In Japan; Part 2

Music plays above the display windows of jewelry and clothing stores. By 1130, the four blocks of Joedora Avenue that are the heart of the Ginza hold the sea of taxi cabs. Waves of orange lights pass slowly by and head out into the far suburbs. Most people head for the trains and at the intersection there is Shimashi station traffic becomes more intense. The train sail rapidly between buildings and across the Avenue. In Shimashi station, ticket takers and uniforms and cabs run whole-fletcher in their hands like rhythm instruments. Subways and commuter trains come and go announced by signals and tones.

It is past midnight now and the fourth rush hour has begun. This one of those who work in the clubs and restaurants. The women who were seen in bright kimonos an hour ago can now be seen in street clothes pressing forward with the crowd and disappearing into the tunnels of Shimashi station. The young Japanese girls today, when they are ready to marry, have three conditions to be met. I mean jokingly said, condition number one, the future husband must have his own house. Number two, he must have his private car.

Number three is problem. Number three is that the future husband must not have his parent to live with. Hiroshi Yoshida may say that he is joking somewhat in his description of what Japanese women want but according to others, he may not be far wrong. And the third condition is a symbol of the change that has come to materialistic Japan late in the post-war years. It was not so long ago that three generations of a single family might have shared the same home. Now, with the growth of crowded cities, there is no space for the extended family, and in an acquisitive society, there seems little inclination to maintain it. Without the ability to see it in the context of the extended family, the basic Japanese family unit of husband and wife seems fraught with contradictions and problems. And if the role of the Japanese man in society is to work long hours for his company and his nation, the role of the Japanese woman is confused and the subject of an almost hidden debate. Femiko Kikuchi is a Japanese feminist and one of a very few.

My friends who are a graduate from four years' university want to get married before 24 years old and go to be the housewives inside home. I don't know why, but they don't have any dream to be promoted in the work, but they do wish to be a good wife. That's true. Maybe I think that it is because of the society's needs. Society's needs in the view of Femiko Kikuchi and other more dispassionate observers are for women who are young and pretty to work in the offices as incentive to make men more productive. Then, when the man is firmly established in his career, the woman is needed to make and keep a home for him and their children. If that is really the commonly accepted social role of women, it is in keeping with some other things that are going on. For example, one is told that in Japan, 40% of all marriages are still arranged by parents and others and that arranged marriages seem to be more successful than non-arranged marriages.

There is a belief that if we get married and if you want to spend a happy life, you have to battle to the arranged marriage. Because when we fall in love, we are so excited and we are so emotional. Some of my friends didn't get married with their boyfriends, but married to the guys who met in the arranged marriage. They are very choosy. The girls are very choosy. And if the boyfriends are not working in the good company, the girls will keep them off and get married to the guys who are working in the first class companies. And it is their social status.

The number of Japanese women who work is not much less than in other modern nations. It is just that they are limited in what they can do. The limitations are both legal and social. For example, it is the law in Japan that except for certain occupations like nursing and waitressing, women are not allowed to work past 10 p.m. The purpose is to protect them from unreasonable labor, but the effect is to limit opportunities. The law will become less restrictive next year, but not because of an outcry on the part of the majority of Japanese women. When we want to change, or such kind of things, or when we try to fight with that, most of the women will not take part in the movement. They don't want to say such a thing in front of men. Some Japanese men don't accept such a thing at all, and they are always finishing this kind of discussion with laughing. That's all.

Indeed, in the offices of Japan's largest council of trade unions, so-yo, economic director Zen Takata talks about the inequality that women face in the workplace and the labor movements attempt to bring about change. When he is asked how many of the organization's officers are women, he has to confer with subordinates before answering through an interpreter. One out of 21. Laughing. I want them to think about that. What the working women are thinking about their life? They have no future. Even if we are working very hard, we have no future, and we have no promotions and things. Even if we are a graduate from the same university, and if I have the better score, he will be promoted soon, and I will remain in the same position. Many women cannot take it, and if the Japan will remain in this system, the many women will go out from the country, or they will be disappointed and leave from the society.

I don't think it is good. This is a good thing for Japan. Others say that more and more housewives are overburdened with that written old relatives. The evening's television news reports on the events of respect for the age of day and national holiday in Japan. While Japan has attained their longer life expectancy than any other nation, its age had found themselves increasingly on their own. They have gathered together from all over the country on this day to discuss their concerns. This year's appeal called women and young people for the first time to cooperate in achieving these goals that has been said that citizens as a whole. Here's a concern that Japanese society is disconnecting its generations and straying from its path. Hiroshi Yoshita worries over the phenomenon albeit small of violence in Japanese schools. The need to remind young people of the respect to their elders and the loss of cultural continuity.

