Finally, I said, "Mr. Shirai, there was the offer of financing, for a small house . . ."
"Oh, yes?"
"Yes. Perhaps you didn't hear of it."
"Actually, I believe I have heard something of that."
I said, "I was wondering what you intended to do about that offer now."
There was a long silence.
Just the splash of the fountains off to my right.
Shirai squinted at me in the hazy afternoon light, trying to decide how to play it.
Finally he said, "Sumisu-san, the offer is improper. It is of course withdrawn."
"Thank you, Mr. Shirai," I said.
Connor and I drove back to my apartment. Neither of us talked. I was driving on the Santa Monica freeway. The signs overhead had been spray-painted by gangs. I was aware of how uneven and bumpy the roadway was. To the right, the skyscrapers around Westwood stood hazy in smog. The landscape looked poor and decrepit.
Finally I said, "So is that all this was? Just competition between Nakamoto and some other Japanese company? Over MicroCon? Or what?"
Connor shrugged. "Multiple purposes, probably. The Japanese think in those ways. And to them, America is now only an arena for their competition. That much is true. We're just not very important, in their eyes."
We came to my street. There was a time when I thought it was pleasant, a little tree-lined street of apartments, with a playground at the end of the block for my daughter. Now I wasn't feeling that way. The air was bad, and the street seemed dirty, unpleasant.
I parked the car. Connor got out, shook my hand. "Don't be discouraged."
"I am."
"Don't be. It's very serious. But it can all change. It's changed before. It can change again."
"I guess."
"What are you going to do now?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. "I feel like going somewhere else. But there's nowhere to go."
He nodded. "Leave the department?"
"Probably. Certainly leave Special Services. It's too . . . unclear for me."
He nodded. "Take care, kohai. Thanks for your help."
"You, too, sempai."
I was tired. I climbed the stairs to my apartment and went inside. It was quiet, with my daughter gone. I got a can of Coke from the refrigerator and walked into the living room, but my back hurt when I sat in the chair. I got up again, and turned on the television. I couldn't watch it. I thought of how Connor said everybody in America focused on the unimportant things. It was like the situation with Japan: if you sell the country to Japan, then they will own it, whether you like it or not. And people who own things do what they want with them. That's how it works.
I walked into my bedroom and changed my clothes. On the bedside table, I saw the pictures from my daughter's birthday that I had been sorting when all this started. The pictures that didn't look like her, that didn't fit the reality anymore. I listened to the tinny laughter from the television in the other room. I used to think things were basically all right. But they're not all right.
I walked into my daughter's room. I looked at her crib, and her covers with the elephants sewn on it. I thought of the way she slept, so trustingly, lying on her back, her arms thrown over her head. I thought of the way she trusted me to make her world for her now. And I thought of the world that she would grow into. And as I started to make her bed, I felt uneasy in my heart.
Transcript of: March 15 (99)
INT: All right, Pete, I think that about does it for us. Unless you have anything else.
SUBJ: No. I'm done.
INT: I understand you resigned from the Special Services.
SUBJ: That's right.
INT: And you made a written recommendation to Chief Olson that the Asian liaison program be changed. You said the connection with the Japan-America Amity Foundation should be severed?
SUBJ: Yes.
INT: Why is that?
SUBJ: If the department wants specially trained officers, we should pay to train them. I just think it's healthier.
INT: Healthier?
SUBJ: Yes. It's time for us to take control of our country again. It's time for us to start paying our own way.
INT: Have you had a response from the Chief?
SUBJ: Not yet. I'm still waiting.
If you don't want Japan to buy it, don't sell it.
AKIO MORITA
Afterword
"People deny reality. They fight against real feelings caused by real circumstances. They build mental worlds of shoulds, oughts, and might-have-beens. Real changes begin with real appraisal and acceptance of what is. Then realistic action is possible."
These are the words of David Reynolds, an American exponent of Japanese Morita psychotherapy. He is speaking of personal behavior, but his comments are applicable to the economic behavior of nations, as well.
Sooner or later, the United States must come to grips with the fact that Japan has become the leading industrial nation in the world. The Japanese have the longest lifespan. They have the highest employment, the highest literacy, the smallest gap between rich and poor. Their manufactured products have the highest quality. They have the best food. The fact is that a country the size of Montana, with half our population, will soon have an economy equal to ours.
But they haven't succeeded by doing things our way. Japan is not a Western industrial state; it is organized quite differently. And the Japanese have invented a new kind of trade – adversarial trade, trade like war, trade intended to wipe out the competition – which America has failed to understand for several decades. The United States keeps insisting the Japanese do things our way. But increasingly, their response is to ask, why should we change? We're doing better than you are. And indeed they are.
What should the American response be? It is absurd to blame Japan for successful behavior, or to suggest that they slow down. The Japanese consider such American reactions childish whining, and they are right. It is more appropriate for the United States to wake up, to see Japan clearly, and to act realistically.
In the end, that will mean major changes in the United States, but it is inevitably the task of the weaker partner to adjust to the demands of a relationship. And the United States is now without question the weaker partner in any economic discussion with Japan.
A century ago, when Admiral Perry's American fleet opened the nation, Japan was a feudal society. The Japanese realized they had to change, and they did. Starting in the 1860s, they brought in thousands of Western specialists to advise them on how to change their government and their industries. The entire society underwent a revolution. There was a second convulsion, equally dramatic, after World War II.
But in both cases, the Japanese faced the challenge squarely, and met it. They didn't say, let the Americans buy our land and our institutions and hope they will teach us to do things better. Not at all. The Japanese invited thousands of experts to visit – and then sent them home again. We would do well to take the same approach. The Japanese are not our saviors. They are our competitors. We should not forget it.