Bill Moyers Journal: International Report; 121; The Very Remarkable Yamato Family-Part 2

BILL MOYERS' JOURNAL: INTERNATIONAL REPORT

"The Very Remarkable Yamato Family"- Part II

June 5, 1975

BILL MOYERS: In Japan they still teach the bayonet drill. But they also teach kids to write the way the Chinese did a thousand years ago. Ritual persists, satisfying to many, stifling to some, in this very comfortable but conforming society. The geishas still dance; marriages are still arranged. But two weeks ago when the first woman scaled Mount Everest, she was Japanese.

Other women are moving too, while the Yamato family itself marches forward onto the international scene. These are our subjects tonight.

In Many ways the one hundred and ten million Japanese are one big family, with women in a key but hidden role, which is a surprise to most Westerners. Until marriage, which is likely to be arranged by her parents, the young Japanese woman doesn't count for much. To help us understand all this, we were fortunate to have Takashi Inagaki, a faculty member at the City University of New York.

TAKASHI INAGAKI: Well, you see, when Japanese women are married, they are not considered really as a person. Their humanity is totally denied; they don't seem to exist in this pyramid, Japanese male children in society, or male society. But once they get married they are given some social status to be in. They become Mama-san, they become mothers. Then they can speak in the society, for the society. But without that status, they are nothing.

MOYERS: Is this still, as it has often been alleged, a matriarchal society? Tell me about it.

INAGAKI: Well, first of all, you go to a bar there are four hundred thousand bars, according to statistics, eight hundred thousand coffee houses in Tokyo, believe it or not and each coffee house or bar have Mamasans. If they are forty years old. You politician, sixty years politician, they go to geisha house, there are Mama-sans. go home, there is a Mama-san. You go see your wife, already your wife have kids, then she becomes a Mama-san. So this is like, anywhere you go, there is Mama-san all over.

MOYERS: What's a Mama-san?

INAGAKI: A Mama-san is just simply mother. But Mama-San, this concept is very different from just simply mother with children. Your wife could become Mama-san concept, who nurses you, who babysits for you. If you go home, your wife will come around, take off your tie, and socks, and everything. And you just put your jacket on the mat. You go to hot bath, you come out, dinner is ready. You eat, and slip into the bed. And meanwhile your wife becomes a Mama-san.

It's not quite servant. And to Westerners' eyes she serves as a servant, slave; but it's not. It's a Mama-san, mother taking care of a boy, or her son.

MOYERS: Businessmen will spend an evening in a geisha house, and this is one of the oldest and most expensive in Tokyo, to talk over their biggest deals. After the formalities, they'll want to be coddled, pampered, waited on, and entertained. Politicians, bankers, professionals, the backbone of the establishment, they all deal here. This international broker much prefers a supper seated on the floor to the martini luncheon.

MAN: We still feel more relaxed to do business in such a place like this, right on tatami, what we call the mat, instead of sitting on a hard chair and European style table. And we can feel more relaxed, and we feel that things will be smoother if we do like this. So in a concrete building, and everything is European style, and the people look so hard, you know, rather than that we would like to come here, and we would like to pursue the most difficult business, which would not have been done otherwise.

MOYERS: The geisha are in no sense prostitutes. Besides being classically trained entertainers, they are skillful Mama-sans, able to provide a laugh, a song, whatever is needed to relieve the tension when a lot is at stake.

If they do have an affair, it is long term, mistress like, and the man is expected to help provide the money to set the geisha up in some enterprise of her own, if that's her ambition.

In the beginning Japan was a matriarchy. The early legends credit the wondrous Sun Goddess with helping found the nation. In the Third Century a queen ruled the island of Kyushu, and a few hundred years later a line of empresses reigned.

These days it is difficult to get young women to go into the geisha business. It takes years to master all the ancient dances, songs, and musical instruments. much easier to become one of Japan's half-million bar hostesses, the go-go geishas. Sex is not for sale from bar hostesses either. Still, there's an endless stream of men willing to pay them well for a few hours of chatter, flattery and flirtation.

