The 31st Japan Studies Association of Canada Annual ConferenceJapan’s World and the World’s Japan:
Images, Perceptions, and ReactionsConference Proceedings

October 11-14, 2018
University of Alberta
Edmonton

JAPAN’S WORLD | THE WORLD’S JAPANA Collection of Papers from the Japan Studies Association of Canada(JSAC) 2018 Annual Meeting held at the University of Alberta

Edited by
Aya Fujiwara (University of Alberta)
and James White (University of Alberta)© 2019 Japan Studies Association of Canada

TABLE OF CONTENTS________________________________________________________
LIST OF TABLES

iii

LIST OF FIGURES

iv

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORSvi

EDITOR’S PREFACE

vii

1. JAPAN-WEST INTERCULTURE: TIME’S STEP BACK—DŌGEN,WATSUJI, KUKI AND HEIDEGGER

1

2. THE EJCA HISTORY PROJECT AND 2013 SURVEY:BACKGROUND, ACCESS AND SOME REFLECTIONS

27

3. TRANSLATION WITHOUT WORDS: WHAT KYŌGEN CAN TELL
US ABOUT SAMUEL BECKETT’S TOLERANCE FOR ADAPTATION

38

4. FORTY YEARS AFTER THE CHINA-JAPAN TREATY OF PEACE AND
FRIENDSHIP: REFLECTIONS ON CHANGING ECONOMIC ANDCOMMERICAL RELATIONS

47

5. AN ASSESSMENT OF THE FIRST SIX YEARS OF ABENOMICS

85

6. FOUR DECADES SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF E.W. SAID’SORIENTALISM: BRIEF COMMENTS ON ITS IDEOLOGICAL ROOTSAND IMPACT ON JAPAN AND JAPAN-RELATED SCHOLARSHIP

109

7. THE TOURIST WALKING ROUTES OF BUNKYO WARD, TOKYO:
FOREIGN PERCEPTIONS OF WALKABILITY

125

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japanii

LIST OF TABLES_____________________________________________________________
Table 1.1 Western Civilization and East Asian Civilization

10

Table 1.2 Summary Comparison of Heidegger and Dōgen

19

Table 4.1 2001-2017: The Dangerous Years

58

Table 4.2 Major Events and High-Level Visits Leading up to the 40th Anniversaryof the 1978 Treaty of Peace and Cooperation

66

Table 4.3 Japan’s Major Export Markets in 201770

Table 4.4 Reports of Japanese Companies Leaving China

71

Table 7.1 Example of a Walkability Checklist with 23 Criteria Based on Icanwalk.ca

133

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japaniii

LIST OF FIGURES____________________________________________________________
Figure 2.1 The EJCA History Project and 2013 Survey

28

Figure 2.2 EJCA History Project

28

Figure 2.3 Phases 1&2: Summary and Finding Aid

29

Figure 2.4 Phase 1/2

29

Figure 2.5 Phases 1&2: Access

30

Figure 2.6 Phases 1&2: Newsletter Moshi Moshi

30

Figure 2.7 Phases 1&2: Insights and Challenges

30

Figure 2.8 Phase 3: Survey

31

Figure 2.9 Phase 3 Survey: Access31

Figure 2.10 Survey Details

31

Figure 2.11 Survey Sections

32

Figure 2.12 Survey Insights: Narrative

32

Figure 2.13 Survey Insights: Narrative

32

Figure 2.14 Survey Insights: Quantitative

33

Figure 2.15 Survey Insights: Quantitative

33

Figure 2.16 Reflections and Future

33

Figure 2.17 Metaphor 1: A Snapshot

34

Figure 2.18 Metaphor 2: A Canadian Census Snapshot

34

Figure 2.19 Metaphor 3: Energy/Matter

35

Figure 2.20 Metaphor 4: Enlightened Entanglement

35

Figure 2.21 Metaphor 5: “There’s Magic in Them There Fields”

35

Figure 2.22 Metaphor 6: Social Fields (for Humans)

36

Figure 2.23 Metaphor 7: Sequencing Japanese Predispositioning on Earth36

Figure 2.24 Metaphor 8: Enlightened Entanglement

37

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan

iv

Figure 4.1 China’s Belt and Road Scheme andJapan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy

62

Figure 4.2 Competing Global Trade Blocs: TPP and RCEP (2015)

63

Figure 4.3 Japanese ODA to China, 1980 to 2016

72

Figure 5.1 A Casual Framework for Assessing Japanese Economic Performance

87

Figure 5.2 Output Gap as a Percentage of Potential Output, IMF

88

Figure 5.3 A Stylized Representation of Edward Lincoln’s Output-Gap Framework

89

Figure 6.1 Books Critiquing Orientalism

118

Figure 6.2 Tweets by Hamid Dabashi

122

Figure 6.3 An Israeli Student Quoted in the Article

122

Figure 7.1 Ueno no Oyama Walk That Passes Through Bunkyo Ward

126

Figure 7.2 Bunkyo Ward (Bunkyo-Ku) in Metropolitan Tokyo

128

Figure 7.3 Bunkyo Ward Looking Northeast Toward Tokyo University
from Bunkyo Ward Tower

128

Figure 7.4 Bunkyo Ward from Bunkyo Gakuin University Looking Toward
Shinjuku and Mt. Fuji

129

Figure 7.5 Four Bunkyo Ward Walking Routes: Purple, Green, Pink and Orange(with Most Stops Included)

134

Figure 7.6 The Landscape Around the Printing Museum (Right)

136

Figure 7.7 Yureizaka Hill Walking Path

136

Figure 7.8 Rikugien Park at the End of the Pink Walking Route near
Komagome Rail Station

138

Figure 7.9 Walking Route Sections of Brandon’s Orange Route

140

Figure 7.10 Stepping Stones Across Stream

141

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS_____________________________________________________David W. Edgington, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, University of British
Columbia
Jay Goulding, Professor, Department of Social Science, York University
Jacob Kovalio, Associate Professor, Department of History, Carleton University
Brian K. MacLean, Professor, Department of Economics, Laurentian University
Daiyo Sawada, Professor Emeritus, Department of Elementary Education, University of Alberta
David Sulz, Academic Librarian, University of Alberta
Jane Traynor, Ph.D. Student, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia
University
Tom Waldichuk, Assistant Professor, Department of Geology and Environmental Sciences,
Thompson Rivers University

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japanvi

EDITOR'S PREFACE__________________________________________________________The 2018 Japan Studies Association of Canada’s Annual Meeting was held under the title,“Japan’s World / the World’s Japan: Images, Perceptions and Reactions.” Its goal was topromote the analysis of the current global trend of resurgent nationalism in the face ofaccelerating globalization. Japan’s interactions with the rest of world produce images,
perceptions and reactions constantly. In the era in which much of critical decision-making
processes and reactions depend on the mass production of images and perceptions, an analysis of
their contents and mechanisms by which they are produced help identify challenges that Japan isfacing and find solutions to them.
The selected papers in this volume have conceptualized this theme in their own ways, situating
Japan in a global context. Three papers are included in the field of the Humanities. While Jay
Goulding, Jacob Kovalio and Jane Traynor exhibit some similarity in their focus on theintersections and interactions between Western and Asian philosophies and cultures, they
approached major Western thinkers in a different way. Goulding revealed very intriguinginteractions between major Western and Japanese philosophers, revealing the existence of atransnational sphere that cannot be explained through the binary between the West and the East.
Jane Traynor pushes the West-East boundary questions a bit further, analyzing translation in theperforming arts. Focusing on the work of Samuel Beckett, her study also recognizes the spacethat emerges between two different languages and cultures in theatres—what she called “artistic
liberties.” Kovalio too analyzes the encounter between Western and Asian scholars but expresses
concerns about the popularity and influence that Edward Said’s Orientalism has had in the fieldof Asian studies. He stresses the fact that Western scholarly interaction with the study of Japanand the East has little to do with colonial power system and Western hegemony.
David Edgington and Brian K. MacLean examine the political economy of Japan from different
angles, the former from international relations and the other from domestic economic politics.
Focusing on the forty years of Japan-China relations, Edgington identifies several stages in theshifting Japanese perception of China as a trading partner. He refutes the static view of JapanChina relations that was established forty years ago, revealing that Japan has often changed its
approach to China, as it increases its economic opportunities and competitiveness. MacLean’s
article shifts attention to Japan’s internal economic politics, evaluating the first six years of
Abenomics. While the assessment of its policy differs significantly among scholars andcommentators, his analysis, focusing solely on the GDP and figures, points to a moderate successin economic recovery.
The essays by Tom Waldichuk et al. and by David Sulz and Daiyo Sawada are both written asreports of major projects that their teams have conducted for many years. Reviewing the stages
by which the Edmonton Japanese Community Association collected personal documents andhistoric photos from community members and challenges that the process entailed, Sulz and
Sawada present a unique analysis of the project. Revealing the gap between goals and reality,
their essay offers a useful tool and insights to anyone who compiles community history projects.
Similarly, Waldichuk et al. offers insightful analysis of one of the tourism routes, based on thefield work. Interestingly, they reveal that the Bunkyo walking route is not necessarily designed
JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japanvii

for foreign tourists and thus more international consideration is necessary to make it accessible,safe, and enjoyable for foreign tourists. All articles make valuable a contribution to theunderstanding of Japan’s World and the World’s Japan and bring Japan studies to a global
audience. The editors hope that our dialogue will enrich future Japan studies in Canada.
Aya Fujiwara, Ph.D
Chair of the 2018 JSAC Annual Conference

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1. JAPAN-WEST INTERCULTURE:
TIME’S STEP BACK—DŌGEN,WATSUJI, KUKI AND
HEIDEGGERJay Goulding
Professor, Department of Social Science, York University
E-mail: jay@yorku.ca______________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACTAs progenitors of world interculture, Japanese scholars engage the phenomenologist
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) in Germany in the 1920s with discussions of literature, popular
culture, language and philosophy. Yamanouchi Tokuryū (1890-1982) reads Husserl’s Logical
Investigations with Heidegger, later lecturing Greek philosophy at Kyoto University; Tanabe
Hajime (1885-1962) shares Heidegger’s love for art, culture, ontology and nothingness; Kuki
Shūzō (1888-1941) engages Heidegger on the aesthetic of iki いき, publishing the first book on
Heidegger: The Philosophy of Heidegger (Haideggā no tetsugaku); Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960)
brings existential philosophy to Japan, employing Heidegger’s methodology in his classic work
Fūdo (climate). This paper explores intercultural ideas amongst Kuki, Watsuji and Heidegger on
cultural and philosophical intersections East and West. Comparative topics include the Japanesescholars’ understanding of Zen monk Dōgen Zenji’s (1200–1253) uji 有時 (sometimes, just for
the time being), Nikon 而今 (just now), kyōryaku 經歷 (ranging, flowing) and taiho 退歩 (thestep back), alongside Heidegger’s verweilen (whiling time), Augenblick (right moment ofvision), Erstrecken (to stretch time along) and Schritt züruck (the step back)—all directed toward
a mutual discourse of Japan-West interculture. Inspired by my initial encounter with thehermeneutic phenomenologist Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) in the early 1970s at
Hamilton’s McMaster University, I launch a career of engagement with Heidegger scholars
Richard Palmer (1933-2015), William Richardson (1920-2016), Hwa Yol Jung (1931-2017), Wu
Kuang-ming (1933- ) and Cheng Chung-ying (1935- ), most of whom are experts in both East
Asian and Western philosophies. From these interactions, I generate four cornerstones of East
Asian thinking—primarily emanating from Japanese Zen and Chinese Dao—which manifest
through one thinker in the contemporary Western world: Heidegger. The paper explicates these
JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan1

cornerstones: 1) non-Cartesian subjectivity (there is no “I” but a person as temporally or
dimensionally “in- between” [renjian 人間]); 2) non-Euclidean space (fractal geometry, Chinesechaos theory; no vanishing point); 3) non-Aristotelean time (reversibility of time; every moment
an instance of a different time); 4) non-representational thinking (thing as itself, that whichthings a thing is not itself a thing), imbedded equally within Heidegger’s thought as within both
Zen and Daoist cosmology. Remarkably, Heidegger arrives at these four cornerstones on his
own––as counter-positions to traditional Western spatialized and materialized thinking, callingthem respectively: 1) Dasein (there-being, non-Cartesian subjectivity as a collection of beings
searching for primordial there); 2) das Ding (the thing, non-Euclidean space as fourdimensionality within essential spirit); 3) Kehre (the turn, non-Aristotelian time as areversibility); 4) Vernehmen (ap-prehension, approception, proception) as an alternative to
Vorstellung (representation). Finally, the paper contrasts the material West to the spiritual East
through reversibilities including time and space. Western binaries such as centre and periphery,
shape and shadow, interior and exterior, stillness and motion give way to East Asian dipolarities
that do not culminate or overcome each other as in dialectical practices but are mutuallyconditioned linked opposites that are necessary for each other as co-constitutive, co-resonatingand equiprimordial.
Keywords: Kuki Shūzō, Watsuji Tetsurō, Martin Heidegger, Dōgen, uji 有時, taiho 退歩, Schritt
züruck (the step back), Fukanzazengi 普勧坐禪儀.
1. INTRODUCTION___________________________________________________________The purpose of the essay is to (1) outline thumbnail sketches of interactions between
Japanese philosophers Kuki Shūzō (1888-1941), Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960) and Martin
Heidegger (1889-1976) on the way to (2) detailing what I call the four cornerstones of East
Asian philosophy as reversibilities of Western thought. These act as provisional foundations for(3) a comparison of Zen monk Dōgen Zenji’s (1200–1253) taiho 退歩 and Heidegger’s Schritt
zurück—both expressions rendered in English as the step back.
2. JAPANESE INTERLOCUTORS_______________________________________________In my review of Lin Ma’s exquisitely detailed source book of Heidegger’s interactions
with East Asian philosophers,1 I explain that over a five-decade period, the following occurs:
Yamanouchi Tokuryū reads Husserl’s Logical Investigations with Heidegger inthe early 1920s, and later teaches Greek philosophy and phenomenology at Kyoto
University (p. 11); Tanabe Hajime, a kingpin of the Kyoto School shares both
Heidegger’s affinity for discourse on ontology and nothingness, and aversion totechnology; Kuki Shūzō dialogues with Heidegger on the Japanese aesthetic of iki
いき, and in 1933 publishes the first book on Heidegger, The Philosophy ofHeidegger (Haideggā no tetsugaku); Watsuji Tetsurō is the “first to introduce
existential philosophy to Japan” (p. 13); Nishitani Keiji engages in extensive
1

Lin Ma, Heidegger on East-West Dialogue: Anticipating the Event (London: Routledge, 2008).

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan2

discussions in Germany from 1938 to 1940, and again in 1964 and 1972—
primarily on comparisons of Buddhist emptiness and Heidegger’s nothingness as
the “essential unfolding” of being (p. 179); Tezuka Tomio is the inspiration for
Heidegger’s 1959 “A Dialogue on Language: Between a Japanese and an
Inquirer” (pp. 19-23); Hisamatsu Shinichi, a Zen Buddhist monk, conducts acolloquium with Heidegger on “Art and Thinking” in 1958 (pp. 157-160);
Tsujimura Koīchi sees Heidegger as a “…signpost that can lead from Zen
Buddhism to philosophy” (p.14); Xiong Wei studies with Heidegger in the 1930’s(p. 216), and might I add, supervises the translation of Being and Time (cunzai yu
shijian 存在與時間) into Chinese in the 1980’s; Hsiao Shih-yi begins atranslation of Daodejing with Heidegger in the 1940’s (pp. 153-156); and Chang
Chung-yuan, a renowned philosopher from University of Hawaii, completes his
own Daodejing translation with input from Heidegger in the 1970s (pp. 15-17).2
In May of 1928, Heidegger is preparing to return to Freiburg to accept a full-time teachingposition; Kuki Shūzō is preparing for the Pontigny lectures in France; Watsuji is preparing toreturn to Japan—his trip cut short because of his father’s death. In 1931, Miyake Goichi (18951982), another celebrated scholar, studies with Husserl and Heidegger.3
I believe Kuki Shūzō (son of Baron Kuki Ryuichi [1850–1931]) to be the mostsophisticated and refined of many Heidegger scholars in Japan. As a seminal philosopher in his
own right, Kuki is courted by many thinkers but like Watsuji, maintains his own distinct
thoughts and presentations. Watsuji might not have actually met Heidegger despite Lester
Embree’s Encyclopedia of Phenomenology4 claiming that the encounter takes place at Husserl’shome as part of the Japanese Freiburg pilgrimage.
Although details of Watsuji’s travels in Europe are scanty, Yuasa Yasuo suggests that
Watsuji’s intimate understanding of Heidegger could only come from a personal encounter.5
Watsuji wrote a substantial book in 1935 on climate and space (Climate and Culture: A
Philosophical Study translated from Fūdo 風土)6 as a response to his close reading of Heidegger
on time.
On the other hand, Inaga Shigemi informs us that Watsuji sends a letter from Florence toTanabe Hajime on 26 March 1928, “excusing himself for not having made good use of the letterof introduction to Martin Heidegger prepared for him by Tanabe.”7 Since Watsuji and Kuki were
longtime friends (meeting in Paris on April 6, 1927), it is possible that Watsuji might have madeJay Goulding, review of Heidegger on East-West Dialogue: Anticipating the Event, by Lin Ma, Journal of Chinese
Philosophy 36, no. 3 (September 2009): 484-487.
3
Dorion Cairns, Conversation with Husserl and Fink, edited by the Husserl-Archives in Louvain (The Hague: Nijhoff,1976), 17-19, 29.
4Lester Embree, ed., Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Springer Science and Business Media, 1997), 367.
5
Yasuo Yuasa, “Modern Japanese Philosophy and Heidegger,” in Heidegger and Asian Thought, ed. Graham Parkes(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 155-174.
6
Tetsurō Watsuji, A Climate: A Philosophical Study, trans. Geoffrey Bownas (from Fūdo 風土) (Tokyo: Printing
Bureau, Japanese Government, 1961).
7
Shigemi Inaga, “Japanese Philosophers Go West: The Effect of Maritime Trips on Philosophy in Japan with Special
Reference to the Case of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960),” in Japan Review 25 (2013): 113-144.
2

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan3

a quick visit back to Germany in May to see Kuki and Heidegger before the long voyage home—
especially since Watsuji would probably not visit Europe again.
In any case, taking inspiration from Heidegger, Watsuji introduces a fascinatingargument on the essence of the person in-between (Being and Time’s in-zwischenheit):
Man does not reach constantly into the future within individual consciousness
alone; rather, it is the betweenness that reaches into the future. Temporality of theindividual consciousness is a mere abstraction that is only rendered possible on
the basis of historicality [Geschichtlichkeit] of betweenness. Third, transcendence
also means standing out climatically. In other words, man-as-betweenness
discovers itself in climate. From the standpoint of the individual, this becomes
consciousness of the body, but in the context of the more concrete ground of
human existence (ningen sonzai [人間存在]), it reveals itself in the forms ofcreating communities, and thus in the forms of constructing language, the forms
of production, the styles of buildings, and so on. Transcendence, as the structureof human existence, must include all these aspects.8
Concerning this statement, Inaga Shigemi illustrates: “Ningengaku 人間学 is a neologism
distancing Watsuji’s position from Western as well as (neo-) Confucian human-centered ethics:
it means ‘the study of ningen,’ where ningen refers to the human, zooid as well as species, but its
literal meaning is ‘inter-human,’ the relation in between, preceding the establishment of
individuality and personality in the sense of ‘persona.’”9 As a crucial distinction, Watsuji
employs a spatialized and sociologized idea of ningen, whereas Chinese philosophy (andHeidegger) have a temporalized view of the in-between as an interstitial dimension—something
like the between of heaven and hell as in a classical Chinese cosmological understanding.
On the other hand, Kuki’s philosophical analysis begins with the surface of everyday
experiences (Bergson’s existentialism) and then dives deeply (Heidegger’s hermeneutic
phenomenology). Of Kuki’s travels in France, Stephen Light writes:
The philosopher Yasumasa Oshima, in an article on Kuki, has recounted thatwhen his elder colleague Yasutaro Awano was in Paris in 1934, Awano asked
Emile Bréhier [Professor at the Sorbonne] if Bréhier could provide him with apartner for purposes of discussing French philosophy and thus employing his
French. Bréhier, exclaiming, “that was just Kuki’s request!” introduced Awano toa young lycée professor, Maurice Merleau-Ponty! Oshima takes the remark as asign that it was probably Bréhier who had earlier directed Kuki to Sartre [asrépétiteur].10
Tetsuro Watsuji, Climate, 12.
Inaga, “Japanese Philosophers go West,” 119.
10
Light, Stephen. Shūzō Kuki and Jean-Paul Sartre: Influence and Counter-influence in the Early History of
Existential Phenomenology (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 26.
8
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4

The renowned phenomenologist Hwa Yol Jung (1931-2017), student of Harvard’s John Wild
(1902-1972) who studies with Heidegger in Freiburg in 1931, suggests that when Kuki arrives inFrance from Germany, he places an advertisement for someone to teach him French in exchange
for knowledge of both German language and existentialism; his first respondent is Jean-Paul
Sartre (personal correspondence).
Elsewhere I have written of Kuki and Heidegger:
Phenomenology is the study of appearances in daily life from the position of aprimordial echein (an originary holding ground or pure philosophy, see Heidegger
and Fink 1979, 29) through an epechein (a withholding or suspension of personal
prejudices) toward a theorein (a beholding or theorizing of a life-world).
Embracing phenomenology, Kuki fleshes out a detailed sketch of Japan in his
idea of iki as a ‘refinement’ of behaviours and attitudes stratified throughout
language and culture. For Kuki, Tokugawa exemplifies both a ‘horizontal’
phenomenology of everyday experiences and a ‘vertical’ phenomenology ofspiritual experiences. The kanji for phenomenology is important enough to
explain. Genshogaku (現象学) is the study of that which manifests itself or
represents appearance or presence. Husserl and Heidegger applied their respective
phenomenologies to the study of time as a horizon of our experiences, hence a‘horizontal’ phenomenology. An innovative aspect of the phenomenologicalmethod was the notion of ‘bracketing’ or suspending one’s assumptions of theworld in order to address alternative views. The world is composed of rings ofperception or what Husserl calls the “co-present margin” (1962, 92).
Philosophical, linguistic, cultural and psychological assumptions wind ring after
ring of perceptions around our experiences and thereby create a horizon by which
we judge the world. These rings are co-present—that is existing simultaneously.
Heidegger refers to the matrix of these crossings of existential experience as
Dasein or ‘there-being’ (1962). As a student of both thinkers, Kuki’s contribution
to the discussion was a ‘vertical’ phenomenology that incorporated the spiritual
world in addition to the existential world of material things. For Kuki, theequilibrium of Japanese society finds a harmony in the crossings of language andculture through both their visibility (materiality) and invisibility (spirituality).
Japan managed to balance daily experiences (materiality) with the harmonizationof the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Shinto (spirituality). Not
only was Japanese culture of the Edo Period [1603-1868] a blending ofmulticultural elements but also a harmonization of many teachings. Part of whatgives Japan its global resilience today is this balance of materiality andspirituality. Not only the external appearance of balance but also the internal
manifestation of harmony operated as twin generators of iki. Taking a cue from
Heidegger, Kuki blends the methods of phenomenology with the quest for truth.
‘Hermeneutics’ was the art of interpretation by which scholars moved from mere
appearances to essences of thought or to ‘the things themselves.’ Hermes, themessenger god, brought knowledge from the heavens to earth; hence,‘hermeneutics’ is the study of interpretation of messages, both divine andJSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan5

otherwise. Kuki links this hermeneutic quest for truth with the phenomenologicalproject of displaying the layerings of social life, themselves stripped away like thepeelings of an onion skin: linguistic, cultural, philosophical, political, social,
psychological, religious, historical and cosmological. Husserl is famous for
employing the image of the onion as “kugelschalenförmig” or “ringförmig.” Thesocial world appears in “the shape of concentric peelings” or “the shape of a ring”(see Husserl 1973, 430).11
Not only does Kuki contribute to the shaping of phenomenology at its inception (studying
with Heidegger at the very moment that Being and Time is published) but applies his profoundunderstanding to examples drawn from various periods of Japanese civilization:
In his Pontigny lectures of 1928, Kuki explains two levels of crossings. As
mentioned above, one level is ‘horizontal’ phenomenology, the explication of
everyday life in the Lebenswelt. The world is our horizon of being and time.
‘Ecstatic time,’ which stands outside of itself, seeks for a unity of present, pastand future time (Heidegger 1962, 377-379). What Kuki adds is a second level, thenotion of a ‘vertical’ phenomenology which is no longer simply an existential
reality but a ‘mystical ecstasis’: “...each instant, each present, is an identical
moment of different times... Each present has identical moments, in the future aswell as in the past... time is in this sense reversible” (Kuki 1987a, 45-46). It flows
back upon itself as a retrograde temporality or as a reversibility of time. Word
(kotoba 言), event (koto 事) and meaning (kokoro 意) are synchronous; theancient past folds into the now. We might think of Kuki’s concept of time as akairos, a revelatory moment of eternal nows or what Heidegger calls Augenblick,the blink of an eye or an instance. Being and time are not separate but are linked,
something like the Buddhist monk Dogen’s uji (有時) or ‘being-time’ (see Cleary
1986, 102-110). Perhaps it is like the Buddhist ma (間) or aida (間), an interval
between life and death, between heaven and earth, between this and that. Perhaps
it is like the pause of a no (能) theatre performer between movements.12
3. DIALOGUE ON LANGUAGE AND BACK TO PARIS____________________________
Thanks to Kuki’s encyclopedic expertise, the Edo Period idea of flirting with life—thepeacetime samurai tasting the forbidden pleasures of the ukiyo and the wartime samurai testing
his mettle with death (either in battle or in seppuku)—might intrigue Heidegger. The nearness ofNothing to Being and Dasein’s inability to embrace the immediacy of Being stand at the centreof Heidegger’s early work.
Jay Goulding, “Kuki Shūzō and Martin Heidegger: Iki いき and Hermeneutic Phenomenology,” in Why Japan
Matters! 2, eds. Joseph F. Kess and Helen Lansdowne (Victoria: Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, University ofVictoria, 2005), 680-682.
11

12

Ibid, 680-682.

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The Japanese sabi 寂 or loneliness might catch Heidegger’s eye. In this instance, thehaiku poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) and the profound German poet Friedrich Hölderlin(1770-1843) both wait for revelation which vanishes as its first brief appearance (Augenblick).
This peek-a-boo reveal and conceal style attracts Heidegger:
That which is, the particular being, stands in Being. Through Being there passes aveiled destiny that is ordained between the godly and the counter godly... There islittle that comes to be known. What is known remains inexact, what is masteredinsecure. In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs. There is aclearing, a lighting [die Lichtung]. Thought of in reference to what is, to beings,
this clearing is in a greater degree than are beings. This open center is therefore
not surrounded by what is; rather, the lighting center itself encircles all that is, likethe Nothing which we scarcely know.13
In the above 1959 quote from “A Dialogue of Language” in On the Way to Language, Heidegger
reminisces his exchanges with Kuki from three decades prior.
Despite his engagement with a catalogue of top notch East Asian scholars, it is Kuki that
Heidegger remembers the most. And it is Kuki that Heidegger writes about thirty years after theirinitial encounter.
In returning to France, Kuki delivers two seminar lectures at Pontigny (50 kilometersfrom Paris) in August of 1928. The first was called “The Notion of Time and Repetition in
Oriental Time.”14
As I write of Kuki:
In this lecture, he ponders: “If one has the right to speak of ‘Oriental time,’ itseems it can be a question of nothing other than the time of transmigration. This
time is a time that repeats itself, periodic time... Time is of the will. For a table,
for a chair there is no time. If time exists for them, it is because consciousness, as
will, has given them a time” (1987a, 43). This is a unique combination of Asiantime as ‘transmigration,’ Bergson’s time as duration, and intentional
phenomenological time as consciousness of something. Kuki goes on to praise
Heidegger’s ‘anticipation’ of time as a future time (sich-vorweg-sein). Perhaps
Kuki anticipates Merleau-Ponty (1964, 1968) when he says: “In the Orient, timeis also considered as being, at bottom, of the will” (1987a: 43). Rather than beingin time (Aristotle) we have time in being. What Kuki adds is the idea of will as athickness of time and being. Quoting from Indian classics, he proclaims: “Of past,present, and future duration the root is ignorance; from ignorance come thedispositions of the will.” Thus, Kuki surmises that “from ignorance comes the will
and from the will time” (1987a, 44). Hence, transmigration for Kuki is “indefinite
Heidegger, On the Way to Language (New York: Harper & Row, 1971b), 53.
Shūzō Kuki, “The Notion of Time and Repetition in Oriental Time,” in Shūzō Kuki and Jean-Paul Sartre: Influence
and Counter-influence in the Early History of Existential Phenomenology, ed. Stephen Light (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1987a), 43-50.
13
14

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rebirth, the perpetual repetition of the will, the endless return of time” (1987a,
44). Classical Japanese Buddhist nirvana as ‘annihilation’ or ‘extinction’ is therenunciation of the will. Defeat desire and defeat both the will and the time that it
creates. But is denying the will not itself the will? Is this not a tautologicalargument? Kuki responds with bushido, which is the shadow nirvana: “In Japan
during the feudal period another moral ideal, Bushido—‘the way of the bushi’—was developed alongside Buddhism. Rectitude, Valiance, Honor, Charity: these
are the cardinal virtues of Bushido” (1987a, 49). Again, Kuki gives a raison d’êtreto Lord Asano in Chūshingura who upholds his ‘bushi’ (武士) against thedomesticated responses of Kira, even if it results in the misery and death of bothhimself and his loyal retainers. Kuki goes a long way to explaining the dipolarityof bushido and of Buddhism, of war and tranquility, of the will and its abolition,of the abolition and its will. In doing so, he destabilized the self from its
apotheotic pedestal and forces it to simultaneously face its own essence andannihilation. He takes it to the gates of the torii, to the slash between impurity andpurity, reminding us that nothing is permanent. Everything perpetually moves
forward and backward in the ebb and tide of being, as Heidegger might put it.
Unlike ‘the eternal repose’ of Indian philosophers in ‘nontemporal deliverance,’
the samurai choose to ignore time “...in order to live, truly live, in the indefinite
repetition of the arduous search for the true, the good, and the beautiful” (1987a,
50). This flowing into the experience of the life-world and meeting it half way, so
to speak, is ‘the clearing’ that Kuki aesthetically names iki. It combines thehorizontal ecstasies of Heidegger with the vertical ‘thickness’ of heaven andearth, of phenomenology with mysticism.15
Kuki complements the above lecture with “The Expression of the Infinite in JapaneseArt.”16 In his analysis of nearness (stimulated by Heidegger), he recalls the Zen monk Hakuin’s(1686-1768) image of ‘standing in water yet searching for it.’Art replaces the visible with the invisible. Japanese painting is a synecdoche where thepart stands in for the whole: tree trunks for forests, a bridge’s buttresses for the bridge, a home’s
roof for walls:
There is a reciprocal relationship between Kuki and Heidegger. While Heidegger
was the first to discuss phenomenology with Kuki, Kuki was the first to gently
direct the German philosopher toward poetics and beyond… iki develops between
these two thinkers, one a philosopher and the other a poet. As Heidegger
maintains: philosophers speak being; poets name the holy. Being/Nothingness
resides within and between the two. On this account, Kuki states: “twice is art
liberated from time: once in the artist who creates infinity, once in the spectators
Jay Goulding, “Kuki Shūzō and Martin Heidegger,” 688-689.
Shūzō Kuki, “The Expression of the Infinite in Japanese Art,” in Shūzō Kuki and Jean-Paul Sartre: Influence andCounter-influence in the Early History of Existential Phenomenology, ed. Stephen Light (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1987b), 51-67.
15
16

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who participate, as it were, in this creation by the contemplation of works of art”
(1987b, 62-3). Kuki and Heidegger reach out from different phenomenologicaldirections to ‘globalize’ the East/West dialogue and re-member (re-assemble) a
communicative nexus, whose very existence attempts to create a ‘planetary
thinking.’ These thinkers were at the centre of a whirlwind of social,philosophical and cultural change… At the forefront of this change, Kuki’s ideaof iki helped preserve the backbone of a Japanese culture that collects up pieces of
its heritage to help shape its future. Heidegger’s move to Dichtung (poetry) andsubsequently to Lichtung (the clearing) is stimulated by Kuki.17
4. FOUR CORNERSTONES_____________________________________________________
Inspired by my initial encounter with the hermeneutic phenomenologist Hans-Georg
Gadamer (1900-2002) in the early 1970s at Hamilton’s McMaster University,18 I launch a careerof engagement with leading Heidegger scholars Richard Palmer (1933-2015), William
Richardson (1920-2016), Hwa Yol Jung (1931-2017), Wu Kuang-ming (1933- ), and Cheng
Chung-ying (1935- ),19 most of whom are leading experts in both East Asian and Western
philosophies.
From these interactions, I generate four cornerstones of East Asian thinking—primarily
emanating from my understanding of Japanese Zen and Chinese Dao—which manifest throughone thinker in the contemporary Western world: Heidegger. Those cornerstones I dub:
1. non-Cartesian subjectivity (there is no ‘I’ but a person as
temporally/dimensionally ‘in-between’ [renjian 人間])
2. non -Euclidean space (fractal geometry, Chinese chaos theory; no vanishingpoint)
3. non-Aristotelean time (reversibility of time; every moment an instance of adifferent time20)
4. non-representational thinking (thing as itself, that which things a thing is not itself
a thing), imbedded equally within Heidegger’s thought as within both Zen andDaoist cosmology
Remarkably, Heidegger arrives at these four cornerstones on his own––as counterpositions to traditional Western spatialized and materialized thinking, calling them respectively:
1. Dasein (there-being, non-Cartesian subjectivity as a collection of beings
searching for

Goulding, “Kuki Shūzō and Martin Heidegger,” 690.
“Atkinson philosopher heads up western ‘all-stars’ at Shanghai conference,” Yfile, Sept. 20, 2005, http://yfilearchive.news.yorku.ca/2005/09/20/ atkinson-philosopher-heads-up-western-all-stars-at-shanghai-conference/.
19
Jay Goulding, ed., China-West Interculture: Toward the Philosophy of World Integration: Essays on Wu Kuangming’s Thinking, Association of Chinese Philosophers in America Series of Chinese and Comparative Philosophy(New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 2008).
20
Shūzō Kuki, “The Notion of Time and Repetition in Oriental Time,” 45-46.
17
18

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan9primordial there)21
2. Das Ding (the thing, non-Euclidean space as four-dimensionality within essential
spirit)22
3. Kehre (the turn, non-Aristotelian time as a reversibility)23
4. Vernehmen (ap-prehension, approception, proception) as an alternative to
Vorstellung(representation)24
The material West contrasts to the spiritual East through reversibilities including time andspace. Western binaries such as centre and periphery, shape and shadow, interior and exterior,
stillness and motion give way to East Asian dipolarities that do not culminate or overcome eachother as in dialectical practices but are mutually conditioned linked opposites that are necessaryfor each other as co-constitutive, co-resonating and equiprimordial25:
Table 1.1 Western Civilization and East Asian Civilization
Western Civilization

East Asian Civilization

Elements (ῥιζώματα)—material from Void(earth, air, fire, water)–never to return to it;
Hesiod; Empedocles; replaced by Aristotle’s
volumeElements (lún 輪)—non-material re-inaugurated
through Void and return: generating interaction(xiāngshēng 相生) and overcoming interaction(xiāngshèng 相勝) earth, air, fire, water, metal

Euclidean geometry—mountain as
triangle; cloud as oval, lightning as slash;singular vanishing point (imaginary horizon
where earth and sky meet)

Non-Euclidian geometry—fractal geometry,
Chinese Chaos theory; no vanishing point or
multiple points as in scroll painting; Daoist
ultimate polarity taiji 太極

Linear Time; Aristotle’s time as a numberof movements between before and after

Non-Linear Time, reversibility; “orthogonaltime… everything that was, just as the grooves on
an LP contain the part of the music that has
already been played; they don't disappear after the
stylus tracks them”; “That an orthogonal or rightangle time axis could exist, a lateral domain in

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row,
1962), 27, 46-58.
22
Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language and Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper Collins, 1971a),
163-187; Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 15.
23
Martin Heidegger, Concept of Time, trans. William McNeill (London: Blackwell, 1992), 18E.
24
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovett (New York:
Harper Collins, 1977), 15-19, 130-132.
25
Jay Goulding, “New Ways Toward Sino-Western Philosophical Dialogues,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no.
1 (February 2007): 100.
21

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which change takes place—processes occurring
sideways in reality”26; “syntonic translimination”27
Cartesian Subjectivity, I and subject-object Non-Cartesian Subjectivity – the thing as
as a lightning flash of subjectivity rendering stretching, flowing to and fro in and through itself;
the object invisible
Heidegger’s Dasein as a collectivity of beings
searching for their ‘there’ (da);Representational Thinking—idea in head,
one to one correspondence to object (thingas object); A=A, a thing is a thing; theobject is absorbed by one’s subjectivity

Non-Representational Thinking— A≠A, thing as
itself, object is not a thing; Zhuangzi “that whichthings a thing is not itself a thing (物物者非物)”28;
cf. Heidegger’s “[Die] Dingheit des Dinges…kannselbst nicht wieder ein Ding sein”29

Connect the Traces (Dots)—add them up

Disappear within the trace—Heidegger’s Schritt
zurück30; Zhuangzi’s ji 跡 (trace) where the Daoist
sage disappears like cartoon character Bugs Bunny
vanishing into a hole that he pulls from his
pocket31; apophantic trace (let the thing in itself beseen) as Guo Xiang’s footprint dimming down into
nothing (ming 冥)32

Alterity as binary other outside

Di-Polarity as mutually conditioning linked
opposites that are necessary for each other: coconstitutive, co-resonating, equiprimordial(gleichursprünglich); the Other within myself

Entropy—from something to nothing; fromorder to chaos“Negentropic Vortex”—from nothing tosomething; from chaos to order to chaos33

Philip K. Dick, The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings, ed. Lawrence
Sutin (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1995), 216, 235.
27
Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, eds. Pamela Jackson and Johnathan Lethem with Erik Davisannotations (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 31, 73.
28
Zhuangzi, “Knowledge Rambling in the North,” Chapter 22 (zhibeiyou 知 北 遊 ), http://ctext.org/zhuangzi/
knowledge-rambling-in-the-north.
29
Martin Heidegger, Die Frage nach dem Ding: Zu Kants Lehre von den Transzendentalen Grundsätzen (WinterSemester 1935-36), in Gesamtausgabe, Herausgegeben von Petra Jaeger (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984), 41:
8.
30Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, Herausgegeben von Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt:
Vittorio Klostermann 2000), 7: 183
31
Jay Goulding, review of Vanishing into Things: Knowledge in Chinese Tradition, by Barry Allen. Journal of
Chinese Philosophy, 44, no. 1-2 (March–June 2017 [Dec. 2018]): 113-116.
32
Brook Ziporyn, The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang (New York: SUNY, 2003), 18,66.
33
Dick, Exegesis, 138, 373, 592.
26

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11

The leader leads

The leader does not lead; fades away with time’s
passing, and vanishes into things

Subject sees the object as intended whilemoving linearly through the grid of nowtime in Cartesian coordinates

The thing as “a rhythm or flow”34 has no object
while it sinks from three-dimensionality into
multiple time lines—The Matrix, the Tesla Grid35

5. HEIDEGGER AND DŌGEN—THE STEP BACK________________________________In September 1969 at Meßkirch in Germany, Tsujimura Koichi (1922-2010), an elite
Kyoto scholar of both Zen and phenomenology, delivers the keynote address “Martin Heideggers
Denken und die Japanische Philosophie” on the German philosopher’s 80th birthday. Tsujimurastudies with Heidegger in Freiburg from 1956-1958, and in Japan with celebrated Heidegger
aficionados Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962) and Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990). It is worth quoting
Tsujimura’s outstanding speech at length:
It was in 1921 when for the first time a Japanese studied with our thinker, who
was lecturing in Freiburg at the time. His name is T. Yamanouchi, who later
founded the seminar on Greek philosophy at the University of Kyoto. One year
later in 1922, my teacher H. Tanabe came to Freiburg. He was, as far as I can tell,
the first to discover the importance of Heideggerian thinking—not only in Japan,
but perhaps in the entire world as well. In his essay from 1924 The New Turn inPhenomenology—Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Life, one can already recognize
a first version of Being and Time. Tanabe continued his thoughtful dialogue with
Heidegger’s thinking up until his death in 1962 and has remained the leading
thinker in Japan. He once said to me in his last years: “In my opinion, Heidegger
is the only thinker since Hegel.” Then Baron Sh. Kuki came to see Heidegger in
Marburg. To him we Japanese owe the first reliable elucidation of Being andTime. Unfortunately, he died too early—in 1941. Thus, in Japan, and particularly
at the University of Kyoto, there has been an appropriation and tradition of
Heideggerian thinking that has continued for almost half a century already.36
Tsujimura goes on to say:If, however, we understand by Japanese philosophy that thinking endeavor which
does not arise from the place of Western-European philosophy, but rather springs
from the ground source (Quellgrund) of our own spiritual tradition, then thisphilosophy is something very rare. In what follows, I understand JapaneseBarry Allen, Vanishing into Things: Knowledge in Chinese Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,2015), 34.
35
Ibid, 292-294.
36
Kōichi Tsujimura, “Martin Heidegger’s Thinking and Japanese Philosophy,” Epoché 5, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 349357.
34

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philosophy in the latter sense—and this philosophy finds itself in an essential
want (Not). From the most ancient times, we Japanese have been close to nature
in a specific sense. Namely: we do not have the will to dominate nature, butinstead we want to live and die as far as possible in a way that is in accord withnature. On his death-bed, a simple Japanese said to those around him: “I am dying
now, just as the leaves fall in the autumn.” And a Zen Buddhist master, who was,so to speak, the grandfather of my own Zen practice, refused an injection when he
was dying and said: “What is the point of such a forcing and, thereby, of a
prolonged life?” Instead of taking the medicine, he drank a sip of his favorite ricewine and died calmly. Rightly understood, here already is evident a stark contrast
between the age-old Japanese spiritual tradition and a life determined by theEuropean spiritual tradition and by European science and technology. In short, tolive and die in accord with nature was, we may say, an ideal of the ancientJapanese wisdom of life… This conflict first of all remains veiled in an optimistic
way, and yet visible all the same, in a slogan that appeared back then [1867],
namely: “Japanese spirit with European ability” [Wakon-yōsai 和魂洋才].37
Finally, Tsujimura states most profoundly:
What becomes worthy of questioning through his [Heidegger’s] thinking is what
we always already are and so what is already somehow understood by us in a nonobjective way, and thus is always overlooked in science and philosophy. It seems
to me that the matter (Sache) of Heidegger’s thinking always preserves thischaracter. For this reason, the matter of his thinking withdraws itself in its truth assoon as we simply want to represent, grasp, and know it. And, therefore, histhinking remains in principle inimitable. The ultimate matter of his thinking,which perhaps may be indicated by the ancient Greek word Aletheia (unconcealedness), could be understood in view of Western philosophy, and thatmeans here metaphysics, as a ground that is concealed to metaphysics itself. Thus,
the matter itself would have demanded from the thinker a transformation of
thinking—namely, the transformation of philosophical thinking into “anotherthinking.” Only by this other thinking—and that means by “the step back fromphilosophy”—has what is “proper” to philosophical thinking—and that means
here what is proper to the essence of the Western world and of its humanity—
been “properly” glimpsed. That is an extraordinary appropriating event(Ereignis). In this sense, we Japanese see in Heidegger’s thinking a glimpsing-ofitself of what is “proper” to Western humanity and its world. In view of thisthinking, we Japanese, too, necessarily had to be thrown back onto the forgotten
ground of our own spiritual tradition. If I may offer something personal here:
Right after my first encounter with Being and Time when I was still in secondary
school, I sensed that at least for us Japanese the only possible access to a genuine
understanding of this work of thinking is concealed in our tradition of Zen
37

Ibid, 351-352.

