To the Editor

Eamonn Fingleton gets it about as wrong as is possible in his 300-word criticism of myself (No. 1 Shimbun, July).

He says, quote: “We have never met before and I have never given him (Clark) any reason for grumpiness.” In fact we have met, at an Irish Embassy reception a few years back, where I congratulated him, most un-grumpily, on the important work he has done highlighting Japan’s manufacturing prowess and determination. Japanese manufacturing skill is also one of my favorite themes (the monozukuri culture), but he has taken it much further than I have. I am constantly amazed by the quality of his research, and I told him that. He has a very selective memory.

I also told him he did not deserve the flak he was getting for his book predicting, wrongly, that Japan would overtake the U.S. by year 2000. Neither he nor I was to know the U.S. would bubble its economy, replacing manufacturing with financial industry gimmicks. Nor was he to know that Japan’s economy would be wrecked by the Koizumi-Takenaka duo naively relying on U.S. supply-side economic policies, though he could have realized this was coming from the Hashimoto-era policies.

As for the grumpiness charge, wrong again, and badly. Some years back he backed out of a planned FCCJ debate, on the grounds that since the establishment was plotting to get him, questions should not be allowed (a debate without questions? At the FCCJ?).

In addition to the Narita location issue, he also said something about Tokyo’s refusal to release the Shiodome land for sale at the height of the Bubble (another topic close to my heart) being an LDP plot to drive land prices even higher. I had good reason to believe it was not a plot, that it was a typical piece of Tokyo economic stupidity (you keep prices down by restricting supply). I went on to suggest that in addition to his worries about debate questions, he was prone to seeing plots, including the Narita location and Shiodome land-sale issues, even when they did not exist.

But I tried not to hurt his feelings by using a conditional word like “maybe” somewhere in the text. In reply, he seized on my use of the conditional to avoid answering any of my points, stating baldly, and even more grumpily, that by using the conditional I had admitted I was uncertain of my facts, and he did not have to say anything more, period.

I was indeed certain of my facts. So when he recently launched into his improbable thesis that Japan and China have long been in cahoots with each other and are just pretending to be hostile, I could not resist the temptation finally to come back to the argument he avoided answering earlier, namely, his belief that the Narita location was a Tokyo plot to discourage overseas travel (this at a time when JETRO was shifting from export promotion to import promotion, including increased overseas tourism, to reduce the balance of payments surplus and the endaka it was causing ).

My own hunch was that it was a typical piece of Tokyo bureaucratic stupidity has since been confirmed.

I would be happy to accept his offer of a debate, except that on the topic he has chosen – Tokyo’s manipulation of information – I am totally in agreement.
I too have written about the Unit 731
connection with postwar Japan’s establishment. Maybe (I repeat “maybe” with tongue in cheek) I have stuck my neck out even more than he has by challenging the way Tokyo has manipulated the NK abduction issue.

Do that and you really do run into flak, serious flak.

Gregory Clark