Japan’s position in the world has always been obscure in terms of politics, economy, and culture. Geographically speaking, Japan is located in the region called ‘Asia.’ But the country is not necessarily represented in the context of ‘Asia’ because of Japan’s uncertain situation. Japan is often described as a part of ‘Asia,’ but also sometimes as a member of the West. Japan may not belong to anywhere but have its own category of civilisation as Huntington suggests in his article of ‘the Clash of Civilizations?’ (1993). The Japanese self-identity is even more ambiguous as if the country is staggering between the West and ‘Asia’ (Holloway 1991: 6). But because of her strong influence on international politics and economy, it is crucial to examine the representation of the country in the world.

In 2000, the main meetings of the G8^* summit conference were held in Okinawa Prefecture, which consists of a few islands and is located in the far south of Japan. The conference was likely to be held in Tokyo as before, but the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi decided to choose Okinawa as the main meeting place. Okinawa, formally known as Ryukyu, has a different background from the mainland Japan. The Ryukyu Kingdom historically functioned as a base of trade and communication between Japan and China and its surrounding nations. Today, Okinawa is often described as an entrance to ‘Asia’ from Japan as the message of a memorial in Okinawa says “here Japan ends and Asia begins, and here Asia ends and Japan begins” (Sakamoto 2000). Therefore, the decision by Obuchi to have the main meetings of the G8 summit conference in Okinawa was important in the Japanese politics, suggesting the government’s willing to make much of ‘Asia.’

But the government failed to invite China to the conference. China is a country who has the largest population and the most influential power in terms of culture, politics, and economy in the region. It means that it is difficult for Japan to be considered herself as a leader of the region without considering China, and therefore, China’s curt refusal to the invitation suggests that Japan should not be a representative of the region (ibid.).

In this paper, I would like to re-consider the problematic concept of ‘Asia’ and to examine Japan’s struggle with her position in relation to ‘Asia’ through the country’s representation. There are three standpoints of Japan’s representation to be considered: the West, ‘Asia,’ and Japan herself. Based on these three standpoints, the representation of Japan is to be examined chronologically. By doing so, we would be able to recognise the importance of political economy in determining the world and to go beyond common sense interpretations to uncover underlying processes which shape representations.

The concept of ‘Asia’ is very ambiguous, and therefore, very problematic. According to Encyclopadia Britannica, “Asia is more a geographic term than a homogeneous continent” (2001a). The term normally refers to most of the eastern part of the Eurasian continent, but the exact border of the area is not defined clearly. The name ‘Asia’ might originally be used to designate the lands situated in the east of Greece in ancient Greece, but some scholars also believe that the word may come from the Assyrian word asu, meaning ‘east’ (ibid.). Geographically speaking, the area called ‘Asia’ includes countries like Turkey (Anatolia) and Israel in the west, Russia in the north, India in the south, Malaysia and Indonesia in the southeast, and China and Japan in the east. Since it is a vast area, the terms like Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia are used to designate each part of the area.

The important fact here is that the concept of ‘Asia’ was not created by ‘Asians’ but by the ancient Westerners to designate the land in the east. In this sense, the term contains the meaning of ‘the other’ in itself and it is similar to the idea of the ‘Orient.’ Although the word ‘Orient’ mainly refers to Islamic or Arabic cultural world rather than geographical boundary, the term ‘Asia’ is also used to describe a different world from the West. In his explanation of the nature of orientarism, Edward Said mentions as follows:

However, the concept of the ‘other’ does not always mean fear and hostility, but contains exoticism, glamour, mystery, and promise at the same time. The medieval Venetian merchant and adventurer, Marco Polo, travelled from 1271 to 1295 to China and most of the countries which are called ‘Asian’ today, and compiled a famous travel account called Il Milione or The Description of the World. His account had a deep impact on the readers of Europe, and stimulated interest in ‘Asian’ trade. It is believed that Polo’s travel experiences offered a firsthand view of ‘Asian’ lands (Encarta 2001a). Although it is not certain if Polo journeyed with the perception of the concept of ‘Asia,’ it is clear that his account fascinated European people with ‘Asia’ and established the image of ‘Asia’ as an exotic place and a different world from Europe.

In addition, it was Polo who introduced the country of Japan to Europe for the first time through his account although he himself did not visit the country. But the description of Japan was very influential as Christopher Columbus set a goal to Japan in his journey in 1942 (Britannica 2001b). Since Japan was introduced in the context of the travel to ‘Asia,’ Japan was gripped as one of the ‘Asian’ countries. In other words, Japan was represented as an attractive and strange country in ‘Asia.’

