Asia Leadership Fellow Program
1997 Program Report

Culture, Development, and Emancipation:
the search for a new paradigm

International House of Japan
Japan Foundation Asia CenterContents
Foreword

4

Profiles of the Fellows

6

Program Schedule

8

Introduction
Asian Public Intellectuals:
New Millenium, Old Challenges, Same Tasks
Tanami Tatsuya

10

Program Reports of the Fellows
Challenges to Asian Public Intellectuals
Kuo Pao Kun

31

Track-three Intellectuals
and the Asia Leadership Fellow Program
Goenawan Mohamad

48

Notions of and Questions on Identity
Ota Yoshinobu

54

Asian Public Intellectuals and 'Development with Soul'
Ishak Bin Shari

66

Asia Leadership Fellow Program Report
Laddawan Tantivitayapitak

76

Research Papers
Baldwin's Garment: Identity and Fetishismand Other Issues of Difference
Goenawan Mohamad

93

Globalization and Human Development
Ishak Bin Shari105

Nation in Doubt, Identity in Question,and Hybrid Society
Ota Yoshinobu

113

Program Staff and Resource Persons

124Foreword

The publication of the 1997 Program Report of the Asia Leadership Fellow
Program (ALFP) marks its second year of implementation. The International Houseof Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center created jointly this extremely novel
program in 1996. The program enables selected Asian public intellectuals (a) toengage in collaborative interactions and intellectual discourses with their fellow
Asians in Japan; (b) to conduct their own individual research; and (c) to undertake
exchange activities—if opportunities arise—with their Japanese counterparts thatfurther promote mutual understanding and cooperation, and deepen contactbuilding and networking.
It is the objective of the ALFP, among others, to take the current level ofintellectual discourse and dialogue among Asian public intellectuals, including
Japanese, to a new horizon: one that will nurture the development of new norms andvalue-orientation in approaching and analyzing various pertinent issues and in
searching for a new Asian paradigm for the future.
As in the first volume of this report, the present one carries the program
reports of the ALFP fellows. The 1997 ALFP fellows are: Kuo Pao Kun, Singapore;
Goenawan Mohamad, Indonesia; Ota Yoshinobu, Japan; Ishak Bin Shari, Malaysia;
and Laddawan Tantivitayapitak, Thailand.
The International House of Japan and the Japan Foundation Asian Center
express their profound gratitude and highest appreciation to all the generous people
who directly and indirectly made the 1997 ALFP another resounding success. In
particular, the scholars, researchers, and public intellectuals in Japan and other Asian
countries who shared their time by serving as members of the screening/steeringcommittee and who recommended superb candidates for the program and who also
shared their expertise and views as resource persons in numerous seminars; theJapanese people who acted as 'local hosts' for the field trips of the fellows, and themany others who quietly worked on but contributed tremendously to the program,
especially those who labored patiently behind the scenes.
The International House of Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center are
confident that the second volume of the ALFP fellows program report will enable its
readers to have firmer grasp and better understanding of the program dynamics andits initial accomplishments.

The International House of JapanThe Japan Foundation Asia CenterTokyo, March 1999

4

Profiles of the 1997 Fellows
Kuo Pao Kun (Singapore)
Artistic Director, Practice Performing Arts Center Ltd.
Mr. Kuo is one of Singapore's most dynamic dramatists whose works
have been produced and performed at international festivals. Throughhis works and writings, Mr. Kuo has been arousing serious and deep
discussions on various problems and challenges facing Singapore andthe Asian region. He is at the forefront of promoting cross-cultural communication andarts education through public seminars, theater projects, and conferences on the arts andsociety. His most recent play, partly conceptualized during his tenure as a fellow of the
ALFP, was a major event at the Singapore Arts Festival in June 1998 and at the Chinese
Theater Festival in Hong Kong in November 1998. There are plans to stage this particularplay, inspired by the Japanese cemetery in Singapore, in Japan.

Goenawan Mohamad (Indonesia)
Director, Institute for the Study of Free Flow of Information
Mr. Mohamad is recognized as one of Indonesia's key intellectuals. He
is a journalist, poet, an art critic, and an activist. He is famous as thefounder and editor-in-chief of Tempo Magazine when it was banned by
the Indonesian government in 1994. He is well-respected among civil
libertarians in Indonesia as a champion and advocate of people's rights. He has publishedseveral volumes of essays and poetry.

Ota Yoshinobu (Japan)
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies,
University of Kyushu
Prof. Ota is an anthropologist who has done extensive research in
Yaeyama, Okinawa Prefecture. He is currently doing research on
Mayan identity-formation in Guetamala. He received his M.A. from
Northwestern University and his Ph.D. from the University ofMichigan. Exploring the political implications of discourses on culture, he is studying thelinks between tradition and modernity, and their effects on development, nationalism,
ethnicity, and gender. His most recent book, Transposition: Toward a Reimagining of
Anthropology (in Japanese), started in 1994 and finally completed during the ALFP
fellowship, was published by the Sekai Shisosha.

6Ishak Bin Shari (Malaysia)
Professor and Director, Institute of Malaysian and International
Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Prof. Shari is one of the most respected economics professors in
Malaysia. He earned his master's from the London School of
Economics and his Ph.D. from the University of Malaya. He has served
as president of the Malaysian Social Science Association 1990-1994. He
is a noted commentator on economic affairs, often interviewed by the mass media.

Laddawan Tantivitayapitak (Thailand)
Co-founder and Assistant Secretary, The PollWatch Foundation
Ms. Laddawan started her career as a human rights worker in 1976 andhas since been active in non-governmental organizations' advocacy
campaigns. At PollWatch, an election monitoring body created by theprime minister of Thailand through an order, she is responsible forplanning, coordinating, administering, and reporting on general elections since 1992.

(From L to R, back row:) Alan Feinstein, Japan Foundation Asia Center; Izumi Koide, I-House; Tatsuya
Tanami, I-House; Isami Ikeda, Dokkyo University; Ota Yoshinobu, Japan; Ishak Bin Shari, Malaysia; Kuo
Pao Kun, Singapore; Isamu Maruyama, I-House; Goenawan Mohamad, Indonesia; (Front row) Maho Sato,
Japan Foundation Asia Center; Mariko Oka-Fukuroi, Japan Foundation Asia Center; Michiko Yoshida, IHouse; Naoko Shimamura, I-House; Ibarra C. Mateo, and Laddawan Tantivitayapitak, Thailand

7

Asia Leadership Fellow Program 1997
Schedule of Activities

Sept. 2Introductory Meeting

Sept. 3

Welcome Reception

Sept. 8Workshop I
Presentation by Kuo Pao Kun(During workshop-presentation, each fellow talked about his/herresearch interest. Discussion followed the presentation.)

Sept. 9Workshop II
Presentations by Goenawan Mohamad and Ota Yoshinobu

Sept. 10Workshop III
Presentation by Laddawan Tantivitayapitak

Sept. 11

Workshop IV
Free discussion among fellows

Sept. 16

Seminar at the University of Tokyo - Institute of Oriental Culture

Sept. 19

Special meeting with Dr. Muhammad Haji Salleh

Sept. 22

Workshop VFree discussion among fellows

Sept. 23

Workshop VI
Free discussion among fellows

Sept. 24

Workshop VII
Free discussion among fellows

Sept. 25

Seminar on Japanese Media and Asia
Resource Person: Mr. Wakisaka Noriyuki,
Asahi Shimbun, Editorial writer
Visit to the Japan International Cooperation Agency headquarters

8

Sept. 26

Seminar on Asia-Pacific Regional Security
Resource Person: Col. Yamaguchi Noboru, National Defense Agency

Sept. 30

Seminar with Representatives of Japanese
Non-Governmental Organizations

Oct. 1

Seminar at Kyoto University - Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Organized by Prof. Shiraishi Takashi, Kyoto University

Oct. 3

Seminar at Kyoto Bunkyo University
Organized by Prof. Shiraishi Saya, Bunkyo University

Oct. 8

Seminar on Nationalism
Resource Person: Prof. Yoshino Kosaku, University of Tokyo

Oct. 10-13

Seminar in Hokkaido
Organized by Prof. Kajiwara Kageaki, Hokkaido University

Oct. 16

Seminar on 'Re-appraisal of Development in Asian Viewpoint'
Resource Person: Prof. Nishikawa Jun, Waseda University

Oct. 17

Seminar on 'A New Look at the Chrysanthemum and the Sword'
Resource Person: Prof. Douglas Lummis, Tsuda College

Oct. 19-21

Out-of-Tokyo Retreat Conference
Pegasus House, Ito City

Oct. 27

Seminar on Civil Society
Resource Person: Prof. Sakamoto Yoshikazu, University of Tokyo,
Professor Emiritus
Seminar on Japanese Foreign Policy Agenda in East Asia
Resource Person: Mr. Katakami Keiichi, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Oct. 29

Debriefing and Evaluation Session

Oct. 30

Public Symposium on 'Culture, Development, and Emancipation:
The Search for A New Paradigm'

9

Asian Public Intellectuals:
New Millenium, Old Challenges, Same Tasks
Tatsuya Tanami

Public intellectuals, according to social critic Russel Jacoby, is a category
hard to define and riddled with complexities. Although, he conceded that a 'public
intellectual' must be at least 'an incorrigibly independent soul' answerable to no one
and committed not only and simply to a professional or private domain but to a
public world—to a wider educated world. The decisive factor to be considered or to
be labeled a public intellectual is one's contribution to open discussion: one's
influence in enriching public life and revitalizing public culture.1 In May 1998, elevenyears later, another definition of 'public intellectuals' was forwarded by the Social
Science Research Council Regional Advisory Panel for Southeast Asia whichcharacterized them as 'individuals articulating and representing novel politicalpresents and futures.'2
In contesting the concept of public intellectuals and their roles in the public
life and culture, some are of the opinion that 'public intellectuals who initiate, define
and become established as the arbiters of public debate' these days, come not fromthe ranks of the academe but from among the varied leading political groups andtheir allies, and that these politically active sectors are complemented by their'handsomely supported publicists' in shaping the contours of the national debate.3
There are those who are predicting the decline of influence of public intellectuals andhad questioned in fact the 'viability' of their existence as a distinctive social faction in
the future.4 Some had analyzed the 'contradictory' positions of public intellectuals as
being both dominated and dominant. They are considered members of the dominantclass because of their possession of power and privileges that emanate from theirsignificant cultural capital, and yet they are dominated by the real owners of
economic power and by the wielders of political power.5
In my seminal writings on the topic, I had tentatively conceptualized theelusive term 'public intellectuals' as people who act in public space, civil society, andthink, discuss, and take action outside of the immediate policy concerns. 'Public
intellectuals' may also be leaders 'who are keen in articulation, conceptualization,and participation in societal transformation'—beyond the categories which I had
termed as first-track, meaning those belonging to government circles, and second-trackor those related to various research institutes and think tanks for strategic andinternational studies. It must be mentioned that many of these institutes and thinktanks have working relations or close ties with national governments of their

10

respective countries. I had sometimes referred to 'public intellectuals' as track-three
intellectuals vis-à-vis the first-track and the second-track.6

Public Intellectuals in Asia and the Regional Crises
As we approach the new millenium, public intellectuals in Asia are once
again being summoned to register their clear dominant voices and prevailed upon toact with a sense of utmost urgency amid the persistent crises that had buffeted theregion, resulting in tensions and turmoil accompanying the inevitable contemporary
strides of history sometimes called globalization of national economies. Recent
political struggles and transformations within the region had also manifested how
fragile national consensus are, even under iron-strong leaders who had ruled for
decades, leading to violence victimizing ethnic minority groups and politicallymarginalized factions. Swiftly as globalization became a buzzword and massiveinternational capital flight wreaked havoc within Asia, there are those who warn
now of imminent disintegration of the global economic system. At no other time
during contemporary history we had witnessed and continue to observe how thefoundations of and assumptions governing various social, political, and economic
institutions are being shaken profoundly and called into question. Indeed, these areinteresting and trying but challenging times for all of us, and most especially to
public intellectuals whose exceptional tasks of grasping the 'real social world' havebecome more pressing than ever.
Public intellectuals in Asia within the academe with their 'researchedknowledge' and those outside of the confines of universities with their 'locatedknowledge'7 are being prompted to overcome and cross the deep divides separatingthem that, together academic and non-academic public intellectuals may become
influential actors in these present moments of chaotic public life in various countries
in the Asian region. In short, Asian public intellectuals are encouraged—if notpressured by present volatile circumstances—to inspire and to invigorate the current
confused public life, sieve through and divine order in the regional mess. As in thepast great historical junctures, public intellectuals are urged to be 'passionately
involved in the world's work as passionate participants rather than as detachedobservers.'8 Public intellectuals are being tasked to reinterpret the past, reappraise thepresent, and become instrumental catalysts and potent actors in the future-making
processes which are here with us now. Asian public intellectuals must return to their'real calling'9 as intellectuals: provoke, if not stir, honest reflection and candid
evaluation which are imperative for renewing various institutions of our public lifeand culture.
Having enumerated the unenviable demands on public intellectuals for
significant engagement and meaningful intervention in public life and culture, it
must be explained—for pragmatic considerations—that they have delicate,ambiguous, and ambivalent relationships toward their public: the citizens of theirrespective countries. Let me quote here in detail a succint explanation of a Thai

11

scholar of these rather tenuous links between Asian public intellectuals and the'people.''The peculiar position of public intellectuals in the questions of minorities
has to do with their problematic, troublesome, love-hate relationship with theirpresumed audience or constituency under the name of 'the people.' For, in mostcases, public intellectuals are isolated and not-always-understandable
intellectual minority within a minority. They can't live without the people who
are the public consumers of their ideas but neither can they live in peace withthem. Public intellectuals usually have to argue with, cajole and criticize thepublic who don't always heed their suggestions, and more often than notdisappoint and desert them. So many public intellectuals often feel hopelessabout and disdainful toward the people, and then feel unconscionably guilty
about it.
The opposite, no less troublesome, attitude is to hold to the cult of the people
which regards it as the font of wisdom and final arbiter of all issues, to whom
the intellectuals are unquestioningly bound to adhere. Thus characterized, one
can say that the public intellectuals'relationship to the people is one in which
they try to sell their reasoned arguments to it, or try to buy it with theiraccumulated and borrowed cultural capital (read resources for argumentation,
signification, communication and persuasion available in society's culturalrepertoire). Their capacity to win over the people seems to vary with (for wantof a better term) the current, given structure of plausibility or cultural
opportunity structure.'10
However, before any Asian public intellectual can exert substantial influencein the public life and public discourse and actively interact with 'the people,' he must
make himself 'socially relevant' and his intellectual's presence publicly felt.
Otherwise, his power and intellectual capital emanating from his recognizedexpertise lose their value. Again, allow me to quote lengthily another Asian scholar
who advised any public intellectual to penetrate 'public spaces' where he can become'an effective intellectual.''To become socially relevant, an intellectual must be able to disseminate thealternative ways of thinking that her/his work can create/enable. Indeed, themore public her or his dissemination becomes, the more recognized her or his'expertise' on the subject; and hence her or his ability to be an effective
intellectual. There are at least two crucial kinds of public spaces that an Asian
intellectual needs to access: first, conventionally recognized public spaces,
particularly those involving mass media exposure; and second, privatizedpublic spaces, the closed door spaces where one enters into discussions with
politically powerful experts, i.e., state and government officials. In these secret
spaces you can be given 'facts' that others are not privy to. Hence theintellectual can be in the know and yet not have the right to dispense this12

received knowledge. In this respect, such a space gives an intellectual aparticular distinction which, effectively, can be used to win him/her over andgive him/her the legitimacy to make statements without having to fully clarify
them…
In sum, the intellectual's public relevance is 'public' because s/he locatesherself/himself in given spaces and sites of authority. But as the prestige andinfluence that follow from being a public intellectual increase, they can andhave taken some intellectuals further and further away from the ground whence
they first spoke. Additionally, it legitimizes that growing distance because they
now know more and more about that which is secret or private—including thepersonal relationships and hence true character of individuals in power.'11

The Asia Leadership Fellow Program
To a large extent, the Asia Leadership Fellow Program (ALFP)—under the
auspices of the International House of Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center—
provides select public intellectuals in Asia a novel space, wider arena, and a fertile sitewhere they are afforded opportunities to spend several months in Japan to conduct
their own individual research, while at the same time encountering fellow public
intellectuals from neighboring countries as they work on a 'collaborative'project on achosen topic pertinent to the Asian region. While specific topics vary each year, thecollaborative project must revolve around the general theme of 'development andculture.' The ALFP aims to create a close network of public intellectuals in Asia, andto further promote mutual understanding and deepen cooperation and contact
among them and their counterparts in Japan. The ALFP offers public intellectuals in
Asia an imagined, socially-constructed 'regional space' where they can learn fromtheir fellows and where they can share their knowledge and wisdom to the rest of
Asia.12The establishment of the Japan Foundation Asia Center gave an important
impetus for the International House of Japan's initial interest to create a new networkof public intellectuals from and within Asia and Japan. While fellows are invited tospend several months in Japan, the ALFP is mainly intended to initiate encountersamong themselves. The major concerns of ALFP are to keep track of intellectual
visions for Asia by Asian public intellectuals and to project developments andforesee future directions of Asia. One of the strengths, if not its main feature, of the
ALFP is its experimental nature based on flexibility, open and critical methods ofanalysis, and the use of an 'Asian' perspective in approaching varied issues affecting
the region.

13

The ALFP Fellows for 1997
The fellows of the ALFP 1997 were: Goenawan Mohamad, journalist, directorof the Institute for the Study of Free Flow of Information, (Indonesia); Ishak Bin
Shari, professor of economics, director of the Institute of Malaysian and International
Studies in the University of Kebangsaan Malaysia, (Malaysia); Kuo Pao Kun, creative
writer and theater director, artistic director of the Practice Performing Arts Center,(Singapore); Laddawan Tantivitayapitak, a leader of NGO, co-founder and assistantsecretary of Pollwatch Foundation, (Thailand); and Ota Yoshinobu, an associate
professor of anthropology in the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies in
the University of Kyushu, (Japan).
The ALFP program always started with the initial presentation by each of the
fellows on his particular area of interest and work. Talking about one's work or
professional concerns had proven to be an effective way of drawing out a fellow's life
history, philosophies, and beliefs. It also thawed the initial tensions expected when agroup of individuals gather for an intensive interaction lasting a couple of months.
The contents of the no-holds barred interactions that took place after each of thepresentation unfortunately could not be captured by this article. It may indeed bethat this entire volume not do justice to the sheer intellectual energies evolved andunleashed, and to the deep camaraderie that had been kindled and developed while
the fellowship was in progress.
As if to further stoke the intellectual fire within each fellow into a full-blown
intellectual conflagration, Kuo Pao Kun urged all present in his initial presentation
to heed his 'plea to be totally irresponsible' within the context of the 'unstructured
nature' of the fellowship by 'getting away from the confines of institutions andmindset.' His initial presentation focused on his 'journey as an artist' which began
during his lonely childhood. Pao Kun said his specialization on theater arts had
helped him cope with his loneliness and resolved his frustrations, and in the process,he found companionship and relationship with his people, his audience. He wasdetained for four years and six months by the Singaporean authorities on suspicionsof being a subversive. His detention, he said, was 'a good educational experience'that strengthened him.
Pao Kun described the Singaporean government's policy on the arts as: itshould make life more refined and more entertaining; art must not challenge thestatus quo; and art must be a money-making venture. He also said that Singaporeans'live in the margins of culture and civilization' since they have 'no nation to revive, nocultural heritage.' However, he said that one positive aspect of this phenomenon wasthat 'it is easier for Singaporeans to enter a conglomeration of cultures.'
Goenawan Mohamad, started his presentation by narrating the tragedies
surrounding his life which coincided with the succession of Dutch and Japanese
occupations of Indonesia. He said the series of politically-related violence thatmarked his life had left a deep impact on his views toward life and death, and more
especially on his current activities.

14

Goenawan invited his co-fellows to 'think on the political implications of theidea of culture' and their influence on artistic and intellectual productions. He said
there was 'always a hint of violence in the intellectual effort to understand reality, tocontrol it, and to use it for a designed end.' An accomplished literary writer himself,
Goenawan said he had attempted 'to distance' his literary works from the trend to
make writings a kind of means or subject to political ends. He said politics do nothave to dominate one's life completely. A 'sanctuary' or a 'private space' wasnecessary to feel and appreciate again the beauty of life, he said.
Ota Yoshinobu, for his part, discussed in broad strokes the three projects hehad been working on. First, decolonizing anthropology which is social anthropology
as a western discipline and trying to historicize the western discipline ofanthropology and looking for possible routes that can be used by anthropology andattempting to locate it within the Japanese context. Second, the formation of identity,
and third, understanding culture in anthropological sense: 'the symbiotic mediation
occurring in society and the world.'
Among others, Ota questioned the proposition of the progressive narrativeof march of history from traditional to modern undertaken by various societies. He
refused to concede that societal evolution could be this simple, adding that he wastrying to find another model that would deviate from the 'tradition and modernity'
model. He said the question of 'hybridization' was a controversial one for it involved
the 'authenticity and dilution' of a culture. He said the intrusion of colonialism madeculture political.
Laddawan Tantivitayapitak likened herself to a 'theater-maker' in the sensethat she managed to move people to change in the same manner that theater arts
could transform people. She recalled the February 1991 massacre in Bangkok, saying
one of its lessons was that 'there are situations that cannot be controlled as there arealways many actors in a (theater) production.' Laddawan said the 'production' ended
violently when 'uninvited audience' disrupted the process by agitating othermembers of the audience.
She said the works of non-governmental organizations were 'difficult andfrustrating' because struggling against the powerful is 'burdensome'. She admitted
being surprised by calls of Thai nationals that the military seize power from corrupt
politicians, manifesting the people's inadequate understanding of the dynamics ofpolitics and political reforms.
One of her major concerns in her work as an NGO leader, she said, was theprocess of enshrining people's rights in the constitution, while at the same time
striking a healthy balance between rights and rules that would govern societies.
Ishak Bin Shari said his interest on the issues of poverty and equitable
income distribution stemmed from the impact of the Malaysian riot in 1969. Initially,
he was distrustful of the Malaysian government's direct intervention on market
forces and of its national economic development policies. However, by late 1970s, hesaid that his position toward government economic policies changed gradually as the
reduction of poverty became evident and income disparity narrowed, leading to thegrowth of a middle class. He said that from then on, he began doing research on the15

important role that the Malaysian government played in economic development andits influence on harmonizing ethnic relations in Malaysia. He said there would
always be a need for a mechanism that could 'check' emerging inequality, especiallyin a setting like Malaysia, which is multi-ethnic and multi-religious.
He said his concern with poverty and unequal income distribution are
related to their political and social implications such as the use of politicians ofdivisive issues within the society. He proposed the following courses of action that
could be taken as the globalization of economies proceed: the need for active role ofthe state again in regulating the market; the recognition of the negative aspects ofgovernment intervention such as inefficiency and totalitarian tendencies; and thesetting of the precondition that active state intervention on the economy would bepremised on 'human development' and 'participatory development.'

Culture, Development, and Emancipation:
A Search for a New Paradigm
The ALFP 1997 fellows decided that 'Culture, Development, andEmancipation: A Search for a New Paradigm' would be their main theme, while thefollowing sub-themes were enumerated after three days of initial presentations:multiculturalism and multiracialism; globalization, migration, and uprootedness;role of tradition and ethnicity; role of religion; question of identity/nation-states; roleof capital and state in development; role of people's participation in development(civil society); role of the arts; and the role of public intellectuals.
Pao Kun called on the fellows to create 'new words, new terms, newconcepts, and new paradigms' to enable them to escape from and be separated fromthe 'old'. He also cautioned his co-fellows to be conscious of the 'need for equal
strength from other participants' in order to avoid domination of some andrelegation to the background of the others.
Goenawan exhorted his co-fellows to be rigorous to the point of exhaustion
because 'the exercise of asking questions and reflections is good.' He also voiced out
the problem that multi-cultural projects such as the ALFP always had the initialdifficulties of 'where to start from and what tradition to use.'
Issues such as identity as a tool for survival and as an empowering
mechanism, and the friction resulting from the collision between tradition andmodernity were also touched upon by the fellows.

Summary of Sessions with Resource Persons
Dr. Muhammad Haji Salleh said scholars in Asia work within religion itself
such as Buddhism and Islam instead of competing with or rejecting it. He also said
that literary works such as poetry are still valid in these times of great industrialchange in spite of their seeming irrelevance. In his case, his poetry were his

16contributions to human kind. 'In poetry, you play with metaphors, you say things
indirectly, this is the Asian way,' he said.
He said Asians have to move beyond comparing themselves with the west
and cast away the idea that if they did not measure up to the western standards, they
were nothing. He said the breaking down of borders brought about by globalization
would mean a 'frightful' future, that of one single global culture. 'Homogenization
brings monotony,' he said. 'We have to reconfirm our uniqueness in this age ofglobalization,' he said.
Salleh said writers have the task of bringing out our uniqueness, but not thechauvinistic kind. 'Identity of colonized people should be seen outside of thestereotyped images, that of the downtrodden and victims,' he said.
Wakisaka Noriyuki, a journalist working for the Asahi Shimbun and in
charge of the Asian affairs and overseas development aid matters for the samenewspaper company, talked about the general situation of newspaper industry inJapan.
He said Japanese readers had been complaining of the deteriorating qualityof Japanese newspapers such as their lack of in-depth analyses and weak editorial
opinion and stance. He did not categorically state that his newspaper could influence
the general Japanese public's opinion, but said that bureaucrats who make decisions
read Asahi Shimbun and other newspapers, allowing mass media to play a role inshaping government policies.
Wakisaka said his newspaper had always advocated that Japan shouldsquarely face its history, apologized about its wrong doings during World War II,
and try to emulate Germany's example in handling its past. He said that Japanese
intellectuals at present have a weak voice in participating in debates or discussions
that could lead to sound government policies.
Col. Yamaguchi Noboru, of the National Defense Agency, talked about theimportance of Southeast Asian region in the maritime security of Japan, Japan's
security policies and projections, and Japan's security roles.
Yamaguchi said the Southeast Asian maritime jurisdiction and borders are
not well-demarcated, resulting in increased tension in the region. He said Japan wastrying to work within the framework of 'stability through prosperity' in maintaining
peace in the region.
He outlined Japan's securities toward the Asian region as: first, multilateral
cooperation for regional security—Asian confidence-building measure is positive
because it is anchored on cooperation rather than reducing suspicion and securing
the economic prosperity of the region; second, the region's need for U.S. commitment
since it is the only remaining superpower and this, he said, was directly linked to the
U.S.-Japan bilateral defense cooperation; and third, maintaining constructive
relationship between Japan and major political actors in the region such as China.
A group of NGO leaders from Japan met with the ALFP 1997 fellows.
Among the Japanese NGO representatives were: Ito Michio, secretary general of theJapanese NGO Center for International Cooperation; Hata Tatsuya, secretary generalof the Sotoshu Volunteer Association; Inoue Reiko, of the Pacific Asia Resource

17Center; Taniyama Hiroshi, secretary general of the Japan International Volunteer
Center, and Tsuru Akiko, former executive secretary of the Japan NGO Network on
Indonesia.
The Japanese NGO representatives enumerated problems that beset theiroperations. Notable among these problems were the perpetual lack of financial basefurther aggravated the Japanese government's stringent policies toward NGO
personnel management costs; the inadequate educational exposure of the Japanesepublic on NGO activities and their importance in dealing with regional issues; theconvoluted Japanese legal system blocking efforts of NGOs, and the lack ofindividual initiative on the part of Japanese public.
It was suggested that efforts should be made to persuade young Japanesepeople to visit and learn from Southeast Asia as a way of deepening their social
awareness and getting them involved.
Prof. Shiraishi Takashi, of the Kyoto University-Center for Southeast AsianStudies, said Southeast Asia was 'created' in 1949 in Washington D.C. when China
became communist. Before this change in China, it was always 'China and its
vicinities.'He said Southeast Asia is an 'empty notion' and that the term is aconceptual device used by the U.S. for its geopolitics. He said that in the 1950s, there
was a clear U.S. hegemonic project to contain Japan and Southeast Asia. He called
this 'double containment'—containment of communism and containment of Japan.
The political implication of this was the creation of a collection of U.S. bilateral
military treaties.
Shiraishi called for a deeper understanding of the experiences of Southeast
Asia and Japan. He said that since Southeast Asia is an American hegemonic project,
it could be co-opted and the notion be re-oriented by lessening the American
influence.
Prof. Yoshino Kosaku, a sociology professor from the University of Tokyo,
talked about contemporary nationalism in Japan and the Nihonjinron, looselytranslated to English as 'discussions/discourses on Japanese uniqueness.'
He said nationalism can be categorized into two: political nationalism whichemphasizes the nation's collective experience as a political reality by trying to achievea representative state for its community, and cultural nationalism which is intended
to generate a national community by creating, preserving, and strengthening apeople's cultural identity when it is felt to be lacking.
Yoshino said there are three general propositions regarding Nihonjinron.
First, that the patterns of Japanese communication are characterized by silence,
ambivalence, emotionality, non-logic in contrast to the West's eloquence, rigid
principles and rationality, and dichotomous logic. Second, that the Japanese society
is characterized by groupism, vertical stratification, dependence, other-directedness,inter-company ties as opposed to the west's individualism, horizontal stratification,
class solidarity, and independence. And third, that the Japanese society ishomogenous or uniracial as opposed to the west's which is heterogeneous or
multiracial. He said that Nihonjinron is not unique at all to Japan. He said the British
have their own brand or way of expressing their 'Englishness'. He said the British

18

objectify or institutionalize their Britishness while the Japanese explores culturalethos or what lies behind institutions. He said the British enjoy reading books written
by French or other nationals stereotyping them.
Prof. Nishikawa Jun, an economics professor from Waseda University, said
economic development in Southeast Asia or East Asia was a project of thegovernment and supported by the idea of nation-state. He said this had led to theconcept of development-oriented dictatorship system, state bureaucracy-dictatedindustrialized policies with the clear idea of income distribution. He said economic
development in the Asian region was theorized under the label 'wild geese theory'
initiated by the Japanese experts during the 1930s. He said this meant that latecomers
can copy the example of the early developed countries at lesser cost. However, hesaid these experts did not say anything about the future of the early developed
economies.
Nishikawa said industrialization and economic growth in the region had led
to deterioration of social relations and imbalances in social relations among classes,
nations, and with the environment hampering a sustainable development. He said
that the globalization of economies is based on modernization theory which holds
that all countries would pass through the same stages of economic development.
However, Nishikawa said it is difficult to equate 'happiness' with economic
development, and that this is the problem with modernization theory: it equatespeople's happiness with economic development.
Prof. Douglas Lummis, of Tsuda College, tackled Ruth Benedict's classic
book Chrysanthemum and The Sword which sold more than 1.4 million copies, a veryrare feat for a 'social science book.' He said the book exerted a considerable influencein viewing Japan by providing a 'model' for Nihonjinron. He said, however, that it
would be a mistake to analyze the book as a work of social science because it
contains many inaccuracies. And in spite of this widely known fact, the book is stillwidely read, he said. The fascination with the book, he said, had nothing to do with
its inaccuracies, but because it is a work of political literature, and that most of those'troubled' by the book are the subjects themselves (the Japanese) and not the readers(consumers of information).
Lummis said that Benedict successfully managed to establish a different
basis for discrimination: culture not race. He said the sources of patterns in her book
were: orientalism (western stereotyping); historical moment in which it was written(from the perspective of the victors and that the campaign against racism was usefulin war to justify killings perpetrated by soldiers); and Benedict's own personal wayof thinking (fascination with death).
In discovering that Benedict had a Japanese co-author in writing the book, hesaid this factor explains why the book was 'accurate but not really accurate' and thatthe work had undercurrents of 'intense alienation.' He said Robert Hashima, an
important informant of Benedict, shaped the book in an influential way, reflecting his
experiences of being bullied in Japan. Lummis said that Hashima had told him that
Benedict was lost and confused, until he started to help her in the project.

