Japan rebranding its image in Africa

 

Ardhi House along Ngong Road in Nairobi. Photo/FILE

By  Macharia Munene

Japan is concerned about its image and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears to be rebranding Japan in Africa.

In Nairobi, this effort is reflected in the activities of Atsuko Kashiwaguchi, outgoing political officer, defensively engaging people she perceives to have unflattering opinions about Japan.

She twice came looking for me at the university to “discuss” some of my views on geopolitics. One of her last acts, prodded by Japanese language instructor Katsuji Nakamura of USIU, was to organise a public assessment of Japan’s relations with Kenya.

The symposium revealed things affecting Japan’s image. The experiential discussions portrayed the positive but did not touch on what ails perceptions of Japan-Kenya relations.

The story of Yoshiyuki Sato’s 50 years of business innovations and enterprise in Kenya was thrilling. Dennis Awori’s revealed Toyota’s expansion plans in the region.

The scholarly session brought out the fact that Japan is poor at marketing itself and tends to assume that its work is self-evident.

Subsequently, Kenyans often give credit to China for some work done by Japan. It does not seem interested in letting people know of its activities.

In addition, having seemingly ignored scholarship on Kenya/African relations with Japan, little literature in English exists on Japan and Africa. With hardly anything to read on Japan, besides technical brochures on JICA and TICAD, the Japanese remain mysterious.

Part of the mystery is Japan’s attempt to be part of the conceptual West, although being geographically in the East. Emerging from World War II psycho-politically cowed, it managed to conquer the world economically by flooding the globe with quality and reasonably priced goods.

In Kenya, Japan contributed to the growth of the matatu industry with the ever present Nissans ferrying people from and to every corner that buses could not.

Geopolitically, Japan came up with its own innovation of Africa “Summit” diplomacy by inaugurating the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, TICAD, in 1993.

The TICAD process raises Japan’s international profile even as it seeks alternative sources of energy, and Africa appears to be that source. Other powers then copied Japan and started holding their own African “summits”.

Japan, however, finds difficult to escape entrenched paternalistic Euro habits of purporting to preach to Kenyans while ignoring their own poor governance and corruption.

The corruption disease afflicts both the Africans and the “donors” but the Euros are good at blame shifting and sanitizing their misdeeds by baptizing them “national interests”.

Accusations of corruption, with Japan caught in between, became shrill after 2002 when fresh procurement procedures were applied as previous English virtual monopoly of supplying security vehicles and drugs was reduced.