Press Has Found Its Villain and It’s--Japan! : News: Americans get a singularly dark impression of the country and its people.

I am married to an American and have lived in America for more than 30 years but have always read Japanese magazines and newspapers because, among other reasons, I never used to be able to find any news about my native land unless a train derailment, airplane crash, earthquake or mine disaster occurred there.

Now almost daily I can see news stories about Japan. But this abundance of riches has left me both confused and frightened. Not only are these stories different in tone and substance than the ones I read in the Japanese press or see on Japanese television, but they all seem to communicate the same singular dark impression of Japan and the Japanese.

Not long ago, for example, I read in an American newspaper about how badly the Japanese were treating Brazilian immigrants of Japanese extraction, denying them access to proper medical treatment and health care and proper housing. But that very night a Japanese television newscast reported the successful integration of immigrant Japanese Brazilian workers and their families in a town not far from Tokyo through language classes and a program of after-school activities for their children.

And, of course, it has become a staple for American newspapers to run stories about the mistreatment of American workers by their Japanese employers here. They are denied promotions, paid less than their Japanese counterparts or find themselves summarily dismissed.

Whether it is because this year is the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or because since glasnost and the end of the Cold War the casting of a new villain is necessary, or simply because the ascendancy of a non-Caucasian country to Western affluence is just too much for Americans to take when their own economy is reeling, I do not know. But the fact remains that almost any mention of Japan these days seems to cite it as an origin of evil, as a source of universal malevolence.

However, long before Japan’s prosperity, the world was not without its ills and evils, its exploiters and its exploited. I can vividly recall, for example, working for an American company in Japan for less than one-fifth the salary of the lowest-paid American. I was also required to put in overtime almost every day without pay. And I could scarcely dream of promotion or advancement because I was a Japanese and a woman.

That Americans once mistreated their Japanese employees and that Japan itself has never been a fair society still does not justify the increasingly dangerous rise of both subtle and not-so-subtle Japan-bashing. I never thought I would be one to defend Japan, a land I left because of its archaic racial prejudices and demeaning gender practices. But then I never thought I would become nostalgic for the good old days of train wrecks and earthquakes, either.