Trading Attitudes

Mr. Serizawa has invested in a rice combine. He harvests the rice from fields belonging to many different farmers near the city of Shizuoka. It takes him most of the day to harvest this small patty, and sack the rice. He charged the owner of the paddy a thousand dollars for the day's work. The owner seemed pleased to pay that amount, thanking Mr. Serizawa when he had finished. The owner will now sell the rice for about one thousand dollars, the same amount it cost him just to harvest it. But he and other Japanese rice farmers will go right on planting rice in the face of such puzzling economic conditions. What they're really worried about is America. They also think America doesn't understand Japan. Maybe not. I sure didn't. Hoping to separate the truth from the myths, I came to Japan - not to talk to government officials, but to people directly involved in these issues. Salaryman, farmers, housewives, teachers, students.

It's confusing. Do the Japanese hold us in contempt or do they want to be like us? And if the picture we have of the Japanese as being tranquil and serene is accurate, why don't they relax a little? I had a lot of questions about Japan and maybe the Japanese were just as confused about America. Toshio Suzuki, a television reporter in Shizuoka, Japan, said he pictured Americans as big, friendly people who drive big cars, live in big houses and complain about competition from Japan. I had always thought Japan was a busy, crowded, fiercely competitive place that was at the same time spiritual and a little mystical. Toshio agreed to show me around part of Japan.

And then he'd come to America and we'd both try to get some things straight. We would talk to everyday people - not the politicians, not the newspaper reporters and not the TV anchors on the five o'clock news. This program will show what each of us found. [speaking through an interpreter] America is a very important country to we Japanese. We have been watching Americans on TV and in the movies, so we believe that we know America very well. But I wonder whether we know the real people of America. Everybody in Japan knows the term 'American Dream', which means whoever tries hard will succeed. It's a positive and cheerful term. Our image of the U.S. is that of a huge rich country full of hope and opportunity. I don't understand why Americans are complaining about other countries, especially Japan. Why should such a big country complain about us? Is our image of America wrong or outdated? [Children singing in Japanese] The first thing I wanted to see was a Japanese school.

By every account it's the key to Japan's stunning economic success. It produced a generation of whiz-kids at technology and business. [Woman speaking Japanese] Mrs. Suzuki teachers 45 second-graders. More than would be in most American classes. They attend the school five and a half days a week. The school year ends on March 31st. The next school year begins on April 1st. It's the beginning of an unrelenting struggle for success that enlists every Japanese child and will increase in intensity until the child reaches college. These kids will outdistance American students in no time, by every measure. But at what price? Does childhood and fun end with the first bell of grade school? [Speaking Japanese] The first and second years are not so difficult for the children.

They can do most of their studying in school, so that their only homework is reading. I want them to have a good foundation. Even at this age, it is important for the students to learn good study habits. They will need these good habits for later school years. When I talked with American teachers, they've expressed frustration with their jobs. Not so with Mrs. Suzuki. When I meet friends that I went to high school and college with, I am proud to tell them I am a teacher. Being with the children makes me very happy. The children in my class are in the second grade. They play and have a good time. But with the schedule of the school, the number of things they have to learn you increase, so they must have more and more homework in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. At about grade 4 the system really starts to get intense.

I wondered if that was good. It is necessary for the children. For once in their life, they must act very seriously and try very hard to achieve something. They need to have goals to achieve. It is very important. All attention turns toward learning. Learning the endless number of symbols of the Japanese language. Learning English, science, math. Studying, reciting, memorizing. Homework grows heavier. [Children reciting in Japanese] [music plays] The lines between school and home blur. Students in all the schools wear uniforms. At today's final bell, students and teachers alike grab brooms and mops

and clean the school, inside and out. Incredible as it seems to an American visitor, they all seem to consider it fun. The teachers believe it shows respect, and adds to the feeling that they own their schools. This immense workload is one that many teachers and parents accept as something their kids must do to have a happy life. Masauki Umai, a professor at Shizuoka University, describes his son's typical day. [Speaking through an interpreter] My first son is in the 9th grade. He leaves our house at 7:30 in the morning, comes home at 5:00, and eats at 6:00. He goes to Cram school at 7:00, returning home at 10:00, where he studies until he goes to sleep at 2 a.m. All of this so he can get a good job? I wondered how many American parents and students would consider a schedule like this, that lasted from the 4th grade through high school.