The geisha, the bar hostess, the permissive wife merge into the much-needed Mama-san, who stands behind the mother-molded men of Japan. Observers conclude that Japanese women are actually more self-reliant than men. Do they then object to the absolute male control outside the home? Not very loudly, yet. But there is a small women's lib movement, and it's growing, indicative of how Japan and world-wide social movements are linking up.

These women reject the Mama-san role, whatever its powers. They refuse to be put in charge of procreation, pampering, and the paycheck. They want to redefine the woman's role in Japan, find her a comfortable place outside, as well as inside, the home. They all work: a nurse, a copywriter, a teacher, a physical therapist. And every Saturday night they meet to produce a quarterly women's magazine. It's slowly beginning to build a following.

MICHIMI AMANO: These are my sisters, and we publish the Japanese quarterly feminist magazine, called Onna Eros. The women's lib movement is the cultural revolution, as well as the political revolution. So you must know about the culture of your own country. After six months in New York, and I've been in Europe for two years before, I find the culture is very, very different. The spiritual structure is, even today, very, very different. So I found we must define our own sexual politics.

MOYERS: Michimi Amano is twenty-eight, university educated, and lives with a roommate, also a writer, in downtown Tokyo. Her life as an activist began in the Sixties, when she was part of a students' movement against the war in Vietnam. The behavior of American GI's in Asia is the subject of this article she's working on.

To support herself she works in a Pachinko, a pinball parlor, in the evenings. She's a rebel, an individualist. But she says she still feels an enormous kinship with all the women in her family who came before her.

MICHIMI AMANO: I don't like to get together for many, many people to make a demonstration, to make a speech on the street. I'd rather be alone, and what I call, yeah, lone wolf way. So even in the feminist movement, I want to stay alone.

The women's feminist movement is only not for me, but for my mother and for my grandmother, because they are very miserable. My grandmother was dead, but I would like to work for her, too, you know, to meet her in another country again, happily. So this is maybe the main reason why I'm working for women.

So

I have two mothers. One is my real mother, and the second one is my stepmother. And I find both of my mothers are oppressed by this society, too. When I was twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, this is the period for Japanese women to get married. that my father, too, from his duty as a father, he asked me what kind of man you prefer; you know, I will find for you, something like that.

So I cut his love. You know, she said this is his love to me. And I said, oh, I don't want such a kind of love, you know. So I cut his love off, and I went to Europe. This is my way to run away from my home. And I stayed in Europe for two years, to cool my, you know, my feeling, and cool my father's feeling, too.

Now once a year I go back to my home town, it's Kyoto, such a beautiful, traditional city. I hate it. And once a year, you know, I went back, I go back to my home town, to see their faces and to show my face to them. Because if I don't do that, they imagine: what my daughter's doing in Tokyo? Maybe she's going to the Red Army, in terms they imagine, you know. So I must show them that I'm living just ordinary. And now he said that he is satisfied, if I can manage my life by myself he don't want to, doesn't want to help me.

The reason why I choose to work in a Pachinko Parlor is, well, personally I like such a frank atmosphere. I hate office work. I must bow in Japanese women's way, and I must, you know, yeah, communicate with the boss in very, very it's very severe for me, and I'd rather like to communicate with such girls, because they are very frank, and very naive.

Sometimes I showed my book to them, I choose the person, you know, and they were shocked very much. Oh, you know, you are doing such things. But they start to read, and they recommend our book to their friends, or something like that. So I think this is my women's lib way, too, you know.

So I found the Japanese culture is very -- mothers, or the women are controlling, are arranging the whole society before, the maternal system remained until Tenth Century in Japanese history. And such customs, or such atmosphere, are remaining even today. So in our future I would like to connect with such old, good days of maternal society, with our future. So this is my romance.

