A war of public opinion between Japan and the United States through the eyes of a Japanese diplomat

Zhang Xiuzhi/Text Makoto Kondo holds a glittering diploma in one hand and has rich political experience, which makes him a top elite in Japan. From 1993 to 1996, he served as Minister of the Japanese Embassy in the United States. The book was published in Japan in 1996 and reprinted eight years later. In 2007, China introduced the book and there is a Chinese translation.

After nearly 20 years, when I read Seiichi Kondo's book, there is still no shortage of understanding.

Japan has been deeply afflicted by the negative public opinion of the United States

Since the 1980s, with the rise of the Japanese economy, there has been a serious imbalance in trade between Japan and the United States, and Japan has a large trade surplus with the United States. This imbalance would have been even more serious if it had not been for Japan's restrained approach to the export of some products to the United States, fearing that it would trigger US sanctions. However, even so, there is still a strong wave of fierce criticism in the US society on the trade relations between the two countries, and the US government has no choice but to conform to public opinion and continue to wield the big stick of sanctions to put pressure on Japan to force Japan to further open its domestic market, thus creating an atmosphere in which a trade war is on the verge of breaking out. This past is an international news that has attracted attention for a long time.

However, although the world is aware of the economic friction between Japan and the United States, it may not be aware of the public opinion war that occurred simultaneously with the economic friction. When the trade friction between Japan and the United States was most intense, that is, during the Clinton administration, Seiichi Kondo served as minister to the United States and was in charge of propaganda work. He admits that during his three years as minister, he participated in the recording of about 60 television programs and nearly 30 radio programs, including the three major networks and CNN. His principle is not to refuse requests for interviews with television stations. After leaving office, however, he admitted, somewhat dismayed, that his efforts had not had much effect, because he had not been able to change some of Americans' deep-seated views of Japan.

Under the pen of Makoto Kondo, the mirror image of Japan in the field of American public opinion presents a contradictory phenomenon: on the one hand, it ignores the existence of Japan, and on the other hand, the "Japan threat theory" is prevalent. In a February 1994 poll conducted by USA Today, 78 percent said they "don't care about Japan," and only 1 percent were able to correctly answer the name of the Japanese prime minister. However, in a poll conducted by the Associated Press during the same period, 55 percent of Americans believe that Japan's rising economic power is a threat to the United States. In a survey conducted by the Chicago Foreign Affairs Council and the Wall Street Journal in the same year, more than 70 percent of Americans said that "Japan was engaged in unfair trade," and as many as 80 percent of the elite.

A 1990 survey conducted by the Chicago Council of Foreign Affairs was particularly relevant to the Japanese. In the survey, Americans were asked to select (choose two or more) countries from four options: Japan (economic power), China, the former Soviet Union (military power), and Europe (economic competition) that they believed posed a profound threat to the United States on issues of vital interest to the United States. The results show that Americans, both ordinary and elite, ranked Japan's economic strength as the top priority.

In the eyes of the allies, the Americans, Japan's economic strength poses a threat to the United States, even higher than that posed to the United States by the former Soviet Union's military strength. At the time of writing this book, Seiichi Kondo remembered the impact of this survey on the Japanese psyche.

In addition to the Americans' bad feelings toward Japan brought about by economic frictions, the Japanese people also deeply feel the pain of negative public opinion from the United States, as well as the Americans' memories of the war. In a New York Times poll, 36 percent of Americans still hate the Japanese because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. Surveys by various media outlets show that more than half a century after Pearl Harbor, more than half of Americans still believe that Japan should apologize for Pearl Harbor.

During the same period, a number of documentary and fictional works that "hit Japan," such as "The Sun Rising," "The Guilt of Honor," and "The Rising Sun," also appeared in the United States, all of which pointed to such topics as Japan's rise as a threat to the United States and Japan's attempt to dominate the world.

Insight and honesty

In the eyes of the world, Japan and the United States, which share common values and whose alliance seems unbreakable, should have been in the mood of a long time ago, and the economic friction between them can be easily explained. Seiichi Kondo uses his own observations to tell us that there is no room for such romantic imagination between countries, and when it comes to economic interests, even allies must be folded, wits and courage, and even be prepared with a stick.

What is valuable about Kondo is that he does not resort to emotion on the issue of trade conflicts, which can easily be infected with nationalist passions, but always insists on using a rational scalpel to analyze and judge both Japan and the United States. With regard to the public opinion war instigated by the Clinton administration aimed at forcing Japan to comply, Seiichi Kondo dismantled it from two perspectives: the influence of the mass media on the political ecology of the United States and the role of public opinion in the decision-making of the US government.

First of all, due to the development of modern media, especially because of the rise of television, American politics has entered the era of "cognitive politics" and "image politics", in this era, voters' reactions to candidates are not formed by relying on the "what" of the candidates, but according to the "looks" of the candidates. In this case, Washington, D.C., became "a city of imagery," or a big show. With regard to the economic friction between Japan and the United States, in order to win re-election, Clinton must cater to the will of the people and create an image of a hard-line president against Japan in front of the people. In the book, Kondo provides some details that vividly show how the Clinton administration has hollowed out its efforts to achieve its goal of pressuring Japan and portraying a tough-guy president in front of the domestic public. For example, the day before Clinton met with Japanese Foreign Minister Kono on the trade dispute, the White House temporarily changed its mind and changed its previous agreement to allow 15 Japanese journalists to enter the venue to cover news, allowing only five photojournalists to enter the venue, and stipulating that the five reporters could not use the event's television camera equipment. The Japanese press corps strongly protested against this, and Seiichi Kondo also made representations to the White House, but the White House refused any accommodation. Kondo and his colleagues judged that this temporary decision was tailor-made for Clinton because whenever he was face-to-face, he would unconsciously show a friendly expression whenever he was face to face with people, and at a time when he needed to send a strong signal to Japan, he wanted to avoid the president facing the television cameras. As a result, the five Japanese photojournalists captured all the photos of Clinton with a serious expression on his face in front of Kono during the allotted 50-second interview time. In fact, as soon as the reporters' cameras left the venue, Clinton's expression immediately returned to normal, and the talks took place in a friendly atmosphere.

