27 - Norman Macrae (1921–2010): Pioneering Journalist of The Economist on Japanese Affairs

Summary

INTRODUCTION

WHEN ONE OF the co-authors of this essay was based in Japan as the Tokyo correspondent of The Economist during the 1980s, he would of course from time to time receive visitors from head office, and they would expect an itinerary of meetings to be laid on for them. There weren't then as many visitors as a correspondent would receive today, for the appetite to fly via Anchorage in two lengthy legs was not strong, but the visitors did come, and it wasn't always easy to arrange meetings as the appreciation at that time in Japanese institutions of this internationally minded but then fairly small-circulation British publication was limited. One visitor, however, needed no introduction and virtually no help in getting doors to open for him, beyond simply passing on the news that he was on his way. That visitor was Norman Macrae.

He was deputy editor of The Economist but, unusually perhaps given Japanese protocols, the easy reception for him had little to do with his status or function. It was strictly personal. The best illustration of this came from the very top of the governmental ladder. During all this correspondent's time in Tokyo, the then prime minister, Nakasone Yasuhiro, would understandably meet foreign correspondents in groups rather than singly. Except when Macrae visited. Suddenly, the doors of the Kantei (prime minister's office) swung open, and your co-author was able to stride through them as Norman's bagcarrier for a special interview with Prime Minister Nakasone.

Why? Norman Macrae spoke no Japanese and had never lived in Japan. He wasn't an easy person for even fluent English-speakers among Japanese officials to understand, for he tended to talk rapidly and had an endearing, but sometimes baffling, habit of laughing at his own, generally self-deprecatory, jokes part-way through telling them. And yet Japanese officials did want to listen to him, to meet him, but above all to help him. For in 1962 and repeatedly thereafter he had shown himself to be an extraordinarily shrewd, even pioneering western interpreter of what was going on in the Japanese economy, and through The Economist a powerful and influential communicator of the new Japanese reality to the rest of the world.