The social change, the pride, the young people, children, or the opportunity of learning from the wisdom, from the experiences of the old people. Down a winding path from the rush of the surrounding city, music is played in an amphitheater in Tokyo's Kibaya Park. Women in Kamono search the older people in the audience to come up on stage to sing a traditional song. They stand in line behind an microphone and sing in turn. The mountains of the prefecture are bright in the sunshine. Now we are going to the battlefield. There is nothing that we worry about. We have good horses to ride. The wives are keeping house safely. Elsewhere in Hibaya Park, young schoolchildren and uniforms eat their lunch and play on the grass, they smile at the passing fore and face.

The older people have given the young people a life that is prosperous and free from war, a gift given without complaint. An executive of the Matsuste Company in Kyoto says that it is most important to enjoy one's life. He is in the generation of those who were born in 1920s or 1930s. Those generations are often referred to as the very poor at spending their own time or enjoying their own life. They are better described in this way. Those who cannot dance in the party. In comparison with his generation, he thinks that the younger generation is much, much in better position and enjoying their own life, spending more money.

The young people of Japan are continuing an era that was opened in 1867 under the Emperor Meiji. The Meiji Restoration, as it is called, saw the internationalization of Japan and the assimilation of Western cultural ideas. On Sundays, young parents follow the gravel paths deep into Yogi Park to the shrine in Meiji's honor. They bring their newborn children very ceremony of passage into the world by a gentle priest. And on Sundays, they are only respite from a six-day school week teenagers flock to Yogi Park and they pop culture costumes of American news. As Elvis Presley's or Bobby Soxers, they dance in formation to the music of loud ghetto blasters. It might seem to be the Meiji Restoration taken to its ultimate extreme, but it is still quintessentially Japanese, the formation of the group, the borrowing of culture.

And it is so loud that it might be just on the other side of a full circle returned to the quiet that lives in the soul of Japan. From the coast of the main island of Japan near Hiroshima, a fairy boat whispers across the common land sea toward the large red Tory gate that stands in the water near an inlet of the island of Miyajima. In the early centuries of Japanese history, this was a sacred island in Shinto Shrine honors three female deities, daughters of the Thunder God. The traveler arrives here at night after days in the cities. After a bath, wrapped in his Yukata, the traveler sips whiskey and sitting at the window of his room in the Iwaso Inn, he listens to the night. There is a mystery at the center of Japan. It's barely audible. Early in the morning, light returns to the narrow streets. Families of deer roam the small island. Some are still asleep near the inlet.

The tide rises insistently from the northwest and flows around the footpost of the Tory gate. As Miyajima awakens, people move through the brisk morning on small water scooters that is also swirling in the air. Storekeepers sweep their doorways to begin the day. With precise Japanese efficiency, the fire department changes shifts and makes a daily test of its equipment. The mystery of Japan is forgotten for a time. In late afternoon, in Tokyo, traffic roars pass the Kabuki's at Kabuki Theater in the Ginza. Inside, theater goers are called to the five o'clock curtain and into a world far removed from the surrounding city.

The Kabuki dates back to the 1600s. Some of its dancers originated with the prostitutes of that time, and its drama from the puppet shows, or Bungraku, came from Chata in the 7th century. Most Kabuki plays are drawn from history. Their stories are told in the expression of character and scenery, so totally controlled as to be intense by their mere presence on the stage. In the play of the Shogun leaves Edo. The audience is drawn powerfully into the anguish of the Shogun Yoshinobu. He must finally decide whether to leave Edo there by bringing to an end a 250-year shogunate, or to remain, and cause certain destruction of the city. He kneels alone in perfect concentration in the bare room of a monastery hours before dawn. In its sympathy, the audience is drawn deeply into the stillness of the night. A bell and the sound of a nightbird only served to accent the silence. It is then that the mystery begins to reveal itself. In the night of Miyajima, and the night that falls in the Shogun's monastery, and at the sharpest point of the Yoshinobu's anguish, in those dark silences, the soul could almost disemble itself into nature and time and disappear.

