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