Tougher Question

I came to the US 20 years ago with only an old suite case. Now I have my house, 2 cars, and all other good things. On the flight that I took from Japan when I came to this country I sat next to a gentle man (I just call him as “Ted”). Ted has advanced degrees from prestigious universities and was working as a successful professional. I casually mentioned that I was interested in getting an advanced degree in America. Ted said “That’s a great idea! You can do whatever you want to do through your hard work”. Fast forward 2 decades, I would say that he was right back then. If you measure a success in terms of how far you accomplished what you wanted to achieve, I did well.


There is a question that pops into my mind. The one is “can you still achieve what you want to do today?” I would say “sure thing”. Due to the tough global competitions and technological changes things will be tougher for many people, but it’s just like they say “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going”. All of these changes will bring us new opportunities and we will be able to capture them. We still have a good amount of natural and human resources here in the US, we can be successful through innovations and hard working.


However, the next question will be more difficult. The next one is “will you be able to achieve what you want to do 20 years from now?” I would answer “may be”. I’m an optimistic guy, but I’m realistic too. What we will be able to do 20 years later depends on what we do today. If we don’t tame our budget deficit while improving our education system how come can we expect a bright future ahead of us? If we don’t solve our issues today what will happen to the next generation of Americans including my nephews and a niece? What will I say to a young man who will be coming to America in the future? I don’t want to say to him “sorry buddy American dream is over”.


We need to fix issues in this country one by one. We need to set aside our ideologies and choose well thought out solutions. What we need is to lay a firm foundation for our future growth. If we don’t do this now, we’ll only have ourselves to blame 20 years from now.

English and I

I’ve been learning English since I was 12 years old and the total time that I’ve spent using English is approaching to half of my life. English as a matter of fact, is becoming my main language to work and enjoy my life. At this point I cannot imagine my life without using English, the language of my heart and soul. I would call it as my “adoptive mother tongue”.

I used to study English to work in America and I moved to the US about two decades ago. At that time I made a great deal of effort to improve my English pronunciation and business English skills. I practiced hard for a very obvious reason.

Now I have no problem doing business in English. At times it is easier for me to read and write in English than in Japanese. For one thing there is no viable spellchecker that works well in Japanese. Moreover, I don’t know much about the latest Japanese slung and colloquial expressions.

So you might think that my days of learning English are about to end. Actually that’s not the case. To the contrary I really want to learn English more! I want to read English literature (Geoffrey Chaucer, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, etc.), increase my vocabulary, and improve my writing skill.

I’m not interested in methods to learn English quickly any more. Those are not appealing to me. I just enjoy learning English and discover a new side of this amazingly expressive language every day. English has a special place in my heart just like programming does. I wonder how I could’ve been without English and programming.

How in the world did I communicate?

When I was 10 years old I lived in Tokyo Japan. There was an American family who lived near my parents’ house back then. I used to play with an American kid in the family (let’s just call him as “John” here). His dad gave me a ride when we went to Y’s gym. I don’t clearly remember how I communicated with them and still wonder how I did that.


A Japanese gentleman who has moved to Canada with his children told me that his kids communicate with Canadian kids without knowing much English. He mentioned that his kids listen to Canadian kids’ English and respond in Japanese. Children’s ability to communicate is amazing. It seems that little kids can learn a foreign language 10 times as fast as adults can.


Recently I’ve been researching the ways for adults to learn a second language in the same way as they did to learn the first one. I researched on neuroscience and read papers on “working memory” and “phonological loop”. So far my research results point to the time tested knowledge “younger is better when you learn a foreign language”. Although there are exceptions the ability to learn a foreign language starts to decline at an early phase of life (around 12 or so) in most cases. I think that it has something to do with the decline in the pace of neurons creation.


I’ve been using English almost exclusively for about 20 years. Today, people seem to think that I came to America at the age of 15 or so (I actually came to America in my mid 20s). That is close to my age when I started to go to a language school to learn English from native English teachers. After all of the pronunciation lessons the level of my spoken English seems to be affected largely by the age I started to learn English from native speakers.


I’m working with talented engineers from around the world and have no difficulty to communicate through English. Still then it is a bit of challenge to speak like a native English speaker. In theory the maximum level of my spoken English could be as good as someone who came to the US at the age 10 (the same age when I played with John). In any case I am nowhere near the point to challenge the critical period hypothesis.


I lost in touch with John. He may be wondering why he can speak Japanese so easily in somewhere in the US now. ;-)

Trading places

Years ago I predicted that the early 21st century in Asia will be like the early 20th century except that the roles of Japan and China will be reversed. At this point I can see how the process plays out. In early 20th century it was naïve to assume that Asia will modernize steadily with the strong leadership of Japan. Today, it is naïve to assume that China will democratize itself and pave the way for a long prosperity of Asia through peaceful means. It is obvious for Chinese communist party leaders that they don’t gain anything from Chinese democracy. They will lose everything when China is democratized. I think that some Chinese officials make comments about the need for political reforms only when they criticize their rival factions that support stricter state controls.


