Japan's Nationalist Turn
TOKYO – Japan has been in the news lately, owing to its dispute with China over six square kilometers of barren islets in the East China Sea that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu Islands. The rival claims date back to the late nineteenth century, but the recent flare-up, which led to widespread anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, started in September when Japan’s government purchased three of the tiny islets from their private Japanese owner.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has said that he decided to purchase the islands for the Japanese central government to prevent Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara from purchasing them with municipal funds. Ishihara, who has since resigned from office to launch a new political party, is well known for nationalist provocation, and Noda feared that he would try to occupy the islands or find other ways to use them to provoke China and whip up popular support in Japan. Top Chinese officials, however, did not accept Noda’s explanation, and interpreted the purchase as proof that Japan is trying to disrupt the status quo.
In May 1972, when the United States returned the Okinawa Prefecture to Japan, the transfer included the Senkaku Islands, which the US had administered from Okinawa. A few months later, when China and Japan normalized their post-World War II relations, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai about the Senkakus, and was told that rather than let the dispute delay normalization, the issue should be left for future generations.
While Chinese rhetoric is overheated, there is certainly a rightward shift in mood in Japan, though it would be difficult to describe it as militaristic. A large group of students at Waseda University recently were polled on their attitudes toward the military. While a significant number expressed a desire for Japan to improve its ability to defend itself, an overwhelming majority rejected the idea of developing nuclear arms and supported continued reliance on the US-Japan Security Treaty. As one young professional told me, “we are interested in conservative nationalism, not militaristic nationalism. No one wants to return to the 1930’s.”
And, of course, Japan’s Self Defense Forces are professional and under full civilian control.
Japan faces parliamentary elections in the near future, by August 2013 at the latest, but perhaps as early as the start of the year. According to public-opinion polls, the governing Democratic Party of Japan, which came to power in 2009, is likely to be replaced by the Liberal Democratic Party, whose president, Shinzo Abe, would become prime minister – a position he has already held.
Abe has a reputation as a nationalist, and recently visited the Yasukuni Shrine, a Tokyo war memorial that is controversial in China and Korea. In addition, Toru Hashimoto, the young mayor of Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, has built a new party and also developed a reputation as a nationalist.
Japanese politics, it seems, is showing signs of two decades of low economic growth, which has led to fiscal problems and a more inward-looking attitude among younger people. Undergraduate enrollment of Japanese students in US universities has fallen by more than 50% since 2000.
Thirty years ago, Harvard professor Ezra Vogel published Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America, a book that celebrated Japan’s manufacturing-fueled rise to become the world’s second-largest economy. Recently, Vogel has described Japan’s political system as “an absolute mess,” with prime ministers replaced almost every year and the youngest generation’s expectations sapped by years of deflation. Yoichi Funabashi, former Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, also is worried: “There’s a sense in Japan that we are unprepared to be a tough, competitive player in this global world.”
Despite these problems, Japan still has remarkable strengths. Although China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy two years ago, Japan is a comfortable society with a much higher per capita income. It has impressive universities and a high education level, well- managed global companies, and a strong work ethic. It is a society that has reinvented itself twice in less than 200 years – in the nineteenth-century Meiji Restoration and after defeat in 1945. Some analysts hoped that last year’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe would spark a third effort at national reinvention, but that has not yet occurred.
Many younger Japanese have told me that they are “fed up” with stagnation and drift. When asked about the rightward trend in politics, some young Diet (parliament) members said they hoped that it might produce a realignment among political parties that would lead to a more stable and effective national government. If a moderate nationalism is harnessed to the yoke of political reform, the results could be good for Japan – and for the rest of the world.
But if Japan’s deepening nationalist mood leads to symbolic and populist positions that win votes at home but antagonize its neighbors, both Japan and the world will be worse off. What happens in Japanese politics over the coming months will ripple far beyond the country’s shores.
Japan's Nationalist Turn
TOKYO – Japan has been in the news lately, owing to its dispute with China over six square kilometers of barren islets in the East China Sea that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu Islands. The rival claims date back to the late nineteenth century, but the recent flare-up, which led to widespread anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, started in September when Japan’s government purchased three of the tiny islets from their private Japanese owner.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has said that he decided to purchase the islands for the Japanese central government to prevent Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara from purchasing them with municipal funds. Ishihara, who has since resigned from office to launch a new political party, is well known for nationalist provocation, and Noda feared that he would try to occupy the islands or find other ways to use them to provoke China and whip up popular support in Japan. Top Chinese officials, however, did not accept Noda’s explanation, and interpreted the purchase as proof that Japan is trying to disrupt the status quo.
In May 1972, when the United States returned the Okinawa Prefecture to Japan, the transfer included the Senkaku Islands, which the US had administered from Okinawa. A few months later, when China and Japan normalized their post-World War II relations, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai about the Senkakus, and was told that rather than let the dispute delay normalization, the issue should be left for future generations.