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Buddhism. And this is so because Zen Buddhism is nothing other than a seeingthrough (Durchblicken) to what we ourselves are. For this seeing through, we firsthave to let go of all representing, producing, adjusting, altering, acting, making,and willing, in short, all consciousness and its activity, and then, following alongsuch a way, to return to its ground source. As one of the greatest Japanese Zenmasters, Dōgen, says as well: “You shall first learn the step back [taiho 退歩]”
(Dōgen, Fukanzazengi [普勧坐禪儀]).38
The very last expression is a breathtaking summary of fifty years of Heidegger’s project: “Forthis seeing through, we first have to let go of all representing (Vorstellung), producing, adjusting,altering, acting, making, and willing, in short, all consciousness and its activity, and then,following along such a way, to return to its ground source.” And then the ultimate punchline:“As one of the greatest Japanese Zen masters, Dōgen, says as well: ‘You shall first learn the stepback [taiho 退歩]’” With this final comment, Tsujimura leaves generations of thinkers—Eastand West—with a spectacular hint on the connections between Dōgen and Heidegger: “the step
back.” Tsujimura is the first scholar to see this coincidence of thought. It is to this connectionthat I now turn.
In the Fukanzazengi (Universal Recommendation for Zazen), written in the 13th century
after his return from China, the monk Dōgen Zenji (1200–1253) expounds on “the step back” asa meditative practice. Step forward into thinking; step back into unthinking. In the original
version (Shinpitsu-bon), written in classical Chinese, Dōgen states: “o mochi-iyo ēko-henshō notaiho 須迴光返照之退歩 (Take the step back of turning light around and illuminate inward).”39
This is a very prophetic and difficult expression like many in Dōgen’s works—perhaps the mostimportant expression of all his writings. Indeed, it can benefit from both Heidegger’s
hermeneutics to unfold it and tear it down, and his phenomenology to compose it, and gather it
together again. As much as Dōgen needs Heidegger, Heidegger needs Dōgen. As Tsujimura
intimates, the key to understanding Heidegger is Zen, and the key to understanding Zen is
Heidegger. A long-term key to understanding old Japanese Zen is China, and the key tounderstanding Chinese Chan 禪 is Dōgen’s Kamakura Japan (1185-1333).
Firstly, what is lost from Dōgen’s expression is the old Chinese connotation of huí guāngfǎn zhào 迴光返照: the last radiance of the setting sun, a momentary recovery before death, asudden burst of energy prior to collapse or the medical image of a “terminal lucidity.”40 It is anoccasional rhetorical device meaning a last-ditch effort of a lost cause or something shining
brightly before it disappears, the “last radiance of the setting sun.”41 It often has a mysterious or
occult effect in its reaction from everyday speakers. A popular use today is a “get out of deathcard” (回光返照) that participants in role playing games employ to resuscitate their fictional
characters just before they expire. In my era, it was simply Monopoly’s “get out of jail card;”Ibid, 351-352.
Dōgen, “Fukanzazengi,” https://terebess.hu/zen/dogen/Fukanzazengi.html#1.
40“回光返照,” https://baike.baidu.com.
41
Xiaojing Cheng, “Chinese Metaphors in Political Discourse: How the Government of the People’s Republic ofChina Criticizes the Independence of Taiwan” (PhD. diss., Ball State, 2009), 223-24.
38
39

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now both Western and East Asian animated versions of Dungeons and Dragons sword andsorcery combat simulations have “death resurrection cards.”42
Alas, Dōgen intends a much deeper meaning than this—one that is quite apocalyptic andrevelatory of his unique version of Zen. The sage fades in the midst of time’s passing as theworld vanishing into nothing—certainly reminiscent of wabi sabi 侘寂 of samurai culture, bothof life’s impermanence and unfilled goals (sabi 錆 as rust on a sword). Dōgen’s originary taiho
退歩 as a “step back” is a dimensional shift—the cultivation of energy gathered within oneself
not only at the last breath of one’s own life but perhaps at the last sunset ever of humankind.
As a corollary, in respect to his time in China, especially at Shaolin, Dōgen is assuredly
influenced by the Daoist imagery of the first sunrise ever such as in the variegated clouds
soaking up the emerging fireball at dawn at Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain), captured in theclassical Chinese graph wén 雯 described in dictionaries as “variegated clouds” of orange andred blending, technically named by the colour “Claudia,” and only seen at 5:30-6:01 in themorning in the mountains of Anhui Province. Dao 道 is the first sunrise coming into being;
Dōgen’s Zen is the last sunset receding into nothing. The Chinese Chan monk Jianzhi Sengcan(529-613) is the first to record the imagery of henshō 返照 (Chinese fǎn zhào) in Song of theTrusting Mind (xinxinming 信心銘), translated by Richard B. Clarke, revised by Kokyo Henke:
歸根得旨 To return to the root is to find the meaning,隨照失宗 but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
須臾返照 At the moment of turning the light of awareness around,
勝卻前空 there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.43
Obviously, Dōgen’s Chinese excursions could bring him into contact with Jianzhi’s work.
In Fukanzazengi, perhaps the most crucial manual for practicing zazen that has ever been
written, and the basis of Dōgen’s Sōtō school (Sōtō-shū), he states:
You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding,pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns
your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind will drop away ofthemselves, and your original face will manifest itself. If you want to attainsuchness, you should practice suchness without delay.44
At this point, we turn and bend our light backward to Heidegger’s Schritt zurück to look at his
version of the step back. Originally delivered as a lecture “Das Ding” in June 1950 atBayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste, Heidegger writes:
42

Ryan Erwin, “What’s the meaning of ‘回光返照’,” https://www.quora.com.

Jianzhi Sengcan, “Xinxinming,” https://www.scribd.com/document/252717188/Song-of-the-Trusting-Mind.
Norman Waddell, and Masao Abe, “Dōgen’s: ‘Fukanzazengi’ and ‘Shōbōgenzō zazengi,’” The Eastern Buddhist,
New Series 6, no. 4 (October 1973): 122.
43
44

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15

Wann und wie kommen Dinge als Dinge? Sie kommen nicht durch die
Machenschaft des Menschen. Sie kommen aber auch nicht ohne die Wachsamkeit
der Sterblichen. Der erste Schritt zu solcher Wachsamkeit ist der Schritt zurück
aus dem nur vorstellenden, d.h. erklärenden Denken in das andenkende Denken.
Der Schritt zurück von einem Denken in das andere ist freilich kein bloßer
Wechsel der Einstellung. Dergleichen kann er schon deshalb nie sein, weil alle
Einstellungen samt den Weisen ihres Wechseins in den Bezirk des vorstellenden
Denkens verhaftet bleiben. Der Schritt zurück verläßt allerdings den Bezirk desbloßen Sicheinstellens. Der Schritt zurück nimmt seinen Aufenthalt in einem
Entsprechen, das, im Weltwesen von diesem angesprochen, innerhalb seiner ihm
antwortet. Für die Ankunft des Dinges als Ding vermag ein bloßer Wechsel derEinstellung nichts, wie denn auch all das, was jetzt als Gegenstand im
Abstandlosen steht, sich niemals zu Dingen lediglich umstellen läßt.
When and in what way do things appear as things? They do not appear by meansof human making. But neither do they appear without the vigilance of mortals.
The first step toward such vigilance is the step back from the thinking that merely
represents—that is, explains—to the thinking that responds and recalls. The stepback from the one thinking to the other is no mere shift of attitude. It can never be
any such thing for this reason alone: that all attitudes, including the ways in which
they shift, remain committed to the precincts of representational thinking. The
step back does, indeed, depart from the sphere of mere attitudes. The step backtakes up its residence in a co-responding which, appealed to in the world’s beingby the world’s being, answers within itself to that appeal. A mere shift of attitude
is powerless to bring about the advent of the thing as thing, just as nothing thatstands today as an object in the distanceless can ever be simply switched over intoa thing.45
And in 1957 in Identität und Differenz (Identity and Difference), Heidegger explains:
Der Schritt zurück weist in den bisher übersprungenen Bereich, aus dem her das
Wesen der Wahrheit allererst denkwürdig wird.
The step back points to the realm which until now has been skipped over, andfrom which the essence of truth becomes first of all worthy of thought.46
Heidegger goes on to elaborate:

Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 183; Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language and Thought, trans. Albert
Hofstadter (New York: Harper Collins, 1971a), 179.
46
Martin Heidegger, Identität und Differenz, Herausgegeben von Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt:
Vittorio Klostermann, 2006), 11:58; Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, 1969), 49.
45

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16

Dies besagt: Wir wagen einen Versuch mit dem Schritt zurück. Der Titel »Schritt
zurück« legt mehrfache Mißdeutungen nahe. »Schritt zurück« meint nicht einenvereinzelten Denkschritt, sondern die Art der Bewegung des Denkens undeinenlangen Weg. Insofern der Schritt zurück den Charakter unseres Gespräches
mit der Geschichte des abendländischen Denkens bestimmt, führt er das Denken
aus dem in der Philosophie bisher Gedachten in gewisser Weise heraus. Das
Denken tritt vor seiner Sache, dem Sein, zurück und bringt so das Gedachte in ein
Gegenüber, darin wir das Ganze dieser Geschichte erblicken und zwar
hinsichtlich dessen, was die Quelle dieses ganzen Denkens ausmacht, indem sie
ihm überhaupt den Bezirk seines Aufenthaltes bereitstellt. Dies ist im Unterschiedzu Hegel nicht ein überkommenes, schon gestelltes Problem, sondern das durch
diese Geschichte des Denkens hindurch überall Ungefragte. Wir benennen esvorläufig und unvermeidlich in der Sprache der Überlieferung. Wir sprechen vonder Differenz zwischen dem Sein und dem Seienden. Der Schritt zurück geht vom
Ungedachten, von der Differenz als solcher, in das zu-Denkende. Das ist die
Vergessenheit der Differenz. Die hier zu denkende Vergessenheit ist die von derΛήθη (Verbergung) her gedachte Verhüllung der Differenz als solcher, welche
Verhüllung ihrerseits sich anfänglich entzogen hat. Die Vergessenheit gehört zur
Differenz, weil diese jener zugehört.
This means: we venture an attempt with the step back. The term “step back”
suggests various misinterpretations. “Step back” does not mean an isolated step ofthought, but rather means the manner in which thinking moves, and a long path.
Since the step back determines the character of our conversation with the historyof Western thinking, our thinking in a way leads us away from what has beenthought so far in philosophy. Thinking recedes before its matter, Being, and thus
brings what is thought into a confrontation in which we behold the whole of thishistory—behold it with respect to what constitutes the source of this entire
thinking, because it alone establishes and prepares for this thinking the area of its
abode. In contrast to Hegel, this is not a traditional problem, already posed, butwhat has always remained unasked throughout this history of thinking. We speakof it, tentatively and unavoidably, in the language of tradition. We speak of thedifference between Being and beings. The step back goes from what is unthought,from the difference as such, into what gives us thought. That is the oblivion of thedifference. The oblivion here to be thought is the veiling of the difference as such,thought in terms of Λήθη (concealment); this veiling has in turn withdrawn itself
from the beginning. The oblivion belongs to the difference because the difference
belongs to the oblivion.47
Just as Heidegger in the 1920s contributes immensely to the return of Hegel scholarshipin a predominantly neo-Kantian Europe, Watsuji Tetsurō nearly single handedly resurrects
Dōgen in Japan. Written between 1919 and 1921, Watsuji’s Shamon Dōgen (Dōgen the Adept)47

Heidegger, Identität und Differenz, 58-60; Heidegger, Identity and Difference, 49-50.

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changes the landscape for Zen studies in both Japan and the world.48 Steve Bein, a student of
Yuasa Yasuo (1925–2005), himself a close associate of Watsuji, writes in his introduction to thetranslation of Shamon Dōgen:Dōgen was born in January 1200 to aristocratic but ill-fated parents. His father
was probably a well-heeled member of the Koga family, and his mother wasprobably Fujiwara Motofusa. If so, then Dōgen was descended from noble stock.
The Fujiwaras were a dominate power in Japan for centuries, and the Kogas wererelated to the Minamotos (another dominant family) and descended from Emperor
Murakami [Murakami-tennō 924-967]. There is a general agreement that Dōgen’s
mother died when he was seven or eight years old. It is said that Dōgen firstgrasped the impermanence of all things as he watched smoke rise from the
incense at her funeral. After her death, he was adopted by an uncle, Fujiwara
Moroie [Matsudono Moroie 1172-1238], who was without a son and who
therefore planned to groom Dōgen to be his heir. At the age of twelve or thirteen,
Dōgen was faced with a choice: he could follow his uncle’s wishes, undertaking arite of passage into manhood and joining the aristocracy of the Fujiwara clan; or
he could follow his mother’s dying wish, which was for him to join a monastery.
Dōgen chose the latter…49
Just as Dōgen tries to create a pure Zen in his era, Watsuji tries to do the same in his. As
Watsuji most astutely observes:
Dōgen crossed over to China before the Zen tradition had been established inJapan. Of all the Japanese that became truly absorbed in Zen thinking, it would be
accurate to say he is the first. Nevertheless, he jumped into the midst of theclosing years of a Chinese Zen tradition that had already existed for six or sevencenturies, boldly claiming that in all that history only Rujing [Tiāntóng Rújìng
(1163-1228)] was correct. In other words, rather than choosing the Zen sect, hechose one man: Rujing.50
In 1928, Heidegger is only beginning his journey of interconnections between East and West.
By the time of engagement with Tsujimura thirty years later in 1958, he would have had
decades to think over personal and professional encounters with Japanese and Chineseinterlocutors along the way.
As such, several uncanny resemblances emerge between Heidegger’s ideas and those of
Dōgen, the key one being “the step back.”

Steve Bein, Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsurō’s Shamon Dōgen, trans. and with commentary (Honolulu: Universityof Hawaii Press, 2011); James Takashi Kodera, “The Buddha-nature in Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō” Japanese Journal of
Religious Studies 4, no. 4 (December 1977): 267-292.
49
Bein, Purifying Zen, 10
50
Ibid, 10.
48

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6. SHŌBŌGENZŌ 正法眼蔵_____________________________________________________
Although the Heidegger translator Joan Stambaugh (1932-2013) offers a more complete
analysis of ideas revolving around Schritt zurück and Dōgen51, we can only highlight a few here.
In Shōbōgenzō (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), uji 有時 is a good example from which to
draw. Below is a summary comparison of Heidegger and Dōgen:
Table 1.2 Summary Comparison of Heidegger and Dōgen
Heidegger

Dōgen

Schritt züruck (the step back)taiho 退歩 (the step back)verweilen (whiling time)uji 有時 (just for the time being, sometimes)

Augenblick (Kairos, right moment ofvision)nikon 而今 (moment, just now)erstrecken52 (to stretch along; “stretchedout-ness of Dasein’s temporality”)

kyōryaku 經歷 (ranging,53 flowing in all
directions)

Beginning in the 1920s and extending over a fifty-year period, Heidegger creates a new world ofexistential thinking. Rather than being in time, he moves to being and time, time and being, andeventually time in being. Hence, verweilen as whiling time (living in a moment), and Augenblick(as revelatory time) are crucial for reversing the Aristotelian view of time as a succession of
now-times (Jetztzeit) pacing the modern material world of spatialized linear progression. In
1924, Heidegger writes:
Dasein is that entity which is characterized as being-in-the-world. Human life is
not some subject that has to perform some trick in order to enter the world. Dasein
as being-in-the-world means: being in the world in such a way that this Beingmeans: dealing with the world; tarrying [verweilen as lingering, dwelling,sojourning] alongside it in the manner of performing, effecting and completing,but also contemplating, interrogating, and determining by way of contemplationand comparison. Being-in-the-world is characterized as concern.54
And furthermore, time is reversible as a future’s past: “In being futural Dasein is its past; itcomes back to it in the ‘how.’ The manner of its coming back is, among other things, conscience.
Only the ‘how’ can be repeated. The past—experienced as authentic historicity—is anything but
Joan Stambaugh, Impermanence is Buddha-Nature: Dogen’s Understanding of Temporality (Honolulu: The
University of Hawaii Press), 1990.
52
Graham Parkes, “Dōgen/Heidegger/Dōgen: A Review of ‘Dōgen Studies’ and ‘Existential and Ontological
Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dōgen,’” Philosophy East and West 37, no. 4 (October 1987): 446.
53
Thomas A. Kasulis, “The Zen Philosopher: A Review Article on Dōgen Scholarship in English,” Philosophy Eastand West 28, no. 3 (July 1978): 370.
54
Heidegger, The Concept of Time, 7E.
51

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what is past. It is something to which I can return again and again.”55 Hence, the moment ofvision (Augenblick) halts the everyday while yielding primordial insight:
Running ahead seizes the past as the authentic possibility of every moment of
insight, as what is now certain. Being futural, as a possibility of Dasein as
specific, gives time, because it is time itself. Thus it simultaneously becomesvisible that the question of “how much” time, “how long” and “when”—to theextent that futuricity is authentically time—that this question must remain
inappropriate to time. Only if I say that time authentically has no time to calculate
time is this an appropriate assertion.56
Heidegger’s attempts at reversal try to make it “our time” rather than homogenous time,
eternal time or clock time. Our Anwesen (presence) as a sojourn in the world is just for a while. It
stretches from life to death in Erstrecken, a non-spatialized in-betweenness.
The step back from the technocratic world of moving forward or upward is the
motivation of Heidegger’s reversal—a sinking down to the Friedrich Schelling (1775-1855)
inspired “deepest grounds of being” (tiefsten Grunde des Seyns)57—a primordial dip into thevoid. Similarly, Dōgen addresses three parallel ideas surrounding his taiho: uji, nikon andkyōryaku: Uji (just for the time being) is generally understood as simply meaning “sometimes”
from its Chinese roots. Yet Dōgen interrogates the graphs of “being” and “time” separately,
contemplating them side by side, “for the time being.”
In Shōbōgenzō, he writes:
古佛言、
有時高高峰頂立、
有時深深海底行。
有時三頭八臂、
有時丈六八尺。
有時拄杖拂子、有時露柱燈籠。
有時張三李四、有時大地虛空。58
A former Buddha once said in verse
Standing atop a soaring mountain peak is for the time being
And plunging down to the floor of the Ocean’s abyss is for the time being;
Being triple-headed and eight-armed is for the time being
Ibid, 20E.
Ibid, 15E.
57
Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), in Gesamtausgabe, Herausgegeben von FriedrichWilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 65:100.
58
Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, http://www.shomonji.or.jp/soroku/genzou.htm.
55
56

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And being a figure of a Buddha standing sixteen feet tall or sitting eight feet highis for the time being;
Being a monk’s traveling staff or his ceremonial hossu is for the time being
And being a pillar supporting the temple or a stone lantern before the Meditation
Hall is for the time being;
Being a next-door neighbor or a man in the street is for the time being
And being the whole of the great earth and boundless space is for the time
being.59
Likewise, Dōgen explains that nikon (just now) is not clock time but the time that can never slip
away, perhaps an eternal time. Taiho (the step back) as a meditative dimensional shift reveals thenatural deconstruction of uji into its component parts of time and being. The oscillating flux of
being-time yields both (a) right now (nikon) and (b) continuous flowing (kyōryaku)—bothstillness and motion in all directions.
Dōgen continues:
At the time when, proverbially, a mountain was being climbed and a river was
being crossed, an I existed, and it was the time for that particular I [uji no nikon
有時の而今]. Since such an I existed, time could not abandon it. If time did nothave the characteristic of “coming and going, being continually in flux”, then thetime when this I was “climbing atop the mountain” would have remained forever,
eternally comprised of that particular “time when.” But, since time retains thecharacteristic of “coming and going, being continually in flux,” there is a flow ofever-present “nows,” each comprised of a time when an I exists. And this is what
is meant by the phrase “just for the time being.”60
As well, Dōgen’s expression kyōryaku as ranging, flowing and continuous passing in all
directions finds its best reversible description as such:
Time has the virtue of continuity: it continuously flows [kyōryaku] from the today that weare talking about to a tomorrow, from a today to a yesterday, from a yesterday to a today.
It flows from a today to a today and from a tomorrow to a tomorrow. Because continual,
continuous flow is a function of time, past and present times do not pile atop each othernor do they form an accumulative line… Mountains are of time: oceans are of time. Were
there no time, neither mountains nor oceans could be. Do not think that time does notexist for the mountains and oceans of the present moment. Were time to cease to exist, so
would mountains and oceans cease to exist: if time does not become extinct, thenmountains and oceans too will not become extinct… In such a manner, coming toEihei Dōgen 2007, Shōbōgenzō: The Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching. A Trainee’s Translation ofGreat Master Dōgen’s Spiritual Masterpiece, trans. Rev. Hubert Nearman, O.B.C. (Mount Shasta California: Shasta
Abbey Press, 2007), 108.
60
Ibid, 110-11.
59

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training, going on in training, training until you arrive, and training beyond arriving are,at all times, “just for the time being, just for a while.”61
Dōgen’s primordially eternal nows differ markedly from the “accumulative line”
succession of Aristotle’s nows of before and after. The world-acclaimed Dōgen scholar Steven
Heine comments: “Nikon, the ‘eternal now,’ is able to both encompass (‘chew up’) and tosurpass (‘spit out’) the conventional misconception of time,” that is “time flies.”62 He articulates:
Kyōryaku (literally “undergo” or “passing through”) is one of the central notions
in Dogen’s philosophy of time. Here, Dogen deals with the continuity of time in away fundamentally distinct from the conventional view, which holds that fixed
time-units are passing, flying or slipping away and flowing in irreversible
succession toward some destination. Kyōryaku, on the other hand, refers to theprocess of a journey actively engaging the passenger and passage-way as well as
the full context of their experiential reality. It is multi-dimensional, flexible anddynamic, moving in and through multiple directions simultaneously—a projectionof man’s ontological understanding and enlightened experience of time into past,present and future, which are ultimately equalizable yet experientiallydifferentiable dimensions of being-time. All tenses of time interpenetrate,
reverberate through and influence one another… Because time is not linear,successive time-points do not accumulate.63
In response to Heine, Graham Parkes suggests that kyōryaku as “ranging” (following Thomas
Kasulis) might better serve a comparison to Heidegger’s Erstrecken as a stretching along of
being:In temporality, however, the constitutive totality of care has a possible basis for its unity.
Accordingly, it is within the horizon of Dasein’s temporal constitution that we must
approach the ontological clarification of the “connectedness of life”—that is to say, thestretching-along [Erstrecken] the movement, and the persistence which are specific for
Dasein. The movement [Bewegtheit] of existence is not the motion [Bewegung] ofsomething present-at hand. It is definable in terms of the way Dasein stretches along. The
specific movement in which Dasein is stretched along and stretches itself along, we callits “historizing”. The question of Dasein’s “connectedness” is the ontological problem of
Dasein’s historizing. To lay bare the structure of historizing, and the existential-temporalconditions of its possibility, signifies that one has achieved an ontological understandingof historicality.64

Ibid, 112, 116, 118
Steven Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dōgen (New York: SUNY,1985), 180.
63
Ibid, 181.
64
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 427.
61
62

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7. CONCLUSION: WALKERS OF THE BOUNDARY OF THE BOUNDLESS__________
It is clear that Heidegger is not Dōgen and Dōgen is not Heidegger. Both cross paths asTsujimura attests through their various reversibilities—through Tsujimura himself in the 1950s
but also through previous Japanese interlocutors such as Kuki or Watsuji. Despite theirdivergencies, we might ask, what lies underneath Dōgen and Heidegger? Dōgen studies Dao at
Shaolin (Dōgen’s name: Dao 道 yuan 元 [original way]); Heidegger dabbles in Laozi andZhuangzi over a fifty-year period. Heidegger65 is familiar with a Zhuangzi text called The True
Book on the Southern Land of Blossoms66 translated by Richard Wilhelm. The book itself is acompilation of texts most likely drawn from the 1919 version of Zhuangzi entitled Song Editionof the True Classic of Southern Florescence67 and annotated by Guo Xiang.
If Zen is the ceremony, Dao is the substance. Both Zhuangzi and Guo Xiang discuss thetrace (ji 跡), a crucial idea resonating throughout Heidegger’s writings. According to Guo, theDaoist sage has “no deliberate mind or purpose of his own.”68 Instead, he acts spontaneously.
People who follow the actions or words of the sages are mistaken. What counts is the
spontaneous action of the sage or “ziran [自然] as that which leaves the traces.”69 Traces areplaces where the sage has left the world. For Heidegger, you find your own place to leave theworld. What Heidegger calls the turn back or bend back (Kehre) as it relates to the trace (Spur)as “wending your way” (wenden) might be similar to Dōgen’s bending back the light. Both areturns in different planes of existence, hence stepping back. Dōgen and Heidegger are together“walkers of the boundary of the boundless” (Grenzgänger des Grenzenlosen).70 Concerning thisboundless boundary, Zhuangzi states in Chapter 22:
bù jì zhī jìjì zhī bù jì zhě yě
不 際 之 際， 際 之 不 際 者 也
The Border (Boundary, Limit) of the borderless (Boundless, Limitless) is (yě 也)
the Borderless (Boundless, Limitless) of the Border (Boundary, Limit).71
Likewise, the proper walker of Laozi’s Daodejing Poem 27 leaves no trace (tracks, wagon
tracks, footprints)—shàn xíng wú zhé jì 善行無轍跡.72 Traces of the past as what has been, andMartin Heidegger, “Traditional Language and Technological Language,” Journal of Philosophical Research 22(1998): 131, 143.
66
Dschuang Dsi [Zhuangzi], Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland: Nan Hua Dschen Ging, trans. Richard
Wilhelm (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1923).
67
Zhuangzi, Song Edition of the True Classic of Southern Florescence (Songke nanhua zhenjing 宋刻南華真經),
annotations by Guo Xiang in Continuation of a Collection of Lost Ancient Writings (xu guyi congshu 續古逸叢書)vol. 3, compiled by Zhang Yuanji (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1919), 81-227.
68
Ziporyn, Penumbra Unbound, 47.
69
Ibid, 19.
70
Heidegger, On the Way to Language (New York: Harper & Row, 1971b), 41.
71
Zhuangzi “Knowledge Rambling in the North.”72
Laozi, Daodejing, https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing/ens?searchu=.
65

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traces of the future as not yet weigh on the duel meaning of Spur.73 Parallel to Guo Xiang,
Heidegger reflects in 1938-1939:
Das Da.
Eine Spur davon in der ἀλήθεια [un-concealment] der φύσις [emergent nature].
Aber längst ausgelöscht ist die Spur–nie einfach wieder zu be-treten, sondern aus
eigenem Gang zu finden.
The There [Da].
A trace of the There in the ἀλήθεια of φύσις.
But the trace has long since been extinguished—it can never simply be followed
again but must be found from one’s own trail.74
All is reminiscent of Dōgen’s passing through (kyōryaku) of future to past and past to future by
way of the step back.
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刻南華真經). In Continuation of a Collection of Lost Ancient Writings (xu guyi congshu
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2. THE EJCA HISTORY PROJECT
AND 2013 SURVEY:BACKGROUND, ACCESS ANDSOME REFLECTIONSDavid Sulz
Academic Librarian, University of Alberta
E-mail: sulz@ualberta.ca
Daiyo Sawada
Professor Emeritus, Department of Elementary Education, University of Alberta
E-mail: dsawada@shaw.ca______________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACTIn 2013, the Edmonton Japanese Community Association (EJCA) ran a census-likesurvey of the broadly defined local Japanese community. The shorter, quantitative-type questions
were modelled on long-form Canada Censes (specifically the NHS in 2011) with the addition of
longer, narrative-style prompts at the end. The roughly 290 responses were summarized in bookform as “EJCA Community Survey 2013 Results and Individual Histories” both in hard-copyand ebook (se http://ejca.org or http://era.library.ualberta.ca). This paper outlines the history
project generally and the census process and results more particularly through quantitative andnarrative lenses. It then shifts philosophically to consider the roughly 92% of eligible people notcaptured by the survey and ruminates on how e might unhide these hidden blurs through eight
metaphors: snapshot, census, energy/matter electromagnetic fields, entangled entanglement,
Higgs fields, quantum and social fields for detecting community, nature sequencing throughaesthetic predispositions and enlightened entanglement.
Keywords: Japanese-Canadian history, Japanese in Edmonton area, Edmonton JapaneseCommunity Association, EJCA, Japanese-Canadian Edmonton Survey 2013, metaphors ofcommunity, enlightened entanglement, entangled enlightenment.

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1. INTRODUCTION___________________________________________________________In this short presentation, we introduce a project to collect the history of Japanese
influence in the Edmonton region of Alberta, Canada undertaken by the Edmonton JapaneseCommunity Association (EJCA) over the past number of years. In the first part, David Sulz will
give an overview of the project—its origins andits products. In the second half, Daiyo Sawada
will lead us on a deep philosophical explorationof what the project might and might not reveal.
We hope it will inspire exploration of thematerials we collected, created, and madeavailable in various places.
The physical materials are mostly
housed in the EJCA library but some items havebeen digitized. In addition, we created several
Figure 2.1 The EJCA History Project and 2013
documents and reports in both print and digital
Surveyform to describe and summarize what wascollected. The descriptive reports (and some
digitized materials) are most easily available through the www.ejca.org website. However, inrecognition of how websites are subject to constant change, physical copies were made anddistributed to specific libraries and EJCA members. In addition, digital copies of the reports arehoused in the University of Alberta’s institutional repository called ERA. Specifically, thematerials discussed in this presentation can be found here:• EJCA History Project Data Collection Report June 2014.
https://doi.org/10.7939/R36M33K2W•

EJCA History Project Appendix Compilation to Data Collection Report June
2014. https://doi.org/10.7939/R3X34N737•

EJCA Community Survey 2013 Results and Individual Histories (2016).
https://doi.org/10.7939/R3Q814R6X
o Note: this digital version contains the complete print version contents aswell as the survey instrument in its various forms (i.e. English, Japanese,
print, online).

In January 2010, the Edmonton JapaneseCommunity Association (EJCA) board
established a History Project Committee
charged with gathering information about
Japanese-Canadians in Edmonton. Actually,“Japanese-Canadian” is merely a convenient
shorthand description because Japanese citizens
who spent time in the area were also included.
Six people have served on the history
committee; four were involved across all three
Figure 2.2 EJCA History Project
phases (Cathy Tennant, Sanae Ohki, Jim

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan28

Hoyano, David Sulz) while Rick Hirata was involved for phase 1 until he moved away, andDaiyo Sawada joined for phases 2 and 3.
Early in the project, it was thought we would produce a book of some sort similar to otherlocal history association projects. However, over time, a more generalized approach to collectmaterials that could be used in a variety of potential ways by different people in the present in
the future was decided upon. We tried to think less of collecting material for “one time use” andmore about issues of preservation and accessibility even if we were fully aware that we could
never get all the way to archival standards of description and preservation nor meet current
expectations of digital accessibility anywhere by anyone.
We came to refer to various parts of our project as “phases.” Phase 1 lasted about two
years (2010-2012) and mostly involved
conducting 19 oral interviews along withrecordings and transcriptions thereof, inaddition to a start on collecting documents,
photos, books, and references. Due to thefavourable reception of our progress by the
EJCA board and continued enthusiasm of thecommittee members, we carried on for anothertwo years of collecting, organizing, storing, anddescribing a variety of materials (i.e. phase 2).
Figure 2.3 Phases 1&2: Summary and Finding
At the end of this second phase, a report was
Aidproduced outlining the project, describing thematerials, and sharing some interesting bits ofwhat was collected. A digital copy Phase 1/2
report can be ejca.org website and in the
University of Alberta’s ERA repository at
https://doi.org/10.7939/R36M33K2W.
To give just a hint of what is containedin the Phase 1/2 report, there are ten sections
and five appendices covering such things as:• project outline• interview process• short descriptive histories of about 10
Figure 2.4 Phase 1/2
community groups in addition to internal
EJCA clubs and committeeso (e.g. Buddhist gatherings, Japan-Canada Businessmen’s Assoc., Metro
Edmonton Japanese Community school, Tomo no kai, etc.)• listing of materials collected by this project and stored at the EJCA (about 40
smaller collections)• historic interviews with seniors from the EJCA newsletter• copies of a few articles of particular interest• transcriptions of interviews conducted during this project

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan29

At present, the materials collectedduring this project are stored in the EJCA
library room in an organized filing cabinet that
can accessed during library room hours or byrequest. Of course, it would be ideal to also
have digitally available copies of everything for
wider accessibility but the realities of such anundertaking were beyond the scope of thisproject in terms of time, expertise and expense.
Figure 2.5 Phases 1&2: Access
Perhaps future users will be inspired to makeand share digital copies now that much of thecollecting and organising effort has been done.
One item of special note is the almost
complete set of EJCA newsletters (Moshi
Moshi) going back to 1977 which give an
unparalleled glimpse back across time. Thanks
to the particular interest and willingness of
EJCA member Takashi Ohki, these are available
both physically in the EJCA library and digitallyon the .ejca.org/moshi-moshi.html website. The
intention is to make them more permanently
available through the UAlberta ERA repository
Figure 2.6 Phases 1&2: Newsletter Moshi
as well.
Moshi
There were several realities thattempered our big dreams and expectations. Our
modern digital world creates expectations not only of ease of access but also ease of production;
there are endless examples of beautifully digitized materials available to anyone with a few
clicks. The reality of creating such sites, however, is very different. Posting random photos onsocial media or uploading to a website are remarkably easy in the short term but the process oforganizing large amounts of material in a logical way that will be findable by potential users witha variety of digital skills and making sure they will be available well into the future after multiple
evolutions of formats and hardware devices is quite daunting in reality.
Our small group of volunteers, while
enthusiastic overall, did experience its fair shareof lulls in enthusiasm over the course of eight
years and there are pieces of the project we lookback on with some sense of wishing we haddone a bit differently. One example, from theoral interviews, is the challenge in finding abalance between having a script of questions
and allowing both interviewer and interviewee
to follow items of particular interest andpassion.
Figure 2.7 Phases 1&2: Insights and Challenges
In the end, we believe we have createdan interesting and relatively well-organised
JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan30

collection of valuable historical source materials in a safe place for future researchers to
discover.
———In the course of collecting materials for Phases 1&2, a few items were discovered that
prompted the idea for an updated, census-like snapshot of the current Japanese / JapaneseCanadian community in the Edmonton area.
These were the 1921 “Comprehensive list ofJapanese Canadians” and the 1941 “Tairiku
Nippo Japanese Name List” that had sections
devoted to the Japanese community in
Edmonton. While such lists including names,
and often addresses, is not necessarily possible
in our modern world of heightened privacy
concerns, it was felt that something more akin to
the Canadian national census might be
Figure 2.8 Phase 3: Survey
feasible.
Such a survey, however, turned out to bea substantial effort and impossible tosummarize in a short presentation. For thisJSAC 2018 presentation, we have physicalcopies available for free if you would like yourown copy (left over from our community
distribution). In addition, a digital copy of thereport is available through the
http://www.ejca.org/history-project.html
website as well as the UAlberta ERA repository
at https://doi.org/10.7939/R3Q814R6X.
Figure 2.9 Phase 3 Survey: Access
The digital copy has extra pages with allversions of the survey instruments that were
not included in the physical copy for spacereasons.
After much discussion about what sort ofquestions to include, four versions of the survey
were created to reach a variety of audiences:
English and Japanese language versions that
could be completed either on paper or online
through a Google form. The complete surveys
and questions can be found on pages 236-284 of
the electronic version. The survey was
Figure 2.10 Survey Details
promoted in various ways including:• newsletters (e.g. EJCA’s Moshi Moshi
and Metro Edmonton JapaneseCommunity School)
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31

•
•
•

various EJCA clubs and events
posters in local Japanese restaurantsbulletin board display at the EJCA centre.

The survey was presented in two parts: aquantitative section and a qualitative/narrative
section. The quantitative section had 30
questions mostly of the multiple choice or very
short answer type. Participants were not asked
for any identifying information; responses wereanonymized and presented in aggregate form.
The qualitative/narrative section was as personal
as respondents wished and was designed to elicit
information similar to other local community
Figure 2.11 Survey Sections
histories which collected very specific andpersonal experiences, often by family. In
addition to names, we prompted respondents tooffer their year of birth, ancestral geography, reasons why they came to Edmonton, occupations,and how being Japanese may have influenced their lives.
To protect individual privacy related to questions in the first section, each respondent’s
survey was split into two parts and stored separately. As for translation, a decision was made totranslate Japanese responses to English (andretain the original Japanese) but not to translate
all the English responses to Japanese.
In the end, some 308 responses werereceived. About 2/3 were in Japanese and while
2/3 of respondents completed the whole survey,
some answered only part 1 (quantitative) or part2 (qualitative). It is difficult to say, however,
how representative this is of the community
considering the 2014 EJCA membership list
Figure 2.12 Survey Insights: Narrative
shows 656 members (including children) andthe 2001 Canadian Census indicated about
3650 people in the Edmonton area claimingsome Japanese ancestry. Nevertheless, it does
tell us something and the exercise in and of
itself was a valuable undertaking.
As might be predicted, there was a wide
variation in the extent of information provided
in the voluntary narrative section. At one
extreme, some responses preferred to remain
anonymous and only offered up only where theycame from (e.g., “Tokyo, Yokohama”) and avery brief explanation of their reason for
Figure 2.13 Survey Insights: Narrative
coming to Edmonton (e.g., “due to husband’swork”). On the other hand, some responses
were very extensive and involved great detail spanning several pages in the final book product.
JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan32

Although all Japanese responses were translated to English, the original Japanese text is also
included; as noted above, however, it was decided not to translate all English responses toJapanese.
It is impossible in this short presentation to say much about the extensive quantitative
section so it will have to suffice to say we created about 60 different graphs, charts, and tablesfrom the 30 questions on the surveys. The original data is still available but, understandably,
there are concerns about making it freely accessible to anyone.

Figure 2.14 Survey Insights: Quantitative

Figure 2.15 Survey Insights: Quantitative———
2. REFLECTIONS AND FUTURE IMPLICATIONS________________________________
Given the 2011 National Survey ofCanada carried out by Statistics Canada foundan estimated 3650 residents in the Edmonton
area self-identified as having Japanese heritage
but our 2013 survey garnered just over 300
responses, it seems that many residents in the
Edmonton area with Japanese heritage remain“hidden.” In an effort to “unhide” them or
consider what it means for them to be hidden,
we present eight possible philosophicalmetaphors.

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan

Figure 2.16 Reflections & Future33

2.1 Metaphor 1: A Snapshot
Our survey captured merely a“snapshot” of Japanese-Canadians living in the
Edmonton area and a very uneven portrait of theactual number at that. In our snapshot, about
10% are in relatively clear focus with the rest
maybe described as “dark, blurry blobs”—allwe know is that they are out there somewhere.
We could thus ask follow-up questions such as:• What’s wrong with our “photographic
technology”?
Figure 2.17 Metaphor 1: A Snapshot• Why is there so much blurry“darkness” almost everywhere?
• What can we do to improve, to “lighten up,” our “photo-sensitivity” to bring others into
the picture?
2.2 Metaphor 2: Using the Canadian Census Snapshot
We might then examine the Statistics
Canada methodology to come up with betterways to get “higher resolution” pictures of theJapanese-Canadian population residing in the
Edmonton area and clarify some of thosemassive blurry “black holes.” However, the2011 Canadian census project we had as an
example had been changed from long-standing
standards by the government of the day. The
mandatory part of the census was restricted to
Figure 2.18 Metaphor 2: A Canadian Census
the “short form” with minimal questions while
Snapshotthe long-form questionnaire (the section withmany of the more interesting questions) was
made voluntary and renamed the National Household Survey. This resulted in dramaticallyhigher non-response rates than previous years; for example, Alberta’s response rate was about
67% (i.e., 33% non-response) with Edmonton at about 30% non-response rate. Thus, even withthe “best snapshot technology” and legislative backing, even Statistics Canada’s results have amassive blur. Is it possible for a tiny organization such as the Edmonton Japanese Community
Association to do better than StatsCan? A huge challenge but possible? Should we consider somekind of return to fundamentals for our snapshot, or even a “paradigm shift” in how we analyze
the community?

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34

2.3 Metaphor 3: Back to Fundamentals: Energy/Matter
Apparently, energy/matter in theuniverse (as with other fundamentals such as
coffee) comes in two “flavors”—regular anddark. According to physicists, energy/matter inthe universe is distributed with 5% - 10%
appearing as Regular and 90% - 95% as Dark.
Interestingly, these percentages align with the
distribution in our survey sample between
respondents and apparent non-respondents(approximately 300 out of perhaps 3650).
Figure 2.19 Metaphor 3: Energy/Matter
Thus, our sampling dilemma can berephrased as, How can we access the massive“dark energy/matter” that is so difficult to
detect even for quantum physicists? We know the “dark energy/matter” is out there in the
Edmonton area, StatsCan says so, but we don’t know how to “enlighten” it—render it lightenough to be detectable. Currently this dark energy/matter, even though existing as “Japanese in
the Edmonton area,”,is not detectable as part of the Japanese community in the Edmonton area.
Can we “enlighten” the dark stuff—render it sufficiently light/bright to be detectable?
2.4 Metaphor 4: Entangled Enlightenment—Our Dilemma and Our Opportunity?
Some followers of Buddhism, especially
Zen Buddhism, suggest that entanglement is
not only a fundamental property of quantum
physics, it is also a fundamental property ofZen. Thus, is Entangled Japanese-ness out
there but not aware of its own entanglement or,if aware, prefers to ignore it? Here then is ourchallenge: Can we use “enlightened
entanglement” to help enlighten the dark
Japanese stuff we know is “out there” but
Figure 2.20 Metaphor 4: Enlightened
remains invisible to the Japanese-Canadian
Entanglement
community?
2.5 Metaphor 5: There’s Magic in Fields
Even if we are not conversant with
Maxwell’s field equations, we are all familiar
with electromagnetic fields throughphotographs or displays of individual ironfilings behaving as a “community” when theycome under the influence of a magnetic field.
Recently, a new field, the Higgs Field, wasverified by physicists conducting experiments
using the Hadron Collider. This discovery wasa major “brick” in the verification of the socalled Standard Model of quantum physics.
JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan

Figure 2.21 Metaphor 5: “There’s Magic in
Them There Fields”

35

“The hunt for the source of dark matter is one of the most hotly anticipated searchesof our time and the Higgs boson might be able to light the way to a possible dark
matter discovery.” [emphasis added] (www.seeker.com/the-higgs-boson)
This Higgs field pervades the entire universe and makes fundamental particles detectable as
mass. Hypothetically, such detection applies to all kinds of entities whether regular or dark oreven yellow. It provides support for the existence of other fields that “remain in the dark” such as
undetectable Japanese-Canadians.
2.6 Metaphor 6: Social Fields (for Humans): From Quantum Fields to Social Fields in Order toDetect Community
The EJCA as a Social Field has thepotential to associate individuals into a
Community; this is what social fields do by
their very nature. As with iron filings under the
influence of a field, humans become aware thatthey are members of the larger community andthat they themselves compose it just as itcomposes and recomposes them. Like a Higgs
Field, however, can a social field render social
Figure 2.22 Metaphor 6: Social Fields (fordark energy detectable? Especially
Humans)considering that about 92% of the dark
Japanese stuff does NOT participate in a
Japanese-Canadian social field. More explicitly, can the EJCA (or other Japanese Community
Association) as a social field entice social dark stuff into a community by re-energizing
predispositions existing latently but inactively in “dark Japanese Canadians”? This brings up
two further questions:
1. Are “dark Japanese Canadians” at all predisposed to become Japanesecommunity members?
2. How can we access/trigger/ignite/actualize predispositions latent in “darkJapanese” that, by virtue of being Japanese, are compatible with and supportive ofa Japanese Community Field?
2.7 Metaphor 7: Japanese “Aesthetic
Predispositions” Already Sequenced in
NatureIn the following, the verb “sequenced”
should be read in the sense of genomic
sequencing. There are several Known
predispositions that are already aestheticallysequenced as indicating Japanese community:
bonsai / Japanese garden / forest / Japanesecommunity. In other words there is an aesthetic
Japanese-ness that is already organicallysequenced as Japanese community.
JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan

Figure 2.23 Metaphor 7: Sequencing JapanesePredispositioning on Planet Earth36

Is there, then, a sequence to convert unknown dark predispositions to be socially sequenced
as Japanese community: e.g., dark Japanese / EJCA / Social Field / Japanese community. That is,can dark Japanese-ness be socially sequenced into Japanese community? In this case, our claim
could be that these two sequences, the “organic-aesthetic” and the “socio-cultural,” areequivalent (≈) even though the paths taken are different. Stated explicitly as equivalent
sequences: this would render as[bonsai / garden / forest /Japan] ≈ [dark Japanese / EJCA / Social Field / Japanese community]
2.8 Metaphor 8: Enlightened Entanglement
Can enlightened entanglement be
actualized as “edited socio-cultural sequencing”
and what might this entail? This question begs
for a paradigm shift into “onto-epistemology”
and suggests Magoroh Maruyama’s work on
Mindscaping as a major component on an
enlightened path into socio-aesthetic-culturalsequencing. Accessing such paths by “laying
them down” as we walk depends mightily on
how we walk, both as “me, myself, and I” andFigure 2.24 Metaphor 8: Enlightened
as a participant in “socio-aesthetic-cultural
Entanglement
sequencing.” Riding on the shoulders of
Maruyama and several others, one of us is
attempting to write a book on “holonomic socio-aesthetic-cultural sequencing” as a way ofwalking here on planet earth or even in the uni- or multi-verse. Such a book might have a subtitle
as grandiose as “A Journey into Consciousness”. It might even become one of thousands suchbooks that fade into dark blurry blackness never to be detected. Nevertheless, could such a bookbe written in such a way so as to escape such a fate? Indeed, if “such suchness” is mentioned
often enough it might foment a sequence! Said once more, are there paths ahead that “Japan”
could lay down but thus far has not walked?
Thank you for your attention through two very distinct explorations into our project—the
first half being very descriptive and the second very philosophical. We hope it has inspired you
to dig into our collection and to look at the process through a deep philosophical lens. We areboth more than willing to be contacted and share more with anyone so inclined.