MOYERS: Television is Japan's electronic shrine. And it reveals the changing fate of the female. Women tell their dreams, and the ever-present panel, the priests, give guidance.

This is a daytime show on sex and marital problems. There's a lawyer, a leading film director, and an actress. Their task is to advise the unhappy woman in the glass booth, who has come to tell her story to them, and to millions of women listening at home.

Her situation is classic. Her husband, who is away from home often, ignores her on his return, and spends most of his time with his mother, who lives nearby. The audience can sympathize.

The lady in the booth asks - Can I win back my husband, or should I divorce? s a rare step, which generally marks the woman as a failure. American notions about compatibility and sharing are not primary here. As in the beginning, the woman is the guardian of the home, who must perpetuate the Yamato family. This is her mission, whatever her husband's faults.

The panel is split in its advice. The actress advises that she beat the mother-in-law at her own game; that is, out-Mama-san the Mama-san. The film director, Nagisa Oshima, who has dealt with women in many of his scripts, advises divorce, and the lawyer outlines the procedures. ]

None of Oshima's movies have happy endings.

INAGAKI: translating for Nagisa Oshima:

MAN: First of all, men and women has to be independent and mutually independent, and they have to be one to one relationship. However, in Japan now, the woman's, independent woman's power is very small, minimal. But once they become mother, she gets so much power. He has scripted many women who try to make it independently. However, they get defeated by society at the end of the movies. Just like the guest today he had, she sobs and cries. She blames her problems on somebody else, on something else.

MOYERS: In this TV studio a new story is unfolding. These are sixth grade children in one of Tokyo's downtown elementary schools. Co-education is taken for granted, although it didn't begin until after World War II. It's inevitable that these kids will accept new ideas as easily as they handle the new technology. To a degree, this is what the Ministry of Education is planning, even promoting a new look in the anchor person.

This is a lunchtime health show put on by the school's TV Club, with amazingly little supervision from adults. The program may not get the highest rating, but putting kids on their own more is the new policy, to get away from the rigidities and rote learning of the past.

There is also debate about the almost fanatic competition in exams, to qualify for the better schools as you proceed toward college. Official policy is now to give children more free time in grade school to play, to read, to develop their own resources and individuality.

The teachers' union of Japan, which is left-wing, can take some of the credit, for it has long fought constant memory drills, mass discipline, and the enormous stress put on getting grades.

Teaching brush writing to fourth graders might be likened to asking first graders in this country to speak in Chaucer's English. These youngsters are being educated to reach out and broaden the nation's perspective. But the roots of the culture must be tended also.

Japan began taking its written language from China a thousand years ago; just as a mere one hundred years ago it adopted industrialization and parliamentary procedures from the West. But although it has also taken thousands of English words into the language, spoken Japanese is still very eastern; a tongue of incredible subtleties, perfect to express mood and feeling, but hardly precise or logical. There are no singulars or plurals; tenses are vague; and there are ten different ways to say 'I' or 'we,' depending upon the degree of deference you wish, or are compelled, to use.

TEACHER: Today is Saturday. Today is Saturday. Today is Saturday. Again: Today is Saturday.

GROUP: Today is Saturday.

MOYERS: The tradition of junior high uniforms has not yet been broken, or the

In the past this meant reading and six day school week. Everybody learns English. writing only, so that the West could be studied. Today the emphasis is on conversation, so that there can be genuine communication. than their fathers for an international role. They are being much better prepared.

MAN: Some of these young girls told me with an enthusiastic voice that they want to become stewardesses. It may sound like an ordinary dream for young girls anywhere in the world. But for these Japanese girls, it is the proof of jet speed progress of postwar Japan.

The mothers of these girls dreamt of becoming nurses. They wanted to dedicate and sacrifice themselves totally. The nurses were the unmarried Mama-sans. just unthinkable at the time to get involved with anything international, especially in the case of women.