When we think about the representation of Japan, it is necessary to consider Japan’s view of the world in order to know how Japan located herself in the world. In the early stages of the country’s history, the most important world outside of Japan was China. China had a much more advanced civilisation in many aspects than Japan had, so China had been an object of learning for Japan for a long time. As a result, Japan absorbed the writing system, religion, philosophy, music, government structure, city planning, etc. from China.

But it does not mean that Japan always saw herself as a tributary state of China such as Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, and so on. Prince Shoutoku, who served as regent for his aunt, the empress Suiko, opened relations with the Sui dynasty of China on an equal basis in the seventh century. There is a famous episode that in front of the Chinese emperor, the prince addressed him as the ruler of the nation ‘where the sun sets,’ while he was the ruler of the nation ‘where the sun rises’ (Britannica 2001c). This episode is the basis of the name of Japan, Nihon (Nippon) in Japanese, meaning the nation where the sun rises. Therefore, Prince Shoutoku established the self-identity of Japan as a truly independent nation by placing the country in an equal position to China, which was the most influential empire in the region. It was epoch-making because the self-representation of Japan in the region, or ‘Asia,’ became unique then and different from any other ‘Asian’ countries.

After Prince Shoutoku, there were several exchanges between Japan and China. The official missions who dispatched from Japan were called Kenzuishi (mission to the Sui dynasty) and Kentoushi (mission to the T’ang dynasty). They were sent to learn the continent’s culture and international affairs. The students of those missions returned from China with the power and efficiency of the Chinese dynasties, and they contributed to the reformation of the Japanese government and to the reinforcement of the power of the state (ibid.). But because of the confusion in the end of the T’ang dynasty in the ninth century, the missions were ceased at that time. The exchanges between Japan and China were limited afterwards, except for the religious contacts such as Ganjin (Chinese: Chien-chen), who was a Chinese dignitary and came to Japan in 753 after his six attempts on the Japanese government’s invitation.

Until the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1867, Japan had basically been isolated from the rest of the world, experiencing the Warring State Period and the stable Tokugawa (Edo) Period. Especially in the era of the Tokugawa, the government enforced a policy of national isolation, which banned trades with any foreign countries except for the Dutch and Chinese people. Therefore, Japan’s sense of belonging to ‘Asia’ did not did not develop at all. Rather, it is believed that the policy of national isolation by the Tokugawa Shogunate “produced in the Japanese a unique sense of insularity” (ibid.).

With respect to the relationships between Japan and ‘Asia’ and between Europe and ‘Asia,’ there is a theory which should be reckoned with. Heita Kawakatsu has proposed a ‘maritime historical view of civilization,’ which explains the successful modernisation of Japan after the Tokugawa Period (Takashima 1998). By playing up the parallels between Japan and Western Europe, Kawakatsu points out as follows:

Therefore, when Perry’s black ships from the United States arrived in Edo (former name of Tokyo) at 1853, the two contrasting civilisations encountered each other. The key point of this theory is that Japan and Europe are paralleled in an equal position and Japan is differentiated from ‘Asia.’ Japan is thus often represented as her own civilisation rather than a part of ‘Asia.’

After the Tokugawa Bakufu was forced to open the ports of Japan to foreign countries in 1850s, domestic tensions were increased. With facing the Western powers, Japan experienced great social and cultural changes. The fall of the Tokugawa and the establishment of the Meiji government were occurred in 1867. This movement is called the Meiji Restoration, in which Japan changed herself to the modern state.

One of the most influential policies which the Meiji government enforced was westernisation of the Japanese culture and social systems such as clothing, foods, academics, governments, etc. The policy was represented by a slogan ‘Datsu-A-Nyu-O’ which means “Getting out of Asia, and join the West (Europe).” It was an expression by the government and the elite at that time that Japan should not belong to ‘Asia’ but Europe so that the country could play an important role in the world politics which the Western powers dominated already.

In his article of “Complicit Exoticism: Japan and its other,” Koichi Iwabuchi explains the movement of westernisation in Japan in the late nineteenth century as the development of an ‘oriental’ orientalism (2000). What Iwabuchi means by an ‘oriental’ orientalism is that the government considered Japan herself as the inferior other in the Western view of the world so that the whole Japanese people were able to unite in the direction for westernisation and establish the Japaneseness in the end. In other words, Japan tried to construct new Japan which could compete with the Western powers, but in its own way.

