Toward the Japanese Century
IN the gentle Senri Hills just outside Osaka, under a pall of dust visible for miles away, helmeted workmen are bustling to put the finishing touches on what looks like a giant's toy box. Here, three weeks hence, Japan's Expo '70 will begin a six-month run. It is the first world's fair ever to be held in Asia, but amid its architectural anarchy the occasional pagoda or the batwing sail of a Chinese junk seems oddly out of place--and time. From one end of the 815-acre site to the other, the skyline is a futurescape of spires and saucers, globes and polyhedrons, sweeping carapaces and shimmering towers of aluminum, glass and steel.
The scene strongly suggests the movie 2001, and well it might. No country has a stronger franchise on the future than Japan. No developed nation is growing faster. Its economy quadrupled in the past decade, and will triple again in the next. Powered by a boomu (the word is a typical Japanese neologism) that has been picking up speed for a full ten years, Japan whistled past Britain in gross national product in 1967, then France in 1968. Last year it surpassed West Germany. With a G.N.P. that is expected to reach $200 billion this year, Japan now ranks third in the world, be hind only the U.S. ($932 billion) and the Soviet Union ($600 billion). U.S. Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans says that Japan "could very well" move to the head of the class in the next 20 years. Says Economist Peter Drucker: "It is the most extraordinary success story in all economic history."
At $1,100 a year, Japan's per capita income still ranks only 19th, just ahead of Italy's and far behind the U.S.'s $4,600. But that gap is closing fast as Japanese workers begin to make up for past sacrifices with fat pay increases. "It would not be surprising," says the Hudson Institute's Herman Kahn, "if the 21st century turned out to be the Japanese century."
Miniskirt and Kimono
Not bad for a war casualty with paltry natural resources, few close allies, and hardly enough room to breathe. The four spiny main islands of Nippon house the most crowded society in the world. Japan has half as many people (102 million) as the U.S., and a smaller area than Montana. Only 20% of the spectacularly mountainous land is habitable, and the Japanese are packed into coastal plains at a density of 2,365 to the square mile--about twice that of
The Netherlands, the second most densely populated country.
Besides being the most crowded society, Japan is, as Kahn says, "the most achievement-minded society in the world." The Japanese possess a keen sense of competition, sharpened by the fact that their shoulder-to-shoulder existence invariably makes for many rivals and few openings. This competitive spirit extends beyond Nippon's borders and instills a deep concern among the Japanese over their ranking in the world. They intend to move higher. To that ambition they bring a machinelike discipline, an ability to focus with fearful energy on the task at hand, and an almost Teutonic thoroughness in all pursuits, whether business or pleasure.
For all their confidence, the Japanese are enduring acute modernization pangs. Until a century ago, Japan was semifeudal, primarily agricultural and almost totally insulated. Today it is a sometimes baffling blend of West and East, of old and new. Some of its rebellious young radicals would not dream of sitting down to dinner without a deep bow to their honorable grandfathers. The campuses are torn by challenges to authority, but 70% of Japan's marriages are still "arranged." Along the streets of the teeming cities, miniskirts and high heels vie with ankle-length kimonos and wooden clogs. The glass-and-steel sheaths of modern commerce along the main arteries give way to delicate wooden teahouses on cobblestoned side streets, and the skyline juxtaposes industry's mammoth cranes and chimneys with the softly curving roofs of Buddhist temples.
The past still pervades Japan, hut it does not crimp its future. Already, the heirs presumptive to the 21st century own a big share of the 20th. A human cliche everywhere is the bespectacled Japanese salesman, quick to bow, to smile and, after consulting his pocket dictionary and his neatly arranged attache case, to quote a cut-rate price. He is seen even in the lobbies of the Alcron in Prague and the Gellert in Budapest.
