In the third year of a program administered by the Sasakawa Pacific Island Nations Fund, ten journalists from the Pacific Islands were invited to Japan for an eight-day visit in October 1994. During their stay, the guests engaged in various goodwill and professional activities in Tokyo and on the island of Amami-Oshima in Kagoshima Prefecture. This was the first time participants on the program spent time in one of Japan's outlying island communities, and many said the experience completely changed their image of Japan. The following is a brief, participants-eye view of the 1994 visit.

Grasping the real Japan

Just as most Japanese have a rudimentary picture, at best, of the Pacific islands, Pacific islanders generally receive only fragmentary and distorting information about Japan. Filling this gap between image and reality requires a wide range of efforts toward mutual understanding, and among the most important of these is the simple exchange of people.

It was precisely with that aim in mind that The Sasakawa Pacific Island Nations Fund (SPINF) set up the program "Inviting Journalists from the Pacific Island Region to Japan" in FY 1992. The program targets media personnel for three reasons. First, such people can be relied on to observe Japan with the care and balance demanded in their profession. Second, it is hoped that, given the media resources at their disposal, they will pass on the experiences and insights they gained in Japan to as wide an audience as possible in their home countries. Finally, by attracting the interest and participation of Japanese media counterparts, the presence of media personnel from the Pacific islands represents an ideal opportunity for Japan to take an active role in representing itself more accurately to the countries of the region.

While the program has been expanding steadily since its inception, the results of this third visit represented a particularly marked development over previous years. On the Japanese side, the program was the subject of an NHK television documentary and was reported widely in the press, albeit mainly in provincial newspapers. Meanwhile, the Pacific island participants themselves wrote numerous feature articles about Japan in their own papers and magazines upon returning to their respective countries. These concrete results confirm the increasing success of the program in fulfilling its original aims.

The implementation of the 1994 program differed from that of previous years in two important respects. First, it was carried out in partnership with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA). The term "mass media" is somewhat misleading in the case of the Pacific island region. Daily newspapers are published only in Papua New Guinea and Fiji, relatively large countries within the region. Being so tiny, many other countries have only weekly newspapers and government bulletins, the content of which varies widely from country to country. Furthermore, only a few countries in the region have broadcast media which serve as vehicles for local journalism. The program organizers were therefore faced with the difficult task of gathering from this diversity a balanced, homogenous group of journalists to participate in the visit. It was clear that, in order to overcome this difficulty and acquire the know-how to enhance the program in the future, SPINF needed the input of a partner organization from the Pacific island region itself. In the 1994 program, this role was filled by PINA.

PINA is a private association comprised of media-related individuals, groups and companies in island countries and territories with membership in either the South Pacific Commission or the South Pacific Forum. Though a small organization with just one permanent officer in Suva, Fiji, PINA conducts a broad range of activities, including organizing an annual general meeting, facilitating information exchange between members, holding training courses and seminars, and promoting the spread of media throughout the region. This unique position and experience made PINA an ideal partner for the present program.

The other major change in the program was that the tour itinerary was expanded beyond Tokyo to include a visit to the island of Amami-Oshima in Kagoshima Prefecture. Many programs of this kind stick to a pattern of meetings and on-site inspections in Tokyo followed by visits to cultural sites in Kyoto (Japan's former capital), or perhaps to the peace memorial in Hiroshima. The addition of an island destination to the present tour was aimed at showing the visitors that, despite its image as an ultra-urban, hi-tech society, Japan has other miens, including island communities much like their own.

Fascination with the big city

PINA selected ten participants for the tour, six men and three women from Fiji, Kiribati, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Western Samoa and American Samoa. Six of the participants worked in the print media, three in broadcasting, and one in an administrative position.

Led by Ms. Monica Miller, president of PINA, the delegates were briefed on their itinerary upon their arrival at their hotel in Tokyo. Though somewhat taken aback at first by the long list of organizations and sites they would be visiting-NHK, the Metropolitan Police Department, Waseda University, the Diet, newspaper companies, Asakusa and more-their surprise soon became a keen professional curiosity.

One member of the group, it was soon discovered, had been hoping to have a chance to ride the Shinkansen express train. That same evening, a member of the organizing staff "was volunteered" to take all participants on a short Shinkansen ride from Tokyo to Shin-Yokohama. Though only a 15-minute trip, for most of the visitors this was their first experience of any form of train travel, and they watched with great fascination as the scenery flashed by their windows.

The non-stop schedule of the tour proper got under way the following morning. Mr. Leote Uelese Petaia of Western Samoa was particularly amazed by NHK's organizational strength in administering and broadcasting television and radio programs spanning the full spectrum of genres, from news and education to sports, drama and music. The experience inspired him, he said, to find a way to return to Japan to study the technical and administrative aspects behind such breadth of content. Mr. Tibwere Bobo of Kiribati-a country of just 70,000 people-was similarly impressed with how Kyodo News Service applied its advanced data processing system to make news from what he saw as a "tidal wave" of information constantly pouring in.

Not all of the stops on the itinerary were media-related, and yet the guests were just as curious about and moved by the places that bore little direct relation to their work. Ms. Nina Ratulele of Fiji, for instance, remarked that the Tokyo Stock Exchange gave her an almost palpable sense of the giant Japanese economy in action, while Mr. Tavake Fusimalohi from Tonga later recalled being enthralled at the Tsukiji fish markets by the sight of a seemingly endless supply of tuna being haggled over in the very orderly fashion customary among the merchants and dealers.