[speaking through an interpreter] This hard time for my son is only a few years. If he has good marks and enters a good high school, he will be able to go to top university and [inaudible] a good future. These years from grade school through high school are training time, so he must work hard. This is Cram School. Nighttime drills of math and science to prepare for the tests that will climax high school and decide which university the student will go to. Cram school is voluntary and costs extra. But most Japanese parents consider it a necessity. Those tests may determine a child's career for life. [Man speaking Japanese] Is it all too much?

[Speaking through an interpreter] No. Everyone does the same thing. So, it's not too much. I want a good job for myself. [Speaking through an interpreter] Sometimes it's too much. But what's important is that it will decide my whole life, so it is very important. Mr. Saki's students are working on a problem in ethics. This kind of pondering and discussing is a rarity in Japanese education, which is filled with reciting and memorization of facts. Some Japanese, including teachers, have come to believe that this is a weakness in the system. [Speaking Japanese] I asked my students what do you want to be in the future? The number one answer was, I don't know. The number two answer was I want be a salaryman, a businessman. To be a salaryman, they want to go to high school, then university, and then to a company. But they don't know what they want to do in that company.

They don't have time to think about their whole life. The right school, the right company, that's our only goal. Japanese education has learned a lot from America. America was dream country when we were children. And we thought whatever America was doing was the best way, Now children learn only what is written in the book. We haven't learned to deal with things not written in the textbooks. [Speaking Japanese] What we need now is how to have an individual student think for himself. We need individual thinking and individual opinion. If we have group studies always then the students always think in a group. When they become adults they need to be able to think on their own. We heard almost the same lament from a housewife in Tokyo. Shihoko Ogawa, who is worried about her 4 year old son as he nears school age.

You are creating children with originality or expressing themselves freely and things like that. In Japan, our children are not very original. They are not creative. They are sort of forced to sit still and memorize things and accumulate the knowledge. A kind of, you know, the wisdom from the other people. They are not creating their own thing. [Basketball bouncing] Nice try. [Speaking through an interpreter] Education is the mirror that shows the real image of a society. Schools in Japan and America will show us the basic differences between Japanese and American societies. Mrs. Chris Ritter is a first-grade teacher in [Perlis?] Grade School, located in a suburb

of Portland, Oregon. There are only 20 students in the class, half the size of the Japanese class. The children were studying in an open freestyle. I couldn't imagine that this would ever happen in a Japanese classroom. The Japanese teachers and parents would find this extremely chaotic. I wondered if there was a strict line between the class period and recess. Well, the behavior that they were eliciting at that point was acceptable behavior in a classroom of this structure. Doing their work on the floor, if they can see better and work more comfortably here where they're closer to the work, that's acceptable. As a matter of fact, I initiated that. I, at the beginning of the year, said would you like to work this way or this way? How do you best work? It depends on their style. [inaudible] spelling to correct spelling today, okay? A mother of one of the students came to see the class. She began teaching another child. This would never happen in a Japanese classroom.

A Japanese teacher would get angry at her because her actions would disrupt the class. Here in Chris Ritter's class, it is accepted. Perhaps this is because America makes much of freedom and individuality. Still, I wonder if this may widen the gap between the bright and common students. In Japan, we believe it is better for every child to reach the same level of achievement. [speaking Japanese] This is the inner city of Portland, Oregon. Drug dealers do business in the area. It is economically depressed around here, and a rough place to live. Jefferson, a public high school, is in this district. I recognize many differences between a Japanese and an American school. American students do not wear a uniform and they never clean their classrooms themselves. I was surprised to see a guard in the school to protect the students. I have never heard of such a person in a Japanese school.

