The Challenges of Success

By Jill Smolowe

The Japanese capacity for change is nothing short of astounding. When Commodore Matthew Perry sailed a squadron of U.S. naval ships into Japan's waters in 1853 and demanded an opening of trade, the Japanese reacted swiftly. They cast off 250 years of rigid isolation and rapidly transformed their island nation from a feudal to a modern state. The Japanese again proved chameleon-like following their humiliating surrender at the close of World War II. Under the watchful eye of General Douglas MacArthur, the head of the occupation forces, they abandoned militarism, established their unique brand of capitalism, and quickly turned the country from an economic prodigy into a business superpower.

A generation later the Japanese are discovering that the challenges of success can be just as tricky as the hardships of defeat. Now that the bionic yen has driven up the price of Japan's products in foreign markets and angry trade partners are threatening to obstruct those exports, the Japanese are trying to change once again. Government officials are looking to make the Japanese more voracious consumers, thus loosening dependence on exports and boosting demand for imports. Sacrifice is out, self-indulgence is in. The Japanese are being encouraged to work less, play more, save less, spend more and, while they are at it, buy foreign.

The Japanese have a new buzz word for this phenomenon: kokusai-ka (internationalization). Kokusai-ka refers to the host of efforts designed to deal with trade frictions, from opening the domestic market to foreigners to investing more heavily in public works, including bridges, highways and housing. The more philosophic interpret kokusai-ka as an end to Japan's historic attempt to remain separate from the world and the beginning of an opening of Japanese hearts and minds to the international community.

Despite Commodore Perry and General MacArthur, the Japanese have rigorously guarded their culture, their minds and their gene pool against foreign influences. Today most of Japan's 120 million people still share an unshakable belief that they are different from, indeed superior to, all other people. Says Kuniko Inoguchi, assistant professor of international relations at Tokyo's Sophia University: "There is a set of subtle but complicated rules that exclude outsiders from a homogeneous village called Japan."

But many political and business leaders say the country must reject those old views. "The whole world market is so international, we can't stay in Japan alone," says Teruyoshi Yasufuku, senior managing director of Sanwa ^ Bank. As a result of exhortations like that, Japanese companies are not just exporting but are moving overseas in record numbers. For years, Japan invested only in its own miracle. But by the early 1980s, with huge balance-of-payments surpluses building up, businessmen began to look abroad for new opportunities. Last year alone Japanese direct investment overseas more than doubled, to $14.3 billion. A survey conducted by the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan shows 41% of all Japanese manufacturing companies have offices abroad.

Most companies claim they set up foreign branches to be closer to their markets and to lessen trade frictions. But overseas investment also reflects a respect for the bottom line. Many manufactured goods can be produced more cheaply in Taiwan, Singapore or South Korea, where wages are lower. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry estimates that by the year 2000, Japan will have effectively exported as many as 900,000 Japanese jobs, which some fear will not be replaced at home and will thus drive up the unemployment rate, currently 3%.

Much like their American counterparts, Japanese companies are restructuring in response to leaner, meaner times. Thus many firms have folded the safety nets that gave workers a guaranteed job for life. Within the past year, thousands of blue-collar workers have been fired or forced to retire early, particularly in the steel, shipbuilding and textile industries. White-collar workers find the breakdown of the seniority system no less jolting. Suddenly creativity seems to count for more than corporate loyalty.

Predictably the young, unburdened by their parents' postwar commitment to work and the common good, have proved to be the most adaptable. According to a recent survey conducted by the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living, 60.9% of young adults believe life should be enjoyed, a sentiment that is shared by only 31.3% of their parents' generation. For the young, the study concludes, "words like 'endure,' 'ardor' and 'fighting spirit' belong to a dead language."

The result is a new breed of Japanese, a burgeoning Me generation, whose self-absorption is sending shock waves through the older We generation. Many of these young adults thrive on values and ideas imported from the West. If work is not challenging enough or if it demands too much time, they move on. Job-hopping, once a rare phenomenon, is gaining acceptance. More than 60 Japanese publications (combined circ. 2.5 million) now offer nothing but employment listings.