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3. TRANSLATION WITHOUTWORDS: WHAT KYŌGEN CANTELL US ABOUT SAMUEL
BECKETT’S TOLERANCE FOR
ADAPTATION
Jane Traynor
Ph.D. Student, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
E-mail: jkt2125@columbia.edu______________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACT

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is known for his strict expectations for performers to heed
to the specifications of his playtexts. However, he is also known for his work as a translator, ajob which many would agree requires a nuanced understanding of the necessity of adaptation.
Considering this, is it possible for one to discover at what point, for Beckett, necessary
alterations become superfluous personal liberties? Particularly in cases of theatre, it is important
to consider not only the linguistic translation of the written text, but also the adaptations of theperformed text. In an attempt to address this question, this paper examines Noho Theater’s
adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Act Without Words I (1982). Through this case study, I
investigate the boundary between translation and adaptation, and challenge the understanding of
the text-stage relationship in the performing arts.
The paper begins with an examination of Beckett's style as a translator of his own works.
In order to explore this concretely, I compare Act Without Words I and Acte sans paroles I (1957),
to see the types of liberties Beckett took during the translation process. It also incorporates
scholarship from experts in the field of Beckett’s self-translation practices. It then investigates
Noho Theater's adaptation, Kotoba naki koi I, and the challenges faced by the troupe inconverting the work across cultures. Contrary to what might be expected of a radical adaptationof one of Beckett's works, Beckett was overall supportive and responded positively to Noho’s
works, so long as he found artistic liberties to be within reason. Finally, I propose a reading of
Noho Theater’s adaptations as an act of translation. Just as the written script was translated fromEnglish to Japanese, the actions on stage required a translation from one somatic language toanother. This is particularly visible in the fixed physical style of classical Japanese theatres suchas Kyogen. Through this, I propose that perhaps Beckett remained tolerant of adaptations of his
works, provided that they were approached as cultural translations rather than reinvented for new
purposes. I also suggest that this case study be considered preliminary research for what might
JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan38

potentially be a larger investigation incorporating Noho Theater’s entire canon of Beckett
adaptations as well as a more in-depth analysis of their approach and process. Furthermore, I
suggest an analysis of published reviews of their performances in order to see how the
productions were received by both critics and popular audiences.
Keywords: Japanese premodern theatre, performance studies, kyogen, Beckett, translation,
adaptation.
1. INTRODUCTION___________________________________________________________
Even from my earliest exposures to the Irish author and playwright Samuel Beckett(1906-1989), I was made painfully aware, usually from snide comments or passing remarks, that,while he was alive, he was notorious for having an iron-clad grasp on his works and even after
his passing, his estate has carried on his wishes to have his texts strictly adhered to.1 All stage
directions must be followed and staging major discrepancies from the original text, for example,
cross-gendered casting, will run you the risk of having the rights pulled and your run cancelled.
But what does a (perhaps grumpy), strict, modern Irish playwright have to do with Japanesetraditional theatre? According to Jonah Salz and Akira Shigeyama, the co-founders of Noho
Theatre Group—everything.
Noho Theatre Group, a multicultural theatre troupe that specializes in nōgaku adaptationsof western theatrical texts, among other transcultural theatre performances, found themselves
particularly drawn to the works of Beckett over the years. One might postulate that the merging
of two such contextually different genres might be artificial or forced, but dark humour and thefollies of humans are themes explored regularly in both theatres. Therefore, kyōgen is a vessel
already equipped to manage the overarching themes of Beckett’s works and perhaps, as
Shigeyama puts it, his view on life (jinseikan).2 Their staging of various Beckett plays over theyears included Act Without Words I & II, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, and Quad I & II. Of theseinterpretations, Act Without Words I, a short mime piece for a single actor, was the first play that
Noho Theatre produced. While Salz indicated that this choice was dictated by his limited
Japanese language ability at the time3—his Japanese was not yet at the level where he felt
comfortable managing both a physical and linguistic translation on the stage simultaneously—
this piece does make for an interesting “introduction piece” to transnational and transcultural
adaptations of Beckett to Japanese audience. Salz had also hypothesized that as a piece without averbal script, Act Without Words I (or kotoba naki kōi I, in Japanese), would be more accessible
to international audiences.4 Furthermore, Salz has stated,
Beckett was aware of these productions and gave approval for them to be done
only in Japan, or in Japanese when we went abroad… He understood our idea oftranslating culturally was a valid way to transmit his plays but he didn’t want thatto be the only version that people had in mind. And when I showed him somephotos and wrote to him he was rather… understanding and sympathetic to what

Personal observation, Classes at the University of Alberta (DRAMA 308 [Fall 2013] & DRAMA 409 [Winter 2014]).
Akira Shigeyama, personal interview with author, July 23, 2018.
3
Jonah Salz, personal interview with author, September 18, 2018.
4
Jonah Salz, personal interview with author, September 18, 2018.
1
2

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan39

we were trying to do. Within limits.5
I will touch on the conditional approval contingent on these productions remaining
Japanese exclusive in just a moment; however this depiction of Beckett by Salz paints the author
as a relatively reasonable, perhaps even supporting playwright, rather contradictory from theimage I had been primed to before. So what then made such adaptations acceptable to the man
infamous for his scrupulous management of his works? I believe the answer is contained in
Salz’s key phrasing that he “understood [their] idea of translating culturally.”6
It is important to note that Beckett’s approval was by no means based solely on thisunderstanding of and leniency towards cultural translation. As Salz explained, Beckett imposed
the condition that the Noho performances of his works must either be in Japan, or when
performed abroad, such as at the 1982 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, they were to be performed
only in the Japanese language. Salz suggested that this was because he felt the reach of Japanese
performances was not overly impactful to the distribution of his plays.7 Beckett still obviously
wanted to maintain control over the Western language staging of his works. Nevertheless, hepermitted these adaptations and in fact showed enough interest to meet with Salz on two separate
occasions to discuss the productions. Additionally, it is feasible to consider that perhaps Beckett
equated the Japanese language as a necessary part of the cultural translations in order to maintaintheir cultural integrity.
2. BECKETT AS A SELF-TRANSLATOR_________________________________________
Beckett, known far and wide for being inflexible in many ways, was himself a translator
who, consequently, was acutely aware of the necessary creativity and concessions required for a
successful translation. Successful translation, particularly when dealing with literary works,
requires the translator to simultaneously maintain a thorough understanding of not just the
linguistic elements of the source text, but its symbols, allegories, and over all affect, in addition
to a thorough understanding of the target language and culture. In Raymond Federman’s chapter“The Writer as Self-Translator” he states that complete analysis of Beckett’s translations would
require not simply a comparison of the “rhythmic and phonetic patterns of the two texts” but also
what he classifies as “resonances and equivalences.”8 According to Federman, by resonances andequivalences he means not only “how certain linguistic elements are transformed in the processof translation, but also how certain cultural, philosophical, and literary allusions, evenquotations, are not simply translated but transposed into a French or English context to produce a
totally different set of cultural, philosophical, or literary connotations.”9On the one hand, there is evidence that Beckett’s particularity was sustained not just fromthe page to the stage, but from book to livre, or vise-versa. Translating all but one of his own

Jonah Salz, “Noho Theatre Group ACT WITHOUT WORDS 1,” YouTube, April 25, 2010, accessed on October 3,
2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFkrdBwhvMM (Please note that the quote transcribed above omits fillers
and instances where the speaker revises himself.)
6Salz, “Noho Theatre Group ACT WITHOUT WORDS 1.”
7
Jonah Salz, personal interview with author, September 18, 2018.
8
Raymond Federman, “The Writer as Self-Translator,” in Beckett Translating/Translating Beckett, ed. Alan Warren
Friedman, Charles Rossman, and Dina Sherzer (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
1987), 13.
9Federman, “The Writer as Self-Translator,” 13.
5

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works independently10 was obviously a deliberate choice to give himself the final say over theend result of his work. He was even said to have monitored the Italian and German translations
closely,11 drawing on his knowledge of those languages, which he acquired in his youth. On theother hand, as a self-translator, Beckett is known among bilingual readers as having a translative
practice that is “extraordinary adaptive.”12 For example, his translations have been known to takeextreme liberties with literary references. Hokenson and Munson observe, “Voltaire becomes
Berkeley in Malone Dies, [and] a line from Baudelaire becomes a line from Shakespeare inEndgame.”13 The overarching trend seems that Beckett’s earlier translations are closer in tone,
syntax, etc. than later works,14 perhaps suggesting that his translation philosophy became moretolerant or even gained preference for major cultural or linguistic adaptations in order tosuccessfully communicate his original intentions over time. Even in one of his most famous
works, Endgame, there appears to be a “displacement of meaning” in the translation process
which, according to Federman, might suggest a shift of moral attitude or temperament.”15 It is
important to note, particularly in the case of self-translations, but perhaps potentially an attitude
that may be applied towards external translation as well, that they should not been seen as “anapproximation of the original, or a duplication, or a substitute, but a continuation of the work, or
workings of the text.”16 Translations are often considered secondary to the original text; however
in instances of self-translation, the authority given to the original author must be applied to bothtexts. One cannot arguably give one precedent as the “correct” version over the other.
Even in what may be the most “straightforward” translation, Acte sans paroles I/Act
Without Words I, there are discrepancies. The idea may be that translating a short series of stage
directions from French to English seems hardly a challenging or creative task, let alone one
requiring major liberties to be taken in the translation process. In fact, a parallel reading of the
English and French texts reveals that they are, for the most part, very literally translated. For
example,Acte sans paroles I (1957):“Une petite carafe, munie d’une grande étiquette rigide portant l’inscription EAU,
descend des cintres, s’immobilise à trois mètres du sol.”17
Act Without Words I (1958):“A tiny carafe, to which is attached a huge label inscribed WATER, descends fromflies, comes to rest some tree yards from the ground.18
As one can see above, there are few minor discrepancies (for example, the converting of“meters” to “yards”) but overall, it remains quite consistent. The actions are announced in the
Jan Walsh Hokenson and Marcella Munson, ed., The Bilingual Text: History and Theory of Literary Self-Translation(London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 189.
11
Walsh Hokenson, The Bilingual Text, 191.
12
Walsh Hokenson, The Bilingual Text, 191.
13
Walsh Hokenson, The Bilingual Text, 196.
14
Federman, “The Writer as Self-Translator,” 15.
15
Federman, “The Writer as Self-Translator,” 10.
16
Federman, “The Writer as Self-Translator,” 14-15.
17
Samuel Beckett, Fin de partie, suivi de Acte sans parole (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957), 119.
18
Samuel Beckett, Endgame: a play in one act, followed by Act Without Words: a mime for one player (New York:
Grove Press, Inc., 1958), 88.
10

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan41

same order, no action is missing or added in the English version, the carafe remains a carafe, andeven the word “water” is capitalized in both versions. However, even Act Without Words I is notfree from major omissions. In the original French, the set up to the scene is presented as followed(with English translation in brackets):19
PERSONNAGE (CHARACTER) :Un homme. Geste familier : il plie et déplie son mouchoir. (A man. Familiar
gesture: he folds and unfolds his handkerchief.)SCÈNE (SCENE): Désert. Eclairage éblouissant. (Desert. Dazzling light.)
ACTION (ACTION):
Projeté à reculons de la coulisse droite, l’homme trébuche, tombe, se relève
aussitôt, s’époussette, réfléchit. (Thrown backward from the right wing, the man
trips, falls, stands up immediately, dusts himself, reflects.)20
The first part of the English translation, released within a year of its French counterpart, begins:
Desert. Dazzling light.
The man is flung backwards on stage from right wing. He falls, gets up
immediately, dusts himself, turns aside, reflects.21
Here we see a slight change of structure, but more importantly, two omissions and an
addition between the two texts. Both the handkerchief and the man tripping are removed and theaction “turns aside” is added before he reflects. These changes could be the result of a variety ofreasons; cultural adaptation, linguistic adaptation, or even revisions after having seen this firstrun of the production brought to life on stage. However, the reasons for which these changes
were made are of less interest to this paper than the fact that these changes exist at all, as they
provide a concrete example of the concessions Beckett made himself on this work before we
examine the translation process of Noho Theatre Group.
3. NOHO’S TRANSLATION AND BECKETT’S RESPONSE_________________________
It is clear from the very first point of contact with this piece, the title, that translating Act
Without Words I into Japanese will without a doubt raise problems that are not observed whentransitioning from French to English. In the Japanese version of the title kotoba naki kōi I, thepun on the word “act” (referring to both actions, as well as an act of a theatrical performance),
which easily translates from French to English, is lost as the translator must drop one of themeanings in favour of the other. In this case, the importance was placed on the meaning of“actions” rather than the reference to an act of the theatre. More important, however, than the
linguistic casualties for this piece are the physical alterations that were necessary to facilitate asmooth cultural translation. Especially translating between two vastly different cultures, there
was bound to be some major alterations necessitated. After all, at the foundation of Saussure’s
theory of semiotics, the signifier is arbitrarily linked to the object, concept or notion that it isEnglish translations in parentheses are translations by the author unless otherwise stated.
Beckett, Fin de partie, 117.
21
Beckett, Endgame, 87.
19
20

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signifying.22 One part of Act Without Words I that posed a problem for direct translation was:
He looks at his hands, looks around for the scissors, sees them, goes and picks
them up, starts to trim his nails, stops, reflects, runs his finger along the blade ofscissors, goes and lays them on the cube, turns aside, opens his collar, frees hisneck and fingers it.
The small cube is pulled up and disappears in flies, carrying away rope andscissors.
He turns to take scissors, sees what has happened
He turns aside, reflects.23
During the rehearsal process, Shigeyama noted that this gesture would not work in a
Japanese, and particularly traditional Japanese, theatrical context as the image of suicide by
cutting one’s throat was deeply linked with the suicide of a samurai’s wife. Since the character
was a man, this action would have to be altered. They instead opted to use the scissors, alreadypresent on stage as a part of the previous actions, and have the man prepare to commit ritualsuicide known as hara-kiri.24
Though a seemingly drastic modification to the original texts, Beckett, when informed
about this creative choice, was content with Noho Theatre Group’s final staging. Beckett had
been known to express his displeasure with Salz’s creative decisions on other matters (the usageof a nō actor to represent a diseased wife) as well as lay down technical restrictions on
performances (only the use of percussion instruments, in one instance); however, the doubletranslation of slitting one’s throat to hara-kiri, and then from that concept to its stylization for thenō stage, managed to satisfy Beckett’s expectation for the work.25 On the other hand, the harshest
critique came from Japanese audiences who felt that hara-kiri, as a ritualized death linked withthe samurai class, did not depict the everyday man that the protagonist of Act Without Words I is
supposed to be representative of.26
4. TEXTUAL TRANSLATION___________________________________________________
I would also propose that while there were many acts of cultural translation importing Act
Without Words I into Kyōgen as examined above, the process on the whole was also a type of
linguistic translation. As I argue in my thesis “Treading in the Formaldehyde of Tradition: Kata
as Somatic Text in the Japanese Nō and Kyōgen Theatres,” the physical patterns (kata) which are
performed on the Nōgaku (nō and kyōgen theatres) stage and preserved through direct teacherstudent transmission can be read as a “somatic text:”
While traditional text is written through the medium of ink on paper, a somatic
text is one that is written through the medium of movements through the body.
The specific movements within kata can be likened to words, which, when strung
together in a specific order, create a physical text and the transmission of this text
is one that relies wholly on the learning, repetition, and transmission of theseMark Fortier, Theory/Theatre: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 20.
Beckett, Act Without Words I, 90.
24
Jonah Salz, personal interview with author, September 18, 2018.
25
Jonah Salz, personal interview with author, September 18, 2018.
26
Jonah Salz, personal interview with author, September 18, 2018.
22
23

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movements by their practitioners.27
From these texts develops of a sort of literacy in those that have been thoroughly trainedin it, such as Shigeyama Akira, who would have been immersed in the genre from the time he
was a child. It is with this literacy in kyōgen kata that Shigeyama was able to develop theappropriate gestures to facilitate the translation of Beckett to the stage.
As a purely stage directional piece, Act Without Words I always makes a transition fromthe linguistic to the physical; however, when, for lack of better term, a “standard”28 adaptation is
performed, the written text is being transferred into a corporeal blank slate. This blank slate
which, if not pre-programmed to perform in a specific somatic language, is at minimum the typeof body for whom the piece was written. A shift of dialect, rather than language, if you will.
However, in the case of transition from text into kyōgen, the actions dictated by the script must
be negotiated to fit the traditional language into which it is being transposed.
5. THE BIGGER PICTURE_____________________________________________________
This brings us to the question, “what can we take away from this?” Perhaps examining
Noho Theatre Group’s translations of Beckett’s works, particularly Act Without Words I, can help
reframe Beckett’s intentions for his works. Thinking in the contexts of the transmission of
traditional texts, it is possible that we can shed new light on Beckett’s restrictions regarding his
extra-textual instructions. Perhaps Beckett was attempting, in the only way he knew how, topreserve what he considered to be the crucial kata of his texts for future performances.
Taking things one step further, this may help us to re-evaluate the dialogue-stage
direction and even text-performance hierarchies. Throughout my theatre education, I was taught
to ignore or eliminate predesignated stage direction from the script before pursuing a scene
study. This led me to believe that this was the expectation and professional standard.29 But if thiswere the case, why would playwrights bother to include direction in their writing at all? Whileunderstanding the post-modern instinct to reject the logocentric philosophies of the preceding
generations, one might also question if rejecting linear text in performance entirely is simply
flipping the hierarchy as opposed to abolishing it. However, rather than doing away with stage
directions or entire texts, perhaps contemporary thespians could reimagine the purpose of these
literary devices and rather than considering them restrictive elements preventing them fromachieving their visions, they could instead consider them clues or hints as to the kind of piece theinitial author intended them to have.
Perhaps, by seeing themselves as “translators” as opposed to “adaptors,” this could
potentially even out the theatrical hierarchy. The director, by staging a text, enters a contract withthe playwright, and for every ounce of authority given to the playwright, they are rewarded witha respect for their decisions that, in theory, are made in good faith and interpretation. Seeing thetext not as the holder of the transcendental truth of any given piece, but rather as a gateway to theintentions of the playwright brings us back to the fundamentally collaborative nature of theatre.
Though not necessarily “self-translation,” I believe that Federman’s notion that the “translation”
of a work should not be seen as “an approximation of the original, or a duplication, or aJane Traynor, “Treading in the Formaldehyde of Tradition: Kata as Somatic Text in the Japanese Nō and Kyōgen
Theatres” (master’s thesis, University of Alberta, 2017), 4.
28
By which I mean a performance aiming to stage the texts as is, not in what would be defined as “experimental,”“fusion” or “avant-garde.”
29
Personal observation, Classes at the University of Alberta (DRAMA 150 [Fall 2011] & DRAMA 257 [Fall 2012]).
27

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substitute, but a continuation of the work, or workings of the text”30 can also be applied totheatrical pieces, for any play text is only a half-realized piece of art until it is brought to life on
the stage.
6. CONCLUSIONS AND POINTS OF DEPARTURE________________________________
In summary, it is possible from the analysis included above to postulate that Beckett’s
tolerance for “adaptation” seems to find its limits within what he considered reasonable acts of“translation.” From here, one might also consider a reframing of perspective towards Beckett’s
works and perhaps even his artistic intentions. While this research investigation has proven to be
an intriguing start to a research project wider than the scope of this paper, it ultimately remains
quite preliminary and has opened my eyes to various other areas worth of investigation.
First and foremost, a more thorough investigation of Noho Theatre Group’s entire
repertoire of Beckett works would perhaps produce a fuller understanding of the translation
system that Shigeyama Akira took to his adaptations. Preferably this would be done throughmore interviews with the practitioners and detailed analysis of any remaining video footage andphotographs. Ideally one of these interviews would be performed with both Salz and Shigeyama
present in the presence of visual materials as memory triggers.
Furthermore, it would be worthwhile to consider the reception of Noho Theatre Group’s
performances in further detail both in Japan and abroad. Reviews and critiques of performances
would help shed light on the success or impact of the performances locally and the perceptions or
misperceptions of Beckett scholars and fans from around the globe. No matter how big or small
the overall impact these adaptations may or may not have had, they are now a part of the canonof Beckett reception and should be included in the critical discourse as such.
______________________________________________________________________________REFERENCES

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame: a play in one act, followed by Act Without Words: a mime for one
player. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958.
Beckett, Samuel. Fin de partie, suivi de Acte sans paroles. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957.
Federman, Raymond. “The Writer as Self-Translator.” In Beckett Translating/Translating
Beckett, edited by Alan Warren Friedman, Charles Rossman and Dina Sherzer, 7-16.
University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987.
Fortier, Mark. Theory/Theatre: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Japan Foundation. "茂山狂言ヨーロッパ公演.” Accessed on October 3, 2018.
https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/project/culture/archive/information/0703/03-04.html.
Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. London: Bloomsbury, 1996.
Mooney, Sinéad. A Tongue Not Mine: Beckett and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011.
Pawasarat, Catherine. “Kyogen with a twist.” The Japan Times. December 12, 2001. Accessed
October 3, 2018. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2001/12/12/stage/kyogen-with-atwist-2/#.W7V0u2hKg2w.
Preston, Carrie J. Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2016.
Pronko, Leonard Cabell. Theatre East and West: Perspectives Towards a Total Theatre. Berkeley
30

Federman, “The Writer as Self-Translator,” 14-15.

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan45

and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967.
Salz, Jonah. “Beckett in Kyogen Style: Lessons in Intercultural Translation.” In Performer
Training: Developments Across Cultures, edited by Ian Watson, 133-152. Nevada: OPA(Overseas Publishers Association), 2001.
———. “Noho Theatre Group ACT WITHOUT WORDS 1.” YouTube. Published on Apr 25,
2010. Accessed on October 3, 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFkrdBwhvMM.
———. “Convergences and Resonances in the Dramaturgy and Mise-en-Scene of Noh andSamuel Beckett.” In Staging Irish Dramas in Japanese Theatre: Studies in Comparative
Theatrical Performance, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., 67-122. Lewiston andLampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014.
Traynor, Jane. “Treading in the Formaldehyde of Tradition: Kata as Somatic Text in the Japanese
Nō and Kyōgen Theatres.” Master’s thesis, University of Alberta, 2017.
Walsh Hokenson, Jan and Marcella Munson, ed. The Bilingual Text: History and Theory of
Literary Self-Translation. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

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46

4. FORTY YEARS AFTER THE
CHINA-JAPAN TREATY OF
PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP:
REFLECTIONS ON CHANGINGECONOMIC AND COMMERCIAL
RELATIONSDavid W. Edgington
Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
E-mail: david.edgington@ubc.ca______________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACTThe 40th anniversary of the 1978 China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 2018provides an occasion to reflect on bilateral economic and commercial relations between thesecountries. Rather than applying universal and deterministic models of international traderelations, this analysis underscores the evolution of Japanese perceptions of, and reactions to,Chinese commercial opportunities and competition. Four distinct periods within the last 40 years
or so can be recognized. In the first, Japanese images of its trade and commercial relationshipwith China were ingrained within traditional “core-periphery” notions. In the second period,
Japan realigned its aims towards nurturing the modernization of China along the “flying-geese”
model of Asia-Pacific development. The third period commenced after China joined the World
Trade Organization in 2001 when it was seen as a growing economic and geo-politicalcompetitor. In 2018, perceptions of the economic and commercial relationship by the Japan sidechanged yet again. On the 40th anniversary of the 1978 Treaty there was anticipation that
relations between the two countries were “back on track,” and that a new era of cooperation
might emerge, reflecting the spirit and original intentions of the Treaty. The paper also points tothe important role taken by Japan’s relationship with the USA during the past 40 years.
Keywords: Japan, China, 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, economic and commercial
relations.

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1. INTRODUCTION___________________________________________________________
Over 40 years ago the first post-War peace treaty was concluded between the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) and Japan on August 12th, 1978. The China-Japan Treaty of Peace andFriendship (Nihonkoku to Chūka Jinmin Kyōwakoku to no aida no Heiwa Yūkō Jōyaku) was
signed in Beijing by Huang Hua (1913-2010), Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic ofChina (PRC), and Sunao Sonoda (1913-1984), Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan. The Treaty
went into effect on October 23, 1978, with the state visit of Vice Premier of the PRC, Deng
Xiaoping (1904-1997), to Japan, hosted by Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo (1905-1995). Lee1
notes that the terms of the Treaty document were hammered out with a particular emphasis on
China-Japan commercial relations, based on the political insights of the times by leaders fromboth sides. Today, the 1978 Treaty can be seen as a prominent event, not just in terms of bilateralties but also regarding the political map of the Asia-Pacific region. Throughout the past 40 years
or so the relationship between China and Japan has made remarkable progress despite sometwists and turns and severe tests, including reversals of growth in trade and the falling off ofdirect foreign investment (DFI) as well as technology transfer. Indeed, prior to improvementsthat commenced in 2018, relations between the two countries had soured for years due to tense
diplomatic disputes over the control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, as
well as wartime issues, such as official Japanese history text books and visits to the Yasukuni
shrine by the Japanese Prime Minister and politicians.2 Nonetheless, as both countries preparedto mark the Treaty’s 40th anniversary there was a growing momentum for improved ties between
China and Japan. In the event, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō (in office, 2006-2007, and2012 - ) met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (assumed office in 2012) in Beijing during
October 2018 to commemorate the occasion. This was the first full-scale Chinese-Japanesesummit since 2011 and the emphasis was again largely on business ties.3
This essay reflects on the 40 years of Chinese-Japanese relations since the 1978 Treaty ofPeace and Friendship with a particular emphasis on how economic and commercial relations
have shifted in this period, primarily from the viewpoint of Japan. Reflecting the overall themeof the JSAC 2018 Conference: “Images, Perceptions and Reactions of Japan in the World/The
World’s Japan,” I take an approach to interpreting this 40-year period with a framework that is
historically contingent, one that depends on particular circumstances together with Japanese
representations of the relationship, and how these have evolved over time. The analysis
underscores that Japanese calculations of economic relations with China have never been set in

Chae-Jin Lee, “The Making of the Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty,” Pacific Affairs 52 (1979): 420445.
2
Toshiya Hoshino and Haruko Satoh, “Through the Looking Glass? China's Rise as Seen From Japan,” Journal of
Asian Public Policy 5 (2012): 181-198.
3
Norihiko Shirouzu and Philip Wen, “China, Japan to Forge Closer Ties at ‘Historic Turning Point,’” Reuters,
October 25, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-china-japan-ties/china-japan-to-forgecloser-ties-at-historic-turning-point-idUKKCN1N00B1.
1

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stone. They have shifted over time and can be marked by distinct stages.4 As Hilpert5 observed,
traditional political and economic assessments of the China-Japan relationship are often
unjustifiably pessimistic or unduly optimistic, as they miss the nuances of government responses
to events and the roles of individual firms. For instance, a traditional (rationalist) politicalscience view of the China-Japan relationship might conclude the differences between thesecountry’s national interests have been fundamentally irreconcilable.6 This is despite a culturalinterpretation of the relationship that emphasizes ancient bonds and similarities—geographicalproximity, shared customs, culture and religion as well as a history of bilateral exchanges
stretching back to the Tang dynasty.7 Hilpert8 goes on to note that a traditional (neo-liberal)
economist would likely come to alternative, more positive, but also over-simplistic
interpretations of the relationship, based on an understanding of the complementary nature ofresources endowments between the two countries. Thus, it is often noted that Japan possesses thetechnology and human skills for China’s modernization and industrialization while China hasabundant natural resources and cheap labor as well as a fast-growing market, signaling(potential) unlimited opportunities to enhance joint welfare by increasing bilateral trade andintensifying economic integration.9
By contrast to these deterministic models of international trade relations, I emphasize thatJapanese perceptions of, and reactions to, Chinese commercial opportunities and competitionchanged markedly over the 40 years. This analysis draws from existing scholarship on ChinaJapan economic interactions by historians, economists and other social scientists, as well as press
reports that covered the 40th-year anniversary of the 1978 Treaty during 2018. I argue thatJapanese images of its trade and commercial relationship with China were rooted initially within
traditional “core-periphery” notions, in part a legacy from the pre-World War II era. Yet, theseevolved during the 1980s as Japan’s motives shifted towards nurturing the modernization ofChina. Japan’s basic stance towards China following the Treaty was based on a perceived
mutually-beneficial “flying geese”-style pattern of increased trade, investment and technologicalassistance to China, and framed within broader Japanese goals of Asia-Pacific regional
development.10 After the year 2000, however, China became the only East Asian country to
emerge largely unscathed from the financial crisis of 1997-98, and was seen as a growing
Akio Takahara, “Forty-four Years of Sino–Japanese Diplomatic Relations Since Normalization,” in China-Japan
Relations in the 21st Century: Antagonism Despite Interdependency, ed. Lam Peng Er. (London: Routledge, 2017),
25-65.
5
Hanns Günther Hilpert, “China and Japan: Conflict or Cooperation? What Does Trade Data Say?,” in Japan and
China: Cooperation, Competition and Conflict, ed. Hanns Günther Hilpert and René Haak (Basingstoke, Hants:
Palgrave: 2002), 32-51.
6See, for example, Linus Hagström, Japan's China Policy: A Relational Power Analysis (Oxford: Routledge, 2005);
Richard C. Bush, The Perils of Proximity: China-Japan Security Relations (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings
Institute Press, 2010); and Yew Meng Lai, Nationalism and Power Politics in Japan's Relations with China: A
Neoclassical Realist Interpretation (London: Routledge, 2014).
7
Akira Iriye, ed., The Chinese and the Japanese: Essays in Political and Cultural Interactions (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1980).
8
Hilpert, “China and Japan.”9
See, for example, C.H. Kwan, “The Rise of China as an Economic Power: Implications for Asia and Japan,” inJapan and China, 12-31.
10
T.J. Pempel, “Transpacific Torii: Japan and the Emerging Asian Regionalism,” in Network Power: Japan andAsia, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein and Shiraishi Takashi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 47-82; Walter F. Hatch,
Asia's Flying Geese: How Regionalization Shapes Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010).
4

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competitor to Japan in the region. This mounting rivalry between Japan and China led to
diplomatic disruptions, worsening economic relations and a potential “decoupling” of bilateral
trade and investment flows. In 2018, perceptions of the “China business” by the Japan sidechanged yet again. On the 40th anniversary of the 1978 Treaty there was anticipation that
relations between the two countries were “back on track,” and that a new era of cooperation
might emerge, reflecting the spirit and original intentions of the Treaty. The paper also points tothe important role taken by Japan’s relationship with the USA during the past 40 years.
The remainder of this paper is divided into five sections. The following section covers
the first 20 or so years after the signing of the 1978 Treaty, in which a number of Japanesemechanisms were used to support China’s modernization. It notes the importance of government
official development assistance (ODA), loans and technology transfer, as well as private sector
trade and foreign investment. The next section focuses on the “dangerous years” from around2000 to 2017, a period when several political disputes came to the fore, and when China emerged
as a formidable challenger to Japan in the Asia-Pacific region. Markers of this new era ofcompetition included not only commercial rivalry between Japanese and Chinese corporations,but also enmity over economic influence in the wider region. The subsequent section thendiscusses the events and turnaround of economic relations 2018 and offers some speculative
observations where China-Japan economic and commercial ties might develop in the future.
2. THE 1978 TREATY AND THE “GOLDEN YEARS”: 1978-2000____________________The events leading up to the 1978 Treaty commenced with an unprecedented visit to China
by Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei (1918–1993) on Sept. 25, 1972, just seven months after U.S.
President’s Richard Nixon’s week-long trip to China in February 1972.11 Four days later, after
meetings with Chinese leader Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, the two governments issued a“Japan-China Joint Communique” restoring diplomatic relations after over 40 years ofconfrontation and ideological conflict left over from the 1937-45 War of Resistance between thetwo countries and as well as the Cold War.12 This political declaration underscored “the ending ofabnormal relations between Japan and China”, recognized the People’s Republic of China as the“sole government of China” and renounced any claims for World War II reparations. The
communique also included Japan's deep reflection on war responsibilities, and its firm adherence
to the “One-China” policy recognizing Taiwan as part of China.13 After first attaining
normalization of diplomatic ties in this way the principles of the bilateral joint statement were thenembodied in the more comprehensive Treaty of Peace and Friendship, negotiations for which

Chae-Jin Lee, China and Japan; New Economic Diplomacy (Stanford CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1984).
Yoshihide Soeya, “Japan’s Relations with China,” in The Golden Age of the U.S.-China-Japan Triangle, ed. Ezra
F. Vogel, Yuan Ming, and Akihiko Tanaka (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 210-228; Jesse
Johnson, “Ahead of Abe's Visit to Beijing a Look at Japan-China Ties Through the Years,” The Japan Times.
October 21, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/10/21/national/politicsdiplomacy/ahead-abes-visit-beijing-look-japan-china-ties-years/#.XMSPMi0ZM-c.
1112Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1972 Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Governmentof the People's Republic of China, no date. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asiapaci/china/joint72.html.
13

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started in 1974 when a trade agreement between China and Japan was made.14 Many
commentators at the time saw the 1978 Treaty as a long-term legal framework and policy todevelop commercial arrangements in the future. The treaty summed up the history of bilateral ties,
affirmed in legal form the principles of the China-Japan Joint Statement, made clear that the twocountries should develop durable relations of peace and friendship, and laid a solid political andlegal foundation for the sound and stable development of bilateral ties.15 Pressing political andterritorial disputes at that time, such as over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands in the East China Sea,
were shelved for future resolution.16
What sort of commercial arrangements existed at the start of 1978? Lee17 notes that postwar bilateral trade between China and Japan had already commenced following the Sino-Soviet
break in 1956. Indeed, Japanese trading companies, such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi, were wellaware of the potential of the Chinese market for sales of Japanese plant and machinery. Indeed,
before the advent of the Cultural Revolution disrupted commerce in the mid-1960s, the amount ofbilateral trade between Japan and mainland China exceeded that between Japan and Taiwan.18
Moreover, the two oil crises of the 1970s led to the Japanese side taking a strong interest in
China’s natural resources, especially its oil and coal resources, since Japan was keen to diversify
its sources of energy imports.19 The 1978 Treaty was perceived as an important agreement that was
expected to continue economic and commercial relations along a “traditional vertical international
division of labor” or a “core-periphery” model, one based around the exchange of raw materials
for advanced manufactured products.20
According to this viewpoint, in order to fulfill its goals of rapid industrialization China
would import modern technology, plants and construction materials, as well as other equipmentfrom Japan, and it would pay Japan back with increased exports of natural energy resources in theform oil and coal. In addition, Japanese financial capital was also expected to be used to fund an
expansion of China’s energy resource developments so that Japan’s needs could be satisfied.21 In
fact, patterns of trade at the start of the 1980s appeared to support the themes of the core-peripherymodel. For instance, at the time when China had just begun its economic reform program thelarger portion of China’s exports to Japan indeed consisted of raw materials, such as mineral fuels(54.9 percent), while manufactured goods accounted for only 22.6 percent (in 1980).22 Zhang23
notes that the energy trade with Japan was facilitated by a Chinese government monopoly in coaland oil production and arbitrary low domestic energy prices at that time. By comparison, laborLee, “Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty”. See also Tomozo Morino, “China-Japan Trade and Investment
Relations,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 38 no. 2 (1991): 87-94.
15
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship Between Japan and the People's
Republic Of China, no date. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/treaty78.html;
Ryo Kokubun, “The Shifting Nature of Japan-China Relations After the Cold War,” in Japan’s Relations With
China: Facing a Rising Power, ed Lam Peng Er London: Routledge, 2006), 21-36.
16
Yun Zhang, Sino-Japanese Relations in a Trilateral Context: Origins of Misperception (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2017).
17
Lee, China and Japan.
18
Takahara, “Forty-four Years.”
19
R.A. Morse, The Politics of Japan's Energy Strategy Resources—Diplomacy—Security, Research Papers andPolicy Studies No. 3, Institute of East Asian Studies (Berkeley: University of California, 1981).
20
Lee, China and Japan.
21
Lee, “Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty.”
22
Kwan, “The Rise of China as an Economic Power.”
23
Zhang, Sino-Japanese Relations.
14

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan51

intensive exports, for example in textiles and clothing, were constrained due to the Chinese
government’s overriding emphasis on heavy industry (e.g., steel and petrochemicals) as a means ofmodernization.
In the event, economic connections between the two countries grew dramatically following
the Treaty, and the volume of two-way trade increased five-fold by the start of the 1990s.24 Even
more distinctive in the immediate post-Treaty era was the introduction of several government-togovernment agreements on technology transfer, plant exports from Japan to China, scientificexchanges and financial cooperation to assist China’s development. Such a high level of formal
assistance from the Japan side was aimed at fostering China’s economic capacity and stimulating
industrial development beyond the mere exports of oil and agricultural products.25 Theoretically,
the new post-1978 perception of China by the Japanese side may be characterised through the lensof the so-called “flying geese” model of regional advancement, whereby Japan used its position as
the most developed economy in East Asia to bring manufacturing expertise to other countries in
the region in a staged “trickle-down” approach.26 The flying geese model was promulgated in thewritings of Japanese economist Akamatsu Kaname during the 1930s, initially to analyze pre-war
Japan’s relations with surrounding Asian countries and to show how an undeveloped country
might become developed relatively quickly. Later, the model was re-cast in the post-war era as apolicy prescription for development in Asia-Pacific, and to show how the region as a whole mightcatch up with the West.
In summary, the paradigm prescribed that the production of goods made uncompetitive inJapan due to rising wages and material costs should move from country to country in the AsiaPacific region, through Japanese direct foreign investment (DFI) and other forms of technicalassistance. This tactical relocation of industry would lead to a gradual upgrading of othercountries’ industrial ability—from labor-intensive production of clothes, such as T-shirts, to theassembly of consumer goods, such as televisions, and then to more technology-intensive
production, such as semiconductors.27 This Japanese-formulated flying geese theory, when applied
to an analysis of international development in the Asia-Pacific region, offered a clear alternative tothe (static) international vertical division of labor and core-periphery models of relations
entrenched in 19th-century imperialism; also the horizontal division of labor of David Ricardo who
argued that economies grew by exploiting their “natural” differences in competitive advantage. In
the late 1970s and 1980s Japan was clearly the “head goose” among the flock of other countries in
Asia-Pacific, and held largely a nurturing approach to China (and other countries in East Asia), inpart (of course) due its need to sell its products into a growing regional market.
Admittedly, apart from the flying geese principle there were certainly many other politicaland economic factors at play in explaining Japan’s keen interest at this time in “nurturing” China
and preventing the country from slipping back into another Cultural Revolution.28 For instance, theM. Seldon, “China, Japan and the Regional Political Economy of East Asia, 1945-1995,” in Network Power, 306340.
25
Yoichi Yokoi, “Major Developments in Japan-China Economic Interdependence in 1990-1994,” in China andJapan: History, Trends, and Prospects, ed. Christopher Howe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 147-154.
26
Hatch, Asia's Flying Geese; Shigehisa Kasahara, The Asian Developmental State and the Flying Geese Paradigm,
UNCTAD Discussion Papers, No. 213, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2013. Accessed
March, 2019. https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/osgdp20133_en.pdf.
27
Terutomo Ozawa, Institutions, Industrial Upgrading, and Economic Performance in Japan: The “Flying Geese”
Paradigm of Catch-up Growth (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2005).
28
Takahara, “Forty-four Years”.
24

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan52

fact that China had declined to receive any war reparations as part of the 1978 Treaty (estimatedby Lee29 at US$50 billion) linked the compunction to atone for recent history (felt keenly by many
leaders in Japan at this time) to a model of bilateral relations involving the transfer of equipment,materials, technology and capital for China’s economic development. Another important element
included Japan’s search for a solution to the tension between its natural aspirations to improve
relations with China and its prominent membership of the US-backed Cold War camp. Indeed, theJapanese were quite willing to transgress the Cold War ideological divide in East Asia during theearly 1980s and to separate economics and politics (seikei bunri) so as to develop trade relations
with China.30 Let us now look at three important ways in which Japan nurtured China during this
immediate post-Treaty period, and the impact on trade and commerce.
To begin, Japan began providing official development assistance (ODA) to China from theyear following the year after the 1978 Treaty was signed. Initially, this was focused on thedevelopment of large-scale economic infrastructure, such as upgrading of harbors to facilitateshipping, power station construction and the installation of new railway lines connecting inland
regions to coastal areas.31 Apart from such programs of direct economic assistance, China also
used Japanese yen loans to build infrastructure projects as part of its economic reform drive.32
During the 1990s, the emphasis of both Japanese ODA and loans to China shifted in response to
the country’s rapid urbanization, including financing urban subways along with water andsewerage systems and the construction of international airports in both Beijing and Shanghai.
Taube33 notes that at its peak Japan was the largest contributor of bilateral ODA to China. On
average, Japanese ODA in this period was nearly two times as high as that of the second-mostgenerous provider, Germany, and nearly 10 times as high as that from the third-most generous,
France. Moreover, China was Japan’s top ODA destination from the 1980s.34 Overall, with such atransfer of substantial amount of financial resources for over two decades up to the year 2000,
Japan made an important contribution to Chinese economic development and its industrialization
process.35
A second area concerns direct foreign investment (DFI) and technology transfer by
individual Japanese companies in factories producing goods either for export or for local
consumption, as well as service sector investments, such as hotels and department stores.36 At theoutset, the reforms in China to allow foreign investment were highly experimental and designed tolimit DFI to certain coastal special zones.37 On top of this, the legal system governing foreign
Lee, China and Japan.
Akira Iriye, “Chinese-Japanese Relations, 1945-1990,” in China and Japan: History, Trends, and Prospects, ed.
Christopher Howe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 46-59.
31
Tsukasa Takamine, Japan's Development Aid to China: The Long-Running Foreign Policy of Engagement(London: Routledge, 2006).
32
Lee, China and Japan.
33
Markus Taube, “Japan’s Role in China’s Industrialization,” Japan and China, 103-120.
34
Juichi Inada, “Japan’s ODA: Its Impacts on China’s Industrialization and Sino-Japanese Relations,” Japan and
China, 121-140.
35
East Asia Analytical Unit, Asia’s Global Powers: China Japan Relations in the 21 st Century (Parks, ACT:
Commonwealth of Australia, 1996); David Arase, “Japanese ODA Policy Toward China: The New Agenda,”
Japan’s Relations with China, 92-106.
36
Katsuji Nakagane, “Japanese Direct Investment in China: Its Effects on China’s Economic Development,” Japanand China, 52-71.
37
Anthony Gar-on Yeh, “Foreign Investment and Urban Development in China,” in China’s Regions, Polity andEconomy: A Study of Spatial Transformation in the Post-Reform Era, ed. Si-ming Li and Wing-shing Tang (Hong29
30

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan53

investment and their local operations remained rudimentary.38 Against this background, Japanese
investment only trickled into the Chinese economy during the 1980s. It was rarely over 1 percent
of Japan’s total overseas investment, with a much larger percentage at that time going to the Asian
NIES (newly industrializing economies) of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, as
well as the ASEAN group of countries (Association of Southeast Nations).39 But as conditions andregulations changed from the late 1980s, Japanese corporations invested more, largely in the
manufacturing sector, and this increased steadily into the 1990s as a special investment protection
agreement was hammered out between the two countries in 1988.40
Within manufacturing, Japanese-controlled factories in China assembling labor-intensive
textiles, electrical appliances, machinery, and transportation equipment experienced the fastest
growth. Such an investment outflow was generally along the lines predicted by the flying geese
model, leaving the production of sophisticated factory components and materials in Japan, such as
the silicon chips (integrated circuits) that were imported and used in China’s industrial
production.41 More generally, direct foreign investment from many advanced European and North
American countries, as well as Japan, contributed significantly to China’s rapid industrializationand export growth during the 1990s.42 By 1994, China was Japan’s second largest host country to
global DFI, exceeded only by the United States.43 While many Japanese factories in China
comprised (at least initially) simple assembly operations, two examples can be given to show how
Japanese companies contributed significantly to technology transfer during this period.
In 1977, Japan’s Nippon Steel was awarded a Chinese government contract to construct the
Baoshan Iron and Steel complex in Shanghai. Completed in 1985, this project was a near replica of
Nippon Steel’s Kimitsu Works located in Chiba prefecture and at that time Japan’s (and likely theworld’s) most modern steel works. The final completion of the Baoshan steelworks was long
delayed and not without controversy, mainly because Japanese contracts were suspended
temporarily because of China’s budget shortfall in 1981.44 Indeed, the project was eventually
implemented only after a 300 billion yen loan offered from Japan for its completion. However,
Taube45 argues that the fact the steelworks—then the largest in China—went into production at all
was due to Nippon Steel’s willingness to transfer its technological know-how, especiallycomputerized control systems for steel production. In terms of the flying geese model, the projectgenerally supported this paradigm of stimulating development. The technology employed by
Baoshan was, at the time, not in line with the then perceived comparative advantage of China’s
economy, which would have demanded more labor- and less capital-intensive technology.
Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2000), 35-60; Chiwai Cheung and Kwan-yui Wong, “Japanese investment in
China: A Glo-cal Perspective,” in China’s Regions, Polity and Economy, 97-132.
38
Peter Howard Corne, Foreign Investment in China: The Administrative Legal System (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 1996).
39
Shuichi Ono, Sino-Japanese Economic Relationships: Trade, Direct Investment and Future Strategy, World Bank
Discussion Papers, China and Mongolia Department Series No. 146 (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1992);
Pempel, “Transpacific Torii.”
40
East Asia Analytical Unit, Asia’s Global Powers.
41
Christopher Howe, “Introduction; The Changing Political Economy of Sino-Japanese Relations: A Long TermView,” China and Japan: History, Trends, and Prospects, 1-22.
42
Feng Li and Jing Li, Foreign Investment in China (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999).
43
Yadong Luo, Strategy, Structure, and Performance of MNCs in China (Westport, CT.: Quorum, 2001).
44
Lee, China and Japan.
45
Taube, “Japan’s Role in China’s Industrialization.”