We believe that school is a place to study, not a place to worry about your safety, and getting into trouble. Nanny's words make Janey's kiss.. Janey kiss.. [Man speaking Japanese] Ms. Linda Christensen has taught literature for 17 years. These students are juniors in high school. Blacks, Mexicans and Asians, students of many races were studying together. Japanese people would be stunned to see students eating and drinking in the classroom. For a lot of students, education.. they see that education has not helped people in their neighborhoods get better jobs. So, I think the lack of opportunity through education has become more apparent to students. So they're less willing to sit still and be contained for eight hours a day. [Speaking Japanese] These children are students of a private school called Catlin Gable.

Most of them come from upper-middle class families or higher. One of the parents told me that a good education is very important to securing the American dream. Catlin Gable has a huge school yard and there are students from kindergarten through high school. The class size at Catlin Gable is very small. The average number of students is twelve. That is one-third to one-fourth the size of a Japanese class. This does not come cheap. Tuition here is ten thousand dollars each year. It may be worthwhile for parents to pay this much because 100 percent of the students go on to universities or colleges, and many of them go on to famous colleges. The school says it does not have a violence, drug, or theft problem. They say that in most American schools students use lockers, not open shelves. [speaking Japanese] In this class, they are teaching Japanese to the students.

They say they are trying to create business people who will someday play a role in international society, especially the Pacific Rim area. What schoolmaster Jim Scott says reminded me of something Japanese teachers also say. We experience, probably more than the public schools do, more keen competition or expectations among our parents and our students about going to good colleges and universities. So we feel that pressure as well. Physics teacher Mr. Lowell Herr is very satisfied with the teaching in this private school. He was not satisfied with his salary, but he likes the educational environment of the school, and the eagerness and ability of the students. I taught in a public school one year and I was going to give up teaching. I teach in, I think, one of the best places I can imagine in this country. I honestly don't think I would trade places with any other physics teacher anywhere else in the country.

But Ms. Christensen has a different view. She says that public school is necessary to American society. America is no longer.. I mean, this is now a multicultural society, and that there are more and more people of color in the United States, people who come from different backgrounds. And really, in order to succeed in the United States, in order to succeed and get along and work with other people, you need to learn how to understand the cultural linguistic backgrounds of people who aren't like you. And so, continuing to close people off in these small pockets of advantage is going to be detrimental for people in the long run, for these children in the long run. [Ragtime music playing] [Speaking Japanese] Jefferson High School has established art classes like painting and dance. These classes attract students from outside the inner city. The school wants to mix wealthy students with those who are poor.

This is a great idea, but the problems of class differences cannot be solved with just this one attempt. America is not a simple society where everybody can pursue the American dream from an equal position. It is a complex society, culturally diverse, with many financial classes. Americans make much of freedom and individuality. However, each person's individuality is confronted by anothers. I find many differences between American and Japanese education. Yoshio Mitsumori is a prized product of Japan's high-powered educational system. His high school test scores were outstanding so he was accepted in one of the best universities. This assured him a lifelong career with a successful company- Star Micronics. As an engineer, he helped perfect computer printers and a long list of other electronic devices. He works 12 to 15 hours a day, 6 days a week.

As with most Japanese, he gives no thought to changing jobs or companies. He has stayed put, and now manages other engineers searching for new products. He has even worked in America, and compares the two. The difference is we are doing by group. When I was in California working for the US companies, I only need to concentrate- you know, I'm working for the R&D divisions. So then I only need to concentrate on R&D matters only. But when I return to Japan, you know, still I'm working for the R&D, you know, product running divisions. Still, I have considered the production schedule or production quality, QC control, or an affairs matter, marketing matter.

Everything combined. This working in a group means no private offices. Everyone works together to make even the smallest decision. Mr Mitsumori told me that if a single person wanted to make a decision on his own, it would be impossible. Even a company manager would never make a decision by himself. In Japan, we don't have any partitions, you know, even a big room. We can see, you know, everybody. Sometime, that is sometimes good, you know, because much easier to communicate. Americans have had difficulty selling products in Japan. According to Mr. Mitsumori, it's because Japan has so many layers of middlemen, and because Japan thinks long-term. Profit in the next five to ten years, instead of the next six months. He also gave me an interesting insight into their philosophy about profit.

