| |
Section One: Book Launch
Section Two: Book Fallout
Section Three: A Change of Life
Section Four: Inside The Japanese Lecture Circuit
Section One: Book Launch
Publicity Seeking
Books need publicity. My 1976 effort was no exception.
At the time I had to assume that my entire career in Japan would depend on its success.
I had no other career alternatives in front of me.
Simul, my publisher for my 'Japanese Tribe' book, had done what they could.
They had run some prominent newspaper ads. But Japanese newspapers are cluttered
with ads for books, most forgotten in a few weeks.
They had given me that sexy, Japanese-language book title: 'The Japanese: Origins
of Uniqueness' even though I had not once used the word 'uniqueness' in the book
(though in a sense very different from that assumed by most Japanese I had implied
it).
But even that would not be enough. I had to come up with something different, and
I thought I knew how to get it..
Buried deep in my book, somewhere around page 158, was a fairly brief mention of
how Australian spies (the DSD operation in Melbourne to be precise) had been regularly
intercepting and decoding Japanese diplomatic and business messages.
The story had been broken in 1975 by Brian Toohey, one of Australia's best investigative
journalists. Splashed over the front page of the usually conservative Australian
Financial Review, the scoop had sent spasms down Canberra's collective spines.
A D-notice forbidding the Review or anyone else from following up on the story confirmed
in effect that the original story was true.
Sitting in Canberra I had waited for the shock waves to arrive from Japan. They never
came. The response from Japan was zero.
To me, this was incredible. US success in decoding Japanese diplomatic and military
messages had been the main reason why Japan had lost the war in the Pacific a generation
or two earlier.
Unless Japanese memories were even shorter than I had already realised, there was
no way they would want to ignore a story of this size and credibility.
Besides, Japan was supposed to be hyper-sensitive to anything we foreigners do that
impinges on its reputation. If even a reputable US or UK newspaper dares to use the
word ‘Jap’ in a headline for space-saving reasons, Tokyo lodges formal complaints.
Here was something far more damaging to Japanese pride, not to mention security,
than someone using the word Jap. And it was splashed all over the front page of an
Australian newspaper. But all we got was deep silence.
(I discovered much later that the story had in fact been picked up by Japanese journalists
stationed in Sydney; they could hardly have failed to notice it.)
(Collectively they had gone to Canberra to get the story confirmed by their Embassy
there.
(The Embassy had insisted that the story was false - that there was no way the Australians
could break Japanese diplomatic codes. The journalists had gone along with all this,
and decided collectively not to report it. )
In my book I had retailed this lack of reaction from Japan to the Toohey article
as yet another example of Japan's inward-looking attitudes. But at the back of my
mind was also the thought that if the story could be regurgitated closer to home,
in Japan itself, then this might create a few publicity waves.
When you are in the book-writing business, you need every wave you can get.
In the process I could confirm yet another of Japan's 'tribal' peculiarities - the
soto-uchi, or inside-outside, syndrome.
In other words, the lack of interest towards what happens outside the tent is matched,
or often matched, or more than matched. by excessive interest towards what happens
inside.
Something published in distant Australia, in English, clearly lay outside the psychological
tent.
But a book published in Japan, in Japanese, would be firmly inside the tent. I was
keen to see the reaction.
But first I needed a reaction, and I thought I knew how to get it.
I had good contacts with the then Newsweek Tokyo correspondent, Bernie Krisher. I
told him how this important story about decoding Japanese diplomatic correspondence
would be hidden away on page 158 or thereabouts, and that I was giving him an exclusive.
Bernie rose to the bait. The result was a whole page in Newsweek devoted to the story,
just as the book hit the bookstores.
The top half of the article carried a larger than life photo of me shaking hands
with the former Japanese Prime Minister, Sato Eisaku. (It had been taken four years
earlier during an exclusive interview with Sato at his Nagata-cho residence in advance
of a planned visit to Australia. )
The bottom half gave the decoding story, written up by Bernie as if it had just emerged
from the mouth of the former 'senior Australian government official' shaking hands
with that former prime minister in the photo above.
Japan went wild
Within 24 hours of Newsweek hitting the Tokyo streets, almost all the main media
outlets in Japan, and quite a few abroad, were trying to contact me for confirmation
and more details. Many wanted interviews. Some wanted TV appearances.
And thanks to the Krisher story, all wanted to assume that it was I, not Toohey,
who had broken the story - a misapprehension I had to try hard to disabuse.
(As mentioned earlier, during my 1975 stay in Canberra I had not been cleared for
receiving top secret decoded or other materials.)
