I get to write this on the way back to the U.S. before jet lag sets in. After a month in Japan talking to more than a dozen close friends in many levels of Japanese life, there is much to report.
My first experience was explaining the Trump victory to my Japanese friends. Last year, in March, I told everyone that Trump had an 80% chance of becoming president. They all remembered.
In their 2200 year recorded history there has never been a revolution. So they have no basis for understanding what is happening in the U.S. The closest they came to a revolution was in the 1860’s when, under direct military pressure from the U.S. Navy, the country was forced to modernize. The pro-modernity victors in Tokyo, set out to copy everything in the U.S. and Europe that they thought was modernity. At the same time, the Japanese Army fought a ‘quiet’ civil war with the rest of the country to force modernity on the resisters. The civil war lasted 30 years.
I explained that Trump led a popular revolution against the media and academic coastal elites. The media still controls the global information so they would need the Internet to know what is going on. I pointed out Trump’s Twitter account, Drudge and several other websites to know what is going on.
In Pacific politics, Kim Jong Un has created his own problem. He gave Trump and the U.S. military, with coward Obama no longer in office, an excuse to put 'defensive' missiles in South Korea and station 'defensive' U.S. Naval forces in the Japan Sea. Two nightmares for China. China now has no choice but to pressure N. Korea.
Russia is trying to enter the picture. Trump and his gang think like Kissinger and Nixon and want to play China and Russia off against each other.
America now has a great ally in the Philippines. Dutarte is the unpredictable rogue who makes everyone in the Pacific review their plans. Especially around the issue of East Timor where oil has recently become an issue. My friends say that the Filipino’s don’t consider Dutarte to be unpredictable, they like his show of strength.
Old China watchers know China always moves tentatively and the move in the South China islands was entirely predicated on Obama’s cowardice. They will pull out as soon as Trump is ready to force them.
The Japanese navy continues to grow and become more efficient. With a declining Japanese national population, the Navy is what counts for protection. The Japanese ‘peace constitution’ will be changed in 3 years. Allowing a more active military.
The Japanese population continues to decline but they are putting great hopes in robots who are much more common in Japan than anywhere else. They also know that financial incentives of free and abundant child care will turn the population decline around when they want to.
The population is declining outside of cities but growing in major cities. Baby carriages are everywhere in Tokyo. The whole country is becoming more efficient.
The two stories about Japan in the American news are shibboleths. The Japanese are dying from overwork and young people in their 20s aren’t having sex. These two statements are just the Japanese bragging. They always overwork, and sex is prolific everywhere.
Construction continues in Tokyo. Now the cranes are found more in residential building than in commercial towers. But plenty of towers are still going up.
I saw some new Japanese clothing designers. They have now far outpaced the rest of the world. Japan is the capital of fashion. Which should have been visible with Uniqlo. Which is the leading global force in clothing.
I’m back. The U.S. and San Francisco look particularly filthy and third world. Hatred is virulent if you whisper the name Trump.