Superhuman Japan: Knowledge, Nation and Culture in US-Japan Relations

182 Pages·2012·1.252 MB·English

by  Marie Thorsten

Superhuman Japan
This book examines the imaginative narratives that have shaped the attitudes of
Americans (and others) toward Japan. Focusing on cultural aspects of economic
nationalism and US–Japan relations during the trade war, Marie Thorsten uses
examples from public discourse, film, documentaries, novels, acts of racism, and
a comparison of international education assessments to examine the way in which
Japan has been constituted in a global political gaze as an economic hegemon.
In times of heightened rivalry, we often try to find superior “others” so that
we can motivate ourselves against an imagined future of decline. During the Cold
War, Americans and other nations in the West took advantage of being the under-
dog against the perceived superiority of the Soviet Union, especially by turning
the Sputnik launch of 1957 into a lodestone for an educational renaissance. As
postwar Japanese power became increasingly threatening, American policymakers
again tried to fashion Japan into another “Sputnik” to motivate American people.
This book explores the 1980s’ “Bubble” Japan as a “superhuman other” in the
consciousness of Americans, especially as reflected in popular culture and policy
discourses.
Making Japan into a superhuman often resorted to the same stereotyping that
invented Japan as a subhuman. It was difficult for many to see that America, Japan,
and other nations were actually sharing the same global economic circumstances
affecting attitudes toward knowledge and nation.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics, inter-
national relations, and Japanese culture and society.
Marie Thorsten is Associate Professor of Global Communications at Doshisha
University in Kyoto, Japan, where she researches and teaches courses in global
and cultural studies.
Routledge contemporary Japan series
1 A Japanese Company in Crisis 9 Adoption in Japan
Ideology, strategy, and narrative Comparing policies for children in need
Fiona Graham Peter Hayes and Toshie Habu
2 Japan’s Foreign Aid 10 The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese
Old continuities and new directions Cinema and Literature
Edited by David Arase Polygraphic desire
Nina Cornyetz
3 Japanese Apologies for World War II
A rhetorical study 11 Institutional and Technological
Jane W. Yamazaki Change in Japan’s Economy
Past and present
4 Linguistic Stereotyping and Minority Edited by Janet Hunter and Cornelia Storz
Groups in Japan
Nanette Gottlieb 12 Political Reform in Japan
Leadership looming large
5 Shinkansen Alisa Gaunder
From Bullet train to symbol of modern
Japan 13 Civil Society and the Internet in Japan
Christopher P. Hood Isa Ducke
6 Small Firms and Innovation Policy 14 Japan’s Contested War Memories
in Japan The ‘memory rifts’ in historical
Edited by Cornelia Storz consciousness of World War II
Philip A. Seaton
7 Cities, Autonomy, and
Decentralization in Japan 15 Japanese Love Hotels
Edited by Carola Hein and Philippe Pelletier A cultural history
Sarah Chaplin
8 The Changing Japanese Family
Edited by Marcus Rebick and Ayumi 16 Population Decline and Ageing in
Takenaka Japan
The social consequences
Florian Coulmas
17 Zainichi Korean Identity and 27 Japanese Aid and the Construction
Ethnicity of Global Development
David Chapman Inescapable solutions
Edited by David Leheny and Carol Warren
18 A Japanese Joint Venture in the
Pacific 28 The Rise of Japanese NGOs
Foreign bodies in tinned tuna Activism from above
Kate Barclay Kim D. Reimann
19 Japanese–Russian Relations, 29 Postwar History Education in Japan
1907–2007 and the Germanys
Joseph P. Ferguson Guilty lessons
Julian Dierkes
20 War Memory, Nationalism and
Education in Post-War Japan, 1945–2007 30 Japan-Bashing
The Japanese history textbook controversy Anti-Japanism since the 1980s
and Ienaga Saburo’s court challenges Narelle Morris
Yoshiko Nozaki
31 Legacies of the Asia–Pacific War
21 A New Japan for the Twenty-First The Yakeato generation
Century Edited by Roman Rosenbaum and Yasuko
An inside overview of current fundamental Claremont
changes and problems
Edited by Rien T. Segers 32 Challenges of Human Resource
Management in Japan
22 A Life Adrift Edited by Ralf Bebenroth and Toshihiro
Soeda Azembo, popular song and modern Kanai
mass culture in Japan
Translated by Michael Lewis 33 Translation in Modern Japan
Edited by Indra Levy
23 The Novels of Oe Kenzaburo
Yasuko Claremont 34 Language Life in Japan
Transformations and prospects
24 Perversion in Modern Japan Edited by Patrick Heinrich and Christian
Psychoanalysis, literature, culture Galan
Edited by Nina Cornyetz and J. Keith
Vincent 35 The Quest for Japan’s New
Constitution
25 Homosexuality and Manliness in An analysis of visions and constitutional
Postwar Japan reform proposals 1980–2009
Jonathan D. Mackintosh Christian G. Winkler
26 Marriage in Contemporary Japan 36 Japan in the Age of Globalization
Yoko Tokuhiro Edited by Carin Holroyd and Ken Coates
37 Social Networks and Japanese 39 The Ethics of Japan’s Global
Democracy Environmental Policy
The beneficial impact of interpersonal The conflict between principles
communication in East Asia and practice
Ken’ichi Ikeda and Sean Richey Midori Kagawa-Fox