Now these young girls want to travel and see the world themselves. They want to know what is happening in the world. Speaking fluently in a foreign language, serving a cup of green tea with a steaming hot towel and charming smile, and putting a blanket softly over the sleeping passengers, they will emerge as international Mama-sans, in and out of Japan. When these girls become mothers, I wonder what kind of dreams they will pass on to their daughters.

MOYERS: Musical education is superb. about everybody has some musical talent. number of international performers. The underlying assumption is that just. The military are also preparing for a bigger international role. The constitution imposed by America after World War II forbids a standing army. But with the Korean war, the U.S. insisted that Japan rearm, as an anti-communist ally. is basic training in what is called the self-defense forces, which now rank as the seventh strongest military in the world, and continued expansion is planned.

Why? Who is the enemy, and where is the threat? Isn't the nuclear shield provided by the security treaty with America enough?

The hawks answer that Japan must be able to protect its heavy investments in Southeast Asia, and its oil lifeline to the Middle East. They want to get rid of what they call the occupation constitution, and write a new basic document that would permit a full-fledged, no limits military.

Faced with the nuclear power of China and Russia, the hardliners are arguing against the government's plan to sign the non-proliferation treaty. But there is little sentiment in the Yamato family to go nuclear.

There are, however, great pressures on Japan to boost its military strength. Our Pentagon sees Japan as the last stable ally in the east. The army has not been able to recruit easily. Most young men in the big cities laugh at the idea of enlisting. It is country youth who are attracted.

Despite the formality here, the army has had to loosen the old discipline; even down to officers talking to enlisted men as equals.

But these young men have competed vigorously to get into a special military technical high school, sort of a junior West Point, and today they are being inducted. They'll become technicians in an army of a hundred and eighty thousand. are concerned about the size of this force say it could be tripled instantly, because it is made mostly of highly trained non-commissioned officers. Japan's navy and air force rank third in the Pacific, behind America and Russia. This is how it was all explained to the new soldiers.

INAGAKI translating: Examining the recent situations in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Middle East. It is clear that we Japanese people must become alert as a nation and as a race. self-evident that citizens of any nation who suffered defeat in a war, suffer a great deal. So it is important to recognize the task of the National Self Defense Forces, even in peacetime.

As a result of the cordial relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, some critics claim that the Japanese self-defense forces may not be necessary. However, Secretary of State Kissinger recently failed in his attempt to restore the peace in the Middle East. As a result, tension on the international scene is observable. This is why the Japanese National Defense Forces exist.

MOYERS: How strong is the drive to rearm? When will Japan sign the Nuclear

We asked the Non-Proliferation Treaty? Will it abandon its peace constitution? Foreign Minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, whether there was a serious debate within the government about the need to rearm.

KIICHI MIYAZAWA: I think we have determined not to arm, nuclear, even the conventional, to such an extent that we should be able to defend ourselves. I think, Japanese concept of security is dependent upon our relation, security treaty with the United States.

MOYERS: How do you see your relationship in light of that treaty, and in light of Southeast Asia, with China? What is the future of Japan's relations with China?

MIYAZAWA: Well, in the immediate future, at least, I think the Chinese government is more amenable to our, Japan's, maintaining security relations with the United States. I think, in other words, what China does not want to see is Japan go nuclear. And our getting alliance with your security alliance, your government, is a guard, in the eyes of the Chinese people, preventing Japan from going nuclear.

MOYERS: So you're walking something of a tightrope, aren't you, at the moment, in a multi-polar world of the United States, China, the Soviet Union? You're close to

all of them.

MIYAZAWA: I think, Mr. Moyers, any country who is determined to get rid of real armament ought to walk on a tightrope.

MOYERS: Is it uncomfortable walking that tightrope?

MIYAZAWA: Once you get used to it it's not as uncomfortable as you might think. We have been on the tightrope for the past thirty years, and we will be.