19

Lummis said Benedict's intent was not to describe the whole for she did nofield work before writing the book, but instead listened to informants, and that she
imagined the situation before starting to write her book. He said he decided to
conduct this particular research on the book because of his decision to live in Japan,
which according to Benedict, was 'impossible'.
Prof. Sakamoto Yoshikazu, a leading exponent of civil society in Japan,
talked of civil society as an agent of democratization, which particularly refer to therole of the civil society in humanizing social relations. He said the concept of civilsociety is geared toward the creation of public space that recognizes the dignity andequal rights of human beings, not a public space that is 'static, timeless, andahistorical.'He said the main engines of changes today are the markets and civil society,while the state and international organizations largely perform 'reactive functions.' In
post-war Japan, he said civil society developed because of influences from abroad
and from 'above' in the form of demilitarization and democratization initiated by the
U.S. occupation forces whose aims included the dismantling of the imperial army,
police, and to institutionalize democratic rights and abolish semi-feudal political andsocial structures. Peace issues, he said, remain crucial in the formation andstrengthening of the civil society and democratization of post-war Japan. The
formation and predominance of the 'middle class' in Japan led to the decline of civilsociety, leaving the advocates of disarmament and ecology as civil society's major
constituents.
Sakamoto said that it may appear that individual groups may seem noteffective in making changes, but they generate enormous transformative power uponreaching a critical mass. The problem, he said, is the difficulty of predicting a time
table for attaining the needed critical mass.
Katakami Keiichi, an official from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
said Japanese diplomacy up until recently did not emphasize human rights. He said
Japanese diplomacy had a vague policy toward the issue and treated it in a very low
profile manner. He accounted for this low priority given to human rights as a cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy as an indication of 'very shallow' awareness among
Japanese public of the issue, as opposed to western countries. He said it could also be
due to the emphasis in Japan of social stability that would usher in economic
development, rather than on individual rights. He said that the effort to skirt theissue of human rights may be an attempt to side track possible complaints about
Japanese violations of human rights within Japan and in the international arena. He
said Japan had now put human rights issue at the forefront of its foreign policy
dealings.
Katakami said no country would deny that there is a universal value called
human rights that should be complied with and respected, but the point that should
also be considered is the need for flexibility in approaches in complying with andapplying this particular value with respect to each country's historical development
and stage of economic development. He said Japan is more flexible in handlingissues of human rights in its foreign policy dealings which created some problems

20

with respect to the U.S. and its strong emphasis on human rights. He admitted that
one of the difficulties of working within the government and as an official of thegovernment is that officials could not just bypass counterparts in foreign countries orother governments.

Izu Retreat Conference
During the two months of collaborative work, the ALFP 1997 fellows—as agroup—had various opportunities to interact with Japanese scholars, researchers,
and journalists who made individual presentations to them. The Izu retreat
conference was one of the few occasions when the ALFP 1997 fellows interacted as agroup with their Japanese counterparts who also went as a group. The Izu retreat
conference, as in the previous year, was somewhat like a group encounter anddialogue between Asian public intellectuals and their Japanese counterparts,
including other scholars from Asia who were in Japan during the time of the ALFP
fellowship.
Initially, the ALFP fellows made individual presentations before theJapanese participants. Much of the fellow presentations was already discussed in thesection on 'The ALFP Fellows for 1997.' However, the issues of multiculturalism tooka significant and considerable time of the open discusion sessions.
Goenawan argued that Asians should approach the issue of multiculturalism'cautiously' and avoid being restricted by terms defined by western paradigms. The
challenge for Asians, he said, is how to manage differences that would lead to lesser
tension in the region, instead of emphasizing national or regional identities in ageographical area as varied and diverse connoted by 'Asian region.' He cited theexample of prejudices against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia or ethnic Malays in
Singapore. Prof. Nagafuchi Yasuaki, of Nagoya Institute of Technology, said
multiculturalism in the Indonesian context is a complementary concept to the nationstate manifested strongly in the slogan 'unity in diversity.' He also supported theimportance of recognizing that the concept of culture in a multicultural setting
carries the burden of 'which among the cultures is the appropriate culture for anation.' Prof. Thanet Aphorusuvan, of Thammasat University, said the constructionof western regional identity was an easy project for they had the Greek civilization asa foundation to start with, and the Asian context of regional identity is 'totallydifferent' from the western project. He said the predominant influence of western
thinking on Asia is manifested by the existing problem of western-oriented structurein the construction of knowledge.
Aphorusuvan pushed the discussion on multiculturalism further bycommenting that the U.S. context of the issue of multiculturalism was meant to giveequal opportunities to minorities or the marginalized. He said the unintended effectof making minorities act like 'white' Americans blurs the original concept ofmulticulturalism. He said legally speaking, all ethnic groups in the U.S. should betreated equally, but in reality and practice, this is not happening.

21

Pao Kun said the so-called ASEAN project is promoted by the various
governments in the region, but for the people of Southeast Asia, the region denoted
by 'Southeast Asia' means stronger issues such as a shared history of westerncolonialism and lifestyle as in rice being the main staple instead of bread.
Prof. Tsuboi Yoshiharu, of Waseda University, said that 'multiculturalism'
could be likened to a 'jazz fusion' where each instrument could retain its own
identity or character while at the same time contributing to the music-making
process. Pao Kun said the Singaporean context of multiculturalism means 'different'
cultures embodied by predominantly 'monocultured' people.
Goenawan urged that the term multiculturalism be redefined, asking
whether culture could be equated to race in the concept of multiculturalism in Asia.
To this, Ishak said ethnicity plays a more vital role in defining Asian cultures. Pao
Kun, however, disagreed with Ishak, citing the Singaporean national policy of
forcing citizens to learn their mother tongue as a second language as a requirement
for university entrance. He said people opposed this policy by leaving Singapore.
Ota said what seems to be happening now is a kind of denial of a cosmopolitan typeof identity or a decline of the modernist type of aspiration.
Turning to the issue of multiculturalism and political struggles, Nagafuchi
raised the issue multiculturalism and political struggles, Nagafuchi raised the issueof fundamentalism and identity-formation which appear to down play
multiculturalism. Goenawan said the issue of fundamentalism is related to the issueof survival by certain groups. He said people are lured by the appeals offundamentalism when they are threatened by the complexities of the modern world.
He said fundamentalism is a political struggle or a weapon used to attain a certain
leverage of power and one of the components of this struggle is the purification ofidentity. Tsuboi linked the emergence of fundamentalism to socio-political issues,
economic disparity, or societal alienation. Ota said fundamentalists use culture toadvance certain political agenda such as Bangladeshi nationals in England.
Prof. Sekimoto Teruo, of the University of Tokyo, said a good example ofdangers that could be caused by the recent resurgence of fundamentalism is the'Aum Supreme Cult' which resorted to mass gas poisoning of innocent people. He
said the cult reflected the loss of legitimacy of the national government and national
polity hence, people turn to pure forms of fundamentalism like the Aum Supreme
Cult which believe in a certain kind of sacredness.
Among the changes occurring in Japan in relation to identity-formation,according to Tsuboi, is the 'collapse' of the traditional belief that Japan ishomogeneous, while at the same time predicting the gradual opening of Japanesesociety. Sekimoto sounded more pessimistic in assessing the future direction ofJapan, saying the sociological 'Other' is met inside the country in the form of juvenile
delinquents.
Relating identity to globalization, Pao Kun talked of the social impact of
tourism industry on locals. Ota said that in reality, only five percent of the total
human population could travel as tourists and behind this profitable tourism
industry is a huge economic hierarchy. Laddawan said the case of Thailand shows

22how the tourism industry could exert destructive forces on rural villages or spawn
the emergence of a well-developed sex industry catering to tourists.
Issues of globalization translated to dominance of very few countries such as
the U.S. or Japan, and linking globalization with Americanization or Japanization
were also raised. Other participants had pointed out the absence of the socialist
concept of 'internationalism' in the current discussion of globalization.

Public Symposium
After two months (September-October 1997) of collaborative research whichenabled the ALFP 1997 fellows to meet and discuss with Japanesescholars/intellectuals, journalists, researchers, and government and non-government
personnel, a public symposium was held at the International House of Japan on
October 30. Theme of the public symposium was 'Culture, Development, andEmancipation: The Search for New Paradigm.'
Noro Masahiko, the managing director of the Japan Foundation Asia Center,delivered the opening remarks where he stated the purpose of the ALFP which wasto create a network of public intellectuals in Asia who would facilitate cultural
exchanges in the region. He said while economic and political exchanges flourish in
the region, cultural exchanges are still inadequate.
Tanami Tatsuya said the ALFP attempts to locate people who work moreclosely with the civil societies of the Asian countries and bring them together todiscuss various issues which are crucial in shaping Asian societies. He said their
discussions could be used to seek or create a new paradigm to understand Asia.
Pao Kun said that there is 'a need to fit arts into the development paradigm.'
He said he would like to see the emergence of development that would allow therelease of creative energies of people. He said that we should 'nurture the spirit of
exploration, experimentation, and play,' adding that art is the 'ultimate form' ofhuman play. 'Art makes children adult and adults human,' he said.
Laddawan discussed the roles of civil society in the 21st century, by defining
civil society as 'transborder peoples in all circles and grassroots but excluding
politicians and state or government agencies.' She said civil society people are theactors that would bring a new world order together with peace, non-violence, andharmony between people and nature. She said power resides in everyone of us, andthat knowledge alone is not enough. Knowledge must be combined with goodness,
she said.
Ishak linked globalization and human development. He said development
should be seen as 'a process of liberation or emancipation of individuals, classes, andsociety from poverty, deprivation, dependence, and exploitation.' He said that it isimportant to acknowledge the influential role of culture in development process andnot just reduce culture as an adjunct of development. He said that without
considering culture and people's control over their destinies and their ability to view
the world in a way which reflects their particular experience, development is simply

23

a global process of social engineering that enables the economically and militarily
powerful to control more and to dominate and shape the lives of the weak.
He said development is 'more than the simple transfer' of economic, political,
and technological processes from one part of the world called developed to underdeveloped.
Ota talked about globalization and its impact on identity and culture. He
said under globalization, two contradictory social processes are occurring on thecultural planes. First, the emergence of global post-modern, cosmopolitan lifestylethat various metaphors of travel and displacement capture. Second, the strong pull tomobilize by means of culture. He said that globalization had produced neither thecultural homogenization nor the decline of local identity as manifested by thepersistence of indigenous movements, Asian diaspora communities in Great Britain,
and various ethnic mobilizations in the former Eastern Europe.
He said there is a need to be sensitive to the specificity of discourse such as'who is saying what to whom.' He said the terrain in which the discussion of identity
and culture under globalization takes place needs to be contextualized. He said
identity is always formed in relational terms, that is in opposition to the 'other'. He
said what is crucial in discussing identity is 'the ability to fathom the power structureof the world in which each identifier moves and the concrete world in which an actof identification occurs.'
Goenawan said development also brings discontents and that the processesof modernization and economic growth are also accompanied by 'a set of dilemmas'that could be simplified into 'liberty and justice.' He said freedom is 'not a luxury
good' and that it is deeply related with justice, and that 'there is no way to get rid of
dilemma' connected with development.
He said people must know and acknowledge their limitations and that wemust be humble before history.

Toward a Summing Up
The following section will attempt to highlight, in very bold strokes, some ofthe points made by the 1997 fellows in their individual program report whichsomehow echoed and elaborated the points they had earlier raised during the periodof collaborative interactions and intellectual discourses, the focus of which was'culture, development, and emancipation: the search for a new paradigm.' However,
it is always a difficult task to capture—even approximate at its slightest level—the
intense discussions and exchanges that took place during a prolonged period, andadded to this is the fact that the more interesting and thought-provoking ones
occurred outside the seminar halls, when no one was there to take down notes.
In his report, Pao Kun sounded the pressing call for Asians to have a 'moral
voice' that will push for the cause of peace and 'balanced development regionallyand globally.' Pao Kun was emphatic in stating that this 'moral voice' should be'people-based' referring to the ever-growing importance of the role of civil society.

24

In urging his fellow Asian leaders to veer away from western orientation andto create an Asian outlook, Pao Kun said public intellectuals in Southeast Asia are'faced with an historic task of initiating dialogue on these critically important subjects
and issues, and to evolve ways and means to create a network of peoples and ideas—
for exchange, debates, dissemination, and prompt action.' He said Asians 'owe it tothemselves to run on their own steam in the mammoth task of evolving an awarenessof their own, of finding out what Southeast Asia is all about, of identifying its own
energies, and of the role it defines for itself for the future.'
Goenawan, probing on the current issues of immediate importance t theregion—that of the 'promises and pains' of changing societies, said alumni of the
ALFP, who currently compose and will compose in the future, members of a networkof Asian public intellectuals are 'essential to generate a cross-national support
promoting democratic reforms' within the region. 'A cross-national network of civilsocieties free from any government control may bring back the belief that there areworthy values to be universally shared by different people with different people
with different identities,' he said.
The first-ever Japanese ALFP fellow took a somewhat different approach inlooking at the issues raised by his fellow ALFP fellows. Ota said among the mostintriguing points during the discussions were as follows: 'Is it possible to enter
modernity as Asians?; How does 'modern' individual emerge in Asia?; What does
'culture' do under the strong state control of artistic productions. Ota recommended
that the issues of the 'rise of Asian regionalism' and the lure of nationalism in the ageof globalization' should be given due consideration by future participants to the
ALFP.
The economist in the group, Ishak, forwarded the position that economic
development must have a 'soul' and that development should take into consideration'all the realities' of culture. He said there is a 'real need for building new theories andpractices in order to achieve development with emancipation.' He said that his future
research will attempt 'to make culture not a servant of 'development objectives, butrather as the social basis of those objectives.'
Touching on the relationship between intellectuals and their audience, Ishak
said social mobilization is particularly important for intellectuals since it is only
through people and popular movements that ideas can become socially relevant.' He
said: 'Without an audience, the intellectual can still play a role, but unfortunately
cannot become an agent for social change.'
Laddawan said that while the world has already been transformed into a
multi-cultural one, 'mutual relationship and mutual understanding are key words'
that do not necessarily translate 'cleanly as they sound in the real world.'
Adding her voice to that of her colleagues calling for further networking,Laddawan said 'if small groups of people throughout the world can organize andlink up with another, they can also have a say in how the world is being run by big
institutions. We seem to forget the fact that there are more small people than big
people. Why do small numbers always have the bigger say?'25

Allow me to end this introduction by thanking in behalf of the International
House of Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center, the 1997 fellows of the ALFP
for their participation in the program, and all those who helped and assisted us in
making the 1997 ALFP possible.
____________NOTES
Jacoby, Russell (1987) The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe,
New York: Basic Books, pp. 221-237.
1———— 'Public Intellectuals: A View from Southeast Asia' in Items 52:4 (December
1998), p 79. This particular issue of Items is worth noting for it featured articles culledfrom discussions during a workshop sponsored by the Social Science ResearchCouncil Regional Advisory Panel for Southeast Asia. Theme of the May 8-9, 1998
workshop was 'History, Civil Society, and Social Change: Public Intellectuals inContemporary Southeast Asia.'2

See Kessler, Clive (1998) 'The Abdication of the Intellectuals: Sociology,
Anthropology and the Asian Value Debate-Or, What Everybody Needed to Know
About 'Asian Values' That Social Scientists Failed to Point Out,' a draft paper
presented at the International Conference on Asian Values on Trial—Miracle or
Failures organized by the Malaysian Academic Movement, held in Kuala Lumpur on
November 28-29, 1998.
3

Chaney, David (1994) The Cultural Turn: Scene-setting Essays on Contemporary Social
History, London and New York: Routledge, p. 3.

4

Swartz, David (1997) Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Chicago andLondon: The Univesity of Chicago Press, p. 223.
5

See Tanami, Tatsuya (1998) 'New Forces for Social Transformation in Asia: Track-3
Intellectual Network and Civil Society,'a draft paper presented at the International
Conference on Asian Values on Trial—Miracle or Failures organized by the
Malaysian Academic Movement, held in Kuala Lumpur on November 28-29,1998.
Also see Tanami, Tatsuya (1998) 'The 1996 Program: An Introduction' in Intellectual
Concerns and Critiques in Southeast Asia—Asia Leadership Fellow Program 1996 Program
Report, Tokyo: International House of Japan and Japan Foundation Asia Center, pp.
9-26.
6

7

Reynolds, Craig J., 'Located Knowledges' in Items 52:4 (December 1998), pp. 79-81.

26

Hall, Peter Dobkin (1992) Inventing the Nonprofit Sector and Other Essays on
Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Nonprofit Organizations, Baltimore and London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, p. x.
8Hall, ibid. p. xi.

910

Tejapira, Kasian. 'Questions of Minorities'in Items 52:4 (December 1998), p. 82.

11

PuruShotam, Nirmala, 'The Possibilities of 'Asian' Intellectuals' ibid., pp. 86.

See Intellectual Concerns and Critiques in Southeast Asia: Asia Leadership Fellow
Program 1996 Program Report (1998) Tokyo: International House of Japan and JapanFoundation Asia Center for a comprehensive account of the program for the firstbatch of ALFP fellows. The winter 1999 edition of the International House of Japan
Bulletin also carried a short article on the history and objectives of the ALFP.
12

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Ibarra C. Mateo, who edited this volume and was
also the rapporteur for the Asia Leadership Fellow Program 1997, in the preparation of thisintroduction.

27

Reports of the Fellows

This chapter contains the formal reports submitted by the fellows evaluating
and reflecting on their research and residence in Japan.

Challenges to Asian Public Intellectuals:
Asia Leadership Fellow Program 1997 Report
Kuo Pao Kun

The ProgramThis is my longest participation in a program away from my theater work
since the four months I had spent in the U.S. on a Fulbright Exchange Fellowship in
1989. The intellectual nature of this project in Japan has been inspiringly
complementary to my long-time artistic focus.
The Asian Leadership Fellow Program's general theme of 'Culture andDevelopment' is as inclusive as it is provocative, as currently relevant as it isintellectually poignant. The program has a broad spectrum for the free flight of theintellect as it is for the free flow of the senses. It is also broad enough to make eachparticipant's contribution integrally connected. Above all, as an international
program, it is a confluencing effort potently related to the fundamental issues andproblems confronting almost every nation and people on earth. Although I had
planned to spend two more months after the seminar period in and around Tokyo toresearch and write a new play, I knew the intellectual dimension of the program
would continue to dominate my remaining stay in Japan. Indeed it did.
During my personal presentation on Sept. 8, 1997, I spoke of intentionallyupholding an attitude of 'total irresponsibility' in relation to my artistic profession,
my institution, my country, my people, my culture, even my convictions. Taken
somewhat as a joke at first, my colleagues soon realized I was as serious as I could
be. What I meant was, I wanted to detach myself as much as possible from thehabitual ideas and feelings, and patterns and structures, I have been so used to. As inan acting exercise, I wished to extricate myself as much as possible from my formed
reflexes and cliche responses in order to arrive at a state closest to intellectual andemotional 'neutralness'—if ever that was possible—in order to be most
spontaneously receptive of new things.
The company I've had the privilege of being part of during the ALFP has
been exceptionally brilliant. I wish to express my sincere admiration to the leaders of
the International House of Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center for their
extraordinary ability in identifying such a fine group of dynamic and committed
people. Goenawan never failed to inspire us with his erudite, insightful, andpassionate articulations—always tinged with wry humor. Ishak's quiet deliberations
were always founded on solid scholarship and research. Ota-san soon became my31teacher in modernity theory—ever patiently impatient, his passionate humane
concern for the deprived minorities of the world enhanced the moral character of ourdeliberations. Laddawan, more than anyone else, was the child of the land foreverconscious of her mission to speak for the working masses, advocating a philosophy
and lifestyle of organic simplicity. In his inimitable subdued way, Tanami-san, ourProgram Director, was capable of making his omnipresence almost invisible, gave us
an intellectual and organizational leadership by his exceptional understatements andinsightful, non-intrusive interventions. The care and meticulous support and warm
understanding which Maruyama-san and Shimamura-san gave us was of an order I
have never experienced before—all my research and living problems were given
their serious attention. The staff at front desk and the library made me feel totally athome and forever welcome. And then, I must mention the inspiration of Kato-san.
Though always fleeting in our encounters, he nevertheless gave me numerous andsignificant guidance and inspirations—on sources, references, issues, people, andevents. Not to forget Matsumoto-san who played his self-effacing role of 'innkeeper'with quiet modesty. Indeed, the Asian Leadership Fellow Program has had aremarkably deep impact upon me. Much of this awareness comes from the fact that I
now need to try very hard in order to make sense of it. In the best sense of the word,
my temporary 'disorientation' is the best proof of achievement.

The Journey
My personal journey through the program comprised of:
1. the two-month group seminar in Tokyo;
2. the three-day Aspen seminar in Amagi; and3. the two-month of personal research spent partly in Tokyo, partly traveling around
Honshu, and partly living in Niino, a remote village-town on the southern tip ofNagano Prefecture.

The Two-month Tokyo Seminar
The series of lectures and seminars were very informative most of the time(except those with bureaucrats). The following were exceptionally inspiring:
1. the history seminar facilitated by Prof. Shiraishi Takashi, Center for Southeast
Asian Studies, Kyoto University. Prof. Shiraishi's approach to Southeast Asianstudies was refreshing and multi-dimensioned.
2. The mangga lecture given by Prof. Shiraishi Saya, Bunkyo University.
She introduced to me a cultural phenomenon in Japan (and of the global youths)
which had previously escaped my serious attention. Due to her initiation, I later saw

32

the animation film Mononoke Hime by Miyazaki, the model example of the artistic
achievement and cultural significance of this art form.
3. seminars in Hokkaido hosted by Prof. Kajiwara Kageaki, Hokkaido
University. The unique character of the land and people of Hokkaido presented
a diversity and complexity of the Japan nation unknown to me. This is also myfirst introduction to the Ainu culture. Prof Kajiwara's arrangements
substantially broadened my cultural and geographical mind-scape vis-a-vis
Japan.
4. the Asian development viewpoints seminar chaired by Prof. Nishikawa Jun,
Waseda University. He presented a wide spectrum of indigenous Asian perspectives
on development.
5. the civil society seminar given by Prof. Sakamoto Yoshikazu, Universityof Tokyo who ushered us deep into the potential world of 'down-up' governance andits major current expressions.
6. the East Asian history lecture given by Prof. Hamashita Takeshi, Institute ofOriental Culture, Tokyo University during our pleasantly productive Ito retreat. He
threw new light upon the indigenous East Asian forces at work in the Asianmodernization process prior to the coming of the western powers.
These seminars gave me seminal ideas vis-a-vis the larger subject of 'culture
and development.' It also gave clearer context to the contemporary situation ofculture and development in East Asia.

The Public Symposium
Billed as 'Culture, Development, and Emancipation—The Search for a New
Paradigm,' our public symposium was presented on Oct. 30 as the group's final
collective exercise. It was the culmination of two months of intense interaction
between the Fellows and an interim report of our respective research. In a way, it
was also a collective exposure of the group's philosophies and major concerns, and achance to exchange views with the wider Japanese intellectual community. The
attendance was good and the discussion showed a degree of depth and openness.
On reflection, the public symposium presented more problems anddilemmas than inspirations and answers. While I have doubts about the degree of
impact it had upon those who were present, I detected a committed concern and apassionate desire among my fellow fellows to seek new alternatives confronting theworld—particularly in relation to Southeast Asia and the underprivileged peoples
and classes of the world in general. Even with Ishak, the economist, the hope ofresolving many of the fundamental issues transcended the socio-politcal-economic

33

realm. A philosophical strand clearly underlined every paper; a humanistic approachcolored every speaker. It could well be described as a macro and organic concern—that the problems of the world cannot be genuinely recognized unless we bring in
the moral dimension—a dimension which complements the dollar/price-tagged
evaluations with the values of human life, of human feelings, the worthiness of theair, water, earth, plants, and animals. Although the new paradigm was noteffectively established, the desire to seek one was unmistakably clear.
My presentation—Creativizing Culture—was an outline report of myintellectual preoccupation over that period in Japan. Raw and fragmented as it was, I
can see now that it was nevertheless a very good reflection of the new meanings andrelationships I had found by then concerning arts and culture and their innerconnections with the new mode of production in the information age. Culture, in thiscontext, was related to sports, leisure and the arts, and customs, folklore, rituals andbeliefs. I tried to describe a realm of activities which can be loosely enveloped by theidea of a 'leisure dimension'—a dimension which has experienced an explosion in the
more developed world. Affluence and abundance had given energy to a hugeproliferation of forms of leisure/pleasure seeking.
They may even be grouped under a more fun-evoking description—Play.
Parallel to the Homo Faber (humans that work) and Homo Sapiens (humans that think),
the mode of humans as Homo Ludens (humans that play) has come to the fore. Muchof the problem of the world can be viewed from the perspective that, suddenly
becoming affluent with all these abundant material resources, we don't know what to
do with them—apart from intoxicating, dis-enabling, corrupting, maiming, andkilling ourselves. We need to learn how to play; how to make human play lessdestructive, more positive, even creative—from child's play to the arts, the highest
form of human play. I am by and large optimistic about the future. In particular,
seeing the fact that, post Berlin Wall, the reduction of world armament has been
progressing with the increase of investment in leisure/play activities. Although theseinvestments have not all gone to the creative arts and humanities, the trend moving
towards humanistic concerns is reason enough for optimism.

The Aspen-Amagi Seminar
At Kato-san's invitation, I reaped much knowledge and insight from thishighly energized seminar. With 'Human Values in a Digital Age' as the theme, theunusually articulate group of about 20 Japanese and international participants gavethe subject a many-stranded in-depth analysis. Prof Inose, one of the co-chairs, wasexceptionally inspiring with his broad-band knowledge bridging the diverse fields ofknowledge. Comprising scientists, technologists, educators, business executives,
publishers, humanities scholars, artists, media people as well as financial and legal
professionals, this seminar exploited the subject in a very thorough manner. The
breadth and depth of knowledge, the intensity, commitment and candidness of thetwo-day seminar was distinctly informative and challenging. It was by far the most34

'talkative' group of Japanese intellectuals I have ever met. I must also record theexcellence of the three lady interpreters whose bilingual fluency was in no small
measure instrumental to the smooth and dynamic conduct of the seminar.

Derivative Activities
The International House of Japan, being the intellectual center it is, has a wayof extrapolating its programs into all sorts of unexpected possibilities. In my case, thefollowing off-shoots took place during the Program:
1. Sept. 19 - a panel discussion with Muhamad Haji Saleh of Malaysia and my fellow
ALFP comrade Goenawan Mohamad on literature and the arts in Southeast Asia.
Held at I-House.
2. Nov. 14 - cultural seminar organized by Shimamura Naoko-san for Prof. Kawasaki
Kenichi's committee on comparative studies in arts and culture. I was asked to give areport on the arts scene in Singapore. Held at I-House.
3. Nov. 15 - seminar at the Setagaya public theater after the readings of my two
monodramas, namely, 'The Coffin Is Too Big For The Hole' and 'No Parking On Odd
Days.' The discussion centered on Singapore theater, my own work, and some
general issues concerning theatre.
On Dec. 22, the International House of Japan invited me to give a public
report on arts in Singapore and the significance of 'The Substation' which I founded
in 1990 and ran it as artistic director for five years. It added to the pre-Christmas
festivity.

Trips Away from Japan During the Program
Of the five fellows, I stayed in Japan longest—four months. Within that
period, I was absent from Japan briefly on two occasions.
1. Nov. 29. - Dec. 4, 1997: I returned to Singapore to meet with my colleagues andplan work and productions for 1998.
2. Dec. 8 - Dec. 21, 1997: I went to China, firstly to attend a commemorative
symposium in Shijiazhuang on Cao Yu, the greatest modern Chinese playwright on
the anniversary of his death, at the invitation of the Institute of Hua Ju Research at
the China Academy of Arts; secondly, I spent a few days doing research in theprovince of Hebei for the new play I was writing).

35

A Month in the Countryside
With unwavering support from Shimamura-san, and through theintroduction of Prof. Kawasaki, my request to spend some time in the Japanesecountryside was fully materialized. Prof. Ogawa Hiroshi of Kansai University kindly
offered me his country house in Niino, Nagano Prefecture, for more than a month. Its
was an extraordinarily rich experience which I will elaborate later in the Report.

An Unexpected Epilogue
I concluded my Asian Leadership Fellow Program officially on Jan 16, 1998.
Just as I was feeling enormously fulfilled, a bonus arrived in the form of an
overwhelming epilogue which took me back to Tokyo less than ten days after the
program's completion.
No one who has some knowledge of the post-war Japanese response to thewar could have expected Japanese theater director Makoto Sato to do it that way, but
he did it. On the very eve of Chinese new year (Jan. 27), Sato-san and the Japan
Director's Association convened a week-long Southeast Asian theater conference in
his Setagaya public theater. The one theme which most Japanese have shunned forhalf a century—the Pacific War—was courageously chosen as the conference theme.
Here, over one whole week of talking and interacting, the honesty and goodwill of
this small group of Japanese artist-intellectuals conducted themselves in a manner I
could never have expected in my wildest imaginations. They began to openly andpublicly confront the memory of the Second World War.
These are exceptional citizens of Japan whose conscience could not accept
the long, deafening silence which Japan as a people and nation have shown
concerning the Pacific War over the past 50 years. Struggling in pain, dozens ofJapanese friends endeavored during the conference to write a new chapter in theirintellectual and spiritual life. They faced the cruelties and atrocities that, for many of
the younger conferencees, remain guarded information. And they conscientiously
accepted moral responsibilities although they were born many years after suchinhumanities were committed by the Japanese militarism. In so doing, they havebegun the arduous process of building a channel practically blocked by theconservative forces in Japan for more than half a century. It was a heart-warming
event.
On the first day, I was invited to give a keynote address on war. The gist of
my speech was that, we must not allow the tens of millions of people in Asia and thePacific (including the millions of Japanese) die for nothing. We who are alive today
must take up the responsibility to talk to each other and hear what the spirits of thedead had to say. To be evasive is the best way to ensure the repeat of suchinhumanities.