He said that in Japan, a salesman who had a product that cost one dollar and sold it for two dollars, making a 100-percent profit, he would be considered a bad salesman. In Japan, if somebody heard of that, they say he's a very bad guy. It would be much better for everyone to make a little profit. Even with their spectacular success in business, Mr. Mitsumori echoed the thoughts of the teachers I had met. One very good thing is in American-style systems, always be creative. We can learn from America, what we have to do in the future. So, it seems that both the schools and business see creativity as Japan's next step. [music plays] [speaking Japanese]

This is a computer software company called Mentor Graphics. It is a growing company. They have a good restaurant for their employees, and a wonderful fitness center. It is a very beautiful work environment. Very few Japanese companies have these types of facilities. Mr Rob Bartel has been an executive with Mentor Graphics since its earliest days. The computer business is a fast-growing industry in America, as it is in Japan. I learned that if you want to secure the American dream, you had better stay in a high- tech business like the computer industry, rather than growing rice or cutting lumber. Before coming to America I thought that American businessmen worked much harder than Japanese businessmen. [traffic noise] I was surprised when I learned that Mr. Bartel returns home at five o'clock every day. I asked him what he thought about balancing his work and his home life.

My father worked very hard. I think that whole generation was different than the generation that we have now. In this country, we've made, perhaps, a trade-off where we've said it isn't worth it to us to have quite that many goods and services, but rather, we would prefer to have the incredible rewards and satisfaction that comes from raising children and being with them and watching them grow. After dinner, Mr. Bartel went to a local Cub Scout meeting with his children. It is very, very difficult for a Japanese businessman to be involved with his family. There is almost no chance. The biggest difference between Japanese and American businessmen is not the way they do business, but the way they live their lives. For the Americans, it seems that the number one priority is a happy family life. His work is simply a means to that life. I think it is true for Mr. Bartel.

I was very surprised that he said exactly the same thing that Japanese fathers say about their children's futures. It is relatively difficult to, be in the middle class or above in America with less than a college education. It certainly has been done. There are always the stories of multi-billionaires that had 8th grade educations. But, but it would be very disappointing for us to see our children decide not to go to college. Not so much because it would embarrass us or something like that, but rather because it would make the boys lives much less pleasant than they would be otherwise. High in the mountains of Japan, the life is slower, less hectic.

Farmers cultivate manicured hillsides with tea, vegetables, and even trees. Hidemoto Suzuki climbs the steep hillside of the family forest in the mountainous woods an hour from Shizuoka. For generations, his family has made a living carefully cutting and replanting patches of trees. Each day Hidemoto works in the forest that will someday be his. [Speaking through an interpreter] Ever since I was a child, I have loved the forest. I am very much interested in the forestry business. I know this work is difficult and frustrating, but I get much enjoyment from it and I know this is what I will always do . Hideomoto's father, Hidetsugu Suzuki, has seen many changes in his years as a logger. I asked him if he resented American competition. [Speaking Japanese] I think it is all right to import large logs and large lumber

that only grows in America. This is wood that Japanese wood farmer cannot produce. The smaller wood products that compete with Japan's lumber, I would like to see left to Japanese loggers. That sounded like the American car manufacturers who want to limit Japanese competition. [Speaking Japanese] I don't have any bitter feelings. I can't sell product here if it's not of a good quality. So I make good logs and good lumber. I want to export and sell my logs to America. We don't have enough lumber in Japan to meet a domestic demand. If we stopped importing wood, the hillside over Japan would be bald in just few years. What he said next surprised me. It isn't the competition that's hurting Mr. Suzuki, or any shortage of trees. He can't find anyone to cut them. No one in Japan wants to be a lumberjack. As I learned when I talked with the students, they all want to make good grades and be white collar workers.

