Africa-Japan: Reflections on Tokyo International Conference on African Development

Mail & Guardian

2 days ago

Japan went through a process of transforming from a country with a weak agricultural base to the success that it is today. Photo: File
The Japanese have a saying: 'Shippai wa seiko no haha.' It translates as 'Failure is the mother of success.' In other words, never give up!
Next week, African leaders will assemble in Japan for the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) — 32 years after its birth. This is therefore a good time to reflect on how the political and economic experience of
The most essential lesson Africa can learn from Japan is political, because what Africa needs most today is peace and stability, which can only be achieved in the political realm. It is important to note that, unfortunately, Africa's level of conflict was the
Conflict resolution
In my judgment, politics in Japan has at least four interrelated dimensions. First, there is the widespread perception that politics is not a zero-sum game. The best way to achieve a compromise is to ensure that today's political loser can be tomorrow's winner. This eliminates the need to resort to any means necessary to usurp power or cling to it until forcibly removed.
The unwritten rule of politics in much of Africa today seems to be different — one loses a political contest, often a violent and sometimes bloody contest, then that marks the end of that person's political career, or even of his life. In such a contest, one, therefore, has two choices: either to win and exterminate his opponent or to lose and be exterminated.
As the Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui once put it: 'In many African countries, presidential power is a zero-sum game. Either one is head of state or a figure of fun and derision, if not vulnerable to imprisonment or death. This state of affairs encourages some heads of state to cling to power indefinitely. They have everything to lose by giving up the state house.'
The second dimension of politics in Japan pertains to the phenomenon of political recycling, the idea that politicians, especially those holding higher offices, should expect to be called back to service after their term of office ends. The premise is that the old order need not be wiped clean by a new order. The net effect of this approach in Japan has been to institutionalise a positive-sum game of politics, foster the desire among political contestants not only to be good losers but also gracious winners and, above all, to induce the desire to cooperate. In Africa, it is fair to say that political recycling is almost unknown.
Third, there is, in Japan, the idea of the victor without the vanquished. I was a young graduate student from Africa in Japan in the 1990s. In that decade, the country changed its prime ministers nine times, needless to say, always peacefully. Both the winner and the loser could continue to co-exist. It is not a coincidence that Japan today has 11 former prime ministers, who are aging gracefully, some of whom, possibly, may also be waiting in the wings for another call to service.
And finally, there is the notion that an effective politician is one who can successfully make a compromise in the face of conflicting positions. The origin of this win-win approach can be traced back to the Meiji period and beyond.
In 1877, a regional lord named Saigo Takamori rose against the Meiji reformers in a rebellion that ultimately claimed thousands of Japanese lives. The rebellion itself grew out of the disaffection of those whose influence was declining as a result of the reform. After the conflict ended, Takamori came to be described by the victorious reformers as a 'misguided patriot' and, years later, was officially elevated to the position of a 'national hero'. The reformers did not doubt the genuineness of Takamori's concerns for the welfare of his fellow Japanese, even though his vision of how it was to be achieved differed from theirs. A statute was subsequently erected in Takamori's name, which stands to this day in Tokyo's Ueno Park. In a sense, Takamori may be more remembered in Japan today than the Meiji reformers themselves. He was also the inspiration behind the 2003 popular American film,
The Last Samurai
.
Serious political disagreements do arise in contemporary Japan, too, but they never lead to mutual annihilation. The Japanese have learned how to flexibly accommodate each other and change their positions when circumstances dictate. Africa, too, could perhaps take a leaf out of Japan's book.
Sustained economic development
On balance, Japan's experience in economic modernisation reveals that it successfully pursued three strategies: diversification, domestication and indigenisation. First, Japan's Meiji reformers proclaimed in 1868 that 'knowledge shall be sought throughout the world', and absorbed Western skills and adopted Western institutions from as many and diverse sources as possible.
The second strategy was what the Japanese economic anthropologist Keiji Maegawa called translative adaptation, the making of foreign products, institutions and ideas more relevant or more useful to local needs. It is worth noting that the Japanese were less concerned about whether what was modified had or did not have a close resemblance to the original.
Third, Japan pursued indigenisation, the fuller use of its human and material resources. This process also entailed the use and idealisation of what was indigenous. Japan's modernisers never sought to transform their culture radically. Instead, they successfully indigenised modernity. In each of the above areas, Africa's experience was decidedly different.
In general, why does Africa appear to be a less efficient learner? We can refer to a scene from Mazrui's
The Africans,
the internationally acclaimed documentary, to illustrate this point. Holding in his hand a crude homemade gun that the liberation fighters in East Africa had used in the 1950s, Mazrui says in
This issue takes us to another matter Africa has to come to grips with.
Technological self-reliance
Let us consider Mazrui's comment above in connection with the observation made by the American historian, George Basalla. It was about what happened in the 16th century when Portuguese adventurers brought to Japan two handguns made in Europe. At the time, guns were unknown in Japan. Basalla wrote: 'The Japanese were so impressed by these primitive firearms that they purchased them on the spot and set their swordsmiths to work duplicating them. Within a decade, gunsmiths all over Japan were turning out firearms in quantity.'
Far from Japan, the Portuguese also took the same objects, guns, to another place in almost the same period, and introduced them to another group of people in Africa. The new weapon also had a similar practical appeal to the Africans as the Japanese. The idea of making guns spread rapidly in one society (Japan), as indicated above. In the other, however, the idea did not gain any traction. For the succeeding centuries, in the latter, the spear continued to play its traditional role in warfare. The place in question is 16th-century Ethiopia, at the time a Northeast African Christian kingdom in the Northern part of present-day Ethiopia.
Even long before Mazrui and Bassalla, the prominent Meiji-era intellectual Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote in 1899: 'It was not until 1853 that a steamship was seen for the first time [in Japan]; it was only in 1855 that we began to study navigation from the Dutch in Nagasaki; by 1860, the science was sufficiently understood to enable us to sail a ship across to the Pacific. This means that about seven years after the first sight of a steamship, after only about five years of practice, the Japanese people made a trans-Pacific crossing without help from foreign experts.'
What, then, explains the difference? Why did Africa and Japan react to contacts with the West so differently? The answer to this question is complex, for sure. But it would have also to include the divergence in the way the challenges of modernisation were perceived in the two societies, as urgent and stark in one case and less so in the other. In the case of Meiji Japan, the need to catch up with the West was framed in existential terms — as a matter of survival of the nation.
With the persistent threat from the major powers of the time, and with the country open to seeing and interacting with the external world, Japan realised that it was lagging behind these powers in some areas and that it must catch up with them if it was to safeguard its national security. At this crucial moment in history, the belief that national improvement was achievable through determined effort also became widely and firmly accepted in Japan. In Africa's case, the question of catching up with the West, as vital as it was, was never framed in this way, as a matter of 'do or die'.
It was probably not a coincidence that Ethiopia, under Emperor Tewodros in the 19th century, should be the only African country to seek Western weapon technology, though unsuccessfully, as it was seen as essential for the country's survival.
All in all, there is a key takeaway from a comparative examination of the political and economic experience of Meiji Japan and postcolonial Africa. Japan can offer valuable lessons to Africa on what to learn, how to learn and how to learn quickly. And, why to never give up.
Dr Seifudein Adem is a research fellow at JICA Ogata Research Institute for Peace and Development in Tokyo, Japan.