That's certainly not true at all. Clojure has a rich string library where you can do all sorts of manipulation. Clojure's strings are also native data sequences

That's certainly not true at all. Clojure has a rich string library where you can do all sorts of manipulation. Clojure's strings are also native data sequences so you can use the entire Clojure standard library's tools for manipulating data right on strings naturally. I wrote full-time Clojure for two years, and did all of last year's Advent of Code in Clojure. In my entire life, I have never once written a line of Java and I have no idea the details of its standard library. That's how well-encapsulated Clojure is.