(However, I had been cleared many years earlier when working as a young Foreign Affairs
official i.e. before I had committed the traitorous act of opposing the Vietnam War.)
( But most of the materials I had seen from Japan in those primitive Cold War days
were US-made transcripts of buggings against leading Japanese leftwing personalities.)
(Even today, few realise the intensity, or illegality, of that bugging.)
So even though I had stumbled across hints that a decoding operation was underway
while in Canberra ion 1975, I could say in all honesty that I was simply retailing
the Toohey story and writing about the surprising lack of reaction to it in Japan.
In short, I was not revealing state secrets.
But I was also less than unhappy to see Canberra put on the spot.
It was claiming a special relationship with Japan while actively cooperating with
the Echelon operation against Japan, The hypocrisy deserved to be exposed.
But I am digressing.
Section Two: BOOK FALLOUT
The Japanese Reaction
Thanks to the Newsweek article, I went almost overnight from complete obscurity
to full limelight exposure.
Fortunately a few also began to read the book.
Originally I had feared there might be some reaction from nationalists and others
over having described Japan as 'tribal.' There was none.
All the main newspapers and quite a few others ran favorable reviews. Asahi gave
me a large front-page interview article.
Most picked up my emphasis on such obvious things as Japan's groupism and emotionality,
as though I had made some amazing revelation. However one or two progressives — Kato
Shuichi for example - seemed not to like my idea that a long history of isolation
was the cause. They preferred to see the machinations of Japan's establishment as
responsible.
(Many foreigners also like to see Japan's various quirks as the result of 'system'
manipulations . They find it hard to accept the idea that the attitudes they see
as quirkish could in fact be quite natural, even if exaggerated, aspects of the human
psyche, and that it is the quirks of us foreigners which need to be explained.)
All this attention soon led to regular appearances on NTV's (Channel 4) morning program,
Seso Kodan (popular discussions) hosted by the then fairly unknown commentator, Takemura
Kenichi.
The icing on the cake, so to speak, was being asked to join popular writer, Fukuda
Yusuke, in hosting a regular bimonthly NHK 30 minute program, Shin Nihon Jijo, where
the pair of us interviewed, Japanese-speaking foreigners doing interesting things
in Japan.
Japan was just starting to move into its kokusaika (internationalisation) phase.
It was keen to know what we foreigners were up to, and how we saw Japan.
Soon this unknown foreigner, myself, was being firmly, if somewhat bewilderingly,
established on Japan's media map.
From humble University Lecturer to God Professor
The good news did not stop there.
Because of the book I was to end up as a brand-new, fully-tenured kyoju — professor.
It is a title and a status that opens many doors in Japan.
This is how I think it happened.
Whenever I went on TV I had had myself identified as 'visiting professor' at Sophia
University.
By Japanese standards this was not incorrect, since technically I was still ‘visiting'
Japan from the unpaid academic slot Heinz had given me at the ANU.
But the people in charge of Sophia administration were puzzled.
Few had even known about my existence. (The International Division in Ichigaya -
now the Faculty of Comparative Culture - where I was lecturing was separate from
the main Sophia campus in Yotsuya.)
Who was this foreigner claiming Sophia credentials and appearing so regularly on
TV?
Father Joseph Pittau, the intelligent European Jesuit who had skillfully used Japan's
internationalisation boom to drag his once humdrum university to the high reputation
it enjoys today, was the Sophia University president at the time.
(He later became a top official at The Vatican.)
It seems that it was he who decided that since Clark was giving the university such
good TV publicity, then maybe they should have him drop the 'visiting' in his title
and make him a full professor.
Be that as it may, a few months after book publication I got a hint that I could
apply for a professorship. Soon after I had a sudden request to present my publications.
A few weeks later I was a full professor.
And since my formal academic background was in economics, I was given a dual professorship
- one in the Economics Department (with which I had had no previous contact), and
the other in the International Department where I was already lecturing.
I could not believe my good fortune. Normally, academic promotion, both in Japan
and Australia, means decades clawing one's way up a grubby academic ladder. Even
then, the top positions are far from guaranteed.
In my case it had all happened in a matter of weeks.
But soon another even more unforeseen fortune was about to descend on me - this time
in the form of the Japanese lecture circuit.
Lecturer to the Japanese Tribe
Originally I had assumed that the only material returns I would get from my book
would be the royalties from the publisher. So I went out of my way to try to get
a formula that would help maximise those royalties, at least from the English language
edition that was supposed to come out soon after the Japanese edition.
In the process I created some friction with Simul (in Japan royalties are fixed,
regardless of the volume of sales), which was to be yet another reason why that English
language edition never emerged.
