There's no doubt that Japanese people's attitudes toward foreigners, and the ways they relate to them, have changed markedly in the 40-odd years since I first arrived here. But is this change we can believe in?
First of all, in the 1960s — and, indeed, in the years from 1945 until then — most Japanese assumed that every foreigner here was an American. Countless times, while walking along minding my own business, I was accosted by children shouting, "Amerikajin da!" ("It's an American!"). I once shouted back at two scruffy little boys, "Amerikajin ja nain da!" ("I'm not an American!"). That sent them, mouths agape in shock, scurrying into a nearby shrine to hide.
In 1972, I played the character of Mr. Higgins in an adaptation by state broadcaster NHK of Akiyuki Nosaka's prize-winning short story, "Amerika Hijiki." Nowhere in postwar Japanese literature is the complex relationship between a Japanese and a foreigner more honestly portrayed than in this story (Hijiki is a kind of edible seaweed, and American hijiki are black tea leaves that some Japanese mistook for it.)
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