JULY 2010–
Flying in to Haneda Airport is an entirely different experience than landing at remote Narita airport, which is located in a largely agricultural area two hours north of central Tokyo. The plane circles over Tokyo Bay, offering the traveler a panoramic view of the Tokyo skyline. It is a vast city, one of the largest in the world, and far larger than New York. Its infrastructure is also better than New York’s, and also outstrips anything the traveler sees in Seoul. Taking the airport bus to Shinjuku station, where we are to connect to a train to go to the countryside, we see high arc-ing bridges over rivers, monorails, train lines, tunnels, expressways and the like. Whereas New York’s infrastructure is crumbling, Tokyo’s is new and highly sophisticated.
It is an intelligent and precisely organized society. When you hand your bags to the bagmen to store on the bus at Haneda, they hand you little slips of paper with numbers on them. When you disembark at Shinjuku, the men unloading the bus actually check your claim ticket to make sure you are claiming the right bag. There are also little signs and announcements on the bus warning travelers not to smoke or use their cellphones “as that might disturb your neighbors.” Try to imagine any of that that happening at LaGuardia!
Another snap first impression is the quality, and origin, of the cars on the road. In the first few minutes, we see more than one Maserati, Porsche, Jaguar, BMW, Audi and Mercedes. It used to be that the Japanese would only drive Japanese cars, but now something has changed and they are buying the best European luxury models. Nothing from General Motors or Ford, however.
I’ll resume with detailed travel observations in a moment but the big themes of the trip already are becoming clear:
–FORTRESS JAPAN. The age-old question is, what changes in Japan and what remains the same? All my conversations and observations support the conclusion that Japan has moved from the era of striving to “catch up and surpass the West” to the point that they have achieved that. As a result, the fire in the belly is not quite as intense as it once way. They are in a somewhat more defensive mode these days, trying to protect their wealth and their lifestyle rather than striving to accumulate wealth. They are sitting on $15 trillion in household assets, making them far richer per capita than the Chinese. Even if subtract the size of their national debt, about $9 trillion, from that position of wealth, they are net holders of wealth which is a sharp contrast with the situation facing the debt-strapped Americans. In some senses, as in medieval times, the Japanese have built a mighty fortress. The strong yen actually is part of the defensive fortifications because it discourages so many people from traveling to Japan and seeing for themselves what is happening here. It also allows the Japanese to travel easily and comfortably, as we saw in Korea and will see in Taiwan.
–JAPAN AS LIFESTYLE SUPERPOWER. As will become clear in these travel notes, the Japanese are spending big on enjoying life. We saw it reflected in the quality of summer homes, the number of dogs, the pursuit of new hobbies such as surfing, mountain climbing, bicyle touring and white-water rafting. In rich districts of Tokyo, we not only saw lots of dogs but also pet parlors where one can go to buy home-made biscuits and designer collars and leashes.
–JAPAN’S CONFORMITY: Some Japanese are stressing their individuality rather than seeking conformity, which is a new trend. The best way to distinguish Japanese travelers at airports in the region is to recognize the most distinctive looks and styles among the myriad of travelers. Even the most astute American cannot distinguish the Japanese, Koreans and Chinese on purely racial characteristics. It’s the Japanese who are the most advanced in terms of style and distinct looks. But yet at the same time, the traveler notices the phalanxes of “salarymen” in Tokyo. The government has decreed that air conditioning levels will be turned to higher levels this year to save energy, so every Japanese salaryman has discarded his tie. Even CEOs and vice ministers. In this respect, conformity is very much intact, and is still irresistible. This is one of the paradoxes of Japan.
–JAPAN’S RETAIL REVOLUTION: It used to be that the Japanese did not allow large-scale retailing because that threatened small Mom and Pop retailers. This was a big issue when the Americans attempted to negotiate greater access to the Japanese market. The distribution and retailing system was called a “non-tariff barrier” or a “structural impediment.” The Japanese said they could never change this system.But now in suburban and rural Japan, they definitely have. They have allowed large Home Depot-style retailers, big CVS or Walgreen-type drugstores, and large grocery stores. They have big parking lots and bright lighting. These stores are competing aggressively against the traditional stores in the downtown areas of small towns like Chino, and some of those stores are closing down. So traditional shopowners are feeling pain, but overall the consumer is reaping new gains.