But if I had known about Japan's lucrative lecture I would never even have bothered
about royalties. Indeed, I should have paid Simul to publish the book for me. The
circuit was to be a cornucopia of seemingly endless returns.
A Never-ending Cornucopia
Japan's lecture circuit is gargantuan.
Most major organisations in Japan have branches around Japan. And in the pre-bubble
days especially, just about every branch had to be supplied, often monthly, with
lecturers for the regular briefing and entertainment of their clients.
As well, there were the never-ending anniversary parties, annual general meetings
and other ceremonies at these organizations, and their branches. There the demands
for lecturers were even more fertile and lucrative.
Lecturers were chosen mainly for name-value. And name value was something I was rapidly
acquiring, thanks to all those TV appearances.
To be honest, I also had what in those days was seen as a very attractive CV -
son of Colin Clark (well-known in Japan), Oxford, ex-diplomat, fluency in Chinese,
Russian and Japanese, able to talk about economic, diplomacy and Japan, Sophia professor.
And as mentioned earlier, most were amazed that I could gain admission to Oxford
at age 16.
The invitations to give lectures soon became a deluge.
Learning to Lecture
My first effort was memorable, even more than most first efforts. .
I had been asked by the Kyodo news agency to talk to an audience of several hundred
in Nagasaki (together with Jiji, the other main domestic news-agency, Kyodo was to
be a major source of lecture requests).
I am not a gifted speaker (though years on the lecture circuit have improved things
somewhat). Nor was my Japanese very brilliant in those early days.
The audience was tolerant enough as I stumbled through some badly-prepared notes.
I was trying to explain the complicated thinking behind my 'tribe' theory, and it
was pretty clear they had no idea of what I was talking about.
(Years later, when my performance had improved somewhat, I often wished I could go
back and give them the refined version of my talk, with the theory reduced to easily
understood concepts and sprinkled with what I call my Japanese jokes - very different
from Western jokes.)
Despite the Nagasaki disaster, there were more requests to give lectures. Eventually
they were to come in almost daily, sometimes two or even three a day.
Life degenerated into a whirlwind of dates, times and places. On average, I was giving
three to four lectures a week.
Sometimes it was as many as six, if I included interviews.
A day I remember well began in Hokkaido with a morning session for local businessmen,
then by plane to Osaka to talk to a group of foreign investors in Kyoto and then
to Tokyo by bullet train for yet another talk in the evening, this time to an international
school.
When you get on the lecture circuit, you feel you are propelled by an uncontrolled
force which exhausts itself only after you seem to have visited every town and village
in the nation.
An average sized city like Sendai I was to visit at least twenty times over the next
25 years. In Osaka I must have given close to one hundred lectures, in Fukuoka and
Sapporo around fifty, and so on.
The topics were varied - the state of the economy, the politics, the education system,
Japan's internationalisation efforts (a favorite topic at the time), how we foreigners
see Japan (another favorite), and of course the subject of the book - the origins
of Japanese uniqueness.
Usually I could rely on my 'tribe' theory for background. It explains a lot about
Japan - the strength of the economy, the weakness of the foreign policy, and so on.
Audiences seemed to like it too. It was different from the usual boilerplate served
up to them at these talkfests. .
Years later I kept running to people who were almost proud of the number of times
they had heard ‘the lecture.' As with kabuki, Japanese audiences do not seem to mind
repetition. They get their pleasure from slight differences in the performance each
time.
In my case there was also the talking dog factor.
Why did people pay to come to hear the talking dog? Answer: Not because of anything
that the dog had to say, but because the dog could talk.
A foreigner talking about Japan, in Japanese, was, in those days, something of a
rarity -a talking dog.
In the years since the book was published I must have given well over 2,500 lectures.
On top of that were any number of print media interviews and TV appearances.
SECTION THREE : A Change of Life
House Hunting
At first I assumed the whirlwind would soon die out, as do most booms and fads in
Japan. I saw myself as no more than that.
I was quite happy to return to our very simple family existence in our very small
Suga-machi 'mansion' (a tiny apartment really).
But the whirlwind continued. Soon I realised I would need a secretary of some kind,
and hired a part-time Sophia student to answer the telephone calls that were driving
me mad.
Secretaries take up a lot of space, this one especially. We decided to move, from
our cramped ‘mansion’ to a proper, free-standing house.
Even in those pre-bubble days, reasonably priced, livable houses were becoming hard
to find in Tokyo. Most fat-cat foreigners lived in expensive 800,000 to one million
yen a month to rent (several millions of US dollars to purchase) mansions in the
gaijin ghettos of Azabu and Roppongi.
