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Q: ... Mrs. Tabei to have an opportunity with you to talk about education and she has requested me through Mainichi Newspaper to have some possible arrangement for talk and she has been creating his...her tutoring, private tutoring schools on a franchise basis and has been very successful, and...

Kissinger: Well, you were nice enough to send me some...books which, however, were in Japanese, so I could not read them very well.

Q: You look very, very young.

K: Thank you very much. Unfortunately I'm not.

Q: That was...what she said about twenty years ago when she saw you on a tv she wanted...have an opportunity to shake hands with you.

K: Well...

Q: For children those that she teaches, she has many questions that she wishes to place. When you were 15 years old, you came to USA,

K: Yes.

Q: and how did you start your study and how did you get education?

K: You are talking now, after I came to America, not before?

Q: What is the force what you have successfully reached to this position after coming over when you were 15 years old?

K: Well, when I came to America, I did not speak any English. But, at that time you had to go to school in English. There was no other way. So, I went to a public high school...and...I went one year in the daytime. We did not...

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007

- 3 -

So then, I went to college at night for two years...to study accounting.

Q: Then, you went to Harvard?

K: No. Then, I went to the army...in 1943. And I served in the army until 1947 in the European theater. Then...

Q: Two years after World War ending.

K: Well, I spent...I was not eligible for release until May 1946. And then I spent another year in college, ah, in a, as a civilian...in a military organization. Then I came back in 1947.

Q: She is asking what was your rank in the army.

K: My rank was very low. I was a, a staff, a staff sergeant. Then, I became later a reserve lieutenant.

Q: At that time, what is your aim?

K: At that time, before the War?

You see, we were..

Q: When you were a soldier.

K: Well, I had no political ambitions. Before the army I wanted to become an accountant. Afterwards I wanted to become a professor.

Q: After your...the army civilian work, did you get into Harvard?

K: Yes.

Q: Was it very difficult?

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K: Difficult to get into Harvard? Well, er...I had very good grades, always. So, Harvard gave me a scholarship.

Q: Is it from the records that you obtained in college or high school?

K: In both. And one other thing, while I was in the army, the army sent me to college for six months. And I had very good grades there, too.

Q: How were your parents? Were they also good in study?

K: Er...my father was a teacher, and my mother was a housewife, she was not very intellectual.

Q: How about your ancestor?

K: Well, on my father's side, they were all teachers insofar as I remember them. My grandfather was a teacher, and his father was a teacher. Village teachers. In little villages. And, my, on my mother's side, they were all traders. They also lived in little villages and they traded...er...cows and grain and things like that.

Q: So, you have both background, trading background and scholars background.

K: Yes.

Q: Before she starts her tutoring school she was only a housewife of the man who was running electric apparatus shop.

K: A electric repair shop?

Q: The machinery and equipment shop.

K: Yes.

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Q: What is your strong impression about your father or mother?

K: They were both strong personalities, but I was intellectually closer to my father.

Q: Did they scold you very much?

K: Scold me? Well...in Germany, there was belief in strict discipline of children. But, I think in Japan, also. They expected me to have high grades. And when I didn't, and sometimes I didn't, they corrected me.

Q: What was the reason that made you decide to come over?

K: It was the Nazi persecution.

Q: Did you move out earlier than other people? Your family came to America earlier than...?

K: My parents, my brother and I. My grandparents stayed behind and they were killed.

Q: Assume that you close your eye, what is most impressive matters that come to your mind or thinking, when you think about your past?

K: What part of my past? Which...

Q: What is more impressive or that you still strongly remember, clearly remember?

K: From what period?

Q: Teen, twenties and thirties.

K: In the twenties, what I probably remember best is my military

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Q: Did you have any culture shock when you came to America?

K: Yes, it was...I was separated from all my friends and it was difficult to make new friends because I didn't speak the language. But, I'm very grateful to America for giving me the opportunity.

