The Japan Society Review 60
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 60 Volume 10 Number 6 (December 2015)

End of the Dance

The late Lady Bouchier’s memoirs reviewed

The State of the Discipline

Sage’s welcome new textbook: ‘a significant contribution to a small need’

Global Shifts

Japan, 1967-’72: Reports from the British Embassy in Tokyo
For the last 18 months there has been a pause inproduction of The Japan Society Review, although reviews
have continued to be published online. We are now
delighted to be able to resume print production of thisbimonthly publication, and over the next six months will
also be sending out the missing issues. As ever, we are
keen to welcome new contributors with an interest in andknowledge of Japan, and also welcome suggestions as tobooks, films and events that we should be covering. Our
thanks to our previous Editor, Sean Curtin, who initiatedand developed this publication over eight years.
Earlier this year, the Japan Society had been looking
forward to hosting a book launch and talk by author,translator and champion of Anglo-Japanese relations
Lady Bouchier (Dorothy Britton), whose memoir Rhythms,
Rites and Rituals: my life in Japan in two-step and waltztime was published in March. Sadly Lady Bouchier passed
away on 25 February, shortly before the event, and thebook launch became an ocasion to remember and pay
tribute to a remarkable woman. In this edition of The
Japan Society Review Sir Hugh Cortazzi reflects on her
eventful life as recorded in Rhythms, Rites and Rituals.
Many Japan Society members will also be familiar
with the work of Nosaka Akiyuki, who died on 9 December
2015, aged 85. Already well-known in Japan, Nosaka
gained international recognition when his Grave of theFireflies – a tale of civilian survival at the tail-end of theSecond World War – was adapted by Studio Ghibli in
1988. Shortly before he died, Pushkin Children’s Books
published a translation of his The Whale that Fell in Love
with a Submarine, a collection of twelve short stories inthe same vein as Grave of the Fireflies, each set on the dayof Japan’s surrender in the Second World War, reviewed
here by Annabelle Sami. Nosaka lost his adoptive father
and two siblings during the war, his mother also having
died shortly after giving birth to him, and this bittersweet
collection of war stories channels these experiences.
The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies is amajor new text tackling the current state, history and possible
future of Japan Studies; here Richard Coxford offers his
assessment of this important new collection of essays.
Lastly, scholar-diplomat Sir John Pilcher served as
Ambassador to Japan from 1967 to ‘72, a period in which
Japan’s economy and power grew significantly and her
relations with the United States became increasingly
strained. In The Growing Power of Japan, 1967-1972, Sir
Hugh Cortazzi, (who worked with Pilcher during theseyears and was himself Ambassador to Japan from 1980
to ’84) has collated many of Pilcher’s detailed reports toWhitehall, and in his review, Japan Society Chairman, Sir
David Warren (Ambassador to Japan from 2008 to ‘12)
assesses the insights offered by these reports, and asks how
many of Pilcher’s conclusions remain pertinent today.§William Upton

Contents
1)

The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies edited
by James D. Babb

Editor

2)

The Whale that Fell in Love with a Submarine
by Nosaka Akiyuki

Reviewers

3)

Rhythms, Rites and Rituals: my life in Japan in two-stepand waltz-time by Dorothy Britton

4)

The Growing Power of Japan, 1967-1972 edited by Sir
Hugh Cortazzi

William Upton
Richard Coxford, Sir Hugh Cortazzi, Annabelle Sami and Sir David Warren
Latest Reviewswww.japansociety.org.uk/resources/the-japan-society-review(Image: The Growing Power of Japan, 1967-1972, cover)The SAGE
Handbookof Modern
Japanese
Studies
Edited by James D.
Babb
SAGE Publications
Ltd (2015)
613 Pages, £110
ISBN 978-1-84860663-0
Review by Richard
CoxfordThe SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies
does exactly what its title and understated coversuggest, providing in unassuming fashion an immense
examination of the current state, history and possible
future of innumerable aspects to the study of Japan. It
would be folly to attempt to go through the career ofevery one of the 33 contributors, but suffice it to saythat this is anything short of a stella cast. In some ways
there is exactly the composition of authors one might
expect, with a preponderance of Sheffield, SOAS, St
Anthony’s College Oxford and the British Association
for Japanese Studies linkages running through mostof the contributors. Naturally there are big names who
did not contribute, but this is intended as an accessible
general text. In any event, what really makes this book?
Individual authors, tasked with providing an
engaging and sufficiently concise overview of an entire
country by necessity tend to engage in some heavy
diluting. This book avoids this; it introduces Japan asboth a subject and a nation, to the point where almost
any reader will learn something new. This collection,
while the writing can seem choppy because of theimmense number of references in any discipline metanarrative essay, is broad without being random, andis exceedingly well done. It would do readers of theJapan Society Review a disservice to deconstructeach chapter’s arguments in depth because somedisciplines are entirely alien to this reviewer, so instead,the general scope of each part will be sketched out.
The titles of the four parts (Land, History andCulture; Society; Medicine and Health Care; andEconomy) embody such a broad brush approach toJapan as an issue as to be interchangeable, although
the chapter listings within them give some clear
direction. ‘Land, History and Culture’ sets the tone
2