Most middle-class Japanese looked for housing in the then fashionable New Town style
developments scattered around the distant perimeter of Tokyo proper. Here land prices
were moving up to the two million yen per tsubo (3.3 square meters) level, which
meant a reasonably sized house and land could easily cost over 100 million yen. .
Jammed up against other identical neat, newly-built houses, all with their small,
neat little gardens facing neat newly built roads leading to large newly-built antiseptic
shopping centers, these New Towns were monuments to Japan's weakness in urban planning.
They were also monuments to middle-class weakness in lifestyle choice.
The husband in one of these new-age families would often have to commute for up to
three hours a day, simply so that his wife and children could enjoy the fresh air
and alleged comfort of these suburban atrocities.
This self-sacrificing lifestyle was seen as part of the price that had to be paid
for Japan's economic progress.
But for foreigners like myself, there was a much more desirable alternative. These
were the older residential areas close to central Tokyo. What's more, and even though
they were so convenient to central Tokyo, house and land prices were much cheaper
than those in those distant New Towns.
For our new age Japanese citizens these areas were seen as antiquated, inhabited
by fuddy-duddy people and littered with temples and shrines that had ghost-filled
graveyards. Streets were narrow and crooked. Shopping was primitive.
In short they were dasai — hickish and unrefined, the kiss of death for modish Japanese.
Our small Suga-machi condo had been in one of these unfashionable areas. In fact
it had been right next to a temple graveyard with its charming gongs, smells of incense,
venerable trees (temple trees were the only ones spared wartime tree slaughter) and
open spaces.
The ghosts never worried us. On the contrary, we welcomed them because they had lowered
the purchase price of our condo by a good 30 or so percent.
Our elderly neighbours were gentle people. Shopping was very convenient — we were
within walking distance from a typically bustling shotengai with its rows of shops
lining a narrow street from which cars were often excluded and selling everything
from handmade tofu to fresh fish and tatami mats.
For me, dasai was beautiful. I could never understand why Japanese, who were usually
so nostalgic about the gentle, populist pace of life in the former Japan, did not
want to live in the parts of Japan that incorporated just those values.
Even better, where we lived was only a few minutes walk to Yotsuya station, which
was only a few minutes more by train or subway to central Tokyo. So when we began
our house-hunting we naturally enough began looking for something in the same area.
Eventually we found our ideal - a very old wooden house, with a large secluded garden
in the Akebonobashi area, and close to Ichigaya, just down the tracks from Yotsuya.
The sale agents were going to demolish the house. Most Japanese dislike buying into
someone else's house, especially if it is old (more ghosts?). Agents can usually
aim for a higher price by demolishing and offering just the bare land for sale.
When we found that it would cost them 3 million yen to demolish the house, we quickly
told them to leave the house intact and deduct 3 million yen from the price of the
land, which they happily did.
After spending a few million yen on remodelling the house we ended up with a charming
structure that has served us well for close to 25 years.
I was able to tell all and sundry that we lived in a house that originally had a
negative value of 3 million yen.
A few years later as the lecture business continued to boom, I would also get
myself a proper office, in the Kojimachi area, only a few minutes walk from the Diet
and the politicians. Later, I would begin to spend a lot of time there, somewhat
at the expense of our close family life, but I had my reasons. .
Family Life
Back calculations suggest that virtually on the day the manuscript of the book
was sent to the publishers, my second son, Ron, was conceived. When he appeared nine
months later we had a problem.
xxxI was determined to raise the children bilingually and biculturally, with names
that could be used in both cultures. It was already becoming clear that I had no
place in Australia. I would be spending a lot of time in Japan, whether I liked it
or not.
While I wanted my children to have firm Japanese identities, I also wanted to be
able to share my own Western identity with them.
I was glad to give them Yasuko's surname - Tanno; it goes well in both English and
Japanese. It also meant they could hope to avoid some of the ijime -bullying - they
might receive as semi-foreigners if they went to Japanese schools.
I also happen to believe that children should have the surname of their mother anyway.
Using Tanno as a surname was a fortunate mix of ideology and pragmatism.
But there was a problem with the first name for our new-born. .
For girls, there is any number of attractive names that can be used in both English
and Japanese — Emi, Erika, Mari etc. I had a list of them ready, in advance of Ron's
birth.
But for boys the number is both limited and unattractive. For Ron's elder brother
I had originally taken the only name that seemed reasonable in both languages — Ken.
But I had not liked it much.
Then a few months after his naming I had realised there was a much better but so
far over-looked alternative, Dan. It has the same spelling in both languages. Only
a slight change in pronunciation is needed to make it viable in both languages. I
was even prepared to go to the family court to get approval for the change in name
(in Japan names are very important), which was granted
But having used up Dan, what else was available? I did not like the few other popular
male alternatives - Johji (George) or Ben.