The Chinese leaders have no incentive and no intention to accept democracy. They seem to be building the strong economic and military power to fend off foreign and domestic pressures while they implement their sophisticated totalitarian control. China will not offer the alternative model (to the one with democracy and rule of law) for the world to follow, but it offers a model for 21st century’s dictators (“Peaceful Rise” while increasing its military budget more than 10% per year is a clever peace of propaganda).


Many people who wanted to see the demise of China made wrong predictions. It is important to separate their hopes and fears from what is likely happening. They need to think “what the options will be if they were Chinese leaders” to get more realistic scenarios. Then you can rule out the future where China launches total war against the US for the global domination. The most important thing for Chinese leaders is to keep their system as long as they can.


Here is my prediction of what will happen:

Great recession in late 2000s: While the financial shock caused ripple effects around the world China is relatively unscathed. However, the policies that they used to keep their economy afloat deprived them the opportunity to soft land their bubble economy.

2010-2020: Japan will face financial crisis and political turmoil. In a dire economic situation Japanese people will strongly resent China.
China will face the inevitable burst of its bubble economy after it becomes too obvious that most of the Chinese workers cannot afford to buy their homes (just like what happened in Japan). There will be massive riots in everywhere in China. Still, Chinese government will retain the control of media and their leaders will survive the crisis by using their nationalistic sentiment. Chinese leaders will start to say “Foreign powers are determined to stand in our way to restore our rightful position as the leader of Asia”. They will choose the target of their nationalist propaganda carefully. They will choose a hated and militarily weak nation such as Japan as their scapegoat. China will take a hard stance toward Japan in territorial and historical issues.

2020-2030: China’s population bonus ends. The rapid aging of its citizens and decline in the working age people will slow down Chinese economy. At that point there will be groups of neo nationalists in China. They will be the creation of Chinese prosperities rather than the economic hardships. One group will be right wing neo nationalists (new China chauvinists) who believe that Chinese communist party and foreign powers are major obstacles for China to materialize quick improvements in their living standards that they deserve. Another group will be neo socialists who are outraged by the big income inequities but disguise themselves as neo nationalists. Their strategy will be gradually getting into local branches of the government and silently exercising controlling influence (local military districts that Chinese government has a hard time controlling will be their target too).

Chinese government will try to control neo nationalists, but they will have the situation of “tail wagging a dog”. By controlling local government branches, they can do things to push the central government to the edge. If they control a military district they can start a military skirmish too. Since they are free from a fear of divided China they can launch a well calculated coup. It will be a power struggle rather than a democratic revolution. There is no guarantee that communist party wins.

The next wave of Japanese immigrants

I came to America in the 2nd wave of Japanese immigration to the US. We were called as the New 1st Generation since the 1st generation of Japanese immigrants who came to the US before WWII became senior citizens at that time. There are multiple definitions of the New 1st Generation, but I think the term generally refers to Japanese immigrants who came to America from 70s to 90s. When we came some people thought that we were marginal people who couldn’t be a part of mainstream American, but not really accepted in Japanese American communities. That stereotype somewhat reminds me of the stereotype of Gen-Xers. Decades later many of us are living as a part of American society and don’t have perceived frictions with Japanese American communities.

In general, we are the generation that overcame hardships and assimilated to America like the previous generation. However, the reason why we came is different from that of the previous generation. It is said that most of the pre WWII Japanese immigrants came here to save a lot of money and return to Japan. That situation was depicted in “Gan Gara Gan”, a good manga story about Japanese immigrants by Housei Hasegawa. In the story, Rakuichi Nanotsu tried really hard to make money to go back to Japan. The anti-immigration laws at that time made it difficult for them to save money and many of them stayed here. It is a good lesson from the history.

When we came here Japan already became prosperous. That is why many of us came here to be someone that we want to be rather than escaping poverty. For our generation trips outside of Japan are nothing new. Books such as “How to walk on the planet” became very popular. Some of us read books like “How to quit Japanese” (This is actually not a book on how to move to another country. It is more like a cultural study by comparisons). Some of us are engineers, translators, corporate managers, chefs, etc. The Japanese immigrants in the 2nd wave are mostly non agricultural workers. Some of us who work as specialists tend to have comfortable middle class lifestyles. Together with the flashy lifestyle of Japanese corporate types we were generally viewed as affluent immigrants back then.