The salesman is a more pallid--but also more successful--descendant of two other Japanese prototypes. One was the swashbuckling wako, or warrior-trader, who began plundering Asia as early as the 14th century. The second was the soldier-bureaucrat who went to war a generation ago to develop a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," stretching from Manchuria to Burma. His slogan was "Asia for the Asiatics," but his purpose was really to furnish Japan's factories not only with raw materials but also with vast markets for their goods. Today the Japanese have come closer to establishing an informal Co-Prosperity Sphere than ever before (see map, page 27). The difference is that the latter-day wako carries a soroban (abacus) instead of a sword and wears blue serge instead of the khaki of General Hideki Tojo's Imperial Army.
Equal Slices
Diplomatically, if not commercially, Tokyo has been so discreet since the U.S. occupation ended in 1952 as to be almost invisible. The most prestigious branch of the Japanese government is the Finance Ministry, not the Foreign Ministry. Japan's embassy in Djakarta is symbolic: there is a low, two-story wing for the diplomatic staff and a high-rise office tower housing Japanese trading companies.
Diplomatic discretion has meshed wonderfully well with the country's ecumenical trading patterns. Each day Japan exports $44 million worth of goods--one-third to Asia, one-third to the U.S., and one-third to the rest of the world. Few nations can match Japan's prices--not because of cheap labor, which is no longer all that cheap, but because of efficient production and shipping techniques. Incredibly, the Japanese can deliver finished pipeline to Alaska at a total cost that is less than the freight charges alone from Pittsburgh's steel mills. Small wonder that since 1955 Japan's share of world trade has tripled, to 7%, while the U.S. share has declined a few points, to 18%; some economists predict that by 1980 each country will command an identical 15% slice of the market.
The price of Japan's reach for that sizable slice of world trade has been years of national self-denial. "We have sold everything, including the kitchen sink," laments Economist Kiichi Miyazawa, head of the influential Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MIT1). "We have left nothing for ourselves." There are shortages of roads, railways, parks, hospitals, sewers and schools. "There is much to be done," says Premier Eisaku Sato, singling out two problems in particular. "The housing shortage is extreme, and pollution is serious."
More than in most countries, urbanization has overwhelmed Japan. Only 20 years ago, 60% of the population was tied to the farm, and Japan still had to import rice; today, as a result of agricultural advances, only 18% of the Japanese people are needed to feed the country and produce a surplus. The dispossessed farmers cram the cities, and the cities have been woefully shortchanged. The "Tokaido Corridor," a slender, 366-mile coastal belt running along the Pacific from Tokyo to Kobe, was long celebrated for its beauty in misty wood-block prints and delicate, 17-syllable haiku. Today, with 50% of the population crammed into the corridor, it is a smog-covered slurb.
Travelers jetting in by night first see Tokyo from miles out, an explosion of light against Honshu's black mountain ridges. By day, the world's largest metropolis (pop. 11.4 million) is a hazy brown and gray sprawl. Prosperity has only worsened Tokyo's housing shortage, its snarled traffic, and the soot that boils in across the brown Sumida River from the blast furnaces of Kawasaki, which has 3,000 industrial plants and a population of 940,000. Two-thirds of Tokyo is still without sewers; residents are served by "honeybucket" men, trucks and a "night-soil fleet" of disposal ships, some as big as 1,000 tons, that make daily dumping trips offshore. "Don't worry," a crewman smiles, "the Black Current will take it all toward the U.S."
When the wind blows in from Tokyo Bay, the downtown area is enveloped in the aroma from "Dream Island," an ironically named landfill project that grows by 7,800 tons of waste a day. The city is trying to reduce its overhanging pall of smog by persuading homeowners and industrialists to switch from coal to fuel oil (at a cost of increased carbon monoxide). But a 15th century samurai's poem boasting that the city "commands a view of soaring Fuji" is now a wry joke.