Ron was a possibility though it is rarely used as a name in Japan, one reason being
that there are no suitable kanji with that pronunciation.
But Yasuko's father, a kanji aficionado, had a good idea: Why not us the kanji for
the Ron in Rondon, the name of the English capital? The kanji here means virtue,
and is usually pronounced rin. But for the English capital an exception is made —
Rin becomes Ron.
And so Ron became Ron, with a kanji name meaning virtue (though in the years to come
I sometimes thought that a name implying guts, determination and stubborn individualism
might have been more appropriate; after rebelling against Japan's messed-up high
school system, he ended up gaining entrance to a prestige Japanese university, a
good position in a large securities company and a top slot in Japan's list of champion
squash players).
Ron appeared while we were still living in the small Sugamachi pad and while Yasuko
had her job at the Ajiken.
But as a public servant she could get six months maternity leave. When that ended
we were able to put him, and Dan, into a nearby kindergarten.
At the time Japan's conservatives were railing on about the harm done to small children
by being denied constant 'skinship' with their mothers.
Japan's public kindergartens are excellent. As far as we were concerned both mother
and children gained much from the daily rotation between parental care and kindergarten
teacher care.
For the next year or two, before moving to the Akebonobashi house, we lived an unbelievably
primitive existence - both of us taking turns to deliver and collect the children
each day and to shop in the nearby shotengai on the way home (we were still paying
off loans and short of funds), by night camping in our tiny 'mansion' ( the children
thrown together in one tatami room and ourselves in the other), on weekends, hiking
trips to the countryside with the children strapped to our backs.
But it was simple and pure, and I often look back nostalgically.
Embassy Problems
Meanwhile I was having problems with that bastion of tattered Australian dignity
in Tokyo - the Embassy of Australia located in Mita.
My former mentor and boss, John Menadue, had become ambassador there - an exercise
in which I had played a small role a year or so earlier back in Canberra.
When he arrived in Tokyo, our families resumed our previous good relationships. Back
in Canberra we had often dined together and gone on hiking trips together.
While still in Canberra, Yasuko had even begun coaching their eldest child, Susan,
in Japanese. One of Menadue's first moves on arriving in Tokyo was to lean on me
in an effort to get Susan into Sophia.
But all these friendly connections very quickly went out the window the moment the
Newsweek article appeared. Personal and family relations with Menadue and his family
ceased abruptly. I was excluded, ostentatiously, from his Embassy functions and activities.
Menadue, I discovered, is a person who cannot handle anything that upsets the smooth,
disciplined pattern of his existence. And I had badly upset his existence as a new-fledged
ambassador in Japan.
Canberra too went ballistic. It cannot handle anything that seems to compromise its
many secret military and intelligence activities with the United States. The Echelon
operation, together with the Pine Gap communications base, lies at the very top of
its hush-hush priorities.
So overnight I was persona non-grata not just with Menadue and his family, but also
with the Embassy itself. Staff were ordered to report and file records of conversation
on every contact they had with that dangerous personality, Clark.
It was a less than charming throwback to my Moscow days, where we had been required
to record every conversation with Soviet nationals.
Spies at Work
To be honest, the Embassy black-ball did not worry me too much.
I was already making my own independent way in Japan. Unlike many other Australians
in Tokyo, I could survive without Embassy backing or support - though reportage from
Japan into Australian media remained one of my side-jobs and reporters usually need
some kind of Embassy contact for that kind of work.
Nor did I have to feel I had exposed some national interest secret. I had simply
retailed the original Toohey story, and as I explain later, the spies can only blame
themselves for that story having been leaked to Toohey
But there was also a deeper consideration.
Most assume that spy decoding activities, however grubby, do at least enhance the
national interest. I suggest otherwise.
True, a successful decoding operation can give direct access to the thinking and
activities of others. But for the most part, what one sees in the material decoded
and stamped top secret can be found a day or so later in one or other of the better
media.
Besides, in today's world only third world countries fail to use safe codes for important
materials. Finding out what these people think is usually not all that important.
My Moscow experience had told me that anyone using one-time pads (ransu hyo in Japanese)
for coding their messages is safe from decoding (unless someone gets hold of the
pads).
In the wake of my Newsweek 'expose' I was assured by a Gaimusho contact that for
important messages Japan did in fact use ransu hyo.
This meant that most of the material Australia was decoding was minor diplomatic
and business chatter. Our spies may have wanted to tell themselves and others what
a wonderful job they were doing out there seeking to protect the nation from nefarious
Japanese plots.
