110. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon1
SUBJECT
- Views of An American Businessman Long-Resident in Japan on U.S.-Japanese Relations
Senator Hugh Scott forwarded to me recently a lengthy letter from Mr. Robert A.G. Strickland, an American businessman long-resident in Japan who runs a bus line, restaurant chain, and tourist agency. Originally having gone to Japan as a student, having immersed himself in the Japanese scene, and having married a Japanese national, Strickland evidences in his letter the deep empathy he has developed for the country and its people.
At the same time, Strickland is critical of the parochialism he finds in the way Japanese deal with foreigners in their midst and abroad—particularly the double standard they apply in what they insist on from the outside world as opposed to what they are willing to extend to the outside world. Strickland is almost equally critical of American businessmen, diplomats, and scholars in Japan whom he claims are isolated from the real society, and names former Ambassador Edwin Reischauer in particular.
Strickland says he has been moved to write Senator Scott, in the hope his views will reach you, by the present frictions in U.S.-Japan relations. As a sympathetic American with deep roots in Japan, he is basically concerned with suggesting more effective means of dealing with the Japanese in order to get our relationship on a more stable long-term footing.
Focussing on the areas with which he has had most experience—trade, and investment (as well as immigration)—Strickland postulates that Japan’s economic success is due principally to its comparatively free access to the U.S. market, while it has restricted the outside world’s access to its own markets. (He also mentions the decided under-capitalization of Japanese business as an important contributing factor to this success.)
[Page 374]Characterizing Japanese as hard bargainers who respect strength and deplore weakness, who have developed a competitiveness unknown in the U.S., and who will not give in so long as they have the faintest hope of getting their way, Strickland offers the following suggestions for ameliorating our frictions:
—Vigorous efforts on both sides to resolve our differences, but in an atmosphere of mutual understanding and without forcing solutions. (“A forced solution will be as harmful as no settlement at all.”)
—An even-handed U.S. insistence on reciprocity in dealing with the Japanese.
—The use of a “firm, quiet stand” with irrevocable, firm time limits on negotiations in order to neutralize the Japanese tactic of dragging negotiations out ad infinitum to preserve a situation that is to their advantage.2
—Persistence in maintaining a position3 in the face of Japanese attempts to wear an adversary down through repeated assaults on that position.
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 537, Country Files, Far East, Japan, Vol. VI, October–31 December 1971. Limited Official Use. Sent for information. A notation on the memorandum indicates the President saw it. An additional handwritten notation indicates that Kissinger saw it. In a December 18, 1971, memorandum, Holdridge had recommended that Kissinger sign this memorandum to the President, which summarized the views of Strickland on U.S.-Japanese relations. (Ibid.)↩
- Nixon highlighted this sentence and wrote in the margin: “K—vitally important.”↩
- Nixon underlined, “Persistence in maintaining a position.”↩