Q: When you start think about going into politics? Is it after you start teaching at Harvard?

K: You know, I never thought of going into politics, that was an accident. I never planned to go into politics.

Q: You wanted to stay in the scholarly work?

K: Yes, it was an accident. Because in 1954 when I was still a graduate student, Nelson Rockefeller asked me to work on a committee. Nelson Rockefeller was then the President's advisor for national security. It wasn't exactly the same but a similar job. And that was the first time I did anything for the...for the Government. And from there, I then became a good friend of Nelson Rockefeller and he became Governor of New York.

Q: In Japan, the...the graduate school, like you were studying, is to be said "ivory tower" and it is isolated from other side of the world, but for those people there, why did you go into politics and it is very hard for Japanese people to consider that there is possibility for those people in graduate school.

K: Well, I must tell you, it is very rare in America. If you do it statistically it happens very rarely but there was a change in America. Before the Kennedy administration, no professor ever was given an operational job. After that, it started and then I became one of those. But to show you how accidental it was, I only met...I had only met President Nixon once for three minutes before he was elected. And, er...and, I had always supported Nelson

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Q: Where was...er...or what was the chance that the outside people found your talent in politics? Where or how did people find your talent in politics?

K: How did they discover me?

Q: Yes.

K: Well, I had written...in 1955, again almost by accident, I wrote an article in _Foreign Affairs_. I say "by accident" because I had run into a friend in...on the campus of Harvard, who showed me a letter by a friend of his, dealing with strategic issues. I wrote him a comment on that letter. He sent that comment to the editor of _Foreign Affairs_. _Foreign Affairs_ then asked me to write an article. On the basis of that, I was asked to do a book, which dealt with...it was called _Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy_.

Q: You are very active in a movement in addition to what you write. Is it because of your experience as an army?

K: No. I...first of all I like to work. So, I'm always doing something. I don't think that the army was all that important. It was not that important in shaping what I did afterwards. The army was very important for me for getting to know Americans because I served with a lot of Americans.

Q: Normally, when do you study?

K: I normally read at night, and on weekends.

Q: You will not forget once you heard? When you hear one thing, you will not forget?

K: When I read something? I don't forget the basic ideas, I sometimes forget the details.

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Q: You moved around so much and what is the country or the place you liked best excluding America and Germany?

K: There're many places I like. Really I like most...many places. I like France, Spain, Italy, Egypt, Kyoto, and China, Xian and Beijing. Those are some of the places I like best.

Q: You experienced many things and you feel anything that your experience helped growing for your characterizing yourself?

K: Well, coming to a foreign country forces you to get to know yourself. The army was very important. Of course, my college education was important. And then, working in the White House, I had to learn many things because that's a different world. It has an atmosphere of an imperial court.

Q: Outside army, did you have experience that, you...which made you to pray to the God?

K: Frankly, those are things I don't really like to talk about in an interview. My religious experience...

Q: Telling by herself, about herself, she was impressed that she has some chance to see you some time in future and this has been realized. Therefore, this is her belief.

K: I'm honored.

Q: Do you like history?

K: Do I like history? Yes, I'm very fascinated by history.

Q: What part of age you have interest very much?

K: What part?

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K: Er...well, in America. Well, it's different periods in different countries. In America, I'm interested in the very beginning, the first 25 years. Then the civil war, and then the period from World War I on.

Q: How about ancient era?

K: Ancient era I have only come to know more recently. And I've only started to read Chinese history, in some detail, and Japanese history I have tried to read about the emergence of the Shoguns, and then the period from 1860 onwards. But, there are many parts of Japanese history I do not know very well. But, I'm...I'm...in fact now, I have a researcher who is doing a paper for me on the subject. I'm very...what, what interests me most about Japan or one of things is the process by which Japan forms such a cohesive society.

Q: Edo era of three hundred years is most peaceful years without any war.

K: When?

Q: In Japan, Edo era where Tokugawa Shogun took Government. What do you think the reason why no war?

