Tokyo Drift

When my friends learn I'm in Japan, their first reaction is "great!"-- followed usually by "um, why?" I know what they mean by this, as in "why now?" or "are you there on business?" Unfortunately, I have no such excuse. One of my books, Empire of Ashes, was translated and published in Japan a decade ago. Whether it sold or anybody read it is a mystery to me. But that's not the reason I'm here.

Interest in Japan-for-its-own-sake is harder to justify today than it was a generation ago. Back then, it was the Land of the Rising Sun that was the focus of American anxiety, as Japanese "export champions" like Toyota, Sony and Fugitsu stood poised to bury their American competitors. In the 1980's and early '90's, it was widely expected that the Japanese economy would leapfrog the U.S. both in size and clout, with America reduced to nothing more than a colony for natural resources like coal, lumber, grain, and penurious blondes for Japan's pleasure sector. (See the 1993 Sean Connery movie Rising Sun for more on that. Or on second thought, maybe don't...) On TV, we watched Richard Chamberlain in Shogun. If America had a future, it looked increasingly Asian in character, as famously depicted in Blade Runner. Smart parents prepared their children to serve their new overlords by teaching them Japanese. 

Obviously, stuff didn't work out as expected. As Japan sputtered, and dominant American tech companies "disrupted" the world economy, nipponophobia receded -- to be replaced in due course by anxiety over the rise of China. Time will tell if the latter is any more of a mirage. (Spoiler alert: it probably isn't, but the West will change China far more than China will change us.) Our political debates rarely hinge now on what we can learn from Japan, and those prep classes have long since been replaced by sleep-away immersion camps in Mandarin. Being interested in Japan therefore has the feel of arriving at a party that broke up twenty years ago.

I can't quit the place so easily. Part of this must lie in my own experience as a person-of-a-certain-age, with Japan looming larger my rear view mirror than it does through the our collective windshield. Men of my generation will always be a bit like Blade Runner's Rick Deckard, rumpily out of place and looking askance at his Asian future as he wrestles with his bowl of udon.

But in another sense, Japan is even more relevant now than it was as the locus of chatter over superpower rivalry. The Japanese economy stumbled, expectations had to be reduced--and there lies the real lesson. For in a future where efficiency will be as valuable much as consumption, where making the most out of a smaller footprint will bear the greater rewards, Japan will be more relevant than ever. If I am to be watched over in my old age by a domestic robot, my future will arrive first in Japan. If my daughter or granddaughter loses all interest in marriage or childrearing, she will be more like her Japanese sisters already are. America's Great West Coast tsunami of 2037, caused by an earthquake combined with sea-level rise, already happened in Japan back in 2011. If my great-grandchildren own a condo on Mars, that off-world pied-à-terre will likely include elements of compact, highly-refined Japanese design, not Chinese or American glitz.

Traveling to Japan, therefore, is a little like time-traveling to an era I'll barely see, if at all. Though this isn't a business trip, I can imagine no more important business.

© 2015 Nicholas Nicastro