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan54

Another case involves the role played in China by Matsushita Kōnosuke, the founder of themodern-day Panasonic Corporation, in the commencement of a modern electronic appliancesindustry. As part of Deng Xiaoping’s visit to Japan in 1978 to sign the Peace and Friendship
Treaty, a trip took place to inspect Matsushita’s latest color TV factory in Ibaraki city, Osaka
prefecture. Kawase46 reports that Deng, impressed with Matsushita’s approach to technology andmanagement, asked him to help modernize China’s electronics sector. Moved by this personal
appeal for help, Matsushita, then 83 years, promised to do everything he could. He visited China
the following year and found that local Chinese assembly factories were using technology largely
from the 1940s. Matsushita then came up with a plan to establish a joint venture, the Japan-China
Electronics Industries Federation, with the aim of promoting the modernization of China’s
electronics industry. While this institution never came to pass, Matsushita set an example to otherJapanese companies by forging a pioneering partnership with the Chinese. Picture tubes, then thecore component of color TVs and one that China needed to import, were chosen as the first factory
set up by Matsushita in Beijing and this opened during 1987, ushering around four decades of thecompany’s business in China.47 Marukawa48 comments more generally on the role taken by
Japanese electronics firms in China. He notes that Japanese corporate presence in the country was
unimportant in the end-production of consumer electronics, for instance TVs and radios, as well as
in household equipment, such as air conditioners. Yet Japanese electronics firms, such as
Matsushita and Toshiba, played a significant part in the local production of key components that
required precision machining, such as cylinder heads and chassis for videocassette recorders, aswell as compressors for refrigerators and air conditioners.
During this period, China’s rapid growth and industrialization was accompanied by striking
changes in the composition of goods traded with Japan, as predicted by the flying geese model.
Thus, from the early 1990s nearly half of Japan’s imports from China consisted mainly ofmachinery and other manufactured goods, rather than the emphasis during the 1970s largely onenergy materials or agricultural products. For instance, the share of oil in Japan’s imports from
China dropped to 14 percent over the decade of the 1980s.49 Conversely, iron and steel, which
accounted for 53 percent of Japan’s total exports to China in 1977, represented only 17 percent in
1989. The type of products imported from China also changed significantly, reflecting the growing
sophistication of Chinese manufacturing together with the decline (and offshoring) of Japaneselabor-intensive manufacturing, such as textiles and the simple assembly of consumer goods,
including televisions and other audio-visual products.50 Thus, in 1994, 32.7 percent of Japanese
imports from China consisted of basic low-skilled labor-intensive manufactured goods, including

Kenji Kawase, “China Praises Panasonic's Matsushita for Aiding Country's Reforms,” Nikkei Asian Review.
December 21, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-Insight/China-praisesPanasonic-s-Matsushita-for-aiding-country-s-reforms.
47
Roger Hayter and David William Edgington, Multinational Corporations, Post-entry Frictions and Market
Embeddedness in China: A Case Study of Panasonic, unpublished manuscript, 2019.
48
Tomoo Marukawa, “Japanese FDI and China’s Industrial Development in the Automobile, Electronics and Textile
Industries,” Japan and China, 174-193.
49
Ono, Sino-Japanese Economic Relationships, vii.
50
Yoichi Yokoi, “Major Developments in Japan-China Economic Interdependence in 1990-1994,” China andJapan, 147-154.
46

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55

woven apparel, knitwear and footwear. By 2000 the share of these products declined, replaced by
the growth of machinery and electrical equipment.51
In summary, even though the 1980s was marred by the Tiananmen Square protests (in1989), the 1990s emerged as a “Golden Age” of China-Japan relations in which bilateral tradeand foreign investment from Japan blossomed.52 By 2000 Shanghai was second only to Los
Angeles in terms of the number of Japanese expatriates living there.53 Offering theoreticalendorsement to this success, Hayter and Edgington54 showed that Japanese multinational
corporations (MNCs) looked for cheap labour locations widely in Asia-Pacific countries, such as
China, while developing economies in the region were themselves seeking out investment for
their export industries. In other words, the motivations of the two sides were generally congruent
and harmonious. The 1985 revaluation of the Japanese currency (endaka) led to further moves of
production assembly from Japan to the Asia-Pacific region along flying geese lines, and to Japan
topping the list of foreign investors in China.55 Later, as China’s economy boomed, Japan saw
the Chinese market as a way of revitalizing its own economy after the bursting of the Japanese“bubble economy” in the 1990s. Accordingly, bilateral trade between Japan and China
ballooned, with China surpassing the United States as Japan's largest trading partner in the
2000s.56
Overall, there was no perceived economic conflict in this “golden age” from the Japanside, as Japan was still the number one economy in Asia. Importantly, the U.S. was supportive
based on its shared geopolitical interests with both Japan and China during this time.57 Indeed, inthe 1970s and 1980s all three nations saw the Soviet Union as their chief threat during the final
years of the Cold War era. There was only a virtuous cycle of investment and trade, and many
imports from China came into Japan from Japanese firms’ factories in China, such as clothing andconsumer electronics.58
3. CHINA ENTERS THE WTO: “THE DANGEROUS YEARS” 2001-2017_____________At the beginning of the present millennium, China’s economic rise was marked by its entry
into the World Trade Organization (WTO) during 2001, signifying its deeper integration into theCongressional Research Service, Sino-Japanese Relations: Issues for U.S. Policy. Washington, D.C.,
Congressional Research Service. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20081219_R40093_245010b5d91b727aa6f405e3c6fc703838f29a3b.pdf.
52
Nakagane, “Japanese Direct Investment in China.”
53
Xiaojing Xing, “China Gradually Shifts from Factory for Japan to its Main Market, Economic Competitor,”
Global Times. September 5, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1118441.shtml.
54
Roger Hayter and David William Edgington, “Flying Geese in Asia: The Impacts of Japanese MNCs as a Sourceof Industrial Learning,” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 95 (2004): 3-26.
55
Richard F. Doner, “Japan in East Asia: Institutions and Regional Leadership,” Network Power, 197-233.
56
Congressional Research Service, Sino-Japanese Relations.
57
Ezra F. Y. Vogel, Yuan Ming, and Akihiko Tanaka, eds. The Golden Age of the U.S.-China-Japan Triangle.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002.
58
East Asia Analytical Unit, Asia’s Global Powers; Greg Austin and Stuart Harris, Japan and Greater China:
Political Economy and Military Power in the Asian Century (London: Hurst & Company, 2001); Hanns Günther
Hilpert and Katsuji Nakagane, “Economic Relations: What Can We Learn From Trade and FDI?,” in ChineseJapanese Relations in the Twenty-first Century, ed. Marie Söderburg (London: Routledge, 2002), 130-153; June
Teufel Dreyer, Middle Kingdom and Empire of the Rising Sun: Sino-Japanese Relations, Past and Present (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016).
51

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan56

global economy.59 Japan very much supported China’s entry into the WTO.60 Indeed, Japanesefirms expected that China-Japan economic relations would grow in more or less the same virtuous
pattern as before and looked forward to China reducing its trade tariffs and engaging in openmarket reforms.61 Following 2000, however, due to a trade dispute the growth of Japanese exports
to China declined by 30.4 percent to just 2.2 percent.62 Thereafter, exports picked up to 28.2
percent growth in 2002 and reached a staggering 43.6 percent growth in 2003. By 2004, Japan’s
trade with China totaled US$168 billion and for the first time in post-World War II history China
surpassed the U.S. to become Japan’s largest trading partner thereby deepening the dependence ofJapan on the Chinese economy.63 Of more consequence, Japanese (and other countries’) foreign
direct investment continued to pour into China, much of it in manufacturing. It became clear that,in the wake of the late-1990s Asian financial crisis and its entry into the WTO, China in the 2000s
had become a “factory to the world” involving both domestic as well as overseas producers, muchthe same as Japan was in the 1960s and 1970s.64
After this, Japanese perceptions of China changed. Alongside its supercharged growthduring this period, it became apparent to the Japanese side that China had outgrown the flying
geese model of staged development in Asia as it now was capable of making both rocket ships andT-shirts at the same time.65 China had finally “stood up” as an economic peer of Japan.
Accordingly, perceptions in Japan of China as an “aid recipient” country changed to one of a“formidable competitor.”66 Indeed, by 2010 China eventually surpassed Japan as the world’s
second largest economy following the U.S., with a GDP worth U.S.$5.9 trillion in that year.67
Although Japan’s GDP per capita still exceeded (and continues to exceed) that of China, there wasclearly a limit to the growth of Japan’s economic power, in large part due to its aging population,and the difference in per capita GDP between China and Japan continued to shrink. This gave a
sharp impression in Japan of a shift in the balance of power between the two countries.68
Apart from shifting economic power relations, the 2000s and 2010s were also “dangerous
years” for Japanese traders and investors. Political tension between China and Japan grew overvisits by Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine, a new controversial Japanese

Nicholas R. Lardy, Integrating China into the Global Economy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press,
2002).
60
Frederick M Abbot, “China's Accession to the WTO,” Insights (The American Society of International Law) 3 no.
1 (1998). Accessed March, 2019. https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/3/issue/1/chinas-accession-wto.
61
Hisashi Mino, “China’s Accession to WTO and Japan-China Economic Relations: A New Stage of Bilateral
Division of Labor,” in China Enters WTO: Pursuing Symbiosis with The Global Economy, ed. Ippei Yamazawa and
Ken-ichi Imai (Chiba: Institute of Developing Economics, Japan External Trade Organization, 2001), 110-131.
62
Takahara, “Forty-four Years.”
63
Dreyer, Middle Kingdom.
64
Kevin Honglin Zhang, ed., China as the World Factory (London: Routledge, 2006).
65
The Economist, “China's Economic Challenge to East Asia: A Panda Breaks the Formation.” August 23, 2001.
Accessed March, 2019. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2001/08/23/a-panda-breaks-theformation.
66
Yun Zhang, Sino-Japanese Relations in a Trilateral Context: Origins of Misperception (New York, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2017).
67
The Guardian, “China Overtakes Japan as World's Second-largest Economy.” February 14, 2011. Accessed
March, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/feb/14/china-second-largest-economy.
68
Ming Wan, Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic, and Transformation (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow
Wilson Center Press, 2006).
59

JSAC 2019 | Japan’s World / The World’s Japan57

history textbook for schools and territorial conflict over islands in the East China Sea.69 Combined,
these led in 2012 to anti-Japanese demonstrations in Shanghai, and anti-Chinese protests in Tokyo(for major events between 2001 to 2017, see Table 4.1). The demonstrations in Chinese cities
affected Japanese production, including the local facilities of Matsushita’s Panasonic Corporationeven though the company was heralded as a benefactor of China’s modernization.70 Thus, in
September of that year Panasonic halted operations at three factories after angry protestors
ransacked Japanese businesses. A Panasonic factory was also set on fire and the company
suspended work at three plants for several days after factories in Qingdao and Suzhou weredamaged by protestors. In addition, Panasonic also halted operations at a factory in Guangdong
province as local employees staged a strike against Japan’s claims to the island chain called
Diaoyu by China and Senkaku by Japan. Other Japanese companies affected by the unrest in China
included Honda and Canon.71
Table 4.1 2001-2017: The Dangerous Years
Month/Year Event
August 2001
Japan Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro, who took office in April, visits
the Yasukuni Shrine, which is controversial as it enshrines Class A war
criminals among the 2.5 million soldiers there. He angers China with thisannual ritual, which he observes until he steps down in 2006.
April 2005
October 2006
May 2008
2010
September 2010

December 2011

Anti-Japanese demonstrations in many Chinese cities due to a new,controversial Japanese history textbook.
Abe Shinzō, in his first term as Japan’s Prime Minister, makes a fencemending trip to Beijing, commencing a series of annual visits. These stopin 2011.
Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Japan to sign a joint statement toadvance relations based on “common strategic interests” (the 2008
Agreement).
China overtakes Japan as the world’s second-largest economy.
China-Japan ties deteriorate after a Chinese fishing trawler collides with
two Japanese Coast Guard boats near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu
islands. The Chinese fishing boat captain is arrested. China temporarily
halts the exports of rare earth materials to Japan.
Japanese PM Noda Yoshihiko visits Beijing. No Japanese premier visits
China, outside a multilateral gathering, until 2018.

Nicklas Swanström and Ryosei Kokubun, eds., Sino-Japanese Relations: The Need for Conflict Prevention andManagement (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Press. 2008).
70
Kevin Voigt, “Panasonic Closes China Plants after Violent Protests,” CNN Business. September 17, 2012.
Accessed March, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/17/business/china-japan-panasonic/index.html.
71
The Guardian, “Japanese Firms Close Offices in China as Islands Row Escalates.” September 17, 2012. Accessed
March, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/17/japanese-firms-close-offices-china.
69

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September 20122013-2017

Sino-Japan ties plunge to an all-time low after Tokyo effectively
nationalizes the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Large-scale anti-Japanesedemonstrations breakout across China, with the Chinese calling for aboycott of Japanese products and setting ablaze factories and offices ofJapanese companies in China. Anti-Chinese protests occur in Tokyo.
Both militaries dispatch jets over the disputed islands. Japan scrambles arecord number of fighter jets in 2017, rising to an all-time high of 1,168 in
the year to March 2017.

Sources: Congressional Research Service, Sino-Japanese Relations: Issues for U.S. Policy. Washington,
D.C.:Congressional Research Service, 2008. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20081219_R40093_245010b5d91b727aa6f405e3c6fc703838f29a3
b.pdf; Toshiya Hoshino and Haruko Satoh, “Through the Looking Glass? China's Rise as Seen FromJapan,” Journal of Asian Public Policy 5 (2012); Jeffrey W. Hornung, “Japan’s Growing Hard Hedge
Against China,” Asian Security 10 (2014): 97-122, 181-198; various news reports in The Guardian and
The Japan Times.

Nonetheless, driven by the inertia of long-term trading contracts, Japanese exports to
China held up well during 2013 and 2014. On the other hand, worsening political relations
between the two countries eventually caught up and Japan’s commercial ties to China went on a
sharp fall in 2015 and 2016.72 For instance, Japan was the biggest source of foreign investment in
China during 2011 but the Chinese protests against Japan over island disputes led to steep
declines in Japanese DFI in China during 2013 and 2014, with year-on-year investment droppingby 20 and 50 percent, respectively, and a further fall in 2015 by 25.2 percent.73 By 2016
Japanese DFI in China had dropped to fifth place, accompanied by a corresponding increase inJapanese production investment in Southeast Asia, including in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia
and Singapore.74 Indeed, some observers predicted that the two economies might be evendecoupling, thereby reducing the economic consequences of a prolonged bilateral conflict. 75
The long-standing territorial disputes, together with the shifting balance of economic power
between Japan and China, also increased competitive tensions in other fields.76 By way ofillustration, China built up its own technology giants during the 2000s, such as Haier and Hisense(both are electronics and home appliances companies), Huawei (a telecommunications equipment
company), and commercial giants such as the Alibaba Group, owner of the South China Morning
Michael Ivanovich, “Japan’s Trade with China is Booming, but Irreconcilable Differences Persist,” CNBC News.
September 2, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/03/china-japan-trade-booms-despite-irreconcilable-differences--commentary.html.
73
Norihiko Shirouzu and Kazunori Takada, “Two Years After Protests, ‘China Risk’ Still Haunts Japan Firms,”
Reuters. September 12, 2014. Accessed March, 2019. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/two-years-protests-china-risk210021974.html,
74
Financial Times, “Donald Trump’s Tariffs Prompt Thaw in China-Japan Ties.” August 30, 2018. Accessed
March, 2019. https://www.ft.com/content/3c23bb06-ac48-11e8-94bd-cba20d67390c,
75
Gordon G. Chang, “The Chinese And Japanese Economies Are Delinking: Prelude To Conflict?,” Forbes.
February 14, 2014. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2014/02/16/the-chinese-andjapanese-economies-are-delinking-prelude-to-conflict/#26ce802c3291.
76
Jeffrey W. Hornung, “Japan’s Growing Hard Hedge Against China,” Asian Security 10 (2014): 97-122.
72

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Post and a leader in Asian e-commerce, retail, Internet and AI technology.77 Indeed, for the firsttime Chinese firms began to outcompete Japanese technology companies, not only in the Chinese
market but also in the global arena.78 Japanese firms operating in China also worried about
Chinese violations of intellectual property rights and technology theft.79 Other markers of the newcompetition between “giant” Chinese and Japanese companies included a spate of high-profile
purchases of Japanese electronics firms by their Chinese competitors. These included China’sHaier Group Corporation’s acquisition of Japan’s Sanyo Corporation’s “white goods” business in2011 (involving household equipment such as washing machines and refrigerators), and HisenseCo., Ltd’s purchase of Japanese Toshiba Corporation’s TV business in 2017.80
Besides this kind of direct commercial rivalry, Japan-China competition spilled over into
the adjoining Asia-Pacific region as China began to compete with Japanese infrastructure projects
in Southeast Asia.81 In summary, Japan had begun its own program of large-scale investment in
ASEAN nations during the 1970s when the Japanese government quickly became the dominantsource of funds. By the 1990s Japan’s influence had escalated to where it had formulated an
overriding vision for infrastructure connectivity across the region, involving new roads and raillines.82 By contrast, China was a relatively recent newcomer to the ASEAN region and lagged
behind Japan in overall influence. Nonetheless, Chinese investment in Asian construction projects
backed by government loans grew dramatically in the years after 2001. During that time, large
infrastructure projects in ASEAN nations began to be contested almost exclusively by Chinese andJapanese firms.83
By way of illustration, the new competition in the area of infrastructure developments was
visible in the way Chinese and Japanese companies bid for the same high-speed railway projects inIndonesia, Thailand and Malaysia.84 Government rivalry also accompanied these commercial
investment bids, as Chinese infrastructure firms tended to be state-owned, while Japan’s received
significant political support from their national government. In broad-scale, their competitive
tenders reflected different industrial strengths: Japan typically offered more advanced technology,
Mara Hvistendahl, “China’s Tech Giants Want to Go Global: Just One Thing Might Stand in Their Way,” MIT
Technology Review. December 19, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612598/chinas-tech-giants-want-to-go-global-just-one-thing-might-stand-intheir-way/.
78
Roger Cheng, “The Era of Japanese Consumer Electronics Giants is Dead,” CNet. November 9, 2012, accessed
March, 2019. https://www.cnet.com/news/the-era-of-japanese-consumer-electronics-giants-is-dead/.
79
South China Morning Post, “Japan ‘Wants to Join US in Complaining About Chinese Intellectual Property Laws
to World Trade Organisation.’” April 6, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/2140671/japan-seeks-join-world-trade-organization-complaint-usagainst-china.
80
Chuanjiao Xie, “Toshiba Sells TV business to Hisense,” China Daily. November 15, 2017. Accessed March,2019.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-11/15/content_34550381.htm.
81
Amelia Duggan, “Japan, China and the Contest for Influence in Contemporary Asia,” Asia-Pacific Foundation of
Canada. November 6, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.asiapacific.ca/blog/japan-china-and-contestinfluence-contemporary-asia.
82
Takashi Shiraishi, “Japan and Southeast Asia,” Network Power, 169-194.
83
Hong Zhou, Chinese and Japanese Infrastructure Investment in Southeast Asia: From Rivalry to Cooperation?,
IDE Discussion Paper No. 689 (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 2018).
84
Hong Zhou, “Japan and China Crossing Tracks in Southeast Asia,” East Asia Forum. September 15, 2018.
Accessed March, 2019. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/09/15/japan-and-china-crossing-tracks-in-southeastasia/.
77

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but China was seen as more cost-competitive. A key example of how this particular rivalry playedout concerns the case of Indonesia, where the first major high-speed rail project opened for bidding
was the 150 km link from Jakarta to the country’s fourth largest city, Bandung, in 2009. Afteraround five years of feasibility studies, Japanese officials and corporations felt close to securing
the project in 2015. But as the window for final bidding drew to a close, China won the contract by
undercutting Japanese companies, increasing the funding and lowering the specifications in orderto reduce costs. In response, the Japanese side accused the Chinese consortium of offering
unrealistic time scales and underestimating project expenses.85 Both China and Japan became
important sources of investment for ASEAN countries, who were seen by both countries as
valuable markets and key trade partners. China is now ASEAN’s largest single trading partner,
eclipsing Japan in 2015.86
More generally, China and Japan developed competing visions of how to develop the wider
Asia-Pacific region.87 Thus, since 2013 China promoted a “One Belt One Road” initiative together
with a “21st-Century Maritime Silk Road” project (Figure 4.1). Together, they formed a major
program of foreign-financed road, rail and harbor expenditure in Asia. Most “Belt and Road”
projects have been built by Chinese state-owned companies and paid for with loans fromgovernment banks at commercial interest rates.88 Japan, on the other hand, fostered its own “Freeand Open Indo-Pacific” vision, along with the United States, which comprised an alternative
project to provide connectivity across the Indian Ocean, one that emphasizes “high-quality”
infrastructure and maritime law enforcement.89 Thus, since its inception Japan has been wary of
the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, and it launched its own competing version called the“Partnership for Quality Infrastructure.”90
In effect, the two countries became geopolitical and economic rivals, each trying topromote itself as the partner of choice for less powerful neighboring Asian nations. The twodifferent visions for Asia-Pacific connections shown in Figure 4.1 were mirrored by twocompeting development banks, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), set up by China
in 2014, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which had supported economic and social

Ravi Prasad, “The China-Japan Infrastructure Nexus: Competition or Collaboration?,” The Diplomat. May 18,
2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=R.+Prasad+(2018)+The+ChinaJapan+Infrastructure+Nexus:+Competition+or+Collaboration%3F,+18+May,+The+Diplomat,+---&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8.
86
Zhou, “Japan and China Crossing Tracks.”
87
Mie Oba, “Sino-Japanese Competition Over Regional Institutions in Asia,” in Chinese–Japanese Competition andthe East Asian Security Complex: Vying for Influence, ed. Jeffrey Reeves, Jeffrey Hornung and Kerry Lynn
Nankivell (London: Routledge, 2017), 53-70.
88
Zheping Huang, “One Belt, One Road: Your Guide to Understanding OBOR, China’s New Silk Road Plan,”
Quartz. May 15, 2017. Accessed March, 2019.
https://qz.com/983460/obor-an-extremely-simple-guide-to-understanding-chinas-one-belt-one-road-forum-for-itsnew-silk-road/.
89
Julian Richard Lasius, “Strategic Implications of Indo-Japanese Cooperation on the ‘Asia and Africa Growth
Corridor,’” Observer Research Foundation, Issue No. 223, January 15, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.orfonline.org/research/strategic-implications-of-indo-japanese-cooperation-on-the-asia-and-africagrowth-corridor/.
90
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Quality Infrastructure Investment, no date. Accessed March. 2019.
https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000175945.pdf.
85

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development of the Asia-Pacific region since 1966 and was led by Japan and the U.S.91 The AIIB,
together with a specific Silk Road Fund established in China, aimed at providing investment andfinancial support for trade and economic cooperation under the One Belt One Road framework.
While many Western and Asian countries became founding members of the new AIIB, Japan andthe U.S. decided to boycott the new bank citing their desire not to see it undermine the pre-existing
ADB.92 This decision indicated not only Japan’s skepticism about the AIIB’s governance system,
but also a serious concern over China’s apparent ambition to replace the region’s existing financial
system of governance with one led by Japan.

Figure 4.1 China’s Belt and Road Scheme and Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy
Source: adapted from a diagram in Nikkei Asian Review, “Japan Floats Business Aid Idea for China's Beltand Road Plan.” December 31, 2017. Accessed March, 2019. https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan-floatsbusiness-aid-idea-for-China-s-Belt-and-Road-plan2.

A third major form of rivalry that emerged between China and Japan in the past 10 years or
so concerns competing global trade blocs. In Japan’s case it supported the Trans-PacificPartnership (TPP), a comprehensive trade agreement championed by former U.S. president Obama
in 2009 that was often framed as a U.S. tool to “contain” the expansion of China’s power.93
Conversely, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) set up in 2012 andRamon Pacheco Pardo, “China, Japan, and Economic Security Competition (and Cooperation) in the AsiaPacific,” Chinese–Japanese Competition, 71-85.
92
John Browne, “Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank Challenges U.S. Supremacy,” Financial Post. March 31,
2015. Accessed March, 2019.
https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/john-browne-chinese-bank-challenges-u-s-supremacy,
93
Daniel C.K Chow, “How the United States Uses the Trans-Pacific Partnership to Contain China in International
Trade,” Chicago Journal of International Law 17 no. 2 (2016): 370-402.
91

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supported by China was widely understood by Japan as China’s tool (together with the Chinadominated AIIB) to counter U.S. intent to construct a new economic order by means of the TPP(see Figure 4.2).94 From a geo-economics point of view, Japan has been a founding member of the
RCEP from 2012, while Japan only joined TPP negotiations in 2013.95 However, following thewithdraw of the U.S. from TPP negotiations by President Donald Trump in 2017, Japan became
the major economic partner and the finalizing of the TPP was spearheaded by Prime Minister Abe
Shinzō in 2018. The TPP’s final approval by the remaining partner countries sent a clear politicalsignal to the Asia-Pacific region that Japan no longer saw its own economic security through thelens of protecting its domestic economy from global competition, but through increasing
interdependence, openness and mutual concessions. By contrast, a full-scale trade agreement under
the RCEP has been delayed, due largely to India’s concerns about reductions in tariffs on its
imports.96

Figure 4.2. Competing Global Trade Blocs: TPP and RCEP (2015)
Source: World Bank data, adapted from a diagram in Mireya Solis, “The Case for Trade and the TransPacific Partnership,” Brookings. October, 2016. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-trans-pacific-partnership-the-politics-of-openness-andleadership-in-the-asia-pacific/.

The National Interest, “TPP vs. RCEP: America and China Battle for Control of Pacific Trade.” October 6. 2015.
Accessed March, 2019.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/tpp-vs-rcep-america-china-battle-control-pacific-trade-14021.
95
Jemma Kim, Japan and East Asian Integration: Trade and Domestic Politics (London: Routledge, 2018).
96
Peter Petri and Michael Plummer, “The Case for RCEP as Asia’s Next Trade Agreement,” East Asia Forum.
November 6, 2018. Accessed March, 2018.
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/11/06/rcep-evidence-of-asian-leadership-on-trade/.
94

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All in all, the years following 2000 saw an end of any “golden age”’ of China-Japan
relations marked by a congruent flying geese formation in East Asia headed by Japan.97 Besides
commercial rivalry between Japanese and Chinese firms, Japan’s hopes to lever its economic ties
with Asia-Pacific into broader political influence was derailed by China’s rise, evidenced by
China’s Belt and Road program and its willingness to acquire influence through financing
infrastructure undertakings. With China now being the largest trading partner for all Asian
nations, it occupied a central position and became a formidable geo-economic rival.98 The role of
the U.S. in this period was largely one of Japan’s main ally and it seemed that China and the U.S.
also appeared to be on a collision course.99
4. BACK ON TRACK IN 2018?_________________________________________________The last two years or so have seen yet another shift in the Chinese-Japanese economic
relationship—together with Japanese perceptions—one involving an unlikely warming up of ties
in response to trade war measures against both countries by the administration of U.S. President
Donald Trump.100 It is not completely clear to what extent the new relationship was truly
triggered by changed U.S. trade and security policies towards East Asia. Still, many
commentators have pointed to the “trade wars” between the U.S. and China and Japan thatcommenced during 2017 as prompting President Xi to improve ties with Japan, and for Japan towelcome China’s overtures.101 The apparent thaw in what prior to 2018 was a frigid and at times
hostile Japan-China relationship underscores the destabilizing impact of President Trump’s“America First” policies.102 In particular, both China and Japan have jointly opposed President
Trump’s protectionist trade policy by Japan supporting the revised TPP (now called theComprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP), China
further advocating completion of the RCEP, as well as both countries accelerating talks on a
proposed China–Japan–South Korea free trade agreement.103
For Japan, President Trump threatened a 25 percent tariff on Japanese automobiles
imported to the U.S. in March 2018 in order to force Japan into trade negotiations designed toPeter J. Katzenstein, “East Asia—Beyond Japan,” Beyond Japan, 1-33; Lindsey Black, “Japan’s Aspirations for
Regional Leadership—Is the Goose Finally Cooked?” Japanese Studies 37 (2017):151-170.
98
Bill Emmot, Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade(London Allen Lane, 2008); Zhang, Sino-Japanese Relations.
99
Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with China (New York: Vintage Books, 1998).
100
The Japan Times, “Japan and China Agree to Bolster Economic Cooperation Amid Concerns Over Trade Warwith U.S.” August 30, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/08/30/business/japanchina-confirm-agreement-trade-protectionism-benefits-no-nation/#.XMSgty0ZOCU.
101
Anthony Rowley, “Japan and China are Being Pushed Into Each Other’s Arms by Donald Trump’s Antics,”
South China Morning Post. September 30, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/business/article/2166214/japan-and-china-are-being-pushed-each-others-arms-donaldtrumps-antics.
102
Hal Brands and Peter Feaver, “Living in Trump’s World: The Global Reaction to ‘America First,” War on theRocks. March, 27, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://warontherocks.com/2018/03/living-in-trumps-world-the-global-reaction-to-america-first/.
97

Rumi Aoyama, “Japan–China Ties are Tightening,” East Asia Forum. May 24, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/05/24/japan-china-ties-are-tightening/.
103

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reverse what was seen as a structural balance of trade deficit in Japan’s favor.104 China also had
trade issues with the U.S. In April 2018 President Trump threatened tariffs to halt imported
Chinese products worth around US$50 billion, claiming Chinese theft of U.S intellectual property.
In the event, the United States imposed 25 percent duties covering $50 billion of Chinese-madegoods in July 2018, followed by a threatened second round of 10 percent tariffs covering another$200 billion of Chinese exports, including vacuum cleaners and internet devices, the latter rate tojump to 25 percent at the end of that year. To pressure China over trade, Trump further warned ofa third round of tariffs on $267 billion of goods, which would bring all of China’s exports to theUnited States into a new tariff regime.105 China at first refused to negotiate, but eventually agreed
to talks in late 2018.106 In other words, compared to the previous decades, China and Japan now
experienced a direct shared threat in the unlikely form of the U.S. Historically, such a common
menace has been an effective reason for building alliances more widely for these two Asian
countries. Accordingly, on the premise of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” (an ancient
Asian proverb) President Xi of and Prime Minister Abe made overtures to each other to findcommercial and trade opportunities.107
Signs of a thaw in Japan-China relations first came in June 2017 when Prime Minister Abe
expressed willingness to cooperate with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, albeit with certain
conditions.108 This shift in Japanese foreign policy was instantly welcomed by the Chinese
government, which happened to be considering re-orienting its own foreign policy to improve ties
with Japan.109 Thus, in December 2017 President Xi approved a Communist Party internal memo
calling for improved relations with Japan following the U.S. National Security Strategy naming
China as an official “competitor.”110 The move towards closer bilateral relations then shifted intohigh gear during 2018 when there was a flurry of dialogue together with visits between dignitaries
leading up to the 40th anniversary of the 1978 Treaty. These involved trips by Japanese politicians
and business groups to Beijing, and vice versa, as well as important discussions of leaders at side
meetings of international summits. Eventually, Prime Minister Abe visited China during 25th-27th
Steve Holland and David Lawder, “Japan Dodges U.S. Auto Tariffs, For Now, as Trump and Abe Agree on
Trade Talks,” Reuters. September 16, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-japan/japan-dodges-u-s-auto-tariffs-for-now-as-trump-and-abe-agreeon-trade-talks-idUSKCN1M62Q9.
105
Ju-min Park and Makiko Yamazaki, “Asian Firms Shuffle Production Around the Region as China Tariffs Hit,”
Reuters. 22 September, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-chinaproduction-focus/asian-firms-shuffle-production-around-the-region-as-china-tariffs-hit-idUSKCN1M305B.
106
South China Morning Post, “China May Reject New Trade Talks, Won’t Negotiate ‘With a Gun Pointed to its
Head.’” 17 September, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2164456/report-china-may-reject-new-trade-talks-wontnegotiate-gun.
107
Saki Hayashi, “Japan and China Pledge to Accelerate Free Trade Talks,” Nikkei Asian Review. April 16, 2018.
Accessed March, 2019. https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Japan-and-China-pledge-to-accelerate-free-trade-talks.
108
Editors East Asia Forum, “Japan Opens the Way to Cooperation on China’s Belt and Road Initiative” East Asia
Forum. July 10, 2017. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/07/10/japan-opens-the-way-tocooperation-on-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative/.
109
Aoyama, “Japan–China Ties.”
110
Michal Thim, “Why Trump’s New Security Strategy on China and Taiwan means the Gloves are Off in Sino-US
Rivalry,” South China Morning News. December 20, 2017. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2125047/why-trumps-new-security-strategy-china-andtaiwan-means.
104

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October 2018, which was the first visit to China by a Japanese prime minister since 2011 (seeTable 4.2).
Table 4.2 Major Events and High-level Visits Leading up to the 40th Anniversary of the 1978
Treaty of Peace and Cooperation
Month/YearMay 2017

Event
Toshihiro Nikai, Secretary-General ofJapan’s Liberal Democratic Party,
attends the Belt and Road Forum in
Beijing.

Major Outcomes
Chinese President Xi welcomed
Japan’s endorsement of theinitiative, explaining that The Beltand Road Initiative can be a newplatform and an “experimental
field” for China and Japan toachieve mutually beneficial
cooperation and common
development.
August 2017
PM Abe meets with President Xi on the Xi told Abe the countries weresidelines of the G20 summit inimportant neighbors, and said theHamburg.
healthy development of relations
was of importance to the rest of theworld.
November 2017 PM Abe meets with President Xi at the Both leaders agreed to make “aannual Asia Pacific Economic
fresh start” and that “constructive
Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Da
steps” should be made toNang, Vietnam.
“appropriately manage and control
disputes that exist between the twocountries.”
April 2017
Fourth High-Level Economic Dialogue Both sides shared the view tobetween Japan and China convenes incontinue to observe the principles
Tokyo after an eight-year hiatus.
enunciated in the four basic
documents forming thefoundations of China-Japan
relations.
May 2018
Chinese Premier Li Kequiang
A memorandum of understanding tovisits Japan, the first Premier to do so in set up a joint maritime and air
eight years.
liaison mechanism to manage
possible crises in the East China Sea;
relaxed rules for Japanese financial
institutions investing in yuandenominated Chinese stocks andbonds; the creation of an entity to
discuss the softening of China’s
regulations on importing Japanesefood products.

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August 2018

Japanese Finance Minister Aso Taromeets with his counterpart Lui Kun in
Beijing. Around the same time, Nikai
Toshiro, secretary-general of Japan’s
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), meetswith China’s Vice President Wang
Qishan.

China was ready to work withJapan to inject more positiveenergy into bilateral relations. The
two countries acknowledged theimportance of bolstering financial
cooperation, amid growing fears
that an intensifying U.S.-China
trade war would hurt the global
economy. The two countries
negotiated a currency swap
arrangement: the original deal
expired in 2013 and was notrenewed amid sharp tensions over
the territorial dispute between
Tokyo and Beijing over the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the
East China Sea.
August 2018
Japanese PM Abe and Chinese Premier PM Abe said in his message that he
Li exchange congratulatory messages to was “very pleased to have Japanmark the 40th anniversary of the signing China relations return to a normalof the Treaty of Peace and Friendship.
path.”
Japanese Foreign Minister Kono Taroexchanged similar messages with his
Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.
AugustLeaders of Fujian and Sichuan provinces, Pursuit of Japanese foreign
September 2018 as well as Beijing, visit Japan.
investment.
September 2018 PM Abe holds a summit meeting with
Discussions on the North Korean
President Xi at the fourth Eastern
security issue.
Economic Forum in Vladivostok,
Russian Federation.
September 2018 Nakanishi Hiroaki, the head of Japan’s Exchange of views on free trade, theKeidanren (the Japan Businessdigital economy and the proposed
Federation), together with around 240
RCEP, together with a possible
Japanese business leaders visit Beijing
review of Chinese restrictions on
as part of the Japan-China Economic
food from Fukushima prefecture.
Association and meet with
Premier Li and senior officials of
the Chinese Commerce Ministry
and National Development and Reform
Commission.

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October 2018

October 2018
October 2018

14th Beijing-Tokyo Forum takes place in Discussion of joint cooperation inTokyo.
China’s Belt and Road projects.
China and Japan to deepen
cooperation to achieve
denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula.
Japanese Defense Minister Iwaya
Commenced exchange programs
Takeshi and his Chinese counterpart
between each countries’ defense
Wei Fenghe meet in Singapore.
authorities and troops.
PM Abe visits President Xi in Beijing. Agreements to boost bilateral
economic cooperation and topromote free trade; to move ahead
with around 50 infrastructure
projects in third countries; to launch
dialogue on cooperation in cuttingedge technologies andintellectual property rights
protections; agreements relating toelder care, the securities market anda currency swap line in case offinancial crisis. Broad agreement tolease a pair of Chinese pandas to a
Japanese zoo.

Sources: Various news reports and commentary in East Asia Forum, Mainichi Japan, Nikkei Asian
Review, Reuters, South China Morning Post, The Asahi Shimbun, The Diplomat, and The Japan Times.

What was achieved at this historic occasion marking the 40th anniversary of the 1978
Treaty? Apart from the customary diplomatic rhetoric between leaders, a series of compacts aimed
at deepening economic and trade ties took place revolving around business cooperation, technicalinnovation, the finance sector and free trade agreements. At a press briefing in Beijing, a Chinese
foreign ministry spokesman remarked that the visit would “elevate our bilateral ties and put
bilateral cooperation back on the right track.”111 Prime Minister Abe also pledged to lift Tokyo’s
often-tense relations with Beijing into a “new dimension” in a “new era” of cooperation. And at a
meeting held with President Xi, Prime Minister Abe proposed three principles: “switching fromcompetition to cooperation; becoming partners instead of being threats to each other, anddeveloping a free and fair trade system.”112 This emphasis on improved economic and commercial
Agence France-Press, “Shinzo Abe’s Visit to China a Sign of Warming Relations
Japan and China are Set to Thaw a Seven-year Cooling of Relations Amid Beijing's Worsening Trade War with theUS,” Aljzeera, 12 October, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/shinzo-abe-visit-china-visit-japan-pm-2011-181012090336310.html.
112
Issaku Harada, Oki Nagai and Shunsuke Shigeta, “Xi and Abe Use Economy as Binding Force But Hold Back on
Security: Collaboration To Replace Competition as Guiding Principle of Relations,” Nikkei Asian Review. October27, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Xi-and-Abe-use-economy-as-binding-force-but-hold-back-onsecurity.
111

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relations was further underscored by a large number of private agreements exceeding $8 billion
dollars signed by various Chinese and Japanese corporations relating to business cooperation
projects in “third countries.”113 Mr. Abe also remarked: “The horizon of cooperation isextending.”114 In turn, President Xi noted: “With efforts from both sides, the China-Japan relations
have entered the right track and are facing an important opportunity for improvement.” So, what
exactly might the new spirit of cooperation lead to and where might greater development
opportunities lie?
The first opportunity, of course, is a possibility of increased in bilateral trade andinvestment between the two countries. In this regard China is already the number one export
market for Japan where “the China business” remains a key lifeline for many export sectors of theeconomy, such as the automobile industry and industrial goods including integrated circuits, aswell as the in-bound tourism sector. Table 4.3 indicates Japan’s main export partners in 2017,
showing that China and Hong Kong together accounted for 24.1 percent of total Japanese exports
compared to 19.3 percent for the U.S. For all of 2017, the Japanese export business to China
flourished, soaring 20.5 percent after a 6.5 percent decline in 2016.115 Conversely, Japan is thethird largest market for Chinese exports after the U.S. and Hong Kong, and Japan is the second
largest source of imports into China.116 However, in terms of any growth in bilateral trade, Japan is
likely unable to absorb substantially more imports from China, with which it already runs a trade
deficit. Possibilities for growth in Japanese exports to China exist in food products, where China ispotentially a big export market, as well as machinery for producing integrated circuits.117
Nonetheless, improving trade relationships in both agriculture and electronic machine sectors wasovershadowed by the sanctioning of Chinese 5G internet systems and other electronic products on
the Japanese market in 2018.118 Even so, Japan’s banks and brokerage firms agreed to set up a $1.8
billion fund with China’s state-run investment group to help companies enhance trade between thenations.119

Rowley, “Japan and China are Being Pushed.”
Laura Zhou, “Shinzo Abe and Xi Jinping Pledge Japan and China Will Deepen Cooperation,” South China
Morning Post, September 12, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2163879/shinzo-abe-and-xi-jinping-pledge-japan-and-chinawill-deepen.
115
Ivanovich, “Japan's Trade with China.”
116
Hideo Kamata, Hideo, “China Seeks Investment From Japan,” The Yomiuri Shimbun. October 23, 2018.
Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.questia.com/newspaper/1P4-2124223930/china-seeks-investment-from-japan.
117
The Japan Times, “China Intends to Ease Ban on Japanese Food Imports.” 17 October, 2018. Accessed March,2019. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/10/17/national/politics-diplomacy/china-intends-ease-ban-japanesefood-imports-sources/#.XMSg6C0ZOCU; Nippon.Com, “Japan Data Baidu Survey Finds Why Chinese Tourists
Visit Japan,” 11 May, 2018. accessed March, 2019. https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00191/baidu-surveyfinds-why-chinese-tourists-visit-japan.html.
118
Minoru Satake, “Japan's 4 carriers to Shun Chinese 5G Tech,” Nikkei Asian Review. December 10, 2018.
accessed March, 2019. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japan-s-4-carriers-to-shun-Chinese-5G-tech.
119
Takashi Nakamichi, “Banks, China Investment to Set Up $1.8 Billion Trade Fund,” Bloomberg, October 25,
2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-26/japan-banks-china-investmentto-set-up-1-8-billion-trade-fund.
113
114

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69

Table 4.3 Japan’s Major Export Markets in 2017
Trading Partner

Total US$ Exports fromJapan (% of total Japanese
exports)
United States$135.1 billion (19.3%)
China$132.8 billion (19.0 %)South Korea$53.3 billion (7.7 %)Taiwan$40.6 billion (5.8%)
Hong Kong$35.4 billion (5.1%)
Thailand$29.4 billion (4.2 %)Singapore$22.6 billion (5.1 %)Germany$18.9 billion (2.7 %Australia$16.0 billion (2.3 %)Vietnam$15.1 billion (2.2 %)United Kingdom$13.8 billion (2.0 %)Indonesia$13.4 billion (1.9 %)Malaysia$12.8 billion (1.8 %)Netherlands$12.4 billion (1.8 %)Mexico$11.3 billion (1.6 %)Note: Four-fifth (80.7 % by value) of Japanese exports in 2017 were delivered to the above 15
trade partners.
Source: based on data available in JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization), Japanese Trade andInvestment Statistics, no date. Accessed December 2018. https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/reports/statistics/.