While Chinese rhetoric is overheated, there is certainly a rightward shift in mood in Japan, though it would be difficult to describe it as militaristic. A large group of students at Waseda University recently were polled on their attitudes toward the military. While a significant number expressed a desire for Japan to improve its ability to defend itself, an overwhelming majority rejected the idea of developing nuclear arms and supported continued reliance on the US-Japan Security Treaty. As one young professional told me, “we are interested in conservative nationalism, not militaristic nationalism. No one wants to return to the 1930’s.”
And, of course, Japan’s Self Defense Forces are professional and under full civilian control.
Japan faces parliamentary elections in the near future, by August 2013 at the latest, but perhaps as early as the start of the year. According to public-opinion polls, the governing Democratic Party of Japan, which came to power in 2009, is likely to be replaced by the Liberal Democratic Party, whose president, Shinzo Abe, would become prime minister – a position he has already held.
Abe has a reputation as a nationalist, and recently visited the Yasukuni Shrine, a Tokyo war memorial that is controversial in China and Korea. In addition, Toru Hashimoto, the young mayor of Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, has built a new party and also developed a reputation as a nationalist.
Japanese politics, it seems, is showing signs of two decades of low economic growth, which has led to fiscal problems and a more inward-looking attitude among younger people. Undergraduate enrollment of Japanese students in US universities has fallen by more than 50% since 2000.
Thirty years ago, Harvard professor Ezra Vogel published Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America, a book that celebrated Japan’s manufacturing-fueled rise to become the world’s second-largest economy. Recently, Vogel has described Japan’s political system as “an absolute mess,” with prime ministers replaced almost every year and the youngest generation’s expectations sapped by years of deflation. Yoichi Funabashi, former Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, also is worried: “There’s a sense in Japan that we are unprepared to be a tough, competitive player in this global world.”
Despite these problems, Japan still has remarkable strengths. Although China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy two years ago, Japan is a comfortable society with a much higher per capita income. It has impressive universities and a high education level, well- managed global companies, and a strong work ethic. It is a society that has reinvented itself twice in less than 200 years – in the nineteenth-century Meiji Restoration and after defeat in 1945. Some analysts hoped that last year’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe would spark a third effort at national reinvention, but that has not yet occurred.
Many younger Japanese have told me that they are “fed up” with stagnation and drift. When asked about the rightward trend in politics, some young Diet (parliament) members said they hoped that it might produce a realignment among political parties that would lead to a more stable and effective national government. If a moderate nationalism is harnessed to the yoke of political reform, the results could be good for Japan – and for the rest of the world.
But if Japan’s deepening nationalist mood leads to symbolic and populist positions that win votes at home but antagonize its neighbors, both Japan and the world will be worse off. What happens in Japanese politics over the coming months will ripple far beyond the country’s shores.
Nye on Nationalism in Japan
Professor Joseph S. Nye, who coined the phrase "soft power" thirty-some years ago, on the recent uptick in nationalist sentiment in Japan. From
Project Syndicate
.
Japan's Nationalist Turn
TOKYO – Japan has been in the news lately, owing to its dispute with China over six square kilometers of barren islets in the East China Sea that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu Islands. The rival claims date back to the late nineteenth century, but the recent flare-up, which led to widespread anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, started in September when Japan’s government purchased three of the tiny islets from their private Japanese owner.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has said that he decided to purchase the islands for the Japanese central government to prevent Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara from purchasing them with municipal funds. Ishihara, who has since resigned from office to launch a new political party, is well known for nationalist provocation, and Noda feared that he would try to occupy the islands or find other ways to use them to provoke China and whip up popular support in Japan. Top Chinese officials, however, did not accept Noda’s explanation, and interpreted the purchase as proof that Japan is trying to disrupt the status quo.
In May 1972, when the United States returned the Okinawa Prefecture to Japan, the transfer included the Senkaku Islands, which the US had administered from Okinawa. A few months later, when China and Japan normalized their post-World War II relations, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai about the Senkakus, and was told that rather than let the dispute delay normalization, the issue should be left for future generations.
While Chinese rhetoric is overheated, there is certainly a rightward shift in mood in Japan, though it would be difficult to describe it as militaristic. A large group of students at Waseda University recently were polled on their attitudes toward the military. While a significant number expressed a desire for Japan to improve its ability to defend itself, an overwhelming majority rejected the idea of developing nuclear arms and supported continued reliance on the US-Japan Security Treaty. As one young professional told me, “we are interested in conservative nationalism, not militaristic nationalism. No one wants to return to the 1930’s.”
And, of course, Japan’s Self Defense Forces are professional and under full civilian control.