The role of public opinion in the U.S. government's policy-making process is another dimension of Kondo's analysis of the U.S. public opinion war against Japan. He found that American politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion and have a high degree of responsiveness to public opinion in the government's decision-making process. This characteristic manifested itself as early as the end of World War II. At that time, when President Truman was deciding whether or not to drop an atomic bomb on Japan, he conducted a public opinion poll, and the results showed that as many as 86 percent of the people were in favor of dropping the atomic bomb, which led Truman to make the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan without the internal discussion process. When Clinton was in charge of the White House, this characteristic became even more prominent, so much so that at the special commemorative meeting to commemorate the 50 th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Clinton talked a lot about the "anti-terrorism" and "narcotics" issues in his speech, rather than the more important topics of maintaining peace and development.

Based on this, Seiichi Kondo concluded that it is precisely because the public opinion of its own people is strongly influenced by the public opinion of its own people, both in the formulation of domestic and foreign policies, that the US government is keen to wage a war of public opinion when it conducts diplomatic negotiations with other countries, and that it will not only mobilize its own people to support its own policies, but also exert unremitting influence on the public opinion of the other country in order to exert pressure on the government of the other country.

The above-mentioned observations and analysis by Seiichi Kondo help people realize that the foreign policy decisions of the US government are not based on the willfulness of politicians, but have a deep social soil and public opinion background. In view of this, as a party to the game, if you want to understand its decision-making logic, you must grasp the pulse of public opinion and know the true thoughts of the people in the country. During his tenure as minister to the United States, the Japanese Embassy in the United States entrusted the U.S. investigative agency in the United States to conduct in-depth exchanges through group dialogues to understand Americans' true views on Japan and the Japanese. The conclusion of the survey is not pleasant, arguing that Japan is an "alien country" completely different from the United States, but Kondo believes that diplomacy must be based on an understanding of the real world. He advocated that we should not listen to the words of those who have commercial interests in their own country, because their words are pleasant to the ear, but they may not be true, and it is not helpful to understand the mainstream public opinion of a country, and then form an effective game countermeasure.

Thankfully, no one pressed the wrong button

The original Japanese version of this book is titled "Distorted Impressions of Japan". Strictly speaking, the Chinese translation of "Japan-US Public Opinion War" is somewhat inaccurate, because throughout the book, it is about the unilateral public opinion war launched by the United States against Japan on trade issues, and Japan is basically in a state of passive attack. In the final chapter of the book, he examines Japan's mistakes in dealing with the U.S. war of public opinion and proposes some countermeasures.

Seiichi Kondo believes that there is a lot of prejudice against Japan in the American public opinion, and American politicians have taken advantage of this to wage a public opinion war against Japan. But all of these problems, in the final analysis, are due to Japan's own inaction, which has not effectively influenced the American public to change their preconceptions about Japan. He advocated that Japan should not be afraid of "polite confrontation" and should be familiar with the rules of the game, fight when it is time to fight for the interests of its country, and fight for its own interests in an upright manner, so that it will win the respect of its opponents. In the book, he put forward many very specific measures and suggestions, such as making Americans feel that the Japanese understand, respect, and have a favorable impression of the United States, and that even if the United States exposes its weaknesses, Japan will not take the opportunity to harm the other side, and so on.

At this point, this article should be over, but the author is really reluctant to tell a story in the book that Seiichi Kondo tells in a short space, so I summarize it in the most concise text possible, hoping to become a "leopard tail".

The story takes place in early December 1994, when the United States Postal Service did something that seriously hurt the feelings of the Japanese people - to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, it issued a set of ten commemorative stamps, one of which commemorated the victory in the war against Japan was a mushroom cloud. This move immediately caused an uproar in Japan, and the Japanese government immediately protested to the United States. With the intervention of the U.S. government, the turmoil was resolved within a week, and the U.S. Postal Service changed the stamp design, and the situation did not escalate, and Japan-U.S. relations did not suffer any damage as a result.

In Kondo's view, the performance of the two governments and the American media in the turmoil is remarkable. The U.S. government reaffirmed the significance of the atomic bomb to end the war, but said there should be a more appropriate way to commemorate it. The Japanese government and Japanese society, after the U.S. Post Office changed the design, did not show the pride of the victors, but expressed gratitude to the U.S. side for its thoughtfulness for the Japanese people. In his view, what is particularly worthy of praise is the role played by the government in resolving thorny diplomatic conflicts in the pluralistic ecology that has emerged around the turmoil. Kondo Seiichi counted and analyzed a large number of readers' letters and editorials published by the American media around whether the United States Postal Service should change the design, and found an interesting and stark contrast between the two: the readers' letters were overwhelmingly opposed to the change of the design of the United States Postal Service, while the editorials were almost one-sided in favor of the change of design, arguing that the mushroom cloud stamp had become "a symbol of the dullness and rudeness of the United States", and that the change of the image was "an action to show the taste and cultivation of the whole country". The pluralistic and open public opinion surrounding the stamp pattern turmoil has softened the tough stance of the American veterans and ordinary people in the turmoil, thus providing valuable room for maneuver for the U.S. government to smoothly resolve the diplomatic turmoil. "If somewhere someone pressed the wrong button······· It's a little creepy to think about it. Two years later, Seiichi Kondo recalled the incident and was deeply grateful.