BACK TO THE TRAVELOG:
From Shinjuku train station, we boarded a train for Chino in the mountains. For at least 30 minutes, the intense urbanity of Tokyo prevailed outside our windows. It’s as if New York City extended to White Plains and to Ridgewood, N.J. The city of Tokyo is absolutely huge, one of the world’s five largest, with 30 million people in the metro area.
After a while, we started seeing suburban scenes and then we started to climb into the heavily forested mountains. After two and a half hours on the train, our old friend Toshio Aritake picked us up in the town of Chino and brought us up to his chalet. I had never been to the mountains of Nagano, so this was very fresh for me, and of course for Rita.
Aritake lives in a community of about 2,500 cabins in the mountains, at an elevation of about 5,000 feet. He pays about $3,000 a year for garbage, water and other services. The homes are beautiful. We visited one log home built by a man and wife who imported all the logs from Canada and built a two-story mansion. They also were proud of there two huskie dogs, whom Rita just loved.
There are many first class hotels and fine restaurants in the area. It is like Stowe in Vermont or like the Poconos resort area.
Aritake introduced us to other friends, including an 82-year-old man whose name I don’t recall. He and Toshio cut wood together. His wife had just broken her spine so she was very severely injured. Unlike in the United States, the old man could not hire domestic help to come into the home to care for the wife or to cook because Japan simply does not allow cheap immigrant labor. He also couldn’t hire cheap Guatemalans, as I have in New York, to come cut the grass and trim the trees. The old fella had been outside that day on his knees pulling weeds and when we visited he was busy cooking for his wife. So yes, the aging of Japan’s population is a challenge and yes, they are paying a price for not allowing immigration. But they are inventing mechanisms to cope with tightness in the labor supply and they seem largely determined to go it alone. They value the purity and order of Japanese society as opposed to the disorder of allowing millions of people into their country who would not respect their traditions and their rules. Out of a population of about 127 million people, they have only 2 million immigrants.
Aritake explained it, the Japanese have suffered from overpopulation and overcrowding, which is absolutely true. Only 30 percent of their land is habitable because of the rugged mountains. So they all have lived in tight quarters and suffered great congestion. Now that they have achieved parity with the West, it only makes sense that they allow their population to drift downward a bit so that they can carve out more space for their inhabitants. That also squares with the aspirations of young Japanese women who are resisting marriage at too early an age and who are choosing to have fewer children, later in life. They want the good life. That’s why Japan’s population is declining. It is not because of a strange sickness or dysfunctionality. The Japanese recognize what is happening and they are coping with it.
The highlight of our stay in the mountains was a visit to the Suwa Shinto shrine, which is an ancient place devoted to the worship of the huge trees that grow in the area because of the high levels of rainfall. This is the site of the most bizarre religious ritual I have ever heard of. Every year or every other year, they cut down a huge tree, on par with the size of an American redwood. They collect 2,500 villagers who work together to pull pull roaps and drag the giant tree to the top of a steep mountain drop-off. It only works if everyone pulls together at the same time. This is very Japanese—getting a group together to cooperate in achieving a common objective.
Then when they have the trunk of the tree at the edge of the precipice, they strap on other big branches so that young Japanese men can perch on the branches, hanging onto big ropes. I only saw pictures but let’s say that 20 young men cling to these branches.
Then they push the tree over the cliff and let it drop! Every time they do it, apparently, several people get killed or seriously injured. It’s like the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Yet the young men look at is as an honor.
Anyway, we decided to get a blessing from the priests at the Suwa Shrine. Hell, if they can equip the crazy young men with enough faith to plunge over a cliff, maybe they have something we need. It’s like an insurance policy. I always believe in receiving the blessings from any religion. Who knows which religion is right? I need an insurance policy in as many religious traditions as possible, lest my soul rest eternally in the wrong place. The priests have a whole system set up to adminiser blessings and they agreed to do it for the mere sum of 5,000 Yen, or about $60. We sat on a raised platform along with a family seeking blessings for a new baby. This is how the Japanese use Shinto–they use it to get married and bless babies, even to bless new cars.