perfectly with a measured chapter by Andrew Cobbing
on historiography and the shifting identities of Japan
to authors and to the Japanese since the nineteenth
century. Delving into the debates just enoughto tease out geopolitical ulterior motives behindstudies or results, it centres around the perenniallysignificant questions, such as when ‘Modern Japan’
began, Japanese nationalism, and identity projection,
both abroad and at home, particularly Hokkaido andOkinawa.
The chapter on social and cultural anthropology
provides a social scientific response to Japanese
conformity, the contest between what is modern
and what is tradition, and how globalization andconsumption have been experienced by the Japanese.
Religion (or religions) in Japan usually serves as abarrier to insider knowledge for those of us comingfrom Western European philosophical and religious
traditions, but Lucia Dolce delves into the topic withdiligence, cross-examining how it can intertwine with
politics (kōmeitō, for instance), Japanese modernity,
state identity (just think of Yasukuni shrine), plus theambiguity as to whether Japanese religion is in fact a‘religion’ as defined by the West. With methodologicaland historiographical variegation greater in religious
studies than might be said for other humanities, shedoes a tremendous job abbreviating them.
‘Mass Media’ opens by denoting the term ashistorical, because the internet has surpassed any
archaic notion of mass media, and then proceeds
to a discussion of popular culture, politics andrepresentation in the media. Nishiyama Noriaki
provides a very stimulating chapter on natural andcultural heritage management in Japan. From theoutside Japan might appear to be successful inprotecting its heritage, but he shows how much more
complex the story is. It certainly surprised this reader
to find that Japan has no equivalent to our National
Trust, and waited 22 years before ratifying the UNESCOWorld Heritage convention.
Human geography begins with an ambitious
sounding section on ‘What is Japan’ but also affords
for observations on the state of geography as adiscipline in Japanese higher education through time,
and the modern Japanese diaspora. Anthony Rauschprovides a chronology on the conceptualisation of theJapanese nation as a whole, and gets into questionsof decentralization and depopulation from rural tourban landscape, and makes a surprising conclusionthat Japanese post-war ‘growth’ had a negative net
effect on regional governments, bar the two where
Issue 60 Volume 10 Number 6 (December 2015)

Japanese identity projection was strongest: Hokkaido
and Okinawa.
Second in the thematic bookmarks is ‘Society’,bouncing from education to feminism, sexuality
and gender equality, to policing and ‘anti-social
behaviours; in Japan. Japanese education’s bare-bones
functionality is described so that an unfamiliar reader
will follow the debates on governance, reform, and thehighly charged political issue of whether patriotism orinternationalization holds more sway in schools. The
question of teaching Second World War history is
mentioned, but cautiously. Vera Mackie proffers thatJapanese feminism has been built upon international
linkages, while Mark McLelland debunks myths about
Japanese sexuality and describes the great internal
debates, reviewing the legal, education and media
histories of sexuality, both standard and ‘minority’.
Statistics on female upward mobility makefor stark reading in the chapter on ‘Gender Equity’,and the comparison of laws and their enforcement
records likewise suggests that there is much room
for improvement. David Johnson then jumps ontothat erstwhile question: ‘Why is Japan so safe?’ before
picking apart the achievements of Japanese policing
and police accountability, an issue also often brought
into question.
When it comes to organized crime Peter Hill
focuses on the yakuza, a subject particularly relevant
given that their popular image is projected worldwide
through film and TV, yet people wonder why they
still exist at all. A plethora of fraudulent schemes also
make for entertaining reading in this salacious but
intellectually sound chapter.
Part 3, ‘Medicine and Health Care’, is arguably themost technical, and myth-breaking. The Western imageof Japanese health care is of clear success, and thepreliminary chapter shows its transnational borrowings
and more recent global status as a pharmaceutical
giant of sorts. However despite the clear successes ofJapanese healthcare, the difficulty and ambiguity of its
nature ‘on paper’ makes for an interesting rejoinder.
Thereafter are some very interesting summaries of
medical education in Japan, the medico-legal issues,and the rather rarely mentioned subject of mental
health. The Japanese debate about malpractice canprovide subtle comparison to British approaches, butwhat really struck me was the Japanese question ofwhether telling a patient the truth (say, that they havecancer) can hurt them and therefore should be doneor not.

