CQ27_FINAL_SPREADS (1)

ins, who tried so hard for so
long to cheat the locals out
of their natural resources and
convert them to Catholicism
that they were eventually
emphatically kicked out in
1639, after which all contact
with the rest of the world was
banned on pain of execution.
Relations were not fully reestablished
until America’s
Commodore Perry took his
friendly gunboats to Tokyo in
1853, following which events
Japan went from completely
ignoring the west to furiously
developing in order to compete
with it and prove itself superior.
This involved the adoption
of many ideas from western
politics, business, economics,
education and culture,
triggering extensive national
soul-searching. Unfortunately,
the copying extended to the
same sort of un-neighbourly
behaviour – warmongering,
imperial expansionism and
even the massacre of innocent
foreign civilians – that the
western powers had been
guilty of for so long. Matters
culminated in the second world
war, when the Japanese sided
with the Germans, reasoning
that, following the inevitable
conquering of Europe by the
Nazis, the USA would agree a
global settlement that would
leave Japan in charge of all of
Asia. This did not end well.
So, after two centuries of
refusing to have anything to do
with the west, then a century
of competing with it, copying
it and ultimately suffering total
national humiliation at its hands,
it is hardly surprising that the
Japanese have rather mixed
feelings about outsiders. Much
less excusable is an undeniable
and persistent racism in
certain quarters, which, like
most examples of the same
phenomenon globally, seems
to be fed by a peculiar mixture
of arrogance (foreigners
are inferior) and insecurity
(foreigners will take over if we
let them), often culminating in
a notorious refusal adequately
to acknowledge historic
wrongdoings. McCurry’s
treatment of this difficult subject
and how it manifests itself in the
21st century, especially in sports
from rugby and tennis to sumo,
is deft and enlightening.
Once again, though, it must be
stressed that none of this makes
the Japanese unique, even
if their specific way of doing
things is sui generis. There is
another island nation prone to
arrogantly believing in its own
superiority, both dismissive and
fearful of foreigners, and which
is willing to incinerate its longstanding
relationships with the
rest of the world in a tantrum
of mindless jingoism, regardless
of the consequences for its own
welfare. And, like the Japanese,
we also drink a lot of tea.
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