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In the sunny living room of his home near Osaka, 26-year-old Seiji Hayakawa last week contemplated his existence and found it good. Mornings, Seiji and his young wife Kumiko wake to the bubbling of their automatic rice cooker, turned on minutes before by an electric timing device. Evenings they watch Laramie or the samurai dramas on their television set and right off the winter chill by toasting their feet on an electric footwarmer. So well paid are their jobs at the nearby Matsushita Electric Co. radio plant—as a foreman, Seiji makes $61.12 a month, plus a bonus of 6½ months' pay last year—that they also own a refrigerator, transistor radio, vacuum cleaner, electric iron and washer. If the expectant Kumiko presents him with a son next month, Seiji even talks confidently of sending the boy to a university. "What more could I want?" Seiji ruminates contentedly—and answers himself: "I can't think of anything." The contentment of Seiji Hayakawa is a consequence of the biggest and most hopeful economic news out of Asia since the end of World War II: the emergence of Japan as a consumer-oriented society and the first Asian nation to approach a Western standard of living. Less than a century after its awakening from feudalism and only 16 years after the soul-crushing devastation of World War II, Japan ranks among the world's great industrial powers. Stimulated originally by liberal transfusions of U.S. aid* and propelled by the boundless energy of its people, Japan last year boosted its national output to $45 billion—four times the highest prewar level. Exporting at the rate of $4 billion a year (triple the 1951 rate), Japan today is the U.S.'s single biggest trading partner after Canada; last year Japan's exports to the U.S. hit $1.1 billion, its imports from the U.S. $2.2 billion.
What makes Japan unique among Asian nations, however, is that its growing wealth, instead of being concentrated in the hands of a small elite, is benefiting the entire nation. Of the hundreds of words the Japanese language has borrowed from English, the most overworked today is "boom" (pronounced "boomu"). Japan's boom has edged off some in recent months, but the results continue to be spectacular. There is the golfing boom, as new courses, opening at the rate of 60 a year, are jammed with wild-swinging enthusiasts. There is the bed boom, as people leave their straw mats for Western-style mattresses. There are skiing booms, boating booms, bowling booms, appliance booms. Cities throb with the pound of pile drivers pushing new office buildings and apartments skyward. Tokyo's streets —most of them no more than lanes—resound with the honking of 700,000 cars, trucks and motorcycles, v. 59,000 before the war; traffic jams are hideous, and the death rate from traffic accidents the highest in the world. So many people pack stores, subways and amusement centers that one entrepreneur sells a "slippery coat" of tough synthetic fiber to make it easier to slither through crowds.
In many places, the ancient poverty of Japan persists, but today it is no longer accepted as necessary and permanent.