Issue 60 Volume 10 Number 6 (December 2015)

Part Four, possibly the meatiest section, isreserved for politics and foreign relations. Questioning
the appropriation of ‘political “science”’ in Japan,
notably in the postwar movements towards ‘AngloSaxon’ methodologies, or as the early borrowings
are described, ‘American imports’, it makes a call for
greater reflexivity in political studies regarding Japan.
The LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) are a wondrous
enough political construct to merit citations in two
successive chapters, which span the whole series of
postwar elections to pick apart and understand LDP‘dominance’, then question the nature of postwar
democracy itself by wondering whether there aremeaningful electoral choices and how, in spite ofreforms, these doubts linger. After this comes thesociological concept, with a cross-examination oforganizations, welfare, religions, minorities such as
the Ainu, and foreigners. Once more the sense that
local governments do more to please foreigners andpromote their rights than the central government issolidified. Perhaps that says less about Japan and more
about human nature; relationships come throughmore readily in local government than the strained
national ones that also juggle the finances and granddiplomacy which often undermine good treatment ofimmigrants. The give and take between civil society
and government also extends to discussing protests,
be they derived from labour unions, gender equality
movements or political extremism.
Japan’s place in international society is expertly
dispatched as an issue by Christopher Hughes, Hugo
Dobson, Paul Midford and Caroline Rose. Together theirchapters examine what drives Japanese diplomacy
and how it no longer fulfils any image of a ‘reactive
state’, how ‘globalization’ affects interpretations, andrelations with the principal powers of America andChina. As Dobson defines globalization, it makesfor very worthwhile discussion of the old notion ofJapanese exceptionalism in the present day, and how
this transnational, multi-level factor reaches into andalters economics, politics, security and so forth.
Midford’s chapter on the Japan-US alliancesquarely faces down all of the distinct sides to why
the alliance exists, whether it is an equal one, and theever more pressing question of whether it is a ‘help
or a hindrance’ in Japan’s diplomatic manoeuvrability
within Asia. The backbone to the analysis is hard
to resist: that of two democratic nations withinestablished norms watching a relationship grow outof Cold War prerogative into an East Asian stability
mechanism par excellence. Rose, meanwhile, reminds
3the reader that Sino-Japanese relations go beyond
present hostilities and the generational changes inthe two nation’s political classes, as pretty much allperiods and aspects remain in academic focus withhigh potential, primarily due to the opening of many
new archives.
The fifth and final part addresses the Japanese
economy. A summary of the structural changes,
oversight and developments since the ‘lost decades’
ends with an honest assessment of present and futurechallenges. The chapter on Japanese business andmanagement makes very interesting points and takes
a historicist approach to proving them, looking fromthe Bakufu until the 3/11 triple disaster at specificcultural turning points. Thereafter the economy
section shifts to decidedly trickier sociological matterssuch as the psychological factors behind consumers
and consumerism, and the various floating definitionsof ‘purchasing groups’ like otaku or Young Men, andlabour relations and unionism in Japan since the endof GHQ in 1952.
When it comes to discussing the issue of foreign
workers in Japan, there is a very critical stance looking
statistically at the flexibility of visas, the biggest
immigrant communities, the difference between
regular and irregular migrants, and the overall
dissonance in Japanese policy on immigration. The
number of foreign residents in Japan compared to any
other OECD country is decidedly low, which can seem
like a deficit of logic when reviewing Japan’s labour
shortages, while dissonance between the intention
and the result of policies evidences that seeking only
the highest skilled immigrants is not fool-proof, andalso how local policy is more amenable than national
policy. Agriculture, the usual tricky question plaguing
current free trade negotiations with Japan, be it thebilateral EU FTA (free trade agreement) or the TransPacific Partnership, gets its own chapter, providing
insight on its decline, protectionism and reforms, notto mention the potential benefits of gaiatsu (external/
foreign pressure).
The book ends on a subject that for many has
acquired a great deal of gravitas since 3/11, Energy –and it proves very informative at this interesting time
as Japanese nuclear stations are reactivated. Ranging
from energy source to energy source rather thanany over-elaborate thematic structure, it is an astute
exploration of the changes within Japan since theoil shocks of 1973 and 1979 that saw Japan diverge
from America on Middle East policy, and in the postFukushima political landscape. The idea put forward
4