As a result of an excessive plan for enriching the nation and building up the defenses called ‘Fukoku-Kyouhei Saku,’ Japan became the only non-western imperial power and caused the disastrous World War II in the 1940s. Imperialism grew in Japan because only the powerful countries like Britain and France possessed colonies. Many Japanese believed that expansion of the Japanese territory was crucial to become a major power in the world (Encarta 2001b).

In order to urge the people of Japan to support the policy to colonise the Asian neighbour countries which were believed to be necessary for poor Japan in natural resources, the government carried a slogan called ‘Daitoua-Kyoueiken.’ The meaning of the slogan is a prosperous bloc in great East Asia which included Manchuria, Korea, China, Taiwan, and South East Asian countries with making Japan as a centre of the area. The aim of the war, then, was to establish such a bloc in East Asia by inspiring the people of the area to have fellowship and alliance in order to destroy their previous masters, the Westerners (Britannica 2001c). Therefore, the Japanese people believed that the war was a kind of benevolence to emancipate East Asia from the colonisation of the Westerners. Moreover, many people felt that they had a mission to spread modernisation, which Japan experienced in the Meiji Restoration, among their East Asian neighbours.

However, the idea was self-righteous in a way which Japan was looking down on East Asian countries as uncivilised societies. Indeed, Japan not only ousted the Western powers from the area but also colonised those neighbours just as the Westerners did. The Japanese military also killed a number of innocent people, and the cruellest massacre was occurred in Nanking, China.

‘Asia,’ for Japan at that time, was just an object of exploitation to redeem the poorness of Japan in natural resources and to show the power of modernised Japan to the Western imperialist nations. The self-representation of Japan was formed in the concept of East Asia, but she herself was placed in a different, upper level of hierarchy from the rest of East Asian societies.

According to Shouichi Saeki, a famous arts critic, the Japanese have a strong tendency to make other cultures and civilisations objects of aesthetic contemplation and abandon themselves to the unquestioning appreciation of their beauty and charm (1999). It is a result of the Japanese people’s reaction to the power, and they have enhanced themselves by taking the powerful systems and cultures in. The first civilisation was China, and the second one was Europe. Then, after Japan was defeated by the United States in World War II, the object of the Japanese admiration was shifted to Europe to the U.S. As a result, americanisation of the Japanese society proceeded. The economy developed dramatically and the image of Japan was projected and enhanced by events such as the highly successful 1964 Olympic Summer Games and the Osaka World Exposition of 1970 (Britannica 2001c). In other words, Japan could become a major power which can compare with the U.S.

It is natural, therefore, that Japan came to be considered as a leader of the region, ‘Asia.’ Countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia began to try to emulate the Japanese model (Iwabuchi 2000). There was a great opportunity for Japan to display leadership in the region both in name and in reality, but the misfortune was that the Japanese attitude was one of aloofness from ‘Asia’ (Holloway 1991: 6). Almost all of the major prime ministers like Shigeru Yoshida, Nobusuke Kishi, Hayato Ikeda, and Eisaku Sato placed a special emphasis on the relationship with the U.S. represented by the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty (Britannica 2001c), except for the then prime minister Kakuei Tanaka’s decision to normalise the relationship with China (The People’s Republic of China).

Next, Japan’s relationship with the surrounding region is to be concerned. There are two considerable matters for the relationship: economy and security. With respect to the economic issues, a concept of the Asia-Pacific region was raised in the stream of economic regionalism such as EU (European Union) and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). In the Asia-Pacific region, APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference) was established in 1989 by the leadership of Japan and Australia. The members are Japan, the U.S., Canada, China, South Korea, ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) countries, Australia, etc.

Although the purpose of the conference was to response to the growth of economic interaction and interdependence within the Asia Pacific region, it is difficult to say that APEC has been successful so far because of the great diversity of the region such as vast differences in population, culture, historical background and stage of economic development, and political differences and conflicts (Kikuchi 1996). Japan displayed the leadership in establishing APEC, but the country cannot place herself in the region completely because of the weak concept of the Asia-Pacific region. That concept originated only from the geographical facts, and the difficulties of APEC show the weakness of regionalism without any common cultural and political grounds.

In terms of the security issues in the region, China plays a crucial role because of her enormous population size with the communist government and the rapid economic growth. Japan’s basic national defence policy is relied upon the relationship with the U.S. such as the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, but the growing power of China threatens the Japan’s defence policy. When President Clinton of the U.S. did not stop over Japan on the way to visit China in 1998, the Japanese government was shocked and worried about the future of the country (Zhang & Drysdale 2000: 9).

