JAPAN INCORPORATED ROLLS OUT A BIG

[brelief@xxxxxxx]

JAPAN INCORPORATED ROLLS OUT A BIG GUN

     Burma-Japan relations go back to before World War II, and the
diverse opinions of Japan's "old Burma hands" are sometimes better
informed about internal conditions than Western accounts of the
political crisis, even if one doesn't entirely agree with them. However,
a new Japanese perspective on Burma has emerged, which could be called
"Aung San Suu Kyi-bashing" or "hitching one's wagon to the star of Asian
Values." This view is dazzling in its ignorance and superficiality. A
representative of this genre is Kenichi Ohmae, a well-known business
consultant, who warmed the hearts of the generals in Rangoon with a
couple of recent articles. One appeared in the year-end issue of
ASIAWEEK, a Hong Kong weekly, which states:

     "The West knows about Myanmar through one person, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The obsession with Suu Kyi is a natural one if you understand the U.S.
Superficial democracy is golden in the United States; Americans love
elections. Just as Myanmar is Buddhist, and Malaysia is Islamic, America
has a religion called Democracy. There is merit in promoting democratic
reforms. But America is a simplistic country. Americans insist that 
what works for them should work for others at any time and in any stage
of economic development." (Kenichi Ohmae. "1997: A Year of Transition."
ASIAWEEK, December 1997 year-end issue, p. 5)