MOYERS: How do you explain this, the fact that you have no large army, no offensive air force, a modest, efficient, but a modest navy, no nuclear weapons, and yet you're considered one of the important powers, economic powers, in the world? What's the explanation of that?

MIYAZAWA: Well, what do you mean?

MOYERS: Well, thirty years ago you were a devastated nation, a defeated nation. Now you rank right up there with the third strongest economy in the world. Aggressive trade all over the world, respected in the world. What accounts for that?

MIYAZAWA: Oh, I think we did not spend much on military. And we have to have our faith in the peace; otherwise trade will not expand. So I think our, you know in other words, the purpose of diplomatic policy of any country I think are two-fold, really. One is to pursue the national interest. The other is to maintain and improve the peace in the world. In the case of Japan, these two-fold interests are identical. Our best national interests like in world peace.

MOYERS: This is just about the most prominent young politician in Japan.

He' s a combination conservative, populist and celebrity. And he insists that Japan must be stronger militarily, even go nuclear, if it is to survive against Russia and China. He also wants to put patriotism back into schoolroom teaching.

At forty-two, Shintaro Ishihara, novelist and adventurer, challenged the Governor of Tokyo for the job of running the biggest city in the world. Ishihara's election campaign somewhat outraged the ruling conservative party, in which his rise has been spectacular. He was elected to the Diet of Parliament on his first try. And he's gone on to become the top vote getter in Tokyo.

As a writer and personality, Ishihara has a wide audience for his stories about a youthful and pleasure seeking jet set that has emerged in Japan. His party resents the blunt way Ishihara takes positions, for a stronger army, for the right to go nuclear, for moral and patriotic teaching in the schools, and against friendship with China and Russia.

Ishihara also introduced some new campaign tactics. His wife traveled with him and spoke for him, unusual in a society where men do not like to share the limelight in public. Ishihara also stressed his youth, in a culture which respects and often prefers age. He also challenged Tokyo's Governor to debate, a confrontation tactic which the Japanese always try to avoid.

The Governor of Tokyo for the last eight years, Ryokichi Minobe, declined to debate.

At seventy-four, he wasn't about to change his campaign tactics. He carried on in his low key, academic way, developed during his previous career as a university professor.

Minobe is credited with making enormous progress in cleaning up Tokyo's air and water pollution; and also with starting innovative social services for the elderly, and funding existing programs well beyond the national standards.

Minobe calls himself a Marxist Socialist, and says he entered politics back in the 1960's to help stop what he saw as a fascist threat. He is vigorously pro-Chinese, and continually calling for a cutback in the size of the nation's military. He has tried to stop big business from doing any more building in his crowded city, and failed. And he has insisted on higher salaries and pensions for city workers, and gotten them.

The campaign was brief, by law limited to three weeks. TV commercials are not allowed, or billboards. Small posters in designated spots are about the only kind of legal display. Voting is in the local schools on a Sunday. The turnout is large, by American standards. About seventy percent of those eligible vote.

The victor was the elderly, mild-mannered Minobe, who is said to have enormous appeal to women. But his margin was narrow. Many said the strong showing Ishihara made had more to do with his youth and charisma than his stand on things nuclear and military. Nevertheless, the size of the Ishihara vote was worrisome to many.

Whatever the hawks want for the military, however, there is no doubt that Japan's fundamental strength lies in its economy. In the post-war period, Japan has roared into third place as a producer, behind the United States and Russia. The great trading companies are the nation's real army, securing raw materials and markets around the world.

The merchant marine, the largest of any nation's, is the real navy, bringing home each year twenty percent of all the world's raw materials: fuel, food, metals, minerals, and lumber, for example. Almost every canal in Tokyo is a storage corridor for the enormous amounts of wood consumed, more than any other country on earth, to make everything from chopsticks and sandals, to houses, temples, and shrines.

