Weekend at the neighbors in Japan provides food for thought

Irecently spent four days visiting relatives in the Greater Tokyo area, a quick wink-and-a-few-nods’ flight from Beijing. My extended weekend sojourn surprisingly received markedly less press coverage — other than this memorable memo — than the upcoming trip to China by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The lack of media exposure given to my visit is even more anomalous given that it remarkably coincided with the milestone 1,411th anniversary of the first recorded communication between the Middle Kingdom and the Land of the Rising Sun.

Speaking of uncanny coincidences that only I could appreciate … while in Chiba prefecture last week outside of the Japanese capital, I was walking with, not in, traffic as pedestrians are wont to do, and spied a license plate with the numero-letters 5847-TY. I mean, think about it, what are the odds of seeing a license plate with THIS VERY combination: 5847-TY? I’m guessing it was the only license plate with that configuration in Tokyo, and I was there to see it! And before I could photo-text it to all three people in my WeChat account — a 2933-TY Ford whizzed by, amazingly!

Historians on both sides, west and east, of the Korean Peninsula generally agree that the first use of the word Nihon to describe the land of the Mikado appears during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) in what else — The Book of Tang — in which an official delegation from Japan requested that the word be used as the name of the archipelago.

Prince Shotoku, the regent of Japan, sent the mission westward with a letter in which he referred to himself as “the emperor of the land where the sun rises”.

The royal message read, “Here, I, the emperor of the land where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you?” That was perhaps the first nihao/konnichiwa /hello to pass foreign lips in the region. Japan’s 127 million denizen netizens — spread across 6,852 islands — will hopefully raise their collective gaze from their devices and otherwise not be left to their own devices long enough to wish their current leader well on his “Journey to the West”.

Plenty is at stake for the prime minister’s visit to Beijing. A few short years ago, China’s GDP overtook Japan’s — no slouch itself at the three-spot globally.

Though bilateral ties aren’t too hot these days, they also lack warmth, and a friendly visit from the Japanese leader could nudge relations back on track.

Both countries have long adopted policies intended to forestall approaches from outside influences.

Japan looked inward and rolled up the welcome mat in the early 17th century, a period of self-imposed isolation that ended in 1853 with the sight of Admiral Perry’s black ships in Yokohama Harbor.

And the death of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) explorer Zheng He in 1433 led to an imperial decree forbidding most foreign voyages, an edict compounded by the Confucian belief that it was unfilial to venture abroad while one’s parents were still alive.

Neither country is anything close to isolated now in the interdependent world we all call home.

Hopefully, Abe’s trip to China next week will make that even more evident.