K: Well, I am no expert on Japanese history. But I think it marked the establishment of central authority, and then Japan cut itself off all from the outside world, so no foreigners could come in. So, there were no outside, no foreign wars.

Q: How about the American political power? Is it very centralized?

K: No. It's, well...in the executive branch, the President has very central power but there are so many branches of the Government. If they...the checks and balances.

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Q: The power of the President is quite separate from the power of each authority?

K: Yes.

Q: When do you think your character was established or created?

K: Well, I suppose one's basic character is created in one's family. I think my political character was formed when I was in the army where I met a very remarkable man. He was a very learned man and a very powerful personality. He told me what I had never thought of before that I was...he thought I was a...I had a great talent in political thinking. And therefore he was very influential with...

Q: So, you met a very splendid person?

K: Yes.

Q: What was his position, then?

K: Well, he was a very complicated man. I had to leave Germany because of my religion. He didn't. He left Germany, he was not Jewish, he left Germany out of political conviction. He did not have a very high office in the army. He was sort of an assistant to the general of the division in which I served. But, he was such a remarkable personality that the general gave him specific, gave him no special, no specific assignments and he could do more or less what he wanted.

Q: In Japan, those people are, is defined as a person gave you the road or your way.

K: Yes. Quite correct. I mean they gave me...

Q: How to live, a way to live?

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Q: Why did he find you such talent that you have.

K: It was very strange. He gave the speech to my company. And I wrote him a letter saying I...how impressed I had been by his speech which I never do normally. He then came to see me, and we had one conversation and he said "you are talented, you have an unusual talent in politics." I don't know why he came to that idea.

Q: Do you think that he still has your letter?

K: I doubt it.

Q: I guess you wrote a very wonderful letter because he came to see you.

K: You know I don't remember exactly what I wrote. This was forty years ago. It was forty-five, forty-seven years ago.

Q: You never expect...you never know how you will be seeing the people or have an opportunity to have such chance to...

K: I had no...you know, what I told you, you couldn't plan it.

Q: Was it the one reason that you had some change or start of change in your life?

K: Well, I was in the infantry at that point. And he arranged for me to be transferred to intelligence. So, I could do intellectual work.

Q: So, he gave you a change from infantry to intellectual.

K: Yea.

Q: One letter opened up your way.

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Q: Many people and most people have the feeling of failure and how do you redevelop your feeling to further promote, develop yourself.

K: Well, I'll tell you. I have found that whenever I planned something it didn't work out all that well, and whenever I just did what I thought was best at any one moment, it was for the best. So, I never have a long-range plan.

Q: In many occasion, many people got hurt from others or with, in connection with other people's friendship or losing friendship, how do you recover from, yourself, from that?

K: Losing friendship? I must tell you. I am fanatical about friendship. I never abandon a friend. And, somebody would really have to do something, totally treacherous for me to leave a friend. I stuck to the Shah of Iran when everybody else abandoned him. I supported Nixon to the end and he is still a friend of mine. And you can find out in Japan. Even today, every year I visit the widow of Prime Minister Sato and Prime Minister Ohira. Well, now Sato's widow has died also. But I always visit when I come to Japan...everybody with whom I ever worked in Japan, I visit at least once a year. I'm sure that I will tell you...

Q: The people like you are well, highly welcomed and treated nice.

K: Well, I've been treated very nicely by my Japanese friends and acquaintances. Nakasone was a student of mine at Harvard. I always see him. Miyazawa is an old friend. Yes, I have many friends in Japan.

Q: How about friends in economical field, business field?

K: I have some friends in the business field. Morita from Sony.

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- 13 -

Q: What is the factor that make you work hard in politics or anything?

K: It's a very good question. I usually do only those things that interest me. At least since my shaving brush factory days, those didn't interest me. And if I do what interests me, then I like to do it. Foreign policy is my profession. It is also my hobby.

Q: What area do you still teach?