     Ohmae went to Burma with a delegation of Japanese businessmen to
"see what the place is like." He concludes that critics like American
financier George Soros "do not appreciate the progress Myanmar has made
under the current government."
     More revealing than the ASIAWEEK piece are two articles which
appeared in the Japanese magazine SAPIO in November 1997: "Miss Suu Kyi
is becoming a burden for developing Myanmar" (November 12, 1997) and
"Cheap and hardworking laborers: this country will be Asia's best"
(November 26, 1997 -- translations of these articles were kindly
supplied by a BurmaNet subscribe late last month). An exercise in a
weird kind of "Orientalism," -- borrowing Edward Said's concept in his
famous book of the same name -- these two articles reveal more about the
worldview of a certain kind of Japanese "intellectual" than they do
about the situation in Burma. It would be unfair, however, to assume
that Ohmae is expressing "the" Japanese view on Burma.
     From Ohmae's comments, it is clear that Burma has become an outpost
in the unending trade and cultural wars between Tokyo and Washington. He
claims that the United States "has established her [Aung San Suu Kyi] as
the Jeanne d'Arc of Myanmar and is using her to spread their propaganda
and pressure the regime. However, why the US feels the need to do this
and to achieve what end is beyond my comprehension." He confidently
predicts that Aung San Suu Kyi will "become a person of the past in a
year or two."
     Apart from free floating (and not entirely unjustified) Japanese
resentment of the United States, Ohmae seems to be expressing anger over
the Selective Purchasing Laws which several U.S. cities and states have
passed, which are having an impact on Japanese companies doing business
with the junta. As BurmaNet readers may know, the Japanese government
has joined the European Union to protest these laws before the World
Trade Organization. Doubtless American government pressure on Tokyo to
exercise self-restraint in extending foreign aid to Burma is another
cause of resentment.
     More interesting than Ohmae's KEN-BEI (Japanese for "dislike
America") attitude are "Asianist" and "neo-Asianist" themes in his
rhetoric. He is clearly enchanted with Burma, its people and its
culture. He contrasts them, using broad-brushed, racist strokes, with
the Chinese: "(i)n China, for example, on the surface they appear
sincere and serious, but in reality they do everything for money." Like
former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and former Chief Cabinet
Secretary Seiroku Kajiyama, Ohmae apparently appears quite comfortable
with making the kind of racist generalizations which would land
westerners in plenty of hot water.
     But apaprt from flip racism, Ohmae seems to be cultivating a very
promising future reader-market: anti-Chinese sentiment is growing
rapidly and dangerously in Japan. This is true for many reasons, ranging
from the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands territorial dispute  to illegal
Chinese workers in Japan and Beijing's often heavy-handed pressure on
Tokyo to be more contrite about past war atrocities. Shintaro Ishimara,
a rightist politician, also expressed strong anti-Chinese sentiments in
his 1995 book, THE VOICE OF ASIA, coauthored with Malaysia prime
minister Mohamed Mahathir. In the twenty-first century, KEN-CHUU
(dislike China) is likely to be more destabilizing in the Asia region
than KEN-BEI (China is of course stirring up plenty of anti-Japanese
nationalism). Many sober Japanese analysts are worried about China's
growing influence over the SLORC/SPDC regime, but it is unclear whether
Ohmae is aware of this. Certainly his junta hosts in Rangoon wouldn't
have enlightened him about it.
     For a capitalist like Ohmae, an advocate of rigorous business
globalization, it is deeply ironic that his articles express a nostalgic
longing for a "pure" Asia outside of allegedly money-grubbing places
like China, Vietnam and Thailand. Burma reminds him of his boyhood
village in Kyushu, where people worked hard, had just about enough to
eat, and lived simple lives without electricity or running water: "(t)he
current Myanmar mirrors these memories of farming villages in Japan.
Japan at the time was poor in comparison with the United States but this
was not detrimental to Japan." Perhaps Ohmae ought to oppose Japanese
investment in Burma to prevent the undermining of its -- in his words --
"fervently Buddhist ethics." Perhaps he ought to become a supporter of
Aung San Suu Kyi.
     Last year, NHK, the state-owned Japanese broadcasting network,
aired a t.v. documentary on Burma's economic liberalization. One
sequence showed young Burmese women being recruited to wear short red
dresses and hawk Chinese-made cigarettes ("Red Pagoda Mountain Brand")
in the streets of downtown Rangoon. Doubtlessly this sad sight must have
shocked many Burmese passers-by, but that's capitalism, global-style,
which earns Mr. Ohmae, an international business guru, his meal ticket.
     But the Bottom Line is never far from Ohmae's heart. The Burmese,
he writes, are virtuous, honest, hardworking and above all -- docile.
Unl;ike the uppity Chinese and Vietnamese, they'll be happy with
basement-level wages. The title of his November 26 article says it all.
Ohmae might be a little disillusioned, then, to read a little Burmese
history -- about the oilfield workers' strike of 1938, or the close
association of Burmese nationalism with socialism going back to the
colonial era. Or the strong socialist sympathies of Aung San Suu Kyi's
father. He might also learn something from the BurmaNet News article in
issue 906 (January 7, 1998), reporting about labor activism and work
stoppages at joint-venture textile factories.
     Ohmae's "Orientalism" is clearly evident in his illogicality: Burma
is "pure" and unmaterialistic; but it's all right to exploit the
Burmese. It's a bit like the Great White Hunter who claims he "loves"
the big game he shoots.
     Ohmae, author of trendy best-sellers like THE BORDERLESS WORLD and
THE END OF THE NATION STATE, is a very big gun in the arsenal of Japan
Incorporated. Since at least 1994, when a Keidanren delegation visited
Burma and met with top junta leaders, Japanese business has been
building up pressure on the government to get more involved with Burma,
including a reopening of foreign aid flows. Burma's entry into ASEAN
gives added "legitimacy" to full-scale normalization of Tokyo-SPDC ties.
In Japanese elite cirlces, the "ethnic cleansing" of Burma's minorities
is invisible; but Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is highly visible. Thus, Ohmae
and his colleagues need to discredit  her in the eyes of the public --
claiming she's an "axe handle" of the U.S. -- in order to build up
public support for warmer Tokyo-junta relations.
     How the Asian financial crisis fits into this equation is difficult
to say. Asian resentment of the United States is growing because of the
IMF measures, and one way this can be expressed is through criticism of
the Burmese democracy movement as "unAsian." 
     It is unfortunate that Ohmae has to use Burma as a pawn in his
diatribes against the United States and China, which is not to say that
these countries are faultless. The Burma crisis is becoming an
ideological football, a bone of contention between advocates of
western-style democracy and "Asian values." This blinds Ohmae and others
like him to the real situation in Burma today, and what Burma will
become if Ohmae's "greed without borders" style of business dynamism is
allowed to destroy the religious and social traditions which make Burma
a unique society. He ought to get out and learn more about the country,
e.g., visit the Thai-Burma or Burma-India borders to see refugees. Or
leave the subject of Burma to Japanese colleagues who know more about
it.

Donald M. Seekins
Meio University
Nago, Okinawa

January 17, 1998

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