There was a war during that time, for which Japan was mainly responsible. There was a great distortion in the process of Japanese modernization, which led to Japan's invasion into neighboring countries, and also delayed their modernization. This is one aspect of Japanese modernization. However, if we look at things in a wider perspective, in the first half of the 20th century Japan started its first Step towards modernization, while other Asian countries started in the latter half of the 20th century; all have successfully managed to achieve their goal quite rapidly. Asian countries should not be so arrogant, but when we compare East Asia with other countries such as Russia, Africa or the Middle East, it is a fact that East Asia has been modernizing at a very fast pace. It was the various modern ideas which had already existed in Asian history that made such rapid modernization possible. Therefore, as a result of such modernization, or through the difficult experience of modernization, "Asia" is going to emerge for the first time.
This may sound odd, but there was no Asia in the past. Asia is now going to be born. It exists only in the future and the big framework which connects all Asian nations is not an Asian sense of value, but a modern sense of value. Unfortunately, people of several Asian nations tend to use the Asian sense of value as an anti-Western slogan. I do not believe there has ever been such an Asian sense of value in Asian history, since "Asia" did not exist in the past. Now at this conference, because we are in Japan, we use the Japanese language, but we also use English as our common language for communication. This is very symbolic. The English we use is not necessarily British English. We cannot imitate the accent of British people, nor can we use English words with a sense of tradition. In the same way, we use a variety of measuring units such as gram, meter, second or minute.
All these units came from the West. In fact, these units are most widely used in Asia. In the U.S. they still use different units, such as the yard or pound. Only recently have British people applied the decimal system when it comes to their currency. We can say that the modern units such as the decimal system and CGS unit have been most widely spread and most highly used in Asia. And from there we have built a common civilization. I would like to reiterate that if we dig to the layer underneath, we will find various national or regional cultures and traditions, which have never changed in quality. But we can also say that modernization has dug them up and revived them in a sense. Both in Japan and in Korea excavation of ancient remains and their preservation went with modernization. Classic literature of both countries was studied by advanced modernization and by the modem research method.
And a number of new civilizations are now appearing in Asia. The film is one example. It is no exaggeration to say Asian films are now overwhelming the whole world.
Certainly Hollywood of the U.S. is special in this field. But Hollywood is located on the West Coast of the Pacific Ocean and is a member of the Pacific Rim community. So if we include it in our community, we can say almost all films of the world arc made by the Pacific Rim community. Then what is a film? It is a work of art of the 20th century. Asians are most active in the art world of the 20th century. A while ago I mentioned Mr. Minoru Miki and that a concert incorporating Asian musical instrument is now going to be realized for the first time in its history. Performing art unique to each nation bearing modernity as its common symbol is now diffusing and spreading all over the world.
Now what will happen in the 21st century? I believe as long as human beings have the impulse to preserve the individual, the process of modernization will never stop. Of course there are a lot of serious problems caused by this. A free market system is based on the principle of protecting the individual, rather than preservation of the human species. As a result, the market mechanism is only concerned about the present and does not take into account the future. An existing product is exchanged with another existing product. Currency is exchanged with a product. The present is what matters.
We are prone to wasting our future resources or destroying our environment in order to make a product now and our market has no power to stop this process. But if future resources are depleted or the environment is destroyed, preservation of the human species will be jeopardized. Those people who are concerned about these problems, are crying for the need to put the brakes on industrialization, to control the various desires of the individual and restrict the extremely radical power of the free market. This voice that is throwing doubt on modernization, is known as "post-modernism". But if we look closely at the contents of postmodernism, it is perhaps more accurately "pre-modernism. Faced with such big problems, we should look again at the principle of the preservation of the species more carefully. However, we can no longer deny the principle of preserving individual, that is, modernization. No matter how it will contribute to our future generation, we are not so heartless as to kill elderly people. All we can do is try to proceed with new technological