Here in the Kabuki Theater, art may have revealed the point of balance for one of the world's great cultures. As the play ends, Yoshinobu has decided that he must leave Edo. It is barely dawn, and the bridge stretches out over a river to a land that seems far away. After a last anguished moment, Yoshinobu sets foot on the bridge, and Epoch is ended, and the modern era of Japan will begin. The cities of Japan are clean, well-ordered places. There is no vandalism and crime is rare. The Japanese practice a civility toward others where we see and other nations. The subways of Tokyo are not modern, but they are freshly painted and clean, and almost always full.

It is here in these well-lit cars, in tired and sleeping faces, that one begins to see evidence of a society that may be exhausting itself with work. When the moral system of Confucianism traveled from China, and joined with Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan, it gave the Japanese three main moral precepts. They are true or loyalty to the country in the Emperor, co-obidious to parents, and lay proper conduct, etiquette and manners. Chu is largely credited both with leading the Japanese blindly into the tragedy of World War II, and with providing the work ethic that has created the post-war economic miracle. Co has given parents positive influence over their children. Lay has given Japan its very comfortable civility. But those things that are good about society don't come without cost to the individual. Compromise and hard work for the collective good can require the forfeiture of individuality and free will. Civil behavior can require the suppression of feeling. In all three, the individual can become lost, and the person one is supposed to be.

This performance opens for the quiet retreat of Shatsuki. Mother of Lord Mitsuhide, whose son, Judiro, has arrived to take his leave for the former idol. In the Museum of Ethnography near Osaka, a film explains the ancient art of puppetry. It is prepared to die, each knows the other's heart, suppressing their tears, and the audience is moved to tears in sympathy with the tragic potting. The marionette artist makes the dog perform intricate movements, and thus bring it to life and gives it the ability to express subtle emotions and dynamic passions. The expression is so-and-life-like, even if human actors would find it extremely difficult to portray them. It does not seem ironic in Japan that a marionette might be able to surpass human actors in the expression of feeling and emotion. The Japanese may more easily allow that expression in their art than in themselves. A society that can control itself in these matters can better focus its energies on work toward common goals.

But after 40 years of recovery from the war and the gaining of economic power in the world changes in the wind. The young people are beginning to value individual expression. Some women are seeking self-determination and offering their country the promise of new ideas and influence. Even the older establishment Japanese seem to look forward to change. Messiah Miyoshi of the Federation of Economic Organizations. The increasing number of Japanese are questioning themselves or ourselves. What is the national goal for the country? Who are we? And where are we going? I think time has come. Time is coming gradually for Japanese to identify ourselves as new. Are we just going to end up with being economic animal? No. We need it. You see? Higher. Objectives. Even on the fastest passenger jet, the distance from Tokyo to Hawaii across the Pacific Ocean is seven hours.

In 1941, as now, in 1984, the Pacific left against this Hawaii insured YKT. On December 7, 1941, Japan projected its military power far enough from home to destroy the US fleet at Pearl Harbor. The relationship between two great nations was begun that day. Now, 43 years later, it may be the most important relationship between two nations of the 20th century. The course of the war wore Japan down and into eventual surrender. On a modern day bullet train from Hiroshima to Osaka, journalist Chucho Watanabe remembers those days and what he saw as a young reporter. Everybody was completely in a day's condition. America had dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Modern warfare had taken a new turn that Japan could not follow. And so the Japanese surrendered and became an occupied nation. Their former enemies, the Americans, under General Douglas MacArthur, were surprisingly benevolent force. The American plan was to eradicate the historic conditions in Japan that led to the war and to put the beaten country back on its feet as quickly as possible.

Chucho Watanabe says that it was good to have the Americans there, the confusion of that time, a broad political and social stability to the broken country. I personally do feel that many of the Americans were motivated by the Christian fundamental belief in loving your enemy and compassion, felt towards people who are suffering and that sort of things. And when the occupation forces left, the national will turned to hard work and economic growth to the exclusion of military and defense concerns. By the 1970s, Japan had become so strong and exporter of goods and world economic power that other nations started to resent its competition with their own industries. It sold more goods abroad than it bought, and the balance of trade became lopsided. And America became a nation of more and more Japanese cars,

while American auto workers were losing jobs, of more consumer electronic products, while American products receded into the background. It seemed that the United States, which had suffered Japanese aggression in World War II, and had treated its beaten enemy with compassion in the post-war years, was only suffering an aggression of another kind for its trebles. That is a prevalent view of things in America, but in Japan, as might be expected, there is an opposite view, and it is perhaps no more strongly held than in the American Embassy in Tokyo, where Ambassador Mike Mansfield rolls up his sleeves at almost pounds of fist on the conference table. The Japanese American relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world by or not. In my opinion, the next century will be the century of the Pacific. The development of that area will lie, I think, in the closeness, the durability, the reliability, and the trustworthiness of the American-Japan relationship. On September 14, the ship, the Yokohama Maru, left the port city of Yokohama, for a trip across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal and up the east coast of America to the port of Hampton Rose.