Japan faces parliamentary elections in the near future, by August 2013 at the latest, but perhaps as early as the start of the year. According to public-opinion polls, the governing Democratic Party of Japan, which came to power in 2009, is likely to be replaced by the Liberal Democratic Party, whose president, Shinzo Abe, would become prime minister – a position he has already held.
Abe has a reputation as a nationalist, and recently visited the Yasukuni Shrine, a Tokyo war memorial that is controversial in China and Korea. In addition, Toru Hashimoto, the young mayor of Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, has built a new party and also developed a reputation as a nationalist.
Japanese politics, it seems, is showing signs of two decades of low economic growth, which has led to fiscal problems and a more inward-looking attitude among younger people. Undergraduate enrollment of Japanese students in US universities has fallen by more than 50% since 2000.
Thirty years ago, Harvard professor Ezra Vogel published Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America, a book that celebrated Japan’s manufacturing-fueled rise to become the world’s second-largest economy. Recently, Vogel has described Japan’s political system as “an absolute mess,” with prime ministers replaced almost every year and the youngest generation’s expectations sapped by years of deflation. Yoichi Funabashi, former Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, also is worried: “There’s a sense in Japan that we are unprepared to be a tough, competitive player in this global world.”
Despite these problems, Japan still has remarkable strengths. Although China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy two years ago, Japan is a comfortable society with a much higher per capita income. It has impressive universities and a high education level, well- managed global companies, and a strong work ethic. It is a society that has reinvented itself twice in less than 200 years – in the nineteenth-century Meiji Restoration and after defeat in 1945. Some analysts hoped that last year’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe would spark a third effort at national reinvention, but that has not yet occurred.
Many younger Japanese have told me that they are “fed up” with stagnation and drift. When asked about the rightward trend in politics, some young Diet (parliament) members said they hoped that it might produce a realignment among political parties that would lead to a more stable and effective national government. If a moderate nationalism is harnessed to the yoke of political reform, the results could be good for Japan – and for the rest of the world.
But if Japan’s deepening nationalist mood leads to symbolic and populist positions that win votes at home but antagonize its neighbors, both Japan and the world will be worse off. What happens in Japanese politics over the coming months will ripple far beyond the country’s shores.
Japan's Nationalist Turn
TOKYO – Japan has been in the news lately, owing to its dispute with China over six square kilometers of barren islets in the East China Sea that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu Islands. The rival claims date back to the late nineteenth century, but the recent flare-up, which led to widespread anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, started in September when Japan’s government purchased three of the tiny islets from their private Japanese owner.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has said that he decided to purchase the islands for the Japanese central government to prevent Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara from purchasing them with municipal funds. Ishihara, who has since resigned from office to launch a new political party, is well known for nationalist provocation, and Noda feared that he would try to occupy the islands or find other ways to use them to provoke China and whip up popular support in Japan. Top Chinese officials, however, did not accept Noda’s explanation, and interpreted the purchase as proof that Japan is trying to disrupt the status quo.
In May 1972, when the United States returned the Okinawa Prefecture to Japan, the transfer included the Senkaku Islands, which the US had administered from Okinawa. A few months later, when China and Japan normalized their post-World War II relations, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai about the Senkakus, and was told that rather than let the dispute delay normalization, the issue should be left for future generations.
While Chinese rhetoric is overheated, there is certainly a rightward shift in mood in Japan, though it would be difficult to describe it as militaristic. A large group of students at Waseda University recently were polled on their attitudes toward the military. While a significant number expressed a desire for Japan to improve its ability to defend itself, an overwhelming majority rejected the idea of developing nuclear arms and supported continued reliance on the US-Japan Security Treaty. As one young professional told me, “we are interested in conservative nationalism, not militaristic nationalism. No one wants to return to the 1930’s.”
And, of course, Japan’s Self Defense Forces are professional and under full civilian control.
Japan faces parliamentary elections in the near future, by August 2013 at the latest, but perhaps as early as the start of the year. According to public-opinion polls, the governing Democratic Party of Japan, which came to power in 2009, is likely to be replaced by the Liberal Democratic Party, whose president, Shinzo Abe, would become prime minister – a position he has already held.
Abe has a reputation as a nationalist, and recently visited the Yasukuni Shrine, a Tokyo war memorial that is controversial in China and Korea. In addition, Toru Hashimoto, the young mayor of Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, has built a new party and also developed a reputation as a nationalist.
Japanese politics, it seems, is showing signs of two decades of low economic growth, which has led to fiscal problems and a more inward-looking attitude among younger people. Undergraduate enrollment of Japanese students in US universities has fallen by more than 50% since 2000.