There was no doubt that the four days spent in Tokyo gave the participants a host of valuable experiences. The program organizers, however, had been more or less expecting this result from the first phase of the tour. Their real interest lay in how their guests would respond to the second phase, the visit to Amami-Oshima.

Right at home in Japan

The itinerary was just as packed on the island leg of the tour. The participants paid visits to the local government office, schools, a museum of local history and culture, a farm, and a factory which produces a local kind of silk known as Oshima Tsumugi. They were also taken to inspect a mangrove swamp, a coral reef in a glass-bottom boat, and the Amami hare, which is designated as a precious natural treasure, and engaged in a discussion with counterparts at the island's only local newspaper, Nankai Nichi-Nichi.

While on paper these and other activities made the island schedule just as demanding as the Tokyo one, there were definite differences that gave the island experience a special significance, namely, the presence of the sea, the more leisurely flow of time, and the warm, friendly faces of the local people.

Not long after their arrival on the island, several of the participants were already remarking how unlike their vision of Japan it was, and how similar it was to their own countries. That feeling of affinity was best demonstrated that very night at a reception party for the group. Held in the resort hotel where the visitors stayed, the party featured a performance of local traditional singing and music. But in stark contrast to the reserved atmosphere of the traditional dance and song performance the Pacific islanders put on at their welcome party in Tokyo, when none of the audience could be coaxed up to dance, the island party build up into a veritable throng of dancers. Among those working up a sweat amid the kaleidoscope of dress styles-colorful laba-laba and mu-mu criss-crossing with kimono and business suits-were not only the Pacific islanders but also the Japanese hosts they had just paid their respects to earlier in the day, including the headman of the town (Kasari-cho), the local superintendent of education, the editor of Nankai Nichi-Nichi, and even the hotel proprietor. And all this within half an hour of the party's opening!

"This is just like the atmosphere in the South Pacific," said Mr. Alfred Sasako, a delegate from the Solomon Islands. "These island people may not speak English as well as the people in Tokyo, but on a heart-to-heart level it's like we can communicate even better." Group leader Monica Miller was just as impressed, "I never dreamed Japan could have such wonderful islands!" She later led the local residents in a barefoot Polynesian dance that no one wanted to end.

Such simple hospitality, now rare in big cities, is no doubt common to many kinds of rural communities. But the Amami Islands did even more for the visitors from the Pacific islands: the natural environment and the lifestyle it engenders struck, unexpectedly, a resounding chord of fellow feeling deep in their hearts.

One day during the visit, the chairman of the local reception committee, Mr. Tokuji Oku, invited the entire delegation to lunch at his house, which was near the hotel, and treated them to a feast of goat stew, a local delicacy. While that in itself was reason enough to be pleased, Mr. Fusimalohi of Tonga was even more impressed when he later learned that the house was actually Mr. Oku's wife's family home. In Tonga, as in other matrilineal societies in the Pacific, it is customary to invite special guests to one's wife's family home.

Common problem of marginalization

The group's observations in Tokyo, where they saw some of the very latest industry developments at large media organizations and facilities, greatly stimulated their interest as journalists. Given the vast difference in scale between those organizations and their own, however, few of the marvels of the Tokyo media world related directly to their daily work back home. By the same token, however, they found a wealth of more relevant points of interest in their visits to the smaller, limited-audience media bodies in the Amami Islands-the Nankai Nichi-Nichi newspaper and a local cable television station. Whereas in Tokyo the visitors mainly listened passively as explanations were provided, in the islands they actively engaged their hosts in rigorous discussions covering various aspects of the media business, including capital input, personnel training, information marketing, advertising and distribution routes.

The program participants found close similarities to their own countries not only in the scale of the Amami Islands media industry but also in the social problems currently faced by the local community. After her return to Fiji, Monica Miller, for one, reported on various features of the Amami Islands that held special significance to Pacific islanders, such as the local residents' efforts to maintain distinctive cultural forms like Oshima Tsumugi silk and local folk dances, and their preservation of the region's mangrove forests, the most northerly in Japan. Among the problems in which the visitors found reflections of their home countries were the Amami Islands economic dependence on mainland Japan to the tune of «980 billion in aid; the ongoing destruction of the local environment in the name of modernization; the exodus of young people due to the failure of modern industries to take root; the transformation of traditional social structures because farming has shifted toward the monoculture of sugar cane, a cash crop; and the widening disparity with the mainland due to inadequate transportation and communications systems in the islands.

Ultimately, the merit of the decision to add an island leg to the tour was born out most tellingly in the reactions and responses of the visitors-their surprise at discovering the "Pacific" in Japan, and their delight at experiencing at least one side of Japan at such close range. Some even went so far as to say that, whereas they couldn't spend much time in a place like Tokyo, they felt they could happily spend the rest of their days in the Amami Islands.

I, too, gained much from accompanying the Pacific island journalists on their visit to the Amami region. It awakened me to the parallels between Japan's domestic problem of its outlying islands on the one hand and its donor-recipient relationship with the countries of the Pacific islands on the other. This realization has in turn inspired me to an almost obsessive commitment to raising general awareness of that connection. For me, this experience in one of Japan's remote island regions has underscored the fact that the numerous problems facing the Pacific island nations are in no sense unique to that part of the world.