REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT TOKYO UNIVERSITY ON 16TH MARCH, 2005
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT TOKYO UNIVERSITY ON 16TH MARCH 2005, IRELAND AND JAPAN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Mr President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is the fulfilment of a long held ambition to visit your wonderful country and a special honour to have this opportunity to visit such a renowned University. For most of my working life I worked as a University professor and I always feel most at home among students. I am very conscious that, as the country’s first university, you have played a uniquely pre-eminent role in the modern history of Japan. Your country’s rich and deep culture provided a wonderful well from which to nourish the generations of young people, privileged to be educated here, who have gone on to become this nation’s civic elite.
It is a matter of some pride that Ireland has its own part in the story of this great University for one of its most influential teachers It is approtowards the end of the nineteenth century was my countryman, Lafcadio Hearn, the centenary of whose death was widely marked in Japan and Ireland last year. Hearn had a very profound impact on Japan. His influence is evident tfrom an account given by one of his colleagues at Tokyo University who happened to enter his class one day, and described the scene:
“I opened the door and went in. The first two or three rows of his students ... were all in tears.…. I do not know what it was all about. It is a rare event for a Japanese to be in tears; even a coolie is ashamed of it, and with men of higher rank it is much more striking than it would be in EnglandHearn had been reading some very simple English poem; and there was the effect.”
How pleasant to think that hard-boiled students would be moved to tears by poetry! In my day most students were more likely to be moved to tears by overwork or exam stress rather than the eloquence of lecturers.
We are proud of the influence of this Irish educator on a generation of Japanese writers and poets and of his contribution at a time of significant change in Japanese education. He believed then what we know to be true today, that the development of any nation is inexorably tied to its system of education. The Japanese experience bears witness to this truth and so does the experience of Ireland where education was the basic building block of a remarkable transformation in contemporary Irish life. It is that Irish experience particularly over the last thirty years and its impact on our present relations with Japan, that I wish to talk to you about today.
Ireland achieved political independence from Great Britain from the United Kingdom in 1922. But it was to be many years later before that freedom translated into economic success. In the decades following independence, Ireland followed policies of self-sufficiency and sought to develop trade and industry behind high tariff barriers. They simply consolidated and indeed worsened the longstanding and widespread poverty, high unemployment and mass emigration which continually drained the country of its energy, its youth and its potential.There were in fact objective difficulties in the way of development in the decades immediately after Irish independence: there was the world economic depression, followed by an economic war with our most important trade partner, Britain. And then came the Second World War. But even had these negative developments not come in the way, Ireland did not start out with ideal conditions for fast economic development. The country was first of all very marked by the profound trauma which had hit it in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Great Famine, which wiped out one-eighth of the population in five years and saw another eighth emigrating. In a subsequent manifestation of a sense of hopelessness, the population had fallen by another 25% by the time of independence, thanks to prolonged heavy emigration. Thus, in a period of three quarters of a century, the population of the country had fallen by 50%.
Then there was the philosophy which drove economic policy at independence and for many decades afterwards. It was essentially one of self-sufficiency, aimed at building up national economic capacity behind high tariff barriers. This was, of course, not at all an unusual strategy at the time, but it proved to be a costly failure. By 1950, 90% of Irish exports went to our nearest neighbour, the UK, and some 2/3 of these exports consisted of live animals and food, at a time when British policy consisted in focussed on importing agricultural produce and food from around the world at the lowest possible price. Scarcely a recipe for economic growth – neither did it produce it.
It was at this lowest point of Ireland’s independent history that new thinking began. The direction of economic policy was changed away from isolationism towards active engagement with the rest of the world. In 1961 Ireland applied to join the EEC, the forerunner of the European Union, and became a full member on 1 January 1973. Things did not change overnight but in that crucial decision the tide of our fortunes began to turn. Our enthusiastic membership of the European Union transformed Ireland’s economic landscape by opening new markets, creating a new competitive environment for Irish enterprise and making us a very attractive location for inward investors. Our small country grew in stature and in confidence as it became an equal partner in the European Union and a dynamic influencer of its future.
Education played a vitally important role in the process of opening up our country and making it fit for international investment and competition. Starting from the 1960s, Irish governments focussed on the education system, providing free access to second-level education – in Japanese terms middle and upper high-school – and, later, to third-level education. Suddenly the reach of education was extended to huge numbers of young people, the number of third-level students increased four fold over the next twenty-five years and the number of people granted scientific or technological qualifications increased seven fold. That wise and far-seeing investment in education paid off handsomely in the 1990’s when Ireland entered the era of “The Celtic Tiger”.
Since then Ireland has enjoyed a sustained period of high economic growth, exceeding 10% per year for a number of years and forecast to continue to grow rapidly, by up to five per cent a year in real terms until the end of this decade, at least. The country which was the poorest to join the European Union thirty years ago is now among the world’s richest countries: the latest OECD comparative figures for GDP per person show Ireland in fourth place, after Luxembourg, Norway and the US, with a GDP per person 29% above the OECD average.
During the first half of 2004, when Ireland held the Presidency of the Union we had the opportunity to showcase not just our commitment to the European Union but also the special talent we have for promoting consensus. 2004 had begun nervously in Europe with negotiations for admitting ten new members reaching their complex end stage and the failure of efforts to agree a new Constitution. All the resources, governmental and official, available to Ireland were brought to bear on resolving these difficult problems and on 1 May 2004 Dublin hosted the Day of Welcomes for our ten new member states. In June agreement was reached on the Constitution. By the end of our six month Presidency a new mood of optimism and achievement had taken hold in Europe and our peripheral island was privileged to be centre stage in the creation of that “can-do” mood.
