Reopened Door

In a dingy Tokyo office, Japan's first postwar deal in foreign trade was ceremoniously consummated last week. While klieg lights glared and cameras whirred, S. A. Stolaroff, vice president of New Orleans' United China & Glass Co., signed up for $62,000 worth of chinaware from several small Japanese companies.

Little else in the reopening of Japan to world trade had been run off so smoothly. Of the 114 foreign businessmen--75 of them from the U.S.--who had accepted SCAP's invitation to resume trading there were few without serious complaints.

Creaks & Cobwebs. Soon after their arrival, they learned that they would have to submit elaborate applications in sextodeciplicate for permission to go ahead on any deal, await clearance through an involved hierarchy which included Boeki Kodan (the Japanese Government's Public Trade Co.), Boeki Cho (its Board of Trade), and, finally, SCAP. Then they found--as they had been warned by SCAP (TIME, June 16)--that the quantity, quality, and variety of Japanese goods were small. But the Japanese were anxious to improve them.

In the neat, new Tokyo Hotel and Hotel Teito, where the visiting traders were cordially welcomed by K. Nagai director of Boeki Cho, and A. B. Kram, chief of SCAP's foreign trade economic section, and handsomely housed, shabby little Japanese manufacturers eagerly crowded around businessmen, jotted down gripes about style and quality, hustled back to their factories to make what improvements they could. Another snag was the shortage of raw materials. Those who tried to supply them got no help from SCAP. Example: Gordon Behr, of Los Angeles' Yaras & Co., offered to ship enough coal from the U.S. to assure production of some sheet steel his company wanted to order. But SCAP, constrained by the needs of the still shaky occupation economy, refused to guarantee that the coal would not be used for some other purpose.

Mending Hinges. Biggest trouble of all were the exorbitant SCAP-set prices. But traders thought that many of them were caused by the bungling of inexperienced SCAP supervisors. According to some traders, SCAP officials thumbed through Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck catalogues, knocked off perhaps 10% for profit, announced the result as the world market price--giving not a thought to charges for freight, handling, duty, etc. that the foreign buyer would have to pay. A story making the rounds told of one SCAP official who handed a pair of gloves to his secretary, asked her, "What would you pay for that in New York?" He established her answer as the official price.

Thus dampened, contracts in the first two days totaled only $350,000, far less than expected. But SCAP expected that business would pick up.

Among the biggest deals was that of Leroy Healey, of Seattle's Barclay Co., Inc. Awkwardly he signed an order for $100,000 worth of mandarin oranges. The awkwardness was due to his lame right arm, which was torn from its socket by Japanese police in a wartime prison camp in Shanghai.

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