LOCAL ANGLES: AMERICA HELPS NURTURE STEREOTYPE FOR ITSELF

American pride hasn't taken such a beating in Japan since George Bush lost lunch in Kiichi Miyazawa's lap.

This time, it was Walter F. Mondale doing the honors. His gastrointestinal functions intact, thank goodness, the U.S. ambassador to Japan found some television cameras pointed his way and, at the bidding of President Clinton, apologized to the Japanese people for America's wicked ways.

Never the exemplar of rugged yankee manners, Ambassador Mondale looked especially aggrieved in deploring the violent deaths of Takumo Ito and Go Matsuura in Los Angeles. Both were 19-year-old college students. Both were shot in the head in a carjacking.

Of course, Jimmy Carter's vice president wasn't wrong to regret this criminal act. Young lives wasted in this way are properly lamented. The father of a teen who will go away to college next year, I am especially alarmed by such a story. Still, the show in Tokyo was a bit much.

Most years, the murder rate in American metropolitan areas tops 20,000. Most years, the American diplomatic corps stays quiet on the subject 20,000 or more times. Ambassador Mondale, authorized by the U.S. government to display unlimited remorse, broke the silence, telling the Japanese, in so many words, "We're bad. We know it."

Certainly, if there is an American abroad who can convene a robust display of sincerity at a finger snap, it is Walter Mondale, graduate of the Hubert Humphrey "leave-the-chamber-smiling" school. Certainly, too, the sincerity (or was it cynicism?) was deepened by the fact America and Japan can't seem to agree on what constitutes fair trade.

But did the full weight of the American government need to be behind a diplomatic dirge resulting from a carjacking that turned tragic?

(If nothing else, the Japanese might have marveled at the haste of the apology. It was just last August, 47 years after the end of World War II, that any Japanese premier admitted his nation's guilt in perpetuating that conflict.)

In Japan, the story of the murdered students made all the front pages and topped all the newscasts. Stories chronicled other stories of Japanese visitors to the United States who had met with violence.

None of the stories seemed to suggest that Japanese visitors were being targeted by American thugs. This is fair enough since the Los Angeles students were targeted not because of their race but because they drove a desirable car to the wrong spot at the wrong time. So much more is the indictment, according to the Japanese press.

A surprising string of officials stepped forward to announce that the Japanese already have a brutal image of America from action movies Hollywood exports to Asia. One story said, "Between movies and television, many Japanese think of the United States as a haven for gun-toting gangsters."

Can this be true? If it is, should we Americans believe the Japanese all speak out of sync with their lips and endlessly battle Godzilla?

Despite this nonsense, Japan's Foreign Ministry acted in accordance to public delusion, shooting from the hip in its own manner and warning citizens to be especially careful when visiting the United States.

I do not know what it's like to be an Asian visiting this country. I know what it's like to be in Los Angeles or Chicago or New York. When I'm in one of those places, I stay alert.

Sure, people from foreign countries should be careful when they visit American cities. Americans should be careful when they visit American cities. If the Japanese are having second thoughts about going to Los Angeles, they join a vast majority of United States residents in that sentiment.

They should come instead to Cape Girardeau, which is safer, more hospitable and has better barbecue.

And if the American government wants to call attention to the problems of violent crime in this nation, it should find a more constructive forum than a press conference in Tokyo. Maybe the chambers of Congress would be a good place to address the issue.

Pride may cometh before a fall, but American pride should mean dealing with your problems at home, not delivering a servile apology overseas that only serves to reinforce stereotypes about our nation.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.