He introduces himself as Tom Taniguchi, a speechwriter for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but the Japanese visitor to Little Rock on Monday took on the role of travel agent.
The traveler he has in mind? Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
“A couple of hours ago we were in the gorgeous building, your state Capitol, and we were granted a meeting by Governor Hutchinson, who spoke quite fondly about what he saw and experienced in Japan about 18 months ago,” said Taniguchi, a professor and former business magazine journalist leading an economic and cultural exchange mission financed by the Japanese government.
Taniguchi hopes Hutchinson, who won re-election last month, will repeat a 2016 visit to Japan for more extensive talks on bilateral economic development. Those talks, he said, could go straight to the top. “I assume the governor is going to be interested in touring around the globe, and I do hope he will visit Tokyo again,” said Taniguchi, who works on the fourth floor of the prime minister’s offices and is willing to arrange a meeting with the man upstairs.
“Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is on the fifth floor, so I will speak to people on the fifth floor to make it possible for the prime minister to spend some time with Governor Hutchinson.”
J.R. Davis, a spokesman for Hutchinson, said no concrete plans for another Asia visit are set, but the governor is open to the idea. “The governor’s trade missions have been a big part of the state’s economic success over the last four years, and he plans to continue those efforts,” Davis told Arkansas Business.
With succinct charm, Taniguchi leaned over a conference table at the Clinton School of Public Service and described the special economic relationship between his country and the United States.
But he also recalled a far colder time, when trade frictions drove members of Congress to publicly take sledgehammers to Toshiba cassette players and Toyota sedans in Washington.
Now the U.S. is the biggest destination of Japanese direct foreign investment, and Japanese or Japan-related companies account for some 5,000 jobs in Arkansas.
“Since that time in the 1980s and early ’90s both countries have come quite far, and Japan now stands as the second biggest investor — second only to the U.K. — in foreign investment across the United States,” said Taniguchi.
A former financial journalist, Taniguchi brought experts on energy, Asian economic growth and even the sake industry along with him to Little Rock, a stop on the “Walk in U.S., Talk on Japan” tour.
Taniguchi, whose given name is Tomohiko, is traveling with Kazutomo Irie, president of the Asia Pacific Energy Research Center; Koji Uenoyama, a sake sommelier; and Ziaojing Zhou, a PhD student in development economics at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.
In Little Rock, they met with Hutchinson and other dignitaries and presented a program at the Clinton School, adjacent to the presidential library.
“We do this only with the U.S.,” said Taniguchi, who wrote for Nikkei Business, now a Bloomberg product but at that time published by McGraw-Hill, before joining Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He said the tour “represents the value that we find in the Japanese-U.S. relationship and the good maintenance of it.”
He said it’s important “to let people in the United States and in Arkansas be aware of the value being added by Japanese investment these companies have done in their country and state.”
As part of his portfolio, Taniguchi writes speeches on foreign policy topics for Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in postwar Japanese history. He has a doctorate in national security and holds a professorship at Keio University in Tokyo, where he teaches at the Graduate School of System Design & Management.
Many Japan-related jobs in Arkansas flow from the “huge spiraling supply chain” feeding the Japanese automotive industry, which has increasingly relied on American manufacturing.
“Japanese and American businesses have been inseparably interconnected for years, and auto-related manufacturers are one area of importance,” he said.
Taniguchi said the countries have helped each other immeasurably in hard times, and noted that Japanese investment in the United States actually rose after the 2008 U.S. financial collapse. He also said Japan is finally reaching full employment after nearly three decades of stagnation in its economy, a reality that makes U.S.-Japan ties all the more important going forward.
“The Japanese economy has finally come out of its long tunnel of darkness, if you like,” he said, turning reflective. “There was a stock price bubble collapse in 1990, and over the next 25 years the Japanese economy zigged and zagged, but overall stood still. Finally, we’re running a perfect employment economy, with 98 of 100 job-seeking college graduates finding work. Better news is that 98 percent number applies to high school graduates as well.”
He said growing demand for workers is changing gender dynamics in the Japanese labor force, and predicted that his country’s traditionally rigid glass ceiling would start to crack. “To my astonishment the female labor participation rate in Japan now stands slightly higher than is the case for the United States,” Taniguchi said. “Certainly if you look at glass ceilings in both countries, yours is much lower. But I think there will be a time when Japanese women will be found in high places in corporations, government and so forth.”
Trade and its tensions may ebb and flow, Taniguchi said, but Japanese investment in America signals a deeper bond. “Trade with the U.S. has always counted a lot, and it will remain so in the years to come. But the sheer amount of investment in your country is noteworthy. Unlike selling goods and buying them, investment in foreign soil makes you almost permanently bound by the destination country for your investment. That sets Japan apart from other Asian nations.”
He also had high praise for Arkansas.
“This trip, though short, has made us more knowledgeable about what propels Arkansas’ economy forward,” he said. “One of the new developments that we saw with a little amusement was that among your rice growing farmers there is a sake manufacturer [Ben Bell of Nanbu Bijin Brewery and Sake Arkansas]. He is trying very hard to make Japanese sake with Arkansas rice. I think it’s a very happy marriage between U.S. and Japanese cultures.”
He also enjoyed a tour around the sprawling capital city. “Little Rock is well known in Japan, primarily because of the president [Bill Clinton], but touring around Little Rock has shown me one thing … that Little Rock is not little.”