In terms of direct foreign investment the scope for Chinese investment in Japan and viceversa also appears to be somewhat limited. In Japan’s case this is due to the relatively slow growthof its consumer and industrial markets, and in China’s case by existing overcapacity in its own
export production sectors, such as electrical machinery and equipment, and the fact that President
Trump’s tariffs on China’s imports to the U.S. have limited China’s attraction as an investment
destination.120 In addition, Japanese concerns over intellectual property theft still remain.
Significantly, recent news reports on the future of Japanese investment in China behavior byvarious Japanese companies have been mixed. For instance, China is Japan’s number one
automobile market. Consequently, Toyota, Honda and Nissan announced plans in 2018 to expand
their car production in China.121 In contrast, many consumer electronic firms began to relocate
products made in China back to Japan—in part due to recent falls in the value of the Japanese yenthat made Japan-made export goods more competitive in overseas markets (see Table 4.3). At theZhiqang Tao and Mary Hui, “Why Donald Trump’s Trade War is Aimed at Foreign Direct investment in China,”
South China Morning Post. August 20, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.scmp.com/comment/insightopinion/united-states/article/2160342/why-donald-trumps-trade-war-aimed-foreign.
121
Nao Sano, Kae Inoue and Kevin Buckland, “Toyota to Target Tripling China Production Over Next Decade,”
Bloomberg. August 28, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-28/toyotasaid-to-target-tripling-china-production-over-next-decade.
120

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same time, rapid growth and development in China pushed up wages in recent years and increased
local production costs, further dampening investment interest from Japan. Also, in 2018 a numberof Japanese companies assessed the likelihood of U.S. tariffs impacting on their ability to export
from China into U.S. markets and planned to relocate their operations from China to Japan orelsewhere.122 For instance, Mitsubishi Corporation decided to take some operations out of China tominimize the impact from the trade conflict with the U.S. (Table 4.3). Overall, Japan External
Trade Organization (JETRO) surveys indicate that Southeast Asian countries now rank above
China as areas favorable for business expansion; especially Vietnam due to its high economic
growth as well as its strengthening position as a production hub and large consumer market. In
2017, Japan was Vietnam’s largest foreign investor.123
Table 4.4 Reports of Japanese Companies Leaving China
Japanese Corporation with
operations in China
Panasonic (home appliances exported theJapan market)
Sharp (home appliances exported to theJapan market)
Daikin (air conditioners exported to theJapan market)
TDK (electronic components for
smartphones and autos
exported to the Japanese market)
Toshiba Machine Company(plastic moulding machinery exported to
the U.S. auto market)
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (laser
beam machines exported to the US)

Recently announced relocation plans/country of
relocation
Back to Japan

Komatsu Corporation (machinery parts
exported to the US)

Back to Japan or to Mexico

Back to Japan
Back Japan
Back to Japan
Back to Japan or to Thailand
Back to Japan

Sources: S. Hakotani, Shinji, Dai Narusawa and Hisashi Naito, “Japanese Firms Shift Production from
China to Avoid Trade War,” The Asahi Shimbun. 19 September, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201809190047.html; Ju-min Park and Makiko Yamazaki, “AsianFirms Shuffle Production Around the Region as China Tariffs Hit,” Reuters. 22 September, 2018.
Accessed March, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-production-focus/asian-firmsshuffle-production-around-the-region-as-china-tariffs-hit-idUSKCN1M305B.
Shinji Hakotani, Dai Narusawa and Hisashi Naito. “Japanese Firms Shift Production from China to Avoid Trade
War,” The Asahi Shimbun, September 19, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201809190047.html.
123
Ngan Anh, “Vietnam Named 2nd Best Destination for Japanese Firms Wishing to Expand Abroad: Survey,”
VNExpress International, March 11, 2018. Accessed March. 2019. https://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/vietnamnamed-2nd-best-destination-for-japanese-firms-wishing-to-expand-abroad-survey-3721277.html.
122

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71

ODA used to be a possible contender for Japanese business opportunities in infrastructure
project contracts, but it has recently been shut down. As noted earlier, in previous years ODA wasa significant conduit of Japanese commercial interests in China and since 1979 Japan provided a
total of 3.65 trillion yen (about U.S. $32.4 billion) in yen loans, grants and technologicalcooperation.124 However, Japan’s ODA to China in recent years focused less on economic
infrastructure and more on projects such as school construction and measures to deal with
infectious diseases.125 From the year 2000 onward, effort was put into projects such asenvironmental protection, poverty reduction and human resource training.126 Since 2007 no new
yen loans were extended to Beijing, and in fiscal year 2016 Japan funneled just 500 million yen(around US$ 4.5 million) to China in the form of ODA (Figure 4.3). Indeed, acknowledging thereality of China’s increased economic stature, Prime Minister Abe announced an end to overseas
development aid during his visit to Beijing, arguing that Japan had “completed its historicalmission” over the past 40 years.127

Figure 4.3. Japanese ODA to China, 1980 to 2016
Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data, adapted from a diagram in
Tamiyuki Kihara and Riyo Kiyomiya, “Japan to End ODA Funding to China, Now an Economic Titan,”
The Asahi Shimbun. October 23, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201810230031.html.
Lam Peng Er, “China–Japan Paradox: Antagonism Despite Interdependency,” China-Japan Relations in the 21stCentury, 1-22.
125
The Asahi Shimbun, “Japan to End ODA Funding to China, Now an Economic Titan,” October 23, 2018.
Accessed March, 2019. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201810230031.html,
126
Marie Söderburg, “The Role of ODA in the Relationship,” in Chinese-Japanese Relations in the Twenty-first
Century, ed. Marie Söderburg (London: Routledge, 2002), 114-129; Mike M. Mochizuki, “China-Japan Relations:
Downward Spiral or a New Equilibrium?,” in Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, ed. David Shambaugh(Berkeley: University of California, 2005), 135-150; David Arase, “Japanese ODA Policy Toward China: The New
Agenda,” Japan’s Relations With China, 92-106.
127
Daniel Hurst, “Abe Wants ‘New Era’ in China-Japan Relations,” The Diplomat. October 26, 2018. Accessed
March, 2019. https://thediplomat.com/2018/10/abe-wants-new-era-in-china-japan-relations/; Tomohiro Ebuchi andTsukasa Hadano, “Japan to End China Aid, and Proposes Joint Assistance for Others,” Nikkei Asian Review,
October 23. Accessed March, 2019.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Japan-to-end-China-aid-and-proposes-joint-assistance-forothers.
124

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Beyond bilateral commerce, a more likely means to increase relations during this new era
is in so-called “third-country” cooperation, which is undoubtedly a prospective multi-trillion dollar
market in Asia during coming years.128 While avoiding any direct endorsement of China’s
controversial “Belt and Road” vision, discussions took place during 2018 indicating that theJapanese government would provide financial assistance for companies working in environmental
and energy-conservation technology, as well as industrial development and improved distribution
systems.129 Indeed, 52 joint infrastructure projects worth more than $18 billion were signed during
Abe's visit at the China-Japan Third-Market Cooperation Forum held in Beijing.130 Financial
support would be provided through the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Nippon Export
and Investment Insurance and other channels.131 A public-private committee was set up to selectspecific infrastructure projects for cooperation, but no concrete time frame to join the China-led
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was made at the October 2018 Beijing summit. Prime
Minister Abe first called for third-country cooperation at a summit with Xi in November 2017
(Shigeta and Nagasawa, 2018), and in Beijing the following year he restated that unless China met
Japan’s conditions he would not offer any funding as Japan wanted to ensure joint projects with
China were transparent, open, economically viable and fiscally sound for debtor countries.132
Going forward, a high-speed rail project in Thailand that aims to connect the country’s three main
airports (Don Muang, Suvarabhumi and U-Tapao) was widely seen as a likely candidate for China
and Japan’s first collaboration. This project is a central component of Thailand’s Eastern
Economic Corridor development plan to assist its growing eastern provinces link with neighboring
ones.133
A third area likely to benefit from the October summit concerns future free trade
agreements. As noted earlier, China and Japan will likely not only push for the completion of theRegional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), but also advocate further negotiations fora China-Japan-South Korea free trade area. While the warming of relations between China andJapan was expected to bring a conclusion to RCEP trade negotiations, no agreement was reachedin 2018 because of India’s resistance to opening up its domestic market to international trade.134

Rowley, “Japan and China are Being Pushed.”
Shiro Armstrong, “Japan Joins to Shape China’s Belt and Road,” East Asia Forum. October 28, 2018. Accessed
March, 2019. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/10/28/japan-joins-to-shape-chinas-belt-and-road/.
130
Nagai Harada and Shigeta, “Xi and Abe Use Economy.”131
Nikkei Asian Review, “Japan Floats Business Aid Idea for China’s Belt and Road Plan.” December 31, 2018.
Accessed March, 2019. https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan-floats-business-aid-idea-for-China-s-Belt-and-Roadplan2.
132
Reuters, “Japan's Abe Pursues China Thaw as U.S.-Beijing Ties in Deep Freeze.” October 12, 2018. Accessed
March, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-china-thaw-analysis/japans-abe-pursues-china-thaw-as-u-sbeijing-ties-in-deep-freeze-idUSKCN1MM0XV.
133
Jeong-ho Lee, “Why Thailand Could be the Big Winner as China and Japan Start to Work Together,” South
China Morning Post, October 26. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2170391/why-thailand-could-be-big-winner-china-and-japanstart-work.
134
SputnikNews, “Chinese-Backed Regional Economic Partnership Talks Unlikely to Conclude in 2018.”
September 5, 2018. Accessed March, 2019. https://sputniknews.com/asia/201809051067770879-regional-economicpartnership/.
128
129

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Meanwhile, China was reported to have considered joining the new Japan-led CPTPP
agreement.135
Finally, there is the possibility that China and Japan could engage in cooperation in evenwider projects, such as climate change, international peace keeping and the geopolitical
governance of outer space.136 In another sign of improving bilateral relations, Japan and China
have agreed to pursue cooperation in developing advanced technologies in areas such as selfdriving cars and artificial intelligence.137
5. CONCLUSIONS_____________________________________________________________
This paper has reviewed 40 years of China-Japan economic and commercial relations since
the signing of the 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship. Rather than inferring any wide-ranging
generalizations—either overly pessimistic or optimistic—I have emphasized the evolution of thisengagement. Four broad stages were identified that shaped and altered (sometimes abruptly)
Japanese changed perceptions of, and reactions to, the relationship. The core-periphery structure tobilateral trade identified at the outset of the study period soon led to a set of both government andprivate corporate interventions that fit with the flying-geese model of regional development during
the 1980s and 1990s. Following China’s entry into the WTO in 2001, patterns of commercial,technology and aid arrangements shifted again due to Japan’s relative loss of economic power andincreasing China-Japan competition and rivalry on a wide number of fronts. Be that as it may, theyear 2018 appeared to mark the start of a new and more expansive phase of cooperation in ChinaJapan relations. These changes have occurred largely in line with China’s rapid development aswell as contextual factors, such as the role of the U.S. and its strategies toward China and the AsiaPacific region. Clearly, this type of characterization underscores the need for more nuanced
contextualizations of the bilateral relationship, involving the role played by politicians, bureaucrats
and private corporations, together with a wide-range analysis that recognizes that bilateral relations
do not exist in splendid isolation. The uneasy warming of Sino-Japanese relations in the last year
or two is each other’s insurance policy, a hedge against the uncertain nature of their trade relations
with the U.S.
Perhaps the most decisive conclusion to emerge from this analysis is that the picture of
China-Japan relations today is radically different from what it was 40 years ago. Today, notsurprisingly, commentators such as Huang138 have framed the contemporary bond as being “thebest of frenemies”—a term that recognizes that while there might still be feelings of resentment
Laura Zhou and Wendy Wu, “Beijing Looking Into Joining Trans-Pacific Trade Pact to Hedge Against US,”South China Morning Post, 11 October, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2168147/beijing-looking-joining-trans-pacific-trade-pacthedge-against.
136
Chris G. Pope, “China and Japan—An Unlikely Climate Partnership?,” Asia Dialogue. December 13, 2018.
Accessed March, 2019. http://theasiadialogue.com/2018/12/13/china-and-japan-an-unlikely-climate-partnership/.
137
The Japan Times, “Japan, China Plan to Launch ‘Innovation Dialogue’ with Focus on Self-driving Vehicles, AI.”
September 23, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/09/23/national/politics-diplomacy/japan-china-plan-launch-innovationdialogue-focus-self-driving-vehicles-ai/#.XMShIS0ZOCU.
138
Cary Huang, “China and Japan are Still Best of Frenemies, 40 years on From Treaty of Peace and Friendship,”South China Morning Post. September 23, 2018. Accessed March, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2165253/china-and-japan-are-still-best-frenemies-40-years-treatypeace-and---.
135

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and rivalry, China and Japan are permanent neighbors in Asia-Pacific whether relations are cold or
warm.139 In effect they are stuck both with each other and with surrounding nations, and each has
an intense relationship with the United States. China is already Japan’s largest trading partner withmillions of personnel exchanges every year and, in a complicated global economy, if the U.S.
closes its market to China, Japan will remain an even more crucial economic ally. Japan and
China’s economic interests are likely to deepen in the future, even as both look for alternative
market and supply-chain opportunities, as well as to structure wider Asia-Pacific trade andeconomic relations in ways most beneficial to their own interests. Indeed, the basic method of“getting back on track” is seeking common ground while setting aside differences.
Over the years, major documents have been prepared to accommodate the changing
relationship: the Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1978, a Japan-China Joint
Declaration of 1998,140 and the Japan-China Joint Statement on Comprehensive Promotion of a
“Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests,” which was issued by
the leaders of both countries in 2008.141 Together with the Japan-China Joint Statement of 1972,
these constitute the so-called four basic documents of Sino-Japanese relations.142 Japan hopes
Prime Minister Abe’s trip in October 2018 will pave the way for a reciprocal visit by President Xi
in 2019, which would be the first by a Chinese president since 2008. The Japan-side has also
expressed hopes the two sides will sign a “fifth document” to add to the four existing diplomatic
agreements. Indeed, a fifth document is needed to reconfirm the Peace and Friendship Treaty. In
the fifth document, Japan should describe how to cooperate with China, now an international
major power, on issues not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but also in the rest of the world, tobring about peace and stability.143______________________________________________________________________________REFERENCES

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5. AN ASSESSMENT OF THE
FIRST SIX YEARS OF
ABENOMICS
1Brian K. MacLean
Professor, Department of Economics, Laurentian University
E-mail: bmaclean@laurentian.ca______________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACTIn December 2012, at a time when the Japanese economy was seen by many as no longer
capable of significant economic growth, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power with anambitious, Keynesian economic policy package consisting of three components: aggressive
monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy. The three components of the policy
package were described as the “three arrows” of Abenomics.
Six years later, Prime Minister Abe was still in power, and although the economic
policies of the government had evolved, Abenomics was still the term used to describe them.
This essay provides an assessment of the first six years of Abenomics. The assessment differsfrom others in various aspects including that it is written for a general academic audience andmakes use of Canadian data for comparative purposes. It has as its central aim to assess thedegree to which Abenomics has achieved its core objective of overcoming economic stagnation.
The essay first outlines the general macroeconomic framework for the assessment, whichis termed an output-gap framework. It then discusses two analytical issues of special importancefor analyzing Japanese macroeconomic performance. These concern the appropriate indicators of
economic growth and fiscal health. The essay then describes Japanese monetary and fiscal
policies and growth strategies since early 2013, and examines indicators of Japanese economic
performance. The conclusion is that although economic targets have not been fully realized,
economic stagnation has been overcome. The economy has grown at a healthy pace andunderutilization of capacity has been largely eliminated.
Keywords: Japanese economy, Abenomics, unconventional monetary policy, government debt
burden, economic growth measurement, macroeconomic policy assessment, potential output
estimation, labour market indicators, political economy.

Helpful comments and questions were received at my presentation of an earlier version of this essay at the Japan
Studies Association of Canada conference at the University of Alberta in October 2018. I am solely responsible forthe contents of this essay.
1

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1. INTRODUCTION___________________________________________________________In December 2012, at a time when the Japanese economy was seen by many as weak andno longer capable of significant economic growth, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to powerwith an ambitious, growth-oriented economic policy package consisting of three components:
aggressive monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy. The policy package wasdeveloped in collaboration with advisers, notably the Keynesian economist Koichi Hamada, andit was Keynesian in its emphasis on the importance of aggregate demand growth.2 The threecomponents of the policy package were described as the “three arrows” of Abenomics. This wasa reference, as explained by Pilling: “to Motonari Mori, a sixteenth-century daimyo lord who had
told his three sons they would be stronger if they worked as a team. It was easy to break the shaftof one arrow, the daimyo had explained, but nearly impossible to snap three shafts boundtogether.”3
Six years later, Prime Minister Abe was still in power, and Abenomics was still the term
used to describe the economic policies of his government. Given that the government could
possibly stay in power until 2021, it may still be too early for a definitive assessment of the
impact of Abenomics on Japanese economic performance. But we are over six years into thismacroeconomic policy experiment, so there is plenty of evidence available to support apreliminary assessment.
Indeed, some lengthy assessments have recently been conducted.4 The current assessment
differs from others in that it is written for a general academic audience, is focused on judging the
success of Abenomics in terms of achieving its major objective of overcoming economic
stagnation, emphasizes the framework for assessment and the relevant analytical issues andmakes some use of Canadian data for comparative purposes.
The second section of this essay will outline the general macroeconomic framework forthis assessment, and the third section will discuss two analytical issues of special importance foranalyzing Japanese macroeconomic performance. The fourth section describes Japanesemonetary and fiscal policies and growth strategies since early 2013. The fifth section examines
indicators of Japanese economic performance. The sixth and final section of the essay is aconclusion.
2. A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE ASSESSMENT______________________An assessment of national macroeconomic performance demands a conceptual
framework. One informal framework often applied by non-specialists has been to take the trendof Japanese real (inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from the pre-1992 period
and compare that trend to the much lower actual trend of real GDP since 1992 in order to claimthat policy measures taken to boost economic growth since 1992 have failed miserably. We
could represent this framework with Figure 5.1. The steeper the slope of a path of real GDP

Since 2013, Hamada, Emeritus Professor of Yale University, has been writing columns, including ones on
Abenomics, at Project Syndicate: https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/koichi-hamada
3
See David Pilling, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival (New York: Penguin, 2014), 307.
4
See, for example, the 66-page OECD Economic Survey of Japan (Paris: OECD, 2017) and the 63-page Japan:
2017 Article IV Consultation (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 2017) in English, and many book-lengthy studies in Japanese.
A search of Abenomics (“abenomikusu” in katakana) on Amazon Japan (http://amazon.co.jp/) in late 2018 showed
at least eight books devoted to Abenomics in just 2017 and 2018, and many more published in the 2013-2016 period.
2

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shown in the figure, the higher the growth rate.5 The solid, steeply upward-sloping line
represents the pre-1992 trend of sharply-rising GDP extrapolated into 1992 and later years, andthe dashed, mildly upward-sloping line represents actual trend of slowly-rising GDP growthsince 1992.

Figure 5.1 A Casual Framework for Assessing Japanese Economic Performance
The framework applied in this essay, like the informal framework illustrated with Figure5.1, is concerned with real GDP trends, break points such as Figure 5.1 shows for 1992 and with
judging macroeconomic policy effectiveness. Unlike the informal framework illustrated with
Figure 5.1, the framework applied in this essay is one widely employed by macroeconomists.
The framework is based upon a distinction between actual output and potential output.
Actual output is just another term for GDP as measured by the statistical authorities—say, by the
Economics and Social Research Institute of the Cabinet Office in the case of Japan or by
Statistics Canada in the Canadian case. The complicated part of this conceptual framework is not
actual output but the other key component—that is, potential output. The general idea behindpotential output is that at any point in time an economy has a capacity to produce output that is afunction of the size and quality of its labour force, the amount of capital stock, the current stateof technology, the quality of institutions and so on. And this capacity is not necessarily equal toactual output. In a recession, for example, actual output will fall short of potential output, theeconomy will be operating below capacity and the unemployment rate will be high. On the other
hand, it is also possible that actual output could exceed potential output. The economy is thensaid to be “overheating” or in a “bubble” phase, and the unemployment rate will tend to beunusually low. When actual output will equal potential output the economy is said to be at full
employment.
The difference between actual output and potential output is referred to as the output gap.
It is generally expressed relative to potential output. When actual output falls short of potential
For the slope of a straight line to exactly represent a constant growth rate, the figure would have to show thenatural logarithm of real GDP on the vertical axis.
5

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output, there is a recessionary gap, and when actual output exceeds potential output there is an
expansionary gap (sometimes called an inflationary gap). Figure 5.2 shows the output gap forJapan as a percentage of potential GDP as estimated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
for the period 1984-2009. When the line is above the horizontal axis there is an expansionary gap
by the IMF’s calculations, and when the solid line is below the horizontal axis there is arecessionary gap. Notice, for example, the large expansionary gap during the bubble economy
period of the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, and the extremely large recessionary gap
during the global economic recession of 2008-2009.

Figure 5.2 Output Gap as a Percentage of Potential Output, IMF
Source: IMF World Economic Outlook Database, April 2018, and author’s calculations.
The concepts of actual and potential output are static ones. They apply at particular points
in time to levels of output. But they have dynamic counterparts that apply to economic growth
rates. Corresponding to actual output, the dynamic counterpart is the actual GDP growth rate,and corresponding to potential output we have the potential GDP growth rate. The actual GDP
growth rate is as measured by the relevant statistical agency. The potential GDP growth rate isestimated by economists, such as economists at the IMF, guided by theories about the factors
determining the capacity of an economy to produce.

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Thus, the framework to be applied later in this essay is one based on concepts of actual
output, potential output, the output gap, the actual growth rate and the potential growth rate. For
the rest of this essay, it will be called the output-gap framework.6
A relevant application of this output-gap framework is provided in an assessment of theJapanese economy published in 2011 by the U.S. economist and Japan specialist Edward
Lincoln.7 He noted that for the “two decades (1990–2009), the average annual real (inflationadjusted) growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) was only 1.1 per cent.” But for “thedecade of the 1990s, the potential growth rate was probably on the order of 2.0 to 2.5 per cent,diminishing to no more than 2.0 per cent in the first decade of the new century.” Lincoln also
notes that the Japanese economy was operating above capacity in the late 1980s into thebeginning of the 1990s, and makes the case that Japan’s actual real GDP growth after 1990
would have been even lower with less aggressive macroeconomic policy than was applied by
Japanese macroeconomic policy-makers.
Figure 5.3 provides a stylized illustration of these elements of Lincoln’s application of
the output-gap framework for comparison with Figure 5.1 depicting the previously-mentioned
informal framework. Figure 5.3 is “stylized” in that it leaves out business cycle ups and downs
other than the 1992 downturn, and it also leaves out the small drop in the estimated potential
growth rate from the 1990s to the 2000s.

Figure 5.3 A Stylized Representation of Edward Lincoln’s Output-Gap Framework

Further details about these concepts can be found in most macroeconomics textbooks—see, e.g., my co-authoredmacroeconomics textbook Robert Frank et al., Principles of Macroeconomics, 4th Canadian ed. (Toronto: McGrawHill Ryerson, 2012), 159-64. The concepts are typically taught for use with specific economic models, and the term
“output-gap framework” is not part of standard economics terminology.
7
See Edward Lincoln, “The Heisei Economy: Puzzles, Problems, Prospects,” Journal of Japanese Studies 37 no. 2(2011): 351-75.
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As compared to the casual framework represented by Figure 5.1, the relevant features of
Figure 5.3 are:8 1) the path of real GDP after 1992 is lower in part because the potential growthrate declined; 2) the steeper slope of potential GDP growth (shown by a solid line) than actual
growth (shown by a dashed line) suggests that macroeconomy policy could in theory have done
better that it did; and 3) the steeper slope of the actual growth path than the predicted growth
path with less aggressive macroeconomic policy (shown by the dotted line) illustrates the ideathat macroeconomic policy could also have done worse than it did.
There are two other important elements to this output-gap approach. One is that, based
upon historical evidence, central banks such as the Bank of Japan tend to operate under theassumption that the inflation rate (the percentage change in the aggregate price level, typicallymeasured by the Consumer Price Index or CPI) is strongly influenced by the output gap. If there
is no output gap, the inflation rate will tend to stay the same, all else equal. If there is an
expansionary gap with actual output above potential output, the inflation rate will tend to rise.
And if there is a recessionary gap the inflation rate will tend to fall.
The other element relates to the three arrows of the original version of Abenomics. It isthat monetary and fiscal policies, which together are referred to as stabilization policies, arethought to have their impact largely on the output gap (by changing actual output) but not on
potential output. And the policies constituting the third arrow, the growth strategy, are thought tohave their impact largely on potential output. Whether they have an impact on actual output
depends on the particular type of policy and the state of the economy.9
This section has presented an output-gap framework that will inform the assessment ofJapanese macroeconomic policy and performance from December 2012 to the end of 2018. It is
worth noting that while the output-gap framework is neither beyond criticism nor completely
objective, it does have broad acceptance among economists, being compatible with a variety ofmacroeconomic models, both orthodox and heterodox.10
3. TWO ANALYTICAL ISSUES OF SPECIAL IMPORTANCE______________________For the task of analyzing Japanese performance later in this essay, this section will touchupon two analytical issues of special importance to the task: the indicator of economic growth
and the measures of a government’s debt burden. Without a proper appreciation of these issues,
one can easily adopt an overly negative view of Japanese economic performance, either during
the period of Abenomics or during the so-called two lost decades (approximately 1992 to 2012)that preceded the adoption of Abenomics.

To avoid making the graph overly complicated, I have refrained from showing actual output above potential output
prior to the 1992 downturn.
9
For example, a policy under the growth strategy to increase the labour force participation of a particulardemographic group might initially only result in more members of the group seeking work and not finding it (andthereby contributing to potential output but not to actual output) if the policy were implemented in the depth of arecession.
10
Two criticisms are worth mentioning. First, in a wide range of countries, changes in the inflation rate do not seemto be as sensitive to the output gap as was once thought. Second, there is growing evidence that the potential growthrate can be influenced by the actual growth rate. On the first criticism, see Lars Osberg, “Full Employment in
Canada in the Early 21st Century,” in Aggregate Demand and Employment: International Perspectives, ed. Brian K.
MacLean, Hassan Bougrine, and Louis-Philippe Rochon (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2019 forthcoming), andon the second, see J.W. Mason, “Macroeconomic Lessons from the Past Decade,” in Aggregate Demand.
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3.1 The indicator of economic growth
A very common way to gauge the performance of an economy across time periods withother countries is to look at real GDP growth supplemented with other measures. Real GDP
growth is a more meaningful indicator of economic performance than nominal GDP growth
because nominal GDP can expand simply because prices on the whole are rising whereas real
GDP growth is adjusted for inflation.
The practice of judging economic performance by real GDP growth goes back to theearly years of official GDP measurement and it continues today.11 It is a practice that is easily
defended when comparing countries with similar population growth rates, but otherwise it gives
what many economists regard as an unduly favourable impression of the economic performanceof countries with high population growth rates and an unduly unfavourable impression ofcountries with low population growth rates.12
The growth of real GDP can be decomposed into two parts—the growth of populationand the growth of real GDP per person. By focusing on the growth of real GDP per person
directly instead of the growth of real GDP, analysts can focus on a macroeconomic indicator thatis more directly related to improvements in living standards.
For example, the Japanese economy is frequently compared with the U.S. economy.
Decades ago, when the population growth rates of the two countries were similar, it was
reasonable to compare the countries according to their real GDP growth rates. It would not havemade much difference whether one compared their growth rates in the 1960s, for example, interms of real GDP growth rates or in terms of growth rates of real GDP per capita.13 But in thepast decade or so, with Japanese population declining while the U.S. population continues togrow as a significant rate, it makes a big difference whether one compares the countries
according to their real GDP growth rates or their growth rates of real GDP per capita. Japan, likeother countries with low or negative population growth rates, consistently comes off as a poor
performer when real GDP growth is used as the standard of evaluation.
In fact, some economists have suggested that focusing on growth of real GDP per capita
rather than growth of real GDP does not go far enough because the growth of real GDP per
capita still includes an arbitrary demographic element under the surface. More exactly, countries
more affected by population aging will tend to be the laggards in international comparisons ofgrowth of real GDP per capita. The reasoning is that growth of real GDP per capita depends on
growth of output per employed person and growth in the employment to population ratio. But
across the world, workers aged 65 and older are much less likely to be employed, so countries
that have high ratios of elderly workers in their populations tend to have lower employment topopulation ratios than otherwise. And, of course, countries where the share of elderly workers in
There is, of course, a large literature on alternative and supplementary measures of economic performance. See,for example, the discussion in Chapter 4 of my co-authored macroeconomics textbook, Frank et al., Principles ofMacroeconomics.
12
In Brian K. MacLean, “The Canadian Economy since the Lehman Shock—A Retrospective from 2015,” trans.
into Japanese by Kenichi Haga, in Keizai-gaku no zahyōjiku (English title: Economics in Three Dimensions), ed.
Sendai Economics Association (Tokyo: Shakai hyōron-sha, 2016b), 315-338, I discuss this issue in connection withinternational comparisons of Canadian economic growth performance.
13
Takakoshi Ito, The Japanese Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), for example, compares Japaneseand U.S growth performance using only real output growth, not growth of output per capita. Actually, Ito, Japanese
Economy, used real GNP (Gross National Product) growth rather than real GDP growth, probably reflecting the factthat the United States and Japan were later than other countries to switch from emphasizing GNP measurement toemphasizing GDP measurement.
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the population is rising more rapidly than in other countries will find their employment topopulation ratios falling, all else equal. One proposal has been to compare economic
performance in terms of growth of real GDP per person in the 15-64 age brackets.14
Later in this essay, when evaluating Japanese economic performance under Abenomics,
the emphasis will be on growth of real GDP per capita. Incidentally, this is not to claim thatgrowth of real GDP is a meaningless indicator. It is, for example, a meaningful indicator of
growth of the national market and it determines changes in a country’s share in world output.
3.2 The measure(s) of the government debt burden
A government debt-to-GDP ratio is typically considered an indicator of the burden of
government debt in an economy. Some economists emphasize that high debt-to-GDP ratio
combined with high interest rates on the debt imply a high share of government expenditure
devoted to interest payments. They may also emphasize a high government debt-to-GDP ratio
could indicate that a country is likely to have difficulty servicing its debt payments, and mightthen default on its debt. Default on government debt is not only problematic for bondholders, butmore importantly can cause problems for the economy. The case of Greece since late 2009
provides an extreme example. Other economists caution against government debt hysteria andemphasize that one cannot generalize from the experience of an economy without its own
currency to economies with their own currency such as Japan, the United States, Canada andmany others.
In fact, that are two ways of measuring the government debt-to-GDP ratio—the grossgovernment debt-to-GDP ratio and the net government debt-to-GDP ratio. The gross debt-toGDP ratio measures all of the government’s outstanding debt in its numerator whereas the net
debt-to-GDP ratio subtracts the value of the government’s financial assets from the value of its
debt to arrive at its numerator. Journalists typically report the gross debt-to-GDP ratio—it is thelarger one and can make for more dramatic news. Economists are more likely to use the net debtto-GDP ratio for international comparisons.
For some economies, the government’s holdings of financial assets are not particularly
large, which means that the difference between the two debt-to GDP ratios is not large either.
But in the Japanese case, the choice of the government debt-to-GDP indicator makes a big
difference. The gross debt-to-GDP ratio of Japan, the measure that gets cited so regularly innews stories, was estimated to be 238 per cent in 2017. The net debt-to-GDP ratio was estimatedto be much lower—“only” 155 per cent.15
Moreover, under its program of quantitative easing the Bank of Japan has beenpurchasing a substantial portion of the government’s debt. The Bank of Japan is owned by thegovernment of Japan, which means that the government debt held by the Bank of Japan can beviewed as money that the government owes to itself, or debt that does not really count. The
government bonds held by the Bank of Japan amount to 90 per cent of GDP and if they are

See Paul Krugman, “Japanese Relative Performance,” The New York Times. February 9, 2013.
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/japanese-relative-performance/. Although the proposal is a logicalextension of the practice of focusing on growth of real GDP per capita instead of real GDP growth, it has not caught
on.
15
See IMF World Economic Outlook Database, October 2018 (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 2018). For Canada, too, thedifference between the two measures is large—28 per cent for the net debt- to-GDP ratio in 2017 but 90 per cent for
the gross debt-to-GDP ratio. Italy is a case where the two measures do not differ greatly—118 for the net ratio and
132 for the gross ratio in 2017.
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netted out like other government financial assets, then Japan’s “consolidated” debt-to-GDP ratio
is about 60 per cent of GDP.16
The U.S. policy economist Dean Baker has frequently noted the tendency of journalists
and others to sensationalize Japan’s high gross debt-to-GDP ratio and to ignore its surprisingly
low government debt burden as measured by net government interest payments relative to
GDP.17 Japan’s general government net debt interest payments in 2017 were 0.4 per cent of GDP,the same as for Canada, and well below the 2.9 per cent of GDP for the United States and the 2.3
per cent of GDP for the United Kingdom.18
In concluding this section, it may be useful for me to mention an indicator of the financial
health of governments recently promoted by the IMF. The IMF has recently made a case for theuse of net government assets-to-GDP ratio as a supplementary measure of the government debt
burden. Whereas the usual net debt-to-GDP ratio adjusts the gross debt-to-GDP ratio to accountfor financial assets held by the government, the net government assets-to-GDP ratio adjusts inaddition for the value of the real assets (such as buildings) held by the government. By the IMF’s
recently proposed supplement measure of public sector balance sheets, Japan is not the extreme
outlier as indicated by its gross government debt-to-GDP ratio but a rather normal, middle-ofthe-road economy.19
4. ABENOMICS: THE POLICY RECORD20_______________________________________The previous two sections of this essay have outlined a conceptual framework andexplained key analytical considerations for the assessment of Abenomics. This section will lookat the implementation of the three arrows of the original version of Abenomics—monetary
policy, fiscal policy and structural policy—beginning with monetary policy.21 The following
section will evaluate economic performance during the period of their application.

The term “consolidated” debt-to-GDP ratio is employed in Mark T. Greenan and David E. Weinstein, “The Crisis
that Wasn’t: How Japan Has Avoided a Bond Market Panic,” Center on Japanese Economy and Business Working
Papers 361 (2017). The 60 per cent of GDP ratio has been calculated by Adair Turner, “Japan’s Successful
Economic Model,” Project Syndicate. Sept. 20, 2018. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/japansuccessful-economic-model-by-adair-turner-2018-09.
17See, for example, Dean Baker, “Olivier Blanchard Is Worried about Inflation,” Beat the Press blog, Center for
Economic and Policy Research. April 13, 2016. http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/olivier-blanchard-is-worriedabout-inflation-in-japan.
18
See OECD Interim Economic Outlook (Paris: OECD, 2018), Annex Table 35.
19
See Vitor Gaspar, Jason Harris and Alexander Tieman, “The Wealth of Nations: Governments Can Better Manage
What They Own and Owe,” IMFBlog. Oct. 10, 2018, https://blogs.imf.org/2018/10/09/the-wealth-of-nationsgovernments-can-better-manage-what-they-own-and-owe/; and Chris Giles, “IMF Urges Governments to Focus on
State Assets,” Financial Times. Oct. 10, 2018. https://www.ft.com/content/730df5b4-cbba-11e8-b276b9069bde0956.
20
For a year-by-year commentary on the Japanese economy under Abenomics, see the annual surveys by HughPatrick, the latest of which is Hugh Patrick, “Japan’s Economy: Moving Along Its Modest Sustainable Growth Path,”
Center on Japanese Economy and Business Working Papers 78 (2018).
https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D81R86SR/download.
21
In Brian K. MacLean, “Abenomics and the Japanese Labour Market,” in Aggregate Demand, I discuss different
stages in the evolution of what the Abe administration has called Abenomics.
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4.1 Monetary policy22
Although Bank of Japan (BoJ) Governor Masaaki Shirakawa was not scheduled tocomplete his term of office until April of 2013, already in January of 2013 the Abe government
and the BoJ issued a joint statement about overcoming deflation (that is, negative inflation) andachieving sustained economic growth.23 The statement indicated that monetary easing would aim
to achieve a two per cent annual CPI inflation rate at the “earliest possible time.”
Then in February 2012 the government announced it would be nominating AsianDevelopment Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda for the position of BoJ Governor. Kuroda had
spent his career at Japan’s Ministry of Finance before becoming Asian Development Bank
President in 2005. He was known as an advocate of highly expansionary monetary policy. Even
before he was confirmed for the position of BoJ Governor he was quoted in the press as saying:“There is plenty of room for monetary easing.” This seems to have accelerated the depreciationof the yen that had started in mid-November of 2012 with the commencement of the election
campaign that Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party seemed destined to win.24
Next, in accordance with an announcement that had been made in early February 2013,
BoJ Governor Shirakawa resigned a few weeks early from his post to allow Kuroda tocommence his more expansionary monetary policies. Thus since March 20, 2013 Governor
Kuroda has been the face of Japanese monetary policy. He was appointed at the same time as
two new Deputy Governors, one of whom (Kikuo Iwata) was a professor at Gakushuin
University known for advocating more expansionary monetary policy and reduced independenceof the Bank of Japan from the government. In February 2018, the Prime Minister’s office playeda central role in the reappointment of Governor Kuroda to a second five-year term of office, andalso the appointment of two new deputy governors, including one (Masazumi Wakatabe) known
for his support of aggressive monetary policy.25
The monetary policy that Governor Kuroda was appointed to implement is known as
unconventional monetary policy. In most high-income economies, the primary tool of monetary
policy is the key policy rate of the central bank, which is typically a target for the overnight rateof interest for interbank lending. The most commonly stated goal of the central bank is to control
inflation and the target inflation rate is usually 2 or 3 per cent CPI inflation, regardless ofwhether the inflation target is explicit or not. When the central bank expects that inflation willrise above the target inflation rate, it increases the key policy rate, and when the central bankexpects that inflation will fall below the target inflation rate, it lowers the key policy rate. The
central bank’s focus on inflation does not preclude a concern with economic recessions andbooms because recessions tend to lower the inflation rate below the target and booms tend to
For a more comprehensive discussion of Japanese monetary policy under Abenomics, see Sayuri Shirai, Mission
Incomplete: Reflating Japan’s Economy (Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute, 2017). The most relevant
official documents can be found at: https://www.boj.or.jp/en/mopo/outline/qqe.htm/.
23
See Cabinet Office, Ministry of Finance and Bank of Japan, “Joint Statement of the Government and the Bank ofJapan on Overcoming Deflation and Achieving Sustainable Economic Growth,” 2013.
https://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/release_2013/k130122c.pdf.
24
Toko Sekiguchi, “Tokyo Nominates Haruhiko Kuroda as BOJ Chief,” MarketWatch. Feb. 27, 2013.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tokyo-nominates-haruhiko-kuroda-as-boj-chief-2013-02-27.
25
See Jiji Press, “BOJ’s Independence Tested 20 Years after Legal Revision Curbed Government Influence,” Japan
Times, April 1, 2018, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/04/01/business/bojs-independence-tested-20-yearslegal-revision-curbed-government-influence. Deputy Governor Wakatabe had been a Professor of Economics at
Waseda University. His specialty is the history of economic thought, and one of his books was co-authored with
Koichi Hamada, the noted economic advisor to Prime Minister Abe. From October 2014 to January 2018, Professor
Wakatabe wrote 55 columns for Forbes magazine: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mwakatabe/.
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boost the inflation rate above the target.26 In the other words, using the terminology of theoutput-gap framework outlined in Section 2 of this essay, when actual output falls substantiallybelow potential output, the inflation rate tends to fall and when actual output exceeds potential
output, the inflation rate tends to rise.
The BoJ lowered its key policy rate almost to zero by the mid-1990s in response to therecession that followed the bursting of the so-called bubble economy, and since thenconventional monetary policy has been of little consequence.27 With the key policy rate alreadyclose to zero, there was little that the Bank of Japan could do with conventional monetary policy
to counter the deflation that became a persistent feature of the Japanese economy in the latter
half of the 1990s.
Under pressure to do something about a recession and persistent deflation, the BoJ
resorted to unconventional monetary policy in March 2001 with a program of quantitative easing(QE). QE is sometimes referred to as the practice of the central bank cranking up the printing ofmoney, which may suffice as a rough idea of what is involved. It is more accurately described as
the practice of the central bank expanding its purchases of assets, typically government bonds
held by commercial banks, to funnel reserves to the banking system. The expectation is that,
operating through various channels (such as the boost to overall spending in the economy if thebanks use the extra reserves to expand their lending), the expanded central bank asset purchases
will boost overall spending in the economy and thereby boost economic growth and avoid
deflation.28
The BoJ’s first experiment with QE continued until 2006 when the economy seemed to
be on a solid growth path. A separate round of QE was initiated by the Bank of Japan in late2010, around the time that a number of other central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve,
implemented QE in response to the global recession of 2008-2009. The Bank of Japan’s QE wasjudged to be rather cautious in comparison with the QE implemented by the U.S. Federal
Reserve.
Early in April 2013, less than a month after Governor Kuroda had assumed his post, theBoJ announced that it would enter a new phase of monetary easing called “quantitative andqualitative monetary easing” or QQE. In this new phase the BoJ promised to achieve 2 per centinflation within two years by doubling its holdings of Japanese government bonds (JGBs) and of
exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and doubling the average residual maturity of JGB purchases.29
The label QQE was apparently chosen to emphasize that monetary easing was not justabout increasing the scale of asset purchases by the BoJ. The adjective “qualitative” in the label
conveys the idea that quantitative easing purchases would be aimed at specific targets. One target
was for government bonds of longer duration with a view to lowering long-term interest rates.
For a detailed explanation of central banking and monetary policy, see Chapters 9 and 10 of my co-authoredmacroeconomics textbook, Frank et al., Principles of Macroeconomics.
27
More precisely, with the key policy rate at or near zero, there was little to be done by cutting the rate to stimulate
the economy because nominal interest rates cannot go much below zero. But there was still, of course, the possibilityof raising the rate to restrain economic growth. A couple of times during the so-called two lost decades, the BoJ did
hike interest rates, and the hikes were widely viewed in retrospect as having had negative consequences for
economic growth.
28
For an explanation of quantitative easing, see Brian K. MacLean, “Quantitative Easing,” in The Encyclopedia ofCentral Banking, ed. L-P. Rochon and S. Rosso (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2015), 414-416. I emphasize thesignificance of channels other than that of increased bank reserves boosting bank lending.
29
Increasing the average residual maturity of JGB purchases meant buying JGBs of longer duration (for example,
bonds coming to maturity in five years or more as opposed to, say, coming to maturity in one year or less).
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The introduction of QQE by the BoJ in April 2013 was the first of five significant stages
in the evolution of Japanese monetary policy under Governor Kuroda. The second significant
stage was entered at the end of October 2014 when the BoJ announced an expansion of QQE on
the grounds that aggregate demand had weakened due to the consumption tax hike of April 2014
and also that lower crude oil prices were working against efforts to achieve the 2 per centinflation target.
The third stage was marked by a January 2016 announcement by the BoJ that it would
adopt a negative interest rate policy. Under this policy, a negative interest rate of -0.1 per centwould apply to current accounts held by financial institutions at the BoJ. More precisely, thenegative interest rate would apply to one of three tiers of a financial institution’s current accountbalance at the BoJ; on a second tier a zero interest rate would apply, and on the third tier apositive rate would apply.30
The fourth stage came in September 2016. On the same day that the BoJ released a reportassessing its experience with the frameworks of QQE (from April 2013 to January 2016) andQQE with a negative interest rate (from January 2016), the BoJ also announced a newframework with the label “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing with Yield Curve
Control.”
Yield curve control had long been a concern of the BoJ.31 But by adding the term to thelabel for its monetary policy framework, the BoJ clearly hoped that the expansionary nature of its
policy actions would be judged less by the scale of its asset purchases and more by their effects
on interest rates, especially long-term interest rates.
The new framework also included an inflation-overshooting commitment. That is, theBoJ committed to keeping monetary policy expansionary at least until the inflation rate had
exceeded its 2 per cent target level. The previous major policy announcements of the BoJ sinceApril 2013 had all included the statement that the BoJ would continue with its framework “toachieve the price stability target of 2 per cent, as long as it is necessary for maintaining thattarget in a stable manner.” The September 2016 announcement added the inflation-overshooting
target as follows: “The Bank will continue expanding the monetary base until the year-on-year
rate of increase in the observed CPI (all items less fresh food) exceeds the price stability target of
2 per cent and stays above the target in a stable manner.”32
At the time of writing, the fifth and latest state in the development of Japanese monetary
policy under Governor Kuroda was announced in July of 2018. Offering the rationale that
inflation remained below target relative to output and employment conditions, the BoJ declaredthat it would introduce forward guidance for policy rates.33 Forward guidance occurs when thecentral bank commits to maintaining the interest rate or interest rates that it controls for aconsiderable but indefinite period of time (which is called qualitative forward guidance), for a
See The Economist, “Don’t Shed a Tier: How to Make Negative Rates Less Painful,” The Economist, February 3,
2016, https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2016/02/03/how-to-make-negative-rates-less-painful for an
explanation of the BoJ's three-tier rate system of interest rates on the accounts held by banks at the BoJ.
31
A yield curve is a graph of the yields or interest rates on a particular type of bond (e.g., government bonds) withyields on the vertical axis and the duration to maturity of the bonds on the horizontal axis. Typically, bonds oflonger duration to maturity have higher yields. Therefore, the yield curve typically slopes upward from left to right.
32
See Bank of Japan, “New Framework for Strengthening Monetary Easing: ‘Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary
Easing with Yield Curve Control,’” Sept. 21, 2016.
https://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/release_2016/k160921a.pdf.
33
The inflation-overshooting commitment announced in September 2016 did not constitute forward guidance
because it was a commitment about quantitative easing and was not directly a commitment regarding policy rates.
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specific period of time (called time contingent forward guidance) or until some policy-relevant
objective or target is achieved (call state contingent forward guidance).34 In July of 2018, theBoJ’s qualitative forward guidance was to maintain both short-term and long-term interest rates
for an “extended” period.35
One observation about monetary policy under Abenomics is that it has been expansionary
not just due to a policy vision but also because of fortunate timing. Because the general election
was held in December 2012, and the Bank of Japan Governor Shirakawa’s term was due to end
in April 2013, it was relatively straightforward for Abe’s government to recruit and haveappointed a Governor committed to highly expansionary monetary policy. But the generalelection did not have to be called in March 2013. The ruling party, the Democratic Party of Japan,
had come to power in the lower house election of August 2009. It was only legally required tohold another election after four years. That is, the election could have been held as late as August
2013. In that case, the Governor of the Bank of Japan would have been a few months into a fiveyear term, and there would have been no opportunity to replace him or her during Abe’s initial
term of office, even if that term of office had lasted four years. In other words, given the special
circumstances under which Abe came to power, with the term of the Governor soon to expire,
the independence of the Bank of Japan as set out in the Bank of Japan Act did not constitute an
obstacle to the implementation of the first arrow of Abenomics. But under more normal
circumstances, the independence of the Bank of Japan would have been an obstacle. For example,
if the Democratic Party of Japan had wished to engineer a dramatic shift of Bank of Japan policy
when it came to power in 2009, it would have faced the problem that Governor Shirakawa had
been appointed in 2008 and his term would continue until 2013.
4.2 Fiscal policy36
Just as BoJ Governor Kuroda has been the consistent face of monetary policy under
Abenomics, so has Finance Minister Aso been the consistent face of fiscal policy. Under Prime
Minister Abe, he was appointed Minister of Finance (and also Deputy Prime Minister) in
December 2012, and was reappointed in the cabinet shuffles of December 2014 and November
2017. He has served in the House of Representatives since 1979, and served a year as Prime
Minister of Japan at the height of the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, at which time heplayed a significant role in the G20 agreement in November 2008 for member countries toadminister fiscal stimulus.37

