Kicking the Growth Cult

"The Japanese worked too hard in the past. It is most important to curb the growth rate and eliminate various negative conditions, including pollution."

--Konosuke Matsushita, chief of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

In what could be Japan's most significant policy shift since V-J day, the world's third mightiest industrial power is reining in its breakneck drive for economic growth. Many industrialists and economists have joined with Matsushita, himself the symbol of Japan's high-growth ideology, in calling for a slower, steadier pace. Kazutaka Kikawada, chairman of the Tokyo Electric Power Co., complains that Japan's growth drive has led to a "flippant materialism," destroyed much of the country's beauty, and created environmental devastation that threatens to lead to social disruptions. Adds Professor Jun Eto of the Tokyo Institute of Technology: "The production cult is being deflated. It has simply gone out of fashion."

Paring the Work Week. Instead, the Japanese are shifting their prodigious energies toward meeting their great needs for schools, hospitals, sewer systems and the like. The government plans to increase its budget next year by an estimated 20%, with most of the extras going for public works. Meanwhile, government economists are in the process of scaling down the growth goal for the gross national product to about 7% annually, from between 10% and 18% in past years. In addition, the Labor Ministry seeks to persuade businessmen to pare the average work week from 46 hours to 40 hours. Slower growth will eliminate many small producers and bring a moderate earnings drop for major firms. On the other hand, service industries, especially those in recreation fields, will grow as the slowdown provides the Japanese with more free time.

The Japanese are disenchanted with runaway expansion largely because they blame it for causing intolerable pollution. Great palls of deadly, eye-smarting smog from factory smokestacks settle over the cities and their increasingly restive inhabitants. Last week pollution protesters staged a lie-in at government offices in Tokyo. Most were victims of pollution-induced cadmium poisoning, a painful bone complaint that the Japanese call itai itai (ouch ouch). One day recently, Tokyo's Haneda Airport was so socked in by pollution that planes had to be diverted to another city. Industrial waste and sludge have also poisoned the streams and rivers and are choking off life in the Inland Sea. A sign of the times: exhibitors at a recent Tokyo show of U.S. antipollution equipment picked up $29 million worth of orders in only five days.

More and more Japanese also believe that, by stressing industrial growth, they have shortchanged themselves in public amenities. Says Economist Sadakazu Chikaraishi: "Only by persistently keeping down our infrastructure investments have we been able to keep our industrial production soaring." The extent and quality of Japanese roads, parks and housing are far below Western standards. In Tokyo and Osaka, and other overcrowded cities many workers live in fragile wooden shacks that are crammed together in foul narrow lanes. Fully 90% of Japanese houses do not have flush toilets.

Finally, the "Nixon shock" of Aug. 15, when the U.S. President brought out his tough trade and money policy, brought home to the Japanese that they could no longer flood the world with goods produced by low-wage labor. Says Yasuo Kurita, export chief for Maruman Co.: "Some of us have gone into foreign markets too fast and sometimes engaged in the unhealthy practice of dumping. If there is resentment against Japanese businessmen overseas, then we alone are to blame." It is to remove this stigma, to cleanse the environment, and to improve the all-too-gritty quality of domestic life that the Japanese are at last beginning to shift their national goals away from growth at any cost.

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