36

It was a powerful epilogue, a deepening extrapolation, to four months of richand solid learning in Japan. It has made a difference in my intellectual and artistic
sensitivities. And my understanding and relationship with the people of Japan which
for decades have been colored by personal memories of the War. While the program
has created a big network connecting me with numerous new Japanese friends, it has
also entrenched my belief that the war remains the single most important barrier to amore honest and constructive relationship between Japan and the peoples in Asiaand the Pacific, especially between Japan and East and Southeast Asia.

Some Reflections
Exceptional DisciplineFrankly, I have never seen a more courteous people, or a more disciplined
nation. The universal internalization of the sense of civility, of respect for knowledge
and culture, the non-negotiable respect and responsibility for work and the passion
for cleanliness are so arresting that it grew to become something exceedingly difficult
to understand. Remarkably, throughout the four months I was in Japan, I had seen
no quarrel between people and no parents bashing their children and the policemen I
have met never exuded violence or arrogance. How could this be possible and what
does it mean?
In the end, it was a film made by an American in Hokkaido focused on aschool in a remote village on the northern island which gave me a clue: education. A'wide-spectrum' education system which was able to mobilize the energies, knowhow, and the concerns of principals and teachers in school, parents at home and fullmunicipal human and material support. Theirs seems to be an organic education
system encompassing all the major living spaces a child experiences in his/her life asa human being. There is a unity in purpose, attitude, methodology and form in thiseducation system. Generally, a comprehensive set of values almost dominate theentire nurturing process. The degree of 'homogeneity' is awesomely high incomparison to most countries in the world—possibly the most 'homogenous' amongdeveloped nations.
There is a curious exception, though. Given this unity of purpose andattitude, it is appalling to see how the Japanese streets are littered with millions ofcigarette butts.

Chance Encounters in the Country
Getting an opportunity to stay over a month in the village/township ofNiino has been a singular privilege. As with most countries with a substantial nonurban dimension, the heart and soul of the Japanese people is still very much rooted
in the countryside.

37

About six hours by train from Tokyo along the Iida line off the shinkansen,
Niino has only a few hundred households. Situated in the remote mountainous region
on the southern tip of Nagano, it is surrounded by passionately conserved forests andrivers and streams—they are clear as crystal. Modernization has come upon thepeople here long ago but almost every household still retains a plot of land for rice,vegetables, orchards, or mushroom farming. Almost without exception, all thedwellings are detached houses. In most cases, their ancestors' graves are part of theirhabitat.
The affluence of the village folks is incredible. Apart from all the powered
conveniences and modern heating, almost without exception, every household owns a
car or two, or a saloon with 4WD wagon. And all the necessary mechanized farming
tools. Much to my amazement, I found that even the toilet seats are heated throughout
winter! Because they have ready access to the national media networks of print, radio,TV, fax, and the Internet, the Japanese country folks are very well informed. But noneof these conveniences seem to have blunted their diligent, hardworking traits. Rain orshine, even in coldest snowy weather, they work a full day, sometimes into the night.
And as meticulously clean and tidy and courteous as the city folks; if there is any
difference, they are more so.
Here, the spiritual dimension is more enhanced than meets the eye in cities
like Tokyo. The presence of ancestor graves in the home ground and theomnipresence of Shinto shrines exude a stronger spiritual feel. Niino, like othervillages and townships, are rife with festivals deeply marked by religion. I had theprivilege of witnessing the well-known Snow Festival on Jan. 14 when the whole
village/township celebrated, along with a big contingent of tourists who came
specially for this event. From morning, when they called on the gods, to the nextmorning. In heavy snow, up the hill, about 300 people spent the whole night singing,
dancing, praying and merry-making. They expressed a strong sense of unity with theland, the sky, the plants, the animals, the elements and their fellow humans. Children
before their teens, dressed in traditional costumes, were patiently initiated into theculture. Teenagers were methodically taught the ceremonial songs and dances, therituals and the processions. Experiencing that process surrounded by a people soorganically related to each other, one could almost feel that they were also celebratingwith many more spirits around them—the animistic and their ancestral spirits. The
sense of communion is awesomely strong.
Then the most incredible thing happened one day. As I was wandering
around the village, the writing on a tablet caught my eye. I could read the kanji there—the young man had died in 1937 in Henan province in China, only a few hundred
kilometers from where I was born two years later in the adjoining Hebei province.
How incredible! Here I was, deep in the mountains of Nagano, feeling so remotely
away from everything I was familiar with, and suddenly something that close to myearly childhood exploded right in front of me. Of course, there was the bond of thewar which had fatally and intricately tied us together.
The sequel to that story took place the next day when I was invited for lunchin the home of Niino's most respected master-builder. For some reason, they38

mentioned that Grandpa, his father, who is semi-paralyzed and bed-ridden, hadbeen to Manchuria. I instinctively sensed something significant dawning upon us.
Indeed, again with the aid of kanji, we struggled to communicate more complicatedmeanings than the food. After the mistress walked in and out of Grandpa's bedroom
several times to check the facts, we got it all cleared up: The old man had beensoldiering first in Manchuria before being transferred to Pekan. Yes, the town ofPekan in the Malayan state of Pahang! Of course, I needn't have asked, he must havegone up to Pekan by way of Singapore.
On my way down the hill after lunch, I passed by the window of the old man
who was looking out of the window, his habitual entertainment after every meal.
When he saw me—for the first time—I noticed an extraordinary intensity. He musthave known that the man he was looking at—me—had come from two countries
where he had waged war with the local people. He knew the outcome of the war andhe knew my identity. What was in his mind and how did his heart beat? I can only
guess it was something extremely solemn because when I was a fair way down theslope and turned back to look at the house again, all the folks had gone back insideexcept the old man. He was still looking intensely at me, and he started waving at mewith his healthy arm! It was the most poignant moment of my entire stay in Japan.

Probing the Bowing Giant
The Japanese countryside would probably seize my imagination for a longtime to come. It is a weird mixture of the traits of modern America and underdeveloped China. In material affluence, it is as modern as the American countrysidein all its power-driven amenities. In behavior, however, the Japanese countrysideirresistibly reminded me of the desolate Chinese villages I knew so well. Of
particular interest is a declaration certificate proudly displayed on the walls of every
home I visited in Niino. It spells out the families' pledge to keep the village
environmentally healthy, clean, and generative. The content is as American as theform is Chinese—it reminds me of the party- or state-initiated slogans and quotationsin China evoking a strong sense of collective allegiance and personality. Yes,
collective. One senses a much stronger collective mind in the Japanese village than in
the cities—one that is intrinsically bound to the Shinto rituals, the gung-ho work
ethics, the impeccable civic discipline, and the loyalty towards national leadership as
represented by the Emperor in supreme form.
However, the Japanese farmers do not seem to have the 'self-interested'
consciousness of the Chinese peasants nor the individuality of the American farmers.
In this sense, we can understand why so many Chinese who left China since theopening up around 1990 have readily become citizens of other countries and, withfantastic speed and convertibility, become as 'individualistic' as the Americans. This
number must be many times greater than all the Japanese who have left Japan
voluntarily since the end of the war more than 50 years ago. It remains a highlycollectivized community living in a largely homogenous culture with strict

39hierarchies in work, articulation, play and worship. What has caused this distinctive
sense of solidarity and closeness? Or closedness? The countryside experience has
been immensely revealing to me in my undestanding of the Japanese character.
If I have come to understand the Japanese better, I have also found them thatmuch more enigmatic. Here they are: hardworking, disciplined, courteous, welleducated, having successfully scaled the highest peak of material achievement andcivility. Its multi-dimensioned excellence has earned the unquestioned respect of theworld. And yet, this is the same people who have committed some of the mostheinous atrocities ever towards their fellow humankind—against not only othernations but also to their own people! (Here I must thank Kato-san for introducing tome that remarkable book Japan At War—An Oral History brilliantly researched andedited by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook, published in 1992 by the New
Press.)The Japanese psyche fascinates me. While visiting the numerous museums
and galleries, the Japanese public impressed me deeply with their sense of genuineinterest and respect for anything that is culturally refined and excellent. And they
themselves possess one of the most finely preserved treasures of national arts andculture. And yet, over an extended period of observation, I have come to realize that
there exists an extraordinary feeling of insecurity, especially vis-a-vis the cultures ofChina and the U.S.. On this side of the Pacific is a country which Japan had invaded,
partially occupied but never conquered—a nation which gave Japan some of themost seminal ancient cultural enlightenment and nourishments. On the other shoreof the Pacific is the nation which Japan had first vanquished but eventually lost to in
war—the country which has given Japan significant inspiration and education inmost things that are modern and fashionable. From one perspective, Japan had thebest of the ancient and the modern. In a sense, it is sandwiched between two powersof genuine greatness. To the Japanese, however, these greatnesses seemed as
awesome as they were venerable. Somehow, despite all the envious achievements
Japan had won, and all the power it carries in its own hand, Japan still swings like apendulum from extreme feelings of superiority and inferiority, unable to strike a
comfortable balance in the face of China's classical splendor and the U.S.'s innovative
modernity. The image of a bowing giant looking frustrated and unfulfilled often
haunts my mind with deep unease. I have often wondered, and still wonder, howmuch that paradoxical character, that unique cultural psychology, had contributed tothe powerful energy displayed in both its creative outbursts and its destructive
explosions. In this respect, the mangga culture serves as a perverted expression of the
tortured Japanese psyche, especially the erotic manggas (which stunned me with its
spectacular popularity and availability even to young children) that always have aseemingly irreconcilable mix of loving tenderness and cruel violence.
Recently, the leading Chinese philosopher Li Ze Hou published an essay in
the Ming Pao Monthly (Hong Kong, March through to June 1998) in which headvanced an observation that much of Japan's mixture of the high romantic (asexpressed in such works as the Tale of Genji) and extreme cruelty (as in Mishima's
novels) as well as the mixture of the love for life and worship for death (both40expressed in their passion for the cherry blossom) had their source in Japan's uniquecultural character where the sensual and aesthetic outweigh the moral and therational. Li seems to be saying that, in spite of the tremendous achievements in its
modernization, the idea of the absolute supremacy of the Emperor and theirreconcilable greatness of the Yamato race is still very much dominating the inner
depths of the Japanese cultural psychology. The primordial dream of an isolated
people wishing to be a singularly supreme race remains intact at the core of theJapanese psyche almost one and a half centuries after the Meiji Restoration. Havingsafely secured the Number Two position of the world in economic might seems tohave created no relief on Japan's siege mentality. It seems to verge close to astatement made by Singapore architect Tay Kheng Soon: 'Modernization without
modernity,' a comment he coined for his own country Singapore. While this is anindication that the Japanese society is still immersed in semi-feudal culture (as is thecase of much of the East and Southeast Asian societies), there are other special
Japanese traits which deserve special mention. Such as its self-defined aloofness.
Having come this close to the Japanese people and culture, I feel both a senseof respective admiration and a sense of uncomfortable awe. My perplexity isenhanced when I relate to how the Japanese behaves overseas. In Singapore, forinstance, I have been informed by several friends running property agencies who are
in one voice when they complained that the Japanese, second only to the Koreans,are his most uncivilized tenants. May of the Japanese clients dirty their residences;
their furniture are often damaged and sometimes completely destroyed. I simply
cannot understand how this could be possible given the extreme cleanliness anddiscipline I witnessed in Japan for four full months. But of course, personally, I
would also concede that the Japanese I have met in Singapore and other parts of theworld are never as courteous as they were in Japan itself. They always stick together.
They always shop in Japanese shops and are always reluctant to speak anotherlanguage. Why are these so? Why the appalling discrepancy in behaviour between
living at home and overseas? On another level, the same questions are being asked
by more and more people as the financial situation in Asia worsened: Why Japan, so
wealthy and secure, so well endowed in financial resources and security-guaranteedby U.S. forces, is so slow in coming to the rescue of the Asian financial crisis when acountry as financially weak as China had risked so much when confronted by thesame crisis? Again, the haunting image of the bowing giant feeling frustrated andunfulfilled is flashed before me. Its feeling of insecure solitude exudes multiplied
unease far beyond its shores.
Personally, I have never harbored any hatred toward the Japanese as apeople. As a young man, our most respected heroes included those Japanese patriots
who valiantly fought against Japanese militarism and got themselves killed or
maimed. But, as a member of a generation which had personally witnessed thesufferings of the Pacific War, I cannot rest assured of a genuine friendship with Japanas a nation until its people as a whole had squarely faced the war honestly and fully.
Having come this close to the Japanese people, I have a gut feeling that it is in thesame act of honesty taking due responsibility for the war that Japan will begin to free41

itself from that extraordinary complex which has been keeping the giant's headbowed low and its spirit frustrated. It will be a very, very long process. I have afeeling that it will be in that same courageous act of confronting the War Realities
which would free Japan from its self-imposed constraints to springboard itself togenuine greatness.

Aspirations for an Earthian Fellowship
As an East and Southeast Asian (born in China and raised in Singapore) I feel
our nations in East and Southeast Asia share many similar baggages with Japan—
chiefly the semi-feudal culture which impedes our fuller entry into modernity. But
our region pervades with a general openness and sense of relaxation while Japan isforever feeling threatened. If Japan feels threatened living between two giants, weshould feel ten times more intimidated by high-powered presence of the U.S., China,
Japan, and Europe. Because our region had once been colonies to all of them. Goingby some of the Japanese scholars' assertion, Southeast Asia had for decades been seen
as a vehicle for Japan to balance the might of the U.S. and China. Be that as it may,Southeast Asia had benefited from that strategic consideration. However, after a
supposedly partnership for development of more than 50 years, the relationshipbetween Japan and Southeast Asia remains problematic. I wonder how many
Japanese realize that there has always been an urge in Southeast Asia, especiallyamong the vast Indonesian intellectual community, to look towards Japan as a sourceof liberal ideas, democratic inspiration, and liberating support. Much as the ethnic
Chinese remain suspicious of Japanese militarism, their fervent desire to re-forge
friendly relations which had existed long before the Sept. 18, 1931 (The Manchurian)
Incident that preceded the Asian-Pacific War, the Japanese nation singularly focused
their efforts on profit-making enterprises. In spite of the increasing number of NGOs
with genuine interest to create people-to-people relationship with Southeast Asia, theimage of the self-centred Japan remain deeply rooted. In this context, the theme of
the Asian Leadership Fellow Program, Culture and Development, exudes unusualsignificance. It lies in the understanding that unless there is a parallel change inattitude, in value judgment, and in the respect for people equality, talks ofdevelopment and mutual progress remain veils to camouflage political and economic
inroads. Well do we all know how 'aid' has aggravated exploitation of the 'have'nations against the 'have-not' nations.
Before the 1980s, development had always been treated as political,
economic, and social issues. The significance of culture had been kept on the
periphery, enjoying very low priority. Now we are beginning—just beginning—toknow better. The cultural dimension contains deep-set emotional, rational, artistic
and spiritual habits, values, and patterns which substantially affect the practicaloperations of any political-economic-social scheme. The ALFP has introduced many
resources, including some seminal ideas which I was never aware of. For me at least,
this intense four-month exposure in Japan has given me enough to begin a42

comparative understanding between the cultures (or cultural psychology) of Japan,
Singapore(and Southeast Asia) and China. I am particularly interested, partly due tomy profession, in the expanding 'leisure dimension' which broadly include sports,
tourism, fashions, entertainment and the arts (popular and elitist). This is thedimension that reaches the deeper recesses of people's minds and emotions, impulses
and desires. It may be seen as simply play. But play is also a significant mode ofhuman expression parallel as important as work and knowledge to our species.
Given this, the Asian Leadership Fellow Program well lends itself to be a timely
vehicle for the exchange of ideas, for networking and for subsequent practicalimplementation of new found concepts and practices—to reach for a deep mutual
understanding.
I have found a curious affinity with Japan, as I have earlier found with theSoutheast Asian countries and peoples. It's a cultural one. Specifically, I feel we are
all still, in different degrees, prisoners of semi-feudal culture. We are all still locked
in a mode of thinking and behaving subject to the control of hierarchical andpatriarchal systems. The leading figures or institutions of these hierarchies still
dominate our psyches, restraining us from transcending our narrow ethnic interests
and nationalistic views. In cultural terms, they limit our potentials for autonomous
thinking and creativity. In economic terms, they limit our potentials for innovation
development. In political terms, they accumulate potential elements for war anddestruction. But, without doubt, Japan, in Asia, still possesses the resources andpotentials for advancing fully into modernity—in the liberation of the self, in the
democratization of society and in the realization of the knowledge-based mode of
production and exchange. Possibly more so than any other East and Southeast Asianpeople and nation. If we share anything at all, we share, on the one hand, a demon in
our culture and our spirit or psyche which still responds to the conservative calls ofnarrow feudalistic desires and myopic nationalistic selfishness. One the other hand,
we also share a body of rich cultural resources (together described as the easternculture) which could offer the world now dominated by western culture a treasure of
wisdom and experience with the complementary energy to help evolve a global orearthian fellowship, of peace and harmony. That the ALFP has been able to inspire
such idealism is a measure of the program's worthiness. For each of us fellows fromSoutheast Asia, however, there is a personal challenge at hand which is specificallyours.

Toward a Southeast Asian Intellectual Reflection
Many descriptions have been given to the second half of the 20th century. In
almost every one of them, the rise of Southeast Asia has commanded special
attention. In a way, between the earlier revival of Japan and the recent awakening ofChina, Southeast Asia's emergence as a substantial, even major, entity has probably
been more historic in significance than the other two. If not for any other reason, thevery idea and practical working of Southeast Asia as a grouping had never existed

43

before. Nanyang, to the Chinese Kingdom, was all those islands and peoples south of
the sea of China whereas the East Indies, to the western powers, meant that entire
vast region between India, China, and Australia which was profitably theirs overcenturies of colonial exploitation. For a collosal price exacted by the Japaneseaggression, the peoples of Southeast Asia began to write a new page for themselves
after World War II. (I was told by a Japanese scholar that this regional name wasactually given by the Japanese, its original term being East South Asia—one that theJapanese and Chinese still use today.) Partly aided by the geopolitics of the Cold
War, but mainly through the perseverance of the peoples of the region, Southeast
Asia has made it to the major league in world economics and politics. But, as Dr.
Kwok Kian Woon has been asking in a significant manner: What is the meaning of
the 20th century? It is desirable and inevitable that the intellectuals of this region
should confront the even more locally urgent question: What is the meaning ofSoutheast Asia?
At the beginning of the post-war years, Southeast Asia was largely
manipulated by the major powers. It served firstly as both a major supply base ofcritical raw materials for industrialization and war as well as a huge market forexport of goods, followed by the export of capital. Later on, despite super power
efforts to retain their reigns on the region, when Southeast Asia struggled to gain
relative independence and influence, the region was used as proxies for political,
economic contests as well as for war mongering. It is only from the 1980s on that
Southeast Asia had asserted itself as a major entity in world affairs, enjoying
increasing independence. However, on the way, and it's been a long and tortuous
journey, few, if anyone, had bothered to seriously study the larger question:What is
the meaning and significance of Southeast Asia in the World? Indeed, I am no scholaron the subject and cannot pretend to have the answers, but I do have several
concerns.
Firstly, our own experience as weaker nations and subject peoples inSoutheast Asia gave us a prolonged and in-depth understanding of the horrors andinjustices of colonization, cross-national exploitation, unbalanced development andwar. For having been the target of direct aggression as well as battlefields andproxies of other people's wars, Southeast Asians have developed a natural bend forpeace. After centuries of total and/or semi-colonization, Southeast Asian nations also
deeply understand the often destructive effects of unbalanced development of
humans and the environment. Now that the region has come to its own, a moral
voice must be evolved to advance the cause of peace and the cause of benign
balanced development regionally and globally. I don't think such a Southeast Asianvoice has ever been there apart from assertions by the political leaderships such asthat of ASEAN. That the voice should be distinctly 'people-based' is criticallyimportant now that the international community is already in full agreement that thecivil society must increasingly take up a larger role alongside government actions.
Secondly, our geographic-cultural position has naturally awarded us the roleof mediator for the major cultures and civilizations of the world. This is a paradox ofhistory: The colonized, in their awakened rise, have turned the table on their former

44

rulers and are themselves now holding all the ropes, channels, and media which had
yoked them for centuries. As contemporary writers of these former colonies 'write
back' to their former imperial overlords, intellectuals of Southeast Asia can now
utilize all the former imperial cultures for their own good. Seen in a larger
perspective, all the cultures which their former colonizing powers had brought toSoutheast Asia designed to subjugate and to displace the local cultures have now
been absorbed and integrated into a far richer Southeast Asian culture. By its very
nature a multi-sourced one, this Southeast Asian culture has the unique trait of
having absorbed most of the major living civilizations and cultures of the world—
Indian, Chinese, Islamic-Malay, Euro-American, Japanese, and Oceanic. Perhaps nowhere else in the world could one find a living multi-culture existing in such great
diversity than in Southeast Asia where each strand is represented by a large
identifiable thriving population currently retaining its own language and culture
while living, by and large, peacefully with all the other component communities.
Recent events, however, particularly in Indonesia, had begun posing a cruelly bluntquestion: Was this relative peace and harmony perhaps only an accident in history?
The question is doubly disturbing when one considers the fact that the period of
relative peace and rapid growth largely took place when the superpowers were stillcalling the cards. Does it mean that, when relative independence becomes a reality,
Southeast Asia is proving itself incapable of creating better, more peaceful, more
harmonious, more benign and more balanced progress?
Sadly, even those who have given negative answers to the foregoingquestions cannot deny that the Southeast Asian 'people' (if it can be agreed at all that
there is such a being) has yet to show that there really is such a clear awareness, notto mention the fact that there is definitely not yet an intellectual force engaged insuch aspirations. Equally true is that, very possibly, few intellectuals would disagree
that such a force should be initiated. Perhaps, more hopefully, such a gathering offorces may have already become a necessity. For in the information age, withknowledge being the most valued factor of production, the idea of retaining andexpanding Southeast Asia's multi-cultural/civilizational assets will be theadvantageous lifeline for the region's long-term progress and prosperity. The criticalquestion is: Would this former colonized region, on becoming affluent, be able toretain the sense of morality which had inspired many generations and many billions
of people to rise first in arms and then in productivity to reach where they are now.
The relevance of this question does not stop at the pure moral level. However, unlessthe larger moral issues underline Southeast Asia's future development principles andstrategies, this former region of subjugation and exploitation may in turn become
another exploitative power in itself. And there are signs that this is actually
happening. Should this become the major trend, all the diverse ethnic, religious,
cultural and civilizational resources could as easily become ammunition for an
extraordinarily explosive and destructive intra-regional war.
The public intellectuals in Southeast Asia are therefore faced with an historictask of initiating dialogue on these critically important subjects and issues, and to
evolve ways and means to create a network of peoples and ideas—for exchange,45

debate, dissemination, and prompt action. Historically, and to date this is still true,
the center of Southeast Asian networks had always been sited in the west and, more
recently, in Japan. As such, much influence and control are also outside the region.
Could there be autonomus Southeast Asian networks centered in the region itself?
Programs such as the ALFP could initiate such awareness and connections. But tolook to Japan for future leadership is a negation of the very task itself. For some time,
the way to reach the capital cities of Southeast Asian nations may still go throughTokyo, London, New York, Paris, or Berlin. But once the channels are estalished,
Southeast Asians owe it to themselves to run on their own steam in the mammoth
task of evolving an awareness of their own, of finding out what Southeast Asia is allabout, of identifying its own energies, and of the role it defines for itself for the
future.

In Sincere Gratitude
The benign combination of a number of reasons have unlocked a large
amount of life-explaining resources to me during my four months in Japan. The
people gathered around me formed a formidable field of energy. Learned andreflective, giving and inviting, challenging and inspiring, warm and sharp, free anddisiciplined, caring and care-free, the ALFP companionship opened my mind andrelaxed my senses. The density and intensity of the Japanese culture, the purity andbeauty of the land and people, the provocative dark shadows of the Japanese culture
and history, the bizarre mixture of the fragrance of the cherry blossom, the bloody
scent of the sword and the crystal clarity of the mountain streams... the combinedforce of these and numerous other factors have somehow created a state of
hypersensitiveness in me. My sense of history vis-a-vis my people was enhanced bygraves sited in Nagano. My sense of artistic beauty and tragedy was enhanced by themurals of the Marugis. My sense of tragedy was enhanced by the destruction anddeaths of Nogi and wife his sons. My sense of humanity was enhanced by that old
man whom I stared at and looked at with wonder and awe, he who had soldiered in
Manchuria and Malaya. My sense of human brotherhood was enhanced by having
touched, to a depth and and an honesty never before experienced, the feelings andthoughts of a sizable group of intellectuals in East and Southeast Asia.
For all of these things (sometimes heartening, mostly frustrating and at times
torturing), I wish to put on record my deep appreciation to the International Houseof Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center. For their inviting me to participate inthis exceptionally well-conceived program conducted with much warmth andefficiency. If, in my direct and often blunt ways of expression, I happen to haveoffended anyone in anyway, I wish to seek your understanding and forgiveness. I
wish to keep as long time friends all the new acquaintances I have made during the
program, so I will be able to continuously learn from all of them and to share ideas ofcommon interest for the development of a better world for the future. I don't exactly
know how. I can only hope. The young speakers at the conference organized by the46

Japanese Theater Directors' Association gave me reason for hope. They do notnumber many today, but they are young. Didn't a wise man once say, 'When theyoung amongst the people begin to take their culture seriously, there is great hopefor its future.'

Postscript
The play I did research on in Japan had been staged successfully as a majorsold-out event at the Singapore Arts Festival in June 1998. Three Japanese directors
and playwrights flew over for the premiere. Afterwards, we celebrated together. The
play was inspired by the Japanese cemetery in Singapore. It's simply called 'The
Spirits Play.' This production was invited to the Chinese Theater Festival in Hong
Kong in November 1998 and played with great success to the Chinese audience
there. Four Japanese directors and one producer saw it there and plans are under
way to stage the play in Japan in 1999. In this regard, the support of the International
House of Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center had already borne fruit. I
gratefully acknowledge their assistance.

47

Track-three Intellectuals
and the Asia Leadership Fellow Program:
Notes From A 1997 Fellow
Goenawan Mohamad

Introduction
In 1989, I went to Harvard as a Nieman fellow. It was a great opportunity
to be at an excellent center of learning. I had access to facilities and things that inIndonesia were and still are not generally available: book stores, libraries, great
lectures, and seminars. I immensely enjoyed my stay at Cambridge, Massachusetts. I
thought I would never find an experience of similar kind. I was wrong. When I was
selected to be a fellow of the 1997 Asia Leadership Fellow Program (ALFP)
sponsored by the International House of Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia
Center, I found my stay in Japan was at least as intellectually enriching and enjoyable
as my two semesters at Harvard. It was even better, at some points.
Let me make a brief comparative note.
The Nieman Fellowship is an annual program designed specifically to caterto more than twenty mid-career journalists from all over the world. You meet andtalk mostly to people from the same profession. It has its great advantage: we could
easily talk shop to each other. The drawback is that gradually you get the feeling thatyou are never far from your newsroom or your old press club. You would be
surprised to meet someone who is interested in, and have a first hand knowledge of,let us say, the theater or research on low-income groups. Of course, the energetic
Nieman program director (they call it, curiously, "curator"), Bill Kovach, wasinstrumental in making sure that there was a good supply of pundits, resource
persons, and people with interesting backgrounds. Yet, you could only go as far as
picking their brains at professional level. If you want to have more intensive
encounters and exchange of ideas with non-journalists at a more personal level, youhave to go out of your way and make time for them.

The Asia Leadership Fellow Program and the 1997 Fellows
The ALFP has three strong points. First, the small number of the fellows
selected for the program annually. In 1997, there were only five. Second, we camefrom different backgrounds and professional training, yet shared the same focus of48

concern, which largely touches upon issues of freedom, democracy, anddevelopment. Third, we were from neighboring countries (Malaysia, Thailand,
Singapore, Japan, and Indonesia), with more or less similar patterns of social andcultural problems.
The small number has the advantage of being a more auspicious beginningwhen it comes to giving enough space for in-depth discussions and congeniality.
Living next door at I-House to Ishak Bin Sari, a professor of economics who has done
a lot of reasearch on Malaysian public policy dealing with income disparity, andhaving the chance to talk with him during my free time, I could get a better insighton the dilemma between an idea of justice and a notion of freedom and theirpractical consequences. From several breakfasts with another fellow, Ota-san, aJapanese anthropologist who does his research in South America, I gained morethought-provoking theses about problems of identity-formation in human societies.
Ota-san is an academic versed in the current post-structuralist theories that are
helpful also for non-academic, non-anthropological pursuits.
One of the fellows was Kuo Pao Kun, a playwright and theater director
from Singapore. To me, he is a gentle embodiment of "the aesthetic spirit" muddlingthrough the confines of a highly modernized non-western society—a free soulagainst a national obsession for orderliness. Although he is not an academic, he is anarticulate man of ideas. Next to his perceptive observations of things big and small is
his whole engaging personality. In this case, conversation and companionship, nottheories or concept-filled discourse, opened the door for different perspectives of life.
The same applied to my friendship with Laddawan, or "Job", another fellow fromThailand. She is not a woman of many words. Unlike the other fellows, she is not an
intellectual who writes long academic articles. She is a social activist through-andthrough. She stands for the other side of a public intellectual: that which has a strongemphasis on praxis. To me, she did it not by engaging me in a discursive discussion,
but just by telling stories of her works in Thailand—a country in transition to a moredemocratic nation-state.

