Something to look forward to ...

John F. Kennedy’s legacy may finally come to Japan

by Robert D. Eldridge

Special To The Japan Times



Apr 5, 2013




CHATAN, OKINAWA PREF. – If Caroline Kennedy, whose name apparently is being floated to succeed John Roos as the next U.S. ambassador to Japan, is nominated and confirmed, she will be completing, in a sense, a journey that was started almost 50 years ago by her father, President John F. Kennedy, and his staff.

JFK, the popular and young president, was tragically assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in his third year in office during a visit to Dallas, Texas. As a result, he was not able to fulfill some of his plans and goals for the remainder of his first administration, and those of his second, had he been re-elected.

One of the first things on his agenda in 1964, despite its being an election year, was to visit Japan. In fact, on the day of that national tragedy, several members of the Cabinet were already flying over the Pacific on their way to Japan.

Secretary of State D. Dean Rusk and members of the White House staff were to begin coordinating the president’s visit when they reached Japan, but they, too, never made it there. They turned around in midair to attend the funeral and join their compatriots in mourning.

The idea of Kennedy visiting Japan seems to have been in the works for a while. The reasons for doing so were many, particularly after President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to abort his plans to visit Japan because of the Japanese government’s inability to guarantee his safety in the middle of the riots surrounding the ratification of the revised bilateral security treaty.

If JFK had been able to able to visit Japan, he would have been the first sitting U.S. president to do so. Importantly he was also a very popular president in Japan, symbolizing a youthful and vibrant United States full of promise.

Japan at the time was also very much vibrant, too, and optimistic. In the fall of 1964, it was to host the Olympics, symbolizing its return to the international community after World War II. The bullet train and expressways were coming on line, and the nation, now past the divisive security treaty revisions riots of 1960, was now united behind the moderate Hayato Ikeda administration focusing on economic growth.

For Kennedy, who had visited Japan in the fall of 1951 with his brother, Robert, Japan would have looked dramatically different in 1964.

After JFK’s seven-week trip to the “Middle and Far East,” he wrote, “The East of today is not the East of Palmerston and Disraeli and Cromer. Were it so, we might accept Kipling’s dictum that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. But this we dare not do. We want, we may need, allies in ideas, in resources, even in arms, but if we would have allies, we must first of all gather to ourselves friends.”

Of course, historical “ifs” are not really permitted, but I have always wondered how U.S.-Japan relations might have developed in the 1960s had JFK been able to visit Japan. His brother’s visit as attorney general in February 1962 brought a huge amount of good will and publicity, particularly for his willingness to engage in frank discussions with radical students during a visit to Waseda University. Certainly, the level of good will at the national level and deepening of the personal relationships between the president and prime minister would have been furthered.

Because JFK was not able to visit, nor did his two successors, the two countries had to wait another decade before a sitting president, Gerald R. Ford, came to Japan. During that time, relations became frayed between the two countries over the handling of the Vietnam War, basing issues, Okinawa’s reversion, trade friction and recognition of China, to name a few.

JFK is probably looking down proudly at what his 55-year-old daughter, who is the sole survivor of JFK’s immediate family, has accomplished over the years, particularly in the arts, literary world and education, in addition to foundations and nonprofits. His legacy may guide her in her new assignment in Japan, but her experiences and connections will have to power her through these difficult and less-than-optimistic times.

Robert D. Eldridge, Ph.D., a former tenured associate professor of U.S.-Japan relations at Osaka University, was a recipient of the JFK Presidential Library Research Travel Grant in 2000. He is currently working on a book about the reversion of Okinawa.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Someone joked that, because of the high cost of energy, the light at the end of the tunnel would be turned off. Well, now it is turned back on.

Here is what Natsuko Fukue of The Japan Times reports:

"The Diet enacted Monday a ¥2 trillion second extra budget for fiscal 2011 to finance disaster relief and reconstruction since March 11, one of the three conditions laid down by Prime Minister Naoto Kan for his exit.

The Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, the main opposition forces, supported the extra budget, whose passage was delayed from Friday due to a boycott last week by LDP lawmakers of a televised Upper House Budget Committee session.

The extra budget, worth ¥1.99 trillion, allocates ¥275.4 billion to pay for damages suffered by victims of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, including money to monitor the health of Fukushima Prefecture residents.

It also earmarks ¥377.4 billion in financial support for quake and tsunami survivors, including securing new loans for indebted individuals and businesspeople who need to rebuild their livelihood or companies. The supplementary budget also sets aside ¥800 billion for postquake reconstruction.

Kan said last month that he would "hand over my responsibility to the younger generation" after passage of three key bills.

The other bills concern issuing deficit-covering bonds and the establishment of a mechanism for power companies to buy solar power at fixed rates."

Takadaya Kahei, merchant extraordinaire

Take a look at my statue, and think of what you might know of me by my appearance. Yes, you are right that I lived during the shogunate, a contemporary of the western world's George Washington. However, I much preferred trade to life by the sword and preferred to make peace rather than war. How can people trade when they are at war?