In fact I suspect they were doing little more than finding out what John Menadue
had been telling his good mate, Eric Walsh, who would then pass this on to the Japanese
Embassy in Canberra (with whom he had an information-supplying contract) which would
then pass this on to Tokyo.
And since the information was mainly third party gossip, presumably it was sent in
simple, easy-to-use codes which the Echelon spies with their advanced decoding techniques
could easily handle.
If anything, decoding activities cause more harm to the decoding nations rather
than to the decoded.
We all like to read other peoples' mail, especially if the other party has gone to
the trouble of trying to keep their mail secret. So the spies find it easy to use
their decoded materials, even low level stuff, to gain direct access to the policy
makers.
Then having gained that access, they are able also to claim the right for security
reasons to decide who else gets to see the decoded material, and who does not.
This selection process inevitably this favors the hawks and hard-liners in the establishment.
Moderates and progressives are gradually excluded.
The hawks and hardliners are then able to use their privileged access to decoded
and other spy material to dominate the policy making process.
This more than anything else, I believe, has been the key factor behind the never-ending
aggressiveness and hawkishness of Western policies over the past half century.
Canberra provided several examples of this bias in action during the time I was involved
there.
Hawks Ascendant
I mentioned earlier the way the hawks like Renouf and Campbell could dominate Canberra's
Vietnam policy decisions through their access to US insider information over future
Vietnam policy.
In the process they could easily dominate those outside the secret information loop
By the time I returned to Canberra in 1975, only a handful of the many mildly progressive
Foreign Affairs people I had known in the past had survived in any positions of influence.
And this was despite an allegedly progressive government being in power for over
two years.
In the Defense departments the situation was far worse (though the presence of Bill
Pritchett, my former mentor in pre-Hongkong days, at the top was a moderating influence,
especially over East Timor policy.)
My NARA experience had been a classic example of the damage done by this hawkish
bias in choosing who can receive top secret materials and who cannot.
The spies had decoded enough Japanese material to gain the confidence of Whitlam
and his advisers. They could be sure that the views of people such as myself who
realised the foolishness of their anti-NARA moves would be ignored since we were
not privy to the alleged secret material that was supposed to be revealing Japan's
sinister plots over NARA..
But in the process of gaining Whitlam's confidence, the spies also guaranteed that
journalists close to the Whitlam camp would get wind of their spy operation, and
I have reason to believe that that is how Toohey got his story.
In short, I had a lot of reasons for not feeling very guilty over causing trouble
for Canberra, and its Tokyo embassy.
A Personal Fallout
What worried me was more personal. I had made life unhappy for Mendadue, who had
done a lot for me in the past.
The Newsweek article had come at a time when Menadue was trying hard to get himself
established on the diplomatic circuit. In his calls on the Gaimusho (Foreign Ministry)
and others, I imagine one of the first questions had often been something along the
lines of how many of cables have you decoded today.
I could understand his distress. And to the extent that I had been beholden to him
in the past, I had to feel for his distress.
But I too had had to make my way in the world. What was I supposed to do? Roll over
and play dead simply so that he could find it easier to make his mark with the Tokyo
diplomatic set?
He was doing his job and I was doing mine. I was under no obligation to help him,
just as he had seen no obligation to help me after Whitlam's fall from power.
Menadue shared that curious version of the mateship ethic I had found in many other
ALP people.
This says you judge people by the degree of their unwavering tribal loyalty to the
ALP cause (whatever that happens to be at the time) regardless of circumstances.
Principles and integrity are irrelevant.
The moment you show any sign of 'disloyalty' you are an outsider. You are in the
camp of the enemy. You are even more of a non-person than LCP political opponents.
At a party of ALP loyalists soon after my National Times criticism of Whitlam had
appeared in early 1976, a well-known ALP groupie lady, VB, had approached me sneeringly
as 'Mr Integrity,'
That told me a lot about ALP tribalism .
Something that had always amazed me about Menadue at PMC had been his dislike, hatred
even, of Brian Toohey.
Toohey's crystalline, principled commitment to exposing the wrongs and mistakes of
the spies and the LCP uglies should have been obvious. He was doing far more for
the ALP cause in this area than any other Australian journalist.
But at times he had also exposed a few wrongs and mistakes on the ALP side.
Automatically his credentials as a friend of the ALP were cancelled. He was branded
as a trouble-maker - one of the stronger words in the ALP 'tribal' vocabulary.
(Interestingly it has its direct equivalent in the Japan's equally 'tribal' vocabulary
- meiwaku o kakeru. To cause meiwaku, or inconvenience to one’s associates, is the
ultimate sin in the Japanese value system.)