Mr. Suzuki needs five workers to harvest his trees. He can only find two. One of them is his son. [Speaking Japanese] [laughs] We say this work is a three case. [Speaking Japanese] It means dirty, difficult and low status. So here in Japan, there is the problem of having lots of trees and no one to cut them. In America, the problem's just the reverse- not enough trees and lots of unemployed loggers. [Speaking through an interpreter] Oregon is a very beautiful state and well known for its rich natural resources. One of the largest industries here is the timber industry with few barriers, American lumberman sell in international markets. I visited Vanport Manufacturing in Boring, Oregon. Vanport has been very successful in producing finished lumber and selling it to Japan. This large tree was cut into small parts that will make up a Japanese Shoji screen,

90 percent of the products made here will go to the Japanese market. Japanese professionals taught the workers here how to select good lumber and control the quality. Vanport Lumber has a close relationship with the Japanese. Five planks are tied in a bundle, which is the perfect size and weight for Japanese carpenters to carry. [Traditional music playing] This house is standing not in Japan, but in Oregon. The owner of the mill, Mr. Hertrich, built this traditional Japanese house to teach the employees how American lumber products are used on a Japanese home. His approach is much like that of the Japanese companies that succeed in the US market. You look at different values, different appearances, different idea of what quality is. And so anybody who wants to be successful in your market,

first he has to study what is realistic demand in your market? What do people want to buy? Once you do this, it's not difficult. [speaking through an interpreter] But many American mill owners are having a very difficult time. Some have lost their business, even though the United States has 25 times more land than Japan. They are running short of trees in the forest. This sounded peculiar to me. Much of the problem surrounds a bird called the spotted owl. There are only 4 thousand of them left. Environmental groups fear that more logging in the old growth forests will cause the spotted owl to go extinct. The environmentalists say that 100 years of continuous cutting has destroyed 90 percent of the old growth trees. It is very difficult for the sawmills to get logs from national forests that have old growth trees. Oh, it's hard. Spotted owl, and the economy

and everything, you know, it's.. it's hard on the loggers, you know. Sort of a dying breed, all the mills and.. [Speaking through an interpreter] Hull Oaks Sawmill is one of the oldest sawmills in Oregon. It is an old style mill and has no computer-guided machines like Vanport Manufacturing. Hull Oaks cuts lumber for the domestic market using traditional methods. It is not making as much money as Vanport Manufacturing. This is the owner of the mill, 80-year-old Ralph Hull. He's been in the business for 50 years. His mill is running with a steam engine built 100 years ago when no electricity was available. It was a good thing, it was a positive thing. We built, made lumber for houses. During the war we made lumber for warehouses and factories,

and military camps. It was.. it was a good thing. But today we're looked on, we're bad people. They say we're destroying the environment. [Speaking Japanese] Eighty people work in this mill. Some of them have been here for fifty years, since the mill was built. This is the only industry in the town. But Mr Hall is having the most difficult time of his life trying to run the business. In the last three years, 35 sawmills have closed and 5,500 people have lost their jobs. I'm sad. We think that people should be working. The United States owes about three times as much money now as the did ten or fifteen years ago. We've gone in debt. And yet, we have these environmentalists and do-gooders that don't want business to continue.

They don't want to produce lumber. They don't want to produce a lot of other things. That's a lot of negative attitude. And to me, that's, in a sense, the reason we're going in debt so much. [Speaking through an interpreter] I thought American people were proud of having such vast land with rich natural resources. It sounds strange to me to hear that they have the same serious environmental issues as a small and crowded country like Japan. No one, including Mr. Hull, can stop the environmental movement. Mr. Hull's good 'ol America and his American dream have gone and will never return. Far from the isolation of Ralph Hull's ancient sawmill, most of Japan lives in cities, crowded cities. What we call rush hour in America pales in comparison. Commuters endure the daily grind on the trains in a body-crunching, twice a day

trip. [train noises] But even in the middle of the crunch of bodies, you see practical solutions. A quiet moment in a temple is just a few steps from lunch. All that I had heard about Japan being obsessed with baseball or the sumo wrestlers seemed to take a backseat to this: [Arcade music playing] Pachinko. Many Japanese seem to be addicted to Pachinko. It consists of feeding BB's into a machine and BB's come back out in a bewildering ratio. Men, women, children, everyone - they sit for hours. It's obviously gambling, but gambling is not allowed in Japan. Winners were exchanging buckets of BB's for cheap watch bands. They then went somewhere else to cash in the watch bands for money. All very roundabout, but in perfect Japanese logic. You

