Message to America from Japan's Prime Minister Takeo Miki

As part of our Bicentennial observances, TIME asked the Readers of nations around the world to speak to the American people through TIME'S pages on how they see the U.S. and what they hope--and expect--from it in the years ahead. This message from Prime Minister Takeo Miki of Japan is the second in the series.

I have the unique distinction of being the first Prime Minister of Japan to have lived, worked and studied in the U.S. and to have gained firsthand an indelible experience of the many meanings of American democracy.

The time was the mid-1930s. It was a period of global Depressions unequaled before or since, and of the rise of both Fascism and Communism in Europe and militarism in my own country. I had already spent some time as a youthful observer in Germany and the Soviet Union, where it seemed to me the myths of statism left no room for individual liberty, initiative or responsibility, and where Utopian visions of the future seemed contrived and grim.

I then spent two years in Southern California, working part time, listening and learning and meeting thousands of Americans. It was there that I found a political compass that has served me well through my subsequent lifetime career as a parliamentarian, internationalist and democrat.

Not that the Americans I associated with were different or better as human beings than any other nationality I knew, or than my own people. Nor was it that America's record as a world power, or even its domestic performance as the self-proclaimed land of liberty and equality, was without fault or blemish.

It was rather, I think, that even in the depths of Depression, and with the lights of liberty going out in the rest of the world, the American people never lost faith in their democratic political institutions, or their confidence that in a free society the people themselves hold the key to their own destiny.

This remarkable resilience of the American national character rises, I believe, from your national experience that self-government is both the most difficult and the most rewarding of all political systems. In the absence of imposed discipline, the individual citizens must discipline themselves to make democracy work.

This is not a formula for Utopia, for in a democracy the ideal is never quite reachable; there is always more to be done. The difference between what is and what might be lies in the initiative of citizens who are willing to strive together to create something better.

America's vitality also rises, I am convinced, out of your experience with diversity as a nation of immigrants. This is particularly striking to Japanese, a homogeneous people with a unique language and culture. For generations, the people of America have come from all corners of the earth, including Japan, bringing to your shores differences in language, culture, religion and historical experience. Yet by making common cause of your unflagging pursuit of individual liberty, dignity and fulfillment, you Americans have forged out of your diversity a unity and power unrivaled in the world.

These are among the meanings of America, the world's oldest constitutional democracy, that have continuing relevance for the rest of the world: first, that freedom flourishes in a society whose people are continually engaged in self-renewal and self-correction; second, that the working principles of democracy are not the exclusive property of any one people or culture, but are responsive to the deepest needs of any people with the yearning to be free.

Japan's own experience with America illustrates these historic facts. Twice in the past, the U.S. has helped to fashion Japan's history: Some 120 years ago it induced Japan out of self-imposed isolation and into the modern world. In the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War, the U.S. encouraged democratic forces within Japan to guide what has since become the only advanced industrialized democracy in Asia and the second most populous democracy in the world.

We had tragic differences a generation ago which men of good will on both sides failed to prevent. In the succeeding three decades, both sides have labored creatively to weave unbreakable ties. I am confident we have done so, though we must never take them for granted.

Japan and the U.S. are not simply the closest of friends in a narrow bilateral relationship. We have also become the most active partners in pursuit of a more open and fairer world economic system and a more stable world political order. Differences in perspective and priorities are bound to rise from time to time on opposite sides of the Pacific. Yet all this is natural and healthy.

Looking to the future, Japan expects much of the U.S. and is prepared to offer much in return. The Japan-U.S. Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security is the cornerstone of Japan's foreign policy. Linked to the U.S. deterrent, this pact is central to the maintenance of peace and stability in Pacific Asia. We count on the U.S. to maintain its deterrent in the Western Pacific, and to continue its constructive participation in the economic modernization of developing Asia--an American role which I am confident the independent states of that region also welcome.

We count on the U.S. to sustain its historic commitment to liberal world trade. In this connection, Japan warmly welcomed recent decisions by the American Executive Branch which have cleared the atmosphere for our multilateral trade negotiations, and should help reinforce world economic recovery.

Most of all, we count on the U.S. for its continuing friendship and partnership. Dare we also hope that the approaching third American century will be the era when all the diverse nations and peoples of the Pacific will discover and learn to build upon their natural interdependence? That would indeed be a proper challenge to the ingenuity, imagination and creativity of all the peoples of the Pacific, and especially of the peoples of Japan and the U.S.

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