MY SECOND LIFE ON THE WESTERN SIDE OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC
REGION ABOUT TO TAKE ROOTS
- to the Japanese version -
More than half a century
ago, while I was still an undergraduate student of economic history at
Tokyo University, I was obsessed by the idea that the birth of the
modern Western society with peculiar emphasis on human rights,
democracy, and freedom of an individual was not necessarily the
products of capitalist economic development and the forces of market
economy per se, but rather a sociocultural outgrowth nurtured and
institutionalized in the West's long historical past. Thus, my working
hypothesis then was that whatever Japan had labored to reconstruct
after World War II under the directives and tutelage of the Occupation
Authorities, was NOT going to be anything akin to the Western democracy
as known in today's world. Indeed, it was, in my opinion, destined to
become a modified postwar version of the prewar Japanese system, which
was in essence the superficially Westernized Tokugawa capitalism, an
Asian form of an incipient capitalist economy born in the mid-18th
century Japan wedded to the Edo Bakuhan System.
While the so-called Occupation Reforms did yield a considerable success
in transplanting American political and social values and institutions
in the Japanese soil, the transplants were in the end not more than
transplants unfit for the local environment. Thus, once again, they
became grafted to and underlined by, as time went on, the traditional
values and social institutions of the old Japan instead of becoming a
West's true "mirror site" in Asia.
As I became more convinced of this as a young man, I found it difficult
to resist the temptation to go and spend some time in the United States
to have my own personal experience of living in the American society in
order to find out what really made it click the way it did. Then, I
thought, I would know for sure why things wouldn't work the same way in
Japan. I fortunately got a contract job with the U.S. government as a
language specialist and left Japan in 1958. But, alas, it took me much
more time than I had thought it would to achieve the objective. In
retrospect, it took 30 long years instead of a few short years, during
which I experienced by intention more than ten different jobs across
North America. As a result, I now feel I have achieved my goal of
"re-discovering Japan.".
Among the important encounters I experienced during my three decades in
the United States were those with the indigenous peoples of North
America, especially the Eskimos and Indians of Alaska, in whom I
personally discovered striking similarities pointing to the distant
common ethno-cultural roots arching across the Bering Sea. During the 1960s, I began my serious study of
archaeology of the Old and the New Continents, and got myself deeply
involved in the Alaska Native Land Claims movement and the subsequent
execution of the regional economic development projects.
I cam back to Japan in the early 1980s, and spent the first several
years conducting what was then called "internationalization seminars"
for the young Japanese corporate managers destined to take overseas
posts. Most of the trainees were the employees of the well-established
Japanese corporations, and as such represented the cream of the postwar
Japan's business community. My direct contact with them both in and out
of the class rooms, however, taught me the sad fact that the post-war
Japan had NOT changed in any significant way.
I realized that I had to get down to the roots of this phenomenon now
that I had the objective yard stick of my own born of my American
experience, with which to convincingly measure the differences there
exist between the post-war Japanese society and its Western
counterparts. I then found myself faced with a new challenge -- the
task of identifying the origins of the Tokugawa capitalism itself which
arose totally independent of any Western influences. And, this new task
has taken me to the new project of reexamining the historical roots of
the Japanese people and their uniquely Japanese culture.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity of organizing the Virtual Foundation
Japan in 1997 and later join forces with a unique North American NGO
called "Teachers Without Borders" actively involved in the
international provision of educational information and opportunities in
the developing regions of the world. By assisting the rural communities
of East Asia, from the northern foothills of the Himalayas through the
southeastern region of China, and then China's northeastern region and
the Russian Far East, I now have the great opportunity of learning
about the peoples and their lives in these parts of East Asia, whence
peoples and cultures migrated to all parts of the Japanese archipelago
during the several past millennia.
Especially important are the several, perhaps ten, centuries before and
after the beginning of the Christian Era, during which much of the
movement of peoples and cultures to what later became known as Japan
took place. I fully intend to be here as long as necessary to sort out
the data and information I have collected in the past to write a book
on what I think Japan's modernity is all about. In the same process, it
is my plan to work with all these communities in Asia so that we can
work together to build a new regional foundation for East Asia's own
version of civil and open society, or what we might wish to call Asia's
own model of democracy in tune with the 21st century.
Yutaka Okamoto
Director
OIARI
June 10, 2005
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