Robert C Neff, who was at the middle of America’s discussion about a fast rising Japan in the late 1980s, died on July 31, 2024, at his house in Hayama, Japan, north of Tokyo, after a lengthy illness. He was 77 years older. He is survived by his family of more than 40 times, Fumiko Sekizawa.
Neff was born on July 22, 1947, in St. Louis, Missouri. His relatives, who were missionaries, were sent to Asia. Spending little of his youth in Japan, where he attended the American School in Japan, Neff developed tribal competence in the Chinese language, which is exceptional among , gaijin , – immigrants.
Neff’s BusinessWeek support account,” Rethinking Japan,” was most well known for its August 1989 publication, which addressed a contentious debate between the United States and the magazine about whether Japan may switch to an economic and political model more Western-style.
Americans were debating whether Japan’s political and economic model would overthrow American industries or whether it would forego its post-World War II model in favor of a wide opening.
The magazine’s include read:” The US still has a$ 52 billion trade deficit with Japan, and Chinese culture continues to be tightly knit. As a result, a dramatic shift in US thinking about Japan is afoot. This revisionist view assumes that conventional free trade strategies wo n’t work for Japan because it is truly different. Again, such sights would have been dismissed as ‘ Japan-bashing,’ but now they have an academic base”.
Neff was credited with primary applying the word “revisionists” to speak to the academic leaders of this school of thought, whom he identified as Clyde Prestowitz, Chalmers Johnson, James Fallows and Karel van Wolferen.
In an email, Prestowitz wrote,” I would like to express my undying gratitude for [Neff’s ] clear understanding of the reality of US-Japan trade relations in the 1980s. He was the only journalist who could see what was happening, out of all the big newspapers. I will miss him tremendously” . ,
In the early 1990s, the Japanese monetary bubble lost popularity, and some critics claimed that revisionists had misled it. China’s rise in some ways overshadowed the Chinese issue. However, Japan maintained its political and business models.
Neff was portion of a golden era of mag media. He circled the world with messages in Honolulu, Los Angeles, Tokyo, London and New York. Neff was one of the most admired and likeable practitioners in the country, and American news organizations had substantial networks of foreign correspondents.
Steven Shepard, who was the editor-in-chief of Business Week from 1984 to 2005, was emphatic in his praise of Neff. ” A great journalist, a beautiful man”, Shepard posted. I recall seeing him in Tokyo and absorbing some of his vast knowledge of the nation. I cherished our friendship”.
Neff was even known for supporting the advancement of reporters with little experience, both those who worked for him and those who did not. He mentored several fresh reporters who arrived in Japan in the 1980s to tell the stories of Japan’s economic increase, the value of its currency, the yen, its technical prowess and, ultimately, its trade conflicts.
Neff attended the University of Michigan between 1965 and 1969. He met Urban Lehner, who did turn out to be both a literary rival and a longtime friend. Lehner became the Wall Street Journal’s Tokyo bureau captain, while Neff held the position of BusinessWeek magazine’s Tokyo writer.
Neff served in the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector, and he spent two years performing medical care. After that, he attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Before being hired by BusinessWeek in its Los Angeles office in 1977, he began his career at Pacific Business News in Honolulu. The McGraw-Hill Businesses owned BusinessWeek as well as niche industry journals and a cable company, McGraw-Hill News.
In 1979, McGraw-Hill benefited from Neff’s ability to speak Japanese and transfer him to the Tokyo information service. He rose to the position of bureaucrat.
Neff relocated to New York in 1987 as the director of BusinesssWeek’s global release after working there for a while editing International Management publication. He moved up to Tokyo in 1989 as that publication’s bureau chief, a job he held until the mid-1990s. He afterwards served as managing director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan while also editing and writing for various publications, including Forbes and Fortune.
A big Neff success was his author of , a prominent link to the best among Japan’s plenty of , onsen, or warm baths, entitled ,” Japan’s Hidden Hot Springs”. Neff and his wife Fumiko took friend Lehner and his family on a trip to some hot springs, which Lehner did feature in his Eastern Wall Street Journal article.
Lehner claimed that Neff was a master at discovering onsen that were quirky and cheap and frequently featured mountain views from the hot hot tubs. The leading Japanese-owned English-language paper, the Japan Times, wrote that Neff was” a sensitive bather”.
Neff even was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of Tokyo’s vibrant nightlife. He adored music, a traditional Japanese evening ritual that was often performed over drinks. Leslie Helm, a Neff employee in the BusinessWeek commission, recalls how many Chinese contacts commented on how well Bob was speak those songs and how much they enjoyed having drinks with him.
Neff was a member of Japan’s Foreign Correspondents Club. He was secretary in 1981-82 and leader in 1998-99. He and the other co-chair, the late Bob Kirschenbaum ( they were known as the Two Bobs ), also co-chaired the club’s food and beverage committee, which required them to taste all food and beverages before including them on any menu.
Neff also served on various commissions. Toshio Aritake, a friend and fellow journalist, recalls that Neff was” a device at the reporters ‘ tables and always at the middle of the most heated disputes.”
On August 2, a Hayama home funeral was held. A memorial hour will be held in September at the Foreign Correspondents ‘ Club of Japan.