The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0035/00358.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00358}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Japan
The Changing Logic of a Former Minor Power}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Nathaniel B. Thayer and Stephen E. Weiss}
$Affiliation{Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs}
$Subject{japanese
japan
states
american
committees
united
ministry
negotiating
americans
government}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Japan
Book:        National Negotiating Styles
Author:      Nathaniel B. Thayer and Stephen E. Weiss
Affiliation: Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs
Date:        1987

The Changing Logic of a Former Minor Power

     Tradition and change characterize Japanese national negotiating style.
Japanese negotiators come from a culture that prizes quiet accommodation,
emphasizes personal obligations and avoids open social conflict. For most of
the past four decades they have represented a nation which saw military power
as not serving its foreign policy interests and which was quite happy to let
other nations take the initiatives in the councils of the world. However,
this context is changing. Japanese negotiators are developing a more
international negotiating style at a time when their people show a willingness
to be more active in world affairs.

     It could be said that Japan and the United States have been involved
in a continuous negotiating session since the early 1970s when U.S. and
Japanese interests began to diverge. The issues being negotiated concern
Japan's defense, its trade policies, and its role in the free world. No one
says that the negotiations have been concluded satisfactorily, for what the
negotiators are really talking about is beyond the competence of negotiators-
the change in the national strength of the two countries.

     The United States and Japan are number one and number two among the free
world economies. Both nations recognize that they will play the lead roles in
creating a world economy. Much of what passes for negotiations between their
officials is not the accommodation of two national views but rather the joint
exploration of where their mutual interests lie.

The Japanese Setting

Changes in the U.S.-Japan Relationship

     Classic international relations theory states that nations try to
aggrandize their power. That may yet prove to be true of Japan in the long
run. But that theory does not explain Japan's behavior over the forty years
since the end of World War II. Japan has continued to regard itself as a minor
power, even though other nations have promoted it to major status.

     The Japanese word amae, describes a social relationship present in the
West, since it can be explained to Westerners, but no single word can describe
it. If a subordinate offers total loyalty to a superior, the subordinate can
presume upon the superior to take care of his, the subordinate's, welfare.
Furthermore, if the subordinate is weak, the superior is expected to use his
strength on the subordinate's behalf. Finally, and here comes the
psychological twist, the weaker the subordinate, the closer the relationship
to the superior and the more the subordinate can presume upon the
relationship. The weaker the subordinate, the greater the obligation of the
superior. The mother defends her child more fiercely when it is a babe in
arms than when it is a teenager. It is this relationship-the amae
relationship-that the Japanese have projected on their relationship with the
United States.

     Japan's dealings with the oil-producing countries of the Mideast is an
example of how this relationship worked. Japan's economy relies heavily on
oil, which Japan has had to import, largely from the Mideast. Yet, for many
years Japan did not conduct an active diplomacy among the oil-producing
nations of the Mideast. Instead it relied on the United States to undertake
that diplomacy for it. In the early 1970s, the Arab states made it clear that
they were prepared to use oil to challenge the United States and its allies.
The Arabs singled out Japan as a target state. Nakasone Yasuhiro, then
minister of international trade and industry, urged that Japan establish ties
with the Arab states to work out their differences, but Foreign Ministry
officials opposed him. Their argument was that if Japan were to establish an
independent diplomacy, the United States would be free of the onus of looking
out for Japan.

     Accepting this subordinate status did not free Japan of responsibility.
To the contrary, Japan believed itself obliged to accept the foreign policies
of the United States without question. During a sabbatical at Harvard, Hiroshi
Kitamura, a Japanese diplomat, wrote that accepting subordinate status to the
United States meant that the Japanese would have to put up with American
condescension and that the Japanese government would not be able to reject
a U.S. request. That price the Japanese were willing to pay.

     For the three decades after World War II, the United States fulfilled the
Japanese idea of how a major power should act. Expecting retribution for the
war, the Japanese instead got assistance in rebuilding their nation. In 1960,
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee spent only two hours in hearings before
accepting the treaty responsibility of defending Japan. The United States
tolerated the erection of trade barriers behind which the Japanese rebuilt
their industry. Later, the Americans hewed to principles of free trade even
though Japanese exports were doing damage to American industry. Most
important, the United States did not restrict Japanese access to its treasure
house of technology.

     This age of magnanimity could not last forever. Its approaching end was
signalled in the 1970s by an American assault on Japanese "fairness." The
shift was brought about largely by economics. While the United States and
Japan had shared a common long-range goal of creating a new democratic Japan
after the war, by the mid-1960s Japan had rebuilt its national strength enough
so that some Americans accused it of being a "free rider." The assumption
was that Japan and the United States were going in the same direction-their
interests were identical-but that Japan was not shouldering sufficient
responsibility. By the late 1970s, with the tremendous economic growth of
japan and the pressure that put on the United States, the assumption that
U.S. and Japanese interests were identical was challenged. Japan was accused
of refusing to "burden-share." It would not pick up any part of the
responsibility that the United States had assumed to maintain a world at
peace. The Japanese would not even put forward funds sufficient to maintain
their own defense. The age of magnanimity was over when the Americans began
talking about government action of force Japan into assuming international
responsibility.

     The Japanese were not ready for the assault on them that took place in
the first years of the Reagan Administration, though grievances had continued
to pile up during the Carter years. All of a sudden the Japanese were charged
with disrupting the American market and told that the disruption could be
tolerated only if Americans were allowed full access to the Japanese market.
Providing that access meant fundamental reform: Japanese consumers would
have to change their buying habits; Japanese merchants would have to change
the distribution system. More than 300 pieces of legislation that would have
damaged Japanese interests were introduced in Congress. On two occasions,
the Senate and the House passed resolutions critical of Japan.

     Polls showed that many Japanese recognized that there was substance
to the American arguments; Japan has atavistic laws, standards, and procedures
not proper to a society that preaches free trade. But all Japanese were in
accord that the American assault on Japan was not the act of a confident,
major power. America was beginning to slip.

     The assault on Japan has continued for six years. It has made modest
progress in doing away with trade barriers, though there has not been and
there will not be any radical reordering of