Tokyo's ebullient konton (confusion) can be attractive, and the city has proved an irresistible magnet to Japanese and foreigners alike. It has vitality, diversity and unexpected touches of beauty everywhere--in a tiny rock garden, a sprig of cherry blossoms, a full moon reflected in the still waters of the imperial moat. Manhattan-style muggings are virtually unknown. Still, the city's main problem, says Mayor Ryokichi Minobe, is "too many people." New York City, with 128 sq. ft. of park space per resident, is a verdant paradise compared with Tokyo, which has 7 sq. ft. Real estate values have risen 670% in a decade in some parts of town, and now rival Manhattan's--despite fears that anything built on the land may one day come tumbling down. Mild tremors hit the city almost every day, and experts fret that 3,000,000 would die in another earthquake like the one that flattened the city in 1923. Yet since the 100-ft. limitation on buildings was done away with in 1962, because of new, supposedly quake-resistant construction techniques, the Japanese have been challenging fate; now abuilding is one office tower of 40 stories, another of 46. Why not? "We Japanese never consider cities solid, lasting existences as the Europeans or Americans do," says Architect Arata Isozaki, 38. "Ours have been destroyed so often by wars, fires and earthquakes that we believe that when it comes to cities, change is the sole permanent characteristic."
The Salary Man
Certainly change has characterized the life-styles of virtually every age group and class, except for those at the very bottom and the very top. The eta, descended from the practitioners of such despised occupations as leatherworking and butchering, are Japan's closest equivalent to India's untouchables; there are 1,000,000 of them, living in slums, working as ragpickers or worse, and rarely able to marry outside their class. At the top is Emperor Hirohito, who lives serenely in Tokyo's Imperial Palace with Empress Nagako and devotes most of his time, as ever, to his studies in marine biology.
Perhaps most affected are the people in the middle--the country's 17.6 million "salary men." They are the silent, white-collar backbone of the Land of the Rising G.N.P. Take, for instance, Tokyo Salary Man Iwao Nakatani, 27. He is typically middle-sized (5 ft. 4 in.), middle-income ($222 a month), middle-management. In his three-room, $6,900 flat ($833 down, $41 a month), Nakatani, his wife and two children all sleep in the same room.
Nakatani, who studied business administration at Berkeley, spends 21 hours each day commuting to his company, Taiyo Kogyo Co., a tent firm that made the translucent roof of the
U.S. exhibit at Osaka. Paternalism and lifetime employment are still features of Japanese corporations, and Taiyo Kogyo keeps Nakatani happy with a six-month salary bonus every year and a new-car loan every two years. Corporate entertainment allowances total $2 billion a year in Japan, and Nakatani spends a good chunk of his $1,600 share taking foreign customers to geisha parties. But he is not a kimono chaser. That tradition is beginning to fade, albeit slowly, as Japan's women become more assertive.
Nakatani runs counter to tradition in a number of other ways. He occasionally considers quitting for a better post, though job-hopping is still largely unheard of in a land where people usually stay with the same firm for life. He drives home in his Toyota Corolla every day at 5 p.m., whether his boss has left the office or not. And he thought nothing of voting for the Communists in the last election, though he describes himself as "a conservative's conservative," because he was certain they were going to lose and he wanted to help keep the long-entrenched Liberal Democrats on their toes.
The greatest change in the Nakatanis' life has been in the increased conveniences, but the Japanese salary man is fast learning a lesson absorbed by his Western counterpart long ago. "Now that all of us have a car, color TV and a stereo," says Nakatani, "we Japanese have begun to hanker for a mink coat for the wife and a foreign-made car." Already, Japanese housewives are complaining about "the servant problem."
Then there are Japan's two ages of discontinuity -- elder and younger. Older Japanese, used to the rigors of life before the boom, find the relative abundance of contemporary Japan confusing and empty. Eight years ago, as Tokyo's sprawl reached his small farm, Dyusaku Ohno sold his three acres to a development company for $280,000. Now 60, Ohno has his money in good stocks. his children in good schools, his wife in a modern house. But he has lost, he says, "the smell of the earth, the satisfaction of a good crop, the scalding bath at the end of a hard day's work."