Track-three Intellectuals and the Asia Leadership Fellow Program
My point is that by just being a member of a "team" consisting of persons
from different backgrounds was such a privilege. It helped to stimulate further
intellectual probing on current issues of immediate importance—especially because
three of my fellow fellows are from ASEAN countries and another one has a good
grasp of problems associated with the promises and the pains of a changing society.
"Immediate importance" is a keyword in the life of a "track-3 intellectual".
This concept of "track-3 intellectual" is a helpful one if you want to come toterms with the order of things in "old societies, new nation-states." In this respect, the
ALFP as conceived by the International House of Japan and the Japan Foundation
Asia Center is commendable. It shows a good insight of things and a daring
imagination. It fills the gap left by many convenors of seminars, symposia, and49

conferences which normally focus on having people of ideas coming from a
conventionally defined "disciplines" or having socially defined "professions". The
problem is that in countries like the Phillipines and Indonesia you observe a baffling
fluidity of institutions due to an abrupt break from a not-so-distant colonial past. No
wonder, in these countries, significant changes—both inside and outside the arena ofideas—are to a large extent the works of the so-called "public intellectuals." In myview, these so-called "public intellectuals" are people capable of generating all kindsof alternative discourse, and improving the quality of debate through a good dosage
of praxis and of politics.
What is also commendable is the ALFP's unstructured agenda. While theHarvard's Nieman Fellowship gives the fellows freedom to attend any class at theuniversity that suits their liking, classes are classes. They are basically structured by aset of requirements like time, frequency, and certain paper works. Another problem
at Harvard which proved to be inevitable was that there were too many classes tochoose from. You simply had to rely on others' rating of a class and trust your luck to
get something that is to your liking and hopefully, may find "useful" eventually.
The ALFP does not have these problems. You are practically free to do
whatever you opt to. You create your own "classes", which are always in the form of
seminars and discussions. You do not have to write a mid-term paper. The beauty isthat the program always has a limited number of participants. You do not have toworry about bumping into loud-mouthed students who prided themselves in asking
bad questions to lecturers. A more intensive, thoughtful discussion is always more
conducive to any adventure in the realm of ideas.
Surely, the quality of small seminars/lectures chosen or attended by the
fellows was not always great. At the end of my ALFP fellowship, I got invited to aconference outside Tokyo that to me had better food served than the intellectual
exchange. Although, it was immensely useful to have met great people during the
break. I consider myself lucky that I had, for example, the opportunity to discuss
Professor Yoshikazu Sakamoto's famous ideas of "civil society" with the man himself.
Prof. Teruo Sekimoto was, to me, another interesting person to meet and to talk with,not only as an academic but also as a wholesome intellectual. He is doing research
for a forthcoming book on Indonesian batik industry—a book that I am sure will beof path-breaking quality, both in its wealth of materials and its theoretical thrust. I
was fortunate to have met him. We became friends immediately. He allowed me touse his house in Kamakura to do my writing and to return his graciousness, I
requested him to give a talk at my place in Jakarta when he visited Indonesia several
months ago. Unfortunately, I missed the talk myself.
This brings me to the other plus factor of the ALFP: its approach is
cosmopolitan, but its base is regional. I believe that ALFP has a role in shaping ideasof what Asia is to become someday. From my stay in Japan, I could assemble somethoughts that I would like to put in this short report.

50

The Asian Economic Crisis
Five years before the current crisis, it was a shared belief that in the year
2010 Asia will be the source of 35 percent of the world's wealth, against 18 percent for
the US and 17 percent for western Europe (Financial Times, 9 March 1993). It is notcertain now whether the belief has not been shattered by the economic meltdown of
1998.
The drive for greater economic prosperity was something that sustained in
one way or another the idea of "Asia" in the early 1990s. People talked of the "Asian
miracle"—which was the rapid spread of wealth in many countries in the Far East. In
1970, the wealth was limited mainly to Japan. Soon the shares of other Asian
countries grew. The forecast was that by 2010, Japan's share of the wealth would
decline from three-quarters to one-quarter in favor of China, Korea, and the ASEAN
countries. There was a sense of pride, even hubris, when people in Korea, orSingapore, or Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia talked about "Asian values." It was
the right way not only to pave the way for economic growth, but also to manageinternal conflicts of a country, underscoring less individual liberty and promoting"consensus" guided by an enlightened national leadership.
The meltdown has brought us back to the ground. Now, after not much of
the old smugness left, there is one major question: what will be the axis of Asian
regionalism?
Asian regionalism is in many ways different from the European one. Asia,
particularly East Asia, is a wide geographical territory shaped largely more by sea
routes than by continental treks. Most of the encounters took place in history as lowintensity conflicts and fragile alliances. It had no imperial centers, imagined orotherwise. Therefore, Asian regionalism has no well-defined border. Its aim has
never been to create a single supranational entity or a federal political arrangement.
It is, at present, even more difficult to perceive Asia as an "imagined" order
or a common entity. Under the pressure to survive the current economic crisis, even
ASEAN nations—the most prominent regional cooperation in the Far East—competewith one another to get the best share of aids, investments, and trades from the US
and Europe. Given the current shortage of foreign funds to revive the ASEAN
economies, the economic crisis may erode the very basis of this regional association.
The basis is first of all political, i.e. the political goodwill of its members to avoid
regional conflicts, after the damaged done by Soekarno's politics of "konfrontasi".
The ASEAN raison d'être is still valid: no major conflict should take place
between and among these neighboring countries. Proximity has its own potential
hazards. Half-joking I would like to point out that last year, the haze generated byIndonesian forest fires created havoc that affected Singaporean drivers. But besides
the old raison d'être, a new impetus has to be introduced to ASEAN in particular,
and preferably also to an even more inclusive Asian regional cooperation. This new
impetus should not be an ideological outcry against the thrusts of globalized market
economy. Like it or not, the current globalized economy is here to stay and it is51

marching into the next millenium with triumphant notes. The new impetus should
be a more pragmatic one. For example, it should promote the potential benefits ofprojects like "the growth triangle" of Johore, which brings together southern
Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia's Batan Island. The triangle will open more
effective and efficient avenues to generate traffic of capital and work force in the
countries concerned.
Many people are concerned about the future of Indonesia as a nation-state.
Alarmists even talk of a "Balkanization" of this huge archipelago. To be sure, themismanagement and abuses committed by the Soeharto's New Order regime invarious parts of Indonesia had given rise to repressed anger and frustrations at thegrass-root levels. Secessionist ideas and movements are gaining ground. However,any kind of secession will create a deep wound in the nation's psyche. It is notinconceivable that it may even lead to a large-scale violence—a greater national
tragedy. To prevent or minimize potential damages, projects that give benefits to the
local people and at the same time emphasize the positive sides of inter-ASEAN
proximity may play a major, if not crucial, role. Projects of this nature may persuade
local people to opt for more prudent and farsighted negotiations to reach a better
solution to their plight and grievances vis-à-vis the "center", which is the national
government controlling and administering the country from Jakarta.
There is also another reason not to undo Asia's regionalist imperative—nomatter how vague, fluid, and flexible the concept is. It has something to do with theneed to find ways to prevent further damages brought about by currency
speculators. Some new regulatory measures have to be introduced in this globalized
capital market dominated by hedge funds managers.
There is something worth looking into in George Soros's recent idea tocreate an international (or supranational?) body that will act like a central bank witha preemptive influence on economic policies in countries which could ultimately turnto it as an "international lender of the last resort." As Soros puts it, "free market
fundamentalism"—the belief that markets are perfect—is a "false and dangerous
ideology." There should be a set of regulations pressing for more disclosure of how
funds are managed internationally. Because Asian countries have unwittingly
become accomplices and later victims of "free market fundamentalism," they are theones that should work together to explore new ways and means to give the market agood guidance. Obviously such a project cannot be accomplished by one country. Itshould be a joint undertaking of nations with great economic potentials like the ones
you see in Asia.
Asians, of course, should not be concerned only with problems and issues
related to economic growth. Recent political changes taking place in Taiwan,
Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia are the best examples of how authoritarian regimes
had failed to manage national economies. The absence of public accountability had
brought about the false promise of "ersatz" or/and "crony" capitalism. To prevent a
revival of authoritarianism, Asian nations should build a strong network ofinternational and regional "civil societies." The idea of "Asian values" wasmisleading: it was state repression paraded as voluntary consensus.

52However, networking is not only essential to generate a cross-national
support promoting democratic reforms. A network of international and regional"civil societies" may also play a positive role in the current erosion of the "nationstate" myth.
Today, national governments everywhere have to deal with increasing
explosions of "identity politics." Identity politics are, of course, political struggles
waged by people who assume for themselves a definite identity (based on religion,
ethnicity, or gender.). There is a risk that such political struggles will create highly
conflict-ridden societies. A cross-national network of "civil societies" free from any
government control may bring back the belief that there are worthy values to beuniversally shared by different people with different identities.
I strongly believe that the alumni of the Asia Leadership Fellow Program
can contribute to this network in the near future.

53

Notions of and Questions on Identity:
Asian Leadership Program ReportOta Yoshinobu

I
During the two months—from Sept. 1 till Oct. 31, 1997—I spent with otherfour fellows in Tokyo proved to be very important in my intellectual personal
growth; I only hope I somehow managed to contribute something to others who
have interacted with me. Being an academic, working within the limited area ofinterest, I always felt the need to broaden my vistas; this program afforded me an
opportunity to do so. For this I am grateful for the invitation from Japan Foundation
Asia Center and the International House of Japan to participate in the program in
1997. I also appreciate assistance from everyone at the institutions mentioned above,
who made my stay in Tokyo a memorable one.

II
During the tenure of my fellowship I have completed the draft of the bookwhich I had been working on since 1994: the book was subsequently published from
Sekai Shisosha. I also finished the final draft of my paper entitled "Nation in Doubt,
Identity in Question, and Hybrid Society" (later published in IHJ Bulletin,18:1, pp. 1116). The latter work reflects my own position on such issues as the effect of
globalization (the issue that Isak Shari, also a fellow in residence with me, isinterested) on local cultures and peoples, the question of identity (the issue that
Goenawan Mohamad has addressed). I have benefited from my discussions withother fellows—Kuo Pao Kun and Laddawan—in order to finalize the draft of mypaper.
Among the issues that we discussed, the most intriguing is as follows: thequestion of modernity in Asia. For example, we have discussed—as I understandthem—the following concrete questions. Is it possible to enter modernity as Asians?
Does this mean that, as some suggests, Asian modernity is characterized by Asianvalues? How does "modern" individual emerge in Asia? What does "culture" dounder the strong state control of artistic productions? What is a nature of civil societyin Asia and how is it possible to have global linkages with other nations? Or, is54

"nation" already an obsolete category for the purpose of conceptualizing such alinkage.
At the same time we have had some difficulties in our discussions of such
key concepts as culture: an anthropological usage of the term, on the one hand, ahumanistic usage of the term, on the other. The tension between the two havepersisted till the end, and I am not certain if the tension was a productive one or not.
While I feel I wanted to have more focused discussions than we had, I also see thegood point of more open-ended discussions where unexpected vistas would openup; therefore, I am somewhat divided what to recommend for the future as to thenature of the topic. But, the following topics might be worth investigation within theframework of this fellowship for the future: (1) the rise of Asian regionalism; (2) thelure of nationalism in the age of globalization.

III
Since I was the first Japanese participant, I have no experience to comparemine with my predecessors; however, I have immensely enjoyed an intense
experience of living together at the International House of Japan. I still recommendthat a local Japanese participant would be added to a group of the internationallyinvited participants. The weekend retreat as well as a series of visits to parts of Japanother than Tokyo and discussions I had there were all exciting. Even if I have priorcontacts (such as Hokkaido University in Sapporo), I think the vistas would provide
still important contacts with scholars and activists in these areas.

IV
The following is the text that I have revised and completed during my stay inTokyo. While the topic of our fellowship dealt with the development and culture in
Asia, I repeatedly questioned myself about how the notion of development came tobe associated with the western society as a model. What is a shape of modernity notsimply reactive to western modernity?: e.g., modernity grew out of "Asian values,"
whatever these values mean. For the purpose of thinking about such a question, I
wanted to discuss the notion of identity based on nationality, since the question ofidentity has been often fallen into the prey of such an reactive thought.

V"Nation in Doubt, Identity in Question, and Hybrid Society"
A question of identity—to put rather crudely, "who am I?" or "who arewe"?—has been raised in as many different fields as there are in humanities and55human sciences; today, it is the question that has been most often raised, and it is thequestion whose answers are heatedly debated in those fields. What this question ofidentity entails exactly depends on some important qualifications that further
complicate it. I list, as follows, almost randomly such qualifications: who poses it andto whom, though rhetorically, is it addressed?; in what context is it raised?; whenand for what purpose is it raised? To illustrate the importance of these qualifications,
I begin this essay by contrasting this question of identity, which was posed from two
different positions, one issued from the position of dominance, while the other fromthat of subordination.
First, the most symptomatic of European imperialism was a literary
movement called modernism, the movement which emphasized the irreparable loss
and nostalgia for the authentic and organic. Those involved in this movement,
including such American figures as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra
Pound, viewed their world crumbling into chaotic jumble, a clear indication of which
was World War I; therefore, they all went to various destinations in Europe for the
purpose of regaining a sense of self—their identities—something needed toreimagine critically the nature of European civilization. Already in their effort—
which I do not uncritically endorse, of course—a question of identity was enmeshedwith issues of order, belonging, and displacement, among others.
But, white European males—exemplars of my first position—are not the only
ones raising the question of identity; in fact, their displacement was chosen andempowered by the global politico-economic regime of the day, while there wereothers who had raised the question more forcefully from the position ofsubordination, the position created by the regime which made Euro-American
modernism possible.
What I have in mind as an example of the second position is that of W.E.B.
DuBois. DuBois, an African-American historian and sociologist, stated, in
1903, as follows, prefiguring a question of identity in a surprisingly
contemporary manner: "It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness,this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, ofmeasuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in a amused contempt
and pity. One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, twothoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body,whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." (The Soul ofBlack Folk)
Black identity, according to DuBois in this particular writing, was expressedas the negation of self-identity, that is, "looking at one's self through the eyes ofothers." Being an "integrationist," (or "assimilationist" might be a more suitable term
to describe his position in 1903), DuBois still believed in the ideal of becoming a
citizen of the U.S., which had been rejecting "blacks" to the margins of society
through its racist practices. It is the duty of black elites so-called "the Talented Tenth"56

to lead this process of assimilation, which he thought would eliminate what he refers
to in the quotation above the 'double consciousness.'
I have quoted at length from DuBois, not because I naively identify myself
with his position vis-à-vis American society, but because I think that it pointed out
difficult issues surrounding the question of identity in the contemporary world.
Formulating as questions, I enumerate them as follows: is a nation still adequate unitof belonging?; or, is it an ethnic group adequate unit? how do "immigrants" relate totheir newly settled countries?; what kind of identities are articulated in thisdiasporaic dislocation?; how is national identity constructed?; at what cost?; what is
the role of historical memory in the construction of identity?
Thus, a contemporary discussion of identity needs to include a examinationof various modes of "belonging" to community—nation-state and ethnic group—
precisely when such communities are made problematic as the process ofglobalization constantly denaturalizes the legitimacy of nation-state and ethnic
community as the original and primary source of identification, something thatgrounds a mode of belonging; therefore, I discuss in the following section
nationalism in two forms: one based in terms of nationality, the other, ethnicity.
Then, turning to a critique of nationalism, I examine in the third section the critical
notion of hybridity, also divided in two conceptual polarities.
But, how does such a mode of belonging expressed? One cannot simply
express one's identification with a community, unmediated, as it were. My answer atthis stage is a tentative one, but is as follows: it is representation in a culture thatmediates the individual to a community that calls one's identity into being. Thus, inthe following section I would like to discuss, with fear of appearing overly pedantic,
some key terms such as representation, culture, and identity, as they relate to adebate on a mode of belonging.

Belonging: Nationality and Ethnicity
Answers to a question, "who am I?" might include such individual attributes
as name, gender, sexuality, familial relations, and such social attributes as status,"race," nationality, language, religion, and so on. But, to complicate a process ofanswering this question, I would like to point out that gender, sexuality, nationality,and "race," for example, are not innocent categories; they imply more than what theymean; connotations always exceed denotations. Being "Japanese" can simply be astatement of nationality, while it conjures, depending on to whom this nationality isexpressed, historical memories of war, images of economic expansionism, andsecretive political body; such memories and images are then translatable into
stereotypic ideas of being "Japanese": aggressive, passive, secretive, avaricious,
polite, insolent, all of which are necessarily contradictory, as Ruth Benedict pointed
out a long time ago.
Certainly, these connotations do not float in the air, but are socially anchored,
produced and reproduced in representational practices. Such representations

57

produce other-representations as well as self-representations, both of which areconfigured simultaneously; in other words, representations about the Self are
inseparable from creating representations about the Other. Furthermore, since
representations socially circulate, the meanings of these representations are notimmune to re-evaluation by the subjects in different positions, so to speak, theprocess referred to below as transcoding. This process has historically occurred
frequently not only in colonial contact zones but in national urban spaces.
"Who produces these representations and to what purpose in mind?" is avery important question, as it points to the control and deployment of power, yet"who consumes them, and how?" is as important as the previous question, for it also
destablizes the singularly coersive view of power. A representation is interpretable ina sense that its potential for various conflicting meanings is always real; in otherwords, an act of interpretation plies open potentials for meanings of these
representations. For this reason, an identity articulated in representations is actively
produced by the power that smoothes contradictory meanings and strives for aunitary meaning to which an individual is invited to identify for a time being. But,
the individual in turn negotiates such a meaning, avoiding the final closure to it.
Thus, identity is not "being," but "becoming," as Stuart Hall reminds us, a continuous
act of negotiation itself.
According to the process of identity formation summarized above, national
identity is not simply given. For example, an issue of national identity becomescomplicated as soon as it is considered something more than just a legal issue. A
question, "who is Japanese?" has been contested historically as a cultural issue; thatis, "who is included and who is excluded from this nation?" Okinawan intellectuals,
for instance, from Ifa Fuyû to Oshiro Tatsuhiro, have repeatedly raised the following
question: "what does it mean to be Okinawan in Japanese nation-state?" To them thisquestion comes from their reflections on experiences and histories of subtle exclusion
and marginalization of Okinawan people from Japan. This question raised by
Okinawan intellectuals is not simply a question for Okinawans but is also a question
for the Japanese mainlanders; since a discussion of Okinawan identity is inseparablefrom that of Japanese identity at large.
Ifa Fuyû (1876-1947), an Okinawan intellectual of great renown, claimed in1914 that the incorporation of Ryukyu kingdom, enacted through several stages, hadbeen "a kind of emancipation from slavery." "Emancipation" is a rather shocking term
to describe the political process of rendering Ryukyus into Okinawa, the processcompleted in 1879; this statement comes from Ifa's reading of Booker T. Washington's
Up From Slavery published in 1901. To avoid a possible misunderstanding, I shouldemphasize immediately that by the term "slavery" Ifa meant the condition ofsubordination without a definite sense of identity: Ryukyuans were suspended in thetension—constructed forcefully by others—between being Chinese and being
Japanese, the condition preferable to the Satsuma clan which had siphoned revenues
from trade relationships between China and Ryukyu kingdom. Thus, Ryukyuan"slavery" prepared financially for the emergence of modern Japanese nation-state58

since it had supplied wealth for Satsuma clan which was instrumental in 1868
restoration.
Ifa considered national identity was something that had been lacking for
Okinawans; in this case, Okinawans as Japanese. His desire for winning recognition
from the Japanese is something akin, perhaps, to liberating oneself from "double
consciousness," the desire for integration also expressed by DuBois. I think Ifa's effort
in recuperating Omoro, Okinawan courtly poems, was, academic interest aside, toestablish a historical link between ancient Japanese culture with the Okinawancounterpart. Regaining a historical commonality with the Japanese as represented in
Omoro poems was his way of identifying with the Japanese. (Of course, his
intellectual trajectory did not end here, and any extended discussion of it remains
outside of the limit of this paper.)Leaving Okinawa for a moment, I would like to discuss a another way of
formulating identity. This time without relying on the promise of integration, one
moves toward the opposite direction, that is, separation. Nowadays, this move has
been hotly debated because of its association with nationalism (or, its variant, ethnic
absolutism) that empowers members tremendously through proposing a unified
value system but creates absolute gaps between its members and non-members. The
sharp separation of members from non-members are represented in differences
between cultures. I should point out that it is not only minority groups thatsometimes resort to this mode of formulating identity but the majority in power does
as well. Thus, according to conservative critiques like Arthur Schlesinger, an
American historian, Afro-centrism, for example, is a form of tribalism, orBalkanization, that potentially disrupts American national unity, because it
privileges a distinctive cultural unity among African-Americans, the unity that
results in separation. He is vocal in criticizing it, while he remains silent to such an
idea as Huntingtonian "clash of civilization," which is clearly based on the sameorganic and integrated view of culture. Schlesinger considers natural the logic ofcultural separation at the level of nationality, but finds "elitist" the same logic at thelevel of ethnicity.
I repeat that nationalism has not always been the source of evil incontemporary world; its status is really contingent on historical contexts as any formof politics might be. Nationalism among minorities, the oppressed and themarginalized formulates powerful identities through transcoding: a process ofassigning new meanings often opposite of dominant ones to the key terms. For
example, the term, "black" in the U.S. was revalued by black activists in the sixties as
powerful and positive symbol of identification for blacks—"black is beautiful." In the
United Kingdom the same term "black"—which only white British people had used
to describe non-white peoples—was mobilized in the seventies to consolidate various
urban populations of color such as Caribbean, African, and South Asian.
Nationalism invites people to commit themselves deeply to a community
through various powerful representations of sentiment and historical memories. It is
local and sedentary since it derives its power from territoriality, which is often
represented in such expressions as defending one's "homeland" and, in a case of59

diaspora communities, a return to such a place, albeit imaginary. It is a historical factthat (local) nationalism was the driving force behind decolonization movements in
Asian and African countries since the end of World War II. I acknowledge well thatsuch movements perhaps remained only reactions to western colonialism; therefore,
they retained the logic of Manichean dichotomy which had informed the verycolonialism that such movements had tried to overthrow. This is a well-rehearsed
point in contemporary discussion on colonialism. Even this might be a case, the logic,
I do not think, overrides the power of history; it is incumbent upon us to understandthe specificity of historical context in which these movements arose and, certainly,
consequences they created, as well.
I present another instance of nationalism from another part of the globe.
Recently, I have been studying Maya Indian nationalism in Guatemala, where theIndians (Indígenas) are the majority rather than the minority; however, the politicalpower of the country is clearly in the hands of ladinos and whites, the minority. The
indigenous population is not biologically distinct from ladinos; Mayas are distinct
from ladinos only culturally: Mayas use one of twenty-two native languages, practicefolk catholicism, and follow other customary cultural practices in their everyday life.
Often proclaimed in a newspaper is that Guatemala is a country of "mestizos,"the "race" produced as the result of mixture of Indians with Spaniards: Guatemala asa truly "hybrid" nation. To assert anything contrary is to rub against this national
ideology; consequently, this ideology simply reduces Mayas as underclass, which isin need of modernization. Thus, in the dominant national discourse Mayas are
represented as "problem," and they are defined by such terms of negative valence asfollows: pre-modern, unsanitary, poor, uneducated, and unenlightened, collective,
and so on. This discursive construction of Mayas constantly beckons them torenounce their ethnicity, in short, to integrate themselves into the Guatemalansociety, a modern nation based on the model of European nation-state. This
discursive construct of Mayas gave rise to a unified Mayan identity; until nationalists
have rearticulated the notion of Maya for themselves, Mayas conceived themselves ofbelonging mainly to linguistically separate counties (municipios) rather thansomething like Maya "nation."
Maya nationalism transcodes "Maya" as the storehouse of positive meanings:
ecologically conscious, moral, hardworking, knowledgeable, bearers of wisdom ofancient Maya civilization. It represents its cultural heritage in a very essentialized—that is ahistorical—way, in a manner somewhat akin to ethnographic descriptions
produced by anthropologists several decades ago. It strives toward opening up a
space for Mayas to become subjects of the modern nation-state, Guatemala, without
renouncing their ethnic identity by devising strategies of entering modernity: forexample, they now have created means of transcribing their languages, creating
through vernacular neologism—not direct borrowing from Spanish—vocabularies
necessary for modern life, and even lobbying for officialization of four major Mayan
languages. At this juncture, I consider Maya nationalism an effective means tocombat the power of ladinos; without this form of mobilization the Mayas would be60

left with nothing to protect themselves from the powerful discursive constructs that
affect the actions of all involved.
Now, after defending nationalism not only for its political force but also for
its cultural empowerment, I introduce critiques of nationalism and ethnic absolutism
because I think there are also historical contexts and moments in which such
critiques are needed and effective. It is important to keep in mind that any form ofpolitics remains conjunctural; therefore, to use a felicitous expression of Stuart Hall,again, we need to think of it as contingent and positional, that is, "without
guarantee."
One obvious feature of nationalism is its tendency to downplay differencesamong members within a community which it tries to represent politically, while
another is to police the boundary between the inside and the outside for the purposeof keeping the inside absolutely distinct from the outside. The unity is created byemphasizing the historical continuity from the time immemorial, establishing the"sense" of linguistic homogeneity, devising ahistorical cultural essence, if not "racial,"
shared by all.
This unity presupposed by nationalism has been contested. In the age of"postmodern" and global economy, the localized community, whether in a form ofnation-state or in a ethnic group, might appear (but to whom?) oppressive because ofits drive for unity. While nation-state and organic community have been declining as
the source of stable identity, new representations are produced discursively; in otherwords, the systematic and organic concept of culture is no longer adequate inanalyzing current representational practices that produce meanings (amenable forreinterpretation) because such a concept disregards the non-systemic aspects ofsociety, both internally and externally: these representational practices thrive upon
positional variations, internally, as well as exploit permeable borders, externally.
Nevertheless, it might be too rush to do away with the concept of culture
entirely, since without it the world of meaning would be lost. By the same taken, it
might be too problematical to posit a nomadic subject, who feels free of belonging to
any community. An alternative is to focus on the representational practices based onsuch ideas as "import-export, contextual-tactical shifting, local mix-and-match,syncretic recombination" (in James Clifford's phrases), as cultural borders areconstantly crossed and recrossed, new technologies invented and marketed ascommodities are appropriated creatively for the purpose of making thecontemporary life non-identical; thus, emerges a critique of homogenous nationaltime and space. Then, ideas of boundary crossing, syncretism, creolization andintermixture consititute a powerful critique of nationalism that defends the idea of
purity: "hybridity," in short, is a key critical term in contemporary discussions ofnationalism.
But, as Renato Rosaldo has astutely noted, the idea of hybridity oscillates
between two conceptual polarities: (1) hybridity as in-between space of two zones ofpurity; naturally, the idea of purity is logically prior to that of hybridity (2) hybridity
as ongoing condition of all human sociality; for this reason, the idea of hybridity islogically prior to that of purity. Below I discuss these two distinctive conceptual61polarities, the separation of which is, according to some, crucial for reimaging a
possibility for new form of sociality that does not fall into the trap of nationalism.

Hybridity as Critique of Nationalism: Two Polarities
First, hybridity as cross between two zones of purity. If, for nationalism,
locality and sedentariness are key terms, then, for its critiques, the concept of mobility
is a key term, traveling becomes a powerful metaphor, and nomad is no longer premodern figure, but a powerful prototype of "postmodern" individual. Exile no longer
carries a negative meaning, but positively re-evaluated as one of such "postmodern"metaphors of displacement. Everyone in a sense becomes "crossracial, polylingual,and multicontextual" (in Gomez-Peña's words), in short, a hybrid. Since such aperson is a product of difference rather than identity, it might be somewhat
misleading to call this form of identity as "identity" at all. In a sense, this notion of
hybridity celebrates a concept of nomadic subject, as mentioned briefly at the end of
the previous section.
According to this concept of hybridity, it has destabilized the metanarrativeof nation-state, as much as the transnational flow of capital and labor power has
rendered obsolete an understanding of contemporary economy framed exclusively interms of national economy: George Lipsitz, a scholar in American studies, has once
written that "the power of transnational capital means that all of us must become
transnational too."
Although historically important as critique of many taken for granted ideas
linked with nationalism, this way of formulating an idea of hybridity, some argues, isa largely self-congratulatory for intellectuals in postindustrial societies; worse, it
confuses various modes of movement of people into one grand metaphor of
traveling: in what aspects is a position of political refugee from Guatemala living in
Illinois under the protection of a catholic priest similar to (and different from) that ofprivileged intellectual from India, now teaching at a university in Chicago? But, themost notable shortcoming of this facile embracing of nomadism, it seems to me, is its
tendency to regard the "community and belonging" non-issue, in other words, its
total denial of consideration for developing a possible form of sociality. I find it
crucial to keep this critique of "postmodern" nomadism, since I believe thatnationalism and its postmodern critique cannot be narrativized in an evolutionary
sequence; both remain equally contested ideas.
Second, hybridity as on-going condition of all human sociality. This idea ofhybridity is somewhat counter-intuitive because it posits that hybridity is logicallyprior to purity. According to it, what needs to be examined is the ideologicalformation of zones of purity, as expressed in nationalism and ethnic absolutism. In ahistorical examination it takes a form of constructivism, from whose perspective
nation-state premised on the linguistic, cultural, or "racial" homogenous structure is
not given but historically created; therefore, this idea of hybridity deconstructs
nationalism, which emphasizes the historical continuity of nation and its people.

62

It is also effective in criticizing multiculturalism that simply assumes therelative positioning of various cultures would be a solution to the call for more
liberal education, the concept of multiculturalism entrenched deeply in the idea ofculture as closed system as if it were language. Since language as naturally given has
supplied a model of multiculturalism, as Sakai Naoki clearly notes, it is so easy toslide into accepting a almost ahistorical, structuralist view of language, which isexpressed clearly in Levi-Strauss's realization that "language can only have [sic]arisen all at once."
On the contrary, Sakai's argument is that the systemicity of language arises
first through the detour of learning another language. Conscious recognition of one's
language comes only when one learns another; this means that a conscious
understanding of "foreign" language is logically prior to that of one's "mother"
tongue, and that the desire to learn another language is an act of establishing someform of understanding—"heterolingual address," to use one of his expressions—where exists no guarantee in conducting successful communication. This, according
to Sakai, is an opposite of nationalism, based on "homolingual address," in which
affective communication—"communion," in his word—is always secured throughthe "natural" sharing of language, history and culture.
Similarly, since Sakai does not presuppose the systemicity of language prior
to the intervention of power to form it, the concept of translation, according to him,needs to be reconsidered as one of such power. After translation is completed—theact of establishing links between the previously incommensurable—the systemicityof two languages appear, in a sense, after the fact. Sakai's position, in short,prioritizes the hybrid human sociality over the formation of nation-state and its
associated assumptions about language, culture, and people.
I consider Sakai's critique of nationalism insightful and powerful; however,what seems to be lacking is the historical specificity in which his argument isdeveloped. Although he does propose the "heterolingual address," characteristic of
human sociality open to others, as alternative to closed, exclusionary mode ofsociality, I am not sure how he could envision in concrete terms—rather than present
an exercise in deconstruction of nationality and nationalism—a non-exclusionarymode of community. For this reason, I regard his critique as conjunctural, effective incertain historical contexts—the U.S. and Japan—but perhaps less so in other contexts.
In contrast, Paul Gilroy's notion of "Black Atlantic" is highly specific andculturally grounded attempt to criticize nationalism of any form—whether Europeanor black—for the purpose of developing a vision of hybrid sociality, which is, also
like Sakai's, prior to the formation of organic and bounded view of culture. Below I
would like to discuss briefly what Gilroy proposes and to point some implications
his work offers for this forum.

