(4 of 11)
Clogs, Not Cars
Even after the next stage of liberalization, foreigners will not be able to send in many products—including unlimited quantities of oranges and some airplanes and machinery—or to invest in the manufacturing of large computers, certain electronic items and petrochemicals. The Japanese government rejects many investment applications, stalls on others, attaches unacceptable conditions to still others. Ford and Chrysler have been delayed for years in attempts to buy into the booming Japanese auto industry, and General Motors has won permission for only a limited investment: 35% ownership of a joint venture with Isuzu Motors, a truck maker. Says James Adachi, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan: "We can set up a factory to make geta [Japanese wooden clogs], or open a supermarket, so long as it is smaller than 500 square meters."
Inscrutable Economics
The real cause of the present strain is that the U.S. is confronting something totally new in the world: a mighty industrial economy that has been shaped by Oriental history and psychology. If Japan does not follow the gentlemanly trade rules, it is not because of simple greed but because it does not adhere to Western principles on much of anything. To outsiders the Japanese economy seems inscrutable in ways alternately amusing and shocking.
Industry is cartelized to a point that would make John D. Rockefeller envious. Companies carry a burden of bank debts that would drive a U.S. executive to drink—or his company to the brink. Above all, every part of the Japanese economy is directed toward a national goal, and almost everybody feels a sense of participation in achieving it. Bureaucrats, bankers, business executives, workers—all labor hard to make Japan a world power through economics.
The economy is an expression of a society that values order, security, harmony and industry. Japan has become the world exemplar of what in the West is called the Protestant ethic. The reasons behind Japan's work ethic lie not in its Buddhist and Shinto religions but in its history and geography. The mountainous nation has always been a tough place to scratch out a living. The peasant who did not labor hard simply starved, partly because medieval lords took as much as 80% of his rice crop in taxes. Necessity was transmuted into virtue: the busy man is a good man. To this day, it is considered respectful to greet superiors by saying, "O-iso-gashii desho [You must be in an honorably busy state of affairs]."
Single-minded dedication to a goal is easier to achieve in Japan than in the West because Japan is the largest homogeneous society on earth; there are only tiny racial or even linguistic minorities among its 104 million people. Harmony and order are also essential because the Japanese have always been jammed together on small patches of arable land. The physical proximity of the Japanese breeds tension, which can be discharged by hard work, but there is literally no room for aggressively individualistic behavior. There is a violent undercurrent that sometimes leads to street demonstrations or parliamentary brawls, and the Japanese struggle to contain it. Akira