that Japan is at an ‘energy crossroads’ akin to the 1970s
powerful, and I certainly hope the authors are rightthat Japan will make a substantive energy decision,
although their suggestion that it would be by 2016and ‘the next’ House of Representatives election was
perhaps made before the 14 December 2014 snap
election.
To quote the book itself, ‘When we learn about
Japan we learn about ourselves, and others aroundthe world’ (p. 24). The SAGE Handbook is a brilliant
tool for just that. It serves as a very good primer andreview of the Anglophone study on Japan, and is far
from being impenetrable to the general public. Most
chapters have a bibliography roughly equal in page
length to their essay, and within this cross-disciplinary
study of Japan explicitly execute their own sustainedinterdisciplinary methods too.
So overall, this edited collection is a massive
contribution towards a tiny need. Japanese studies
have been making such headway that academics
might even now say ‘Japan is BACK!’. The SAGE
Handbook exceeds itself by not just capturing a small
portion of that success, but presenting a refreshed andcomprehensive review of the state of play that itself
inspires appreciation of all manner of study on Japan,
and could very well motivate the continuation of theJapan interest boom. §The Whale that
Fell in Love with a
Submarineby Nosaka Akiyuki
Pushkin Children’s
Books (2015)
112 Pages
ISBN-10: 178269027
Review by Annabelle SamiDon’t let the title fool you – this collection of shortstories contain poignant, melancholic and tragic tales
set on the day of Japanese surrender, 15 August 1945.
The issue of war in children’s stories is always
difficult to negotiate and Nosaka certainly doesn’t shy
away from the brutal truth of life in Japan during theSecond World War. The subjects of Nosaka’s stories
meet and create fleeting connections – be it a prisonerof war with a little girl, or a whale with a submarine.
Nosaka throws together these symbols of innocenceand violence against a bleak landscape. But as theseIssue 60 Volume 10 Number 6 (December 2015)

The Whale that Fell in Love with a Submarine is illustrated by Mika Provata-Carlone, who writes: ‘The feeling of thesestories is that we must make the unendurable, the unutterable, the utterly inhuman impossible, and it is this feeling that I
tried to illustrate.’ (www.bookanista.com/war-stories-children/)glimpses of friendship are kindled, they are just as
quickly doused – Nosaka does not imply hope where
there was none.
Nosaka was born in 1930, and each of thesestories is coloured by his own childhood experiencesof the horrific implications of war for civilians. Although
it is important for children to be presented with thetruth, it may be that these stories are a bit too brutal
for a young child to take. For instance, one of thestories ‘The Mother That Turned into a Kite’ describes
a mother’s desperate struggle to keep her child alive
using moisture from her own body as they slowly
burn to death after an air raid. The desperately sad
descriptions, although true to life, may well leave somechildren with nightmares – they certainly did for me.

Rhythms, Rites
and Rituals: mylife in Japan in
two-step andwaltz-timeby Dorothy Britton
Renaissance Books(2015)
256 pages
ISBN 978-1-89882312-4, £16.50
Review by Sir HughCortazzi
What a wonderful
title! And what aninteresting story Dorothy has to tell!
Dorothy Britton was born in Japan on Valentine’s
Day in 1922. Her father was a British engineer whoselife she has described in her portrait of him in Britain
and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VI, (edited
Issue 60 Volume 10 Number 6 (December 2015)

