Robert C. Neff, who was at the center of America’s debate about a rapidly rising Japan in the late 1980s, died on July 31 at his home in Hayama, Japan, south of Tokyo, after a long illness. He was 77 years old. He is survived by his wife of more than 40 years, Fumiko Sekizawa. His death was announced by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
Neff was born on July 22, 1947, in St. Louis, Missouri. His missionary parents were posted to Asia. Spending much of his youth in Japan, where he attended the American School in Japan, Neff developed native fluency in the Japanese language, which is rare among gaijin – foreigners.
Neff was best known for his Business Week cover story entitled “Rethinking Japan,” which appeared in August 1989 at a time of sharp debate in the United States and inside the magazine about whether Japan would open its markets and adopt a more Western-style economic and political model.
The debate was important because Americans wondered whether Japan would use its political and economic model to overwhelm American industries or, instead, would abandon its post-World War II model in favor of a broad opening.
Neff’s words on the cover of the magazine seemed remarkably bold at the time: “After years of haggling, the U.S. still runs a $52 billion annual trade deficit with Japan, and Japanese society remains closed in crucial ways. As a result, a radical shift in U.S. thinking about Japan is under way. This revisionist view holds that Japan really is different and that conventional free trade policies won’t work. Once, such views would have been dismissed as ‘Japan-bashing,’ but now they have an intellectual base.”
Neff was credited with first applying the term “revisionists” to refer to the intellectual leaders of this school of thought, whom he identified as Clyde Prestowitz, Chalmers Johnson, James Fallows and Karel van Wolferen.
“I would like to express my undying gratitude for his [Neff’s] clear perception of the reality of U.S.-Japan trade relations in the 1980s,” Prestowitz wrote in an email. “Of all the major journalists, he was the only one to understand clearly and fully what was going on. I will miss him tremendously.”
Japan’s financial bubble lost air in the early 1990s and some critics said the revisionists had been wrong. The emergence of China in some ways also eclipsed the Japanese challenge. But Japan did not abandon its business and political model.
Neff was part of a golden age of magazine journalism. He circled the globe with postings in Honolulu, Los Angeles, Tokyo, London and New York. American news organizations maintained extensive networks of foreign correspondents, and Neff was one of the most highly respected and personable practitioners. Steven Shepard, who was the editor in chief of Business Week from 1984 to 2005, was effusive in his praise of Neff. “A great journalist, a wonderful man,” Shepard posted. “I have many fond memories of visits to Tokyo and absorbing a bit of his great understanding of the country. I cherished our friendship.”
Neff was also known for helping nourish the careers of less-experienced journalists, both those who worked for him and those who did not. He mentored many new reporters who arrived in Japan in the 1980s to tell the stories of Japan’s economic rise; the value of its currency, the yen; its technological prowess and, inevitably, its trade conflicts.
Neff attended the University of Michigan from 1965 to 1969. There he met Urban Lehner, who would become both a life-long friend and a journalistic competitor. Neff became Tokyo bureau chief for Business Week magazine whereas Lehner became bureau chief in Tokyo for The Wall Street Journal and also served as editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal.
Neff was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and spent two years doing hospital work as his form of national service. After that, he attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He started his career at Pacific Business News in Honolulu, before Business Week hired him in its Los Angeles bureau in 1977. The McGraw-Hill Companies owned Business Week as well as other specialty trade magazines and a wire service, McGraw-Hill News.
Neff transferred to McGraw-Hill News in Tokyo in 1979 and he rose to become bureau chief before a British magazine, International Management, owned by Haymarket Media, hired him in London.
From there he joined BusinessWeek in New York in early 1989 as editor of the international edition, prior to moving back to Tokyo in June 1989 as bureau chief. After leaving Business Week he worked for the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan.
Neff also was the author of a famous guide to the best among Japan’s hundreds of onsen, or hot baths, entitled Japan’s Hidden Hot Springs. Friend Lehner and his family traveled with Neff and wife Fumiko on a tour of some hot springs that Lehner would write about in The Asian Wall Street Journal. Lehner said Neff was a master at finding onsen that were quaint and affordable, often offering views of mountains from the steamy hot baths. The leading Japanese-owned English-language newspaper, the Japan Times, wrote that Neff was “a discriminating bather.”
Neff also was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of Tokyo’s lively nightlife. He had a particular love of karaoke, the Japanese practice of singing in the evening, often over drinks. “Many a Japanese contact told me how well Bob could sing those songs, and how much they enjoyed going out drinking with him,” recalls Leslie Helm, who worked for Neff in the Business Week bureau.
Neff was active in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. He was secretary in 1981-82 and president in 1998-99. He also served as co-chair of the club’s food and beverage committee – which meant that he and the other co-chair, the late Bob Kirschenbaum (the pair was known to one and all as the Two Bobs), sampled all food items and beverages before they appeared on any menu. Neff served on other committees as well. Friend and fellow journalist Toshio Aritake remembers that Neff was “a fixture at the Correspondents’ Table and always at the center of the most heated debates.”