See Karyne Charbonneau and Lori Rennison, “Forward Guidance at the Effective Lower Bound: International
Experience,” Bank of Canada Staff Discussion Paper 15 (2015), https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2015/11/dp2015-15.pdf. In recent years it has sometimes been claimed that forward guidance issomething new in the central banker’s bag of tricks—see, e.g., Ryan Avent, “What ‘Forward Guidance’ Is, and How
It (Theoretically Works,” The Economist, Feb. 11, 2014, https://www.economist.com/the-economistexplains/2014/02/11/what-forward-guidance-is-and-how-it-theoretically-works,referring to the use of forward
guidance by the U.S. Federal Reserve in December 2012. Charbonneau and Rennisson, “Forward Guidance,”
however, note that forward guidance was pioneered by the BoJ in the April 1999-July 2000 period.
35
See Bank of Japan, “Strengthening the Framework for Continuous Powerful Monetary Easing,” July 31, 2018.
https://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/release_2018/k180731a.pdf.
36
The fiscal policy speeches of Japan's Minister of Finance constitute a primary source on fiscal policy under
Abenomics, and are available at: https://www.mof.go.jp/english/public_relations/statement/fiscal_policy_speech/.
37
See Ricard Koo, “Balance Sheet Recession Is the Reason for Secular Stagnation,” in Secular Stagnation: Facts,
Causes and Cures, ed. Coen Teulings and Richard Baldwin (London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2014),
131-142.
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The initial plan for fiscal policy under Abenomics was that it would be “expansionary”
until the economy reached full employment. In the terminology of the output-gap frameworkoutlined in Section 2 of this essay, it was to be expansionary until actual output of the Japanese
economy rose to the level of the economy’s potential output, and hence the output gap was
eliminated.38 When the output gap was eliminated, fiscal policy would become contractionary inaccordance with the primary objective of fiscal policy shifting from the now-achieved full
employment to the objective of realizing “fiscal consolidation” (a reduction of the government
budget deficit with a view to lowering the government debt-to-GDP ratio).39
The initial expansionary phase of fiscal policy under Finance Minister Aso focused on
government expenditure increases. There was 20.2 trillion yen (4.1 per cent of GDP) of extra
spending for the emergency recovery program of January 2013 and another 18.6 trillion yen (3.7
per cent of GDP) of extra spending for the “Virtuous Cycle” program of December 2013.40
But the plan was to move to fiscal consolidation as soon as possible. In his first budget
speech, Finance Minister Aso announced that the government’s fiscal consolidation objectives
were “to halve the primary balance deficit ratio to GDP of central and local governments by FY
2015 from that in FY 2010, and to achieve a primary balance surplus of central and local
governments by FY 2020.”41 Central to the achievement of these fiscal consolidation objectives
were planned hikes of the consumption tax from 5 to 8 per cent in April 2014 and then from 8 to
10 per cent in October 2015.
In April 2014 the government proceeded with the consumption tax hike as planned. The
hike, however, was associated with a subsequent economic downturn, as some Keynesian
economists had predicted. Consequently, the scheduled consumption tax increase from 8 to 10
per cent in October 2015 was postponed until April 2017 and then to October 2019.
There have been no further significant contractionary fiscal policy moves since the April
2014 consumption tax hike. There have, however, been expansionary spending measures. For
example, there was a 28.1 trillion (5 per cent of GDP) spending boost in August 2016, and in
December 2018 the government announced its plans for a budget that would increase spendingby 3.8 per cent in comparison with the previous year’s budget.42
Despite the expansionary spending measures, and the postponement of the consumption
tax hike from 8 to 10 per cent originally scheduled for October 2015, the Ministry of FinanceBecause macroeconomic policies, including fiscal policy, generally operate with a time lag, it is common for
macroeconomic policymakers to be forward-looking and to shift the direction of policy in advance of theachievement of an objective—e.g., before the output gap has been completely eliminated—to suit the situation
expected at the time the policy will “kick in.”39
In general, expansionary fiscal policy involves government expenditure increases, tax cuts or some combinationof the two, and contractionary fiscal policy is its opposite—government expenditure cuts and/or tax increases.
40
Takatoshi Ito et al., “Did Abenomics Succeed?: Editors’ Overview,” Asian Economic Policy Review 13 no. 1(2018): 2. My extra spending as a percentage of GDP calculations utilize the quarterly GDP numbers from thequarter in which the extra spending was announced (that is, the first quarter and the fourth quarter of 2013
respectively).
41
See Taro Aso, “Speech on Fiscal Policy by Minister of Finance Aso at the 183 rd Session of the National Diet,”
Feb. 28, 2013. https://www.mof.go.jp/english/public_relations/statement/fiscal_policy_speech/e20130228.htm. The
primary government budget balance is the government budget balance net of interest payments on government debt.
FY is an abbreviation for fiscal year. The Japanese fiscal year runs from April 1 of one year to March 31 of thefollowing year.
42
See Ito et al, “Did Abenomics Succeed?”; and Emi Urabe and Yuko Takeo, “Japan’s FY2019 Budget to Top 100
Trillion Yen for First Time,” Bloomberg. Dec. 18, 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-1218/japan-s-fy2019-budget-to-top-100-trillion-yen-for-first-time.
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was slow to abandon its long-term objective for fiscal consolidation. As late as March 2018
Minister of Finance Aso committed to bringing the primary balance into surplus by fiscal year
2020, while recognizing the difficulty of doing so. But Prime Minister Abe formally announced
in September 2017 that the government was working on revision of the fiscal consolidation plan
and would release it by the following summer, and in June 2018, it was announced that thedeadline for achieving primary balance was pushed forward to fiscal year 2025.43
One observation about fiscal policy under Abenomics is that what is regarded as the
major fiscal policy mistake—the hike of the consumption tax from 5 to 8 per cent in April 2014,
which was followed by an economic downturn—was not just an economic policy misjudgement.
Indeed, Koichi Hamada, the so-called godfather of Abenomics, warned against the consumption
tax hike, and policy-makers were well aware that consumption tax hikes are contractionary bynature. But policy-makers felt that they had an obligation to meet their international
commitments to engage in “fiscal consolidation.” When Finance Minister Aso announced thegovernment’s fiscal consolidation objectives “to halve the primary balance deficit ratio to GDP
of central and local governments by FY 2015 from that in FY 2010, and to achieve a primarybalance surplus of central and local governments by FY 2020,” he was stating exactly the same
objective that had been announced by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Kan government inJune 22, 2010, partly at the urging of the IMF. The Kan Cabinet decision to adopt a Fiscal
Management Strategy with these fiscal consolidation objectives became a Japanese commitmentin the G20 Toronto Summit Declaration of June 27, 2010. In addition, DPJ Minister of FinanceAzumi had announced in his fiscal policy speech of January 2012 that the consumption tax ratewould be increased to 8 per cent in April 2014 and to 10 per cent in October 2015 “on condition
that the economic situation is improved.” This conditional plan for consumption tax increases
was also maintained under the flexible fiscal policy of Abenomics until the negative economic
consequences following from the April 2014 tax hike provided a satisfactory excuse to postpone
the tax hike that had been scheduled to take place in October 2015.
4.3 Growth Strategy44
Prime Minister Abe and his government termed the third arrow of the initial version of
Abenomics as a “growth strategy.” Unlike the terms monetary policy and fiscal policy, however,
the term growth strategy is not a precisely defined and widely used term in macroeconomics. In
macroeconomics there is a tradition of dividing the major macroeconomic policies into three
types: monetary policy, fiscal policy and structural policy. Monetary policy and fiscal policy fallunder the umbrella of stabilization policy are they are concerned with the management of overall
spending in the economy to combat recessions or to prevent “overheating” of the economy. In
the terminology of the output-gap framework of Section 2, they impact actual output or its
growth rate. By contrast, structural policy is said to be concerned with raising potential output or
the longer-term growth potential of the economy.45 Structural policy is the term that economists
would use to describe the types of measures forming the third arrow of the initial version of
Abenomics. Economists use the term structural policy rather than growth strategy becausemonetary and fiscal policies are also concerned with stimulating economic growth.
See Robin Harding, “Japan Says It Will Run Budget Deficit until 2025,” Financial Times. June 15, 2018.
https://www.ft.com/content/a9e5fb10-7087-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92914.
44
Growth strategy documents are provided by the Cabinet Office of Japan at:
http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/keizaisaisei/kettei.html.
45
For further explanation of structural policy, see Frank et al, Principles of Macroeconomics, 90.
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Details of the original growth strategy are presented in 98-page document titled “Japan
Revitalization Strategy: Japan is Back.” Released in June 2013, it puts the growth strategy incontext as follows:
Through the implementation of the three “arrows,” including this Growth Strategy,
among other measures, Japan aims to achieve a vibrant economy that will register
over 2% labor productivity improvement in the medium- to long-term, and around
3% nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth and around 2% real GDP
growth, on average, over the next ten years.46
The paragraph mentions three targets: a target for the growth of labour productivity, one
for the growth of nominal GDP and another for growth of real (or inflation-adjusted) GDP. By
definition, the growth of real GDP equals the growth of labour productivity (GDP per employedperson) plus the growth of employment. Also, by definition, the growth of nominal GDP equals
the growth of real GDP plus the inflation rate (that is, the growth of the price level).47 Of thethree targets, the growth strategy would be most directly associated with labour productivity
growth. But it would also be relevant for real and nominal GDP growth because real GDP
growth depends on labour productivity growth and nominal GDP growth depends on real GDP
growth.
The growth strategy document stated that economic growth would be ensured boththrough pursuit of macroeconomic targets and through achievement of targets for
subcomponents of the growth strategy. Regulatory reforms, spending on new programs andprojects, and changes to the system of taxation would support achievement of the targets, and thestrategy would evolve from one year to the next. Among other things, regulatory reforms would
extend to the electricity sector, agriculture and healthcare; corporate tax rates would be reduced;
and corporate governance would be enhanced.
The growth strategies for 2014, 2015 and 2016 kept the same “Japan Revitalization
Strategy” title as the 2013 edition but the their subtitles changed from “Japan is Back” to“Japan's Challenge for the Future” to “Investment for the Future and the Productivity Revolution”
to “Toward the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” respectively. Promoting a a fourth industrial
revolution based on the Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics was firstraised as an issue in the 2014 growth strategy. The June 2015 edition of the growth strategy waspresented as being central to a second stage of Abenomics in which, because of the substantial
progress made in reducing the output gap, the growth strategy would become more important
relative to monetary and fiscal policy. The 2016 edition emphasized the promotion of IoT, AI
and robotics that had been introduced as an element of the 2014 growth strategy, and pointed to a
new macroeconomic goal of realizing a nominal GDP of 600 trillion yen.48

See Cabinet Office et al., “Joint Statement,” 2.
There are two main methods for measuring inflation. The most common method is in terms of growth of the pricelevel as measured by the CPI. The method that is most relevant here, however, is in terms of the growth rate of the
GDP deflator. The two inflation rates tend to move together, but, for Japan, the CPI inflation rate tends to show
more inflation than the inflation rate based on growth of the GDP deflator.
48
The government had first announced in the fall of 2015. To put the 600 trillion yen nominal GDP target in context,
it helps to know that Japan’s nominal GDP in the third quarter of 2015 was about 533 trillion yen. The 600 trillion
yen target was often mentioned without specification of any deadline for its achievement, but when a deadline wasmentioned it was for fiscal year 2020.
46
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The 2017 and 2018 editions of the growth strategy were both given the new title“Investment Strategy for the Future” with the subtitle for the 2017 edition being “A Revolution
for the Realization of Society 5.0” and the subtitle for the 2018 edition being “A Shift to the
Data-Driven Model of Society, Society 5.0.” Society 5.0 was presented as a new stage in socioeconomic evolution that would improve people’s lives through the widespread diffusion of thetechnological breakthroughs emerging from the fourth industrial revolution. The role of growthstrategy was to accelerate the transition to Society 5.0.
Many advocates of “structural reforms” to the Japanese economy treat the growthstrategy of Abenomics as being synonymous with structural reforms. It is more accurate todescribe the growth strategy as a structural policy that includes structural reforms but is not
limited to them. Elements of the growth strategy such as the campaign to increase the annual
number of tourist visits to Japan, measures to boost the employment of women through social
program expenditures, efforts to raise educational attainment and industrial strategies to promote
promising technologies for the realization of Society 5.0 are significant, and they would notnormally be described as structural reforms.49
Nevertheless, the main stated aim of the growth strategies of Abenomics has been to raise
the labour productivity growth rate of the economy, and the Abe government has treatedstructural reforms as being critical to achieving this aim. One observation is that it is inherently
difficult to raise the labour productivity growth rate of a high-income country, and structuralreforms implemented with the stated aim or raising productivity growth can result primarily in ashift of income from labour to capital. With an output gap estimated by the IMF of 3.7 per centof potential GDP when Abenomics began, there were easy growth gains to be had throughexpansionary fiscal and monetary policy until the output gap was eliminated. But Japan was notanything like, to give an extreme example, China waiting to be dramatically transformed by the
implementation of Deng Xiaoping Theory following the death of Mao Zedong. Japan, asJapanese economy specialist Hugh Patrick has often stated, has a “well-educated, industrious
labor force, high savings and investment rates, and good economic institutions.”50 This has beentrue for decades, and it implies that raising Japan’s productivity growth rate by much isinherently difficult. Moreover, the experience of various countries shows that structural reforms
implemented with the stated aim of raising labour productivity growth may instead primarily
result in upward redistribution of income.51
5. ABENOMICS: PERFORMANCE INDICATORS_________________________________In 2012, pessimism about Japan's economic prospects was widespread, and not without
reason. The two previous decades were widely described as the two “lost decades.” Nominal
GDP in 2012 (at 495 trillion yen) was no higher than it had been in 1992. The economy was still
The term structural reforms is usually used to describe financial liberalization measures, corporate governancereforms to make corporations more focused on returns to shareholders, large cuts to corporate tax rates, labour
market reforms to increase “labour flexibility,” privatization of public corporations and publicly-provided services
and so on. For further details, though with a developing country focus, see Dani Rodrik, “The Elusive Promise of
Structural Reform,” Milken Institute Review, 2nd quarter (2016): 27-35.
50
See Patrick, “Japan’s Economy,” 1.
51
In the political science literature, structural reforms are often viewed as a component of neo-liberalism. For theperspective that Abenomics has been a mixture of Keynesian and neo-liberal policies, see Saori Shibata, “Repackaging Old Policies?” ‘Abenomics’ and the Lack of an Alternative Growth Model for Japan’s Political
Economy,” Japan Forum 29 no. 3 (2017): 399-422.
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experiencing deflation. The GDP deflator had declined from 103.7 in 2009 to 99.2 in 2012. The
Tokyo Metro Area house price index had dropped below 77 for the first time since its inception
in mid-1993. Japanese real GDP in 2012 was lower than it had been in 2007. Net export growth
was challenged by a yen-dollar exchange rate that had appreciated from an average 118 yen per
U.S. dollar in 2007 to 81 yen per dollar in November 2012. Total employment had declined
continuously since 2009. The government budget deficit stood at -7.5 per cent of GDP. The
Nikkei index of the stock market, which had peaked at about 39,000 at the end of 1990, stood at
8,500 in November 2012.52
Such was Japan’s economic situation when the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan
returned to power by winning a majority in the Lower House election of December 2012 with anambitious program to overcome deflation, boost Japanese economic growth and expand
employment opportunities. The Abenomics program included targets for inflation (2 per cent),
for fiscal policy consolidation (primary budget balance by fiscal year 2020), and for real GDP
growth (2 per cent).
None of these targets have been met. The inflation rate, whether measured by percentage
increase in the CPI or percentage increase in the GDP deflator, failed to average 2 per cent.
Annual CPI inflation only reached 2 per cent in 2014, and has averaged slightly less than 1 percent. The fiscal consolidation objective of primary budget balance by the target fiscal year 2020
has been abandoned in a favour of a target fiscal year of 2025, and the government gross debt-toGDP ratio has continued to climb. Finally, annual real GDP growth only reached 2 per cent in2013, and has averaged about 1.25 per cent.
But it would be extremely one-sided to note only that the targets have not been met.
While 2 per cent inflation has not been reached and maintained, the economy has not fallen backinto deflation. The GDP deflator that had declined each and every year from 114.1 in 1997 to
96.2 in 2013 has since risen to 100.53
While the government budget deficit has not shrunk enough to meet the fiscal
consolidation target, it has been cut in half, in good part thanks to increased revenue stemmingfrom higher economic growth. Moreover, it should be noted that the usual rationale for slashing
the government budget deficit is to bring down the gross government debt-to-GDP ratio. But, as
discussed in Section 3, the gross government debt-to-GDP ratio that is typically employed tosuggest that Japan is on the brink of fiscal disaster is not an ideal measure of Japan’s fiscal health.
Measures such as the “consolidated” debt-to-GDP ratio calculated by Greenan and Weinstein,
the net government interest payments relative to GDP ratio emphasized by Baker and the net
government assets-to-GDP ratio recently promoted by the IMF suggest that fiscal consolidation
is probably less urgent than proponents of impending fiscal disaster suggest.
With respect to economic growth, as explained in Section 3 of this essay, growth of real
GDP per capita is generally a more meaningful measure than growth of real GDP. The 1.5 percent annual growth of GDP per capita for the 2013-2018 period compares favourably not justwith the widely-praised 1.1 per cent annual growth during the years (2001-2006) of former
Prime Minister Koizumi’s government but even exceeds the growth rates of all other G7

The main source of data for this paragraph is the IMF World Economic Outlook Database (2018). Other sources
are the Pacific Exchange Rate Service for the exchange rate, the Japan Real Estate Institute for the Tokyo Metro
Area house price index and the FRED database of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for the Nikkei index.
53
See Federal Reserve Board of St. Louis, FRED Economic Data, GDP Implicit Price Deflator in Japan(JPNGDPDEFAISMEI), https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNGDPDEFAISMEI.
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countries except for the United States (that is, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United
Kingdom) during the 2013-2018 period.54
One way to measure whether Abenomics has been successful in eliminating underutilized
capacity in the Japanese economy is with estimates of change in the output gap. As with output
gap estimates for other countries, those for Japan vary according to the source.
The IMF estimates point to the most slack in the Japanese economy. According to the
IMF, Japan faced a recessionary gap of 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2012. The gap has fallen steadily,
but the IMF estimated a recessionary gap of 0.8 per cent of GDP in 2017, and projected arecessionary gap of 0.3 per cent of GDP in 2018.55
The OCED estimates are that Japan had a recessionary gap of 1.5 per cent in 2012. The
gap fell substantially under Abenomics, and turned into a very small expansionary gap of 0.1 percent in 2017. The OECD estimates a recessionary gap of 0.3 per cent for the Japanese economy
in 2018.56
According to the Cabinet Office of Japan, the Japanese economy had a recessionary gapof 1.7 per cent of GDP in the latter half of 2012, was operating just at capacity with no output
gap in the first quarter of 2017, realized expansionary gaps of between 0.3 per cent and 0.8 percent of GDP between the second quarters of 2017 and 2018.57
According to the BoJ estimates, the Japanese economy had a recessionary gap of over 1
per cent of potential GDP at the time the Abe government took office, but had substantiallyreduced that output gap by the third quarter of 2013, and since the fourth quarter of 2016 theJapanese economy has been operating continuously with an expansionary gap, which reached 1.6
per cent of potential GDP in the second quarter of 2018.58
The consensus among four official sources, then, is that there was a substantial
recessionary gap before the implementation of Abenomics and that the recessionary gap has been
either drastically reduced or transformed into an expansionary gap.
Another way to measure the success of Abenomics in eliminating underutilized capacity
in the Japanese economy is with labour market statistics. A very wide range of statistics point to
the fact that the Japanese employment has expanded to the point that labour market is “tight”—
that is, close to full employment.59 Although the population aged 15 and over declined by almost
100,000 from November 2012 to November 2018, the number of employed grew by 4 million
over the same period, after having declined continuously from 2009 to 2012. On an annual basis
employment reached 66.3 million in 2018, exceeding the previous peak reached in 1997.
The overall labour force participation rate rose by 2.8 percentage points over theNovember 2012 to November 2018 period. (For comparison, the U.S. labour force participation
rate fell by 0.8 percentage points over approximately the same period and the Canadian one fell
This paragraph makes use of data from the IMF World Economic Outlook Database (2018), with preliminary
estimates for 2018.
55
IMF output gap estimates can be found in the IMF World Economic Outlook Database (2018).
56
The OECD estimates can be found at OECD. Stat: https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?QueryId=51655.
57
The Cabinet Office estimated a small recessionary gap in the third quarter of 2018 that I presume would havebeen related to the impact of natural disasters that occurred in September 2018. Output gap calculations by the
Cabinet Office are provided in a spreadsheet file on the Monthly Economic Report page of the Statistics site. At
present, the direct link is: https://www5.cao.go.jp/keizai3/getsurei/1842gap.xls.
58
Details about the Bank of Japan's output gap calculations can be found at:https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/research_data/gap/index.htm/
59
I present the relevant labour market statistics in much greater detail in MacLean, “Abenomics and the Japanese
Labour Market.”
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by 1.2 percentage points.)60 The participation rate of Japanese women aged 25 to 54 now
exceeds the corresponding rate for U.S. women in the same age bracket.61
The unemployment rate has reached its lowest level in decades. In May 2018 theunemployment rate fell to 2.4 per cent, the lowest level since 1992, and in September 2018 it fell
further to 2.3 per cent.62 The unemployment rate of those in the aged 15 to 24 bracket has“declined to a level below that of the bubble period, and labour market conditions for new
graduates have created more of a seller's market than ever before.”63
In September 2018 the ratio of job offers to applicants reached a 44-year high. Moreover,the “active job openings-to-applications ratios recently have exceeded 1 in all prefectures, which
was not observed even in the bubble period.”64
In short, although targets for economic growth, inflation, and fiscal consolidation havenot been met, the economy has grown at a healthy pace as measured as growth of real GDP per
capita and employment growth. Moreover, Japanese labour markets are generally “tight” asmeasured by the extremely low unemployment rate, labour force participation rates and theextremely high rate of job offers per job applicant.
6. CONCLUSIONS_____________________________________________________________
This essay has provided an assessment of Abenomics over the six years since its
inception at the end of 2012. The central aim of the essay was to assess the degree to which
Abenomics has achieved its core objective of overcoming economic stagnation. The assessment
has been conducted with an output-gap framework and in light of analytical considerations suchas the appropriate indicators of economic growth and fiscal health. The conclusion has been that
although economic targets have not been fully realized, economic stagnation has been overcome.
The economy has grown at a healthy pace and underutilization of capacity has been largely
eliminated.
The assessment is obviously incomplete in that Abenomics will obviously continue
beyond the period covered by the essay. Of particular interest for future assessments of
Abenomics will be the economic impact of the consumption tax hike of 2 percentage points thatis still planned for October 2019. The budget for fiscal year 2019-20 contains various countermeasures to offset the negative impact of overall spending of the consumption tax hike, but at thetime of writing it remains to be seen whether they will suffice.
The assessment has also not delved into the evidence on the degree to which the
improvement in economic performance under Abenomics has been the result of Abenomics or,say, simply due to the international economic environment during the Abenomics period.65 I
would argue that the improvement in economic performance under Abenomics is largely due toJapanese monthly data in this paragraph comes from the Labour Force Survey of Japan.
See Jay Shambaugh, Ryan Nunn and Becca Portman, “Lessons from the Rise of Women’s Labor Force
Participation in Japan,” The Hamilton Project/Brookings Institution (2017). The paper gives the U.S. rate as 74.3
and the Japanese rate as 76.3 in 2016. Incidentally, the rate in Canada then was about 82 percent.
62
See Alice Woodhouse, “Japan September Unemployment Rate Falls to 2.3%,” Financial Times. Oct. 29, 2018.
https://www.ft.com/content/510aa27c-dbd3-11e8-9f04-38d397e6661c.
63
Masazumi Watakabe, “Japan’s Economy and Monetary Policy: Speech at a Meeting with Business Leaders in
Nigeria,” Bank of Japan. Dec. 5, 2018. https://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/press/koen_2018/ko181205a.htm/.
64
Wakatabe, “Japan’s Economy and Monetary Policy.”
65
In MacLean, “Abenomics and the Japanese Labour Market,” I have a brief discussion of the evidence on theextent to which economic performance under Abenomics is due to policy decisions.
60
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expansionary monetary policy and to fiscal policy that has been mostly expansionary except forthe consumption tax hike of April 2014.66
The expansionary monetary policy has continued to lower interest rates, especially longterm rates.67 Lower interest rates tend to weaken the exchange rate. A weaker exchange rate
tends to stimulate export growth. Export growth and lower interest rates tend to boost stock
prices. Low interest rates, export growth and rising stock prices tend to encourage private-sector
investment. Export growth and private-sector investment growth produce growth of aggregate
demand and real GDP growth, not just nominal GDP growth, in an economy with theunderutilized capacity. Lower interest rates and rising stock prices also support consumption tosome degree, which also supports real GDP growth. As well, expansionary fiscal policy
contributes to real GDP growth directly—government purchases are a component of GDP—andindirectly by encouraging consumption and private-sector investment. Real GDP growth above
the rate of labour productivity growth boosts demand for labour, which acts to raise employment
rates and bring down employment rates.
The assessment is also incomplete in that it has focused on assessing how well
Abenomics has achieved its initial objective of overcoming economic stagnation, and has
described the key policies (fiscal, monetary and structural) related to this objective, but it hasdelved into later objectives of Abenomics. An example of a later objective is that, announced infall of 2015, of raising the fertility rate to 1.8 births per woman as a means to reduce the pace of
population decline. The fertility rate has risen almost continuously from a low of 1.25 in 2005 toabout 1.45 more recently, and it is certainly an important question as to whether the rate can beraised to 1.8.68
The assessment has not investigated the broader socio-economic impacts of Abenomics
such as the availability of good jobs, the growth of wages, the distribution of income and thepoverty rate.69 Such an assessment would require another essay. In my concluding paragraphs,
however, I would like to mention a socio-economic issue of considerable importance—thesuicide rate.
Suicide rates have been cited frequently as an indirect indicator of the state of theeconomy ever since they jumped sharply after the financial crisis that began in 1997, and stayedat an elevated level for years after.70 More precisely, in 1998 the number of suicides jumped 35
per cent from 24,391 to 32,863, and many of those who committed suicide left suicide notes
mentioning financial problems. More than 30,000 deaths by suicide were recorded in each of 14
consecutive years to 2011, the highest number being 34,427 in 2003.71
Linking the number of suicides to economic factors is actually not straightforward. In
their economic analysis of suicide prevention, Sawada et al. caution that “by examining
In MacLean, “Abenomics and the Japanese Labour Market,” I argue that the key indicator that fiscal policy has
been expansionary is that the budget deficit was still about 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2018 when the economy was very
close to potential output and full employment by many indicators.
67
To follow the reasoning of this paragraph, it helps to know that macroeconomics divide GDP into four broad
categories of spending: consumption, private-sector investment, government purchases and net exports.
68
Fertility rate data can be found at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=JP.
69
In MacLean, “Abenomics and the Japanese Labour Market,” I briefly discuss the growth of wages and theavailability of good jobs.
70
I discuss this briefly in Brian K. MacLean, “Avoiding a Great Depression but Getting a Good Recession,”International Journal of Political Economy 35 (2006): 84-107.
71
Extremely detailed annual statistical reports on suicides in Japan are published online (in Japanese) by the
National Policy Agency at: http://www.npa.go.jp/publications/statistics/safetylife/jisatsu.html.
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individual-level data, the Suicide Investigation Team (2008) finds that people who killed
themselves had typically suffered from multiple—four, on average—risk factors for suicide.”72
The National Police Agency gives health issues as the leading identifiable cause of suicide. Men
are more than twice as likely as women to commit suicide, and those over age 65 are much more
likely to commit suicide than those 64 and under. Suicide prevention policies have been anational priority since the Diet passed the Basic Act on Suicide Prevention in 2006.
Nevertheless, “financial problems” has been the number two motivating cause forsuicides in Japan since the early 1990s, and given that the number of suicides was frequently
cited as a dramatic indicator of the state of Japan's economy during the “lost decades,” it is worth
mentioning that the number of suicides in Japan fell by 3.4 per cent in 2018 from the previous
year, marking the ninth consecutive year of decline. The total number of suicides fell to 20,598
in 2018, down from 27,858 suicides in 2012, and marking a 37-year low. The number of suicides
for women dropped to 6,473, setting a record low for the third consecutive year.
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6. FOUR DECADES SINCE THE
PUBLICATION OF E.W. SAID’SORIENTALISM: BRIEF
COMMENTS ON ITSIDEOLOGICAL ROOTS AND
IMPACT ON JAPAN AND JAPANRELATED SCHOLARSHIP
Jacob Kovalio
Associate Professor, Department of History, Carleton University
E-mail: jacob.kovalio@carleton.ca______________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACT2018 was the fortieth year since the publication of E.W. Said’s anti-Orientalist (in fact
anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Zionist [politically antisemitic]) Orientalism, a political“manifesto” masquerading as scholarly work. Notwithstanding countless factual errors (due todeliberate omission or plain ignorance), tendentious selectivity, shoddy, victimist (see below)
corrupt and corrupting analysis, practically no academic, intellectual, communications andmedia, socio-economic, political, cultural and artistic realm, even in democratic societies—from
the US, Canada and Europe to Japan and Israel—has escaped Orientalism’s deleterious impact.
The history, culture and art of Japan—central to this piece—are no exception. This regrettablereality, as shown here, should be considered an expression only of the intellectual and sociocultural malaise that has affected the democratic world in the past five decades that Said, theclever political intellectual, both profited from and exacerbated. This essay is indicating—for the
first time anywhere—that Orientalism in particular, as well as Said’s other political writings andmilitancy, drew heavily on the anti-Orientalist (thus anti-Western and antisemitic) writings andideas of Egyptian thinker Sayyd Qutb (1906-1966, the leading ideologue of the global Islamist
Muslim Brotherhood movement) especially his Our War against the Jews. In a gradual processthat started in the late 1960s, universities, the media and politics in all democratic nations havecome under systematic pressure of an anti-democratic thus totalitarian anti-Western, antiAmerican and anti-Zionist [politically antisemitic cum surrogate of convenience and facilitator
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for the first two] activist “cabal” of sorts, composed of Islamists and Radical Leftists. E.W.
Said—through Orientalism and other copious political writings and relentless activism—is theundisputed epistemological representative of Islamist (thus Rightist) anti-Westernism, antiAmericanism and anti-Zionism, positions fully shared and expressed on the Radical Left in the
countless write-ups and militancy of fellow political intellectual and personal pal, A. Noam
Chomsky. I am thus proposing the term Saidskyism—a neologism formed from the names of
Said and Chomsky—as expressing concomitant Islamist/Leftist anti-Westernism, antiAmericanism and antisemitism. This short essay is the written version of a presentation by thesame title, given at the annual conference of the Japan Studies Association of Canada (JSAC) at
the University of Alberta (Edmonton) in October 2018. The essay contains three chapters: 1) On
Orientalism and orientalism, 2) EWS—intellectual jihadi to the end, 3) EWS’s lasting legacy atColumbia University. The views expressed herein are the author’s alone.
Keywords: E.W. Said [EWS], A. Noam Chomsky (ANC), Saidskyism, Orientalism, Orientalism,
orientalism, anti-Westernism/anti-Americanism/anti-Zionism, International Congress ofOrientalists, Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyd Qutb, Japan’s Orient, Embracing the East, Defending
the West, Reading Orientalism, 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, World Social Forum Porto
Alegre 2003, Columbia University, Hamid Dabashi.
Motto: “The sheer crassness of what is being quoted [in Orientalism] can override a criticalcaution about what has been left out… In terms of intellectual history [Said’s] interdisciplinary
rigor borders on the mortis.”—Daniel M. Varisco, Reading Orientalism, 40-41.
Motto: “It is because the Japanese have tried to adapt themselves to the [sic] Western orientalism[that] Japan has become an orientalist State, that alienates itself from Asia.”— Yūzō Itagaki,
Dialogue Among Civilizations: A Japanese Viewpoint, Bahrain Center for Studies and Research[BCSR], May, 2002.
Notes on style and terminology: 1) Japanese names are rendered in traditional Japanese fashion,
last names first. 2) The name of Edward William Said—dapper, wealthy, aggressive “public [infact Islamist political] intellectual,” self-anointed Middle-East expert though mostly ignorant of,
and/or grossly prejudiced on all major issues—chiefly history—of the area of Asia at large,
author of a slew of essentializing naked propaganda pontifications, Orientalism being the mostnotorious, all strongly inspired by and stealthily aimed at implementing the global agenda of the
Muslim Brotherhood [hereafter MB] (see below), and influential with the anti-Western, antiAmerican, antisemitic academic, intellectual and media crowds in all non-democratic as well as
in many democratic societies—is mentioned as EWS throughout. 3) Eminent Orientalist Bernard
Lewis who passed away in 2018 was the target of EWS’s mendacious racism and antisemitism inOrientalism and elsewhere, as were countless other eminent specialists who interfered with
EWS’s politicized intellectual jihad. Rightist EWS’s sidekick on the Radical Nihilist Left, theequally shrill anti-Western, anti-American, antisemitic “political intellectual” A. Noam Chomsky[hereafter ANC] in March 2003, in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
TV, bashed Bernard Lewis as a “vulgar propagandist”—a baseless slur regarding Professor
Lewis, but a perfectly accurate designation for both EWS and ANC for the anti-Westernism,
anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism/Israelism [thus political antisemitism] underpinning theirpolitical oeuvres and activism. Given their common ideological turf (with antisemitism often
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used as surrogate and/or facilitator for anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism) and theundeniable, though most regrettable, influence of their ideas (a symptom not of the acceptabilityof their views, but only of the scholarly and intellectual malaise affecting the academic,
intellectual and political realms of democracies since 1968) I have coined the term Saidskyism—
a portmanteau composed of the last names of EWS [Islamist] and ANC [Leftist] and expressing
anti-Western, anti-American and antisemitic propaganda rolled into one. 4) EWS and EWSinspired writing about the Middle-East and Asia is spelled “orientalism.”
1. ON

ORIENTALISM AND ORIENTALISM

Following are brief remarks (stemming from a larger project) on what I consider to be thedeleterious impact of EWS’s anti-Western, anti-American, antisemitic, anti-scholarly, agitprop
polemic, Orientalism. This is an urgent need, in view of the popularity, as a potent ideologicalweapon wielded by an anti-Western, anti-American, antisemitic Islamist/Marxist, antidemocratic “cabal” (thus negatively affecting freedom of speech in society and on campuses)
highly influential among many Western—including Israeli and Japanese—scholars, intellectuals
and politicians, of EWS’s Islamism-inspired diatribe masquerading as scholarly work. Indeed,
one is hard pressed to find any field in the humanities and social sciences which has not been
afflicted by EWS’s arrogant, aggressive and intellectually corrupt orientalism—evidence not ofthe validity of his ruminations, but an unfortunate symptom of the contemporary intellectual andscholarly crisis affecting Western democracies, and which has allowed EWS to cause themincalculable damage.
The term “Orientalists, International Congress of,” at https://www.encyclopedia.com, is
described as “a group… devoted to the spread of learning in oriental subjects” aiming at “thepropagation of the knowledge of the History, Languages and Civilizations of Oriental people
among Western Nations.” The suggested bibliography at the bottom of the short article includes
but one item: Orientalism by EWS. Considering EWS’s highly politicized intellectual jihad
against the Western scholarly, cultural and largely apolitical tradition of Oriental [Asian]Studies, which Orientalism embodies but which Orientalism has aimed to destroy, the very factof the book being mentioned as a legitimate source for the field, indicates its continuing, andgiven its nature, deleterious impact. The passing in 2018 of the eminent Orientalist Bernard
Lewis, often the target of EWS’s racist and overall poisonous pen and tongue, like many otherleading historians and intellectuals who “dared” to criticize his “scholarship,” reinforces therelevance of renewed efforts to alert (at least) democratic societies to the destructive characterof his extremely politicized intellectual output.
The year 2018 was the 40th anniversary of the publication of EWS’s Orientalism, a tomeof unbridled anti-Westernism, anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism [political antisemitism]
overflowing with shoddy scholarship, thus abundant displays of factual ignorance or distortion,and expressed in an arrogant, victimist and aggressive writing style. (EWS admirer and Asiansupremacist writer Parag Khanna, author of The Future is Asian, has adequately called
Orientalism a “manifesto.”) Nonetheless, it is undeniable that EWS’s assault on Western
scholarship on the Muslim/Arab Orient and beyond has met with much popularity, EWS
cleverly profiting from and bolstering rampant political correctness, cultural relativism, moral
inversion and overblown multiculturalism which, in recent decades, have afflicted theinstitutions of higher learning as well as the intellectual and political life of all democracies,
including Japan and Israel.
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Traditional professional Orientalism is a field of scholarly (linguistic, cultural, historical,
religious) intellectual and artistic endeavour encompassing all of Asia (itself a European
designation) which emerged gradually in universities in Western Europe and Russia (where it
was sponsored by the State) about 400 years ago. Scholarly, intellectual and linguistic curiosity
as well as genuine fascination with Asian cultures animated European Orientalists from
“Oriental” Jones, through Milescu Spătaru and Champollion to Bernard Lewis—rather thanimperialism (an occasionally parallel but not complementary phenomenon) or sordid European
plots to dominate Muslim lands and minds, as EWS and his followers insist. Excellent recent
efforts—Urs App’s The Beginnings of Orientalism comes to mind—to redeem Orientalism andits history from Saidskyite, thus Islamist/Leftist politicized intellectual onslaught, while highly
relevant, have had only a limited impact.
Even the briefest look at the way the study of Japan—and that of all other Asian
cultures—by professional Orientalists, our assiduous, sincere, respectful, efforts to study andunderstand those traditions—should place EWS’s “orientalism” in the corner of shame it
deserves, as the crude anti-intellectual campaign blaming the so-called West—for the selfinduced, largely Islamism-related, problems plaguing his ancestral Arab-Muslim as well as
African and some Asian cultures.
The International Congress of Orientalists [ICO] was launched in 1873 and Paris hosted
the inaugural conference. The proceedings volume of the first conference includes a list ofmember nations and regional political entities (like the kingdom of Prussia). Japan’s membership
included the Meiji Emperor, (mentioned by his given name, Mutsuhito) and other prominent
personalities like intellectual modernizer, writer, educator and public opinion maker Fukuzawa
Yukichi (a veritable “anti-EWS” given his pragmatic and constructive approach tomodernization—selective learning from the West—as the most beneficial approach to Japan’snational interests and identity) was under the aegis of the foreign ministry, foreign minister
Terashima Munenori, etc. The newly founded Tōyō Gakkai (Oriental Research Society),reflecting the ancient, often state-sponsored, Japanese tradition of historical writing, wasunderwritten by the foreign ministry. Since Japan was the central theme of the conference, thepresident of the Congress was the eminent French Japanologist Leon de Rosny—author, among
many other titles, of the History of the Civilization of Japan. The Egyptian khedive, Ismail, was amember too. The ICO was an outgrowth of the Ethnographic Society (Société d’Ethnographie,founded in 1859). It is mentioned in the proceedings that “the importance of British colonies wasbehind the establishment of centres of linguistic and other training in [sic] India, China and Japan
which became a hothouse [pepiniere] of [bureaucratic] Orientalist specialists for Britain.” Newly
united Germany had the largest number of Orientalists in Europe. The individual membership ofthe ICO stood at 909; 44 national academic societies, 17 libraries and an unspecified number ofmuseums were affiliated with the organization.1 The ICO continued to exist for a century; in
1973, it became the International Congress of Asian and North African Studies (ICANAS).
Information about its activities and publications has always been readily available, eminently
apolitical, yet have been by and large ignored due to the orientalist onslaught.
EWS in Orientalism mentioned French writers Anwar Abdel Malek and Michel
Foucault,in particular, as having inspired him. My research, however, leads to the conclusionthat the late (d.2003) Columbia University English Literature professor, Palestinian-Egyptian
Congrés International des Orientalistes, Compte rendu de la première session (Lichtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1873
[1968]), x-xi.
1

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and “talismanic” (EWS’s reference) American passport holder, nominal Christian, Palestine
Liberation Organization [PLO] operative, and lifelong anti-Western, anti-American and antiZionist political intellectual was inspired in his long anti-Orientalist academic, intellectual, evenartistic (as classical music reviewer) propaganda campaign (jihad) by the ideas of Sayyid
Qutb—the top postwar ideologue of the MB—the world’s leading Islamist movement, foundedin Egypt in 1928.
The MB has been very successful in penetrating Western universities (which given theirtraditional autonomy, constitute a political soft belly of democracies) through groups like theMuslim Students Association [MSA]. Former American President B. H. Obama—who
throughout his political life interacted closely with EWS and especially with his fellow
Columbia University orientalist and PLO–man Rashid Khalidi—has been a firm believer in the
MB as a democratic movement (!!) and practically cut off relations with Egypt after its military
overthrew president Muhammad Morsi—a leading MB member—in 2013. The movement has
been banned as a terrorist entity in Egypt and much of Europe but not (yet) in the US.
EWS turned his highly politicized “scholarship”—a Orientalism being only the mostnotorious example—into a potent weapon of shrill propaganda aimed at the gradual
undermining and eventual destruction of Western (especially American) democracy. His
offensive anti-Western, anti-American and antisemitic write-ups and speeches—which hecleverly and, of course, falsely, advertised as “speaking truth to power”—in reality militated fornothing less than the unravelling of his host culture from within, a goal he shared with Qutb andthe MB, as shown here:
QUTB: “The Jews have instilled [sic] men
and regimes [in the Muslim world] in order
to conspire against the Ummah [global
Muslim nation]… Thousands of Orientalists
and students of Orientalists, a massive
army of agents in the form of professors,
philosophers and researchers… writers,
poets and journalists… all learned
authorities intend to break the Creed of the
Muslims..” 2

