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Japan's youth should avoid assimilation into cultural imperialism

My dear Edward Said,

On New Year's Day, I participated as a commentator in Tokyo in a debate on
satellite television by some youths in America and their counterparts in
Islamic countries.

One of the students in New York eloquently advocated the role of world
police by ``the most powerful and richest democratic country.''

His point was that all the problems would be solved if ``we'' taught
democracy to ``those'' who are less advanced.

A girl student in Cairo clearly described the variety among Islamic
countries and the anger against America shared by each of them. She also
sent a message to the self-righteous American student: ``Read Edward Said's
books instead of those propagandized by the mass media.''

Since the 11th of September you have intensively written penetrating
articles that are all enduring as well as relevant to the times. They are
going to be collected and published in this country. Together with them, I
hope, my countrymen will also read ``Culture and Imperialism,'' of which a
superb Japanese translation was published last summer (both by the Misuzu
Shobo publishing house).

The time has already come in which cultures are all ``hybrid, heterogeneous,
extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic.'' At such a time, why
should the cultural and the national identity of Americans combine to rule
the world with the use of massive violence? This was the question you
raised, soon after the end of the Persian Gulf War.

However, in the middle of the war in Afghanistan, Japan readily volunteered
to be assimilated into the cultural imperialism of America, with mixed hope
and anxiety.

It seems that the sometime Japan bashing by the West has visibly subsided;
and, as the course they will take in the 21st century, Japan and the
Japanese, at the nadir of their disorientated economy, have chosen to follow
in the wake of America with its unitary and monolithic political and
cultural identity.

The prime minister, who promptly expressed his unqualified wish to take part
in the aggressive policies of the Bush administration and thereby gradually
nullified the resisting constitutional power of Japan against warfare, is
enjoying enormous popularity in wide-ranging sectors of the nation.

Nevertheless, I am still hoping that the youths of Japan will learn wisdom
and courage from your works and never assimilate themselves into the bizarre
political and cultural situation brought about by the Afghan war. I hope
they will be able ``to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally,
about others than only about `us.'''

When you first came to Japan in the summer of 1995, I had the privilege of
being your interlocutor in the officially published dialogue. I took the
opportunity to have you autograph my copy of ``Culture and Imperialism.'' We
have since met many a time, but I have somehow failed to tell you, my dear
Said, that your book gave me the incentive to resuscitate myself as a
novelist.

By the time of our reunion in Tokyo in 1995, I had publicly announced that I
would give up writing novels. I was then devoted only to reading. My crisis
was made more serious by the fact that my lifelong friend and spiritual
guide, the composer Toru Takemitsu, was dying of cancer.

I gave up writing novels after a long deliberation. I then felt that my way
of writing had deviated from its original principle and intent and had gone
astray into a maze: the materials of my novels had become too much involved
with my own life, on the one hand, and, on the other, with esoteric
mysticism. If I had kept on writing that way, my novels would have lapsed
into perverted confessions of faith. In such a state of mind I received the
Nobel Prize in Stockholm, feeling it to be a kind of burden.

Whenever I was in the company of Takemitsu during my youth, I tended to
create monologues most of the time. He suddenly enlightened me with a
precise solution: It was just like a composer hitting upon the exact
notation for which there could be no other alternative. That bliss was
leaving me forever.

In such a predicament, I was reading your ``Culture and Imperialism.'' I was
reading it partly to intensify my criticism against myself for not
sufficiently confronting history and reality. At the same time, I now
remember, my literary yearning was being satisfied by your fully genial ways
of reading a whole variety of novels.

After the death of Takemitsu, I spent a long time writing ``Toru Takemitsu's
Elaborations'' to make up for his loss. I also made up my mind to make a
fresh start by elaborating my own method of writing novels.

For my support and stay, I had not only the word ``laborate'' but also
others uniquely re-defined by you concerning intellectuals and their
morals-those intellectuals who are sufficiently independent while deeply
rooted in society.

In re-reading ``Culture and Imperialism'' in my native language, I become
keenly aware that, written some 10 years ago, it can be an exact analysis of
present-day Japan and Japanese.

The Japanese are now willingly accepting the rule by cultural imperialism or
unification of the cultural and national identity, which engulfed America at
the time of the Gulf War and has been reiterated and reinforced in America
throughout the war in Afghanistan. It also means Japan's envisagement of her
identity with the world other than Islamic countries.

Certainly the Afghan Reconstruction Conference in Tokyo was held for
all-important motives. But the high-ranking Japanese officials, with the
exception of the Government Delegate Madam Sadako Ogata, looked as if they
were celebrating the war victory in the presence of the Secretary of State
Mr. Powell.

Did this not have a bearing on the fact that, although temporarily, the
Japanese government barred from the conference the delegates of two NGOs who
had seen the dubious battle with their own eyes?

The tone of my letter has become grim. And yet I find hope in the emerging
new breed of young intellectuals who can raise their effectual voice of
dissent against the united cultural imperialisms of America and Japan. I
mean, for instance, the women members of the said NGOs and of even smaller
respective groups of volunteers who are proficient in telecommunication
techniques; and also those youths in the southern islands of Okinawa that
house the military bases for the war in Afghanistan. Those Okinawans are
trying to establish a network with ``them'' or ``not us'' and are receiving
less and less attention from inhabitants of mainland Japan.

I am not certain-perhaps nobody is-whether humankind can surmount the
current crisis without being integrated into the imperialism (not only
cultural but overall imperialism) of one great nation.

But suppose we can. Then it will no doubt be by ``them'' or those diverse
people, whether the volunteers of the NGOs or the Okinawans, that a spatial
and temporal sphere could be created in which the humankind will lead a
genuinely humane life in the 21st century.

With warmest wishes,

Yours ever,

Kenzaburo Oe.

(Translated into English by Hisaaki Yamanouchi from the Japanese original.)

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