And food. The Yamato family must catch or buy each year fifteen percent of the worldwide fish catch, or it would starve. Almost half of all the protein eaten comes from the sea. And half of the national caloric intake comes from abroad.

The samurai, turned seamen and salesmen, have abandoned the sword for commerce, in pattern of trading umbilicals which link every nation. Through harbors and markets like this pass the sustenance of Japan.

The country has to import ninety-nine percent of all the oil it consumes for energy; and the story is almost the same for food. Twenty percent of all the food the United States exports comes here to Japan. Ninety percent of all Japan's soybeans come from American farms.

Without the United States as a customer, Japan wouldn't have the money to stay prosperous. But without Japan as a customer, many American farmers would go broke.

Now the world's economy is changing, and Japan can no longer be merely dependent on the United States. It's pushing out particularly to the Middle East and South America for new markets and new materials. As one Japanese said to me the other day, "For us interdependence is not an abstraction, interdependence is food, oil, raw materials, and markets. Interdependence," he said, "is life."

These frozen tuna fish were taken in the waters off Hawaii, without any protest from the United States. But recently the Japanese tuna fleet has been asked to quit fishing in the Mediterranean. And the fishing industry is in serious talks with Russia, China, and Latin America, over charges that it continually invades their waters. Where do a nation's territorial waters end three miles out, two hundred miles?

The Japanese are negotiating with forty different countries. The search for raw materials also produces conflicts. World War II began in part when Japan and the West clashed over oil. Now Japan must import all of its oil, eighty-eight percent of its iron, ninety percent of its manganese, and all of its tin, rubber and aluminum.

Most of Japan's oil comes from American controlled sources. And since prices have quadrupled, Tokyo is fighting to loosen this grip. Just as the Asian nations who supply raw materials and labor are fighting Japan's policy of buying cheap, and selling back dear.

The oil issue is the crucial one. It has made Tokyo do almost an about face toward the Middle East and China. Japan is investing huge sums in Iran's production, and helping China become, according to the experts, a major new oil supplier.

As all these new and unforeseen alliances emerge, no nation's interests can be calibrated in the old way. Japan is clearly a bigger factor in the international equation.

America's recognition of this perhaps is symbolized in an invitation to Emperor Hirohito to visit Washington for the first time this fall. The once conquered Emperor will dine with the conqueror, as equals, through the alchemy of history.

These Japanese are filing into the grounds of the Imperial Palace. The Emperor's home was not bombed during World War II, although the rest of Tokyo was leveled. It is Emperor Hirohito's seventy-fourth birthday. Once considered a living god, he is perhaps the other side of the Mama-san phenomenon, the ultimate Papa-san, so revered in the past that ordinary people were not permitted to look at him directly.

Before the war, none of these folks would have dared sleep with their feet pointing toward the Imperial Palace; that would show disrespect.

At first, General Douglas MacArthur's advisors wanted to get rid of the Emperor,

But it was and emperor worship, as an obstacle to replacing fascism with democracy. decided that for the morale of the nation, the imperial heritage should be saved. In defeat, however, Hirohito did renounce his divinity, and publicly accepted his new role, simply as a symbol of the state and unity of the people.

These days it is the elderly who keep these birthday celebrations going. youth consider the emperor irrelevant, and the middle-aged are neutrally tolerant. These young men are hardly representative. They come from a college known for its conservative point of view. Conservative American policy makers thirty years ago also supported Hirohito. They said if he were deposed there might be chaos, and a takeover by the Japanese left. They saw the victory of Mao Tse-tung coming; they wanted the strongest possible Japan as an ally against communism.

Today at seventy-four, after fifty years as monarch, Hirohito is a mild-mannered figurehead. Gone is the image of a young general in a white uniform, with a plumed hat, on a white horse, commanding the imperial forces. Since the war, his most serious interest is marine biology. And every year millions of poems are sent to the palace, in a contest held by the Empress.