63

Conclusion: Linking and Connecting, or Living Otherwise
Gilroy's magnificent book, The Black Atlantic, puts forward two inter-related
arguments: (1) blacks are internal to modernity as it developed in Europe; therefore,
modernity cannot be a monopoly of European bourgeoisie; (2) modernity cannot be
narrativized as a gradual development of nation-states. The agents in his counternarrative to Euro-centric view of modernity are black intellectuals, musicians, andwriters, who crossed the Atlantic from the New World to Europe, a direction
opposite to the trajectory of slave trade; through the process of this movement
created is the black political culture called the "Black Atlantic," the politicalconception that privileges "route" rather than "root," which is often the key metaphor
for nationalism. The "Black Atlantic" proposes a hybrid form of sociality called"diaspora" as alternative to nationalistic form of belonging. "Diaspora," unlike
postmodern nomadism, does not do away with the desire for community altogether,but links and connects differences in a web-like fashion to create relations without
suppressing these differences. It also aspires to create relations with its adopted
locality, as if it were agents of networking the past, present and future. Gilroy further
argues that such linkage is, in the case of the "Black Atlantic," culturally specific:
various black musical forms—from gospel, blues, and funk to jazz—contain acharacteristic, "call and response"; through this antiphony, the culturally specificform, the performer is linked, while remaining distinct, with the audience. Gilroy
states that antiphony arose out from spirituals, the storehouse of memory of slavery,
which, as Tony Morrison says, is the beginning of modernity.
I am not in a position of outlining any blue print for developing a nonexclusive form of sociality (or what James Clifford has once referred to as "nonexclusive practices of community, politics, and cultural differences") and I know wellthat such a blue print, if exists at all, needs to come out of effort to see things withdual vision: one eye toward the specific articulation of local history and anothertoward the specific vision of future, and the effort in the present is to bring the two
together.
Any discussion of identity cannot avoid being political, since identity iscontested precisely because a certain type of political subject follows from a certain
articulation of identity. Identity is discursively constructed in representations; then,in addition to content, form of representations are also made contestable due to the"multi-accentuality of signs" (as vehicles of meanings) that constitute such
representations. Since, culture is saturated with representations, no one can takeculture, the bundle of meaningful practices, for granted. These concepts are plied
open now; none is privileged in a sense that it can ground all other concepts; all ofthem open to contestation and rearticulation. Thus, the field of meaning, culture, andidenity is political through and through. This political implication of our identity, ina way, creates a sense uncertainty, or a moment of crisis, as Gramsci says, in which"the old is dying and the new cannot be born." This uncertainty, however, is a call forreimagining the nature of community. While a notion of community is predicated on
the idea that it is given, taken-for-granted, and assumed; therefore, belonging to a64

community presents us a sense of security, the sense which helps in maintaining the
integirty of individual. This uniformitarian notion of community is in predicament,
as discussed in this essay. But, I suggest that out of the same sense of uncertainty
emerges a search for another notion of community, something still in need of
construction rather than given and taken-for-granted; consequently, it still calls forour effort in bringing it about. Thus, a discussion of identity is inseparable from thissearch for a notion of community other than uniformitarian one. A search for one's
identity—"who am I?" always entails another search—"who are we?" A question ofidentity is always social, while that sociality needs to remain open for individual
differences.

65

Asian Public Intellectuals
and 'Development with Soul':
Report on the Asia Leadership Fellow Program 1997
Ishak Bin Shari

Introduction
I had mixed feelings when I received the letter from the International Houseof Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center inviting me to participate in the Asia
Leadership Fellow Program for 1997. On the one hand, I was obviously very happy
and greatly honored to be chosen as a participant for several reasons. First, as a
student of development economics, the Japanese model of development, which has
tremendous influence on the development experiences of the East and Southeast
Asian economies, has always attracted my attention. I was keen to learn more about
it. One important question that has been raised frequently in evaluating and thinkingof the Malaysian development experience, in particular, and developing countries, ingeneral, relates to the argument put forth by Fukuyama. He is well known for
arguing that liberal democratic capitalism in the Anglo-American mould is only
viable system for the future after the collapse of Soviet communism. This would
imply that East Asian mercantilism—state-led and often authoritarian—cannot be a
viable alternative. However, there are those who argue that Japanese-style nationalist
development offers a far greater challenge to western economic theory than the fallen
Soviet system. Hence, my keen interest in investigating whether the Japanesedevelopment model could provide a viable alternative development path to other
Asian countries as well as developing countries in general. Second, the program
would provide me with the opportunity to be away from my usual busy routine andprovide the time for me to reflect seriously on many development issues that havebogged my mind for some time. One of the areas of concern for me is on theimplications of globalization on the attainment of human development in developing
countries such as Malaysia, particularly the pursuit of the goal of social justice. The
third reason was the golden opportunity to interact with fellow colleagues fromother Southeast Asian countries and Japanese scholars and intellectuals during theduration of the program. Finally, it was hoped that my stay in Japan would allow me
to have a better understanding of Japanese society.
On the other hand, I had some apprehensions on my ability to contribute
effectively to the program. This is partly due to the broad scope of the general themeof the ALFP, namely 'culture and development.' While I am more familiar with66

development problems and issues and increasingly aware that development is a far
complex process and cannot be seen as a single, uniform, linear path, still myunderstanding of the interrelationship between culture and development is vague. In
fact, while culture is one of those words that people have used all the time, they
however have much trouble defining it. People have very different things people inmind when they talk about culture. On top of this, the AFLP theme related culture
and development. Furthermore, my work commitments the months before my
departure for Japan happened to be heavy with several research projects andteaching assignment that needed to be completed. This was the dilemma I faced
when deciding whether to accept the invitation or not. After some discussions withclose friends and getting the encouragement and support from the university(although I was only given a two-month leave to participate in the activities centeredat I-House), I decided to fill in the form confirming my acceptance of the invitation.
As was pointed out by some friends, the least I could do was to listen and learn fromother fellows of the programme. Furthermore, looking at the list of other participants—Goenawan, Laddawan, Ota-san, and Pao Kun—all special people who haveaccomplished a great deal in their respective fields, I felt I would definitely benefit
tremendously from the program if I could share some of their ideas and experiences.
I decided that it was time to listen.

The Two-Month Collaborative Activities and Dialogue
The way the fellowship program was arranged during the first two months
is rather interesting. Although we were the second batch of fellows to participate in
the program, many things were not yet fixed. In fact, apart from some planned
programs, our facilitator at I-House provided us with the freedom to determine ourown agenda during the two months. We were also given the luxury to decide which
Japanese scholars/intellectuals to invite as resource persons in our discussion series.
As Pao Kun always reminded us, the freedom to be 'irresponsible' given to us wasvery much appreciated by the fellows. Furthermore, despite our different
backgrounds and interest, we managed to engage ourselves in serious discussion on
issues of common interest to us under the broad theme of 'Culture andDevelopment.' Here, I must admit that the capable leadership of our 'Pengerusi'(Chairman) Goenawan as well as the extremely loving and philosophical approach of
Pao Kun played a major role in getting all of us together in our 'play'. The efficiency
and caring hospitality of our host, the International House of Japan and the JapanFoundation Asia Center, also played a significant role in making the program amemorable experience.
Unlike the first group of ALFP fellows, and most likely as a result of theirrecommendations, we were more fortunate to have the opportunities of making
contact with a wider spectrum of Japanese society. Apart from Japanese scholars andintellectuals, the fellows were exposed to representatives of Japanese NGOs,
bureaucrats, and the Japanese media. We were also taken for a visit to the67marginalized Ainu community in Hokkaido. The facilitator also arranged meetings
with scholars and intellectuals from other parts of the world, including the U.S. and
New Zealand. The two months stay at IHJ has also helped me to have a better
understanding of Japanese society as well as the Thai, Indonesian, and Singaporeansocieties through my regular contact with fellow colleagues.
The fact that all the five fellows stayed in I-House also helped to promote a
closer relationship and comradeship among us. One of the most interesting aspects ofour daily lives during the two months of stay in Japan was the extended breakfast
meetings among the fellows. Although the agenda was not set, the discussions andexchange of ideas during these sessions were intensive and serious. These heart-toheart discussions also pulled us together despite the different viewpoints andpositions each one of us held. Furthermore, such discussions, which also happened
during the formal sessions, made the program something special. As I mentioned in
my 'goodbye' note to all the other fellows at the end of the two-month stay at IHouse, I really cherish the two wonderful and memorable months in Japan and was
inspired by my time there.
As for the general theme of the collaborative activities and dialogue, 'Culture
and Democracy,' the participating fellows felt that it was broad enough to encompass
all our interests. Nonetheless, we did feel that there should be a focus to ourdiscourse. After learning about our respective interests in our earlier discussions, theparticipating fellows agreed that we should try to focus our discussions on the
emancipatory role of culture and development. Hence, it was decided that the theme
for our collaborative project should be: 'Culture, Development, and Emancipation: A
Search for New Paradigm'. Among the areas of concern planned to be covered in ourensuing discussion series were: the role of tradition, ethnicity, and religion indevelopment; the question of identity in nation-building; the debate on
multiculturalism; the role of civil society in development; globalization, migration,and uprootedness; the role of capital and state in development; the role of the artsand public intellectuals. In fact, the resource persons who were suggested to thefacilitator of the program were selected based on our interest in the above issues.
Nonetheless, as some of the scholars and intellectuals selected were unavailable, I
must say that our search for the new paradigm during the two months was just the
beginning of a long journey.
On the whole, the two months of intense and thought-provoking discussions
held at I-House as well as at various places in Kyoto, Hokkaido, and Ito City were afruitful period for my own personal development. The various seminars, colloquia,
and symposia arranged by the facilitator, as well as those that we had theopportunity to attend during our stay in Japan, brought to my attention many
problems and issues that I would have not been aware of had the IHJ and the JapanFoundation Asia Center not provided the opportunity. The continuous dialogue anddiscussions—both formal and informal—with my fellow colleagues contributed a lot
to my understanding of the problems which Malaysia in particular and Asia ingeneral are facing. In fact, the way I approach the issue of my interest—Humandevelopment in the Era of Globalization—has been very much altered by the various

68discussions on culture and development, creativity and empowerment, and cultural
pluralism (see the section on my individual research below).
In addition, the program had also been successful in many ways in attainingsome of the objectives of international cultural exchange and co-operation such as thesharing of common values, probing ways for the creation of new values and working
together for the understanding and resolution of common issues and problems. In
what is increasingly becoming a globalized world, such efforts are definitely
necessary and vital to our progress. The importance and the need for working
together and promoting solidarity at the global level was nicely stressed by Jacques
Delors in the following words: "The world is our village; if one house catches fire, theroofs over all our heads are immediately at risk. If any one of us tries to startrebuilding, his efforts will be purely symbolic. Solidarity has to be the order of theday: each of us must bear his own share of the general responsibility."

Individual Research Project
During the two-month period in Japan, I did manage to continue with mysearch for a better understanding of some questions that I had confronted during thecourse of doing my own research. As presented in some of the sessions with otherfellows as well as the seminar at Ito City, my main research focus is the implicationsof globalization on human development and the elusive search for social justice in aworld where neo-liberal ideology dominates. I was not able, however, due to time
constraints to pursue seriously my other related interest, i.e., to examine the Japanesedevelopment experience and evaluate it as an alternative model for developing
countries. I must say that the library at the I-House was really excellent for that
purpose but I just did not have the time to read the volumes of books and articles on
this issue.
Globalization, aided by the development of modern communications, theestablishment of free trade blocks, and the use of multilateral agreements such as theWorld Trade Organization and global financial institutions such as the IMF and theWorld Bank, had produced an unprecedented integration of the world economy.
Proponents of globalization always argue that this growing integration strengthens
competition and ensures the optimum distribution of resources. They claim it willbring rapid economic growth and prosperity for all, including the poor and themarginalized.
However, behind the promises of general prosperity, there exists a grim
reality. The stark divergence between the promises of globalization and the reality is
indeed very worrying. The move towards trade and financial liberalization during
the last decade has been accompanied by several disturbing trends. Among them, theworld economy is growing too slowly to generate sufficient employment; there is awidening gap between the rich and poor all over the world; the income accruing tocapital has gained over labor; trading in existing assets has become more prominent
than creating wealth through new investments as finance has gained an upper hand69over industry; job and income insecurity is increasing; and the growing wage gap
between skilled and unskilled labor is becoming a truly global problem. We are also
witnessing the disintegration of social order, the rise in violence and homelessness,social alienation and the growing fear of the future. Globalization has also brought
massive damage to the natural world as evidenced by global climate change,
widespread species loss, water crises, and numerous forms of environmental
degradation and depletion.
Furthermore, globalization has not even managed to create the so-called
level-playing field that it promises. The multi-lateral agreements continue to reflect
power imbalances between the powerful North and much-weakened South. Veryfew developing countries possess the technological know-how and capital tocompete within the global economy. Consequently, the competition to attract foreign
capital among the developing countries has led to the lowering of the labor cost, laxenvironmental and safety regulations and the lowering of the tax rate. Thus, what ishappening in many developing countries is not development but a race to thebottom.
Coming from a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society such as Malaysia, I
was very much concerned with this trend towards increasing disparity in the
distribution of wealth and income in our society as it has the potential of generating
ethnic conflict. I could just be reflecting the sensitivity to ethnic 'faultlines' that most
Malaysians have acquired since the May 1969 race riots, like the Japanese notice evenminor earthquakes. But, as events in the last year had shown, such concern is notwithout basis. The attacks on Indonesians of Chinese origin during the riots in
Jakarta and other parts of the country (including raping of women) were the ugly
aftermath of the current financial and economic crisis. In my opinion, these attacks
have deep roots in the growing disparities of Indonesian society despite its rapid
economic growth during the last three decades. In the case of Malaysia, containing
ethnic divisions and disparities along ethnic lines has been one of the central
objectives of its development policies and programs. The success of such policies,
despite its shortcomings, has so far enabled Malaysia to prevent the reoccurrence of
ethnic conflicts thus far. It is also interesting to note that the worsening poverty andproblems of inequality have been manifested in the rapid increase in the flow ofinternational migration within the region and the authorities in these countries needto address its attendant problems.
There is another rather frightening development accompanying the above
trends; the increasing inequality of income and wealth has acquired a new aura oflegitimacy. It has increasingly being argued that this development is both inevitable
and necessary. In other words, the suffering of hundreds of millions of people
throughout the world is considered to be justified as a 'small' price to pay for the
many 'blessing' of world capitalism. Proponents of globalization also speak about
how all boats will eventually rise with the tide of economic growth and that somepeople will have to suffer and shoulder the risks in the short and medium term.
What all these disturbing trends imply is the fact that the search for real humandevelopment and social justice remains an increasingly difficult task for many70

developing countries. In fact, with the present financial and economic crisis affecting
several countries in Asia—including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand—becoming
worse, the number of the unemployed, the poor, the homeless and the landless inthese countries have increased rather substantially. In addition, while the people indeveloping countries have been encouraged to wait for the unseen rewards ofglobalization, they are rapidly losing whatever democratic space that has been
available to them to voice their opposition to these policies and to seek meaningful
and sustainable solutions to their problems.
It has been increasingly recognised in recent years that the accelerated
processes of globalization have consequently reorganized the economic, political,
and social structures of many societies and countries of the world and that more suchchanges are expected to come in the next few years of the new millenium. However,
our understanding of the process and its implications is still limited and the search
for new alternatives is just beginning. As we enter the 21st century, the tasks ofseeking a better understanding of the profound changes around us and defining a
new alternative vision and dream for the world become increasingly urgent. Basedon this understanding, my current research is trying to contribute in a very modest
way towards this task.
In pursuing this research, I am increasingly inclined to believe that there is areal need for building new theories and practices in order to achieve developmentwith emancipation. Presently, despite the progress made in the conception of humandevelopment, most economists and politicians still take for granted that development
merely concerns economic growth, maximized efficiency, increased production andconsumption. Underlying this idea, is the implicit assumption that all people sharethe same destiny, that they are essentially oriented toward the maximization ofmaterial goods, and that this is what ultimately motivates them. The goals ofdevelopment are thus taken as given and development itself has been redefined as
the pragmatic art of development management. It is further assumed thatdevelopment could be achieved simply by transferring economic, political, andtechnological processes from the developed to underdeveloped countries.
As correctly pointed out by Saburo Okita: "There is no inherent reason why
the organized pursuit of material improvements should automatically result in
freedom, respect for humanity, and social justice." This is largely due to the fact thatthe more generally accepted meanings of development do not take into consideration
at all the realities of culture—people's control over their destinies and their ability toview the world in ways which reflect their particular experience. In other words, thewhole dimension of culture—beliefs, ideas, meanings, and feelings—are excluded
from consideration. Consequently, as shown by the experience of many Asian
countries in the last two to three decades, what has been achieved is rapid economic
growth without soul.
What I plan to stress in my future research is the need to make culture not a
servant of development objectives, but rather as the social basis of those objectives.
For example, a healthy, well-educated, skilled, and motivated labor force is definitely
a productive asset for development. However, it must be remembered that human71beings need to work together and cooperate and interact in may ways. It is in thiscontext that culture plays a crucial role. Culture helps men and women relate to eachother and makes the development of the individuals possible. Similarly, culture also
defines how people relate to nature and to their physical environment as well as how
they express their attitudes to and their beliefs in other forms of life. It is in this sensethat human development is ultimately determined by cultural factors. Indeed, wemust recognize that development and the economy are part of, or an aspect of, apeople's culture.
As for the struggle for social justice, my research will also emphasize theimportance of the expansion of civil society. Given the worldwide political andideological shifts which have so privileged the market economy, individualism, andcompetition on the one hand and the downsizing everywhere of the state sector on
the other, people need to look for other options in their struggle for equitable andsustainable human development. One response to the growing anxieties generated
by globalization is the demand to restore a bigger role for the state in protecting its
citizens against some of the risks of competition. However, critics of theinterventionist state level two convincing arguments against restoring the greaterrole for the state. First, the experience of our century reveals a propensity and acapacity of the state for totalitarian regulation and repression not only of people but
also of institutions, social practice, and the very fabric of ordinary life. Second, thestate is a strikingly inefficient economic agent. It is in this context that it is of vital
importance to recognize the critical role of civil society. Specifically, civil society will
be able to play an effective role in at least three major areas, namely to check both thestate and the market, encourage the empowerment of the people, and to promote
new ideals. In fact, it has been asserted that equitable and sustainable development
can only be achieved through the democratic initiatives of civil society itself. For
example, the solution of the problem of environment degradation requires thevoluntary participation of every member of civil society in a change of lifestyle
geared to equitable and sustainable development in opposition to the model of adehumanized consumer culture.
Furthermore, in our endeavor to build a better world, cooperation between
peoples of different cultures—either within a particular society or among nations—will be facilitated and kept within acceptable and constructive limits only if thesepeoples can see themselves as bound and motivated by shared commitments.
Therefore, it is imperative to look for a core of shared ethical values and principles.
Its efficacy will depend upon the ability of both the people and the government totranscend narrow self-interest and to agree that the interests of humanity as a wholewill be served by the acceptance of a set of common rights and responsibilities. As
pointed out by the World Commission on Culture and Development, the search for
global ethics will involve culture in a number of ways. Moreover, any attempt toformulate a global ethics must draw on cultural resources, people's intelligence andtheir emotional experiences, historical memories, and spiritual orientations. Culture,unlike scarce physical resources, will through this process be invigorated andenhanced rather than depleted.

72

The task ahead is going to be a very difficult one. I am really looking forward
to future collaboration with researchers from the region who share the search for
new alternatives to globalization as defined by the neo-liberals' agenda.

Follow-up Activities
During one of the discussions among some of the ALFP participants andother intellectuals from Southeast Asia, it was strongly felt that the idea of bringing
together intellectuals from the region for intense people-to-people dialogue hasbrought tremendous benefits to the participants and their societies. Thus, it wasagreed that efforts should be made to develop similar programs in the Southeast
Asian region to enable more participants, including young public intellectuals, to be
involved. In order to minimize cost, it was suggested that the participants could justmeet in one of the countries in the region. It was also suggested that I should take theinitiative to consider the possibility of planning and implementing such a program.
As a follow-up to the suggestion, the Institute of Malaysian and International
Studies (IKMAS) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) has submitted to theuniversity's management a proposal to set up a fellowship program at the institute.
The purpose of the fellowship is to invite a group of selected scholars and people ofintellectual distinction from Southeast Asian countries to come together and pursue
collaborative discourse and writing in a stimulating milieu.
A major part of this collaborative work is to address some pertinent humandevelopment issues facing Southeast Asian countries in the next century. In an
increasingly globalized world economy, intellectuals from the South must consider
playing their respective roles in two ways. First, an analysis of social transformations
and disruptive changes of any country in the region can no longer be addressed
separately or on its own without taking into consideration the pace andconsequences of changes globally as well as those taking place regionally. A good
example is the recent currency and financial crisis faced by the East and Southeast
Asian countries (and the increasing likelihood of it becoming a world crisis). Clearly,
a comparative and regional perspective enhances one's understanding of the
problem.
Second, all such efforts require close co-operation and collaborative work
among the region's scholars and intellectuals. This kind of co-operation is especiallyhelpful to countries of the South as they share common problems and interests in
confronting the multi-faceted processes of globalization.
The program has been planned to include scholars and intellectuals who
work in the fields of culture, society, politics, economics, international studies as well
as globalization studies. In particular, the objectives of the program are as listed asfollows:(a) to provide an opportunity for a number of scholars and intellectuals fromeach country in Southeast Asia to pursue joint or collaborative work at IKMAS. We

73

hope to provide a conducive and stimulating milieu for these individuals toundertake their collaborative projects;(b) to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and experience among the scholars
and intellectuals thus providing greater impetus for further research and publicationin regional and international studies;(c) to promote an understanding of specific problems and comparative
perspectives on various development issues in Southeast Asian countries.The fellows
will also be invited to present their views and analyses in seminars and lectures
which will benefit the academic community at UKM in particular and Malaysia ingeneral; and(d) creating a network among Malaysian intellectuals and those in theSoutheast Asian region in order to strengthen the collegiality among them andthereby strengthen cooperation between peoples in this region.
This proposal has been approved by UKM's management board and IKMAS
is now working to get financial support from various possible sources for the
program. If the planned financial contributions from various parties is finalized soon,
this fellowship program could be implemented at the end of 1999. It is hoped that theInternational House of Japan and the Japan Foundation Asia Center could also
provide financial assistance to this program so as to hasten its realization.

Suggestions for the Future Program
I have no major suggestions to make regarding the future programs. Whatcan be said at this juncture is that the fellowship program has indeed succeeded inencouraging an intensive person-to-person exchange of ideas and opinions among
the participants during the two-month stay at I-House. The regular meetings andcontacts had also enabled the participants to develop a better understanding of issues
relating to the theme of the program and developed into a base for a new solidarity
among them. However, as was mentioned by a member of the pioneering batch of
fellows, understanding is only the beginning and should not be the end. The issue
that needs to be addressed by all participants in the future is how to develop thisnew close friendship into a network of solidarity among Asian intellectuals so thatthe intellectuals in the region could also contribute in a meaningful manner towards
strengthening global civil society. This work of solidarity-building could play asignificant role in promoting freedom of expression and communication among
Asian intellectuals, as well as defending their rights to organize and advocate for the
betterment of their respective societies. The importance and the urgency of efforts
towards promoting solidarity is increasingly obvious given the regional nature ofmany problems facing Asian countries. The recent financial and economic crisis that
so quickly engulfed the whole region is a good example of such problems. To facethese new challenges requires regional cooperation between all sections of thesocieties, including public intellectuals, in these countries.

74

For intellectuals, their main role in society is to produce, evaluate, reproduce,and propagate ideas and knowledge for the betterment of society. Given theseriousness of the current financial and economic crisis in many Asian countries,
Asian intellectuals have a big role to play in looking for new ideas and a new vision
to resolve the problems facing millions of people in the region. So long as this is anunequal world of the poor and the rich, the concept of one world and one planetcannot be realized. The joint responsibility for the health of a global common can
only materialize when there exists a shared global prosperity. In short, without
global justice, global sustainable human development will always remain an elusive
goal. As many have pointed out, the continuous transformation of the concept ofglobal justice into effective concrete policies will indeed be difficult. It is in thisparticular area that our role as public intellectuals is most crucial and needed. And
the first and the foremost task for us is in education. Education empowers
individuals and groups by sensitizing them to the various forms of power structuresthat exist in our respective societies. In addition, intellectuals can also function as asynthesizing force to generate collective action. Social mobilization is particularly
important for intellectuals since it is only through people and popular movementsthat ideas can become socially relevant. Without an audience, the intellectual can stillplay a role, but unfortunately cannot become an agent for social change.

75

Asia Leadership Fellow Program Report
Laddawan Tantivitayapitak

Introduction
I always like adventure. Life is an adventure for me. My first adventure wasin the Philippines during 1983-1984. My purpose in going to the Philippines at thattime was to have a break after six years of human rights work which started in 1976
when the military staged a bloody coup in October 6, also in the same year. My
retreat was originally intended to study social work, but it unexpectedly changed
one month after my arrival in Manila when former Sen. Benigno Aquino was brutally
shot down at the Manila international airport. The event had angered thousands ofFilipinos who spontaneously marched down the streets everyday to protest the ruleof former President Ferdinand Marcos. I joined the protest actions, while also
attending my social work classes. This way, I came to know the Philippines as well associal work theories.
My second adventure was in Japan. It was the second longest break I had
from my work life which had continued for more than 12 years after I returned fromthe Philippines. The excitement offered by my Japan trip was different from that of
the Philippines. In Japan, I gained an entirely different perspective and was exposed
to intellectual debates. Fortunately, there were no political upheavals that matched
the scale I had experienced in the Philippines.
The invocation of fellow fellow Kuo Pao Kun on irresponsibility did not
make the rest of my trip to Japan less eventful. In Thailand, reading is considered to
be a form of leisure, especially when the reading materials have nothing to do with
one's work. I was so delighted to have a lot of time to read. There were so many
articles, books, and materials to read, that I ended up without successfully finishing
any single book that I had carried in a large travel luggage all the way from Thailand.
Instead, I had learned other invaluable things.
The documents we had to read before the group discussions were useful,however, I felt that we did not discuss deeply as it should have been the case. The
discussions were rather too broad and general. The strength of our group discussions
was not only in the subject themselves, but also the process that they offered us ingetting to know each other's perspective better. It was actually important tounderstand each individual's viewpoint before we could work as a group for the
symposium as well as do networking in the future. We had spent a lot of time
discussing before we could really settle down and identify what we were aiming at. I

76

think this was an attempt in 'fine tuning' our waves of interests and expertise to comeup with some thing novel like a new paradigm. Perhaps, we may be compared to anorchestra or a stage play that needed rehearsals to put all varieties of tunes orcharacters in a cohesive package before a performance. The 'group intuition' tooktime to be felt and a lot of efforts were exerted before we could overcome factors thatblocked our creativity. I personally was happy with what we had done andaccomplished in our workshops as well as the symposium. It did help me in myreflections on my unruly concepts of transparency and highlighted questions to befurther discussed or worked out.
I think I should end my report here so I will not be much of a bother to theInternational House of Japan and Japan Foundation Asia Center by making themread a long report. On second thoughts, I had decided to change my mind. The
above was only a preamble, the real and serious stories are contained in thefollowing paragraphs.

Japan Becomes An Interest
Japan did not interest me before. Among the countries I did like to know
deeply were mostly in Southeast Asia and Indochina, Burma in particular. I am alsointerested in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, etc. However, gradually my
fascination with Japan developed. It caught me when I went to Kyoto and Hokkaido.
I had to express my gratitude to two materials that I read while I travelled to Kyoto.
One is called "World View of Japan" which was translated into Thai. The other was aspecial magazine feature written by Prof. Nithit Aiewsriwong, a Thai professor who
had spent some time in Kyoto. The professor's article was called something like
"Kyoto, the shadow of Doi Suthep." (Doi Suthep is a famous tourist spot in
Chiangmai province of Thailand). The two materials gave me better a better grasp ofJapanese history of development, its culture, as well as its pattern of behavior. They
also have helped me afterwards in framing my thoughts, while I was in Japan. I had
been wondering for almost a month before I could put my thoughts to rest. As for
my fellow fellows, though we did have many things in common, we also had
different expectations in relation to one another. The feeling of being relaxed isstronger when one knows exactly where to put one's feet firmly without annoying
others. As my knowledge of Japan deepened, I began to appreciate my stay. The
images of being 'miserable' while in Japan and the ideas of 'unreachable' Japanesepeople had gradually been erased, and Japan became a fascination.
The places I visited in Kyoto were so impressive. Among the places I visited,
Ryoanji Temple and Shugakuin Imperial Villa were the most impressive places I
would like to mention. The impression I got from reading Prof. Nithit's article on
Ryoanji, a rock garden, prepared me before the visit. I had been interested in Zen fora long time. I like the way the masters taught his students, which are simple, brief,
and precise with its meaningfulness. I had intended to spend more time there for
meditation. Before going there, I bought a small book about Zen with the hope of77

reading it there. I arrived at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I was quite surprised
and a little bit disappointed as it was too crowded. However, the visitors tried toobserve silence though it was interrupted from time to time when tourist guides
brought in some visitors and gave explanations. I then found a corner to sit down
and did my observation with an 'empty mind.' The time passed so fast and before I
realized it, the officials were already urging visitors to leave as it was closing time. It
was already five o'clock in the afternoon. I did not realize that I was sitting there foralmost two hours doing nothing and was totally absorbed by its beauty. It was very
simple, but very beautiful. On the way out of the temple, I pictured heaven in mymind. Was that the way people could imagine heaven? The images of the garden had
been implanted in my mind and I had peace. I went back to the Japanese inn where
we were staying with happiness. "May peace prevail on earth." The Shugakuin
Imperial Villa's garden surrounded by natural forest and mountains was so
wonderful. While walking behind a Japanese guide, I wondered what was thestimulation in creating this small beautiful garden within a wild jungle. Thensuddenly, I was reminded by our discussions on modernization and my insistence ona philosophy of development through the concept of "small is beautiful." And
Shugakuin did confirm to me that small could be beautiful even in this wild world ofcompetition. Each woman/man could change this wild world and make it beautiful
to live in as did the prince who created the Shugakuin villa. The beauty of smallthings was in contrast to the large natural jungle, and it just fit perfectly. Small things
could be easily managed and handled. When Schumacher invented this idea of"small is beautiful," he also worked for it. He established an institution called"Intermediate Technology Development Group" (ITDG) which supported andencouraged small enterprises based on ethical and environmentally sustainable
principles using small-scale technology that could be managed and owned bycommunity-based organizations and groups.
Modernization has been accompanied by consumerism and competition.
Consumerism stimulated greed and unnecessary wants through advertisements andall kinds of stimulations, while competition created hate and mistrust. Would weallow our world to develop this way? Women/men are created with instincts ofgood and bad as well as strength and weakness. If the bad side would over power
the good side, what kind of world will we have in the future? I do believe a goodworld can be created, that the good will of people can be strengthened by giving,
replacing greed, and confidence replacing mistrust.
The turmoil of the Thai economy followed by Malaysia and Indonesia andthe collapse of Japanese big financial institutions, the bankruptcy of Hokkaido
Takushoku Bank, the ruin of Sanyo Securities, and the fall of Yamaichi Securities Co.,
the oldest and the most vulnerable of Japan's 'Big Four' Brokerages, followed bySouth Korea's appeals for help from the International Monetary Fund had given
significant warnings to the world's development. The reinvestment cycles of surplus
gained from certain business had never meant prosperity for the world's majority
and it only showed that the unlimited pursuit wealth which could translate to greed,
had brought the collapse of the system (especially in the case of financial institutions

78

which are the backbones of capitalist system). I call this financial institutions as a "eatand sleep tigers" since they do nothing, produce nothing, but earn and make profits
from other's efforts. As big companies collapse, the effect will be firstly on labor
sector which will inevitably mean unemployment. The rich may suffer someinconveniences, the poor will be poorer, and the poorest of the poor will be the mostaffected. This uncontrollable system of development in the hands of the few cannever be sustained. It may even self-destruct.
The strength of being small lies in its easy-to-organize nature. If small groupsof people throughout the world can organize and link up with one another, they canalso have a say in how the world is being run by big institutions. We seem to forgetthe fact that there are more 'small people' than 'big people.' Why do small numbers
always have the bigger say?
The prince of Shugakuin Imperial Villa may never know that what hecreated had inspired people like me to adore the beauty of small things. Shugakuin
was created by a prince who had transcended the beauty of wilderness. I think this is
one of the strengths of Japanese culture: its ability to create something new from old,to seek strength from weakness.
This is very true when we try to recall Japan's association with China. For
centuries, Japan had imported Chinese writing characters, customs, beliefs,
traditions, arts, etc., but they have never become 'Chinese' or felt inferior to China.
They had the creativity to fashion something that can be called Japanese from
Chinese culture.
Before World War II, Japan had sent many people to study abroad and tolearn about the world, come back, and contribute in the building of their own
country. I believe this had prepared the basic structure for Japan to be Japan today.
There could be no doubt how efficient Japan could adopt certain technology to meetits own domestic need. In the political system, Japan had no hesitations in adopting asystem of governance that would only give a semblance of democracy.

