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Adding to the frustration is a backlog of other trade irritants that could continue to flare up. One is Japanese reluctance to allow U.S. bidders to compete for a slice of the country's premier construction project, the $6.5 billion Kansai international airport now under construction near Osaka. Another is the long-standing American complaint that the Japanese have not been buying enough U.S. auto parts. Particularly galling to the U.S. was a statement attributed to MITI Official Kuroda to the effect that American supercomputer manufacturers were wasting their time trying to sell the advanced machines to the Japanese government and universities. So far, Minneapolis-based Cray Research has managed to sell only seven of its supercomputing systems (cost: $2.5 million to $16 million each) in Japan over the past eight years. All but one of the sales were to private Japanese companies.
According to Commerce Secretary Baldrige, the new U.S. sanctions ensure that there will now be a "different bargaining atmosphere in the future" and, he added, a "much healthier one." Whether that proves to be true, some Japanese opinion molders, amid the rush to smooth over the incident, were thinking about the longer-term implications of the U.S. action. Japanese business leaders, notes Kimihiro Masamura, an economist at Tokyo's Senshu University, "are not aware of the extent of the impact they have had on their foreign competitors over the past several years. Now the Japanese have no other choice but to think globally."
However, for many other, more ordinary Japanese, the U.S. sanctions were both a puzzlement and a frustration. Says Kenji Hatakenaka, 38, a project- development manager at Sharp electronics: "It's hard for me to see what's really behind this. Japan doesn't pose the kind of threat you would expect to provoke such a reaction." Hatakenaka claims that the Nakasone government's efforts to boost consumption in response to U.S. pressure are running into resistance at the rice-roots level. Says he: "The government tells us to spend, but with currency instability everyone feels it's safer to save. The government says, 'Buy that TV today,' but we'd rather wait until the price comes down."
In some cases, Japanese dismay at the sanctions is also taking an unpleasant turn. Surveys by Prime Minister Nakasone's office show a conspicuous decline in Japanese affections for the U.S. The most recent sounding in October revealed that 67.5% of the sampling felt themselves to be friendly toward the U.S., down from 75.6%. The October reading was the lowest pro-American result since the prime ministerial surveys were started in 1978.