The priest was all decked out in his robes and first beat his drum and then came over and used a feathery kind of big fan to wipe away our sins and help start the process of purifying our souls. He then intoned some sacred blessings in an ancient form of Japanese that even Toshio could not understand. Then much like the Catholics that have the bell they ring during a mass, the Shinto priest then passed some bells over us.
We were then summoned to sit before a little table in front of the room where the gods were sitting and lay a branch in such a way that the cut end of the branch pointed toward the gods and the leafy end pointed toward us. Then we bowed and clapped twice.
It was over in 10 or 15 minutes and the priest gave us a bag with holy sake and cookies and such. The bag of goodies had been sitting up by the gods and therefore was blessed. The whole point of the exercise was to guarantee us health and safety.
Later we went to an onsen where Toshio and I disrobed and went into the healing hot waters. This is such a healthy experience, to allow the hot mineral waters to warm your body to a higher level, as in a purification ritual. As before, I am struck by how Japanese fathers wander around naked in front of their four-year-old daughters, but everyone is very comfortable with that arrangement. Rita decided not to go into the onsen and instead found a massage chair, where she blissed out. The chair is an example of how the Japanese take a basic technology and refine it, and then refine it some more. There is a non-stop quality to the Japanese. They call it kaizen, or continuous improvement.
We saw other applications of technology to everyday life, in ways that will reduce the demand for labor. On the train, the conductor merely walks down the aisle and sees that there are people seated in the seats that are marked as occupied on his or her handheld computer. They don’t need to check the tickets. At a restaurant at Suwa, our waitress takes our order on a handheld device that transmits the order to the kitchen. Then when we’re done, the device issues a bill. That saves a step or two. In America, the waiter takes the order and then goes to a computer to enter it. The Japanese method is more efficient.
On that commercial note, we visited several “big box” retailers. This is entirely new, in my experience. We went to one drug store chain called American Drug. It was supermodern and had a big parking lot. Then we also went to a Watahan Low Price Super Center that was almost identical to a Wal-Mart or Home Depot. The Japanese, outside of central Tokyo, also now have access to Costco, Ikea and of course Wal-Mart’s Seiyu stores, which I wrote about some years ago for Fortune magazine.
The downtown area of Chino did not have much room for parking, so the traditional Mom and Pop types of stores there are really hurting because of the competition from the big box stores. Several have closed their doors. This is the kind of retailing revolution that the Americans used to advocate before they gave up on Japan. But today, it is happening. The whole retail system is being shaken up.
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We headed into Tokyo on Tuesday and spent the night, but headed back out into the country the next day, so allow me to continue with that theme because it actually is very important in attempting to understand Japan. If you stay just in downtown Tokyo, your perspective is skewed, just as if you attempted to make a judgment about America by strolling through Times Square.
We went to visit Bob and Fumiko Neff, who live on the Kamakura peninsula, about a 90-minute train ride south from Tokyo. It’s like a Laguna Beach area because it’s on the Pacific Ocean, very close to the Imperial Family’s summer villa. On the beach, we can see surfers in the water. Japanese surfers “cheat” because they are carrying paddles to position themselves for the waves. There are also many trendy surf shops. Running a surf shop is now an acceptable career choice for young Japanese in the area.
Neff was the Business Week bureau chief and we are old allies. He was a missionary kid who grew up in Japan. His Japanese is fluent. He warms to the theme that something has changed in Japan, from the days when we were writing cover stories together. The old fire in the belly has eased. “This is the safest, cleanest, most efficient, most educated society in the world, and it has the best healthcare,” he says. “In many ways, it is the best society in the world.”
Yes, it has problems. It’s crowded. Women are still marginalized. They are going to have to cope with the aging issue.
But the problems are overshadowed by the obvious increase in the Japanese standard of living. “Why kill themselves trying to do anything more?” Neff-san asks.
That captures it for me. Even outside of Tokyo, the rising tide of affluence has reshaped people’s lives and their expectations. There are issues about the gaps in wealth between Tokyo and the provinces, and between the elite and those who have not gained as much. But overall, this is a society that works, that delivers benefits to the vast majority of its people. In sharp contrast with my own.