I think that the next wave of Japanese immigrants will come in the next 10 to 20 years. In Japan it is estimated that the young generation will have to pay 40 mil yen (about $490K) in tax more than the amount they receive in public services. The senior citizens today will receive 57 mil yen (about $695K) in public services more than they pay in tax. This astounding gap (about $1.2 mil) will trigger them to “vote on foot” (dissent by leaving their country) in a nation where young people only hold minority votes. In the next 10 to 20 years it will be painfully obvious that Japan doesn’t offer bright future for young people. Today, Japanese people who leave the country may be mostly limited to specialists and affluent people, but once mass emigrations start a number of young people will follow.

The next wave of Japanese immigrants will be characterized by the amount of information that they use to choose the best country for them. In our generation it was harder to get information about countries that offer opportunities for us. Today’s young people can use internet (SNS, Twitter, etc.) to get as much information as possible to find a nation that offer young people good opportunities. Since the US is a developed nation that doesn’t have severe aging population issues many Japanese people will decide to move to the US.

The paradox of identity politics

Sometimes I want to say “let us all just be Americans”. I do understand that there still are people in the US who don’t consider Asian Americans as mainstream citizens. To some extent I understand the logic of let’s get together to fight racism against us. In that case we are getting together for a common cause to create a nation where we don’t need to get together. That’s a paradox of hyphenated identity politics. With this identity politics, people sometimes criticize others who actually advocate their end goals like “let us all be just Americans”.


I wonder what JACL or Chinese for Affirmative Action members will react when I say “we need to stop discrimination against Asian American students in the admission processes of top schools”. There are those who challenged the situation. Jian. Li, a Yale student who had a perfect SAT score lodged his complaint about alleged racially discriminatory admission policy against Asians at Princeton. I personally think that anyone who thinks that he doesn’t want too many talented Asians at his school should say it in public.


“Asians Against Affirmative Action” a Facebook group says “All we want is to be given a shot at equal opportunity, just as everyone else is. It's time we showed our voice and demand equal opportunity through race blind admissions”. That sounds very American to me (the part that they are willing to fight back). I can even see an echo of MLK’s dream of the nation where race doesn’t matter. I reject ideas such as “some people are more equal than others”. If everyone demands equal opportunity the demands will move us closer to a fairer society.


Identity groups are formed in part to counter discrimination against us. As groups expand their scope wider and wider, they will eventually reach the point to cover every American. At that point it’ll start to make sense to get rid of all of the race based preferential treatments. I wonder if today’s identity groups accept the ideas like “anyone can join this group and we are for everyone in the US”. In other words are they ready to become loosely defined cultural organizations (such as “Chinese cooking fan club”)?


I don’t think that I can find any identity group that clearly states “our goal is to create a society where we are no longer needed”. It’s not that the success of Asian Americans put us in the paradoxical position. I rather think that identity groups are indeed paradoxical (fighting for their irrelevance just like some super heroes).

Learning from history

I’m reading the book titled “Strong men armed” by Robert Leckie. His story in the book as well as others (such as “Helmet for my pillow”) was featured in HBO mini-series “The Pacific”. It is interesting to know that the reason for Japan’s failure in Guadalcanal was attributed to bad information and piece meal commitments of troops. In other words, Japanese generals thought like lieutenants (they rushed to get a quick win without grasping the information about the whole situation) and made poor judgments.


Japanese side of historical accounts often characterize the failure as the result of significant numerical disadvantages. However, Japanese troops didn’t have significant numerical disadvantages in the beginning of the battle. If Japanese generals had planned the troop gathering and logistics carefully and realistically, the US marines would have had much tougher time winning the battle.


After many years since the end of the war, it seems that Japanese large organizations didn’t completely shake off the problem. In 90’s Japanese CEOs thought like managers and couldn’t grasp the changes in businesses and technologies. They made bad judgments and caused two decades of economic decline. Some Japanese business leaders try to hire more foreign employees and make English an official language of their companies. Although they are right moves they failed to address the key issue.


The core issue of Japanese organizations is the lack of meritocracy. They usually don’t demote bad managers and promote good managers quickly enough. As a result, you will see Japanese CEOs who think more like managers in organizations with a long history. In Japan once you hopped on the escalator of social promotion you will be OK for the rest of your career. Some people may say it won’t work that way anymore, but I don’t hear large scale layoffs of mid managers in major Japanese companies often.


The past efforts to introduce meritocracy in Japanese companies had mixed results at best. Some Japanese people seriously argue that it’s impossible to assess a person’s performance. To me, assessing the performance of workers based on their job descriptions and commitments is a basic task for managers.


Japanese companies should reintroduce meritocracy in the following ways.
1. Hire employees based on the job descriptions. Stop the outdated custom of finding employees fresh out of collages.
2. Make labor laws more flexible. Allow companies to lay off workers with certain amount of severance pay. It will create a more flexible labor market.
3. Set realistic and measurable goals for each worker so that managers can assess his/her performance. Each employee should be the advocate of his/her own career and demonstrate their skills and achievements to his/her supervisors and other managers.
4. End life time employment and social promotion.