Do Japanese yet realize that culture's acquired, not in the blood?

There's no doubt that Japanese people's attitudes toward foreigners, and the ways they relate to them, have changed markedly in the 40-odd years since I first arrived here. But is this change we can believe in?

First of all, in the 1960s — and, indeed, in the years from 1945 until then — most Japanese assumed that every foreigner here was an American. Countless times, while walking along minding my own business, I was accosted by children shouting, "Amerikajin da!" ("It's an American!"). I once shouted back at two scruffy little boys, "Amerikajin ja nain da!" ("I'm not an American!"). That sent them, mouths agape in shock, scurrying into a nearby shrine to hide.

In 1972, I played the character of Mr. Higgins in an adaptation by state broadcaster NHK of Akiyuki Nosaka's prize-winning short story, "Amerika Hijiki." Nowhere in postwar Japanese literature is the complex relationship between a Japanese and a foreigner more honestly portrayed than in this story (Hijiki is a kind of edible seaweed, and American hijiki are black tea leaves that some Japanese mistook for it.)