can still have a law against gambling, but the people can still win money. Like a casino in America, but different. It also seemed to me that Japan had another national addiction: shopping. In every city, town and village the streets are a continuous flow of people going from store to store. Their department stores are like ours. You can find the usual things, things we have in America, but different too. And in America, I don't ever remember the salespeople and the managers greeting me like this. [man speaking Japanese] Here was another example of the difference between our two countries, and something that helps explain the near absence of unemployment in Japan: a service station. To an American, it's ridiculously overstaffed and sort of puzzling. A service station that provides service?

[Speaking through an interpreter] I visited an American gas station. It was very different from those in Japan. In many stations, the customers fill up their cars by themselves. I had never seen that in Japan. There was no window cleaning, no polite bowing, no asking to change the oil. In Japan, I usually choose the station with the best service, but there was no service here. They say American people are creative. Why don't they use their creativity in selling goods? Many people in America are out of a job, but it seems to me that they are not willing to do these small jobs. American people say that the Japanese work too much. But I think Americans would not like to work as much as we do. [speaking through an interpreter] There is a small supermarket in Portland called Anzen, which means safety in Japanese. The store was established by a Japanese immigrant from Okayama, located in west Japan. This immigrant sought the American dream. At the beginning of World War II the owner of the store was put into an internment camp and his store was taken from him.

After the war, he and his son started the business again from nothing. Soon they will open another store in San Francisco. There has been a certain change in this store. The customers have changed. Years ago, most of the customers were Japanese and Japanese- American. Today, they are in the minority. I'm a chef and it's a fairly healthy diet, not as fatty as most Western diets. I wish I could speak Japanese. You might be interested to know that right now I'm a 3rd grade teacher, sensei. And right now we have a unit studying Japan. So we've been studying their culture and speaking 'domo arigato' and things like that. And so these are eight-year-olds. The people I do business with are people I've known for about ten years. I don't have any friction with the Japanese. What kind of business? We produce seeds and sell them, too.

It is a good business? It's a good business. The average Japanese and the average American salaries are now about equal. What makes a difference is that prices in Japan are much higher than in America for just about everything. The puzzling thing for me was that the customers in Japan don't just accept these higher prices, they create them. It's true that practically everything in Japan is expensive, but with some things there's more to it than just a high cost of living. That's particularly true with food. In this market, for instance, here's a melon priced at 4,000 yen. That's about 34 dollars. That's because it's so beautiful. You can get a less attractive melon here for as little as 15 dollars. Here's one, it's especially beautiful. It costs 82 dollars. Appearance is very important in Japan. Food must not only taste good, it has to look good, and people are willing to pay extra for it.

Here are apples: four dollars apiece. That's because the color is so beautiful, and that color didn't happen by accident. For Mr. and Mrs. Momoru Saiki of Yamanashi, the hardest part of tending their apple orchard is the wrapping, unwrapping, and re-wrapping of each apple on every tree as they ripen. He outfoxes the sun, and improves on nature so that the apples take on just the right golden color. Left on their own, the apples would have uneven color, and no Japanese would want to buy them. Farming in Japan requires artistic talent. Although it was a hot day, Mrs. Saiki wore protective wrapping on her hands and face, a protection against suntan. The Japanese consider a pale ivory complexion on women as important as the golden red on their apples.

The Saiki's also own 18 little rice paddy's, scattered all around their village. Even with government subsidies, the rice only amounts to a third of their farm income, Mr. Saiki says. Even so, it is by far their most important crop. Rice is not just a crop. It's something more. [Speaking through an interpreter] I have been a farmer all my life. When I harvest and have the rice in my hand and look at it, I get a lot of pleasure from what I have grown. I get more pleasure from growing rice than I do from tomatoes or apples. I think all Japanese farmers feel this way. I even heard rice described to me in religious terms. [Speaking through an interpreter] If you look into roots of Japanese culture, you find rice. One thing I think symbolize this: The emperor is a symbol of Japanese people and Japanese state. In the spring, he plants rice. In the autumn, he performs a ceremony of harvesting rice.