EWS: “Orientalism… is a Western
style [sic] for dominating,restructuring and having authority
over the Orient… The study of aforeign region like the Orient is turned
into a program for control by
divination… Yet such programsmust have a liberal veneer andusually this is left to scholars, menof good will, enthusiasts to attend
to.”3

QUTB: “[Our] divine program has to begin
by destroying… the power of the state[throughout the world] and the social
system and the conditions that surround it.
We must not allow the campaigns of

EWS: “I think the Westphaliansystem, which ordered the statesystem of the world, has failed. And I
think it's failed internally. There's
been a desire on the part of the rightwing in the United States… toattack… independent thought… that

Ronald Nettler, Past Trials and Present Tribulations: A Muslim Fundamentalist’s View of the Jews (New York:
Pergamon Press, 1987), 47. The Nettler book is a detailed analysis of Qutb’s Our Struggle Against the Jews
published in 1955, which as seen above contains blunt and racist/antisemitic attacks on Orientalism, positions EWS
fully shared.
3
Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 3.
2

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Orientalists against the principle of Jihad todeceive or scare us.” 4

appears to challenge the prevailingorder, and it increased after 9/11.”5

EWS was a consistent supporter of Islamism—Sunni or Shi’ite, thus of Khumaynism. He
used his harsh and offensive pen and tongue to bash writers of Arab origin like Fuad Ajami,
Kanan Makiya and others who did not share his views on Islam and its relations with democraticsocieties.6
EWS’s orientalism and his equally fraudulent “post-colonial studies” (a version of the
Dependencista theory—falsely accusing former Western colonial powers of continuing todominate their past colonies by means of a supposedly skewed post-colonial economic and trade
regime—a spurious theory invented by the late communist agitator Andre Gunder Frank andeasily debunked by the examples of India, South Korea, Taiwan, and under its peculiar
circumstances, China) found enthusiastic support among self-serving, racist and corrupt Arab,
Muslim and African as well as more than a few Asian intellectuals and politicians only too
happy to blame the lack of development of their newly independent nations not on thedeleterious impact of their ancestral political cultures and incompetent leaders, but on their
purported continuing domination by the defunct colonial powers.
EWS’s deleterious, intellectual and even political impact in Japan, Israel and otherdeveloped Asian nations is of course regrettable, though manageable, but downright devastating
for Arab, Muslim and African societies in need of reform, simply because it bolsters the
opposite attitude to the one they desperately need: self-reflection as a precondition for theirunderstanding of the inadequacies of their traditional political cultures, the resulting selfinflicted socio-cultural, economic and political wounds and the indispensable need for selfimprovement.
As mentioned earlier, all categories of traditional antisemitism and its contemporary
variants of anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism (both forms of political antisemitism since their aim
is Israel’s destruction) are indispensable political tools which, using Jews/Israel as surrogates forthe unjustly maligned (in fact envied) democratic West, ultimately legitimize anti-Westernism
and anti-Americanism.
The MB, in pursuing its global imperialist project (see below) employs the following
tactics: terrorism (al-Qaida, Da’esh [ISIS]), Da’wa (religious conversion); political infiltration(of all societies) ; propaganda (political: anti-Western, anti-American antisemitic/anti-Zionist,
conducted through overt—MSA chapters—and covert outfits especially in universities, themedia and community organizations—like CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations]/
CAIR Canada etc. in democratic societies; victimism—the false accusation of Muslims/Arabs
being subjected to wholesale discrimination in democratic societies). EWS was a relentless userof victimism, beginning with Orientalism:
The life of a Palestinian Arab… in the West, particularly in America, isdisheartening. There exists here a… consensus that politically he does not exist…
or only as a nuisance or as an Oriental. The web of racism, cultural stereotypes,
political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology is astounding… No… Orientalist…
Nettler, Past Trials, 50.
EWS at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, 2003, online.
6
See, Zarnett, David, “Edward Said and the Iranian Revolution,” Democratiya 9 (2007): 43-53.
4
5

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has ever in the US culturally and politically identified himself wholeheartedly
with the Arabs… as has liberal American identification with Zionism.7 [emphasis
added]
This is but patently false, racist, propaganda, when considering facts. Americans, unlike
Arabs, do not distinguish among Arabs who do (especially based on vernacular dialect).
In stark contrast to EWS’s victimist rant, from national politics—James Aburezk, George
Mitchell, Darell Issa, Ray LaHood , John Sununu, John E. Sununu , Donna Shalala, and recently
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlayeb, etc.—through the military—John Abizeid, Nidal Hassan—
business—Steve Jobs, the Zogby media tycoons, etc.—to entertainment—K.C. Kassem, PaulAnka, Bill Maher, Michael Nouri, Hoda Kutb, George Nouri, Tony Shalhoub, Rima Fakih—and,above all academe, the United States, in the postwar era has been overwhelmingly fair and open
to Arabs and Muslims. After all, the dandyish, supremely immoral, viciously anti-American
EWS practically embodied that openness. The main element, however, proving the factual andintellectual fraudulence of EWS’s statement is the continuing devastating impact of his views
and those of his cohorts across the humanities and social sciences in the West—reinforced by the
Radical Leftist rants of ANC, and their acolytes. As for Jewish/“Liberal” (in fact various nuancesof Marxist) supporters for EWS’s Arab cause, individuals like ANC, Joel Beinin, Judith Butler,
Nira Yuval-Davis, Richard Falk are but the most notorious among EWS supporters as areuniversities from the UCal system and San Francisco State University to Concordia University inMontreal and Tel Aviv University. EWS practically took over the meek MLA (Modern
Languages Association) and caused the implosion and splitting of the MESA (Middle-East
Studies Association).
EWS’s Orientalism is, by and large, a factually baseless, or distorting, plainly unjust,obscurantist tirade against the Western tradition of Middle Eastern in particular as well as Asianand area studies, a veritable ode to ignorance, when considering pearls like the bashing of Spainfor publishing, in one year, more books than the entire Muslim world. Japan, routinely topping
the global list of published books, would “deserve” the intellectual commissar’s harshest
tongue-lashing. EWS mangled Japan’s history as part of his dogged anti-Western intellectual
jihad: “Islam excepted, the Orient for Europe was until the 19th century a domain with acontinuous history of unchallenged Western dominance. This is patently true of the British
experience in India, the Portuguese experience in the East Indies, China and Japan, [except for]the occasional native intransigence to disturb the idyll, as when in 1638-39, Japanese Christians
threw the Portuguese out of the area.” [emphasis added] All of the assertions in the excerpt are
factually false, the most egregious being the misrepresentation (on the altar of sorts of EWS’s
obsessive anti-Westernism) of the last stage of the genocide of Japanese-Christians by the
Tokugawa shogunate.
EWS/Orientalism has had significant influence on Japan scholarship. On this side of the
Pacific, Stefan Tanaka gave Japan’s modern historiography the orientalist treatment in his 1993
award-winning Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Professor Tanaka considers
Orientalism “a fine study on the epistemological and ontological distinction between the
Occident and the Orient.” Fully accepting EWS’s orientalist line, Tanaka writes:
Knowledge… claims authority over its object… In his study Orientalism… Said
describes such a use of knowledge in the European discourse on the Orient,
7

Said, Orientalism, 27.

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primarily the Middle East… how the French and British developed and defined apositional superiority; the Orient as the past was an object by which the progressof Europe could be measured… [Orientalism] developed into an institutional
discipline, Europe used to create and manage the Orient.8
Tanaka then proceeds to orientalise Japan’s modern historiographical practice:[T]ōyōshi [Oriental history] evolved from a discussion of Japan’s position in theworld… to Japan’s destiny in the world, particularly in Asia. The implication for
power in this field of knowledge is clear… Japanese orientalists objectified tōyō
in the same way that the European Orientalists objectified the Orient.9
Tanaka readily accepts EWS’s political polemic at face value, and even as legitimate
inspiration, apparently without considering the factual accuracy or the overall analytical validityof EWS’s diatribe. Shiratori Kurakichi’s supremacist analysis reflected the vibrant andsuccessful modernization project of Meiji Japan vs. self-destructing Shina (mainly due to thelingering impact of the Taiping Rebellion and incompetent national leadership) is understandable
in its own historical context, amply illustrated by cardinal events like China’s inability to reform
successfully and find stability in the century prior to 1949 vs. Japan’s victories over China (aconfrontation between two imperialist powers over Korea) and Russia and the self-confidence,even arrogance that they generated especially in the context of the Sino-Japanese civilizational
relationship during the previous 1300 years. Thus, given modern Japan’s intellectual andpolitical history, the EWS-style orientalist interpretation is even anti-historical, unless one wants
to partake in EWS’s anti-Western intellectual jihad, a la Itagaki Yūzō as shown below. Qutb’s
Islamism followed by EWS is supremacist in nature and as such, utterly averse to learning fromother civilizations. Japan is on the opposite end of the civilizational spectrum. The always
pragmatic Shintoist/Buddhist civilization practised WAKON KANSAI in the pre-modern era,then switched to WAKON YŌSAI in the Meiji era—in both cases for its own benefit while
fiercely guarding its distinct identity. A century ago, in his Fifty Years of New Japan thenJapanese Prime Minister, Ōkuma Shigenobu, democrat, nationalistic statesman, educator andfounder of Waseda University, confidently and historically accurately, observed: “Japan's
general progress during the short space of half a century (since the Meiji Restoration of 1868)
has been so swift that it presents a spectacle rare in the history of the world.” Nonetheless, andmost importantly, “the susceptibility of the Japanese to the influences of foreign civilization [iscoupled with] a strong retentive power which enables Japan to preserve and retain all that is goodin and about herself. Moreover, for twenty centuries the nation has drunk freely from thecivilizations of Korea, China and India. The Japanese have then welcomed Occidental
civilization while preserving their Oriental civilization.”10 [emphasis added]
The failure of the “Arab spring” is but the most recent, major historical event, indicating
the utter falseness of EWS’s irresponsible and malign approach of blaming the West/America for
the intrinsic failure of the Arab world to reform, again, mostly due to the lack of separation
between Religion and State (Din and Dawla, respectively, in Arabic) characteristic of all Muslim
entities. EWS’s habit of blaming others for Arab failures renders him a ROLE (Racist of Low
Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 21.
Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, 22.
10Ōkuma Shigenobu, Fifty Years of New Japan (London: Smith & Elder, 1909), Introduction.
8
9

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Expectations) as well. Japan represents the opposite reality—that of Religion traditionallyserving the State with the drastically different and obvious consequences.
In Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism, Mari Yoshihara
effusively praises “Said’s pivotal work on the European discourse about its colonial territories in
the Middle East.”11 Yoshihara seems to fully embrace EWS’s orientalism and racist antiAmericanism, ignoring the fact that the colonialism she mentions practically never existed,
simply because 400 years of Muslim/Ottoman imperialism only ended in 1918 and Islam has
been overwhelmingly dominant in the area for 1400 years. It is these two solid historical facts
that account for the awful present political situation in the Arab/Muslim Middle East, where pastWestern colonial rule is but a distorted, propagandistic reference to the 30-year long British andFrench presence not as colonial masters but as Mandatory Powers for the League of Nations, that
ended in 1948.
Yoshihara’s orientalised Madame Butterfly is “a classic trope symbolizing the politics ofrace, nation and gender in US-Asian relations… a melodramatic construction of Orientalism—
Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and representing the ‘Orient’ that are founded on amaterial reality of unequal power relations between the West and the East… typically expressedin gendered terms: the powerful West… associated with virile masculinity and the subordinate
East with passive femininity.” Impressively put, but only as an EWS-inspired remark. (EWSgave Aida the racist, anti-Western orientalist treatment, too). In reality, Chōchō-san is a very
familiar case of a novel turned into an opera libretto, the result of a veritable international“conspiracy” (EWS would love it!) the main plotters being American novelist John Luther Long,
French novelist Pierre Loti and two Italians, librettist Giuseppe Giacosa and composer Giacomo
Puccini. Needless to say, Madame Butterfly as idea and as operatic masterpiece has nothing to dowith racial or gender supremacist political ideas; it is a typical Italian opera set around a lovestory ending badly and told through beautiful—occasionally lachrymose—music. Most
importantly, countless factual examples point in the opposite direction of Yoshihara’s genderfocused orientalised rendering of American-Japanese relations: Nitobe Inazō’s 1900 global bestseller Bushido: The Soul of Japan; the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, facilitating a Japanese
victory over Russia; the U.S. considering Japan’s military capability so challenging that thepossibility of war against the upstart Asian power is seriously considered in 1907. Yoshihara
further orientalises and otherizes Japan-U.S. relations in the late 19th century, by, in my view,[mis]representing the building of a full-size replica of the gorgeous Hōōden (Phoenix) Pavilionof the Heian era, at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, not as a display by aproud Meiji Japan of its ancient (Chinese-inspired) architectural tradition but as an episode of the
U.S. “reassert[ing] the Orientalist vision of the Japanese as the peculiar Other… Americans…
were also fascinated by the spectacle of the construction process.”12 I cannot consider the act ofAmericans marvelling at the architectural masterpieces of another culture at an exhibition as an
example of Western/American (White) supremacism.
Japan’s leading orientalist among the academic Left is professor Itagaki Yūzō, cotranslator of Orientalism into Japanese, retired Tōdai professor of Middle East studies, former
president of JAMES (Japan Association of Middle East Studies) and former advisor to then

Yoshihara Mari, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 7.
11

12

Mari, Embracing the East, 20.

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Lower House Speaker Kōno Yōhei. Sacrificing Japan’s history for the benefit of EWS’s Islamist
scholarly agenda comes easy to Itagaki:
It is because the Japanese have tried to adapt themselves to the [sic] Westernorientalism [that] Japan has become an orientalist State, that alienates itself from
Asia… There are Japanese who feel spontaneous sympathy toward anotherorientalist state called Israel.13
Itagaki’s countless anti-American and antisemitic diatribes going back to the 1960s
includes the book Nihonjinyo, kakugo wa dekiteiruka? (English title: Have You Made
Preparations?) in which he urged his fellow Japanese to prepare for imminent suffering causedby the U.S., purportedly the result of Israeli “pressure” in reaction to Japan’s frequent pro-Arabpolicies aimed at ensuring a steady supply of oil since the first oil crisis of 1973. Itagaki’s direpredictions failed to materialize.14
Hirokawa Ryüichi, another Radical Leftist propagandist, masquerading as photographic
journalist has been a fervent Palestinian-Arab victimism pusher, a Shylock promoter, as well as
an EWS fan, thus vociferous antisemite for over 30 years. Indoctrinated in anti-Zionism in Israelby the late ‘Akiva Orr, a leader of the Israeli anarcho-nihilist terrorist outfit Matzpen who also
trained Pakistani communist and fervent EWS follower Tariq ‘Ali, Hirokawa married anddivorced Radical Leftist anti-Zionist Ruti Yoscovici, daughter of Shoáh survivors. In early 2019
Hirokawa was outed and may be tried as a sexual pervert and rapist.

Figure 6.1 Books Critiquing Orientalism
Orientalism has had its critics over the years. Malcolm Kerr was among the first to
directly criticize EWS’s corrupt and highly politicized scholarship.15 Keith Windschuttle andmany others have also taken EWS to task for his shoddy and corrupt scholarship, his abject
Yūzō Itagaki, Dialogue Among Civilizations: A Japanese Viewpoint (Bahrain Center for Studies and Research[BCSR], 2002).
14
Yūzō Itagaki, Nihonjin yo, kakugo wa dekiteiru ka? (Tokyo: KK Besto Serăzu, 1991).
13

15

Kerr H. Malcolm, “Review of Orientalism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980): 544-547.

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victimist tactics,16 though not his intellectual and political Qutb-style Jihadism I am introducing
here. The lack of more significant impact of two most important book-length critiques ofOrientalism above, as well as that of countless critical articles, indicates the need for continuing
scholarly and intellectual endeavours aiming to “talk truth to EWS’s lies” and based on solid
historical facts. Ibn Waraq’s Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism ismethodical and systematic. The title itself attests to the author’s perfect grasp of the raison d’êtreof EWS’s jihadi write-up. Daniel Martin Varisco’s Reading Orientalism: the Said and the
UnSaid is very useful due to the author’s commitment to a balanced approach to orientalism—amajor tradition in Orientalism and Western scholarship at large.
2. EWS—INTELLECTUAL JIHADI TO THE END_________________________________
EWS’s unswerving support for Islamism, replete with his lifelong racist and antisemitic
aggressiveness were in full display after the September 11, 2001, Jihadi terrorist attacks on the
United States.
The day following the 9/11 attack, however, EWS was launching online the fraudulent
Israeli apartheid movement: “In the American mind, analogies [between Palestinian-Arabs and]South Africa’s liberation struggle… most emphatically do not occur. We must make thoseanalogies.”17 The baseless, grossly antisemitic Israeli apartheid jihad and its BDS(Boycott/Divest/Sanction) tactic was subsequently and quite successfully expanded by Omar
Barghouti, a Qatari Islamist operative masquerading as a graduate student at Tel-Aviv University(Israeli apartheid at work!!!) a proponent of a “One-Arab-State” solution to the Arab-Israeli socalled conundrum, as well as by prominent Marxist activists like Canada’s Naomi Klein. EWS
had used the apartheid slur against the Jewish State since the 1970s.
Among the leading supporters of the baseless and racist Israeli apartheid accusation havebeen major leaders of the iconic African National Congress (ANC) including Nelson Mandela
and Desmond Tutu. By now, an “eternal” governing party, the ANC, after liberation, has provena harsh disappointment for the nation’s long-suffering Black majority; it has become a cauldronof social injustice, corruption and unfathomable violence—especially in the form of sexualattacks against women—employing communist/Islamist antisemitism to prolong its rule. Israel,of course, has never been an apartheid state because as a genuine democracy, its Arab minority
has always been fully represented in the Knesset (Parliament)—in Zionist parties as well as in
Jihadi groups. Arab ministers, judges and Supreme Court Justices and diplomats, are routine.
Separate roads for Israeli traffic in the West Bank were built in the early 21st century only forsecurity reasons—to stem suicide-murder terrorism. It is, however, the Muslim world that has theoldest apartheid scheme—the 1400-year-old Ahl Dhimma. As well, the longest lasting (amillenium before the Atlantic African slave trade and 150 years after the latter ended in mid-19th
century) the largest (in number of victims) and the harshest form of that awful tradition was
dominated by Arab/Muslim traders (and their African collaborators) on the eastern coast of
Africa (Zanzibar, etc.) as well as in North Africa where the victims were 1.5 million Europeans.
As for the September 11, 2001, Jihadi attacks on the United State, at first, after habitually
rudely bashing another, Samuel Huntington (the author of a brilliant analysis of the civilizational
nature of future international confrontations) as “a clumsy writer and an inelegant thinker,” EWS
16

Keith Windschuttle, “Edward Said’s Orientalism revisited,” The New Criterion 17, no. 5 (1999): online.

17

Al Ahram Weekly Online, September 12, 2001.

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cleverly “elegantly,” and arrogantly, and, as expected, falsely, used the “trivialization card” inexplaining away the incident: “Instead of seeing it for what it is, the capture of big ideas… by atiny band of crazed fanatics for criminal purposes… international luminaries… have pontificatedabout Islam’s troubles… But why not instead see parallels… for… bin Laden and his followers
in cults like the Branch Davidians, or the disciples of Reverend Jim Jones at Guyana or theJapanese Aum Shinrikyo?”18 In reality, as even the intellectually corrupt EWS knew (better thanmost but feigned ignorance out of loyalty to the Islamist cause) it is abundantly clear that themassive popular support for the “Magnificent 19” (bumper stickers in “Londonistan”) in the
Muslim world (but not the Iranian people) indicate the global reach of Jihadi syndicates, from
Al-Qaida to Da’esh (ISIS).
By late September, EWS adopted the Islamist/Leftist comeuppance theory, laced withhistorical falsehoods, plain antisemitism and clever victimist complaints against the anti-Arab“bias” of journalists (especially those with Jewish names), in order to turn the aggressor into
“victim” and justify the attacks:[I]n the Middle East and the Arab world, U.S. actions…—unconditional support
for Israel, the sanctions against Iraq that have spared Saddam Hussein… thebombing of Sudan, the U.S. ‘green light’ for Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon(during which almost 20,000 civilians lost their lives, in addition to the massacresof Sabra and Shatila) the use of Saudi Arabia… as a private U.S. fiefdom, thesupport of repressive Arab and Islamic regimes—are deeply resented and, notincorrectly, are seen as being done in the name of the American people...In otherwords, there is a dialectic between specific US actions… and consequent attitudes
toward America… which has behaved with such callous obliviousness of lesser
peoples. Surely also, many Arabs and Muslims are aware of the hold on US policyof the pro-Israeli lobby and the dreadful racism and fulminations of pro-Israeli
publications like The New Republic or Commentary… or bloodthirsty columnists
like Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, George Will, Norman Podhoretz and
A.M. Rosenthal, whose columns regularly express hatred and hostility toward
Arabs and Muslims.19 [emphasis added]
ANC at MIT expressed his full support for the 9/11 attackers in a joyous tone, justifying
the atrocity in a wild anti-American and anti-Western diatribe: “The United States, over the past
200 years… expelled or… exterminated the indigenous population (of America)… conquered
half of Mexico, carried out depredations all over the region, Caribbean and Central America,
conquered Hawaii and the Philippines… For hundreds of years, Europe has been casuallyslaughtering people all over the world. That’s how they conquered the world, not by handing out
candies to babies… The main sport of Europe for hundreds of years was slaughtering one
another… In Afghanistan, we are in the midst of trying to murder 3 or 4 million people, not
Taliban of course, their victims.” [ANC, September 12, 2001, MIT]In 1955, EWS’s hidden mentor, Sayyid Qutb, expressed most clearly the aims of the
MB’s global Jihad mentioned on page 4. In 1962 the MB reached the United States with the
MSA, the first among its many front outfits.
18
19

Al Ahram Weekly Online, September 17, 2001.
Al Ahram Weekly Online, September 27, 2001.

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About three decades later, in 1991, the FBI—while investigating Jihadi finances andactivism in Florida—uncovered an MB document originally drafted in Cairo in 1987 and titled
An Explanatory Memorandum for the General Strategic Goal for the [Muslim] Brotherhood in
North America, which spells out the movement’s goal of undermining America internally,
through intellectual and political jihad:
The… ‘Civilization-Jihadi Process’… the Ikhwan [al Muslimun—the Muslim
Brotherhood] undertakes in [North] America is a… grand Jihad in [sic]eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its
miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it iseliminated and God’s religion [Islam] is… victorious over all other religions… It
is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever helands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny.20
In 2003, not long before his passing, EWS was expressing, in unmistakable Qutb-style,his militant jihadi convictions at the Marxist-Islamist World Social Forum in Porto Alegre,
Brazil:I… believe very strongly that it’s important for those of us who are not part ofthis [Westfalian-style nation] state system to be able to address what I call the‘other America,’ because there are vast possibilities of mutual benefit… Porto
Alegre is a terrific model for that. I think there are enough movements frombelow, whether human rights movements, ecological movements, women’s
movements, ethnic movements, that favor, in America, THE DISUNITING OF
AMERICA which is very important.21 [emphasis/capitals added]
ANC chimed in: “9/11 was due to Israel as the root cause for legitimate anti-U.S. Moslem andThird World fury.”22
The slogans at the Leftist/Jihadi global anti-capitalist jamboree were “Viva la Intifada
Global!” and “Nazis, Yankees, Jews—No More Chosen Peoples!” The slogans have not changed
to this day, be it at WSF annual gatherings or at those of its newest affiliate—the Antifa Leftist
fascist movement.
3. EWS’S LASTING LEGACY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY_______________________
EWS’s global anti-Western, anti-American, antisemitic legacy is particularly évident at
his stomping grounds, relentlessly continued by at least three Islamist academic militants.
American-born Rashid Khalidi, the E.W. Said Chair of Arab Studies is a former leading PLO
operative, and now a “front” for HAMAS (founded by “the much regreted Ahmed Yassin”). In
his scholarly work, Khalidi is the proponent of the idea of the existence of distinct PalestinianArab national patterns in the Ottoman era, a position championed for years by the likes ofRadical Leftist Israeli sociologist Nira Yuval-Davis and Tel-Aviv University’s Radical-Leftist,
avid promoter of the fictional Palestinian-Arab ancient nationhood, and avowed Jewish
The Investigative Project on Terrorism, online.
Shimon Samuels, “With a Clenched Fist and an Outstretched Arm: Antisemtism, Globalization and the NGO
Challenge in the International Arena,” Jewish Political Science Review 15 (Fall 2003): 3-4.
22
Samuels, “With a Clenched Fist.”
20
21

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nationhood-denier, Shlomo Sand. Khalidi is the founder of the American Arab Action Network(AAAN) an MB-style advocacy outfit now headed by EWS acolyte, head of EWS-style Arabpolitical advocacy Washington Watch and media magnate John Zogby. Islamist Joseph Massad
uses extreme anti-Zionist hateful lies as legitimizing tools for the promotion of his hard gaybashing, anti-Westernism, anti-Americanism and antisemitism. Islamist Hamid Dabashi (leading
EWS acolyte and author of the orientalist Post-Orientalism) routinely uses antisemitic and antiAmerican tweets in a manner highly reminiscent of EWS’s tirades, and even worse:

Figure 6.2 Tweets by Hamid Dabashi
With such EWS-inspired teachers, no wonder that the Columbia University campus isbecoming a cauldron of unbridled even violent, Islamist/Leftist anti-American and antisemitic
activism, a BirZeit on the Hudson.

Figure 6.3 An Israeli Student Quoted in the Article
A recent episode—one of many—indicates the seriousness of the situation. An Israeli
student (Figure 6.3) describes an incident she personally experienced: “A [Students for Justice inPalestine—an MB affiliate Islamist/Leftist propaganda outfit] member heard me [speak Hebrew]

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and started screaming: ‘Stop killing Muslim babies!... You’re a murderer!’” she said. “Then she
screamed, ‘Zionist, get out!’ A nearby public-safety administrator did nothing.”23______________________________________________________________________________REFERENCES

Adhim, ‘Abdel Lutfi. “Arabs and Jews: Who Will Annihilate Whom?” Al Ahram al Iqtisadi,
September 1982.
Al Ahram Weekly Online, 2001-2003.
Alam, Shahid M. Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on the War Against
Islam. North Haledon, New Jersey: Islamic Publications International, 2006.
Ashcroft, Bill et al. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 2006.
App, Urs. The Birth of Orientalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Boer, Inge E. ed.. After Orientalism. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 2003.
Buruma, Ian & Avishai Margalit. Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies. New
York: Penguin Press, 2004.
Calvert, John. Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islam. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2018.
Congrés International des Orientalistes. Compte rendu de la premiére session. Lichtenstein:Kraus Reprint, 1873 (1968).
Clarke, J.J.. Oriental Enlightenment. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Dabashi, Hamid. Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in Time of Terror. New Brunswick:Transaction Publishers, 2009.
El Cheikh, Nadia Maria. Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2004.
Heni, Clemens. Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Berlin: Edition Critic, 2013.
Ibn Warraq. Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism. NewYork:
Prometheus Books, 2007.
Israeli, Raphael. Peace in the Eye of the Beholder. Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1985.
Itagaki, Yūzō. “Nachizmu to Shionizmu.” Firastin Biradi. September 1980.
———. Nihonjin yo, kakugo wa dekiteiru ka? Tokyo: KK Besto Serăzu, 1991.
———. “Dialogue Among Civilizations: A Japanese Viewpoint.” Bahrain Center for Studies andResearch [BCSR] (May, 2002).
Kalmar, I.D. & Derek Penslar ed. Orientalism and the Jews. Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis
University Press, 2005.
Karsh, Ephraim & Rory Miller. (1997) : Fabricating Israeli History : “The New Historians”.
London : Frank Cass.
———. “Did Edward Said Really Speak Truth to Power?” The Middle East Quarterly 15, no. 1(2008): 13-21.
Keppel, Giles. Jihad: the Trail of Political Islam, trans. Jon Rothschild. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Kerr, Malcolm H. “Review of Orientalism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12(1980): 544-547.
Landes, Richard Winter. “‘Celebrating’ Orientalism.” Middle East Quarterly 24 (2017): 1-26.
Manji, Irshad. The Trouble with Islam Today. Toronto: Random House, 2005.
MEMRI.com
23

http://www.MEMRI.com.

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Moussali, Ahmad. Radical Islamic Fundamentalism. Beirut: American University Press, 1992.
Nettler, Ronald. Past Trials and Present Tribulations. A Muslim Fundamentalist’s View of theJews. New York: Pergamon Press, 1987.
Qutb, Sayyid. Milestones. The Mother Mosque Foundation, 1987.
———. In the Shade of the Qur’an, trans. A.H. Salahi. London: MWH Publishers, 2002.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Samuels, Shimon. “With a Clenched Fist and an Outstretched Arm: Antisemtism, Globalizationand the NGO Challenge in the International Arena.” Jewish Political Science Review 15(Fall 2003).
Sardar, Ziauddin. Orientalism. London: Open University Press, 1994.
Tanaka, Stefan. Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley, University of California
Press, 1993.
Varisco, Daniel Martin. Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid. Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 2006.
Windschuttle, Keith. “Edward Said’s Orientalism revisited.” The New Criterion, 17, no. 5(1999).
Yoshihara, Mari. Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Zarnett, David. “Edward Said and the Iranian Revolution.” Democratiya 9 (Winter 2007): 43-53.
———. “Review of Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism.” Democratiya
12 (Winter 2008): 50-62.

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7. THE TOURIST WALKING
ROUTES OF BUNKYO WARD,TOKYO: FOREIGN PERCEPTIONS
OF WALKABILITY
R. Yu, D. Du, A. Hughes, G. Jules, L. Lane, D. Li, V. Ness, C. Rookes, B. Turner,
T. Waldichuk,1 N. Welychko, N. Woolverton, & Z. Zhou
1

Corresponding Author: Assistant Professor, Department of Geology and Environmental
Sciences, Thompson Rivers University

E-mail: twaldichuk@tru.ca______________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACT

Many cities have developed walking networks that are geared for international anddomestic tourists. Students explored four tourist walking routes in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo,
depicted on a tourist map in May 2017, as part of a third-year geography field course. The main
objective was to evaluate each route’s walkability in terms of ease of walking, landscape variety,enjoyment, and safety. These criteria were from the walkability checklist on the website
http://ican.walk.ca of Green Communities Canada. The students also critiqued the routes
subjectively in terms of their suitability for foreign tourists walking them. The field work
involved recording landscape observations, sketching and taking photographs. The overall results
were that each route highlighted gardens, museums, temples and shrines according to themes
about local literary culture that were assigned to each walking route on the tourist map. The
enjoyment of each route varied according to the path taken between the points of interest notedon the map and the degree to which students were engaged in the landscape. Also, the routes
took longer to walk than what was suggested on the map. The principal conclusions were thatwhile the routes were generally safe for walkers, wayfinding was challenging, partly because
most of the students did not read Japanese, and there were no route markers. Moreover, somestudents were disengaged as the themes of the routes were generally geared for local tourists who
are familiar with Japanese literary culture.
Keywords: Japan, China, 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, economic and commercial
relations.

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1. INTRODUCTION___________________________________________________________
Tourist walking routes are common in large cities as walking has become more popular.
There has been a drive to make cities more walkable. Some of these routes are geared forinternational tourists, but many are geared for domestic tourists and local residents.
Several walking routes exist in Tokyo. Some are indicated by signposts and maps affixed
to markers or walls. Some of these routes were established by the metropolitan government andcriss-cross the wards of Tokyo. They are often indicated by metal maps fixed to concrete
markers at different locations along the routes (Figure 7.1). Some walking routes of Tokyo are
published in paper and on the internet. Recently the Japan National Tourist Organization1
published in English a set of walking routes for metropolitan Tokyo in a PDF map format. The
Tokyo Metropolitan government also publishes a set of health walking routes on the internet.2
Individual municipalities in Tokyo have created walking routes, e.g., the “Nippori and Yanaka
Strolling Map” produced jointly by Arakawa City and Taito City.3 Some walking routes havealso been created by individuals—often these are associated with blogs or personal websites.4
There are also guided walks. Some of these are free, and some are not. For example, guided
walks are advertised on the internet for upwards of $375—e.g., a day walk through places suchas the University of Tokyo!

Figure 7.1 Ueno no Oyama Walk That Passes Through Bunkyo Ward
Source: Damei Li photo, May 17, 2017.
“Tokyo and vicinity walking guide: Sixteen Selected Courses,” Japan National Tourist Organization, 2017
Accessed March 16, 2019. https://partners-pamph.jnto.go.jp/simg/pamph/385.pdf.
2“Tokyo Walking Map,” Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health, 2016.
http://www.fukushihoken.metro.tokyo.jp/walkmap/en/tokyo-walk/index.html.
3“Nippori and Yanaka Strolling Map.” Tourism Promotion Section, Industry and Economy Division, Arakawa City
Office, January, 2017. http://www.city.arakawa.tokyo.jp; Tourism Section, Cultural Industry and Tourism Division,
Taito City Office, taitonavi.jp
4
Kaoru Sawahara, “Kakei Tanbou, Toukyou To Bunkyou Ku, Hongou, Kikusaka Kaiwai (Searching for a Beautiful
View, Bunkyo Ward, Metropolitan Tokyo, Kiku Hill Neigbourhood),” 2007-2009, Accessed March 20, 2019.
http://www.natsuzora.com/dew/tokyo-east/hongo-kikuzaka.html. This is an example of a personal website
describing the Bunkyo Ward landscape in detail while one is walking back alleys and side streets.
1

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This paper focuses on a case study of four walking routes in Bunkyo Ward in Tokyo.
These walking routes are published in paper and online. The reason for choosing Bunkyo ward is
one of practicality. The students and instructors in our third-year geography field course5 stay in
Bunkyo Ward for about one week. In 2010, the students started to evaluate the walkability ofthese walking routes as part of their course assignment. This paper focuses on the work that 12
students did in May 2017. The students addressed the following questions: 1) How walkable isBunkyo Ward based on foreign students’ perceptions and reactions using a walkability checklist?
and 2) How can the walking routes be improved for foreign tourists?
I write this report primarily in the first person from the point of view of the course
instructor, but the students are authors too as it is their observations, perceptions, reflections andliterature reviews that are the main content of the paper. I refer to the students by first namewhen citing their perceptions or comments. However, I generally do not distinguish which
student used or cited which source. I will first give a brief background about Bunkyo Ward.
Second, I will then go over the objectives and methods used in the study. Third, I will briefly
describe the four tourist walking routes. Fourth, I will go over the walkability results. Fifth, I will
discuss the results, make recommendations, and then summarize and conclude.
2. BACKGROUND TO BUNKYO WARD, TOKYO_________________________________
Bunkyo Ward6 is located in the centre of Tokyo (Figure 7.2)— being surrounded by the
Yamanote train line, which is the circular line around the centre of Tokyo. Bunkyo Ward isbordered by Ueno train station, Tokyo Dome, Shinjuku ward and Ikebukuro ward. It is a mixtureof residential, commercial/retail and public space, including several well-known gardens, shrines
and temples. Bunkyo Ward is the home to several universities, including Tokyo University andadjacent Bunkyo Gakuin University (Figures 7.3 and 7.4), where our field course students stay.
The ward was created in 1947, and is an amalgamation of Hongo and Koishikawa wards.7 As of
February 2019 it has a population of 221,606.8 The area is 11.29 km2 , and it is the fourth
smallest of the 23 wards of Tokyo.9

This is a field course at Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC. The course is open to students who havetaken at least half a year of academic courses. Often students who are not majoring in geography—but have a strong
interest in Japan—take the course. This was the case in 2017.
6
I will use the term Bunkyo Ward, a translation for Bunkyo Ku; however, Bunkyo Ku is also referred to as Bunkyo
City
7“Bunkyo Ku no Oitachi,” Bunkyo Ku, November 30, 2016.
https://www.city.bunkyo.lg.jp/kusejoho/profile/three-minutes/upbinging.html.
8“Bunkyo-Ku Jinkou Toukei,” Bunkyo Ku, 2019. http://www.city.bunkyo.lg.jp/kusejoho/toke/zinko.html.
9“Bunkyo Ku no Ichi to Chikei,” Bunkyo Ku, June 9, 2016.
https://www.city.bunkyo.lg.jp/kusejoho/profile/three-minutes/location.html.
5

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Figure 7.2 Bunkyo Ward (Bunkyo-Ku) in Metropolitan Tokyo10

Figure 7.3 Bunkyo Ward Looking Northeast Toward Tokyo University from Bunkyo Ward
Tower
Source: Nick Welychko photo, May 2017.

Shigenobu Aoki, “Bunkyo-Ku Map,” Akanemoto~commonswiki, July 4, 2006.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Bunkyo-ku_en.png.
10

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Figure 7.4 Bunkyo Ward from Bunkyo Gakuin University Looking Toward Shinjuku and Mt.
Fuji.
Source: T. Waldichuk photo.
Bunkyo Ward consists of both uplands and lowlands. The uplands or yamanote11 is partof the eastern edge of the Musashino Plateau.12 During the Edo era, high ranking military, suchas the daimyo or regional lords, had residences on the uplands,13 which elevated the status of theuplands—a landscape with mansions and park areas. There still exists a cultural difference
between the lowlands (shitamachi) and the uplands, exemplified in terms of language andclass.14 The ward is higher than the Asakusa area next to the Sumida River in adjacent Taito
Ward, which is considered a traditional shitamachi or lower town. Jinnai gives a good
description of some of the ridges and valleys in Bunkyo Ward. A lowland area stretches from
Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park—just east of Bunkyo Ward along Shinobazu Dori street, north to
Nezu subway station and further north to Sendagi subway station in Bunkyo Ward. This is thevalley of the former Aizome River.15 Other lowland places in Bunkyo Ward include the area near
Tokyo Dome and the wide roads branching off from that area, e.g., Hakusan Dori,16 the areaaround the Kanda R. in the Otsuka and Meijiro districts of Bunkyo Ward next to Shinjuku Ward,and the area around Ochanomizu train station in the Yushima area. These lowland areas werecharacterized by small, high-density clusters of buildings, e.g., the nagaya building.17 Fujimori
calls these present-day areas that are left-over residential landscapes, often found in back alleys,
shitamachi islands.18 The sloped walking pathways (sakamichi) are a known characteristic of
Terunobu Fujimori, “Shitamachi, in Tokyo’s left hand,” Japan Quarterly 34, no. 4 (Oct.1, 1987): 410.
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1304282731?accountid=14314.
12
Hidenobu Jinnai, Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology, trans. Kimiko Nishimura (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995), 11-12.
13
Fujimori, “Shitamachi,” 410, 412.
14
Robert J. Smith, “Pre-Industrial Urbanism in Japan: A Consideration of Multiple Traditions in a Feudal society,”
Economic Development and Cultural Change 9, no. 1 (part 2) (Oct. 1960): 248. https://doi.org/10.1086/449888.
15“Sendagi—The Landmarks of Edo in Color Woodblock Prints,” National Diet Library, Japan, Accessed February
26, 2019, http://www.ndl.go.jp/landmarks/e/sights/sendagi/.
16
Jinnai, Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology, 12. One can see the Hakusan Dori (Street) area from the map on p.12.
17
Fujimori, “Shitamachi,” 412.
11

18

Fujimori, “Shitamachi,” 417.