This being said, the stories carry potent messages
that speak pertinently to adults and those children old
enough to understand. The subjects of these stories
are the victims of circumstance, set up by those inpower. On the final page of the book, Nosaka writes,‘On 15th of August, the war the grownups had started
finally ended’ and this is a particularly telling line. The
adults’ war and the children’s book share the same
harrowing stories – tales that children must know if
the book’s pacifist stance is to make an impact. But
perhaps this book is best left for educational purposes,
rather than bedtime reading, and for children old
enough to understand the important messages in thewriting behind the frightening narrative. §by Sir Hugh Cortazzi, reviewed in Issue 10, Vol. 2, No.
4). Her mother was American.
Dorothy was a baby in Yokohama when the city
was destroyed in the devastating Kanto earthquake of1923. She and her parents survived and her mothermanaged to get on board a ship, which took themto Ko-be. After a few weeks in Kyoto they were able
to rejoin her father who had worked hard to help thevictims of this natural disaster.
She learnt to speak Japanese from her earliest
days and first went to school in Yokohama. After her
father’s early death, she had a couple of years at an
English boarding school where she was scolded forspending her free time studying a Japanese school
text book instead of improving her Latin. She laterwent on to school and college in the United States, butalso spent some time in Bermuda, where she becamea keen yachtswoman. There, after the outbreak of theSecond World War, she was employed for a time as a
postal censor, although her knowledge of Japanesecharacters at that time was limited.
5

Dorothy had a good ear, which helped her to bebilingual in English and Japanese and enabled her tospeak French fluently. Her sense of rhythm and her
natural appreciation of sound nourished her love ofmusic and poetry. At Mills College in the United States
she studied composition under the French refugeecomposer Darius Millhaud. She learnt to play the
piano, the ukulele and the harp. She wrote poems
from an early age.
At the end of the war she and her motherreturned to England and for a time Dorothy worked for
the Japan Service of the BBC. They longed to return toJapan where the seaside cottage, which her father had
built on the coast at Hayama, had been taken over asa beach house by the British Embassy. Eventually they
were granted visas by SCAP (Supreme Commander
Allied Powers) and in due course they were enabled
to take possession once again of their beloved cottage
where Dorothy could swim and add to her collectionof shells. Dorothy was at that stage in her life employedas librarian in the British Embassy and later in the British
Council.
I will not attempt to summarize her later life,
which involved much travel around the world andvarious romantic episodes. She recounts these withadmirable frankness. One long-lasting and fraught
affair was with the famous Japanese composer Dan
Ikuma [團伊玖磨] whose opera she translated andwhom she nearly married. Her attachment to Cecil(‘Boy’) Bouchier, whom she eventually married after his
wife died, began when Bouchier (Air Vice-Marshal Sir
Cecil), who had been commander of the air contingentof the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces inJapan (1946-48), was the representative in Tokyo of
the British Chiefs of the Defence Staff.

Sir Cecil had a son, Derek, who had had a tragic
accident as a child. The brain injury which Derek
suffered meant that he could not talk. Cecil was
devoted to his son but feared that Derek’s life would
prevent him from marrying again. Dorothy however
immediately felt great affection for Derek and has
looked after him devotedly since Cecil Bouchier diedin 1979.
Dorothy’s memoir, apart from being a frank andmoving record of her peripatetic life bridging thethree cultures of Britain, America and Japan, has muchto tell the reader about her contributions to culturalinterchange through her inspired compositions andfluent translations including her version of MatsuoBashō’s Oku no Hosomichi.
During her long life in Japan, Dorothy developed
friendships with Japanese in all walks of life from the
Empress to the local fishermen. She also has muchto tell her readers about Japanese life and customs
including marriage. (On one occasion Japanese
friends arranged a formal miai with an American forher, but neither participant took it seriously). She
was much impressed by what she saw of the Suzuki
method of teaching young children to play the violin
and thought that language teachers should try to use
similar techniques. Dorothy herself helped improve
the teaching of English in Japan by her recording
sessions with NHK. She also learnt to appreciate theJapanese ability to remain silent when we feel theneed to keep up a conversation. She notes that the artof English party conversation, which she taught for atime at a women’s university in Japan, was quite new
to the Japanese. §Japan Society Publications: Call for Proposals
The Japan Society has long engaged in the publication of books which further the UK-Japan relationship and / or the understandingof Japan in the UK. These have included works produced or commissioned by the Society, as well as those which have been
initiated by others and published under the Japan Society imprint.
As a general rule, the Japan Society aims to issue one publication each year and is now inviting
proposals for future projects. We welcome proposals for books of any genre, including, but notlimited to, academic works, guides, children’s books and translations of works in Japanese. The
only criteria are that proposed publications should further the aims of the Japan Society as set
out on the ‘About’ page of our website, should represent quality in their field, and must be ofinterest to more than specialist scholars.
Further details on how to apply: japansociety.org.uk/38450/call-for-proposals/
All expressions of interest will be considered by the Publications Committee in April each year,
and those selected will then be presented to the Board for final approval.
6