Now, Japan is wealthy because we manufacture products and export them to America and other countries. So why doesn't the emperor go to an automobile plant? Instead, he put boots on and he goes into the paddy field and plants rice. Every farmer we visited in Japan is disheartened. They say the Japanese farmer, especially the rice farmer, is in serious trouble. American rice farmers want to sell their surplus rice to the Japanese. [angrily speaking in Japanese] Last fall demonstrators, Japanese farmers, demanded that their government continue to forbid imports of rice. They fear their government will give in to America's argument that if Japan can sell cars to America, America should be able to sell them what we produce more efficiently - food. Japanese farmers insist it's different.

[Speaking through an interpreter] Japanese farmers produce less, but still we have a rice surplus. So, I wonder why we would want to import American rice. I understand Japan export cost to America, and Americans have been hurt by this. They think Japan should buy something in return. The only thing they can sell to us in return is rice. Because rice is staple food here. And America has surplus rice. I understand this, but as a farmer I can't accept it. And there's another reason the Japanese farmer is finding it harder and harder to cling to his farm and its valuable land. His children, polished in the Japanese school system, don't want to be farmers anymore. They want a piece of Japan's success story. American imports may only hasten the end. [Speaking Japanese] [inaudible] has a population of 3,500. These are 1,000 families.

550 of those are farming families. But none of these 550 families have a child who will take over the farm, not one child. We worry about the future. If things continue as they have been, the Japanese farmer will become extinct. But many Japanese believe the rice farmers enemy is not the American farmer, but simple reality, changing times. And that the farmers attempts to preserve the rice fields as something sacred are doomed. The land is simply too valuable to be used as farmland. One hundred million people, one-third the population of the United States, are packed onto islands with an area smaller than California. Seventy percent of the land mass is mountains and forests, with half of the rest being farmland. Some fields and paddies persisting inside the cities, between overcrowded apartments. City dwellers resent having their taxes subsidize the fantastically uneconomical

farms. The esthetic, environmental, historical and spiritual value of home-grown rice may not be enough to save Mr. Saiki. [speaking through an interpreter] Farming has been good life for our family. My wife and I are happy when we're working with our crops. It is sad that none of our children will follow us. I don't know what will happen to the land. I decided to meet the rice farmers in California because the rice exporting issue is a source of friction between America and Japan. [Speaking through an interpreter] I met Dennis Gallagher, a rice farmer in northern California. How are you? [Speaking Japanese] His father began rice farming here in a 100-acre field. Now, he and Dennis own a 2500-acre rice field. That is 300 times as large as Tokyo Dome ballpark.

When I compared this with the tiny rice fields in Japan, I was certain that Dennis had fulfilled his American dream. This big building that looks like a chemical factory is a dryer. It dries rice and stores it inside. It is 60 feet tall and full of rice. I had never seen so much rice in my life. Japanese people regard rice as a sacred thing. So I was afraid to walk on it. They say that the Gallagher's are middle-sized rice farmers in California, but the field looked huge to me. I found that the rice here is very different from Japanese rice. The grain is longer and less sticky when cooked. I don't think the Japanese would like this rice. We should be able to, you know, export some of our rice

into Japan. And I think it should happen in that direction. I don't necessarily feel that we need to control the entire Japanese rice market, but just a small niche of it, 5 to 10 percent or something like that, which to me doesn't seem like a whole lot, you know. Would.. would definitely help our economy. And I think it would be advantageous to the Japanese consumer. Dennis's father, Bob, told us that Japan must open its rice market. They have all the capital coming in Japan and nothing, nothing in retaliation. And so for the Japanese government and people, they should realize that it's not a one-way street. It's got to be a two-way street. And it's got.. not only United States, but throughout the world. [Speaking through an interpreter] I met another rice farmer named Tom Jopson, who showed me how his

rice was sold in the American market. The rice was packed in bottles and bags and eaten like a vegetable in salad or with steak. It was very different from Japanese steamed rice. I don't believe that American farmers could sell their rice in the Japanese market. Tom also explained the difficulty of pricing American rice for sale in Japan. How do you sell this rice? Japanese are a very progressive people. They weren't dumb enough to import rice from the United States at a higher price than what world market price is. When they could buy it from Thailand, they could buy it from Australia- anywhere else in basically the world, rather than California - at a lower cost. So why would Japan import rice from the United States at a high price, when they could import it at world market price? That was.. I could never understand why the American farmers would, or California farmers, believe that.