Taming Taming the Thunderbolts
Yoshikazu Maeda. 54, a Tokyo bank executive, remembers that day when "the family was more closely knit, living quarters were more cramped, and there was consideration." much He more says mutual sadly: personal "The whole pace of life seems to have speeded up. Human relationships seem to be getting colder." Moreover, the problem of caring for the elderly is growing, if only because there are so many more of them. Improvements in diet and medical care have increased life expectancy for men from only 50 years in 1945 to 69 years today.
A youth problem has already arrived -- and how. In a country where chil dren traditionally are coddled up to the age of nine or ten, then are expected to begin facing society's rigorous de mands without complaint, Japanese youths are baffling their elders by taking to the streets to protest everything from the "dehumanization" of life to air pollution. In few lands is communication between generations breaking down more rapidly. The suicide rate among 15-to 24-year-olds is one of the highest in the world. So is the rec ord for campus chaos. Last year, 3,500 students were jailed in clashes that closed 100 of Japan's 377 universities, some for as long as twelve months.
The catalogue of student complaints is familiar, and in many respects well justified. Competition for admission is fierce, especially to Tokyo and Kyoto universities, the Oxbridge-like axis that produces most of Japan's ruling establishment of businessmen, bureaucrats and politicians; according to one estimate, 20% of Japan's Diet (parliament) members and 30% of its corporation presidents are Tokyo U. alumni. Jammed with 1.5 million students, a 100% increase since 1960, the understaffed universities strike many youths as diploma factories geared to feed industry. Tokyo's Nihon University has 75,000 students; in its 7,000-student school of economics, there are but 27 professors.
Westerners accustomed to the atmosphere of improvisation at U.S. or French demonstrations are apt to find the Japanese protest scene quite different. Clashes between helmeted students and shield-carrying riot cops seem as stylized--and puzzling--as a No play. Moreover, the rioters, often led by members of the radical Zengakuren (a student federation), are usually higher on doctrine than drugs (pot has yet to spread far in Japan). Before long, however, Japanese dissent may be taking on a Western character.
Thousands of students and hippie-style dropouts are being drawn to a Viet Nam protest movement called Be-heiren, which often draws 5,000 "folksong guerrillas" to monthly protest meetings in Tokyo's swinging Shinjuku area. When the cops come, the kids give them flowers and songs instead of staves and curses. Sample:
Oh, the sad, sad riot-squad men Withering away their finest years Like wintry shrubs under duralumin shields
Beheiren's founder is Novelist Makoto Oda, 38. He launched the new wave in dissent two years ago in Sasebo Harbor, where he circled the U.S. carrier Enterprise in a small launch, calling out "Don't fight for Uncle Sham!" on a megaphone. If Oda's style has a familiar American quality, it may be due to the fact that he once studied at Harvard, on a Fulbright scholarship.
The rise of dissent -- or rather, the decline of Confucian decorum -- has stunned Japan's elders. A measure of their confusion is the advice on handling students contained in a manual circulated among the faculty of Tokyo's Chuo University. They should be treated "as foreigners," the handbook ad vises, "with all their different sets of modes, customs and thoughts." Still, older Japanese take comfort from the fact that so far most of the young ka-minari (thunderbolts) have dutifully taken "their proper place" in the ser vice of company and country after graduation. A few businessmen are in fact trying to recruit campus activists, valuing their "volatile and creative minds."
Control and Release
Life-styles change more rapidly than character -- and the Japanese character bewilders many Westerners. It is shot through with contradictions, as Cultural Anthropologist Ruth Benedict noted in a pioneering study of the Japanese mind that was written in 1946 but is still pertinent. "Both the sword and the chry santhemum are a part of the picture.
The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways. They are terribly concerned about what other people will think of their behavior, and they are also overcome by guilt when other peon $49 pie know nothing of their missteps. Their soldiers are disciplined to the hilt but $4.0 are also insubordinate."