25 days later, it unloads its traded Nissan automobiles, and in a nearby building, music plays for a luncheon celebration in the Grand Open in Nissan's port facility in Norfolk. Hampton Rose has gotten a facility over stiff competition from other east coast ports. Large automobile preparation facility is full of Japanese and Americans trying to communicate with each other as best they can over a large language barrier. The governor has come by helicopter to speak. We look forward to the $24 million impact that the Nissan presence is going to mean principally to this area of Hampton Rose, but to its German-Spotman-indicates the entire Commonwealth of Virginia. What may be Detroit's loss is to a much lesser degree Norfolk's gain. Japanese automobiles have become popular in America, and to combat a recent dip in American car sales import restrictions have been placed on the Japanese. In Tokyo, Messiah Miyoshi of Kedonron talks with friendly disdain about the American effort to overcome the imbalance of trade in automobiles.

For the motor company in price rise, if not the General Motors, they just went to Washington and asked the government to keep what you see. This facility, they have to develop a sellable products. Saleable products in the Japanese view are those that people want and need and that are designed to be usable. They are also more often in keeping with the new Japanese industrial model of light, thin, short, and small. Those products use up less energy and raw materials in their manufacturer are less bulky for easier transportation and are worth more relative to their smaller size. Thank you, Misa Gochi of the Foreign Ministry. To the charges against it over the imbalance of trade with America, Japan replies that its own trade barriers are lowering.

It is the largest importer of American agriculture, the second largest importer of American industrial products after Canada. In 1984, Japan will invest $25 billion in America, according to Misa Gochi. The two countries need to stop squabbling and get together to deal with the coming competition and opportunities in the rest of Asia and the world. US and Japan are the most technologically advanced countries in the world and we can help each other a lot. Now, you know, there are problems and they will continue to be problems. The only thing you can do is have a discuss it and try to do something about it. But I don't think we ought to want to think with one country and expect that country to pure our yields which are largely of our own making and which will be largely pure by ourselves. In the auditorium of the American Embassy, Ambassador Mike Mansfield speaks to a trade delegation from the state of Missouri.

The Mansfield message is that America must stop blaming Japan for its own economic problems. Instead, he insists that America ought to relearn from the Japanese some of the things it's forgotten like the work ethic, productivity and quality control. It's nice to be in a country where you can walk any street in any city, at any hour of the day or night and feel perfectly secure, where people are civil and courteous as a matter of course, not something that they have to put on in their pockets or make an effort to do. But a country which is changing, a country who depends upon us and trusts us and a country which I think along with our own will be responsible for the development of the basin. More and more American states have set up shop in Japan and begun to move into the rest of the Pacific Basin. The Virginia Port Authority has offices with a spectacular skyscraper view of the heart of Tokyo. There are a lot of private American businessmen wandering around Japan and they like what they see.

They've had to make the effort to understand a vastly different culture and an extremely difficult language. And the more they've seen the differences, the more they have found a common affinity between the two nations. The same holds for the Japanese who come to America, Messiah Miyoshi. They have found, for instance, the United States, a very comfortable place to go and invest and do business with Americans' course. We share so many common values. Among those common values are basic regariousness, a sense of humor and optimism. The Japanese are learning the American variations of those basics and they ask that Americans try harder to understand the way they do things. We consider human contact, human touch, more important than dry. So it's not enough that you write letters so you send beautifully printed letters with a brochure and then you receive them. You see? And it may give you answering letters but no follow-ups unless you come over here and then visit with human touch. Say greeting is a good morning.

I love cheese for you with everything. Small, fresh bread and black coffee. Three toppings. All of which brings us to this Wendy's restaurant on the Ginza right down the street for McDonald's where I'm just ordered lunch. It is not a case of an American saying for eventually an American while in a foreign land. Instead, it is the citizen of the world having the lunch that he wants, where he wants it. The only difference between this Wendy's and the one at home in America is the taste of the kitchen, decidedly inferior and the co-ed toilet will lock on the door. It is as much a bona fide part of Japanese life as is the Panasonic television set part of American life. It is the world as it really is or ought to be. More people and more places finding more in common that they can work on together instead of fighting over. I'm Chris Dickens.