World: Toward the Japanese Century

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place for every person in their country—but manifestly not for foreigners, who are known as gaijin (literally, outside people) and who are discouraged from seeking citizenship or marrying Japanese. The concept of a slot for everyone is best reflected in industry's paternalism. Keeping people in their jobs for life and maintaining a virtually full-employment economy are practices that do not seem to jibe with Japan's emphasis on efficiency. But the Japanese figure shrewdly that they are gaining in social stability whatever they may be losing in wasted salaries.

Fads and Frivolity

Things get done in Japan not by the impulse of a forceful individual but by a process of consensus. The process can be timeconsuming, but not always. One result is that fads are epidemic. Paris fashions and the latest rock beats reach Tokyo almost as quickly as they reach New York. The current singing sensation is Osamu Minagawa, a Tokyo six-year-old whose recording of something called Kuro Neko No Tango (Black Cat Tango) has sold 2,000.000 records, mostly on the basis of his imitation of a mewing cat. Baseball has been booming since Babe Ruth's visit 35 years ago, but now there are also booms in skiing, golf and gambling; wagers on horse, auto and hydroplane races totaled $3 billion last year.

Sex, too, is enjoying a boom as a spectator sport, with scores of strip joints and nude theaters — but not, as yet, top less waitresses. The Ginza is still To kyo's main entertainment street, but the rising sin district is Akasaka, where ground-floor bar patrons in the Biblos bend not only their elbows but also their necks — to leer at couples dancing on a transparent plastic floor above. Of the 493 movies that Japan produced last year, ductions." The 250 were hottest flick right adults-only now "ero-is — what else? — Sexpo 70.

Tea and Origami

Though Japan's biggest daily, the Asahi Shimbun, has suggested that the country be renamed "Kindergarten Nippon," not all the fads are frivolous. Theater and concert performances are usually S.R.O., especially if the bill is Western.

The Berlin Opera's six month appear ance in Osaka during Expo has been sold out for a year. Music lessons are all the rage, and at one Tokyo music school four-year-olds learn to play Bach on miniature pianos and violins. At the Tokyo Culture Hall, children flock to the orchestra pit at intermission time to ogle their heroes — cellists and bas soon players.

Despite their hunger for the new, the Japanese still show a marked in terest in their heritage. Housewives flock to schools to learn origami (paper folding), flower arrangement and the ancient tea ceremony just as unmarried girls fill charm and beauty schools. More flags are out on holidays, and the man's formal kimono is making a modest comeback. Novelist Yukio Mishima (Forbidden Colors) has formed his own private army of 100 men to help restore discipline, patriotism and pride in young Japanese. But many artists are exceptions to the growing preoccupation with Japanese identity. They consider their work to be their passports. Says Novelist (The Ruined Map) Kobo Abe: "We have nothing left to mark ourselves as particularly Japanese, and we tend to regard ourselves as people with the same aspi rations as our counterparts in the U.S.

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