Issue 60 Volume 10 Number 6 (December 2015)

The Growing Powerof Japan, 19671972: analysis andassessments fromJohn Pilcher andthe British Embassy,
Tokyocompiled and edited by
Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Renaissance Books inassociation with theJapan Society (2014)
433 pages
ISBN 978-1-898823-06-3
Review by Sir David Warren
Sir John Pilcher (1912-1990) was British Ambassador inTokyo from 1967 to 1972. These were important years
for Japan. The ‘iron triangle’ of Liberal Democratic Party
politicians, Japanese business and the bureaucracy,
ruled supreme. It delivered exponential economic
growth, which in turn brought renewed national selfconfidence, not least in the wake of the successful
1964 Olympics, but also serious environmental
damage. Left-wing noises often seemed increasingly
irrelevant. The worldwide upsurge of student protest
was felt in Tokyo, as on campuses in Europe and theUS, but to little political effect. Japan prospered within
the security alliance with the US: but tensions in therelationship remained, climaxing in the shocks of1971, with President Nixon’s overture to China andabandonment of fixed exchange rates.
John Pilcher brought the mind of a scholar as well
as a diplomat to his post. He had served as a language
student in the Japan consular service before WorldWar Two. In the 1950s he had been head of the Far
Eastern Department of the Foreign Office. He was alsoa man with a finely-developed sensitivity to Japan’s
history and culture, and, perhaps less common among
his peers, Japanese philosophy and religion.
He took up his role at a time when relations
between Britain and Japan had yet to achieve thesense of partnership that has existed for much of
the last thirty years. Although there was increasing
interest in the UK in Japan’s economic and social
development, residual bitterness over Japan’s wartime
behaviour persisted. Economic relations were marked
by continual friction over trade barriers which theJapanese showed little interest in removing. Pilcher
recognised the importance of getting British politiciansIssue 60 Volume 10 Number 6 (December 2015)

and businessmen to understand Japan’s potential anddevelop closer links, not just in the commercial sphere.
Until traditional methods of diplomatic reporting
were swept away by instant electronic communication,
it was customary for ambassadors, in addition to their
daily letters and telegrams, to produce longer reports,
known as despatches, which developed broader
themes at greater length. Those of general interest
were printed and distributed widely within the Foreign
Office and other departments. Sir Hugh Cortazzi, one ofJohn Pilcher’s distinguished successors as Ambassador,
has collected and edited Pilcher’s surviving despatchesfrom Tokyo in this handsome volume.
In reading these detailed and sometimes learned
essays, it is interesting to reflect on how, while somethemes are timeless, so much in the geo-politicalcontext has changed. Pilcher was reporting at a time
when there was a fear that Japan was as likely to be
seduced by the ‘pull’ of China as to maintain the alliancewith the US. At the same time, a sense that nationalism
was only dormant, coupled with a suspicion of the
Sōka Gakkai Buddhist cult and its political offshoot,the Kōmeito, encouraged fears of a fascist resurgence.
The UK was withdrawing from east of Suez, the US’s
military might was being found deficient in Vietnam.
How could Britain exploit more actively Japan’s rapid
development as an economic powerhouse? And
wouldn’t this be immeasurably helped, as Pilcher
rightly notes in April 1970, by our joining the (then)
EEC [European Economic Community]?
This book provides both a political history of theera and a fascinating commentary on it. In addition to
the major set-pieces clearly written by Pilcher himself,
there are analyses by members of the Embassy staff on
Japanese social and economic policies, and politicaldevelopments. In 1969, for example, we have a reporton Japanese science and technology innovation andlater a detailed memorandum on the Government’s
White Paper on the quality of life in Japan – health,social security and housing. Trade features strongly
throughout: Japanese protectionism needs to be
tackled and British exporters need to try harder. The
first ‘British Week’ was held in Tokyo in October 1969,
the year that Britain achieved a balance in visible
trade. Pilcher gives an entertaining account of thecommercial and cultural activity that this included(whose idea, one wonders, was it to choose ‘The Battleof Britain’ as the film representing British cinema?).
John Pilcher understood the growing importanceof commercial diplomacy, but acknowledged that itwas not his métier. He had, however, a profound cultural7