Except for small children and old people, the Japanese lives constantly in a state of near-total control or near-total release. A man may be a perfectly decorous office worker at 4:55 p.m., but by 5:05, after one drink at the bar around the corner, he may be a giggling buffoon. Extremely rigid codes define proper behavior in virtually every social situation, but there are no codes at all to cover many modern contingencies. That is why so much body-checking and elbowing go on in a Tokyo subway or department store. As Author-Translator Edward Seidensticker puts it in his recent Japan: "They are extremely ceremonious toward those whom they know, and highly unceremonious toward others. Few urban Japanese bother to say 'Excuse me' after stepping on a person's toes or knocking a book out of his hand--provided the person is a stranger. If he is known, it is very common to apologize for offenses that have not been committed."
The guideline for the Japanese abroad is "No shame away from home." Japan's neighbors learned the meaning of that aphorism from the appalling atrocities committed during the war; in a very different way, they are learning it again today (see box, page 26).
At home, however, extreme overcrowding has led to an overpowering sense of "proper place." Individuality is not a quality sought by most Japanese; even artists usually belong to a group, submerging or sharing their identity. The Japanese are fond of saying that there is a place for every person in their country--but manifestly not for foreigners, who are known as gaijin (literally, outside people) and who are discouraged from seeking citizenship or marrying Japanese. The concept of a slot for everyone is best reflected in industry's paternalism. Keeping people in their jobs for life and maintaining a virtually full-employment economy are practices that do not seem to jibe with Japan's emphasis on efficiency. But the Japanese figure shrewdly that they are gaining in social stability whatever they may be losing in wasted salaries.
Fads and Frivolity
Things get done in Japan not by the impulse of a forceful individual but by a process of consensus. The process can be timeconsuming, but not always. One result is that fads are epidemic. Paris fashions and the latest rock beats reach Tokyo almost as quickly as they reach New York. The current singing sensation is Osamu Minagawa, a Tokyo six-year-old whose recording of something called Kuro Neko No Tango (Black Cat Tango) has sold 2,000.000 records, mostly on the basis of his imitation of a mewing cat. Baseball has been booming since Babe Ruth's visit 35 years ago, but now there are also booms in skiing, golf and gambling; wagers on horse, auto and hydroplane races totaled $3 billion last year.
Sex, too, is enjoying a boom as a spectator sport, with scores of strip joints and nude theaters -- but not, as yet, top less waitresses. The Ginza is still To kyo's main entertainment street, but the rising sin district is Akasaka, where ground-floor bar patrons in the Biblos bend not only their elbows but also their necks -- to leer at couples dancing on a transparent plastic floor above. Of the 493 movies that Japan produced last year, ductions." The 250 were hottest flick right adults-only now "ero-is -- what else? -- Sexpo 70.
Tea and Origami
Though Japan's biggest daily, the Asahi Shimbun, has suggested that the country be renamed "Kindergarten Nippon," not all the fads are frivolous. Theater and concert performances are usually S.R.O., especially if the bill is Western.
The Berlin Opera's six month appear ance in Osaka during Expo has been sold out for a year. Music lessons are all the rage, and at one Tokyo music school four-year-olds learn to play Bach on miniature pianos and violins. At the Tokyo Culture Hall, children flock to the orchestra pit at intermission time to ogle their heroes -- cellists and bas soon players.
Despite their hunger for the new, the Japanese still show a marked in terest in their heritage. Housewives flock to schools to learn origami (paper folding), flower arrangement and the ancient tea ceremony just as unmarried girls fill charm and beauty schools. More flags are out on holidays, and the man's formal kimono is making a modest comeback. Novelist Yukio Mishima (Forbidden Colors) has formed his own private army of 100 men to help restore discipline, patriotism and pride in young Japanese. But many artists are exceptions to the growing preoccupation with Japanese identity. They consider their work to be their passports. Says Novelist (The Ruined Map) Kobo Abe: "We have nothing left to mark ourselves as particularly Japanese, and we tend to regard ourselves as people with the same aspi rations as our counterparts in the U.S.
and Europe. Who asks if Kafka was Czech, Austrian or German? His main mark was that he was modern."
The boom that is propelling Japan toward superpower status has been aided hugely by an unparalleled era of free trade that has prevailed virtually everywhere -- except in Japan. Pleading postwar poverty and a paucity of resources, Tokyo's bureaucrats created a hothouse economy, sheltered from foreign competition by a network of quotas, tariffs and other trade barriers.
