Gaiatsu and Cultural Judo

The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.-Yasunari Kawabata PRESCRIPT Nothing is more dramatic than running out of time and uncertainty. The fear of drama can be finally overcome by embracing the permanence of death bringing to an end the disease of life. However, the attempt to eliminate all risk has its own risks. Because of Japan's rich literary legacy, its relationship with the West is wonderfully documented from the point of view of the culturally, economically, and (one must not forget) militarily colonized. It is an excellent case study of the confusion and suffering that colonization has on the colonized. 1 The Japanese term gaiatsu means" outside pressure." It was most commonly used in the late 1980s to refer to coercion from powers outside of Japan, usually the United States. Such coercion typically referred to colonial practices, such as encouraging Japan to open domestic markets to global competition and to modify regulation on financial institutions so that they would come into line with Western practices. This is what William Greider (1997) derides as so-called harmonization. This process is what others legitimize in pseudo-scientific and