Today there are Japanese thinkers who say the Emperor should have been removed, and that the people could have withstood the shock. They argue that as a result, real democracy would be nearer today. In opposition are conservative groups who want to scrap what they call the occupation constitution, and write a new one that would reinstate the Emperor as head of state. That isn't likely to happen. Nor will the fifteen hundred year old imperial tradition soon end.

The Japanese don't like shocks. It is a many-layered culture, and they like to avoid moral judgments. They don't see good and evil, they see everything as inextricably mixed. But their history proves that when shocks come, they can handle them.

The top three lines in this character represent a flowing river, water; the bottom half suggests tongues of flame, fire. That's how the Japanese express the disastrous effects of an earthquake, destruction by fire and water. This statue is a memorial to the thousands of children who were killed in the last great earthquake in 1923. There are minor earth tremors in Tokyo almost every day. But now the Japanese are preparing for another major catastrophe. Their scientists say it could come in the next few years, killing as many as a million people. remarkably calm. Their island has been lashed by fire and water from the very beginning. They simply adapt and rebuild. Over the centuries they've been able to come to terms with realities of all kinds. That may be one of the reasons why the coming of political change doesn't seem to alarm them, new relationships with the Chinese, the Russians, and the Americans.

Nor do they seem unduly alarmed by the tensions here and abroad The citizens seem to have advanced and become the first industrial nation to develop capitalism. these day

The Yamato family is flexible. That's a crucial quality for survival. It may also help them create a new equation for the domestic and international politics.

On the international scene, Japan states its policy simply: genuine friendship with everybody, the stance which makes the most sense for a small, vulnerable nation. They insist their alliance with America is basic; but they're also about to sign a friendship treaty with China. We asked Prime Minister Miki about Japan's new relations with its giant communist neighbor

.

Both the Prime Minister, and Foreign Minister Miyazawa, are coming to the States this summer, before the Emperor, to meet with President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger, to present their country's views. We also talked with the Foreign Minister, in this twilight period for America in Asia, and asked for his estimate of America's position. First the Prime Minister.

What about China, what do you see ahead in the relations between Japan and China?

PRIME MINISTER MIKI: (SPEAKS IN JAPANESE) First...our history over the past 2,000 years has been a history of relations with China.

But in modern times our relationship has been marked by truly unfortunate events.

And we cannot deny that Japan played not a small role in this misfortune.

However, today our policy is founded on deep reflection over the unfortunate past...

and an earnest hope for everlasting peace and friendship between our countries.

Early in 1972 I went to Peking and talked with Premier Zhou En-lai.

We discussed a formula for normalizing relations between our countries.

Now I give top priority to signing a treaty of peace and friendship with China.

Our future relations will be solidly and securely built on this friendship treaty.

Japan and China will overcome the differences in their social systems.

And then be able to develop ties of peace and friendship through all eternity.

MOYERS: Foreign Minister Miyazawa. Some people in the United States say that we are suffering in the whole world a loss of credibility and reliability, as a consequence of what's happened in Southeast Asia. Do you think that's a justifiable concern?

FOREIGN MINISTER MIYAZAWA: No, I don't. I think what you have lost, or you're going to probably lose, is not a war, but a cause. A cause which was not, unfortunately, shared by the people there. I would think your credibility stands where the other party, where your help is extended to, is willing to help themselves, for whatever cause common to them, to you. But Vietnam was unfortunately not a case where your country and their people had a cause, shared a cause common to each other.

That's why I think your credibility really, to the eyes of the people there, fell.

But to the eyes of the rest of the people in the world, who at least have a will to help themselves, I think your credibility still stands.

MOYERS: Is it still standing with Japan?

MIYAZAWA: Certainly. There is not an iota of doubt.

MOYERS: Do you still take the American guarantee seriously?

MIYAZAWA: Yes, we do. Maybe there I think I am probably selfish, thinking much in the interest of Japan, and less in your interest. But I think Asia, Japan as well, without any United States military presence, is so much a drastic change from the status quo, that it certainly give a very unstabilizing factors, seeds of further instability in this part of the world

.

