Year: 2019

LIFE STORY

Chapter 37 – Finishing Up in Tokyo

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. 1. Mountain Climbing with Yasuko2. A Son, Dan, is Born3. Goodbye to Tokyo?4. The Whitlam Connection 5. Embassy Advisor?6. Ambassador to Japan? 7. The Menadue Connection8. The Prodigal Returns The five years 1969-1974 as Tokyo correspondent for The Australian

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 42 – The East Timor Tragedy

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES To The Limits of Cruelty 1. The ‘Dangerous’ Fretelin2. The Canberra Debates3. A Voice of Reason, Bill Pritchett4. The Whitlam Apologists5. Crunch Time 6. Going Public7. The Renouf Factor8. The Devious Mr Renouf9. The Remorseful Mr Woolcott?   The

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 44 – Goodbye Australia

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES 1.  Defeated in Canberra2.  Australia’s Manufacturing Miracle Destroyed3.  Menadue for Japan?4.  A Nod to The Australian5.  An ANU Redux6.  Visa Problems. Sophia University?7.  Forced Farewell to the Australian Left8.  Bleak Prospects in Japan The last half of

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 45 – A Book About Japan

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES 1. Simul Publishing2. Invited to Write3. Reasons to Write4. Chinese-Japanese Differences5.  Nihonjin-ron6.  An Answer?7.  Disorganised Nihonjin-ron8.  Yamamoto Shichihei – Japanese and Jews9.  Why the Differences, Weird Theories10. Culture versus Values11. Anti-Nihonjin ron12. ‘System’ theorists The idea of

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 47 – Book Aftermath

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. The Talking Monkey 1.The Japanese Lecture Circuit2.Organising a Lecture3.Rewards When I published the Japan as a Tribe book, I had assumed that the only material returns would be royalties from the publisher, Simul. But if I had

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 48 – Embassy Reaction

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. Losing Friends; Making Friends 1. Australian Embassy, Tokyo2. Embassy Blacklisting3. Decoding Realties4. Friends at Court The joys of the lecture circuit did not come without a price. The Newsweek story had caused some damage to Canberra’s relations

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 51 – Refining the Tribe Theory

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA; BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and BETWEEN FOUR LANGUAGES ‘The Japanese mentality is, in most cases, unfit for abstract thinking and takes interest merely in tangible things… Yukawa Hideki.  1. The Original Theory 2. Origins of Differences3. Principles versus Rules4. Japanese Perfectionism5. On Rationality 6. Finding Terminology 7.

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 53 – Sabotaged by Austemba Tokyo

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. And by a Murdoch writer too 1. The J.P.Keating Scholarship 2. The Surprise Scholarship Offer3. Embassy Plots?4. Battling the Bureaucrats5. Bureaucracy Gone Mad6. Ex-Vietnam Types7. More Spies? 8. A Squalid Affair Meanwhile my problems with the Australian official presence

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 54 – Back to Australia

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. 1. Raising Two Bilingual Children2. Reviving Australian Connections?3. Blocked on Every Side4. A Failed Canberra Connection5. Australian Policy Flip-flops. By the mid-eighties life had settled into a routine.  The Japanese lecture circuit ground on. And the committee

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 56 – Japan’s Economic Dilemma

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. 1. Failure of  Hashimoto Restrictions2. A Chronic Lack of Domestic Demand3. High Savings Harmful?4. The Unbalanced Post-1973 Economy5. The Bicycle Economy 6. The Self-Standing Economy  My impudent belief that I could tell Japan how to solve its economic problems

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 58 – Media Involvements

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. Say What you Like; It’s Still a (Fairly) Free Country Japanese Media Meanwhile here in Japan things were happening which made me realise I did not need to be chasing vague Australian possibilities. For some Japanese reason

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 59 – Japan’s Unbalanced Economy

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. Try Walking on Two Legs  1. Trade Problems 2. Endaka (yen appreciation) Problems3. Harmful Exchange-rate Protectionism4. Textbook versus Sensible Protectionism5. Trade Frictions6. Merits of Local Production7. Manufacturing versus Services8. Anti-Service Sector Bias9. The Colin Clark Factor As we

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 61 – The Bubble Insanity

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. Something wrong with the Japanese mentality? 1. The Tanaka Kakuei boom2. Asset Price Insanity Begins3. Bubble Beginnings4. Bank Foolishness5. The EIE Scandal6. Bloated Collateral Values7. The Anti-Bubble Realists8. The Shiodome Fiasco9. Mythical Assets (Fukumi Shisan)10. The ‘Resort’ Boom11.’Yutori’ to the rescue12.

