World: Toward the Japanese Century

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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