MOYERS: I know foreign ministers don't like to give advice to other nations, but I'm interested in what your advice would be to the United States as far as its role in this part of the world is concerned.

MIYAZAWA: The one thing I think I could counsel if I were to come to the United States is not to make a hasty decision of basic nature at this stage of Vietnam, or in Asia. Because you can tend to make rather very hasty decisions under these circumstances, you and I, or I think any human being. But take your time. Take a second, further look what's going to happen there, and make up your change in a basic policy decision, if necessary. That is the one thing I certainly like to counsel your government.

MOYERS: Can nations, can men, really, control their passions? Or must our animal origins forever explode? Kobo Abe, probably Japan's most distinguished writer, asked these enduring questions in his newest play, which is pure metaphor.

There are many characters, all ostensibly human. But some are merely apes who have learned to mimic human behavior, animals in disguise. How do you tell the difference? And an even more perplexing question: mustn't we stay close to our beginnings as mammals in the bush to truly realize our humanity?

Abe, the author of "The Woman in the Dunes," takes his concerns beyond East and West, to the contradictions of civilization itself. Passion versus logic; synthetic versus natural; man against himself. Abe, who has been translated into many languages, offers no quick way for the human race out of its dilemma.

So the way of the Yamato family can be instructive. And flowing from the East may come energy and insights for all of tomorrow's civilization. Some Americans, captivated by the Oriental sense of harmony and spirit, feel there is wisdom here to be shared. But I've met few men in power in our country who are much interested in the East beyond military and economic issues. This is our loss.

During this year, as I've traveled from Europe, to Africa, to Latin America, to Japan, the need to see beyond our own culture has become clear. The old major and minor league divisions of the world had better be abandoned. There are some remarkable teams, with all kinds of coaching systems that work, and work well. But until recently we've frozen out what might be called the Eastern league. Southeast Asia we miscalculated for years, with tragic results.

And despite our defense pact with Japan, I don't think we're aware of what our full interests there could and should be. We see the Japanese mainly as manning the outpost of our Pacific security. They're so much more.

In Tokyo a telephone call costs only three and a half cents. I take that as a metaphor for not just an economy, but for a total approach to public services that demands our respectful study. We've been abandoning railroads; they're building more and better ones. They are capitalists, we are capitalists. So it goes beyond economics. I believe it goes to how we see each other, the shared values, the division of what is a good society.

It isn't enough to explain it all by saying that they function as one big family, and therefore have cohesion and consideration. That part of their story cannot apply to our diverse and young society. But some of their values seem well worth considering.

Work is at the center of their culture. It's the core around which they organize, and it clearly provides stability, identity and goals. In America there's been a flight from work, partly because we invest it with so little human and social significance. And partly because we tolerate today ten million unemployed, even as so much begs to be done.

In Japan and other Eastern cultures, there is a reverent respect for age, which seems to flow from an awareness that one's parents, grandparents and ancestors are forever present. The notion of an enduring family persists. It provides values and support, and it binds.

Here the sense of family is being shredded, and our social cohesion lacerated.

Finally there is the primacy of the community.

Two thousand years have taught the Japanese that collective welfare must come first. We in the West have put our money on individual champions, the star. Both systems have produced startling results. But in the United States unbridled individualism, every man for himself and anything goes, has produced incredible pain, waste, and social neglect.

And on the eve of our two hundredth birthday, it has left us wondering if we have really succeeded in creating a more perfect union. It seems to this reporter that our nation is searching its rich past, its complex and confusing present, and its future hopes, for a new sense of community. I think we can find those values, but not without learning from the Yamato family, and all the other families around the world with whom we must share the table. There, I think, is the beginning of interdependence.

I'm Bill Moyers.

For all the people who made this series possible, good night.