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 62 – Post – Bubble

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and BETWEEN FOUR LANGUAGES:  Post – Bubble 1. Back to Front Land Taxes2. Living with the Bubble3. More Japanese Book Writing4. Campus Life5. Pride before a Fall With the Bubble out of the way we could finally begin to clean up

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 63 – Seeking Education Reform – Failures and Successes’

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS AND FOUR LANGUAGES. Seeking Education Reform 1. The Committees2. The Education Ministry3. The National Peoples Commission of Education Reform4. The University Education Sub-Committee.5. The High-school English Language Committee6. Reform Impossible. A Book Education ‘reform’ was another problem needing attention. It

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 64 – My Media Disasters

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. Dogged by a word: ‘Reform’  1.  Economic Reform Dogmas2.  Nikkei’s ‘Structural Reform’ Hangup3.  Retaliation via Voice4.  Foreign Advice also Rejected5.  Asahi and Others Too6.  TV, NHK too7.  Western Media Too Throughout the seventies and well into the

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 66 – The Tama University Experience

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. Seeking System Improvements 1.  Tama University2.  Motivation in the Classroom?3.  Provisional Entry (Zantei Nyugaku)4.  Other Improvements.5.  Merits of the Zemi (Seminar) System6.  The Successful Graduate School7.  Trying to Repair English Teaching8.  Winding Down In 1997 I am

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 76 – The Rightwing Strikes

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES 1. The NBR Discussion Site2. Discussing the Megumi affair3. Enter the Viper: Komori Yoshihisa4. Sankei Shimbun5. The Exclusion Begins6. The Mitsui Connection7. The Bone Pointed8. Skin-deep Regret My Japan career had begun through trying to explain the

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 77 – Tragedy Strikes

BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES 1. The House in Amatsu2. A Disaster Occurs3. Leukemia4. Tribal Exclusion5. A Failed Operation6. All is not Doom In a long career I have been fortunate to meet some wonderful women who have cared for me, helped me

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 79 – Changing Japan’s Laws

BETWEEN FIVE WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN, PERU AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FIVE LANGUAGES 1. Learning Spanish2. The Visa Problem3. The Immigration Reform Committee4. Asylum Seekers5. Worker Immigration Problem6. Visa Overstayers7. The Ten Year Wait8. Rescue Carolina9. Discovering Peru My interest in Spain had been kindled while at university in

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 80 – Tiananmen

BETWEEN FIVE WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN, PERU AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FIVE LANGUAGES  A Story of Regime Brutality and Media Mendacity 1. Images2. Background History3. Tiananmen Square Massacre?4. State Department Records5. Tankman photo From the beginning it should have been clear simply from the conflicting images of Tiananmen Square

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LIFE STORY

Chapter 82 – Life Story, Conclusion

BETWEEN FIVE WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN, PERU AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FIVE LANGUAGES 1.  Sino-Indian Dispute2.  Vietnam3.  Afghanistan4.  Ukraine5.  Korea (and Vietnam)6.  Yugoslavia and Serbia7.  NATO Pretexts8.  The Vicious Circle9.  Anglo-Saxon ‘Values’10.Khrushchev-anti Cold War11.Memory Notes More than sixty years, spent in five continents, gaining fluency in three difficult languages,

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LIFE STORY

Final Chapter

BETWEEN FIVE WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN, PERU AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FIVE LANGUAGES Japan – Is it Unique? 1.  Japanese Honesty. Can it be found Elsewhere?2.  The Outsider View3.  National Togetherness4.  The Empirical Test5.  Indonesia, the Philippines6.  South Europe,South Asia7.  North Europe8.  Meanwhile in Japan9. Meanwhile in China10.China: The

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