Meanwhile Toohey was also under attack from the Right, ASIO especially. His very
ability to operate as a journalist was suffering as a result. (In later years he
seems to have felt he had no choice but to turn himself into a commentator on economic
affairs.)
Like Japan, Australia finds it hard to understand the thinking of individualists
who want to opeerate without attachments to one camp or another.
True, to some extent I had to be grateful to Menadue for that year in the Prime Ministers
Department. It had allowed me to escape neatly from journalism and the Murdoch empire,
just when I needed a change.
It had brought me back to Australia, just when I needed a recharge.
But the year in PMC had hardly been enjoyable. As mentioned in an earlier part, this
was because Menadue had soon realised he could do his deals directly with the bureaucracy
and did not help from people like myself,
I had wasted the best part of a year chasing initiatives, NARA especially, which
the Whitlam administration had wanted but which the bureaucrats were determined to
kill, and Menadue had gone along with them rather than with me.
On the Vietnam Cables issue, where I done everything to rescue Whitlam from his own
foolishness and the plots of the conservative foreign policy bureaucrats, I got no
thanks.
On the contrary, Menadue and his mates, Brian Johns especially, had been quite happy
see me hung out to dry while they covered their collective backsides.
As for my late 1975 outburst over East Timor which had caused him some trouble, by
1978 it should have been obvious to him who was right and who was wrong on that issue.
Menadue had been perfectly happy to see me out the PMC door once there had been a
change in government, even while he himself was maneuvering to remain firmly inside
that door.
But for my good luck in getting reestablished in Japan, I would have been thrown
on Australia's large scrap-heap of former ALP supporters. He wouldn't have cared
much.
One way and another, I had a lot of reasons to be less than 100 percent grateful
for favors received. Several wheels had turned full circle, though I doubt whether
Menadue ever realised that.
Black-listing Unpleasantries
At a more personal level, however, the falling out with Menadue and his family was
unpleasant. While he was a very different kind of person from myself, I had come
to like and respect him an individual, partly because he was so different.
I admired his ability to move paper and to relate to a wide number of people simultaneously
— qualities he had gained while working for Whitlam over the years.
I had looked forward to keeping a good personal relationship with him in Tokyo.
My family were also victims. Yasuko lost all contact with her former student, Susan
(it was only to be revived some twenty years later when we discovered she had become
the very attractive, self-possessed wife of a successful Korean businessman in Tottori
prefecture and mother of four).
A few years later I began also to realise the loss to my children.
The Embassy was the focus for most Australian social activity in Tokyo. Being black-listed
there meant Dan and Ron were denied the chance to meet and play with Australian children
at precisely the moment when I was trying desperately to raise them bi-culturally.
Being black-listed also did quite a lot of harm to relations with other Australians
in Tokyo. Most were highly sensitive to Embassy likes and dislikes.
Australia's 'one of our mob' value system means that attitudes can change enormously
when you cease to be seen as a member of the 'mob' (another point in common with
Japan).
Fortunately the children's problem could be partly overcome by send them to one or
other of Tokyo's several international schools. But there was still some damage.
For me also, being denied all but the most superficial contact with the Embassy for
many years (for most of my Tokyo career in fact) was unpleasant.
No one likes to feel black-listed by one's own compatriots in a foreign country,
especially when they include people you have known and worked with in the past, of
which there were several, including Menadue.
But professionally the lack of contact may have done some good. I was forced to strike
out on my own. I could have wasted a lot of time getting involved with that Embassy
and its cloying clutches.
(As for why that Embassy had become so useless, this is part of a larger story involving
the decline of the Australian public service in general.)
I was able to concentrate, almost fulltime, on that gargantuan Japanese lecture circuit.
Section Four: THE JAPANESE LECTURE CIRCUIT
Bonanza
Japan's lecture circuit has two unique features.
One is its cumulative nature.
Each lecture adds to one's name-value; each addition to name-value adds to the chances
of being invited by someone else to give a lecture.
For those who manage to get onto it, it is a never-ending upward spiral.
Not only did it have me constantly travelling around Japan in those buoyant bubble
days. It also spilled abroad. The outside world was also keen to know more about
Japan.
In my own case that involved several trips to Hongkong and Singapore (the Overseas
Chinese had an intelligent interest in knowing about the nation that had done so
much harm to their country, which had been attacked and occupied by the US, and which
was clearly prospering regardless.)
A lecture tour of Southeast Asia organised by the Japan Foundation back in the days
when it saw me as a good gaijin was interesting enough too, mainly because it confirmed
the weakness of the Japanese presence in that area.
