How Japanese is Japan in the 1980s?

In the 1980s the problem of Japanese separateness is exacerbated by a great deal of superficial internationalism inside Japan itself, reinforced by former Prime Minister Nakasone’s recent clarion call on the Japanese to ‘internationalize.’ For, while the Japanese give a great deal of lip service to ‘internationalization,’ as a result of the often reiterated and self-sustained shimaguni (island country) complex, that is that Japan is ‘different’ and ‘unique,’ true internationalization is a long way off. Even today when foreign loan words by the thousand have made their way into common Japanese parlance, their meanings in Japanese have usually become different from their meanings in the language of origin. 135 years after Japan was ‘opened’ to the West, differences in language and culture are still felt by the Japanese to provide barriers to intercourse with the rest of the world. From the inside, Japan in the 1980s still seems a small, homogeneous, hierarchical and conservative country.