Hokkaido Visit, Asian Values, and Child Labor
My visit to Hokkaido had brought me another impression of Japan. It was
rather strange and sad. The time I visited Hokkaido coincided with the changing of
the colors of the leaves as the fall season approached. The mountains of Hokkaido
were covered with falling leaves while the new, fresh, and young ones were growing
replacing the fallen old ones. The phases of passing away, being born, and growing
are what comprised a life cycle. However, what happens in real life is not always as
clear cut as each phase would suggest. In a civilized society, the dead should beburied. Burial is one way of paying the dead their due and respect. It is one of themost important ritual we could accord the dead ones.
Allow me to relate here stories I had heard. It is saddening to know that thedead of the Ainu people are being treated as objects of scientific studies, like animals
in a laboratory. I can feel the pain of an Ainu who had told me this particular story.

79

As tribal customs and traditions are viewed as exotic by modern men, they become
subjects of study or objects of interest by tourists. This had also happened to the hilltribes in the northern part of Thailand. The long-necked tribes were paid to stay in
special villages created as tourists spots for tourists to visit and take photos. On theother hand, officials say this practice is one way of preserving culture, but this could
also be interpreted as a way of destroying culture, of taking away the pride of theliving.
In this multicultural world, mutual relationship and mutual understanding
are key words among people living together harmoniously. These concepts do notnecessarily translate cleanly as they sound in the real world. The idea of
discrimination has been deeply rooted in one's mind. It is common for people fromdifferent cultures treat to each others differently. It is not acceptable to have one
culture be treated as superior to other cultures. It is unfortunate that this exists in oursociety nowadays.
Discrimination is consciously and unconsciously rooted in and will never besolved if no serious measures are being taken to deal with it. The more important
thing is that these measures have to be implemented with great care and sensitivity.
In these way, rights and equality could be observed and maintained. When I mention
rights, it would be inevitable for me to say something about Asian values. I cannot
subscribe to the concept that rights should be nationality-specific or values should beaccording to region such as Asian values and western values. Rights as in humanrights are always universal.
One of the two key arguments is that Asian values puts more emphasis on
economic rights before political rights. In other words, people need to be fed first
before they can have rights to voice out or choose what they want. For me, thisargument is illogical, to give priority to economic rights over other rights. Why
would the Burmese people want to have huge hotels for tourists, while they have nohomes to stay?
The other argument is about internal affairs, meaning, one country should
not interfere another country's affairs. I have doubts whether in this modern world of
sophisticated communications technology and complicated economic
interdependence we can have a nation which we could call as completely sovereign
on its own? The fall of the Thai baht had been said to cause the economic turmoil in
the region. The interdependence among countries has been deeply enhanced during
the last several decades. It is hard to reject that problems in one country will not have
impacts on other countries.
Human rights violations in Burma therefore inevitably affect Thailand, whenhundreds of thousand of children and people flee from oppressions in theirmotherland, immigrate to Thailand seeking asylum politically or economically, evenat the time when Thailand is facing its own severe economic crisis. How can one livein peace while his neighborhood is on fire? The badly performing Thai economy had
not stopped children from neighboring countries from coming to Thailand to work.
In fact war and poverty in the neighboring countries had increased the number ofdisplaced people seeking refuge in Thailand.

80Sanphasit Koompraphant, director of the Center for the Protection ofChildren's Rights, which was awarded the human rights award from the Foundationof Human Rights in Asia, Japan, said the children were desperate for a better life andwere so poor that they were barely affected by the regional recession. Employers
took advantage of the children by cheating them of their wages or calling the police
to arrest them before their wages were paid. The highest daily wage that thesechildren could earn in Burma was the equivalent of 15 baht. In Thailand, they could
earn up to 50 baht. Most children risk working in Thailand, even though it is hardbecause in their country it is even more difficult to find work. If they have 10,00020,000 baht back home, they could live comfortably for years. In Burma, child labor
was used to build roads and pipelines without pay. Others were conscripted.
Nevertheless, the children worked in Thailand like adults, up to 10 hours a day and
28 days a month. Many worked as petrol pump attendants, in restaurants, andresorts, as maids and sales representatives, in the flesh trade and in the fishingindustry.
It is estimated that apart from the 740,000 adult laborers registered with theInterior Ministry, there are about 100,000 foreign child workers. Academics
concerned with foreign labor had estimate that there are about one million foreign
workers in Thailand, of which 20 percent are children. Burmese children andminorities such as the Tai Yai, Mon, and Karen worked in Chiang Rai, Kanchanaburi,
Samut Sakhon, Mae Hong Son, and Bangkok.

Lek: A Thai in Tokyo
The fate of many poor people who are seeking better fortunes in Japan may
not be different from those across the border sneaking into Thailand. I met Lek in
Ban Sala. Ban Sala is a shelter that provides assistance to female foreigners whoeither have legal or illegal status in Japan. They give legal advice and provide
temporary shelter for women who are in need. Many of those who come to them are
women who were abandoned, badly treated, physically and mentally abused bytheir Japanese husbands. Lek is a Thai who speaks some Japanese. She came to Japaneight years ago. Before she came here, she was told that she will work in a restaurant.
Like many others, upon arrival, she was forced to have sex with her Japanese clients.
Lek can be considered remarkably good-looking at her age. She met her husband anddecided to stay with him. They have three children. Her husband is a laborer. He
frequently quits his job, and sometimes disappears from the house. Last year, Lek
and her two children were thrown out of their department because she had nomoney and her husband was nowhere to be found. The Thai embassy had asked Ban
Sala to help her as she was pregnant at that time. Through Ban Sala's assistance, Lek
gave birth, the husband came back and looked for her. They reconciled and stayed
together. But it did not last long. Her last baby died of suffocation from milk suckedfrom her. The husband left her again. Tai Gung, her eldest son, is about four years
old. But he cannot speak. It seemed that he has some nerve problems. But from my81

observations, he could understand well if he is treated properly. Since Lek speaks
two languages, Thai and Japanese and she keeps switching from one to another. Thismight be the cause of the speech problems of Tai Gung who tries to follow her andends up confused. Lek is confused also. She feels alone in Japan with no friends toreally talk with. She does not know of any Thai community where she could findhelp with regard to her problems. Her two children are giving her heavy burden that
she is immobilized emotionally and psychologically. Her second daughter is about
one year old. I felt sorry for her and for her two children. I met her husband briefly.
According to Lek, he is a few years older than her. The staff in Ban Sala said that healways shouts at her and blames her for everything. I believe that he has neverlistened to her.
I wonder how many people in this borderless world are facing thiscircumstances. They are ill-prepared to deal with cross-cultural relationships, theirchildren bear the brunt of the tragedies, ending up as victims. What would happen
when these children grow up? Are they going to blame their parents or the society
for its inability to help them? As the world is transformed into a borderless one, thepresent system does not accommodate, but rather obstructs nurturing relationships
among people. The attempts of a certain state to control its citizens as well as
foreigners had not facilitated mutual respect and understanding between the local
citizens and foreigners. When we look back into the history of people's migrationfrom one country to another, we would see that law and order have had impacts on
people's personal relationship. Problems range from children without citizenship,
illegal immigrants, etc.
In Thailand, we treat people differently if they come from poorer countries
like Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, or Burma in particular if they have illegal status.
Some think that it is simple logic that if they have illegal status, they could be treated
without dignity. As the world develops, the poor and those who do not benefit fromthis development are looking for better opportunities in other countries. They end up
being exploited.

Foreigners in Japan and Election Processes
It is then through this mutual respect of rights and equality with
understanding and cooperation that people could live in harmony and peace. I am so
happy to learn from the newspapers today (Nov. 27) that the Governor of Tokyo, Mr.
Aoshima Yukio has chosen 25 non-Japanese from 16 countries to form the Tokyo
Foreign Advisory Council with the purpose of giving foreign residents a voice inTokyo's administrative policies. They held their first meeting on Wednesday 26
November where several serious issues were raised for the council to discuss
including education, discriminatory practices, public support for international
schools, welfare and insurance systems, counselling services for foreigners, andforeign residents' right to participate in local elections and assemblies. By nationality,
the council consists of four Koreans, three Chinese, two Filipinos, two Americans,82

two British, two Brazilians, and one each from Thailand, Burma, France, Iran,Australia, Bangladesh, Germany, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Colombia. About 260,000
people from 170 countries are in Tokyo and are registered as foreign residents.
This is a good program that other countries like Thailand may choose tofollow. If Japan could be a leader in an attempt to accommodate and accord equality
to people living and contributing in a particular society, I would wholeheartedly
support it. I have indeed learned a lot from Japan. Apart from many other things, I
was able to utilize my time to enrich my knowledge on political exercises such as
elections. It is crucial not because of the subject matter, but also the timing when
Thailand is in the process of drafting new laws on elections, commission on elections,and political party laws under the new constitution. Several important points that I
had learned are as follows:
1. Organs for election management composed of Central Election
Management Council (CEMC) for proportional representation, Prefectural Election
Management Committees (PEMC) for single constituency and local (prefectural)election, and Municipal Election Management Committees (MEMC) only for local(municipal) elections and the Elections Department of MHA.
2. CEMC directs and supervises PEMC concerning elections only on
proportional representation. MHA is empowered to direct and supervise PEMC
concerning election on single-member constituency system for Diet members andlocal authorities. Also PEMC can direct and supervise the MEMC on its local
election.
3. CEMC is responsible only for proportional representation
while it supervises and not controls the PEMC in its management on proportional
representation.
4. There are 17 officials at the elections department of MHA. I am not quite
sure whether there are still elections department at the prefectural and municipal
levels. As the PEMC and MEMC are considered special employees of local
administration, I suppose during elections they will include more people to do
management work for elections e.g., like superintendents of the poll or ballot
counting, observers of the poll or of ballot-counting, elections meeting, elections submeeting, etc.
The most powerful authority during general election is the Ministry of Home
Affairs' elections department and the PEMC supposedly representing politicalparties in a way as they are chosen by the assembly from each prefecture. This can bea certain level of check and balance whether the PEMC is doing its work properly.
Unlike in Thailand where politicians do not pay much attention to monitoring theirregularities of their competitors during elections.
5. One professor said that CEMC is nothing, but just a 'paper tiger.' For
general elections, PEMC and MHA have significant roles.
6. Election campaign period for general and local election is very short (say,12-17 days and five -17 days, respectively). There are a number of restrictions onelection campaigns like public-speaking, street rallies, broadcasting, campaign

83literature (postcards, handbills), poster, banners, lanterns, sign-boards, newspaper
advertisements, etc.
7. Financial Control. There are conflicts of statements
between two documents I have read. One is from the election system in Japan, theother is from MHA. I think I should rely on MHA document. It states that "for the
purpose of eliminating inequalities in campaigns due to economic factors and also to
alleviate the economic burden, the expenditures for election campaigns are limited toa certain amount (art. 194)". They show table of limits on expenditures for candidates
on single-member constituency for both houses, members of assemblies,
gubernatorial and mayoralty elections. They do not apply this in elections for bothhouses under the proportional representation system.
The candidates are required to appoint a person to be responsible for therevenue and expenditures for election campaigns (campaign accountant). A
campaign accountant must keep the records of all revenues including contributions
and expenditures and report on the status of receipts and disbursements to theelection management committee. A summary of this report is to be made public.
There are several restrictions of contributions.
There are separate regulations on financing of Political Activities which isunder "Political Funds Control Law." Political parties, political fundingorganizations, and fund management organizations, etc. are considered as politicalorganization under this law. A political party may designate one organization as its'Political Funding Organization" where it gives financial support to a political party
and has the privileges for the receipt of political contributions. At the same time, apolitician or a candidate may designate one organization as "fund management
organization" in order to administer political funds as well as having privileges forthe receipt of political contributions.
Political organizations must submit annual financial reports of their politicalactivities to the PEMC or MHA. This report is published annually in the official
gazette of the national or prefectural government.
There are also subsidies for political parties under the "law for government
subsidies for political parties" effective 1995.
The restriction on election campaign and financial control is very relevant to
the Thai situation, however, the only problem that might be raised on how feasible
its implementation can be. Japanese police system is much more effective than ourpolice system. In financial control, the tax system is a significant gauge, while oursystem is not yet fully functional nor effective.
8. Guilt-by-association. The involvement is up to the level of organizedelection campaign manager and not including canvassers because of the problem of
decoys, entrapment, etc. They have no mechanism in monitoring this. It is the duty ofpolice. The voter in certain areas can file a case in court.
Vote buying is our major problem when politicians invest huge of amountsof money to buy their way to power, and the policemen are under the influence ofpoliticians.
9. Absentee-voting. First, the absentee-voter has to inform the municipal

84

authorities of his/her residence where he/she wants to vote and inquire about
election documents such as ballots. The municipal authorities will then give the votera certain document and inform his/her of the municipality where the voter has tosubmit the ballot. During the campaign period before election day, the voter can go
to the designated municipal office and submit the ballot. The voter must put theballot inside an envelope and seal it. The voter has then to put the sealed envelope
into another envelope and again seal it and then sign it. On the second envelope, awitness from the municipal office will also have to affix his/her signature on theenvelope. The second envelope will have to be put into a third envelope before it isfinally dropped into the ballot box. The ballot has to be placed inside threeenvelopes. In case of absentee-voting by mailing, this is strictly regulated andallowed only in cases of sickness. In the case of absentee-voting by mailing, the thirdenvelope will have to have an address. (Note that Japanese residing abroad have no
voting rights.) The election officials will then check the voter's signature bycomparing it with the registered absentee-voters' list and if it is correct, the envelop
with the ballot will be put in a separate ballot box for counting afterwards.
Sometimes, the absentee voters are required to affix photos in the second envelop,
but this varies from one area to another.
Thailand will employ the absentee-voting procedures for the first time under
the newly-drafted constitution.
10. It is quite complicated to explain how they drew the lines forconstituencies. But they had a 'constituency committee' which was empowered towork on this delicate matter before it was enacted into law by the Diet.
'The plans of demarcation of the single-member constituencies are made by
the Deliberative Council of Demarcation of Constituencies for the House ofRepresentatives and then proposed to the Prime Minister who reports to the House.
Based on the proposal of the plan, the revision of the Election Law is legitimated toamend the boundaries of constituencies.
At the time of the planning, the Council must primarily consider that the
maximum disparity in the number of people among the constituencies be under two.
In addition to this, the council has to take into account the border of administrative
areas as well as the geographical and transportation situations (Art.3 Par. 1 of the
Law for Establishment of the Deliberative Council of Demarcation ofConstituencies)."According to one Japanese academic, the representations of the constituentsare not fairly distributed with regard to population. This is politics.

Civil Society
My report will be glaringly incomplete if I did not mention civil society. I
would like to conceptualize civil society and incorporate with it the basic principles
of 'SACRIFICE'.

85

civil society = Sincerity + transparency
Altruism + sensitivity
Compassion + mindfulness
Responsibility + confirmative
Intuition + creativity
Fearless + courage
Information + technology
Consistency + continuous
Empowerment + networking
These basic principles will enhance and strengthen movements geared
toward creation of a regional society which links people to local self-governance. The
story of People's Agricultural Plan for the 21st century (PAP21) can be an example ofthe empowerment of civil society between Japan and Philippines. I met Muto Ichiyo
who introduced to me Rev. Fr. Ben E. Escrupulo, the executive director of PAP21,
and Sr. Norma G.Mugar, the general manager of Alter Trade Corp. in Philippines.
They had related to me the exciting story of PAP21 which I later saw in video.
PAP21 is an integrated socio-economic and ecological plan which ultimately
is aimed at transforming the Negros island's economy dominated by sugar industry
into a rich, organic agriculture-based economy through the empowerment of thegrassroots communities supported by local and Japanese NGOs. It is a long-term
program aimed at creating a regional society where popular governance, economic
independence, and self-reliance of the people as well as conservation of nature are
simultaneously pursued in a single process. This process is promoted independently
from, while interacting with, the dominant systems through the revitalization ofagriculture based on eco-cycles.
Peasants, farmlot workers, urban poor, and other sectors of the local
population have collaborated to enter into mutually complementary material
linkages, and worked out their integrated plans. For instance, fishing people provide
unmarketable small fish as compost materials, while urban poor communities
launched new business collecting raw materials from city garbage that can be madeinto compost. They receive farm products in return. Integrating animals husbandry
into this process is essential as the key element to ensure the circulation of organic
materials. Compost centers, pig centers, and other cooperative-managed facilities are
introduced as nodes of the socio-economic network. In this sense, it is differentiatedfrom mere popularization of organic farming, or development projects aimed atincreasing household cash incomes. Co-operatives form the basis for this process,ensuring multiple cycles of materials at the level of each farming household, village,
province, and the whole island.
Four major people's organizations in Negros, DKMP for peasants, DALO for
farmworkers, KIMA for fisherfolk, and KAOSA for the urban poor act as the core of
PAP21 center which is set up together with local and Japanese NGOs to promote theisland-wide socio-economic transformation process. The bilateral partnership
between Negros peoples and Japanese NGOs has been actively functional since 198686

when an emergency appeal came from Manila to the Japan Coalition for Philippine
Concerns (JCPC) to provide emergency relief for Negros sugar workers and theirfamilies suffering from mass unemployment and widespread starvation following
the world sugar market crash. Since then, they have been developing this partnershipby stages and through trial and error.
Civil Society is a way of life where people have committed themselves notfor power but for what they believe is the best for their community and for theirsociety. It is like a nest where 'mother-bird' and 'father-bird' fly from one tree toanother tree bringing stems to build nest for their baby-birds. It is a nest of the world
where all creatures are living together in peace and harmony.
I would like to end this report with the "country song of popular rights" as areminder on the spirit of Japanese people who had struggled for rights anddemocracy, which I believe, will never die from the hearts and minds of the Japanesepeople.
"Country Song of Popular Rights"(Minken inaka uta)
by Ueki Emori, an influential thinker who subscribedto the western versions of natural right doctrine, in 1879
Man is free.
The head thinks and the heart feels;
The body moves and runs;
Man surpasses all other wonderful creatures.
The heart and body are
Comparable to the universe.
Man's freedom does not allow a dearth of liberty;
We are free; we have rights.
The people of Japan must claim their rights;
If we do not, then our companion is shame.
Though the birds have wings they cannot fly;
The caged bird can see the outside.
Though the fish have fins they cannot swim;
They netted fish sees the sea beyond.
Though the horses have hooves they cannot run;
The tethered horse sees the grass out of reach.
Men are endowed with arms and legs,
We have hearts and minds
But today we have no liberty or rights,
If we calls ourselves men
Then each person must himself stand up and say,"Man has rights."
The mind must think and the mouth must say,87

"Whether freedom continues or ceases
We all hear and feel its calls.
The rights of freedom are possessed by everyone;
Freedom is a gift of heaven.
Men have both intelligence and strength;
There is no gain in not using them.
Living without freedom, not having freedom
Is the same as being dead.
Think of the salt; salt is salt because it is salty;
If it's not salty then it is the same as sand;
Sugar is sugar only because it is sweet;
If it's not sweet it might as well be dirt.
Man is man only if he is free.
If he is not free, he is like a puppet.
From ancient times government has been
oppressive and tyrannical,
It destroys homes and kills people
It suppresses speech and prohibits discussion.
Does it do anything that is good?
For this kind of government
The granting of rights and liberty is seen
As swallowing a bitter mixture of salt and sand,Not sweet like the earth.
Whether rich or poor, strong or weak,
All men are the same under heaven.
No one is above another and no one is beneath another.
The people of Japan call for the extension of rights,
But there are no methods to extend our rights,
Because the law allows us no freedom.
If a government is evil,
If it checks the freedom of the people,
If it checks their wealth and takes their money,
If it does these wicked things without good reason,
Then it makes a great mistake.
The people's welfare is unobtainable.
Let's resolve for constitutional laws
And for the early popular election of an assembly.
Onward! Onward! People of our country.
Let's push for the rights of liberty.

88Work diligently, thirty million people,
All together;
Rise up, be prosperous and go forward.
A political system of constitutional freedoms
Is the pressing need of today.
Cultivate wisdom and pursue scholarship
Become enlightened people andLet's make brilliant the majesty of our country.

89Research Papers

The following papers were written by three of the fellows during their periodof residence in the International House of Japan. These papers of Goenawan
Mohamad, Ishak Bin Shari, and Ota Yoshinobu supplement their final reports
for the fellowship which appeared in the previous section. The International
House of Japan Bulletin 18:1 Winter 1998 edition printed these three articles.

Baldwin's Garment:
Identity and Fetishism and Other Issues of Difference
by Goenawan Mohamad

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin tofall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates,
never, thereafter, to be a stranger.—James Baldwin, The Price of The Ticket
In the beginning are our differences. The words are from Hélène Cixous, theFrench philosopher, whose writings on feminism speak eloquently on "The new love[that] dares for the other, wants the other."1 But the words might as well be a linefrom any writer commending the dominant trend of contemporary intellectual andpolitical movements. One may point out that today we are observing a kind of
rebirth of the late 18th century European reaction to the Enlightenment as claim ofuniversalism. Yet the current emphasis on differences has a greater variety. It can bea legitimate insistence on developing a space for diversity and change; but it can also
be a violent rebuke to any assumption stemming from both Marxist and liberal
ideals—both in a deep crisis—of shared human destiny. There is a remark about theend of the 20th century, attributed to historian Eric Hobsbawm, that says, rather
pensively: "What holds humanity together today is the denial of what the humanrace has in common."2
The first encounter with difference requires a myth, and we have the story of
the fall of Man. If one believes in the Bible's tale of creation, it was Adam's wish, in
his first pang of solitude. And God created woman. And then the serpent tempted
her, and she tempted Adam in turn, and both ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree ofKnowledge. Thus difference was born as an epistemic moment. As the Bible
describes it, it was a highly upsetting incident, or even an act of sin. God banished
Adam and Eve from Paradise because of it.
My impression is that in this part of the Bible God shows His preference for astate of pure innocence that ensures an undivided mode of being. The text gives theimage of a Supreme Being who is always more willing to repress any claim of
discord in an image that is probably the ultimate paradigm of our own age-old
anxiety. This is the kind of dread that regularly surfaces, in the famous words ofMichel Foucault, "as if we were afraid to conceive of the Other in the time of our own
thought."3 However, it is also the same God, at least in His later appearance in the
Koran, who claims that He created different people so that they could understand93

each other, and that Adam's departure from Paradise was not actually a punishment,
but a mandate to represent Him on earth.
Hence, the persistent ambivalence towards the Other. Modernity is referred
as one of its narrations. The disenchantment of the world is both a farewell toinnocence and a first step to comprehend (which means also to "grasp") various
realities outside the cogititator, in a Cartesian protocol of knowing. This business ofgrasping has something to do with the praxis of emancipation; man and woman
being freed from a condition of ignorance and dependence—but also with therapacious process of colonizing life, the unpredictably plural. Centuries ofimperialism, a child of modernity, had brought different people to one big arena ofcontest. It was a conquest over heterogeneity by setting up categories (andhierarchies) of civilization before, and after, eliminating the weak. At the same time,
it put a particular condition referred by Marx as "Asiatic mode of production," or"rural idiocy" if you will, in its various forms, under a system secured by modern
powers of money and weapons.
Unlike imperialism of the past, today's appeal of globalization rests on its
promises of equal opportunity. And yet globalization is a game mostly played bytransnational financial markets, movable capital and high-tech information
businesses. The movement of immigrant workers, cosmopolitan intellectuals,
technocrats and refugees of all kinds may also be a portent of eroded nationalboundaries. But for better or for worse, there is no single border. On that account, no
global village, open and unsuspecting—ever exists. The majority of people remain
physically attached to a particular geographical site, and besides, an encounter with
the Other often gives rise to an even more acute sense of territorial imperatives, bothin terms of space and of "culture." The Tree of Knowledge gives fruits of sundry
tastes. Some are nice, others bitter.
This is, of course, an old story. In the 19th century Japan there were two books
about hizakurige, "a journey on foot instead of horseback, and thus a journey ofpeople with considerably less than aristocratic means."4 The first story, told byJippensha Ikku, (Tøkaidøch¨ Hiza-kurige, published in 1802, became an instantbestseller), is about two characters, Yajirobei and Kitahachi, who took a trip from Edo
to Settsu and beyond. It is a kind of travel writing focusing on local dialects andcustoms in various places in Japan, with a certain purpose to endow its readers, inthe words of Mertz, "with the fundamentally unifying identity of nation." Theopening passage of Ikku's narrative suggests a praise of the peace the present enjoys,
and also an appreciation of the glorious, albeit violent, deeds of "our warlike heroes"of the great age. By linking the nation's identity with the historical past, Mertz
argues, "the narration avoids the problematic politics of how individual readers arediversely subject to the contemporaneous powers of the state." Interestingly, at theend, because of the way the Hizakurige develops, the reader is no longer invited "totake on the identities of distant co-nationals." Instead, the narration "encourages thereader to enjoy their many differences." In other words, the nation, for this reader, "isalways outside the individual, and the individual is eventually restricted to94

occupying only a single point within its kaleidoscopically variegated cultural
network."5The other Hizakurige is written by Kanagaki Robun almost seventy years
later, or in 1870, less than three years after the Meiji Restoration. Designed to draw
on the commercial success of Ikku's story, Robun's Seiyø Døch¨ Hizakurige has two
main characters presented as the grandsons of Yajirobei and Kitahachi. However,both members of the new generation, instead of pursuing their grandfathers' trek, left
Japan and went by steamship to visit places outside their country, on their way to
The London World's Fair. Again, Mertz's research and insight are helpful ininterpreting the story in the perspective of identity and difference. In contrast to
Ikku's story, the result of Robun's narrative is "a radically rarified and internalized
view of nation and, ultimately, race, that pervades both self and other." The voyage islike a metaphor of moving up, treading "the path of civilization." Based on a linear
idea of progression, it provides "a mapping of international hierarchy," with the line
framed in terms of military and economic power.
No wonder that Yaji and Kita find foreigners in places like Suez
unappealing. "Suez has no grass or trees," the story describes the African port; "thehouses are few and far between, made of mud and small stones. The people areblack, and it goes without saying how dirty it is." According to Mertz, in Robun's
account of the journey, foreigners rarely speak, and when they interact with Yaji andKita, it is more often as thieves or tricksters. At the end, the two travelers findthemselves increasingly "in the position of representing more than their locality, andtheir identity even as Edoites becomes untenable." They have become Japanesenationals. Japan as an "imagined community" is born inside them, and the Edobackground of their origin is now only a thing to remember, albeit longingly.
To remember implies a previous act, or a trace, of forgetting. I think Ernst
Renan is right, when he speaks of the relation between the nation and forgetting.6 Butof course, like remembering, forgetting is a discriminatory modus operandus;
somehow there is always a process of selection about which part of one's experienceis to be deleted from one's file of memories. The end result has its cut in shaping
one's identity, either national or otherwise. Often it creates a more or less complete
linear form that becomes a perimeter to keep out "dubious" elements.
The two stories from Japan are two varieties on a theme, i.e. identity
formation through a process of encounter with the Other. Ikku's narrative suggests
the way identity—in this case national identity—is related to the self in a special way,
probably like a garment to the body. I borrow the metaphor from James Baldwin.
"Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of theself," he says in the work I quote in the opening of this essay. The question is ofcourse how tight the garment is in the case of people like the older Yaji and Kita. I
would say it is not so loose (although it is best, according to the manner Baldwin
recommends, to be "a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's own
nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned"). Nevertheless, for the two
travelers, the garment, or their sense of identity, is certainly not something totally
inwrought in their inner selves. The two Japanese fictive characters will never let it95

fall nor be changed, and they may never have the will nor the power to trust in theirown nakedness, but it is conceivable to see them combining the garment with othergarments and still look natural. In their case, identity is not set against difference. In
contrast, Robun's story is an instance in which the self not only resists any degree of
nakedness, but also objects the use of garment as a metaphor for identity. They see
their particular notion of Japanese-ness not only something imbedded in their being,
but its very sum and substance. It is singular.
This is the beginning of what I call "Identity-Fetishism." It starts with being
aware that there is a different way of doing a similar thing. Afterward, the difference
is attributed to a group of people marked out by certain specificity, either ofgeographic, historical or biological nature. The final step is to transmute thedifference into essence, or race, or paradigm.
Actually, there is nothing unusual in the awareness of being different fromone group of people and being similar to another group. This generates a need tohave a common symbol of belonging and develops into a more structured form of
self-understanding, as well as a way to deal with the world outside. In its more
assertive expression, it is both an assertion of presence and a statement of defiance.
The result is today's politics of identity, through which people from different gender,race and other badges of belonging come forward and negotiate to have their voices
heard and their dignity respected—sometimes in a violent way.
To be sure, this is all a natural response to long years of discrimination or
exclusion. But there is also another way to explain the hardening of boundaries
between different groups of people. The world today comprises of an expanding
market economy generating the rise of capital and prevalent commodification. And,of course, many things go unevenly. The ensuing fragmentation of large and small
communities brings along a centrifugal upturn. A sense of loss and uncertainty
comes right after it. The crisis of both of Marxism and the liberal ideal everywhere
helps to fan the embers. A great number of people begin to secure an identity and arole in the cosmos immune to erosion.
It is no wonder that one of the impacts of "progress" in East Asia, the Middle
East and Africa, in which a sector of the society lays claim to modernity, is a visible,
often noisy, return to "tradition." It is a dialectical vortex of centripetal andcentrifugal forces. At a time when technology and the allure of modernity isseemingly undermining the distinctions between cultures, a local drive for power
comes to the scene to assert itself and make a statement of its uniqueness, carrying
the banner of "nationality," "ethnicity" or "religiosity." In a sense, it is probably notvery different from what Clifford Geertz calls "moral double-bookkeeping."7 Today, agreat number of people, while eagerly embracing the high-tech gadgets they acquired, try to revive once-forgotten symbols, rituals, and structures. They take great
pains to construct, and invent, "the uncorrupted source," or "the pure origin," or any
kind of primal paradise. They happily put forward the premise that social groups
have essential identities, and that your "culture" is your destiny. This is probably the
explanation of the upsurge of Islam, Hindu, and Christian labels of"fundamentalism." This is also probably the explanation of the use of Confucianism

96

both to boast of East Asian economic achievements and to discourage democraticchanges.
What is curious is that this revival of tradition goes hand in hand with thedrive for more modernization. Let's take Singapore as an example. In many respects,
Singapore is a contemporary paragon of a modernizing Asia. It has one of the mostproficient bureaucracies in the world and efficient judicial institutions. It has become
an excellent environment for international trade and investment—a perfect milieu togenerate a consistently strong economic performance. It is essentially a secularized
system created to serve a well-defined goal and the traffic of messages dominated bypurposive rationality. Seeing Singapore from this perspective, one may wonder
whether this is a place of the grim Weberian image of the modern future, where
people live as "specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart." However, thisinterior of near-perfect modernity also stores up something different. While
employing the same political mode western countries use, Singaporean government
leaders keep drumming in the virtue of "Asian values," particularly their Confucian
variation.
Primarily they do it as a resistance to the American and European ideals ofhuman liberty which are often propagated by the media and promoted throughpolitical diplomacy. No doubt, there is an element of resentment in this new
insistence on traditional values. The Singaporean ruling elite, like many of its
colleagues from other parts of Asia and Africa, is understandably uneasy, evenangry, finding itself living in a world constructed, maintained and judged by others.
Hence the show of independence. But there is also another rationale behind thecurrent "neo-traditionalism." Living for many years in an environment signified byboth a "disenchantment of the world" and an unabashed pragmatism, Singaporeanview of tradition is more in the nature of a strategic action than of a nostalgic
exercise. The return to tradition aims at finding a way to legitimize control andthrough such a control to stave off the "side-effects" of modernization.