38 Dealing with Disaster in Japan 40 Superhuman Japan
Responses to the flight JL123 crash Knowledge, nation, and culture in
Christopher P. Hood US–Japan relations
Marie Thorsten
Superhuman Japan
Knowledge, nation, and culture
in US–Japan relations
Marie Thorsten
First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Marie Thorsten
The right of Marie Thorsten to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Thorsten, Marie.
Superhuman Japan : knowledge, nation and culture in US-Japan relations /
Marie Thorsten.
p. cm. -- (Routledge contemporary Japan series ; 40)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Japan--Foreign relations--United States. 2. United States--Foreign relations-
-Japan. 3. Japan--Foreign public opinion, American. 4. Public opinion--United
States. 5. Japan--In popular culture. I. Title.
E183.8.J3T56 2012
327.52073--dc23
2011038295
ISBN 978-0-415-41426-5 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0-203-12477-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman by GreenGate Publishing, Tonbridge, Kent
Contents
List of figures viii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: “Sputnik moment” relaunch:
the comeback of the superhuman? 1
1 America’s Superhuman Japan: from Rising Sun
to globalization rising 21
2 You are Number Two: the awe doctrine from Sputnik
to the Japanese economic miracle 51
3 Supermoms: Kyōiku Mamas 76
4 Super-inhuman: youth and international relations
in Battle Royale 102
5 Super cool from Sputnik to Japan 117
Notes 145
Selected bibliography 163
Index 167
Figures
1.1 John J. Curran, “Why Japan Will Emerge Stronger,”
Fortune Magazine, May 18, 1992
a It starts here: strikingly well-disciplined elementary
school kids sing Japan’s national anthem …
Picture courtesy of Karen Kasmauski 25
b … and leads to this. Fujitsu workers test
supercomputers at a modern factory outside Tokyo
Picture courtesy of Alan Levenson 25
1.2 Photograph by Tom Bonner; Ed Massey, “Projects” 26
5.1 The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs introduces three
“Ambassadors of Cute” assigned to promote Japanese fashion
and brands around the world, February 2009 121
5.2 “No Relaxing Please … We’re Japanese.” Cover of Far Eastern
Economic Review, August 5, 1992 124
5.3 Sputnik nostalgia: education in 1957 and 2007. Leading into the
fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik, the US Department of Education
produced a brochure making several comparisons between
present-day education and the post-Sputnik education boom of
the 1950s 131
5.4 President Obama meets Japan’s HRP-4C humanoid robot at the
2010 APEC summit in Yokohama, Japan, November 2010 133
Acknowledgments
I’m no longer sure, but the idea for this text may have come from repeatedly get-
ting asked whether it was true that the Japanese were smarter than Americans.
Probably many non-Japanese who had spent time in Japan during the “Bubble”
years before the mid-1990s encountered such kinds of reentry questions. The
question was deceptively simple and not always complimentary. It was deeply
entangled with other issues of racial tension and power that also came to the fore
in the 1990s as Americans commemorated pivotal moments of the Second World
War. It’s a question that I obviously could never answer, and I was inspired, if
not haunted, by historian John Dower’s descriptions of American perceptions of
Japanese during the war: “Subhuman, inhuman, lesser human, superhuman – all
that was lacking in the perception of the Japanese enemy was a human like one-
self” (p. 9). At the end of War Without Mercy, Dower also warns of the return of
racial imagery in “sublimated,” “less blatant guises” (p. 310).
Conceptually I also felt that to some extent the superhuman other needed to
be taken up separately from the subhuman and inhuman. After the celebrations of
the fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik in 2007, I was compelled to look more deeply
into the comparison between the Japanese economic prowess of the 1980s and the
Soviet Union’s Sputnik launching of the 1950s and 1960s. Although it’s true that
Sputnik brought about educational advances, there was something peculiar about
the discourse of longing for “another Sputnik” that started up again around 2007.
First, Japan’s effect on American educational thinking in the 1980s and 1990s had
already been the “other Sputnik.” Second, the wave of Sputnik nostalgia silently
underscored exactly what September 11 had not been: a technological surprise
from a superhuman other. I thus began this book as a way to raise several ques-
tions about superhumanizing, identity, technology, and US–Japan relations at a
time when both nations are experiencing some kind of directional loss.
I have too many people to thank for helping me put this text together. Most recently
Julia Leyda offered wide-ranging support that included assistance with last-minute
text preparation matters, and Shinjiro Nakatsuji helped with retrieving and scanning
some valuable materials. Other external colleagues who offered advice, opportuni-
ties, and encouragement include Patricia Molloy, Julie Webber, William Callahan,
Hogara Matsumoto, Kimiyo Ogawa, and Joshua Paul Dale. Andrea Lopez offered
helpful comments as a discussant at the 2010 International Studies Association.