But the economic relationship with China has developed on the other hand. “In 1998 Japan was China’s biggest export market, absorbing 16.5 per cent of China’s total exports. Japan’s exports to China (including net trade with Hong Kong), at 7 per cent of Japan’s total exports, were second only to the United States (Zhang & Drysdale 2000: 5).” It means that Japan has already been involved in China and the region, so the representation of Japan seems to be settled in the region as its part.

However, in the late twentieth century, Japan began to be represented in a different way which categorises Japan as its own civilisation without belonging to any other cultural regions. Based on Arnold Toynbee’s work of A Study of History in 1960s, which cited Japan as one of 21 representative civilisations (Saeki 1999), Samuel Hantington categorised Japan as one of the seven or eight major civilisations in his work of ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ which analyses the Post-Cold War world and the new world order (1993). He states that “Japan has established a unique position for itself as an associate member of the West: it is in the West in some respects but clearly not of the West in important dimensions (ibid.).”

But there is concern among the Japanese if Japan’s lone-country civilisation would be able to survive in this new twenty-first century in the situations like the dramatic and tumultuous rise of the Islamic world and the undeniably expanding range and influence of Chinese civilisation (Saeki 1999). Akihiko Tanaka, a professor of political science at the University of Tokyo, thinks of Japan as ‘pathetic’ with “decrying the country’s lack of ability to think in the strategic terms of a broad regional order and warning that it is likely to end up being like ‘a soccer ball kicked back and forth between the American and Chinese players’” (1999). Japan is represented highly outside of the country, but the Japanese point of view about the country’s future is very pessimistic.

In recent years, there is a new discourse of calling for a new concept of ‘Asia’ in Japan. The advocator of the discourse is Kazuo Ogura, a high ranking Japanese official who is also the author of several books on Japan-U.S. economic friction and currently serving as Japanese ambassador to South Korea. He insists the necessity of the creating a new ‘Asia’ for the three reasons. First of all, as an integrated region, the new ‘Asia’ can play an important role in the American dominated world. He says that at present only Western Europe and ‘Asia’ are economically and strategically capable to cooperate with America and support the country’s leadership. Second, Asia needs to response to the integration of Europe and the great power of America in order to maintain and strengthen the international political and economic order by cooperating with those super powers. Finally, the new ‘Asia’ is able to weaken the movements of sectarian nationalism in Asian nations such as China’s sino-centrism, Korea’s chauvinism, South East Asian countries’ anti-western principles, and Japan’s right wing ideas (Ogura 1999).

However, the region is diverse and it is difficult to integrate as one unlike Europe. Therefore, Ogura is not advocating integration of political sovereignty. Instead, he is calling for and emergence of a concept that spiritually incorporates all the nation-states in the region. In his article of ‘A call for a new concept of Asia,’ Ogura states:

It is interesting that the discourse of new ‘Asia’ appeared from Japan. Ogura emphasises on the necessity of the Japanese leadership to achieve the creation of a new ‘Asia’ (1993). This movement can be considered as a new representation of the country with respect to the position of Japan in the world. By facing the two super powers of Europe and America, Japan recognises that she will not be able to survive, in terms of maintaining the present position as the second largest economic country, in the future. As ‘Asia’ is emerging as a real economic and political presence with the rapid economic development, it is clear that Japan is trying to re-consider and place a special emphasis on the region as a part of it.

As we can see, Japan has been swayed between the great powers such as China, Europe, and the U.S. As Saeki points out, the majority of Japanese tend to think of the core civilisations and cultures of the world as things that always exist elsewhere, distant models that the Japanese must first of all humbly strive to emulate (1999). Therefore, Japan learned from the Chinese civilisation in the early stage of the history, then experienced modernisation in the Meiji Restoration of 1868 by learning from the West, and finally, developed on the model of the U.S. after WWII. So Japan, throughout the history, has not been represented clearly either within the country or outside. “Japan is located ‘in’ Asia, but not ‘of’ Asia (Holloway 1991: 6).”

But the recent movement of calling for a new ‘Asia’ by Kazuo Ogura from Japan is epoch-making in a way which Japan exercises leadership in the movement and Ogura uses the term ‘spirit’ as the common ground of the region (Shimizu 1999), regardless of the diversity.

This is a chance for Japan to identify her position in the world and to represent herself as a crucial member of the region. In this twenty-first century, nations are seeking for a new world order with the U.S. as the only super power. But the importance of the European countries politically and economically is increasing against the background of the European integration. The People’s Republic of China is also gaining a strong power with her enormous population size and the rapid economic development. Japan, in order to survive in this situation, needs to re-consider and to re-represent herself in relation to the region called ‘Asia’ where the country belongs to.

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