Some rough spots remain. Japan suffers from a labor shortage. Unemploy ment runs a mere .8%. Those born in the post-1945 baby boom are already at work; those who arrived afterward tend to spend more time in school. As a result, companies have pushed the re-Toyota cars massed on docks at Nagoya, where 3,000 autos are loaded on special ships for export every day. Retirement age from 55 to 60, are hiring housewives for part-time jobs, and are resisting moves to cut the 48-hour work week to 40 hours. With salaries soaring (a high school graduate who started out at $45 a month two years ago now gets $70), and with workers growing scarcer, some firms have built plants in Seoul and Taiwan in search of that vanishing national asset, cheap labor. Inflation, now running at an annual rate of 5.6%, looms as a serious problem, but the Japanese have not done much to slow down their fast-paced economy. The colorful kimono that went for $170 last year now costs $185, a quarter-pint of home-delivered milk has gone from 500 to 640, and a 280 can of tuna is up to 340.
Western economists argue that the yen (360 to $1 at the official rate, 354 oh the open market) is undervalued, thus giving Japanese exports an unfair price advantage in world markets. The U.S., with its ailing textile industry, and other Western governments are putting strong pressure on Tokyo either to revalue the yen or to liberalize trade. Reluctant to tamper with their currency, the Japanese are expected to carry out a gradual, grudging reduction of barriers against foreign trade and capital over the next couple of years.
The Weaning Process
Ultimately, a far more vexatious issue than any of Japan's economic problems is the nation's future role in Asia and the world. Japan today simply stands too tall and too rich to maintain a low profile--or no profile--for many more years. "This country," says Finance Minister Takeo Fukuda, "can no longer be permitted to think of our own problems without paying attention to the outside world." Foreign Minister Kiichi Aichi agrees. Writing in Foreign Affairs recently, he spoke of the need for "gradually weaning the public away from 'little-Japanism.' "
Events may hasten the process. Britain will complete its east-of-Suez withdrawal next year, as Defense Minister Denis Healey confirmed in a White Paper last week. A partial U.S. stand-down in Asia is in prospect under Richard Nixon's Guam doctrine, as the President confirmed in his "State of the World" message last week. The West's withdrawal will make it impossible for Japan to keep its head down much longer. Says Harvard's Historian Edwin O. Reischauer, former Ambassador to Tokyo: "The Japanese choice is either a close special relationship with the U.S. or to become a major force on their own. The concept that they can be an elephant-sized Laos is ridiculous."
While some Asian statesmen would welcome more active Japanese diplomatic participation in the region, few relish the idea of a greater military role for their former conquerors. Says Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik: "An armed Japan which grows into another big military power would certainly make many Asian countries apprehensive and insecure." Asian leaders note that the Japanese today command more firepower than the combined imperial forces did during World War II. They know that the country will soon start building 105 Phantom jets under license from the U.S., and that a submarine fleet is in the talking stage. And they have heard talk that Tokyo may one day send warships to patrol the narrow Strait of Malacca to protect its merchant fleet from Indonesian pirates.
For all that, a sizable Japanese military presence is not likely to materialize overnight. Article 9 of the Peace Constitution imposed by the U.S. restricts Japan to defensive forces. To be sure, "defensive" can be interpreted broadly, as both Washington and Moscow have demonstrated; but so far, Japan's Self-Defense Force numbers only 259,400 men, all volunteers and all entitled to quit any time they want to. The searing memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan's signing of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty three weeks ago seem to rule out a nuclear role for the foreseeable future. Japan is technologically capable of building a nuclear arsenal, but such a move would increase Japan's bargain-rate $1.6 million defense bill, less than 1% of its G.N.P. compared with 9.2% for the U.S.
