ABSTRACT
Part of the difficulties that the West had in coming to terms with Japan after the Second World War was where to position iff on the points of the compass. In Western perspectives, Japan was, of course, in the East: i.e. Japan was part of the Orient with all the implications, stereotypes, etc., that arise and which Edward Said, among others, has evoked in his work entitled Orientalism. 2 Japan was also, however, part of the West, in the sense of the geopolitical confrontation between the eastern (communist) and the wester (capitalist) bloc, also known by the euphemism of the 'free world'. In the North–South framework, i.e. the Brandt Report type of agenda, Japan, as an industrialized state, was clearly in the North. Not, however, completely. As perhaps an atavistic reaction to the idea that non-Western states could be fully industrialized countries, still in the 1970s Japan was often lumped together with the Third World. From a Western perspective, therefore, Japan's position on the points of the compass was a movable feast. Furthermore, Japan was the only country that could be fitted on all four points. It is not surprising that the image was blurred.