K: I taught, technically, political science, but I like to teach most, history and philosophy.

Q: What particular philosophy?

K: Well, I was particularly interested because it's the only philosophy I really know particularly well is western philosophy. So I taught, what I was interested in is...of the general philosophers, Kant, Spinoza, then I was very interested in philosophy of history, Hegel, Spengler and Toynbee.

Q: What is most idealistic policy?

K: What is the most idealistic...

Q: Idealistic policy.

K: Well, in policy you really need two components. You need ideas. Because the art of policy is to take a people from where it is to where it has never been. That is from the present to the future. But secondly, you have to be very practical. Because the difference between a professor and a statesman is that the professor only needs to imagine the desirable. But the statesman has to know what is possible. The German statesman Bismarck said politics is the art of the possible, the science of the relative.

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Q: May I ask you how you feel about how the trend will be between Iran and Iraq?

K: They don't care so much about what's possible. Their focus is on what's desirable. It will end when one, or both of the leaders dies.

Q: Is there any other successors who maintain such a fight?

K: I don't think so.

Q: To which direction the American policy move from now on?

K: Well, I think...we're in a changing world in which many new countries will emerge. Japan will become more powerful, China will become more powerful, India will become more powerful, maybe Europe will become more powerful. So, America has to adjust, adjust to these realities.

Q: What is the best way you think to have a good friendly relationship between US and Japan.

K: I will answer this question but, my understanding was we would talk about educational questions. Because...I do my political analysis for Yomiuri and we made that clear at the beginning.

Q: For children, who will be growing in the 21st century, what is the best education that should be given by us?

K: Well, of course I'm more qualified to speak of western than of Japanese children. I believe you can always learn factual education. The facts of the situation are relatively easier to learn. And once you are trained, you can do it almost by yourself, you don't need a professor. What is difficult to learn is how to think. So, I believe philosophy, history, economic theory or of course scientific subjects, if you have a talent for it, those you

'88 04/08 19:38

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☑ 005

Q: How to settle a problem or how to think if you study philosophy, will it help for them to, way of thinking? If you have a...

K: Well, I think so. It's not a cook book, it does not give you a direct. You cannot go to a particular philosopher, and say here's the solution. But, the most important thing is to train your mind.

Q: How would you teach what the money is?

K: Money?

Q: Money.

K: How would I teach what money is?

Q: Yes.

K: Of course, I'm not an economist, but I would try to teach how value is established. Money is just a way to express value.

Q: Why study is required, when...she'd like to know how she should teach children why study is required?

K: In our world, there are so many events, and the events keep multi...and they, they keep multiplying because there are more and more facts.

Q: In general.

K: So, therefore, it is impossible to deal with each event separately. It leads to total confusion.

Q: There are many children who hate to study and many people say if you study hard you can contribute to country or the nation.

K: Yes. But, they cannot contribute unless they can form some general

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Q: What is the most important period for children to establish their character?

K: Well, psychiatrists, western psychiatrists say at a very early age. I'm not so sure this is true. I think more between the ages of, say, eight and eighteen. But, I haven't studied this scientifically.

Q: Mr. Ibuka of Sony says that from zero to three years old is very important.

K: Is that what they say?
I...I have never believed it but they may be right. I don't remember anything from that period.

Q: Spirit of three years old forever, we, we have a word saying.

K: It could be true. I...er...I believe, I believe more in the conscious than in the subconscious. Sigmund Freud, and modern psychologists believe more in the subconscious.

Q: How do you define the difference?

K: Well, the modern psychologists, Freudian psychologists say that, that which shapes you most, you're not aware of. And that therefore, if you are engaged in psychiatric discussions, they try to bring out of you an awareness of the subconscious. I do not contest this. I just don't know enough. I can only speak for myself. If I could solve all the problems of which I'm aware, I would be very pleased. So, I have never been very interested in somebody explaining to me what is going on on my subconscious level, because I thought I could spend the time better by dealing with the conscious problems I have.

