What does it mean for the future that Hello Kitty, Pikachu, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Naruto represent Japan for American kids today? Or that slightly older kids first encountered Japanese culture through Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, Final Fantasy, or The Legend of Zelda? One thing it means is that even greater proportions of Americans in the next 25 years are likely to have positive associations with Japan, due in part to their immersive, interactive, multi-vector leisure experiences made possible by Japanese technology. I’m not denying that the youngest of these younger generations have probably been almost as oblivious, selective, and subjective in their engagements with Japanese culture as I was in the 1980s, or that their understanding of the actual Japan has probably been as limited as mine was before I started visiting and researching it around 2003. And they certainly will be influenced by future political and economic shifts and shocks. But I want to suggest that these generations will be a lot less easy for anyone to manipulate than American publics were in the 1940s and 1980s. The odds of military or economic conflict between the U.S. and Japan seem increasingly long over the next 25 years as a result.
It’s not just that “American otaku,” as some in these subcultures identify themselves with pride, are likely to become an even more influential part of the cultural mainstream in the U.S. in coming years. It’s also that problems the younger generations of the U.S. will have to face up to--stemming from the globalization of capitalism and climate change, and including peak oil and alternate energy sources, food production and distribution, demographic shifts, and a host of social issues associated with access, equity, and risk management--are associated in many Americans’ minds with Japanese efforts to solve them. The image of a green Japan may prove to be the most potent representation of Japan in the U.S. in the coming decades.
That is, I think we can expect to see a shift from largely cultural appreciations--of “beautiful Japan” (kawaii culture, Miss Universe, youth fashion, animation culture), of “cutting-edge Japan” (information and entertainment technology, robotics, social dynamics), of “weird Japan” (just do a google search on this phrase to see what I mean!)--to political reappraisals of Japan in the U.S. Part of this will be fueled by regional realignments as crises like North Korean nuclear ambitions force East Asian powers to renegotiate their security policies (not to mention their understandings of each other’s histories) and as the growing importance of intraregional trade forces Asian tigers to learn to grow together (rather than primarily relying on exports to the U.S. and Europe). And part of this will be fueled by a shift in American political culture from Republican-led efforts to orient a new Cold War against radical Islam or China to Democrat-led efforts to head off, mitigate, or recover from global crises and their repercussions for the U.S.
It’s possible, of course, that the U.S. will turn out to have learned the wrong lessons from the twentieth century. It’s possible that Iraq will become Imperial America’s Korea, Iran its Manchukuo, and Saudi Arabia its China--and that Japan will someday face the choice of when and how to break off an alliance with such a dangerous and destabilizing partner. By the same token, it’s possible that Japanese political culture will accelerate its rightward shift and intensify Asian rivalries so much that the U.S. would be forced to distance itself from an embarrassing and erratic ally. But it’s much more likely, I believe, that even U.S. political and military leaders will find much to learn from the post-W.W. II transformations of Japan in the near future. And that liberals in both countries can encourage their fellow citizens to reexamine their own countries’ colonialist and militarist pasts and shift their nations’ priorities to focusing on solving problems of the near- and mid-future.
So my projections for the next 25 years of U.S.-Japanese representations and interactions are surprisingly, if guardedly, optimistic. I’m curious to hear what yours are. Thank you for your time and attention. I’d be glad to respond to any questions or comments you wish to share with me.
[Update 7/25/07: The Onion does a hilarious riff on the Japan=future theme!
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