Thirty years ago, Harvard professor Ezra Vogel published Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America, a book that celebrated Japan’s manufacturing-fueled rise to become the world’s second-largest economy. Recently, Vogel has described Japan’s political system as “an absolute mess,” with prime ministers replaced almost every year and the youngest generation’s expectations sapped by years of deflation. Yoichi Funabashi, former Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, also is worried: “There’s a sense in Japan that we are unprepared to be a tough, competitive player in this global world.”
Despite these problems, Japan still has remarkable strengths. Although China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy two years ago, Japan is a comfortable society with a much higher per capita income. It has impressive universities and a high education level, well- managed global companies, and a strong work ethic. It is a society that has reinvented itself twice in less than 200 years – in the nineteenth-century Meiji Restoration and after defeat in 1945. Some analysts hoped that last year’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe would spark a third effort at national reinvention, but that has not yet occurred.
Many younger Japanese have told me that they are “fed up” with stagnation and drift. When asked about the rightward trend in politics, some young Diet (parliament) members said they hoped that it might produce a realignment among political parties that would lead to a more stable and effective national government. If a moderate nationalism is harnessed to the yoke of political reform, the results could be good for Japan – and for the rest of the world.
But if Japan’s deepening nationalist mood leads to symbolic and populist positions that win votes at home but antagonize its neighbors, both Japan and the world will be worse off. What happens in Japanese politics over the coming months will ripple far beyond the country’s shores.
November 15, 2012
Thanks
Many thanks to those of you who helped us pack the room at the FCCJ in Tokyo yesterday and fill the air with excellent inquiry.
November 11, 2012
Internet Media, Japan, the new Law, Anime
Join entertainment/media lawyer David B. Hoppe of GAMMALAW, JAPANAMERICA author Roland Kelts and NIPPON POP author and music journalist Steve McClure for a presentation/discussion about Japan's new illegal download law and the debate over online media: should it remain free and unfettered, or should it be legally controlled and restricted? Lunch served.
MEMBERS: *Please register BEFORE MONDAY EVENING, Nov. 12, at the FCCJ site here: http://tinyurl.com/b2hs9oz
NONMEMBERS: Please RSVP BEFORE MONDAY EVENING,
Nov. 12, here or via email - and let us know if you would like to purchase lunch.
エンターテインメント/メディア分野を専門とする弁護士のデビッド・B・ホッピ、『ジャパナメリカ』の作者であるローランド・ケルツ、
そして『NIPPON POP』作者スティーヴ マックルーアの三者が出演するプレゼンテーション/ディスカッションです。
日本で論争を巻き起こしている新しく厳格な「違法ダウンロード禁止法」そしてオンライン・メディアに関する論議。
それは果たして拘束せず自由なままにすべきなのか、または法律で規制し制限されるべきなのか。
来場者にはランチが出ます。
FCCJ会員の方：11月12日（月）の夜までにFCCJサイト（http://tinyurl.com/b2hs9oz）でご登録をお願いします。
一般の方：11月12日（月）の夜までに本FBページ、またはメールにてランチ予約の有無をご連絡下さい。
November 8, 2012
ALi-MO live, 11/10/12
Sat, Nov. 10th - Pink Cow Grill Night Dinner #1 & Ali-MO Live!
One grill for meat & one grill for veggies plus all kinds of wonderful side dishes, salad bar, cheese, fruits and desserts! Awesome food to accompany great classic rock band Ali-Mo gigin’ live!
Saturday Night Live with Ali-MO!
Dine, Drink & Dance w/Tokyo's coolest band in their debut show @ the New Pink Cow in the heart of Roppongi.
Rock, R&B & Pop from 4 Decades--plus a Grill Night Buffet. Don't miss it!
¥2,500 for dinner, 7-10pm (drinks separate) please email for a reservations for the best tables for dinner to cowmail@thepinkcow.com For maps and more info about The Pink Cow please check www.thepinkcow.com
グリル・ディナーナイト＆Ali-Moライブ！
１１月１０日（土）
グリル・ディナーナイト＆Ali-Moライブ！
お肉用のグリルと野菜用のグリルをそれぞれご用意します！ベジタリアンもOK!
サイドディッシュ、サラダバー、チーズ、フルーツやデザートなども充実！クラシックロック「Ali-Mo」のライブ演奏を聴きながら楽しく美味しく皆で食べよう！ボリュームたっぷりの美味しいビュッフェ。沢山食べてね！
土曜の夜はALi-MOのライブで！
六本木のど真ん中、新生ピンクカウでの初出演です。
往年の？ロック、R&B、ポップスを聞きながら飲んで踊って
Pink Cowご自慢のグリル・ディナを頂いちゃおう。
お食事代：2500円（食べ放題ビュッフェ７－１０ｐｍ）
良いディナー席のご予約はお早めに！下記までお名前、人数、ご来店時間を添えてメールをください！
cowmail@thepinkcow.com
October 27, 2012
Fukuoka = architecture x environment
Acros Building, Fukuoka, Japan