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Bunkyo Ward and are displayed on a poster produced by the Bunkyo Ward tourism association.
Some slopes are more famous than others. For example, Kikusaka slope near Tokyo University
was the home of author Ichiyo Higuchi.19 There are at least 113 slopes in Bunkyo-Ward.20
Jinnai21 talks about the viewpoints in the uplands of Tokyo during the Edo period. Someof these views were from the uplands in Bunkyo Ward and adjacent areas. The views were of
Mt. Fuji or Tokyo Bay. Tall buildings have blocked many of these views. For example, the viewof Mt. Fuji from the uplands of Yanaka district (called Fujisaka [or Fuji slope]) of the Yanaka
district from adjacent Taito Ward has been blocked by tall condominium buildings in Bunkyo
Ward.
Some of Bunkyo Ward was fire-bombed during World War II. Karacas22 mentions that
51 per cent of Tokyo was destroyed at the end of the war. The Great Tokyo Air Raid of March
10, 1945 that burned the densely populated shitamachi area straddling the Sumida River andkilled approximately 90,000 people.23 Much of the destruction was in the shitamachi areas.24 In
Tokyo, in all the air raids more than 100,000 civilians were killed, injured, 2.9 million buildings
were destructed, and 70 km2 of land was bombed,25 and 2,861,857 were made homeless.26 If one
looks at the historic composite map of the bombing, the areas north of Ochanomizu subway
station, south of Komagome train station, and around Chinzanso Hotel near Edogawabashi
subway station were bombed.27 The section on the west side of the University of Tokyo toward
the Bunkyo Ward Civic centre was spared.
To fully appreciate these sites and landscapes in Bunkyo ward, one should really have abackground in Japanese history and more specifically historical geography. One must have an
understanding of the Edo Era and Edo or old Tokyo itself. One also has to have a fundamental
understanding of Japanese literature that starts well before the Edo era and continues through theShowa era. Many authors have—as I mentioned previously—written literary works that takeplace in Bunkyo Ward.
In summary, the uplands and lowlands play an important role in the cultural history of
Bunkyo Ward. Whereas the ward is not an old administrative area, its amalgamated districts of
Koishikawa and Hongo have a rich history dating back to the Edo period and earlier. As will be
described in the following section, the areas described in the walking routes are the homes offamous writers and often the settings for their novels or poems. As well, the high society that
lived in this highland area during the Edo period left a legacy of magnificent parks and
Kit Nagamura, “Booking Uphill in Bunkyo,” Travel, Walking the Wards. Japan Times. September 7, 2007,https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2007/09/07/travel/booking-uphill-in-bunkyo/#.XI1FJ6Is-fA.
20
Nagamura, “Booking.”
21
Jinnai, Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology, 122.
22
Cary Karacas, “Place, Public Memory, and the Tokyo Air Raids,” Geographical Review
100, no.4 (2010): 522, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2010.00056.x
23
Gordon Daniels, “The Great Tokyo Air Raid, 9-10 March 1945,” in Modern Japan: Aspects of History, Literatureand Society, ed. W.G. Beasley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 129.
24
Daniels, “The Great Tokyo Air Raid,” 125.
25
Kenneth Hewitt, “Providing Grounds of Urbicide: Civil and Urban Perspectives on the Bombing of Capital
Cities,” Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications 14 (2009): 347,
http://scholars.wlu.ca/geog_faculty/14. These numbers were based on multiple secondary sources.
26
Hewitt, “Providing,” 357. These numbers were based on multiple secondary sources.
27
David Fedman and Carey Karacas, “A Cartographic Fade to Black: Mapping the Destruction of Urban Japan
During World War II,” Journal of Historical Geography 38 no.3 (July 2012): 323, figure 12.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2012.02.004.
19

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architecture. At the same time the present shitamachi back alley landscape is a reminder of how
life was in the Edo era for the common people. The newer landscape from the mid-1900s
onwards often clashes with and dominates this landscape, leading to blocked views of Mt. Fuji
and a functional but less interesting landscape.
3. OBJECTIVES AND METHODS_______________________________________________The objective of this project was to evaluate walking routes in terms of ease of mobility,
safety, variety of landscapes and enjoyment28 from the point of view of foreign tourists. We used
the walkability checklist (described below, see Table 7.1) that used to be available from thewebsite https://icanwalk.ca, which was connected with Canada Walks,29 a part of Green
Communities Canada.30 The students also made landscape observations, sketched what they saw
and took photographs as part of their assignment.31 Finally, they critiqued the routes in terms of
their suitability for foreign tourists walking them, e.g., while visiting the 2020 Olympics. Thus,
the students used this walkability information and their observations to write a report on awalking route. Most of these reports included recommendations to improve walkability along thewalking course.
This paper draws its theoretical content from the perception literature, including that of
Yi-Fu Tuan’s1974 book Topophila,32 and John Urry’s writings on “The Tourist Gaze,” 33, 34 andalso the walkability literature, e.g., Wunderlich.35 Yi-Fu Tuan examines visitor perceptions: “Thevisitor’s evaluation of environment is essentially aesthetic. It is an outsider’s view.”36 It is also
an evaluation based on sight.37 We can relate these ideas to the foreign tourists’ views toward
walking route landscapes in Bunkyo Ward. “The visitor’s viewpoint, being simple, is easily
stated. Confrontation with novelty may also prompt him to express himself.”38 Tuan contrasts thevisitor’s viewpoint with the native resident: “The native, by contrast, has a complex attitude
derived from his immersion in the totality of his environment.”39 Thus, such attitudes are moredifficult to articulate. With effort and preparation one hopes that a tourist can see beyond theaesthetics and develop a feeling of what it is like to live in a place. “The outsider judges byThis could have been done on any walking route. We actually do a “dry run” on a walk that I created with acolleague in Kamloops (I will talk about how we evaluate the walk for safety and enjoyment in the methods
section).
29“About Us—iCANwalk,” Accessed March 16, 2019: http://www.icanwalk.ca/en/home/about-us. Icanwalk.ca waspartnered with Canada Walks.
“Canada Walks—A Leader in Canada’s Walking Movement,” A Department of Green Communities Canada, 2015,
http://canadawalks.ca/.
30“We Make it Easier to Go Green,” Green Communities Canada, Accessed March 16, 2019.
http://greencommunitiescanada.org/. This organization promotes socially and environmentally sustainablecommunities.
31
And to help develop the students’ field skills.
32
Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), especially “visitor and native,” described on
63-66.
33
John Urry, “The tourist gaze ‘revisited,’” American Behaviorial Scientist 36 no. 2 (November 1992): 173-184.
34
John Urry and Jonas Larsen, The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (Los Angeles: Sage, 2011), 2-3, 14-23.
35
Filipa Matos Wunderlich, “Walking and Rhythmicity: Sensing Urban Space,” Journal of Urban Design 13 no.1
(Feb. 8, 2008): 125-139. doi: 10.1080/13574800701803472.
36
Tuan, Topophilia, 64.
37
Tuan, Topophilia, 63.
38
Tuan, Topophilia, 63.
39
Tuan, Topophilia, 65.
28

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appearance, by some formal canon of beauty. A special effort is required to empathize with thelives and values of the inhabitants.”40
It is useful to have visitors evaluate walking routes. They can pick up on things that the
local residents do not perceive. Tuan states “Obviously the visitor’s judgement is often valid. His
main contribution is the fresh perspective.”41 “The visitor is often able to perceive merits anddefects in an environment that are no longer visible to the resident.”42
We can also relate the experience of travelling on the walking route to John Urry’s“tourist gaze.”43 Urry mentions that many tourist gazes or viewpoints are unintentionallyorganized by, e.g., writers of tour guides. He also states that different gazes are authorized bydifferent discourses, so one could apply this notion to the promotion of history and literaryculture in Bunkyo Ward by the Bunkyo Ward tourism association in terms of the historic andliterary themes of their walking maps.
One can also relate these thematic walking routes to “kontentsu” tourism. “Kontentsu
tourism” is a Japanese-English term that refers to tourism with content or a theme,44 e.g., thebirthplace of a famous author. Japan markets kontentsu tourism both domestically andinternationally.45 The walking routes of Bunkyo Ward can be classified as “kontentsu” tourism as
they are based on historical themes and linked with historical figures.
Finally, we make reference to the walkability literature. In particular, we refer toWunderlich who talks about the different types of walking, e.g., purposeful walking,46and refers
to the sense of place literature—authors such as Yi-Fu Tuan.47 Thus, this paper examines theperceptions of foreign tourists walking between tourist spots in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo. However,
we do not delve deeply into the sense of place literature. Instead, we focus mostly on theevaluation of walking routes using a walkability checklist.
The walkability checklist that the students used, based on the website Icanwalk.ca, asked
the following four questions (see Table 7.1).
1) How easy was your walk? (ease)2) What people and places did you see? (variety)3) Was your walk enjoyable? (enjoyment)
4) How safe did you feel? (safety)
These questions were asked at designated points along the walking route. The responses
to each of these questions were broken down into pre-determined points or criteria, e.g., under“How easy was your walk?” one response was “nothing blocked the sidewalk.” If nothing
blocked the sidewalks, then a checkmark was given for that location. If there were no sidewalks,then N/A (not applicable) was given for that location. Or under “How safe did you feel?” ifcrosswalks were well-marked, then a checkmark was given for that location. Some students
Tuan, Topophilia, 64.
Tuan, Topophilia, 65.
42
Tuan, Topophilia, 65.
43
Urry, “The tourist gaze,” 173.
44
Kumi Kato and Yumiko Horita, “Tourism Research on Japan—Overview on Major Trends: Japanese and EnglishLanguage Materials,” Tourism Planning & Development 15 no.1 (May 19, 2017 online): 14,https://doi.org/10.1080/21568316.2017.1325392.
45
Philip Seaton and Takayoshi Yamamura, “Japanese Popular Culture and Contents Tourism—Introduction,” Japan
Forum 27 no.1 (Dec. 13, 2014, online): 2, DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2014.962564.
46
Wunderlich, “Walking,”126,127,131-133, 136,137,138.
47
Wunderlich, "Walking,”128.
40
41

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modified the Icanwalk.ca checklist criteria or made up their own terms to evaluate the walking
routes. These walkability criteria are part objective, focusing on practical considerations, e.g.,accessibility by wheelchairs. But they are also subjective, focusing on, e.g., how enjoyable thewalk was.
Table 7.1 Example of a Walkability Checklist with 23 Criteria Based on Icanwalk.ca
How easy was you walk?
 I could use sidewalks, trails or paths

2

3

5

6

7

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓

✓

✓

✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓

✓
✓

✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓

✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓

 There were sidewalks on both sides of the street
 Nothing blocked the sidewalks
 The sidewalks were wide enoughI could easily use the sidewalks if I was in a
wheelchair or pushing a stroller
 The sidewalks were well maintained
What people and places did you see?
I saw a mix of homes, businesses, stores andschools
I passed a mix of apartments, attached houses andsingle detached homes
 I passed windows, not just walls or fences
 I met people on the street
Was your walk enjoyable?
 The route I took was pleasant and inviting I saw plants, trees and gardens

Route Section
4

1

✓
✓

 There were benches if I needed to stop
 There were interesting things to see It was easy to get to shops and businesses
The shops and businesses were neat and tidy,
worth a visit
How safe did you feel?
 It was clear where I could walk

✓
✓
✓
✓

 It was easy to read signs
 Crosswalks were well marked
 I had enough time to cross the street
 Cars stopped at crosswalks and lights
 Cars were driving at a safe speed
 At night, everything was well lit

✓

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

✓

✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓

✓

Adapted from icanwalk.ca, Assesments made by Brandon Turner - May 17, 2017

The scores on the checklists were then added up for each location to give an overall
walkability score for that location of the walking route. The scores for multiple adjacentlocations could then be added and averaged to give a walkability score for a section of a walking
route. Thus, people used these criteria to evaluate walkability systematically (every so many

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metres or block by block) along their chosen walking route (see Table 7.1). This checklist has
been used in a study of the Niagara Region of Ontario.48
We focus on one part of the orange walking route near Tokyo University as a case study
using the walkability checklist. Not all students chose to evaluate their walking routes sosystematically using a checklist—most of them critiqued their routes subjectively.
4. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FOUR TOURIST WALKING ROUTES____________

Figure 7.5 Four Bunkyo Ward Walking Routes: Purple, Green, Pink & Orange (with Most Stops
Included)
Source: Source: Bunkyo City Tourism Association; Base map adapted from Pipping, April 7,
2016, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Today%27s_Tokyo.svg)
As mentioned above, each walking route had a theme, and they were associated withfamous scholars and nobility. But we differentiated each of the walking routes by colour forpractical purposes. The students chose part of one walking route to evaluate—roughly 500m to
1km long.
The following is a brief description of the four walking routes. I refer mostly to a Bunkyo
Ward walking map published in English, with the information as of Feb. 1, 2009 and 2016.49 The
same maps are published in Japanese, Chinese and Korean. In this paper we focus on the English
Lisa Gallant, Walkable Community Checklist Report—A Compilation of Data on Existing Supports for Walkable
Communities in Niagara and Areas in Need of Improvement, Prepared by Healthy Living Niagara as part of
walkON, Niagara Region Public Health, May 2010, http://www.niagaraknowledgeexchange.com/wpcontent/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Walkable_Community_Checklist_Report.pdf.
49“A Town of Culture—Bunkyo Tourist Guide Map,” Bunkyo City, Bunkyo City Office Tourism Section, Bunkyo
City Tourism Association, August 2016, http://www.b-kanko.jp/Portals/0/map/osanpo_en/ebook/pdf/3.pdf.
48

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and Japanese maps. The Japanese maps include short descriptive expressions above each of thestops along the walking routes, unlike the English version maps. The maps are free and areavailable at the Bunkyo Tourist Information centre. There are no routes drawn on the map
between the numbered sites. According to the map information, all the routes are supposed totake between 1 hour and 1 hour and 40 minutes. Unless otherwise noted, the following
descriptions and quotes are from the information included in the Bunkyo Ward walking map. I
refer to the students in my course by first name when citing their comments.
An employee at the tourist information centre told me that older people, including
seniors, often walk the routes, and they like the paper maps. Foreign tourists, other than thosefrom China or Korea, use the English version of the map. In the future more sophisticatedelectronic maps may be produced, but because the current users are older, paper maps are more
popular. In the future, she said the there may be paper map booklets because it is difficult to keep
the big map unfolded while walking.
4.1 Purple walking route (Otsuka and Mejirodai neighbourhoods) (Figure 7.5)
This is the “Art and Poetry Appreciation Course.” “Appreciate the arts and poets of theEdo era, as a renowned poet, Basho Matsuo, guides you through Otsuka and Mejirodai.”50 It is
located in the southwest part of the ward next to Shinjuku Ward.
The route consists of 10 scenic spots with a suggested walking time of 70 minutes. If one
spends any time at these sites, the walk could take one or more days. Stops #3 to #8 are clustered
together, whereas stop #1 is to the north, and stops #9 and #10 are to the east. An energeticlooking caricature of haiku poet Basho, holding a Bunkyo Ward flag, appears at the top of thelist of 10 sightseeing points as if to lead the walkers on a quick trip through the area. The timespan of the route goes from the Edo period to the 20th century, highlighting an Edo-era Buddhist
temple (stop #1 near Gokuji subway station), Japan Women’s University, Shin-Edogawa Park
near the Kanda River, a house dedicated to Basho, a museum where Edo Era nobility from
Kumamoto (daimyo) had a house, a museum for the Kodansha publishing house, St. Mary’s
Catholic Cathedral, the garden at the Four Seasons hotel, a hall dedicated to the family of former
Prime Minister Hatoyama and a printing museum (Figure 7.6). Based on a multi-image map,
much of this area was fire-bombed at the end of World War II.51 Thus, there are many postWorld War II landscapes. Many of these lowland and upland stops are connected by “HeartbreakHill,” a steep walking path from the Kanda River area to the Kodansha museum area. This is theprobably the hilliest of the four walking courses (Figure 7.7). In sum, these stops focus on thehistory of literary culture, religion, politics, publishing and printing.

“A Town of Culture—Bunkyo Tourist Guide Map.” Quotes from Bunkyo Ward walking map, 2009 and 2016
versions.
51
Fedman and Karacas, “A Cartographic Fade to Black,” 323.
50

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Figure 7.6 The Landscape Around the Printing Museum (Right)
Source: Naomi Woolverton photo, May 2017.

Figure 7.7 Yureizaka Hill Walking Path
Source: Nick Welychko photo, May 2017.
4.2 Green walking route (Koishikawa neighbourhood) (Figure 7.5)
This is the “Relaxation and Tranquility” course. “Discover tranquility and relaxation as
you stroll through beautiful Koshikawa area guided by the legendary Senhime, the daughter ofthe second Tokugawa Shogun Hidetada, Hidetada.”52

52“A Town of Culture—Bunkyo Tourist Guide Map.” Quote from the 2016 Bunkyo Ward walking map.

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This walking course consists of seven stops with a suggested walking time of 1 hour and2 minutes, and is dominated by two large botanical parks: Koishikawa Botanical Garden in thenorthwest near Myogodani subway station is at the beginning of the walk. Stop #2, Cherry
Blossom Avenue, is of interest because it is an area rather than a building or park and is an
example of post-World War II land readjustment that has been used in urban planning, in thiscase after the area was bombed during World War II. The walk then continues to a temple andshrine before arriving near the busy built-up area near the Bunkyo Ward civic centre, where theother large garden is found—Korakuen. The area covered by the walk can be divided into two
sections: the residential area in the northwest near Koishikawa botanical gardens, and the morebuilt-up commercial area in the southeast near the Bunkyo Ward civic centre and Tokyo Dome.
The mapmakers try to make a connection among the parks, Cherry Blossom Ave., Dezuin
temple, Kitano shrine, and Genkakuji temple, the Tokugawa Shogunate and the God of academic
achievement Michizane Sugawara. One could say that the “relaxation and tranquility” themerefers mostly to the two large parks.
4.3 Pink walking route (Honkomagome neighbourhood) (Figure 7.5)
This is the “Course to discover the romance of the Edo-culture.” “This course will takeyou back in time. The renowned doctor and novelist, Ogai Mori will guide you through the
Komagome area where you will get a glimpse of the Edo lifestyle.”53
The pink walking route consists of eight stops with a suggested walking time of 1 hour,and highlights three shrines, three temples, a museum and a large garden. It includes a museum
dedicated to a local medical doctor and fiction writer Mori Ogai. Literary romance along thiswalking route is illustrated with the love story associated with the tomb of Yaoya Oshichi at
Enjoji temple (stop #4). Oshichi was a girl in love with a temple worker but was executed forstarting a fire in her quest to meet up with him. The neighbourhoods around stop #3 Kogenji
temple and stop #6 Kichijoji temple were fire-bombed during World War II, damaging thesetemples. The lack of old buildings in the area close to stop #7 (Fuji shrine) and Stop #8(Rikugien Park) also indicate areas that were bombed. But looking at the multi-image air
photograph of the area,54 Rikugien park was spared during World War II bombings (Figure 7.8).
Hakusan shrine (stop #5), Kichijoji temple (stop #6) and Fuji shrine (stop #7) have been moved
over time. Hakusan shrine was moved to the general Hongo 1 chome area during the Tenryaku
Period (947-957), and was moved again several times, lastly by the fifth Shogun Tsunayashi
Tokugawa. Kichijoji temple was relocated from Suidobashi Bridge after being damaged in the1657 Meireki fire. Fuji shrine (stop #7) moved from Suruga in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1573 to
the Tokyo University campus area and then to its current location in 1628. Part of the shrine is an
artificial hill, which resembles Mt. Fuji. Street stalls congregate around the shrine from late Juneto early July when Mt. Fuji opens.

53
54“A Town of Culture—Bunkyo Tourist Guide Map.” Quotes from the 2016 Bunkyo Ward walking map.
Fedman and Karacas, “A Cartographic Fade to Black,” 323.

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Figure 7.8 Rikugien Park at the End of the Pink Walking Route near Komagome Rail Station
Source: Damei Li photo, May 18, 2017.
4.4 Orange walking route (Yushima and Hongo) (Figure 7.5)
The orange walking route starts on lower land near Ochanomizu train station before
climbing uphill to the elevation of Shinobazu pond in Ueno Park. The first three stops on the
walk highlight famous temples and shrines with the first temple, Yushima Jingu, being noted for
its Confucian history. Stops #4 and #5 highlight a more contemporary garden and museums fromthe 20th century. Tokyo University is the focus of stop #6, the red gate and the Sanshiro Pond (orShinji Ike), which both date back to the Edo era, as does Stop #7, Kaneyasu store, which is southof the campus and marked the northern boundary of Tokyo during the Edo era.
The red gate was built in 1827 and is associated with the leader (Daimyo) of Kaga
territory (or Kaga han) whose wife was the daughter of the eleventh Shogun. The gate became anational treasure before World War II.55 The pond and surrounding garden were constructed in
1638 according to the wishes of the second Daimyo of Kaga territory and was considered thebest garden among feudal lords residing in the area during the Edo period.56 The pond became
part of the set for Natsume Soseki’s novel Sanshiro, which was the name of a character in thenovel. Thus, Brandon argues that the pond ties in well with the walking route theme of literatureand romance. Both the gate and Sanshiro Pond are the two best known historical sites on the
University of Tokyo campus.57
Stop #8, the Iseya pawnshop, which also dates back to the Edo period, is associated withthe writer Higuchi Ichiyou, who patronized the shop during the early 20th century due to her lackof income. The neighbourhoods from the red gate (stop #6) to stops #7 and #8 contain oldwooden buildings that date back to the Edo era. These areas survived fires from the Great Kanto
earthquake of 1923 and the fire bombings of World War II. The last three stops, the museum,“Akamon Gate (Goshuden-mon of the Former Maeda Clan’s Residence), “Why UTokyo? Explore Our
Campuses,” Hongo, University of Tokyo, Accessed March 16, 2019, https://www.utokyo.ac.jp/en/whyutokyo/hongo_hi_007.html.
56“Sanshiro Pond (Ikutokuen Shinji-ike).” Why UTokyo? Explore Our Campuses, Hongo, University of Tokyo,
Accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/whyutokyo/hongo_hi_006.html.
57“History of the Hongo Campus,” Why UTokyo?, Explore our Campuses, Hongo, U. of Tokyo, University ofTokyo, Accessed March 18, 2019, https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/whyutokyo/hongo_history.html.
55

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civic centre, and Tokyo Dome, are buildings from the second half of the 20th century, and are
examples of the area’s prosperity. Thus, we start with an old built landscape, with connections
from China and the Edo era, and end the walk with new modern version of Tokyo.
5. WALKABILITY RESULTS OF THE ORANGE WALKING ROUTE________________The twelve students evaluated the walkability of all four walking routes. However, inorder to keep this paper concise, I am choosing the orange walking route to illustrate thewalkability results. I refer to the walkability assessment of the other routes in the general
discussion and recommendations. Not all students used a walkability checklist. Many students
evaluated their walking routes subjectively. I focused on the four questions mentioned previouslythat are derived from the Icanwalk.ca walkability checklist.58
The orange route was evaluated by Aly, Brandon, Geraldine, and Carley.
Aly’s route: Stop#1, Yushima Seido temple to Stop#2, Reiunji Temple, to Stop#3, Yushima
Tenman-Gu shrine:
Aly evaluated the route from Stop #1 Yushima Seido temple, to Stop#2 (Reiunji
Temple) and finally Stop#3 Yushima Tenman-Gu shrine. Parts of Aly’s walk are not accessiblefor disabled users. At stop #1 “Yushima Seido Temple has no wheelchair accessible ramps, andthe stairs on the grounds do not have handrails for those who have difficulty walking, such as theelderly. The pathways are uneven and dark from the overhanging trees. The sidewalks are
narrow and sometimes shared with cyclists. Further into the residential area, stop #2 Reiunji
Temple is more accessible as the paths are even and connect with the parkade. But from stops #1
to #2 there are few streetlights and no crosswalks. Stop #3 Yushima Tenman-gu shrine iswheelchair accessible with large paths.”
The walk is not well suited for tourists: it is hard to navigate the crisscrossed streets,
which only have shops tucked away that locals know about—not an interesting landscape towalk for tourists. Aly found that the mixture of old and new buildings between the first andsecond stop detracted from the historic character of the walk. Near Stop #2 Reiunji temple,
which is mostly residential and quiet, i.e., lack of variety in the landscape, Aly felt a sense ofloneliness and unease. But there was more variety in the landscape near Stop #3 Yushima shrine:
Yushima elementary school, children in a playground, more rooftop gardens and more green
space in general. The presence of greenspace and children playing countered the sense ofloneliness felt near stop #2. Aly commented that some sites seemed overcrowded, e.g., Yushimashrine, which detracted from its historic feeling. In general, Aly’s route from stops #1 to #3 andthe places on it need to address the needs of the elderly with mobility issues and the needs of
tourists.

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1. How easy was your walk? (ease)

2. What people and places did you see? (What did you see?) (variety)3. Was your walk enjoyable? (enjoyment)
4. How safe did you feel? (safety)

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Brandon’s route: Stop #4 Kyu-Iwasaki-tei garden, to Stop #5, Yayoi Museum, to Stop #6,
Sanshiro Pond & the Red Gate
Brandon evaluated the walkability of the orange walking route from stop#4 Kyu-Iwasakitei garden to stop #6 the Sanshiro pond at Tokyo University. Brandon divided his section of theorange walking route into seven smaller sections (see Figure 7.9).

Figure 7.9 Walking Route Sections of Brandon’s Orange RouteUsing his checklist (Table 7.1) Brandon concluded that his section 1 (in red on Figure7.9) was accessible, reasonably safe and friendly.
Brandon’s section #2 (in dark blue on Figure 7.9), toward the hospital, on the way to themuseums (near #4), was basically an alleyway through which he observed people hurrying,
which prompted him to pick up his walking pace. He said this section had the least character andthe lowest score on his checklist.
Brandon’s section #3 (in yellow on Figure 7.9) passes by the front of the university
hospital. This section has more character than section #2 because one can see a planned
university campus. The path is flat, unlike the beginning of his walking route, and one can smella variety of scents from plants, a food truck and the hospital. One passes a façade with artwork at
the entrance of the hospital. This was a pleasant place to walk; for example—with a tree-lined

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boulevard and businesses such as street vendors to watch, but there was no place to stop and sit
down.
Brandon commented “Without a clear path laid out on the tourist map it is quite easy to
become confused and turned around.” Thus, Brandon was not sure where the Yayoi museum(point 4 on Figure 7.9) was—he was worried that it might be someone’s home as the area wasresidential. He found out that he was at the right place later on when checking the location using
the online “Official Tokyo Travel Guide.” Referring to Brandon’s section #4 (in purple): “On the
walkability checklist, this section failed (score = 16/23), as there were no sidewalks—theychanged to a line separating the road from its shoulder near the museums, and it was difficult toread the signs, e.g., for the museum.
Brandon gave his section #5 (in green on Figure 7.9), the north end of Tokyo University
campus where the engineering buildings are located, a high score (score = 19/23) due in part tothe large number of rest spots. His main concern was the lack of or poor maintenance of green
space.
Brandon analyzed section #6 (pink) and #7 (blue) together: section #6 goes from the“statue” to a building at the beginning of the Sanshiro pond on the Tokyo University campus.
Section #7 goes around the pond (Figure 7.9). The entrance to the pond is difficult to find within
the small clump of green space. The pathway down to the pond consists of cut stepping stones,
and a small creek crosses it (Figure 7.10). There is a nice scent from the plants, and “It only takes
a few steps in before it feels as if you are in a different world, transported from the relatively
relaxed campus into a natural unburdened world.” The pond has fish, tortoises and visiting
ducks. Brandon thought the pond was much newer and was constructed as a stormwater retention
basin. One cannot see the surrounding buildings from the pond’s location—trees block the view.
Unfortunately, the route to the pond is not accessible for handicapped persons; the stones can beslippery if wet, there are no railings to hold on to, and there are some drop-offs with no guard
rails. Still, if one can visit the pond and garden, it is beautiful—even if one does not know its
historical context. Brandon gave section #6 of the walking route—the approach to the pond—ascore of 16 out of 23 and section #7 around the pond a score of 12 out of 23.

Figure 7.10 Stepping Stones Across Stream
Source: Brandon Turner photo, 2017.
In summary, Brandon gave a detailed description andimpression of a counter-clockwise walk from Kyu-Iwasaki-Tei
gardens near Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park past the Tokyo
University hospital, north to the Yayoi museum and Yayoi
university gate, then south through the Tokyo University campus
arriving at the red gate and Sandshiro Pond. He had trouble
reading the signs near the Kyu-Iwasaki-Tei Gardens and near the
Yayoi Museum. The route past the museum through theuniversity was walkable, although the sidewalk changed to a line
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marking off the shoulder of the road. His route continued to be walkable until he reached thepond, which although was beautiful, was not walkable for someone who needed assistancewalking or a person in a wheelchair. He did not know the historical importance of the Sanshiro
Pond or the red gate of the university.
Geraldine and Carley’s route: Stop #6, University of Tokyo Red Gate to Stop #7, Kanayasu
Store and Stop #8, Former Iseya Pawnshop
Geraldine and Carley, similar to Aly, did not formally incorporate a checklist into theirwalkability analyses. Geraldine focused on the aesthetics and history of her section of the orange
walking route. She investigated back alleys between stop #6, Red Gate and stop #8, the Former
Iseya Pawnshop. Between the Red Gate and stop #7 Kanayasu store she noted the old Edolandscapes around Kikusaka Dori (Street) with the common lamp designs, evoking a sense ofenjoyment. Geraldine felt that Kikuzaka hill had more historical “intrigue and significance” than
the gate. She—like Brandon—also commented on the lack of English signage. She rated thewalk between the Red Gate and Kaneyasu store (stop #7) as very good, and the walk between
Kaneyasu store and the former Iseya Pawnshop (stop #8) as “good, but could do better.”Carley evaluated the orange route from stop #9 Bunkyo Historical Museum to stop #10
Bunkyo Ward office to stop#11 Tokyo Dome (no one evaluated the section from the former
Iseya Pawnshop to Bunkyo Museum)In general, Carley found that the route she took between the museum and the ward office
was walkable as there was a variety of pleasant, well-maintained, clean landscapes with
abundant green space, and a perceived safe environment due to the lack of graffiti. In addition,
there was a raised (tactile) yellow line following the length of one of the sidewalks for visually
impaired pedestrians, and Carley noticed wheelchair accessible sidewalks and gardens along theway. She did find that large numbers of people around Tokyo Dome detracted from her walking
experience. Also, some of the tiles near Tokyo Dome were broken, but they were being fixed,
and there was a lack of English signage, especially on the museum building.
Orange Route Recommendations
The students had different recommendations depending upon their experiences walking
the orange route. Aly mentioned that along the walking path people should learn about the local
literary history of the area, perhaps through information sign boards. Brandon mentioned better
signage (in English) for the Kyu-Iwasaki-tei gardens and the Yayoi museum. Geraldine said
there could be better lighting and English signage in the old alleyway parallel to the road up
Kikuzaka hill, which is about halfway between stop #7 Kanayasu store and stop #8 the former
Pawn Shop. Carley had a number of recommendations, but specific to the orange route, she said
creating proper sidewalks near Bunkyo Historical Museum alley to prevent people from walking
on the road. Also, the entire walking area needs a site where local people could spend more time,rather than just walking through the area.
Orange route Conclusion
In conclusion, the orange route was walkable and somewhat wheelchair accessible,
except in places like the Sanshiro pond on the Tokyo University campus. The students felt safeon the walking route, and they experienced a variety of landscapes but Aly commented that thearea around the middle of her route seemed quiet and lonely while some sites seemed
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overcrowded, detracting from the tourist experience. The lack of signage, particularly in English,
but even in Japanese spelled out in Roman letters, was a problem with all the students’ routes.
The historical context of the stops along the route was not always evident. The map descriptions
gave some background, but often it was insufficient for people who have no background inJapanese literature and history.
6. GENERAL DISCUSSION_____________________________________________________
In general, all students focused on the utilitarian aspects of walking along their route andin Bunkyo Ward; however, there were variations in assessments and perceptions. Students
examined, for example, accessibly, e.g., by people using wheelchairs, of the places along thewalking route and the sections connecting them or the presence or need of sidewalks. Aly, on theother hand, also took a phenomenological-like approach to analyzing walkability—relying on her
emotional reaction to each of the places along the walking route. Yi-Fu Tuan talks about thisapproach in his book Topophilia.59 One can also relate Aly’s feelings toward the places along herroute back to Urry’s “tourist gaze.”60 Also, in many cases the stops along the way were moreinteresting than the landscapes connecting them as the stops were highlighted on the maps, not
the routes between them. Thus, some students did not evaluate the walkability of the sections of
the route, but often evaluated the walkability of the stops, e.g., are museums wheelchair
accessible? One student evaluated the walk in a reverse order along the purple route. Thus, herperceptions of the route were different, as she was walking downhill to the Kanda River, rather
than walking the opposite way up from the river.
The students’ perceptions of the walking routes sometimes differed from what the
walkability scores would have us believe. One issue with the walkability checklist is that one
may like the walking route, e.g., due to aesthetics, even though it is not walkable because ofsafety issues—for example, no sidewalks or crosswalks, or it may have a low assessment rating
due to low scores in other categories, such as “How easy was your walk?” So the route mayscore poorly overall in terms of numbers, but the user may still like walking it.
Most students who investigated these four walking routes had a very basic knowledge ofJapanese historical geography—they knew or should have known the significance of uplands andlowlands in Tokyo as they had to read an article on this topic. They also knew that Tokyo wascalled Edo. Some of the students were disengaged with landscapes on the routes due to lack ofknowledge of literary culture; others were disengaged because of a lack of theoretical geographic
knowledge, i.e., knowledge of Japanese urban geography or planning, e.g., the history of land
use in the area.
Brandon talked about not understanding the history of the area that he was walking
through. From stop #4 the Kyu-Iwasaki-Tei gardens to the Tokyo University hospital area hesaid “There was much to take in on this leg of the route but having little to no knowledge of thegardens and no connection to the neighborhood, [comma added] this felt like little more than anovel walk. There was no real sense of place for me along here”. Brandon later said, “This goesback to the issue of being uninitiated… This sense of history should be evident while walking in
the area, but perhaps some background reading for the person walking the route or signage isneeded. Still, Brandon did find that even without the historical context, he could still enjoy hiswalking route, and appreciate the character of the different stops along the way. But he stated59
60

Tuan, Topophilia, 8-10.
Urry, “The tourist gaze,” 173.

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that those people “with less passion for mundane details” will not be able to develop this sense ofplace without this historical context.
Brandon stated that he was able to appreciate the character of most of the stops on his
route. Before embarking on the walks we did not review the literary history of the area, including
the famous author Natsume Soseki, or the well-known haiku poet Basho—literary figures who
were connected to the Bunkyo Ward area and are part of the walking routes on the map. As
Brandon said, we did not know the context of why some of these places were important. Brandon
further states that visitors would become more attracted to the sites and landmarks if they
understood the historical context and how the stops on the routes are connected to the themes.
Brandon, for example, did not know the significance of Akamon (red gate) at Tokyo University
until he had done his initial walkability assessment.
These historic walking routes connect areas based on themes. These walks thus fall under
the category of “kontentsu tourism,”61 as they are associated with these literary figures and sites.
Brandon stated that the mapmakers have “created four walking routes which thematically tie
many of these disjointed locations together.” I think the key point to remember is “disjointed.” It
was interesting how—what we perceived as—unrelated sites were connected into a walking
route, e.g., connecting shrines and temples with botanical gardens, but perhaps from a local, oldtimer perspective these connections make sense. Thus, the routes seem to be designed more fordomestic tourists with a background in local historical literary culture.
The students and I sometimes had difficultly connecting the walking route theme to theareas along one of the courses. For example, along the orange route the map has little
information about the areas connecting the Iseya Pawn Shop, the Bunkyo Historical Museum,
Bunkyo Ward Office or Tokyo Dome. There is information about the stops of interest, just not
the areas connecting them. How do these interconnected areas relate to “Literature andRomance”—the theme of the orange route? Moreover, do all sites fit the theme of the route?
How are the sites inter-related, and how are the areas in between them related?
Also, some tourists many interpret “romance” to mean the attraction between two people,
rather than literary romance. Literary romance (bungaku rouman) is a genre of writing involving
relations among several people, e.g., when focusing on someone’s life journey, sometimes in ahistorical context, but it does not always involve a love interest between people. Thus, someforeign tourists using the English walking map may interpret the “romantic” descriptions of thewalking routes as interpersonal romance, and they may evaluate landscapes along the walking
route in terms of wanting to revisit these places with a romantic partner, as some of my students
in the past have done in their essays.62 These misperceptions can be corrected by studying theliterary history of the area before walking the routes.
Other landscapes were perceived because of other foreign perceptions. In my 2017 class,there was a diversity of landscape perceptions because, in addition to Canadian students, there
were two from Hong Kong and two from China. The two students from China noticed amonument built in honour of Chinese leader Sun Yat Sen at Hakusan shrine on the pink walking
route (Sun Yat Sen had lived in the area). I would never have noticed this statue if it had notbeen for the two students.
Seaton and Yamamura, “Japanese Popular Culture,” 2.
A counterview: Kazuaki Nagata, “Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward picked as most ‘Sensuous City’ in Japan,” Japan Times
online, September 3, 2015,
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/09/03/national/tokyos-bunkyo-ward-picked-sensuous-city-japan/#.XI0UqIs-fB. To the defense of these students, some in the media have portrayed Bunkyo Ward as truly romantic.
61
62

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Moreover, the students were interested in everyday cultural landscapes, such as tofu
stores and water pumps, which unfortunately were not highlighted along the walking route.
Promoting these everyday landscapes on the map and on the ground would not require having an
understanding of the area’s literary history.
There is no suggested walking route between the sites on the map, which Brandon states
makes it a challenge for people who do not known the area (such as foreign tourists) to navigate
between the sites on the map—the city, including Bunkyo Ward, is not arranged in a grid, so one
can easily become lost. For example, student Aly comments: “This residential area of Bunkyoward is not tourist friendly since the streets become nearly impossible to navigate even with amap, and there is a lack of signs.” Brandon states that perhaps the mapmaker’s intent was for the
tourist to explore the areas between the sites. Also, Brandon mentions that the order of the stops
is the suggested order that the map maker wanted the tourist to take when visiting the sites.
One can definitely change the walking experience by taking different routes between two
points of interest on the map. For example, two students first walked between two sites on thepink route along a major arterial roadway and then along a parallel back street—the experience
was completely different as the arterial roadway was wide with much traffic, whereas the parallelolder back street was narrow with few vehicles, all travelling slowly and passing houses, yards
and small businesses.
Many of the students advocated for English signs where places were deemed important.
Brandon was perplexed that what he believed to be lesser important places had English signage.
“It was stunning to me that a location with some amount of importance was not marked in
English when other more minor and most major landmarks have English signage,” referring to
the fact that there was no English signage for the Yayoi museum. Geraldine used Google
translate on her smart phone while walking on the orange route to read a note on the pawnshop
that it was closed due to special spring hours. Carley referred to a book that describes the culturaland political challenges of adopting English as a global language in Japan.63
In reality most tourists to Japan are from China and Korea. The number of native
English-speaking tourists is much smaller. Perhaps what would be useful is to use more Roman
letters when spelling out Japanese words or names, so everyone could read them, rather thanusing Japanese or Chinese characters.
To be better prepared for the walking the routes, one can develop an understanding of
Bunkyo Ward by reading anime that is associated with the ward. For example, the setting for the
Bungo Stray Dogs anime is Bunkyo Ward. One can collect electronic stamps related to the Stray
Dogs at different spots in the ward.64 This movement from place to place collecting stamps is
known as a stamp rally (sutamupu-rari-). Information about the Bungo Stray Dogs and the stamp
rally is found on the Bunkyo Ward website.65 However, my interview with a Bunkyo Ward
tourism office employee indicates that most people who currently walk the tourist routes areolder and thus I think may not be interested in local anime.
Philip Seargeant, The idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language (Bristol:
Channel View Publications, 2009), 167. ProQuest Ebook Central.
64“Bunkyokunai 6kasho wo meguri, sutampu wo atsumete keihin wo get!” (Tour the 6 spots in Bunkyo Ward tocollect stamps and get a gift), Bunkyo ku, Accessed March 20, 2019,http://www.city.bunkyo.lg.jp/var/rev0/0147/4684/chirashiura.jpg.
65“Bungo Sutorei Doguzu (Bungo Stray Dogs),” Bunkyo Ku, Bunkyo Ku ~ Bungo no Kai-Bunkyo Ku Sutanpurari& Irasuto Tenji ~, Accessed March 18, 2019,https://www.city.bunkyo.lg.jp/bunka/kanko/event/bungostraydogs.html.
63

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The walking routes focus on history and literary culture, but why has so much of thishistoric landscape in Bunkyo Ward not been preserved? In the last one hundred years the Great
Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the fire bombings of World War II have destroyed much of thebuilt landscape. Also, there has not been a major effort to preserve these old remaining buildings.
Uta Hohn66 mentions that the preservation of the material aspect of a building is not of utmost
importance because of the threat of fires and natural disasters, e.g., that wooden buildings are
frequently destroyed by fire. Thus, people do not expect buildings to last long. However, Hohndoes say that recently there has been a greater effort to preserve traditional architecture.
Observing a mixture of old and new buildings can be enjoyable. Enjoying the landscapeis another aspect of walkability that is emphasized in the checklist from the Icanwalk.ca website.
Along many of the walking routes there are still old buildings mixed in with new ones, which
can be aesthetically appealing. On the purple route student Nick liked the combination of the oldand new architectural landscape in Otsuka and Mejirodai. The mixing of new and oldarchitecture makes this area desirable—Nick said it forms a palimpsest landscape, being able tosee vestiges of the old landscape in the new one. This preference for the contrasting new and oldlandscapes is similar to Geraldine’s impressions of the orange walking route landscape.
Geraldine refers to Yuriko Saito,67 who says that Japanese aesthetics in design is related tojuxtaposed “disparate, often contrasting, elements.” Thus, one can relate this to the old Edo era
buildings mixed in with the newer buildings, even if the Edo era buildings are somewhat
dilapidated or weathered. Conversely, Aly said that the mixing of old and new landscapes along
her part of the orange route detracted from her appreciation of the historic landscape.
In areas of Bunkyo Ward where most of this older landscape has been burned or torn
down, it is hard to appreciate what was once there. Brandon mentions that “while most canappreciate the significance of places such as an iconic building or renowned landform (such as
Fujisan), the significance given to a landscape due to local history and culture doesn’t always
translate, particularly when the landscape no longer clearly exhibits that history,” in other words,
when much of that landscape has been removed.
Finally, the condition of green space had an impact on the walking experience in terms ofenjoyment. Brandon was shocked by how the lawns at University of Tokyo are cared for—for
example, using weed eaters instead of lawn mowers. “My sole concern when walking this path
was the maintenance of the green space, which is not an issue limited to the University ofTokyo—across much of Japan I noticed a distinct lack of investment in maintaining green spaces(at least in the manner we do in Canada).” Overall, the presence of trees increased Brandon’s
enjoyment of his walking route. Aly had a similar positive experience with trees near Yushima
Seido temple at the south end of the orange walking route. Richmond positively remarked on theshade from trees while walking around Korakuen on the green route. Shade has been found to be

Uta Hohn, “Townscape Preservation in Japanese Urban Planning,” Town Planning Review 68 no.2 (1997): 246,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40113818.
67
Yuriko Saito, “The Japanese Aesthetics of Imperfection and Insufficiency,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 55 no.4 (1997): 378. DOI: 10.2307/430925.
66

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highly correlated with perceived walkability.68 In a study from Oregon, a walking route withmore and better organized green space was favoured over one with just basic green space.69
7. RECOMMENDATIONS______________________________________________________
The first ten recommendations suggest making changes to the walking landscape.
First, Brandon suggested managing pedestrian crossings better. Perhaps more crosswalks
in high traffic areas can be added.
Second, in order to improve walking safety, in areas where there is no clear pedestrian
pathway or sidewalk, Brandon states that one can convert a nearby narrow alley or street topedestrian-only use (Yoshii70 discusses this possibility).
Third, to make the walk easier use appropriate signage in different languages.
Fourth, to make the walks easier both Naomi and Aly suggested the construction of better
pathways that could be wheelchair accessible.
Fifth, Naomi and Aly suggested wide benches for people to rest on. Brandon suggested
that benches can be added regardless if one is a senior—he stated that benches are needed, so
people can sit and reflect. Carley recommended installing benches at bus stops.
Sixth, Carley also suggested adding public art to walking routes, which together withbenches would entice local residents to enjoy the area rather than just walking through it.
Seventh, Carley recommended installing garbage, compost and recycling bins.
Eighth, Naomi also mentioned that drinking water should be more available, such as
public water fountains, especially after climbing steep hills as is common on the purple route.
Ninth, to improve the enjoyment of the walks, Carley advocated planting taller trees toprovide shade and to deal with global warming, and she also mentioned displaying hanging
flower baskets.
Tenth, to improve the aesthetic appeal (enjoyment) of the walking routes, Carley
recommended burying electrical lines.
The following recommendations suggest making changes to the walking activity or to themap.
Eleventh, Naomi suggested organizing tours of the purple route area for more vulnerable
international tourists, such as the elderly or physically challenged people, who are led by guides
along the walking course at an easy pace and help people get up the steep hills safely. The guides
could also translate any questions the users have about the area, such as directions. A guidesystem would help people become more active. (Bunkyo Ward does provide free guided walking
tours; however, they are not targeted for vulnerable people.)
Twelfth, encourage walking the routes in different numbered orders for a different
experience—one can, for example, walk from stop #2 to stop #1, then stop #3. One should
Ganga N. Samarasekara, Kiyotaka Fukahori, and Yoichi Kubota, “Environmental Correlates that Provide
Walkability cues for Tourists: An Analysis Based on Walking Decision Narrations,” Environment and Behavior 43
no.4 (2011): 517, doi: 10.1177/001391610379350.
69
Arlie Adkins, Jennifer Dill, Gretchen Luhr and Margaret Neal, “Unpacking Walkability: Testing the Influence ofUrban Design Features on Perceptions of Walking Environment Attractiveness,” Journal of Urban Design 17 no.4,(August 2012): 58, https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.
70
Yu Yoshii, “Preserving Alleyways to Increase Walkability of Historical Japanese Cities,” Procedia - Social and
Behavioral Sciences 216 (2016): 605-607, doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.12.034
68

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promote walking along the narrow, back streets, which are densely built up with flower pots,
e.g., which Sorensen,71 talks about in adjacent Taito ward, rather than along the wider arterial
routes.
Thirteenth, if there is a suggested route, Brandon suggested drawing lines on the map
between points of interest, especially—I would add—if it is easy to get lost or if the mapmakers
want to direct people to certain spots.
Fourteenth, for the benefit of international tourists, give more background information
about the old scholars and famous people who lived in the local area. This could be in the formof additional information included on the walking route maps, QR codes on the maps thatprovide walkers with more information once accessed using a smart phone, or signs at the sites
of interest that can provide more multilingual information displays.
Fifteenth, Richmond mentioned that local anime drama should be used to promote theroutes to younger people, e.g., the Bungo Stray Dogs mentioned above.
Sixteenth, Brandon stated that community mapping can be promoted in Bunkyo Ward.
People can be encouraged to create their own maps, which can be posted on the internet. Apps
can be developed where people can create their own guided tours. This community mapping
does exist: there were flyers from Tokyo University with information about community mappingat the Bunkyo Tourism Information Centre during our stay in May 2017.
The last recommendation focuses on how we can improve the evaluation of walkability.
Seventeenth, Carley states that in the future a more complex walkability index can bedevised, which is a better gage of walkability. There were some walks, as I pointed out earlier,that were enjoyable, but not safe. These discrepancies are not always reflected in the number ofpoints a route receives when being evaluated.
8. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION______________________________________________The students investigated the walkability of the four tourist walking routes in Bunkyo
Ward. This paper only focuses on the walkability of what we called the orange walking route, ormore correctly the Yushima and Hongo route. The four routes took longer to walk than what wassuggested on the map. In general, the routes were safe but not completely barrier-free. It was
hard to navigate the routes due to a lack of multi-lingual signs. On the orange route, Sanshiro
pond on the Tokyo University campus was not accessible, some museums could not be locatedbecause of the lack of English signs, and other significantly historic sites and buildings were easy
to pass by. It was helpful to know the historic context of the walking routes.
Brandon, who walked part of the orange route, stated
I felt a sense of place here, but not what the tourist map would have had me
feeling. My sense of place was being constructed in the present, in the
representation of what the University and its surroundings are in the here andnow. For me, that was exciting. I relished the feeling of exploring the route, but asI said already, I am intrigued by what others might observe as mundane orinconsequential.
Andre Sorensen, “Neighborhood Streets as Meaningful Spaces: Claiming Rights to Shared Spaces in Tokyo,” City
& Society 21 no. 2 (2009): 217. doi:10.1111/j.1548-744X.2009.01022.x.
71

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For many people in the class, perceptions of the landscape were different from those thatthe mapmakers wanted us to experience. Our perceptions were based on our observations around
us while walking the routes. For some of us this was intriguing and in some cases exciting; forothers, as Brandon points out, perhaps less so. The challenge is to engage more people in thelandscape.
These mapped walking routes are a good introduction to Japanese culture for students in
the geography field course at Thompson Rivers University. But a background in the geography
and history of Japan, Tokyo and Bunkyo Ward is important to appreciate these landscapes.
Knowledge of Japanese is helpful too. With little knowledge of Japanese urban geography and
the Japanese language, students became disengaged with the landscape. They tended to pay
attention to the museums and other sites along the way, rather than paying attention to thelandscape in-between. The routes took a long time to walk, especially if one visited all the sites
along the way. In the future, the creators of walking routes need to think about different usergroups, e.g., the variety of international tourists visiting the area during the 2020 Olympics.
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