The No-Show Recession

More than a year ago, Japan's bankers and economists began warning their countrymen that a crisis was at hand unless Japan throttled down its dizzying rate of economic growth. As a nation that lives on foreign trade, they argued, Japan simply could not afford the surge in consumer buying and in industrial purchases of foreign equipment that had sent its imports soaring far above its exports.

Shaken by these jeremiads, Premier Hayato Ikeda's government slapped on credit curbs designed to discourage industrial expansion. Last week, however, the government reported that, despite all its efforts, Japan's gross national product in 1961 increased by 21.5%--6 1/2 times the U.S. rate. Meanwhile, under the stimulus of a government-backed export drive, overseas sales had picked up enough to give Japan a favorable trade balance of $92 million for the first quarter of this year. Sighed Government Economic Planner Masao Sakizaka: "It seems the only people who realize that there's a serious recession going on are we economists."

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