The Land od the Rising Yen

the Tokyo stock
exchange (having been in the doldrums for eight years) is reaching new,
undreamt-of peaks — and then to see, on an inside page, that Upper Clyde
shipbuilders report a loss of £10 3 million; that new, catastrophic
trade-figures have been published in Britain but the Government has explained
that these figures do not mean that the economy is not buoyant: the bad figures
are simply due to (x) increased imports, (2) the New York dock strike and (3)
the devaluation of the Argentine peso.
     
    I was foolish enough to ask for
economic pamphlets, booklets, statistics and surveys from various Tokyo ministries, universities and economic institutions. The result was a flood of
excellent documents, several tons of them, trumpeting abroad the Great
Achievement and lauding the glorious G.N.P. Here is the briefest summary of
this breath-taking success story: G.N.P. (no, you cannot get away from it) was
£7,000 million in 1952, when occupation ended, and is £48,000 million today —
an increase of nearly seven hundred per cent. Japan’s steel production is third
after the United States and the Soviet Union; Japan is the leading
ship-building nation of the world and the second largest automobile producer. More
and more people are better off every year; holiday resorts are crowded; rooms
in Western-style hotels as well as in ryokans, Japanese inns, are more
and more difficult to book; and the department stores are doing a roaring
trade. One Sunday before Christmas 1967, Mitsukoshi, one of the largest popular
stores, took £820,000, nearly two million dollars. Almost every family has a
television set and colour sets are gaining popularity at tremendous speed.
Proportionately more families have refrigerators and washing machines than in Britain.
     
    How has the Japanese Miracle been
achieved? There were three main factors: (1) hard work and ingenuity; (2) good
luck, and (3) a trait which could be politely described as enlightened
self-interest, mystically as sacro egoismo and more outspokenly as
ruthless selfishness.
    (1) There is no doubt that the
Japanese have worked very hard indeed; their success was mostly — although not
entirely — in return for their sweat, blood and labour. Their labour-force is
educated and literate and second to none in intelligence. Economy is the new
patriotism of the Japanese and they are very patriotic people. Long live G.N.P.
The workers are as proud of it as the capitalists are. The labour force is
loyal to its firms, and labour relations are good. There is a real team-spirit,
the workers belong ; occasionally, when one hears that even their
marriages are arranged by the firms, one has the vague feeling that they not
only belong but simply belong to the firms.
    This does not mean that trade unions
are not powerful. There are great wage-battles every spring, led by the two
politically organized groups: Sohyo, of the left, and Domei, a
middle-of-the-road organization. Lightning strikes (lasting as a rule for five
or six hours) are ordered, but mainly as bargaining tactics, just to bare the
unions’ teeth. Occasionally bitter and extremely unpleasant disputes with
strong political undertones flare up.
    All this, however, is on the national
level. Life within the individual firms is happier, sometimes idyllic. Trade
unions are organized within every firm: all workers and clerical staff,
including directors, belong to one union. Individual strikes against one single
employer are rare. There are no demarcation disputes: as only one union exists
per firm, there can be no dispute with another union. As all people are members
of the same organization, from the office boy up to the managing director,
there is no ‘bloody manager’, no ‘we’ and ‘they’. They all work for the
company, for the same aim. As this aim is to raise production and not to raise
profits, the workers’ enthusiasm can be more easily kindled. Profit is a dirty
word while ‘production’ is semi-sacred, second only to G.N.P. The workers can
share in the glory of production; they do not share — not directly, anyway — in
the profits.
    Prices do rise but wages rise more
quickly. This, of course, should keep everybody happy; but it does not — for
reasons to be explained presently.
    (2) Japan has had good luck. First,
she lost the war and before losing it her industry was, fortunately, destroyed.
This is no facetious remark or frivolous joke, but a sober assessment, shared
by most Japanese economists. Of