One U.S. diplomat in Asia suggests that Japan may be the first nation to score a breakthrough--a superpower without superweapons. Almost certainly, however, a nuclear-armed China will eventually persuade Japan to exorcise its post-Hiroshima trauma and begin building its own nukes. Unlike Peking, Tokyo has a head start toward a delivery system; two weeks ago, the Japanese became the fourth member of the exclusive space club (others: the U.S., the Soviet Union and France) by putting a 20-lb satellite into orbit from a launch pad on Kyushu Island.
A key factor in Japan's postwar success has been its political stability. The last election produced a voter turnout of only 68%--low for Japan. One reason was that the Liberal Democrats, who have ruled almost without a break since the occupation, looked like certain winners (and in fact won an overwhelming 300 of 486 Diet seats). The Socialists once gave promise of becoming an effective opposition, but they are still promoting a shopworn Marxism that does not sound too magnetic to Japan's increasingly affluent workers.
Engulfed in Mist
The only parties to improve in the last Diet election were the Communists (up ten seats, to 14) and the Komeito
(Clean Government) party, the political arm of the Buddhist Soka Gakkai (Value-Creation Society), which went from 25 to 47 seats. Komeito is building a growing following among blue-collar urban voters by mixing religion, show business and concern for close-to-home issues such as pollution and prices.
Because Japan is still very much a country of slowly Cemented consensus, no swift changes are in prospect. Men who are now in their 60s will rule well into the 1970s, and they are cautious and uncertain. "Today's leaders," says Kyoto University Professor Kei Waka-izuma, "resemble mountain climbers who, finding themselves engulfed in mist, sit down to wait until the fog clears." There are, however, a few details that will not wait. The U.S.-Japan mutual security treaty comes up for reconsideration in June; Sato intends to keep it in effect, though the negotiations are likely to be punctuated by student demonstrations. Sato's majority in the Diet rules out serious parliamentary oppo sition, and now that he has secured the return of Okinawa from the U.S., the protests may be muted as well.
Richard Nixon has described U.S.
Japanese cooperation as "the linchpin for peace in the Pacific," and last week he emphasized that a "cooperative re lationship" between Tokyo and Washington is a must for the area. William Bundy, former Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East, agrees. Says Bundy, now attached to M.I.T.: "We consult with the British daily on a broad range of issues. We do the same thing with the Japanese, only more deeply and more intensively."
How long the relationship can en dure will depend not on U.S. wishes but Japan's own self-interest. Right now, its interests ally it to the U.S., but they could change as Japan enlarges its role in Asia. In Alternative in Southeast Asia, former World Bank President Eu gene Black argues that "there is very little prospect that Japan will be willing to become a political, much less a military, partner of the U.S. in Southeast Asia." Nor should the U.S. press too hard for such a partnership, he adds, for "the real danger is that we will, wit tingly or unwittingly, force the Japanese to choose rearmament rather than co operation in the years ahead."
Different Dreams
Economist Keiji Sakamoto puts it an other way. "If the U.S. produced a chart of where it wants Japan to go in the coming years," he says, "Japan would accept it. But whether it would follow an the chart is expression: another 'Dosho imu'--Same matter. -- We Same have bed, different dreams."
Eisaku Sato's dream, as he expressed it in a speech two weeks ago, is to make the 1970s "an era when Japan's na tional power will carry unprecedented weight in world affairs." Japan should be a "content but not arrogant" coun try, he said, whose example would in spire "the whole world to agree that the human race is far richer for Ja pan's existence." Whether Japan can serve as a model for the rest of the world, or even the rest of Asia, is, how ever, doubtful. In climate, in resources, but above all, in the will and skill of its people, the country is unique.
That, of course, is Japan's strength.
It has also proved to be an endless source of fascination for Western travelers, who are invariably, and rightly, en chanted by the rugged beauty of its mountains and the exquisite manners of its people. For one of Japan's ear liest Western advocates, Lafcadio Hearn, the main thing was "the viewless pressure of numberless past generations" at work in the country. These days the focus is on the future generations of Japan. No one knows what pressures they will feel, but one thing is cer tain: Japan will, as Sato says, carry weight.
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