The Modern Self
It is commonly known that the modernization process requires technicalinnovations, capital accumulation, marketing and managerial productiveness, and soforth. Its prerequisites are, among others, a drive for efficiency, well-organizedprocesses of production and a rational agreement for frugality and for temporary
forfeiture. However, the very success of economic development has given birth to a
new hedonism. The danger is that the new hedonism, stimulated by massconsumption, will eventually undermine the conditions supportive to a continuing
growth of capitalism. But there is a problem. Unhealthy as the hedonism is, it helps
the consumer goods industry to continue and flourish. To unravel the dilemma, youhave to balance the increasing impulse for prompt prosperity and the expanding
claim for development's gain with a good management of human drives and needs.
In other words, to maintain the vigor of the bourgeois mode of modernity, you have97

to regain the kind of consensus tradition used to furnish—a consensus for common
self-restraint. Hence the recurrent insistence on a nation's "cultural identity."
But there should be a caveat here. A clearly demarcated culture, perceived asa coherently structured entity, is a folly. To be sure, in Southeast Asia, the leaders
persistently argue for "Asian cultural values" in politics. But the concept is
preposterous, since Asia is such a diverse place; not everyone in the region eats withchopsticks, believes in karma, has more than one wife, or has a strange work ethic
indescribable to an American Mormon or a Calvinist Swiss. It is equally difficult toapply a single-culture concept even to a seemingly homogenous group of people likethose living in Bali and in Japan. Under the rug of similarity, there is always aninternal struggle between different local expressions to achieve a certain degree ofsocial predominance. Some are repressed or assimilated. In a less liberal atmosphere,
they are even presented as being mere parasites living outside "the center" andgetting their vital sources from what "the center" offers. Yet even the notion of "thecenter" is problematic. Cultural expressions take place in the contested space of social
existence. The winner calls the shot. He or she makes his or her kind of symbols andstructures the only legitimate origin of meaning. The loser immediately becomes theunwelcome Other.
For this reason, I'd rather use a different approach to "culture." To me,
culture is simply a process of production of intellectual and artistic resources. The
keyword is "process." Of course, old-school ethnographers (also ideologists andpolitical leaders) tend to ignore it. They prefer to talk about established rituals, social
formations and structures. They are oblivious to the fact that the description of theserituals, social formations and structures are likely the results of an "experiencedistant concept," (as contrasted to "experience-near concept," to use psychoanalytic
jargon), that say very little about what is classified and conceptualized. What theethnographers, ideologists and the rest of us have are only parts of cultural texts,
interpreted and reinterpreted by experts and laymen alike.
The trouble is that in reading various cultural texts one often harbors aconsistent bias against the notion of "change." The urge to constitute "a culture" todefine a common identity is the most prevalent mistake in our contemporary
discourse. It freezes the actual catalyst that brings changes and is fraught with
moments of unpredictability during society's creative interplay. In doing so, it moves
against the notion of "text" itself, since it denies the property of a cultural expression
to be mixed or blended with other cultural expressions. No doubt, the labeling servesa purpose. It makes a well-organized cultural catalogue.
This brings me back to the problem of identity, which is a kind of labeling.
Let me tell you one story. I once lived in Bruges, a beautiful Flemish Belgian town
close to the North Sea. It was in mid-1960s, and I believe I was the only non-whiteamong the population of fifty-thousand. Each day the town seemed to reclaim thepresence of history, particularly its own history. The city was first built in the 9th
century. Practically every day I walked on its old cobbled streets. Almost every
morning I passed the charming Rozenhoedkaai canal, marveling at ancient Flemishbuildings overlooking its green, quietly flowing, stream. Every hour the time was98

announced to all corners of the town by a part of Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmuzik,"ringing proudly in the town's sky. As every Bruges person would tell you, the rococo
melody came from the forty-seven carillons played at the top floor of the belfry in theMarket Hall. The town people, the tourist books, and the encyclopedia told me thatthe tower was an impressive medi-eval construction from the 14th century, a part ofthe landscape that has also the ornate 550-years old Stadhuis, the seat of themunicipal administration, around the corner.
In short, the past was a routine presence, but it was not my past. Each time I
passed the Market Place, I was fully aware that even if I decided to be a citizen of
Bruges, with a genuine love for the town, I would never be a legitimate part of its
collective memory. I would always be an outsider, or at best, a latecomer. Everyspring the people of Bruges celebrate their memories during the Holy Bloodprocession. They parade in colorful dresses enacting familiar Biblical stories,
portraying heroic accounts of the Crusades, and recreating the images of theirancestors thus producing their own well-organized catalogue of important eventsfrom Jesus in Jerusalem down to the local medieval burghers. In short, this is their
way of creating a long but clear line out of a rather complicated past. And because
the images of the past are in no way near to the image I have (if I have it at all) of myancestors, or of my own past, the line that was drawn continued to become a borderof identities.
Little did I know that this ritual of remembering is actually a kind of apology
for a previous forgetting. Recently I learned, to my surprise, that architecturally
Bruges is entirely a fake and depends for its charm largely on the British. A new bookby historian Roel Jacobs tells it all. The Market Hall with its belfry turns out to havebeen a 19th century pastiche. The Rozenhoedkaai dates all the way back to 1932.
Jacob's book says that it was the English who settled in Bruges in the mid-19th
century who were chiefly responsible for preserving the town's ancient image, while
the official Belgian attitude was that of indifference.8
But what is the use of "truth" in this matter? Not much, probably. And yet in
identity formation, some half-truths, or even a false premise, can be both powerful
and insidious. More poignant, and certainly more widely known than my Bruges
story is that of James Baldwin in a Swiss village, as he tells it in his famous Notes of a
Native Son. He was the first black man coming to the village, which was not exactly aremote place; it was only about four hours drive from Milano and three hours fromLaussane. In fact, he was a rather familiar visitor to the place; he had been there fourtimes. The villagers knew his name, although they never used it when they talked tohim. They also knew that he was from America, although it turned out that they, intheir charming and naïve manner, never really believed it. For them, and theyexpressed it without malice, a black man had to be from Africa, like all the blacks
they "helped" to convert to Christianity by donating money to the village church.
Increasingly, the writer became aware of how history formed factions; history had
become an exclusive space, representing race, asserting biology. No matter how
accustomed he was to the place and the people, he would forever remain outside theworld which the white people of the Swiss village, and their ancestors, had created.

99

This meant the world of European civilization, its missionary Christianity, itsconquest in Africa, its support of slavery, even its other variations, i.e. the urban
sprawl of New York of which the villagers from one generation to another had neverseen and from which part of the earth Baldwin came. At the end, with a trace of pain,
the essay acknowledges that this kind of history will stay in the black man's mind
like a nightmare he cannot wake up from. He would rather forget his past, but it was
his lot. Let me quote from what he says about himself and his Swiss neighbors:"The most illiterate among them is related, in a way that I am not, to Dante,
Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Racine; thecathedral at Chartres says something to them which it cannot say to me, as indeed
would New York's Empire State Building, should anyone here ever see it. Out of
their hymns and dances come Beethoven and Bach. Go back a few centuries and they
are in their full glory—but I am in Africa, watching the conquerors arrive."9
It is a powerful testimony of anguish. Yet to me the essay, written in 1953,
twenty years before The Price of The Ticket was first published, fails to register asignificant point: even if history had helped to produce Baldwin's "Nigger-ness," itcan have no natural, as well as no total claim over him. Just as the continuity with thepast my Bruges story is a simulacrum from a selective memory, so is the link
between Baldwin's Swiss villagers and New York's Empire State Building of thewhites. The past, theirs and also his, has no single corridor. Besides, it is never simply
there. It is a matter of social signification; therefore it inherits interpretative
problems, of which the answer is never irrefutable. The image of things centuries
ago, or centuries to come for that matter, is not necessarily of a conquering Swiss
tribe taking over Baldwin's helpless African ancestors.
I am using Baldwin's essay and my Bruges story, as well as Robun's
narrative, as a way of arguing that the choice and the representation of a particular
past, like the mapping of people and places in the "path of civilization," can become adetermining line between "us" and "them." And yet it is the capacity of imaginingthat authenticates history and geography. It creates a more or less linear form, maybe
a Caucasian chalk circle, expressing the territorial imperative to mark who should be
inside and who should be not.
Of course, it has something to do with power. Maybe this is the reason why
Foucault's "pancratic" view of the world as something permeated by power thatcomes from everywhere, dour as it is, has quite a strong resonance in contemporary
debates. I have my argument against this, but let's put the matter aside for a while.
Let's put it this way: the capacity of imagining is tied up with the power to sanction
an imagined identity. This makes the role of our "experience" as a keystone of ouridentity questionable. Hence the familiar post-modernist view that identity is aconstruct. In this perspective, our experience of being "black," or "woman," or"Asian," requires, as it were, a constant re-reading. In fact, the post-modernists insist
that our experience has never had a fixed and stable presence to serve as confines ofour social identity. Worse still, as writers of post-colonial studies would urgently
point out, a category of identity involves a particular material history in which a
subject is constituted and indexed (for example, as "Burmese," or "Indian") by alien100forces—and the label sticks. Therefore, as Gayatri Spivak asserts, names like "Asian"
are not anchored in identities. "They are incessant fields of recoding that secure
identities."10
The post-modernist position cherishes differences, and inevi-tably, on theissue of identity, it shows contradictory slants. It has a strong bent to question
consensus-building narratives and an acute misgiving of what it perceives ashomogenizing hegemony. It promotes the praxis of "micro-politics," consisting ofpolitical agendas and actions with neither great theory nor great ambition to build a
New World, in a time when old revolutionary parties have been discredited andliberal democratic institutions spurned. Post-modernist insight is also anappreciation of the abandoned, of the useless, of people thrown overboard. By andlarge, it cheers the political movement of minorities. Accordingly, it has an innate
link with today's noise of identity politics. And yet, its view of identity lends nosupport to strengthening any communal gird, which is a necessary step in politicalformation. In like manner, it impairs the bond created by a group of people as aresult of common suffering, like the Jews after a progom, or the Bosnian Moslems
during a massacre. To them identity is their very survival kit, as a response to being
marked for systematic victimization.
There are also problems arising from the post-modernist delight ofdifference. This has something to do with its dismissive, and sometime distrustfulview of universality. Reading Lyotard's celebrated argument for post- modernity, forexample, is like reading a treatise on tolerance. But it also sounds like an advocacy
for indifference. He rightly finds fault with the claim for universal validity of the"grand narratives." He censures hegemonic discourse posturing as solid "scientific"
propositions and context-free reasoning. Accordingly, he speaks for the need toappreciate different kinds of knowledge coming from different cognitive contexts.
Since their relevant criteria are different, "All we can do is gaze in wonderment at thediversity of discursive species," he says.11 But this espousal for difference played
incessantly, as it were, on Derrida's "groundless chessboard," is actually a mixed bagof attitudes. When it gives credence to the belief in multicultural societies, it
unwittingly also serves as an apology for an apartheid of values. At the end of the
day it may become a respectable "ethics of indifference" towards the Other.
Hobsbawm's timely remark about the end of the 20th century, quoted in the
beginning of this essay, is not about an imaginary situation. It is time, then, to findout whether it is possible to look at the problem of identity differently. Let me begin
with a reminder that identity seems to have become a perimeter of "we" rather thanof "I." The perimeter expands (or otherwise shrinks) in an epistemic moment in frontof the Other. Therefore the "we" is contingent. In the Indonesian language, forexample, there are two distinct words for "we": kita will include the second person,
while kami will exclude him or her. The act of inclusion, or exclusion for that matter,does not totally depend on the side of the person(s) who speak. It depends on aconcrete speech-situation, which is also the case when one has to choose theappropriate word for "I" or/and for "you." I think there is nothing uniquelyIndonesian about it. The Japanese language has many more words meaning "I" and101

often the Japanese use none in their expressions, and French, like German, has twowords for "you." The word in language, as Mikhail Bakhtin reminds us, "is half
someone else's" and signs arise only on "interindividual territory."12 And I think we
can also say the same thing of the constitutive process of experiences and identities:
they are "dialogic" and "situated," and they occur in the creative relation with the
Other.
For this reason, Emannuel Lévinas's insight is inspiring. For him, identity is
not shaped "egologically," but ethically. To be sure, his idea of asymmetrical notionof responsibility (the Other is above me, not reciprocally next to me) may sound too
sweet to the real world of human relations. But we live in an age where so often theface of the victim is smashed and forgotten. The horror of "ethnic cleansing" in theformer Yugoslavia is still with us. Hence the urgency of Lévinas's ethics of the"concrete Other": it is an ethics wary of the insistence of one kind of "we" (kami) at theexpense of the other kind (kita). Its starting point is not a centered subject fixedwithin an identity that claims an essential difference from another identity.
In this matter, it shares the notion of "textuality" of the postmodernist.
Textuality, as Spivak says, is "where the self loses its boundaries." Because there isalways the "trace of the other in the self," identity and consciousness never becomesfully self-present.13 However, there is some- thing that the postmodernists seem tooverlook, something that Lévinas's ethics is somehow capable to suggest, and that isthe pain inflicted on the body during torture, murder, starvation and solitaryconfinement. Through pain, hunger, and sexual desire, the body, particularly theface, is "real": it is something interpreted and yet it is also an agency asserting its
presence. We look at it and find it like a rare piece of glass from a broken mirror,
reminding us of other pieces that may be dumped or crushed in the other side of theroom—and I think that is a moment of our unspoken covenant of being human. The
manifold meanings of birth, sexuality and death provide no final discourse. Yet they
allude to a universal bond before, or beyond, what Theodore Adorno refers to, withscorn, as "identity thinking," which is the kind of cognitive process that puts themultiform tangle of the natural state into abstract grids.
In which case, Baldwin's metaphor of identity may not be wide of the mark.
"Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of theself," he says, therefore, "it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes ofthe desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes,
discerned." This is, of course, not to make identity an inconsequential cover. But it isa way to free oneself each time from any repressive, "colonialist" (or "nationalistic,"
for that matter) formation of subjectivity. Therefore "nakedness" may suggest
vulnerability, and yet ultimately it is the "trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one
the power to change one's robes."14
The issue is, of course, freedom. It means that we are not only dealing with
an issue of the category of space and identity, but a movement of spaces andidentities. As Edwards Said puts it, "no one is purely one thing."15 The disintegrationof the traditional world as well as the old global order has brought along a certain
degree of recognition of the undefinable self. Perhaps, this is a part and parcel of the102

liberating nature of modernization—something many modernizing elite of today
likes to ignore. Admittedly, there has always been a lingering doubt whether humanliberty is what is at stake in the dilemma of political emancipation in a non-European
society. The problem is that in many non-European societies, the individuation
process is a precarious thing. It is not always maintained by the institutionalizationof separate personhood.
A self is constantly a fragile phenomenon, a potential victim of either the
powerful gaze of Authority or of collective project. The question is whether it isdesirable to protect and develop its potentialities. I believe it is, if we share the ideaof creating non-repressive type of order and reason. Order and reason, implied in thequest for modernity itself, tend to trample the indefinable self, by putting it into
concepts of identity and categories. As Adorno would put it, it is always important to
see what eludes the concept, so we may not "drown the scream of its victims."

Notes
1.

Hèléne Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa," in New French Feminism, ed. Elaine
Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (New York: Schocken, 1981), pp. 263-64.

2.

Lecture to the American Anthropological Association, reproduced in
Anthropology Today, February 1992.

3.

In The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Harperand Row, 1972) p. 12.

4.

I am indebted to John Mertz's excellent discussion on the two Hizakurige, "Close
Encounters of the First Kind: Jippensha Ikku, Kanagaki Robun, and the Literary
Construction of National Identity," Asian Cultural Studies (International
Christian University, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo, March 1996, pp. 43-58.

5.

Ibid.

6.

In Homi K. Bhabha (editor), Nation and Narration, (London and New York:
Routledge, 1993), p.11. Renan says: "...the essence of a nation is that allindividuals have many things in common and also that they have forgotten
many things."

7. In his Islam Observed, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 117. One
can discern a similar symptom almost everywhere in the "Third World." Geertz
writes about Indonesia and Morocco. On China, Joseph Levenson reminds us
about the difference between "tradition" as a primary and serious commitment
to Confu- cianism and "traditionalism" as a "psychological device" againstchange. See his Confucian China and Its Modern Fate (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1968), pp. xxix-xxx. On the Arab World, see Fouad Ajami, The
Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 138-200.
8.

Guardian Weekly, November 2, 1997, p. 24.

103

9.

See Notes of A Native Son, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 159-175.

10. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Inscriptions: Of Truth to Size," in Outside in the
Teaching Machine (London: Routledge, 1993) p. 211. An earlier post-modernist
stand on experience and identity is formulated by Jonathan Culler more than adecade ago: "For a woman to read as a woman is not to repeat an identity or an
experience that is given but to play a role she constructs with reference to her
identity as a woman, which is also a construct." Quoted from On Deconstruction(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), p.64.
11. Jean-François Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition, trans. Geoff Bennington and
Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 26.
12. Quoted in V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans.
Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986),
p.12. See also Bakthin's The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson andMichael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).
13. "The Politics of Translation," Outside the Teaching Machine, pp.180 and 179. On
Lévinas's ethics, see Matustik's interpretation: Lévinas's ethics of concrete otheris ever suspicious towards totalitarian ambitions of liberal egological freedom;towards historical projection of the ego on revolutionary identity; to-wards
conservative nostalgia for the ego of a nation, party, totem or church; andtowards the present age ethos celebrating the end of history and the ubiquity of
power." In Martin J. Matustik's, Postnational Identity, (New York; London: The
Guilford Press, 1993), p.191.
14. In his Les Damnés de la Terre, (Paris: Maspero, 1961), Frantz Fanon warns of thedanger of "micronationalisms," which are themselves legacies of colonialism.
"Colonialism does not simply state the existence of tribes; it also reinforces andseparates them." (p.70). This can be used as an apology for centralistic
nationalism in many new nation-states, but it can serve as a warning of how
identity-fetishism based on race, tribe, religions are all as repressive anddisruptive as colonialism. James Baldwin's quotations are from The Price of the
Tickets, Sect. 2, "The Devil Finds Work" (1985; first published in 1976).
15. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1993), p.
336.

104

Globalization and Human Development
by Ishak Bin ShariDuring the last few years a new definition of development has emerged. It is
no longer merely focused on economic growth nor just the rapid and sustained
expansion of productivity and income per capita. It is, rather, seen as a process thatenhances the freedom of peoples, allowing them to pursue whatever they value. In
other words, development is viewed as a process of liberation of both society andindividuals from poverty, deprivation, dependence and exploitation.
This interpretation of human development is important because of the way itinterprets the role of culture. Earlier definitions had but a small role for culture. It
was viewed as merely instrumental—it could help or hinder. In the Asian context,
Confucianism was said to encourage hard work and healthy living, thus promoting
capital accumulation and entre-preneurial skills. Culture was seen not as somethingvaluable in itself but as a means of promoting and sustaining economic progress.
In the fuller definition of development, culture is no longer reduced to thissubsidiary position. Instead, while not denying its promoting of economic growth, itis acknowledged to have a more far-reaching function. Culture is desirable in itself; itgives meaning to human existence. As pointed out by the World Commission on
Culture and Development (1995), "culture is to be considered not as a servant ofends, but as the social basis of those ends themselves."
Human development ought to focus on the individual human being, one
who is both the ultimate object as well as the most important instrument of thisdevelopment. A healthy, well-educated, skilled and motivated labor force isdefinitely a productive asset. However, it must be remembered that human beings
need to work together and cooperate and interact in many ways. It is in this context
that culture plays a crucial role. Culture helps men and women relate to each otherand makes the development of the individual possible. Similarly, culture also defines
how people relate to nature and to their physical environment, through which theyexpress their attitudes to and their beliefs in other forms of life.
It is in this sense that human development is ultimately determined bycultural factors. Indeed, we must recognize that development and economy are partof, or an aspect of a people's culture.
Culture then is not merely a means to material progress. Rather it is the end
and aim of a development defined as an expansion of human capabilities in all forms
and as a whole. Hence any definition of development must recognize terms that
include cultural growth.

105

Globalization and Disparity
While there is a welcome urge to rethink the concept of development, actual
development is not proceeding in a welcome direction. With the collapse of theSoviet Union and the end of the Cold War, market economy and democracy would
appear to have triumphed.
The expansion of trade and markets have produced profound changes in thesocio-economic conditions and cultures of societies around the globe. In fact, thescale and depth of market expansion (encouraged by modern methods ofcommunication and policies of governments and agencies such at the IMF and theWorld Bank) seem to have reached a new stage.
Capitalism and a consequent market expansion seem to reign supreme. It is
common to hear the assertion that we now live in an era in which the greater part ofsocial life is determined by global processes, in which national culture, national
economics and national borders are dissolving.
Central to this perception is the notion of a rapid progress of globalization. It
is said that a truly global economy is emerging, one in which distinct national
economies and therefore domestic strategies for national economic management are
increasingly irrelevant. It is further claimed that the world economy hasinternationalized its own dynamics, that it is dominated by uncontrollable market
forces, that it has its own principal economic actors, that truly trans-national
corporations which owe allegiance to no nation or state and may locate wherever the
global market indicates maximum advantage.
While recognizing that there is some skepticism toward this view, I do want
to focus on some implications of such a development, particularly in the context ofachieving an equitable development—such an important component of humandevelopment.
Contrary to the claims of supporters of economic and financial liberalization,
the movement toward rapid market expansion in the last few decades has beenaccompanied by disturbing trends. In a recent report, UNCTAD listed a number ofthese. They include the fact that world economy is growing too slowly to generatesufficient employment; that there is a widening gap between the rich and poor allover the world; that income accruing capital has gained over labor; that as financegains an upper hand over industry, trading in existing assets has become morelucrative than creating wealth through new investments; that job and income
insecurity is increasing; and that the growing wage gap between skilled andunskilled labor is becoming a true global problem.
In other words, equitable development—an important component of humandevelopment—remains a serious issue. Some statistical evidence indicates that theNorth-South per capita income gap has moved from 10 to 1 in the 1960s to 17 to 1 inthe 1990s. In the Asia-Pacific region where economic growth rates have remained
high, the gap between high income and low income countries is even more acute.
The per capita income gap between Japan and China is 80 to 1, while that between

106Singapore and Indonesia is 30 to 1. Of course, per capita income in terms of the US
dollar does not indicate much about the real living standard or the purchasing powerof a national currency. But in a world of increasing interdependence such a widening
gap is not a healthy sign.
Another disturbing development is the reversal of a trend in declining
income inequality in many countries in the East Asian region, including Japan. At thesame time, as a consequence of the recent currency and financial crises in this region,
there is also been a reverse in the hitherto declining trend of the number of
population classified as living in absolute poverty.
In a multi-ethnic and multi-religioned country such as Malaysia, thesedevelopments may have significant political and social implications. It is also
important to mention that the problems of poverty and of increasing inequality arealso manifested in the increased flow of international and domestic migration within
the region.
Income equalities are also on the rise in other parts of the world. In the US,for example, the growing increase in the after-tax-income of the richest one percent(between 1980 and 1990) is so large that it equals the total income of the poorest
twenty percent. What is more frightening is the fact that this inequality of wealth has
acquired a new aura of legitimacy. It is now argued that this development is bothnecessary and inevitable; it is justified as a small price to pay for the many "blessings"
of capitalism.
In part this increasing trend of income inequality is partly to be explained by
the weakening of working class power and the strength of the trade union movement
as a result of globalization, the resurgence of a free market economy and otherdevelopments which fragmented the solidarity of the workers' movements. Further,
the decline of the worker's movement in industrialized countries as a political force
means that one of the major functions of the welfare state—namely legitimization—
appears no longer an important one. Indeed, one might say that democraticconsumer capitalism has become self-legitimating. In the absence of a credible
alternative to market capitalism, the inequality and insecurity inherent in the system
is becoming far more acceptable. In fact, it has been argued that the absence ofcredible alternatives and the consequence of the acceptance of inequality, indicates a
new situation, since the birth of industrial capitalism.
Another imbalance growing more dangerous in the world today is thatbetween society and the natural environment—something which severely affects thesustainability of the development process.
In the pursuit of rapid growth through industrialization and the excessive
exploitation of natural resources, many forests are rapidly vanishing andenvironmental degradation and pollution have become increasingly difficult
problems. At the same time, the migration of whole populations to urban areas has
resulted in a huge increase in slum areas, thus worsening the environment.
It must be recognized that increasing disparities and a sharp decline in theliving standards of large sections of the population could provoke a real reaction.
The forms so far taken by such a reaction are not encouraging. Increasing inequality

107and poverty have given rise to an increasing incidence of violence, crime, and otherforms of deviance. At the same time, given the weakness of what has been the
traditional left, right-wing populism and extremism is likely to benefit. Discontent
and insecurity are being channeled into racism, economic protectionism and otherforms of national chauvinism.

The Importance of Civil Society
Given those worldwide political and ideological shifts which have so
privileged the market economy, individualism and competition on the one hand andthe downsizing everywhere of the state sector on the other, what are the options
open to people in their struggle for an equitable and sustainable humandevelopment?
One form of response to the growing anxieties generated by marketization isa stronger role for the state in protecting its citizens against some of the risks ofcompetition. It has even been argued that state intervention is important in order tominimize the social imbalance of openness to the international economy. In 1997 Dan
Rodnik pointed out that the postwar period has witnessed highly contradictory
trends in the growth of foreign trade on one hand and the growth of government on
the other. The increased role of government is particularly striking in the U.S. andthe Netherlands. He further argued that the driving forced behind governmental
expansion during the fifty years after World War II was an increase in social
spending, particularly involving income transfers.
The strong correlation between the degree of exposure to international trade
and the importance of government in the economy led Rodnik to conclude that thesocial welfare state has been the flip side of the open economy. He therefore argued
that in order to reduce the deepening social fissures which might harm society, andto ensure cooperative social bases, policy makers worked out to complement theexternal strategy of liberalization with an internal strategy of compensation, training
and social insurance for those groups who are most likely to be adversely affected.
However, critics of the interventionist state today level two convincing
arguments against increasing the role of the state. First, the experience of our century
reveals a propensity and a capacity of the state for totalitarian regulation andrepression not only of people but also of institutions, social practices and the very
fabric of ordinary life. Second, the state is a strikingly inefficient economic actor. At
the same time, today's world is also characterized by the erosion of the wholesovereign state system.
It is in this context that it is of vital importance to recognize the critical role ofcivil society. This entity has been defined as "the intermediate space between thefamily and state," but excluding the capitalist market economy. As Yoshikazu
Sakamoto in 1997 noted, it is "a democratic transformative public space based on thereciprocal recognition of the dignity of the equal rights of human beings."108

I share the view that the expansion of civil society is crucial to humandevelopment. It will enable more effective roles in three major areas and will check
both the state and the market, encourage the empowerment of the people toward
greater participation, and it will encourage the promotion of new ideals. In fact, as
Sakamoto pointed out, both the objects of alleviation and the ultimate elimination ofpoverty and inequitable development, as well as the prevention of environmental
decay and the restoration of ecological balance cannot be attained by the command
economy as empowered by the state from above or by the neo-liberal market
economy run by competitive corporate forces trying to maximize their profits.
Rather, equitable and sustainable development could be achieved throughthe democratic initiatives of those in civil society itself. For example, the solution of
the problem of environment degradation would require the voluntary participationof every member of civil society in a change of life-style geared to an equitable andsustainable development in opposition to the model of a dehumanized consumer
culture.
In fact, against the powerful march of globalization of the free market, there
have been increasing efforts by those in civil society to look for alternatives. The
examples of the Grameen Bank1 in Bangladesh and the Projek Ikhtiar2 in Malaysia
have, though in their early stages, provided alternative credit facilities to the poorest
in the rural areas of those countries. They are well-known examples of theindigenous initiative in the creation of a real alternative development.
In Japan, some groups of farmers and consumers are now conscious not onlyof prices and safety of agriculture products but also of global environment and thefairness of trade. They now see that even if trade is economically fair in free-market
terms, this does not necessarily mean that it is environmentally, ecologically or
spiritually fair.
At the same time they are also frustrated by the liberalization policies ofagricultural products. They strive to find an alternative linkage between producers
and consumers, not only within Japan but also with other countries. Their efforts
may be small but they have the potential of developing into the establishment of analternative global culture through the power of the people themselves.
In this respect too, the idea of cultural freedom as promoted by the World
Commission on Culture and Development is crucial. Cultural freedom, by protecting
alternative ways of living, encourages creativity, experimentation and diversity, thevery essentials of human development. Indeed, it is the diversity of multi-culturalsocieties and the creativity to which diversity gives rise that makes such societies
innovative, dynamic and enduring.
Hence, in my view, developing a balanced relationship between the statemarket and civil society will be crucial to the attainment of an equitable, sustainablehuman development. We must always remember that the market has always existed
and that it is not a creation of modern capitalism. Thus we need to evolve an
equitable and ethical market.

