Yes, We Have No Fukeiki

Instead of saying "Good morning," Japanese businessmen in Osaka traditionally say "Moh-kari-makka?" (Are you making any money?) Only a year ago, the answer was a doleful no. The cutback in U.S. procurement following the Korean peace had demoralized dollar-happy industrialists and spotted Japanese headlines with the word fukeiki (depression). But last week the same businessmen, answering the traditional question, beamed a confident yes. ¶ Industrial production was up 13% over 1954, some 85% above 1934-36.

¶ The grain crop was 70 million bushels above average, 93 million bushels above last year.

¶ Steel production was up 12.8% over 1954, and machine building was 157% above the prewar level. ¶ Japan had moved from seventh to third place among the world's shipbuilders, led only by Great Britain and West Germany and far outdistancing the U.S.

Santas & Spenders. Last week in predominantly non-Christian Japan, Tokyo's big department stores vied with each other in hiring Santa Clauses and putting up Christmas trees. The streets were jammed with automobiles (twice as many as in 1954), and at Keio University, campus parking was restricted because of the increase in student-owned cars. In ten months the number of TV sets in Japan had increased from 44,000 to 103,000.

"Help Wanted" signs are out this week in Kobe and Yokohama and in Osaka girl cotton workers are whipping about on roller skates to speed movement up and down the humming spindle lines. In Osaka's neon-doused Dotombori section, cabarets and bars are putting up "Off Limits to Foreigners" signs in recognition of the fact that Japanese businessmen, and not G.I.s, are today's big spenders.

Finance Minister Hisato Ichimada had slashed imports, forced industrialists to export. Said he, stumping the factories: "Never mind about making more mouse traps. Just make better mousetraps." This year Japan made better mousetraps in the shape of cashmere sweaters, fine fabrics and china, and the world came flocking to her door.

In the first nine months of 1955, the U.S. imported Japanese goods worth $331 million, twice as much as in the same period last year, while Britain and Europe took all they could buy. Result: at the end of the current fiscal year, Japan expects that her visible exports will have reached the postwar high of $1.94 billion.

Talking Poor Mouth. Behind the Japanese businessman's broad smile lies an uneasy feeling. Said a Tokyo industrialist last week: "I regard the present prosperity as I do my stomach when it is full of rice. I can see it. I can feel it. Even so, I keep on wondering how long it will be before I am hungry again." Some of

Japan's uneasiness arises from other nations' efforts to restrict Japan's trade.

Some 14 of the 35 members of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) have refused to grant Japan trade privileges promised other members; Canada and Venezuela are considering restricting Japanese products; India complains that Japanese products are competing seriously with Indian products; U.S. garment manufacturers are squawking about the importation of Japanese blouses (up 1,000% this year). In southeast Asia, Japan has run smack into the new Communist trade bloc, which sometimes sells below cost for political gains. Trade with Red China shows no sign of increasing.

Recently Japanese economists added a new phrase to the growing vocabulary of economic caution: what Japan was experiencing, they said, was no boom but suryo keiki--quantitative prosperity. One good reason for talking poor mouth while enjoying prosperity: when word gets out how well Japan is doing, other Asiatic nations think that Japan can afford to pay higher World War II reparations, and the U.S. Government thinks the Japanese can spend more of their budget (currently about 15%) to provide for their own defense.

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