(cache) Asia Times: Zipangu vs. The New York Times



	January 12, 1999	atimes.com

Media/Technology

Zipangu vs. The New York Times
By Masuo Kamiyama

Japan Made in U.S.A., Zipangu, New York, 1998, 280 pages, 1,600 yen(paperback)

Does Japan suffer from an image problem? If it does, there's certainlynothing new about the phenomenon. Back in February 1988, the cover story ofbimonthly media magazine DaCapo was ''Nihonjin no Hyoban wa Naze Warui ka?''(Why are Japanese regarded unfavorably?). The series of articles,featuring biting remarks from Japanese and local foreigners alike, ran 32pages.

In order of appearance, DaCapo featured such topics as tradefriction; high prices forced upon Japanese consumers in order to fuel thenation's exports; discriminatory treatment of students and workers fromother Asian countries; ''shameless'' behavior by members of Japanese tourgroups while abroad; and the alleged awkwardness of Japanese at learningforeign languages. The final four pages were reserved for the treatment ofJapan in foreign books.

As a counterweight, DaCapo also invited several Japanese toexchange barrages with foreign commentators.

During the years of the bubble economy, when trading partners feltincreasingly threatened by the specter of Japanese economic power, booksabout Japan became less flattering and, to some, more ominous. One genrethat resurfaced at this time (after making its first appearance in the1930s) was a plethora of exotic potboiler fiction on Japan, ranging fromtales of ninja on the prowl in mid-Manhattan to Japanese conspiracies totake control of Wall Street. This negative image of Japan at thegrass-roots level of Western popular culture has been largely ignored byserious scholars. One work of fiction that did receive a great deal ofattention was Michael Crichton's 1992 novel ''Rising Sun.'' It was describedby its author as a ''warning'' against unrestricted sales of U.S. high-techfirms to Japanese companies --- although the book itself made Japaneseappear just as exotic and conspiratorial as other low grade Yellow Perilfiction.

It is clear that the wounds suffered by both sides during WWII haveyet to be fully healed, and create a cozy breeding ground for mediadistortions. In 1997, a team of academics and working journalists puttogether a book entitled ''Cultural Difference, Media Memories ---Anglo-American Images of Japan.'' In an essay therein entitled ''Fear andLoathing in the British Press,'' Phil Hammond and Paul Stirner write, ''It isnot difficult to detect the loathing for Japan in British press coverage ofthe country. The hostility lies just beneath the surface in discussions ofcultural difference, or jokes about weirdness. When such contempt rises tothe fore, however, as in the coverage of the fiftieth anniversary ofVJ-Day, it is easy to lose sight of the fear which motivates thishostility."

The articles in the Western media perceived as the worst offendersare, of course, relayed to Japanese secondhand through their own massmedia. One fairly recent clash that comes to mind was Shukan Shinsho'sangry reaction to ''insulting'' reporting about the Imperial family (withparticular objection to one American reporter's use of the descriptive term''nerdy''). Another was Shukan Bunshun's unhappiness with a French book, ''LeJapon,'' which included a comment on the supposed infrequency with whichJapanese married couples engage in sex.

Nevertheless, it is relatively rare to see Japanese voicingconcerns over their country's image in English-language media. Which bringsus to a New York-based group of 11 Japanese, eight women and three men, whocalls themselves ''Zipangu.'' The name originates from Marco Polo's renderingof the Chinese Jih-pen (or more likely Jih-pen-kuo) --- Japan --- a placeMarco mentioned in his writings although he never claimed to have traveledthere.

Zipangu puts out a newsletter for the Japanese community in NewYork. ''Miserable and angry'' over what they perceive as ''outrageous''coverage of Japan by The New York Times, they went to considerable effortto direct criticism at the U.S. media, justifying their project by statingtheir intention is to point out the ''traps and dangers that are producedwhen encountering two different cultures."

In September of this year Zipangu published a bilingual book (143pages in Japanese, 133 in English, four carrying advertisements) entitled''Japan Made in U.S.A.'' Spot checks of the two halves of the book confirmedthat translations from Japanese to English and vice versa are reasonablyaccurate, but ironically, the titles used are quite different. The Englishtitle is a rather ambiguous ''Japan Made in U.S.A.''; the Japanese half ofthe book is identified by the considerably more inflammatory: ''WawarareruNihonjin --- New York Times ga Egaku Fukashigi na Nihon'' (RidiculedJapanese --- Inscrutable Japan as depicted by The New York Times).

As can be gleaned from the Japanese title, Zipangu's bilingualpolemic specifically attacks the way Japan is being portrayed in the oneof, if not the most, respected newspapers in America. To drive home theauthors' point, the book begins with angry critiques of the ''Ten worst NewYork Times stories on Japan.'' These are (with selected excerpts by theauthors following in brackets): 1) Women's rape fantasies in adult comics(''stressed the mysterious nature of the Japanese''); 2) absence of lovebetween married couples (''thoughtless''); 3) an observation that Japanesewomen speak with high-pitched voices (''ripped off [from] an originalsource''); 4) superstition and religion in modern society (''stereotyping'');5) the failure of the Barbie doll (''arrogant attitude regarding culturalexports''); 6) abortion (''gave an ominous impression''): 7) the Lolitacomplex and schoolgirl prostitution (''conveys a negative attitude towardJapan's low crime rate'') 8) molesters on commuter trains (''reinforced theimage that Japanese are sneaky''); 9) public urination (''nitpicking Japan'');and 10) former soldiers' accounts of war atrocities, including one whoconfessed to having eaten human flesh (''ambiguous,'' ''self-serving'').