In the first great opening of Japan to the world after the Meiji Restoration, the young Emperor Meiji, in his famous Charter Oath of 1868, set down among other things that “Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world.” In pursuit of this objective, the famous Iwakura embassy of 1871-1873 circled the globe. In the course of it, one of its members visited Dublin. It is not clear what, if indeed anything, he learnt from his visit to the Irish capital other than that he took tea at the Gresham Hotel and visited Guinness’s brewery. So we can be sure he did not go thirsty and hopefully his thirst for knowledge was also satisfied there. The important point is that the visit marked an openness to the experience of others which, along with the ability to adapt new knowledge and wisdom to Japanese conditions, has been one of the supreme achievements of modern Japan.
Today, Japan is Ireland’s eighth largest trading partner; indeed, outside the EU, only one other partner, the US, conducts a larger trade with Ireland.
I have already spoken about Ireland’s adoption of an outward-looking economic policy in the 1960s. Japan was one of the countries to which we looked for investment and engagement and for over thirty years, Ireland has benefited from Japanese investment. Today there are around 32 Japanese companies in Ireland, employing over 2,500 people, mainly in the information technology, pharmaceuticals and financial services industries which are so important to us.
More recently, Irish investment in Japan has grown substantially, albeit from a low base, a development that fits into the strategy of the Japanese Government to increase foreign investment in this country. Some 24 Irish companies now have a presence here.
Although the numbers are still relatively small, there was a dramatic increase last year in the number of Japanese tourists visiting Ireland. This is a very welcome development as tourism is one of best ways we can get to know each other, to learn more about our lives and cultures and to enrich our own lives by these journeys of discovery. In fact each year I welcome a group of Japanese students to the home of the President in Dublin and it is wonderful to hear from them how much they love Ireland, its landscapes, its literature and its lifestyle. In Ireland there are marks of civilisation as old as the pyramids of Egypt set in surroundings of great natural and unspoilt beauty which I know will appeal to visitors from Japan. If you go to the World Expo in Aichi, which opens in a few days’ time, and visit the Irish pavilion there, you will get a real sense of the fascinating antiquity, complexity and beauty of Irish culture and I hope a curiosity that will bring you one day to see Ireland for yourselves.
For many years, the Japanese and Irish Governments have sought to encourage greater contact between our peoples. Since 1982, young Irish people have participated in the JET programme and since then over 700 of them have come to Japan as language assistants. The Irish Government also have a programme of placing graduates in Japanese companies. Over the past twenty years, over 600 graduates have benefited from this programme. These two programmes offer a wonderful opportunity to live in Japan, to befriend its people, to learn of its customs and culture and so to be human bridges across the gap that geography and history, language and culture, have imposed between us.
The Irish Government hopes to give more impetus to these programmes because we believe that they represent excellent means of promoting understanding between peoples that our world so badly needs today. The Irish and Japanese governments are also working on a Working Holiday Agreement that will allow young Japanese and Irish people to travel, live and work for a period of up to one year in each other’s country. I hope that some of you here today will be able to take advantage of this new initiative.
We also want more Japanese students to come to Ireland not only to study but also to enjoy themselves and to learn more about us. Some of you will be attracted by our literature: I know that writers such as Wilde and Joyce or our Nobel Prize winners, Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and Heaney, will be familiar to this audience. Others will come for our music, whether traditional or modern, and I know that many Irish musicians such as U2, Enya, The Corrs and Westlife are already well known to you.
Japan is world-renowned for scientific and technical research and this University is pre‑eminent. Ireland’s increasing investment in scientific research offers opportunities for collaboration in research, particularly in biotechnology and information and communications technologies. These research areas are vital to our future prosperity and the Irish Government has established Science Foundation Ireland to channel significant funds into them. Collaboration, supported by Science Foundation Ireland, between researchers in Irish universities and in this and other universities in Japan could yield great benefits to both our countries.
Ireland’s relations with Asia, especially with East Asia, have the potential for much further development and over the past five years the Irish Government has developed and implemented a strategy to realise that potential. It is no surprise that we have identified Japan as one of our priority countries. We very much wish to have even greater co-operation with Japan, not only in economics, trade and business, but also in political exchanges and in social and cultural relations.
In today’s world the fate of each us is bound up with that of others, no matter how distant and the growing connections between Ireland and Japan are very welcome and important. The Irish Government’s strategy to intensify our involvement with Asia, and the policy of the Japanese Government to increase inward investment and the numbers of foreign tourists coming to Japan fit very well with the demands of the new millennium. This is the country with which we have the longest established official ties in the region and importantly it is also a country with which we share a strong commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. That value system makes us natural partners as well as friends.
We both share a profound belief in the need to work together to confront the global challenges we face, the unresolved conflicts, the terrorism, the poverty, disease, the environmental damage - for they challenge our common humanity, our safety, our health and security and they bring misery to so many of the world’s citizens. The children of tomorrow are entitled to expect that we the adults of today will do all in our power to overcome these massive problems and bring peace and prosperity throughout the globe. But good, effective answers demand good, effective cooperation between nations which is why a visit like this and the visit to Ireland later this year by their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Japan, are so important in strengthening the web of trust, friendship and mutual respect which is so essential to a happy future for planet earth.
I hope the 21st Century will see Irish and Japanese relationships flourish as our people, especially our young people, open their hearts and minds to each other’s language and heritage and see in each other the kind of friends, colleagues and partners with which to build together a much better world than the one you inherited. You are Japan’s future and you are Ireland’s future too. I wish each of you great success and I hope that you never lose the gift of curiosity which is at the heart of a great education and the soul of all great friendships. It brought Lafcadio Hearn to Japan and to a wonderful new life. I hope it may bring many of you to Ireland one day.
Thank you.