understanding of Japan, and it is his cultural analysis
that lies at the heart of this book. His theme, developed
at length across a number of the despatches, is theimportance of understanding Japan as an ‘abnormallycohesive’ society – a monoculture (although he does
not use this modern neologism) – and the Japanese
as a people ‘without a philosophy or moral code ofuniversal application.’ These arguments are extended
across despatches dealing with the contemporary
mood, the role of women and student rebellion. Thereis an impressively detailed and persuasive analysis of
the role of the Emperor, including as the head of Shintō,
submitted in advance of the State Visit to Britain in
1971. Much of Pilcher’s writing is imbued with a senseof regret for a lost Japan that he had known, before
the war and the environmental depredations of rapid
post-war economic growth.
There is some excellent social and economic
observation in these essays, particularly a penetrating
piece from July 1970 on ‘Japan’s Changing Society
and the New Generation’. There is a powerful sense
throughout of the uniqueness of Japan, with anabundance of historical, literary and philosophicalallusion. But some of the political and economic
analysis is modulated through this cultural prismtoo, which seems to me on occasion a weakness. For
example, the ‘Nixon shocks’ of 1971 were turning
points in twentieth-century history: they deserved
a deeper analysis of the geo-political implications
for the Asia- Pacific region than the psychological
generalisations (we even have a reference to the ‘endof the Pinkerton-Butterfly honeymoon’) in Pilcher’s
despatch [the fictional Pinkerton abandons his
Japanese wife in Madame Butterfly].
These memoranda were not written as public
documents, and some of the tone and judgements
will grate on modern audiences. It was customaryat the time Pilcher was writing for Ambassadors toregard their correspondence with the Foreign Office
as privileged and private communication between
like-minded officials and attitudes towards the world
outside that closed circle inevitably seem to us rather
condescending. John Pilcher wrote with considerable
literary style and wit: some of this will strike modern
readers as a little self-conscious, and more than once
the Ambassador finds himself led astray in pursuit of alively metaphor.
The judgements on Japan are also sometimes
couched in terms that an Ambassador today, nervousof a despatch ending up on the front page of anational newspaper, would probably not use. But Sir
Hugh Cortazzi is right not to have edited the recordin any way. He observes at one point that he paused
over including one disparaging piece on the Japanesebusinessman abroad, whose critical tone puzzled
the Foreign Office and which some members of the
Embassy thought ill-judged. But he was right not toleave it out: it is important that the record should be
as complete as possible, even if, with similar themes
being developed over a period of nearly five years,
there is inevitably a little repetition.
How influential were these despatches inchanging British attitudes towards Japan? It is hard
to tell. These lengthy and erudite essays belong
to another age, compared with reports written formodern standards of official and political attention
span. It would have been interesting to have had alittle more here on the FCO reaction to some of thesereports: there is a telling comment by the head of
the FCO’s Planning Staff, (later Sir) Percy Cradock, in
October 1970 on John Pilcher’s ‘hedging his bets’ on
the possibility of a revival of Japanese militarism.
But the level of expertise in Japan, and theunique nature of its complex political and businessculture, is impressive. Many of the younger diplomats
whose research and contacts informed John Pilcher’s
analysis and judgement reflected those values, andwent on to distinguished careers themselves. And
the groundwork was laid during those years – forcloser political contacts (Ted Heath, the first British
Prime Minister to visit Japan, went to Tokyo in 1972,
a few months after John Pilcher had been succeededby Sir Fred Warner), as well as a more focused andprofessional approach to doing business with Japan,
led by Hugh Cortazzi himself.
Above all, one has the sense of a man who
combined many admirable values – modesty, good
humour, a profound attachment to spiritual values,
deep culture, a capacity for friendship and for enjoying
his work, great diligence and conscientiousness,a Rabelaisian wit. Above all we also see in Sir John
Pilcher a serious commitment to building closer links
between Britain and Japan, and ensuring that thosecharged with this responsibility in the UK understood
why Japan mattered, what made it special and how
the complex task of realising this objective could betaken forward. This volume is a fitting tribute to his
work.§