Although these responses to the NYT articles reflect the writers'collective anger, the book's overall approach is, to their credit,well-measured, civil and coherent --- considerably more restrained than thevisceral reactions often observed in the Japanese mass media. The bookitself is not entirely one-sided. To the authors' credit, they include a9-page interview with NYT's Tokyo Bureau Chief Nicholas D. Kristof thatallows him to present his own side. This, unfortunately, is the only timeanyone who does not agree with the authors' premise is given a crediblevoice. The remaining essays and interviews --- with former Washington PostTokyo Bureau Chief T.R. Reid, San Francisco Chronicle journalist CharlesBurress, and Japan scholars such as Carol Gluck and Harry Harootunian ---basically support the authors' position.

Matt Thorn, a Kyoto-based cultural anthropologist andwriter/translator and authority on comics, remarks that the NYT's agenda isto portray Japanese society as ''sick'' and ''wrong.'' ''To the prejudicedAmerican mind,'' Thorn complains, ''the American glass is half full while theJapanese glass is half empty."

But cultural anthropology is not journalism, whose task is toentertain and enlighten as well as inform --- and usually in 1,200 words orless --- readers who focus mostly on domestic and economic news, and whofor the most part have only a passing interest in the subject of Japan.

Citing a book by Richard Shepard detailing archival material fromthe NYT, Zipangu notes that in November 1992, the paper's foreign editorBernard Gwertzman sent a six-page interoffice memo to foreign bureausrequesting change in direction of reporting. ''We are interested in whatmakes societies different, what is on the minds of people in variousregions. Imagine you are being asked to write a letter home every week todescribe the a different aspect of life in the area you are assigned."

The book's chief editor, Hideko Otake, interprets Gwertzman'srequest as revealing an intent to ''exoticize'' Japanese, ''to show howdifferent they are from Americans.'' This, she writes, deserves criticismbecause ''no third party seems to assess the validity of what the reporterwrites."

Her assertion, however, appears to overlook the ultimateadjudicator --- New York Times' readers --- who are welcome to writecritical letters, or to cancel their subscriptions.

In an attempt to gauge the reaction to such stories, Zipangu did infact conduct telephone interviews with what appears to be a small crosssection of NYT readers. Interestingly, the responses do not appear negativeenough to have satisfied Zipangu. Yuriko Yamaki, the book's managingeditor, sidesteps the issue by noting that ''The perspectives on each ofthese respondents regarding Japanese coverage varies, because of theirdifferent experiences with Japan. It seems that these respondents do notthoroughly read the Time's stories on Japan, despite a favorable attitudetoward the paper.'' (Italics added for emphasis)

A common argument, both by Zipangu and among western journalistswilling to discuss this topic with me, appears to be focused not on thatsuch subjects as erotic comics for women and abortion should be ignored,but that they should not be reported by a publication of the caliber of TheNew York Times.

Choice of subject matter is always a challenge. Recently, one ofTokyo's English language newspapers ran articles translated from its parentpublication about wife-beating and cheating by students at the eliteUniversity of Tokyo. If such stories are judged important enough to warrantinclusion in local news reports, why can't --- and why shouldn't --- theNYT bureau here feel inclined to add its own perspectives? Does reportingfrom Japan have to be limited to politics and the economy?

Of course in this world of political correctness, articles thatoffend unnecessarily are to be avoided. Zipangu's complaints on theshortcomings of American journalism should not be ignored outright. Theirarguments would have been more effective, however, if they had taken painsto acknowledge and condemn the parallel universe that exists in theJapanese media, where images of foreign countries are distorted andstereotyped, reinforcing the same kind of ethnocentric preconceptions andsense of smugness among Japanese that the New York Times is accused ofattempting to impart to its readers in the U.S. Japan's mediaenergetically reports that foreign societies suffer from racism and bigotrywhile Japan, judging from the lack coverage on this topic, does not. Nordoes TV programming here shirk from broadcasting scenes of people overseasbeing arrested, beaten up or shot, or showing crime victims' mangledcorpses. In Japan, one gets to view a chalk mark after the mess is cleanedup. Showing the corpse is unthinkable, since, after all, ''consideration''must be given to the ''rights'' of the deceased (or to avoid embarrassment tothe family of the deceased).

The NYT's images of Japan may come across as weird to Americans,but is there evidence that Japan is really singled out for such specialtreatment? That the portrayals of contemporary Japan contain moredistortions than, say, those of Germany or Australia?

While Zipangu objected to the NYT articles, one must accept thepossibility that other Japanese find them to be curious but not necessarilyoffensive. Several English-speaking Japanese friends made remarks to theeffect that since so little about Japan gets reported in the American mediain any case, it was nice to see anything about their country getting someattention! (Although yet another, a Japanese magazine reporter, told me ''Ifeel the articles might have been written by a tourist.'')

The picture of Japan as portrayed through foreign reporters' eyesmay be a shallow or distorted one; but I dare say it also provides Japaneseexpates with reminders that the comfortable truisms about the country theyleft behind are fragmenting with terrifying rapidity. Zipangu's knee-jerkreaction is understandable. While its glass-houses stance leaves it flawed,Japan Made in U.S.A. nevertheless deserves a once-over by anyone who reads,or writes about, Japan.

(Masuo Kamiyama is a Tokyo-based writer and translator.)