Q: Very wise man! she said.

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K: Well, I may be wrong.
Tell me. Is there psychiatry in the western sense in Japan? It's
hard to me to believe.

Q: Always return to the Buddhism.

K: Buddhism? Er...but that's not...that's different. No, I...I
understand religious experience but I put that in the conscious
experience.

Q: To think about yourself very deeply which she thinks that that is based upon the religion of Japanese people, Buddhism.

K: Yes. If you don't become totally preoccupied with yourself. When,
if you can speak only about yourself, you become a very boring
person. An interesting person is a person who can establish a
relationship between him or herself and events, not one who can
only examine their own personality.

Q: To her, most impressive words that she received from you today is
that the one piece of letter opened up your way.

K: That was an accident, I didn't plan it.

Q: Although it is invisible, such is effected by God, she said.

K: That's very possible. I believe that this is possible, that there
is a destiny. That is very possible.

Q: What do you teach or what do you talk to your children?

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K: Well, I was brought up in a very disciplined house...very hierarchical...maybe a little bit like Japan. Parents were superior to the children. I try to teach my...to bring...to deal with my children more on the basis of equality. I do not insist that they have to listen to me because I'm their father. So, I try to give them an opportunity to express their own views. On the other hand, I used to tell them when they were younger that I also do not accept what is often believed in America that the young are superior to the old. So, I told them if they have a teenage rebellion, I will resist and they will have a terrible fight.

Q: When you become the father of a child, you start thinking that way?

K: I always thought...thought that even when I was a child.

(break)

Q: She has very basic, two more basic questions. Of historical figures, who most influenced your attitude about education, about your personal or professional goals?

K: You mean among who? Political figures?

Q: Historical figures.

K: Historical figures. Like philosophers, or among statesmen?

Q: Not defining the field just when you think about it.

K: Well, when I was a boy, I was a very young student, Spinoza, the philosopher, influenced me very much. Kant influenced me very much. Spengler, I'm talking Dostoevski, I'm talking about, there were no political figures, I mean there were many interesting political figures but since I didn't want to be a politician...I

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- 19 -

Q: How did you overwhelm the change of environment?

K: When I came to America?

Q: As you...right after you came to America and also you experienced the change of environment as you grow up.

K: Well, I have always been very fortunate in being able to do what, I always focused on what I wanted to do. And, I am very persistent and I don't accept that the environment can overwhelm me.

Q: What she, as a final question, she asks how do you rank the following terms of priority, priority for education? How do you rank priority in the 21st century? Cultural, literacy, historical knowledge, economic knowledge, technical knowledge, international knowledge. How do you rank them?

K: It's a very difficult question to answer because it depends on personality. For example, I have no talent for technical knowledge but I think a society has to have a broad base of technical knowledge, especially of theoretical technical knowledge. So, for me...er...historical knowledge is very important. International knowledge, I think you will learn automatically, or never. So, if you ask me about what should be the policy of a...of a government for its people, I would make sure that talented people have an opportunity to get technical knowledge. And I would want to make sure that those who enter government study history, philosophy and theoretical economics, and I wouldn't care so much about whether they know all the practical details that they will learn later. That's how the British educated their governing classes and they did very well.

Q: Interested to know that you have opinion that people who go into government should study theoretical economics.

K: Theoretical

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Q: Very important factor, you think?

K: Yes. Because economics is such an important factor of our lives.

Q: She believes that she has answers to what she wanted to ask.

K: You did it very nicely. Very gently.
You will publish it in what way? How will it be?

Q: Coordinated with Mainichi Newspaper and will have them issue a book.

K: Oh, it will come out as a little book?

Q: Yes.
So, as we promised that we will send a transcript

K: Very good.

Q: before doing anything.

K: Very good.
Well, I...have you finished? I appreciate this opportunity. Thank you very much.

Q: Thank you very much.