Temporary work is also catching on. Temporary Center Corp., one of 350 such agencies nationwide, has 31,000 names on its roster, up from 200 eleven years ago. The agencies appeal primarily to young women, who are more inclined than their American and European counterparts to leave the work force once they marry and have children. Still a handful of Japanese women have worked their way into corporate boardrooms, and the future looks promising. Last year the salary gap between male and female college graduates just starting out was only about $500 annually.

Other aspects of Japanese life have plenty of room for improvement. Despite Japan's vast wealth, living conditions remain remarkably humble. By American standards, corporate salaries are modest. Because the average personal-savings rate is high, 16%, in contrast to 4% in the U.S., many basic amenities go wanting. Apartment space is claustrophobic, yet there has been little effort to replace what the Japanese derisively call their rabbit hutches. Some 155,000 households still do not have flush toilets, and almost all lack heat.

Last April the government kicked off a campaign to restructure the economy with the release of the Maekawa Report, a project prepared by 17 eminent Japanese. The slender canon warned that Japan must consume more and export less if it hopes to achieve greater "international harmony" with its trading partners. Shorter work hours and longer vacations were encouraged so that people would have more time to spend their money.

The travel industry has already benefited from the new attention to leisure. In 1986 a record 5.4 million Japanese went abroad, 80% of them on vacation. Says Akio Morita, 52, the chairman of Sony: "I envy the younger generation of Japanese. They are citizens of the world." At present some 39,400 Japanese children attend primary or secondary school abroad, and 13,300 students are enrolled in colleges in the U.S. Moreover, Japan is currently host to 18,000 foreign students, a number that Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone hopes will swell to 100,000 by the turn of the century. To accelerate crosscultural pollination, 68 American colleges and universities have been invited to open branches in Japan.

However, Japan's educational system will need more than a smattering of foreign influences if it hopes to maintain its vitality. While educators the world over seem to agree that the Japanese system is superior up through high school, Japanese universities have failed to achieve the same recognition. Japan's academic emphasis on rote learning fails to encourage the sort of innovative thinking that will be crucial to its high-tech future.

Schools also remain faithful to a traditional notion: the nail that sticks up must be hammered down. When Sixth-Grader Tetsuya Osawa returned to Tokyo from New York City, he encountered hostility. Classmates ridiculed his Americanized way of shrugging his shoulders in answer to questions and his practice of opening doors for girls. Osawa's teacher informed the boy's mother he must "act like a Japanese person." In short order, Osawa developed a stress-related ulcer and had to be transferred to a private international school. Adults hardly fare better. Says Koji Kato, chief researcher at the National Institute of Education: "Returnees are regarded as kind of guests."

The Japanese still look down on resident foreigners. The 700,000 Koreans who constitute Japan's largest alien enclave must overcome legal barriers to obtain citizenship, although many of them were born and bred in Japan during the early part of the century, when Korea was a Japanese colony. The 5,000 Indochinese refugees taken in by Japan after the Viet Nam War find assimilation all but impossible. "Japanese heartily welcome foreigners on short visits," explains Masahiro Tsubouchi of the Tokyo immigration office. "They just don't want them to stay forever."

The outbreak of AIDS has provided a new reason for xenophobia. The press has warned Japanese to avoid intimate relations with outsiders, and fear of AIDS has prompted massage parlors, saunas and nightclubs to post signs reading FOREIGNERS PLEASE REFRAIN FROM ENTERING. Officials have drafted a bill that could deny entry to Japan to foreigners infected with the virus and deemed likely to give it to others.

Given such rigid attitudes toward anything non-Japanese, many experts feel that true kokusai-ka is a long way off. "Japanese culture hasn't changed a bit," says Researcher Kato. "It still persistently keeps anybody different out." Still, Japan's gradual opening cannot be ignored. It may be fleeting, a calculated response to edgy trade partners, or it may be enduring. Perhaps when the Japanese stop identifying themselves as different from the rest of the world and start seeing themselves as part of it, kokusai-ka will truly flourish.

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand and Yukinori Ishikawa/Tokyo