109

Culture and Development
In conclusion, it is important to again stress that the meaning of development
cannot be taken for granted. Presently, despite the progress made in the conceptionof human development, most economists and politicians still take for granted thatdevelopment merely concerns economic growth, maximized efficiency, increased
production, and consumption.
Underlying this idea is the implicit assumption that all people share the same
destiny, that they are essentially oriented toward the maximization of material goods
and that this is what ultimately motivates them. On the social and political front,
development is equated with efforts to create and transfer institutions which are
believed to be conducive and to support both the economic processes and"democracy." The goals of development are taken as given. It follows that"development" itself has been identified as the pragmatic art of development
management.
However, this meaning of development, as has been pointed out above,
takes into no consideration at all the realities of culture which have to do withpeople's control over their destinies, their abilities to view the world in ways whichreflects their particularly experience.
If development becomes simply a global process whereby the economy andmilitary exert more powerful control and dominate and shape the lives of others fortheir own ends, then whole cultures (meaning beliefs, ideas, meanings, feelings) areleft out of consideration. When this occurs it is meaningless to speak of humandevelopment. As was well pointed out by the World Commission on Culture andDevelopment, development divorced from its cultural context is growth withoutsoul.
It is obvious therefore that development is more than a simple transferring of
economic, political and technological processes from the "developed" world to the"under-developed" one. Unfortunately, from the perspective of conventional
development discourses, it is extremely difficult to conceive of other different world
views as equally worthy of consideration. In fact, very rarely are other ways of life
being considered as having equal value or of providing fulfillment or satisfaction. As
a result, the ways of life of indigenous peoples through the world is being seriously
threatened. The great diversity of human societies, of ways of solving problems, ofcreating meaningful existence, of organizing human relations, of adapting todifferent environments, are destroyed by development as conceived and implemented by the powerful elite.
In an effort to redefine development which emphasizes the importance of
culture it is also crucial to maintain a proper balance between tradition on one handand modernity on the other. Although there are tendencies toward maintaining or
returning to more ancient traditions (including tribalism) most people wish toparticipate in "modernity" in terms of their own traditions.

110

They consider that some features of traditional societies are worth preserving
in their own right, while others will have to be adapted to the requirements of achanging and progressing world.
In fact, some may need to be implanted from outside. Some Asian countries,
particularly Japan, appear to have succeeded in this better than others. Traditional
consumption habits, community loyalties, patterns of cooperation and traditional
hierarchies seem to have contributed to the extraordinary economic growth of Japanand some other East Asian countries. It must be admitted, however, that in recent
years, the internationalization of production and the changing of values thatemphasize individual life rather than corporate life have been leading to someserious problems in these very societies.
In our endeavor to build a better world, cooperation between different
peoples—all from different cultures and with different interests—will be facilitatedand kept within acceptable and even constructive limits only if these peoples can see
themselves as bound and motivated by shared commitments. Thus, it is imperative
to look for a core of shared ethical values and principles. Its efficacy will depend
upon the ability of both the people and the government to transcend narrow selfinterest and to agree that the interests of humanity as a whole will best be served by
the acceptance of a set of common rights and responsibilities.
As pointed out by the World Commission on Culture and Development, thesearch for global ethics will involve culture in a number of ways. Moreover, any
attempt to formulate a global ethics must draw on cultural resources, people's
intelligence and their emotional experiences, historical memories and spiritualorientations. Culture, unlike scarce national resources, will through this process be
invigorated and enhanced rather than depleted.
Involuntary poverty and social exclusion are evils in modern society thatneed to be eradicated. However, all too often the very process of development which
is supposed to alleviate, results in creating more poverty and economic oppression.
For example, in the transition from subsistence-oriented agriculture to commercial
agriculture, impoverished women and children are sometimes hit hardest. In thetransition from a rural, traditional society, in which the extended family takes care ofits more unfortunate members, to a market system in which the community has yet
to develop an alternative welfare system, the fate of these victims is often cruel. In
the transition from rural patron-client relationships to relations based on the cash
nexus, the poor suffer by losing one type of support without gaining the other. In thetransition from an agricultural to an industrial society, the majority of the rural
population are neglected by the public authorities in favor of urban populations. In
the transition from centrally planned to market-oriented economies, and fromautocracies to democracies, inflation, mass unemployment, poverty, alienation, andcrime all have to be confronted.
This does not mean that development is necessarily bad and should be
rejected. What is most needed is the rethinking of the development paradigm. So
long as this is an unequal world of poor and rich, the concept of one world and one
planet cannot be realized. The joint responsibility for the health of a global commons

111

can only be materialized when there exists shared global prosperity. In short,
without global justice, global sustainable human development will remain always anelusive goal.

Notes
1.

Grameen Bank ("Bank of the Poor,") is a financial institution in Bangladesh
providing small, non-collateral loans to the very poor to enable them to startsmall businesses. The loans are paid back in small weekly amounts. Establishedin 1983, the bank now successfully operates in over half of in Bangladesh's
68,000 villages with a total of 2.1 million borrowers, 94 percent of whom are
women. One-third of Grameen's customers are now out of the poverty groups
while another one-third are close to crossing the poverty line.

2. Projek Ikhtiar is a micro-lending scheme which also provides small loans
without collateral to the poor in Malaysia. The project is modelled after theGrameen Bank but with some adjustments to suit the local conditions. The
implementation of the projects is being carried out by a non-governmentorganization, Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM). Again, women are the major
recipients of the loans and the loan repayment rate is more than 95 percent.

References
Dani Rodrik, "Sense and Nonesense in the Globalization Debate," Foreign Policy,
Summer Issue, 1997.
Yoshikazu Sakamoto, "Civil Society and the Democratic World Order,"Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
UNESCO, Our Creative Diversity: Report of the World Commission on Culture andDevelopment, Paris, 1996.

112

Nation in Doubt, Identity in Question,and Hybrid Society
Ota Yoshinobu

A question of identity—put rather crudely, "who am I," or "who are we"?—has been raised in as many different fields as there are in humanities and humansciences; today, it is the question that has been most often raised, and it is thequestion whose answers are heatedly debated in all those fields. What this questionof identity entails exactly depends on some important qualifications that further
complicate it.
I list, as follows, almost randomly, such qualifications: who poses it and towhom, even rhetorically, is it addressed?; in what context is it raised?; when and forwhat purpose is it raised? To illustrate the importance of these qualifications, I wantto contrast this question of identity, posing it from two different positions; that ofdominance and that of subordination.
First, the question most symptomatic of European imperialism was posed bya literary movement called modernism, a movement which emphasized theirreparable loss and nostalgia for the authentic and organic. Those involved in thismovement, including such American figures as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound, viewed their world crumbling into chaotic jumble, aclear indication of which was World War I; therefore, they all went to various
destinations in Europe for the purpose of regaining a sense of self—their identities—
something needed to re-imagine critically the nature of European civilization.
Already in their effort—which I do not uncritically endorse, of course—a question ofidentity was enmeshed with, among others, issues of order, belonging, anddisplacement.
But white European males—exemplars of my first position—are not the only
ones raising the question of identity; in fact, their displacement was chosen andempowered by the global politico-economic regime of the day, while there wereothers who had raised the question more forcefully from the position ofsubordination, the position created by the regime which made Euro-American
modernism possible.
Who I have in mind as an example of the second position is W.E.B. DuBois.
DuBois, an African-American historian and sociologist, stated, in 1903, as follows inthis quotation from The Soul of Black Folk, a question of identity in a surprisingly
contemporary manner:

113

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always
looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape ofa world that looks on in an amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; twowarring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being
torn asunder."Black identity, according to DuBois in this particular writing, was expressedas the negation of self-identity, that is, "looking at one's self through the eyes ofothers." Being an "integrationist," (or "assimilationist" might be a more suitable term
to describe his position in 1903), DuBois still believed in the ideal of becoming a
citizen of the U.S., a country which had been rejecting "blacks" to the margins ofsociety through its racist practices. It is the duty of black elite's so-called "Talented
Tenth" to lead this process of assimilation, which he thought would eliminate what
he refers to in the quotation above as the "double consciousness."
I have quoted at length from DuBois, not because I naively identify myself
with his position vis-à-vis American society, but because I think that he pointed out
difficult issues surrounding the question of identity in the contemporary world.
Formulating as questions, I enumerate them as follows: is a nation an adequate unitof belonging? Or, is the ethnic group an adequate unit? How do "immigrants" relate
to their newly settled countries? What kind of identities are articulated in thisdiasporaic dislocation? How is national identity constructed? At what cost? What is
the role of historical memory in the construction of identity?
Thus, a contemporary discussion of identity needs to include an examinationof various modes of "belonging" to community—nation-state and ethnic group—
precisely when such communities are made problematic as the process ofglobalization constantly denaturalizes the legitimacy of nation-state and ethnic
community as the original and primary source of identification, something thatgrounds a mode of belonging; therefore, I discuss in the following section
nationalism in two forms: one based in terms of nationality, the other, ethnicity.
Then, turning to a critique of nationalism, I examine in the third section the critical
notion of hybridization, also divided in two conceptual polarities.
But, how is such a mode of belonging expressed? One cannot simply express
one's identification with a community, unmediated, as it were. My answer at thisstage is a tentative one, but it is as follows: it is representation in a culture thatmediates the individual to a community that calls one's identity into being. Thus, inthe following section I would like to discuss, despite a fear of appearing overly
pedantic, some key terms such as representation, culture, and identity, as they relate
to a debate on a mode of belonging.

Belonging: Nationality and Ethnicity
Answers to the question, "who am I?" might include such individual
attributes as name, gender, sexuality, familial relations and such social attributes as114

status, "race," nationality, language, religion, and so on. But, to complicate theprocess of answering this question, I would like to point out that gender, sexuality,
nationality, and "race," for example, are not innocent categories; they imply morethan what they mean; connotations always exceed denotations. Being "Japanese" cansimply be a statement of nationality, while it conjures, depending on to whom thisnationality is expressed, historical memories of war, images of economic
expansionism and secretive political body; such memories and images are thentranslatable into stereotypic ideas of being "Japanese": aggressive, passive, secretive,
avaricious, polite, insolent, all of which are necessarily contradictory, as Ruth
Benedict pointed out a long time ago.
Certainly, these connotations do not float in the air, but are sociallyanchored, produced and reproduced in representational practices. Such
representations produce other-representations as well as self-representations, both ofwhich are configured simultaneously; in other words, representations about the Self
are inseparable from creating representations about the Other. Furthermore, since
representations socially circulate, the meanings of these representations are notimmune to re-evaluation by the subjects in different positions, so to speak, theprocess referred to below as transcoding. This process has historically occurred
frequently not only in colonial contact zones but in national urban spaces.
"Who produces these representations and to what purpose in mind?" is avery important question, as it points to the control and deployment of power, yet"who consumes them, and how?" is as important as the previous question, for it also
destabilizes the singularly cohesive view of power. Presentation is interpretable inthe sense that its potential for various conflicting meanings is always real; in otherwords, an act of interpretation pries open potentials for meanings of these
representations. For this reason, an identity articulated in representations is actively
produced by the power that smoothes contradictory meanings and strives for aunitary meaning to which an individual is invited to identify for a time being. But,
the individual in turn negotiates such a meaning, avoiding the final closure to it.
Thus, identity is not "being," but "becoming," as Stuart Hall reminds us, a continuous
act of negotiation itself. According to the process of identity formation summarized
above, national identity is not simply given. For example, an issue of national
identity becomes complicated as soon as it is considered something more than just a
legal issue. A question, "who is Japanese?" has been contested historically as acultural issue; that is, "who is included and who is excluded from this nation?"
Okinawan intellectuals, for instance, from Ifa Fuy¨ to Oshiro Tatsuhiro, haverepeatedly raised the following question: "what does it mean to be Okinawan in theJapanese nation-state?" To them this question comes from their reflections on
experiences and histories of subtle exclusion and marginalization of the Okinawan
people from Japan. This question raised by Okinawan intellectuals is not simply aquestion for Okinawans but is also a question for the Japanese mainlanders; since a
discussion of Okinawan identity is inseparable from that of Japanese identity atlarge.

115

Ifa Fuy¨ (1876-1947), an Okinawan intellectual of great renown, claimed in1914 that the incorporation of Ryukyu kingdom, enacted through several stages, hadbeen "a kind of emancipation from slavery." "Emancipation" is a rather shocking term
to describe the political process of rendering the Ryukyus into Okinawa, the processcompleted in 1879; this statement comes from Ifa's reading of Booker T. Washington's
Up From Slavery published in 1901.
To avoid a possible misunderstanding, I should emphasize immediately thatby the term "slavery" Ifa meant the condition of subordination without a definite
sense of identity: Ryukyuans were suspended in the tension—constructed forcefully
by others—between being Chinese and being Japanese, a condition endorsed by theSatsuma clan which had siphoned revenues from trade relationships between China
and Ryukyu kingdom. Thus, Ryukyu "slavery" financially prepared for the
emergence of the modern Japanese nation-state since it had supplied wealth for
Satsuma clan which was instrumental in 1868 restoration.
Ifa considered national identity something that had been lacking for
Okinawans; in this case, Okinawans as Japanese. His desire for winning recognition
from the Japanese is something akin, perhaps, to liberating oneself from "double
consciousness," the desire for integration also expressed by DuBois. I think Ifa's effort
in reviving the omoro, Okinawan courtly poems, was—academic interest aside—to
establish a historical link between ancient Japanese culture with the Okinawancounterpart. Regaining a historical commonality with the Japanese as represented inomoro poetry was his way of identifying with the Japanese. (Of course, his intellectual
trajectory did not end there, but any extended discussion of it remains outside of thelimits of this paper.)Leaving Okinawa for a moment, I would like to discuss another way of
formulating identity. This time without relying on the promise of integration, one
moves toward the opposite direction, that is, separation. Nowadays this move has
been hotly debated because of its association with nationalism (or, its variant, ethnic
absolutism) that tremendously empowers members through proposing a unified
value system but creates absolute gaps between its members and non-members. The
sharp separation of members from non-members is represented in differences
between cultures. I should point out that it is not only minority groups thatsometimes resort to this mode of formulating identity; the majority does as well.
Thus, according to conservative critiques like Arthur Schlesinger, Afrocentrism, forexample, is a form of tribalism that potentially disrupts American national unity,
because it privileges a distinctive cultural unity among African-Americans, the unitythat results in separation. He is vocal in criticizing it, while he remains silent to suchan idea as Huntingtonian "clash of civilizations, "which is clearly based on the sameorganic and integrated view of culture. Schlesinger considers natural the logic ofcultural separation at the level of nationality, but finds "elitist" the same logic at thelevel of ethnicity.
I repeat that nationalism has not always been the source of evil in thecontemporary world; its status is really contingent on historical contexts as any formof politics might be. Nationalism among minorities, the oppressed and the116marginalized formulates powerful identities through transcoding: a process ofassigning new meanings often opposite in dominant tones to the key terms. For
example, the term, "black" in the U.S. was re-valued by black activists in the sixties as
powerful and positive symbol of identification for blacks—"black is beautiful." In the
United Kingdom the same term "black"—which only white British people had used
to describe non-white peoples—was mobilized in the seventies to consolidate various
urban populations of color such as Caribbean, African, and South Asian.
Nationalism invites people to commit themselves deeply to a community
through various powerful representations of sentiment and historical memories. It is
local and sedentary since it derives its power from territoriality, which is often
represented in such expressions as defending one's "homeland" and, in a case of
scattered communities, a return to such a place, albeit imaginary. It is a historical factthat (local) nationalism has been the driving force behind de-colonization movements
in Asian and African countries since the end of World War II. I acknowledge as wellthat such movements perhaps remained only reactions to Western colonialism;
therefore, they retained the logic of the Mani-chean dichotomy which had informed
the very colonialism that such movements had attempted to overthrow. This is awell-rehearsed point in any contemporary discussion on colonialism. This logic, I do
not think, overrides the power of history; it is incumbent upon us to understand thespecificity of the historical context in which these movements arose and, certainly theconsequences they created.
I present another instance of nationalism from another part of the globe.
Recently, I have been studying Maya Indian nationalism in Guatemala, where theIndians (Indígenas) are the majority rather than the minority; however, the politicalpower of the country is clearly in the hands of ladinos and whites, the minority. The
indigenous population is not biologically distinct from ladinos; Mayas are distinct
from ladinos only culturally: Mayas use one of twenty-two native languages, practicefolk Catholicism, and follow other customary cultural practices in their everyday life.
It is often maintained that Guatemala is a country of "mestizos," the "race"
produced as the result of mixture of Indians with Spaniards: that Guatemala is atruly "hybrid" nation. To assert anything contrary is to rub against this national
ideology; consequently, this ideology simply reduces Mayas to an underclass, whichis in need of modernization. Thus, in the dominant national discourse Mayas are
represented as a "problem," and they are defined by such terms of negative valence
as follows: pre-modern, unsanitary, poor, uneducated and unenlightened, collective,
and so on. This discursive construction of Mayas constantly beckons them torenounce their ethnicity, in short, to integrate themselves into the Guatemalansociety, a modern nation based on the model of European nation-state. This
discursive construct of the Mayas gave rise to a unified Mayan identity. Until
nationalists have re-articulated the notion of Maya for themselves, Mayas conceived
themselves of belonging mainly to linguistically separate counties (municipios) rather
than something like Maya "nation."
Maya nationalism transcodes "Maya" as the storehouse of positive meanings:
ecologically conscious, moral, hardworking, knowledgeable, bearers of wisdom of117

ancient Maya civilization. It represents its cultural heritage in a very essentialized—that is an historical—way, in a manner somewhat akin to ethnographic descriptions
produced by anthropologists several decades ago. It strives toward opening up a
space for Mayas to become subjects of the modern nation-state, Guatemala, without
renouncing their ethnic identity by devising strategies of entering modernity. For
example, they now have created means of transcribing their languages, creating
through vernacular neologism—not direct borrowing from Spanish—vocabularies
necessary for modern life, and even lobbying for official recognition of four major
Mayan languages. At this juncture I consider Maya nationalism an effective means tocombat the power of ladinos; without this form of mobilization the Mayas would beleft with nothing to protect themselves from the powerful discursive constructs that
affect the actions of all involved.

Another View
Now, after defending nationalism not only for its political force but also for
its cultural empowerment, I would like to introduce critiques of nationalism andethnic absolutism because I think there are also historical contexts and moments inwhich such critiques are needed and effective. It is important to keep in mind thatany form of politics remains conjectural; therefore, to use a felicitous expression of
Stuart Hall again, we need to think of it as contingent and positional, that is, "without
guarantee."
One obvious feature of nationalism is its tendency to down play differencesamong members within a community which it tries to represent politically, while
another is to police the boundary between the inside and the outside for the purposeof keeping the inside absolutely distinct from the outside. The unity is created byemphasizing the historical continuity from the time immemorial, establishing the"sense" of linguistic homogeneity, devising an historical cultural essence, if not"racial, "at least shared by all.
This unity presupposed by nationalism has been contested. In the age of"postmodernism" and global economy, the localized community, whether in a formof nation-state or in an ethnic group, might appear (but to whom?) oppressive
because of its drive for unity. While nation-state and organic community have been
declining as the source of stable identity, new representations are produced
discursively; in other words, the systematic and organic concept of culture is nolonger adequate for analyzing current representational practices that produce
meanings (amenable for reinterpretation) because such a concept disregards the nonsystemic aspects of society, both internally and externally. These representational
practices thrive upon positional variations, internally, as well as exploit permeableborders, externally.
Nevertheless, it might be too rash to do away with the concept of culture
entirely, since without it aworld of meaning would be lost. By the same token, it
might be problematic to posit a nomadic subject, which feels free of belonging to any

118community. An alternative is to focus on their presentational practices based on suchideas as "import-export, contextual-tactical shifting, local mix-and-match, syncretic
recombination" (in James Clifford's phrase), as cultural borders are constantly
crossed and re-crossed, new technologies invented and marketed as commodities areappropriated creatively for the purpose of making the contemporary life nonidentical. Thus emerges a critique of homogenous national time and space. Then,ideas of boundary crossing, syncretism, creolization and intermixture constitute a
powerful critique of nationalism that defends the idea of purity: "hybridization," inshort, is a key critical term in contemporary discussions of nationalism.
But, as Renato Rosaldo has astutely noted, the idea of hybridization oscillates
between two conceptual polarities: (1) hybridization as in-between space of two
zones of purity; naturally, the idea of purity is logically prior to that of hybridization(2) hybridization as ongoing condition of all human sociality; for this reason, the ideaof hybridization is logically prior to that of purity. Below I discuss these two
distinctive conceptual polarities, the separation of which is, according to some,crucial for re-imagining a possibility for a new form of sociality that does not fall into
the trap of nationalism.

Hybridization as a Critique of Nationalism: Two Polarities
First, hybridization as a cross between two zones of purity. If, fornationalism, locality and stasis are key terms, then, for its critiques, the concept ofmobility is a key term, traveling becomes a powerful metaphor, and the nomad is nolonger pre-modern figure, but a powerful prototype of "post-modern" individual.
Exile no longer carries a negative meaning, but is positively re-evaluated as one ofsuch "post-modern" metaphors of displacement. Everyone in a sense becomes "crossracial, polylingual, and multi-contextual" (in Gomez-Peña's phrase), in short, ahybrid. Since such a person is a product of difference rather than identity, it might besomewhat misleading to call this form of identity as "identity" at all. In a sense, thisnotion of hybridization celebrates a concept of a nomadic subject, as mentioned
briefly at the end of the previous section.
Accordingly, this concept of hybridization has destabilized the metanarrative of nation-state, as much as the transnational flow of capital and labor
power has rendered obsolete an understanding of contemporary economy framed
exclusively in terms of national economy. George Lipsitz, a scholar in American
studies, has once written that "the power of transnational capital means that all of us
must become transnational too."
Although historically important as critique of many such taken for granted
ideas linked with nationalism, this way of formulating an idea of hybridization, someargue, is a largely self-congratulatory stance for intellectuals in post-industrial
societies; worse, it confuses various modes of movement of people into one grand
metaphor of traveling: in what aspects is a position of political refugee from
Guatemala living in Illinois under the protection of a Catholic priest similar to (and119different from) that of privileged intellectual from India, now teaching at a university
in Chicago?
But, the most notable short coming of this facile embracing of nomadism, it
seems to me, is its tendency to regard "community and belonging" as a non-issue, inother words, its total denial of consideration for developing a possible form ofsociality. I find it crucial to keep this critique of "post-modern" nomadism, since I
believe that nationalism and its postmodern critique cannot be narrated in an
evolutionary sequence; both remain equally contested ideas.
Second, hybridization as on-going condition of all human sociality: this ideaof hybridization is somewhat counter-intuitive because it posits that hybridization is
logically prior to purity. According to it, what needs to be examined is the ideologicalformation of zones of purity, as expressed in nationalism and ethnic absolutism. In ahistorical examination it takes a form of constructivism, from whose perspective
nation-state premised on the linguistic, cultural, or "racial" homogenous structure is
not given but historically created. Therefore, this idea of hybridization deconstructs
nationalism, which emphasizes the historical continuity of nation and its people.
It is also effective in criticizing multiculturalism that simply assumes therelative positioning of various cultures would be a solution to the call for more
liberal education, the concept of multi-culturalism entrenched deeply in the idea ofculture as closed system as if it were a language. Since language as naturally given
has supplied a model of multiculturalism, as Sakai Naoki clearly notes, it is so easy toslide into accepting an almost ahistorical, structuralist view of language, which isexpressed clearly in Levi-Strauss's realization that "language can only have [sic]arisen all at once."
On the contrary, Sakai's argument is that the systemicity of language arises
first through the detour of learning another language. Conscious recognition of one's
language comes only when one learns another; this means that a conscious
understanding of "foreign" language is logically prior to that of one's "mother"
tongue, and that the desire to learn another language is an act of establishing someform of understanding—"heterolingual address," to use one of his expressions—where there exists no guarantee of conducting successful communication. This,according to Sakai, is opposite to nationalism, based on "homolingual address," inwhich effective communication—"communion," in his word—is always secured
through the "natural" sharing of language, history and culture.
Similarly, since Sakai does not presuppose the systemicity of language prior
to the intervention of power to form it, the concept of translation, according to him,needs to be reconsidered as one of power. After the translation is completed—the actof establishing links between the previously incommensurable—the systemicity of
two languages appear, in a sense, after the fact. Sakai's position, in short, prioritizes
the hybrid human sociality over the formation of nation-state and its associatedassump- tions about language, culture, and people.
I consider Sakai's critique of nationalism insightful and powerful; however,what seems to be lacking is the historical specificity in which his argument isdeveloped. Although he does propose the "heterolingual address," characteristic of120human sociality open to others, as alternative to closed, exclusionary mode ofsociality, I am not sure how he could envision in concrete terms a non-exclusionarymode of community. For this reason, I regard his critique as a conjunct, effective incertain historical contexts—the U.S. and Japan—but perhaps less so in others.
In contrast, Paul Gilroy's notion of a "Black Atlantic" is a highly specific andculturally grounded attempt to criticize nationalism of any form—whether Europeanor black—for the purpose of developing a vision of hybrid sociality, which is, also
like Sakai's, prior to the formation of organic and bounded view of culture. Below I
would like to discuss briefly what Gilroy proposes and to point some implications
his work offers for this forum.

Linking and Connecting
Gilroy's magnificent book, The Black Atlantic, puts forward two inter-related
arguments: (1) blacks are internal to modernity as it developed in Europe; therefore,
modernity cannot be a monopoly of European bourgeoisie; (2) modernity cannot be
narrated as a gradual development of nation-states. The agents in his counternarrative to Euro-centric view of modernity are black intellectuals, musicians, andwriters, who crossed the Atlantic from the New World to Europe, a direction
opposite to the trajectory of slave trade; through the process of this movement
created is the black political culture called the Black Atlantic, the political conceptionthat privileges "route" rather than "root," which is often the key metaphor fornationalism. The Black Atlantic proposes a hybrid form of sociality called "Diaspora"as alternative to nationalistic form of belonging. "Diaspora," unlike postmodern
nomadism, does not do away with the desire for community altogether, but links
and connects differences in a web-like fashion to create relations without suppressingthese differences. It also aspires to create relations with its adopted locality, as if itwere agents of networking the past, present and future. Gilroy further argues thatsuch linkage is, in the case of the Black Atlantic, culturally specific: various blackmusical forms—from gospel, blues, and funk to jazz—contain a characteristic, "calland response"; through this antiphony, the culturally specific form, the performer islinked, while remaining distinct, with the audience. Gilroy states that antiphonyarose out from spirituals, the storehouse of memory of slavery, which, as Tony
Morrison says, is the beginning of modernity.
I am not in a position to outline a blueprint for developing an non-exclusive
form of sociality (or what James Clifford has once referred to as "non-exclusive
practices of community, politics, and cultural differences") and I know well that sucha blueprint, if exists at all, needs to come out of effort to see things with dual vision:
one eye toward the specific articulation of local history and another toward thespecific vision of future, and the effort in the present is to bring the two together.
Any discussion of identity cannot avoid being political, since identity iscontested precisely because a certain type of political subject follows from a certain
articulation of identity. Identity is discursively constructed in repre- sentations; in121addition to content, form of representations are also made contestable due to the"multi-accentuality of signs" (as vehicles of meanings) that constitute such
representations. Since, culture is saturated with representations, no one can takeculture, the bundle of meaningful practices, for granted. These concepts are priedopen now; none are privileged in a sense that they can ground all other concepts; allof them are open to contest and re-articulation. Thus, the field of meaning, culture,and identity is political through and through. This political implication of ouridentity, in a way, creates a sense of uncertainty or a moment of crisis, as Gramsci
says, in which "the old is dying and the new cannot be born."
This uncertainty, however, is a call for re-imaging the nature of thecommunity. While a community is often predicated on the idea that it is given andassumed, therefore, belonging to a community presents us with a sense of security; asense which helps us maintain the integrity as an individual. This uniformitarian
notion of a community is a predicament, as I have discussed before. But, I suggestthat out of the same sense of predicament and uncertainty emerges a search foranother notion of community as something still in need of construction rather thantaken for granted. Consequently, it still calls for our efforts in bringing it about. Thus,a discussion of identity is inseparable from this search for a notion of community,
unless it a for an uniformitarian one. The search for one's identity, "who am I?"
always entails another search—"who are we?" The question of identity is always
social, but the society must remain open to individual differences.

122

Asia Leadership Fellow Program 1997
Program Staff and Resource Persons

Resource Persons:Hata Tatsuya
Inoue Reiko
Ito Michio
Kajiwara Kageaki
Katakami Keiichi
Lummis, Douglas
Nishikawa Jun
Sakamoto Yoshikazu
Shiraishi Saya
Shiraishi Takashi
Taniyama Hiroshi
Tsuru Akiko
Wakisaka Noriyuki
Yamaguchi Noboru
Yoshino Kosaku

Secretary General, Sotoshu Volunteer Association
Pacific-Asia Resource Center
Secretary General, Japanese NGO Center
for International Cooperation
Professor, Hokkaido University
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan
Professor, Tsuda College
Professor, Waseda University
Professor Emiritus, University of Tokyo
Professor, Kyoto Bunkyo University
Professor, Kyoto University
Secretary General, Japan International Volunteer
CenterExecutive Secretary, Japan NGO Network
on Indonesia
Editorial Writer, Asahi Shimbun
Colonel, National Defense Agency
Professor, University of Tokyo

Izu Retreat Participants:
Thanet Aphorusuvan
Hamashita Takeshi
Koizumi Junko
Nagafuchi Yasuaki
Sekimoto Teruo
Tsuboi Yoshiharu
Wakisaka Noriyuki

Lecturer, Thammasat University
Professor, University of Tokyo
Associate Professor, Tokyo Universityof Foreign Studies
Associate Professor, Nagoya Institute of Technology
Professor, University of Tokyo
Professor, Waseda University
Editorial Writer, Asahi Shimbun

124

The Japan Foundation Asia Center
Masahiko Noro
Mariko Oka-Fukuroi
Maho Sato
Alan Feinstein

Managing Director
Director, Intellectual Exchange Division
Intellectual Exchange Division
Coordinator

The International House of Japan:
Mikio Kato
Tatsuya Tanami
Isamu Maruyama
Naoko Shimamura

Executive Director
Program Director
Chief Program Officer
Program Officer

Rapporteur/ALFP 1997 Program Report Editor
Ibarra C. Mateo

125

Asia Leadership Fellow Program 1997 Program Report

Culture, Development, and Emancipation:
the search for a new paradigm
Published by The International House of Japan
March 1999
Printed and bound by Seibundo Printing Co., Tokyo, Japan
Copyright © 1999 by
The International House of Japan
5-11-16 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan 106-0032
Tel. (03) 3470-3211
Fax. (03) 3470-3170
All rights reserved
The International House of Japan, incorporated in 1952, is a private, nonprofit membership organizationcommitted to the furtherance of international good will and understanding. Housed in a handsome
structure built in 1955 and renovated in 1976, it is a working international community directly
engaged in a variety of programs that embody free exchange and the interaction of ideas to foster a
climate favorable to international cooperation and understanding.