I was born on an island not far from Kobe, a city in mid-Japan that you probably have heard of, but it was in Hokkaido that I made my fortune. Do you see the map I am holding? I explored the island of Hokkaido and the islands that lead beyond Hokkaido to Russia. I opened them all up to trade. And what did I do with most of my profits? I poured a fortune into the building of infrastructure.

Hokkaido is blessed with an enormous, sheltered, natural harbor at Hakodate. I gave it wharves and warehouses. I filled it with ships, and not just my own. But anyone will tell you, it was the Takadaya brand that made it a success.

Come visit my company's original premises the next time you're in Hokkaido. We're easy to find, a few minutes away from the water, across the street from the red brick warehouses that still form the liveliest marketplace in Hakodate.

flowers of fire

Tokyo Bay Fireworks 2010

Japan in the Top Ten

The UN index rating countries according to their livability status puts Japan in the top ten. Among the criteria are such factors as lifespan, literacy and school enrollment, health care, and GNP.

The top ten countries listed on the index are: Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Japan.

Way to go, Japan!

Hot? Cold? Never mind, it's Oct 1

Japan is a country that takes great delight in the changing of the seasons. It may be the only country in the world where the first day of spring and the first day of fall are national holidays.

October 1 is another important, seasonal day.

Rain or shine, hot or cold, October 1 is Koromo-gae no Hi. This is the day when all uniforms change from the summer version to the winter version, when short sleeves yield to long sleeves, when sandals suddenly disappear and boots are allowed out of the closet.

The weather itself has nothing to do with it. It's October 1. It's time to put on the winter wardrobe.

Sumo--The Times They Are A-changing

It's sumo season in Japan.

Sumo is the sport in which incredibly pudgy--but a muscled kind of pudgy--men try to trip each other up and shove each other out of the ring. First, they face each other and go through ritual motions, stomping and glaring, rather like tomcats hissing and spitting before they get down to brass tacks. They throw a handful of salt into the air to appease the spirits, and then they grapple.

Or try to. Getting one's arms around a very fat fellow is not an easy thing to accomplish.

A round ends when one wrestler steps outside the ring or takes a fall. The spectators show true grit by never flinching, even when 300 or more pounds of sumo wrestler fly out of the ring and land on someone's lap.

The fall sumo tournament just ended.

The giant silver trophy--so big one has to be of sumo wrestler's dimensions to even lift it--goes to the grand champion, or yokozuna. For this most Japanese of sports, the new yokozuna, is not Japanese. The wrestler, who fights under the name Hakuho, was born and raised in Mongolia.

Why not? Shouldn't sports, of all places, have a level playing field and welcome all comers?

There was a time not so long ago when the sumo world went into a hissy fit because the wrestler who earned the yokozuna title came from Hawaii. If Japan's Ichiro can be the cat's pajamas in American baseball, isn't it fitting to give other nationalities a chance to sit in the catbird's seat of Japanese sumo?

86% are women

September 16 was Respect for the Aged Day here in Japan. You have to be 65 or older in order to celebrate.

For most of us, 65 is retirement age. An item featured in the news on Respect for the Aged Day said that now there are some 36,000 persons living in Japan who have reached the ripe old age of 100. 100! If you retire at age 65 and manage to become a centennarian, that means you will get 35 more years to fill.

In Japan, some 86% of those who have lived to see their hundredth birthday are women. They are the generation for whom many activities allowed for men--such as smoking and heavy drinking--were socially unacceptable for women. Hmmm... Draw your own conclusion about healthy choices, please.

Day for Romance

The seventh day of the seventh month is the most romantic night of the year, at least in Japanese mythology. For one whole year, the weaver star and the cow-herder star have been waiting for their chance to meet each other on the same side of the Milky Way. July 7 is the night.

This is the festival called "Tanabata". It's the night when wishes are supposed to come true.

People celebrate by decorating a huge sprig of bamboo. Is sprig the right word for something that might be nine feet tall? Bamboo grows fast, but that's beside the point.

The bamboo branch/sprig/whatever is decorated with bright paper decorations--lace cutouts, interlocking rings, and tanzaku. Tanzaku are wishes, written out on strips of colored paper. Anything goes, from "I hope it doesn't rain on the fireworks" to "Let there be world peace."

Today I saw one: "I wish we could afford steak for supper."

The rest of the celebration consists of dressing up in light summer kimono and playing with sparklers and other fireworks that you can do at home.

It will be fun. If it doesn't rain. When the weather is bad, those two stars have to wait another full year for another chance to make their dreams come true.

Bugs and Bougainvillea

Here they are, the Ladies of the South Pacific, also known as Tree Nymph butterflies.

They are the largest butterfly native to Japan, found only where the temperature can be counted on not to drop below 15 degrees C. That means Okinawa.