After a reception attended by executives of top business corporations at the Nihon Kogyo Club in Marunouchi, Tokyo, a small group went to the Restaurant Kurosawa at Nagatacho for dinner.
The restaurant was designed such that it evoked, both from its exterior appearance and the simple but elegant interiors, the ambience of actual samurai living, bringing the patrons back to some 200 years ago. And in the room where we partook of the best shabu-shabu ever, based on a recipe of the Kurosawa family, an actual painting by the world-acclaimed film director Akira Kurosawa of samurai congregating together was the singular centerpiece in a reed-covered wall.
Our four-man Filipino group was composed of a creative marketing genius, a young corporate executive and a lawyer, plus myself. Sitting on tatami mats, we faced a former ambassador who now heads the Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation, a university professor, a medical doctor and two other Japanese business executives.
The French wines were of excellent vintage, but the ingredients in the shabu-shabu, from the wagyu to the kurobuta to the crisp vegetables were simply excellent (and I thought the best I tasted was in an ancient restaurant in Kobe years ago), but more than the food and the libations, it was the conversation that struck me as most edifying.
The central topic was President Rodrigo Duterte.
At first our Japanese hosts were trying to capture the most politically correct words to describe the Philippine president who was arriving the day after.
“He is really different…some kind of a maverick,” someone said.
“Maybe like a ronin?” one Filipino tried to inject appropriate humor.
That was where the university professor lit up and said, “NO, in the best traditions of the samurai, because your president is fighting for something pure and noble.”
We were quite awed. We thought that because of the historic competition between Japan and China, they would be slightly critical of our President’s statements. But no, truth is, they were simply not expecting a Filipino president to be so refreshing, if too candid.
They, as well as the large majority of Filipinos, both in our country and abroad, had been accustomed to leaders who were predictably pro-American, and with it, predictably approving of the statements coming from American-influenced multilateral institutions and countries.
“Your president is on center stage all over the world. He is the symbol of disruption,” the medical specialist, one of Japan’s best, chimed in.
To which the former ambassador added: “To be disruptive is what true change means.”
At one point in the conversation, one of the Japanese gentlemen before us emoted: “Did America have to unleash the atomic bomb upon innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Would the war not have ended, with us vanquished anyway, without having to commit such a crime against humanity? And now they excoriate about human rights in a war against criminals?”
He said it so poignantly, almost with tears in his eyes, that we were so moved into quietude.
America, the most powerful nation on earth, self-proclaimed by President Obama and his predecessors as such, and expectedly recognized by most of the world, must come to terms with certain nationalist sensibilities that no matter how globalized the world has become, remains a fierce reality.
Treat every sovereign nation and every race as equals and with respect. Whether that is a former wartime enemy as Japan, or a Communist state like China, or a small but highly energized island nation as Taiwan, or a former colony kept in poverty by its leaders’ failed policies and subservience like the Philippines.
The world is changing, as much as high technology has changed the views and opinions of its citizens, particularly the millennials. Whether in Africa or war-torn parts of the Middle East, in Latin America as in Asia, and even in old Europe, it is America which must adjust. And not always expect the rest of humanity to fall in line, and step in their step.
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There were a lot of topics and project possibilities that we discussed Monday night amid the ambiance of a samurai dwelling. But all those will have to depend on the success of President Duterte’s meetings with key officials in Japan. And the impression he will leave, the goodwill his visit will generate. Above all, it is important for these leaders and the Emperor, to “feel” the inner Duterte, to get to know the samurai in him.
Very apropos to setting the tone of the country’s aperture japonais, after the visit to competing China, were the remarks made by the president and CEO of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, Mr. Vince Dizon, during the reception at Marunouchi.
He quoted a Japanese proverb, “Koketsu ni irazunba koji wo ezu.”
“If you do not enter the tiger’s cave, you will not catch its cub.”
Roughly explained, the “hyperbole” (a favorite Digong word) means: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You can’t do anything without risking something.
Precisely. Mismo. Disruption equals change.