That was followed by an all-nation tour of the US organised by the Japan-American
Society. That taught me a lot about the US - both its attractive vitality and its
ignorance of the outside world.
The other unique aspect of the Japanese lecture circuit is the extraordinary financial
and other perks.
For some reason, when a Japanese organisation decides to invite you to give a lecture,
and you say yes, a sudden transformation occurs. As far as that organisation is concerned
you are now a very important person, and you have done it the highest honor imaginable
by accepting to give the lecture.
At least, that is the case for the period of time that the lecture commitment exists
(there is rarely much follow-up afterwards, apart from occasional requests to check
the verbatim record before publication).
First move is to send a virtual delegation to your office for an uchiawase — a discussion
of the details of your planned lecture and the various logistic arrangements. If
the lecture is to be at the other end of Japan, some will come all the way to Tokyo
from that other end of Japan, just for that uchiawase.
Only one of them will do the talking. The others will just sit there taking careful
notes.
Often I try to suggest that we decide all this over the phone, ideally with my secretary.
But no. They have to have that face-to-face meeting with the sensei before they can
feel assured that everything will happen correctly.
Being reassured is very important for these people.
This uchiawase is then followed by innumerable phone calls to your secretary seeking
confirmation of all those details, more materials, more reassurances. CVs, photos
and resumes are also needed.
A brochure or flyer will then be prepared giving details of the important speech
you have promised to give. First class tickets to the town, village or city where
the lecture is to be held are provided.
Eventually you arrive at the scene of the great event. You will of course be met
at the airport or train station by a luxury car and bevy of attentive staff whose
job it is to make sure to get to the lecture site safely and on time, often as much
as an hour in advance so everyone can be reassured that you will not be late.
There you will be met but another bevy of more senior but equally attentive staff.
They will take you to a waiting room especially hired for your comfort.
As you sip green tea and make mild conversation with them, the top dignitaries involved
with the occasion will file in politely to meet you. Cards will be exchanged.
After more green tea and conversation, a large flowery symbol of status, with your
name attached, will be pinned your person.
Eventually you are ushered to the podium. There you will be introduced in equally
flowery language by an attractive MC, also especially hired for the occasion. She
will call for applause.
Then an hour or so later when you have finished saying what you have to say, you
will often receive, in addition to more applause, a bouquet of flowers and a little
speech of appreciation from one of the organisers.
Usually there are no questions; they are seen as too much of an imposition on the
esteemed lecturer who is in a hurry anyway to move on to other important engagements.
Then as you leave the premises, the dignitaries line up to thank you once again.
You receive a nice souvenir (often a quite expensive piece of local art) plus two
presents — one to take back to your secretary with whom the organisers have now become
firm telephone friends, and another to take back to your family as compensation for
their sacrifice in allowing you to depart from the family hearth for so long.
Meanwhile the attentive staff are still hovering around, determined to get to your
train or plane on time. Usually they arrange it so you arrive at the station or airport
around thirty minutes too early, just so they and you can be reassured that you will
not miss that plane or train.
The attention is staggering. Sometimes you will be invited to bring an assistant
to carry your bags etc. — all expenses paid.
But it is the financial reward that really staggers. At first I could not believe
it — large ornate envelopes handed over immediately after the lecture, and stuffed
with ten thousand yen notes.
Translated into US or Australian dollars, it was an amount far greater than anything
I had seen or hoped for in my previous existence.
Even the total royalties from a well written book could easily come to less than
the reward for simply standing on a podium for an hour or so and enjoying the rapturous
attention of a large audience.
In Australia the reward from giving a lecture would normally be zero, or close
to it.
Often you would have to pay for your own transport and accommodation. As for being
met at airports and train stations, or receiving presents, forget it
The people inviting you felt they were doing you an honor by letting you onto their
podium, not vice versa. The audience would often share their feelings.
Meanwhile, in Japan, the thick envelopes were piling up day after day, week after
week, month after month, year after year. It added up to a lot of money.
And with the money came a host of privileges and freedoms.
In effect, I was being paid to discover the nation which I liked and in which
I had a deep interest.
I was being paid to get to places around Japan I would never normally get to,
to meet people I would never normally get to meet., for opportunities to improve
my Japanese, and to refine my original 'Japan is a tribe' theory.
For most of my life, my welfare and future had depended on other people. Now I could
be completely independent. I was being paid to be free.
For years after the lecture circuit got under way I would wake up mornings and literally
pinch myself. I could not believe that I had been so lucky.
In just a few years I had gone from riding very low in my home country Australia,
to riding very high in my adopted country, Japan.
Even better, I was now free to organise my life, just as I wanted to.
Next
|