[Speaking Japanese] There was an abandoned house near Tom's rice field. The owner of this house gave up growing rice and moved to Idaho when the price of rice fell suddenly ten years ago. There are many factors that make the life of the American rice farmer difficult. In America, the larger the rice field, the more money farmers must spend on machines, fertilizer and chemicals. The price of rice has remained lower than the farmers expected, and they now face a new problem: environmental issues. Rice farmers have been criticized for using chemicals that hurt the environment. Tom is not as anxious to export rice to Japan. When I told him that the Japanese farmers believed the California rice farmers must be rich, he laughed and shrugged his shoulders. The old farming machines remain in his garden. They are symbols of the high costs and difficulties of farming life. If you hear 'Wow, your daughter would like to marry rice farmer in California'?

I tell , tell her no. If she wanted to marry a farmer in California, period, I'd tell her no. Find some other guy in a different, you know, line of work. I don't care what it is. But farming, no. Stay out of it right now. California. [Speaking through an interpreter] He told me that within five years the number of California rice farmers will be cut in half. Most farmers cannot obtain the American dream by growing rice. Perhaps the main frustration of the farmers is their inability to export their rice to Japan. In the time I spent with the people of Japan, I discovered that it's hard to know what the Japanese think about Americans. They obviously do think about us a lot. They adopt our fads and styles. Japanese schools require six years of English, which they use to advertise their businesses and products, sometimes with incomprehensible results.

Recently, a Japanese business leader suggested that the reason Japan was winning the export-import war against America was that Americans had grown fat and lazy. His comment embarrassed the Japanese we talked to. I don't want American people to think that Japanese people have this kind of arrogant attitude towards American people because we don't. It's some, sorry politicians, you know, very big-headed politicians. They just say things like that. I think we admire each other, you know, where we can respect the difference. The cultural difference and things like that. Don't get very hysterical about, say, Japan-bashing or American-bashing issues and things like that.

In spending time with the people of Japan, not the politicians, I saw them facing many of the problems we face in America. The success of Japan in becoming a power in world business has come with a price. That price is change. The old, sometimes comfortable ways are being pushed aside for something new. The question is, will it be better? The rice farmers, more than any others I met, are paying the price of progress. Everything around them is changing and they are powerless to stop those changes. Their farms are too small. The land is more valuable for housing or factories. Their children want to work in jobs that are easier and pay more money. And the cheaper, imported rice will make their crops worth less. An already hard life looks like it is going to get even harder. What I did not find in Japan were many of the problems we now face in America.

I did not see homeless. I did not see unemployed. And I did not find hostility toward America. To learn all of this, I met with farmers and businessmen, loggers and schoolteachers. And of course, I met Toshio Suzuki. [Speaking through an interpreter] America is a society made up of diverse races and cultures. It is a flexible society that adopts anything for the good of society. I found that people on the West Coast are very interested in countries on the Pacific Rim, like Japan and other Asian countries. American people I met are not angry with the Japanese people. The TV and newspapers in Washington and Tokyo made me think that everyone was angry. America has problems such as homelessness, crime, and class differences in education. It seems to me that America is losing its confidence. I think the problems of America today could be the problems of Japan tomorrow.

Japan is accepting more and more people from other countries, so Japan's homogeneous society has begun to change. I am very concerned with how Japan and America will cope with their problem. [music fades] [inaudible] I really enjoyed it. It was quite an experience. If we can get both countries to work together, maybe this will all work for both of us. [laughs]