A once and future economic superpower: Plagued by adversity - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

TOKYO, Japan – You can glimpse a panorama of incipient economic might as your Boeing-747 dips over Tokyo Bay, negotiating its flight path to a landing at Haneda airport. A giant supertanker serenely ploughs into port, guided and badgered by two small but perky tugs. Factory smokestacks dot the landscape, while, in the distance, you can already spot the skyscrapers of Shinju-ku and the 59-story department stores (depato) in the adjoining districts.

You can almost feel the pulse of power, as a metropolis of 12 million souls (22 million in the daytime streaming in from bedroom communities within a radius of 30 kilometers away) unfolds beneath your aircraft’s wings.

But wait. Tokyo still glitters, but its denizens are frenzied and plagued with self-doubt. An unwanted Prime Minister squats on an uneasy "throne", resisting all efforts of his own Liberal Democratic Party to shame him into resigning. Yesterday’s Yomiuri daily screams out in desperation: "Create New Government Immediately!" However, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori shrugs off editorials like that. He’s determined to go to Washington on March 19 to powwow with George W. Bush. The stock market dips even more disastrously, plummeting to close below the Yen 12,000 line.

The almost panicky editorial puts it succinctly: "The Mori Cabinet should resign en masse immediately."

No way. There’s no "People Power" here. It’s weird that a nation, once so courageous and cruel in war, can’t even mount an EDSA-type mass "explosion", nor threaten a coup d’etat. Is it because the Japanese are now too democratic? Methinks what ails them is that they’ve gone numb.

A sign of their having fallen into serious financial straits (not "dire straits", though) is the fact that Japanese consumers – so enamoured of "brand-new", and once a throw-away society – are now refurbishing second-hand equipment and appliances and buying them. Even second-hand cars, once scorned, have found a market.

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In The Japan Times, Professor Takamitsu Sawa, of the faculty of economics of Kyoto University and director of the university’s Economic Research Institute, brilliantly discussed what’s wrong.

In the 1980s, he recalled, "most Japanese economists were under the illusion that the American economy was in decline and that Japan would surpass America as the world’s largest economy."

It wasn’t just the Japanese who marvelled not just at the Rising Sun but at the Skyrocketing Sun. There was even a book, written by a European savant (whose name evades my recollection) entitled Japan As Number One.

As Sawa put it: "Japanese systems and customs, such as those governing business management, public administration and education were considered models for other nations." Twitting the US about its decline, Japanese economists, managers and bureaucrats were saying, proudly, that "American businessmen should learn from Japanese-style management in order to get the American economy back on its feet."

The Japanese even sassily advised the Americans to adapt the US educational system to the Japanese model. "The irony," Sawa mourns, "is that in the 1990s the scholastic and intellectual ability of Japanese youths declined because of defects in Japan’s education system."

The professor points out that "the US economy began its ascent in the 1990s and it continued for nearly 10 years. By contrast, the Japanese economy has been stuck in an unprecedented slump since March 1991. Now, almost every economist here says that Japan should adapt the American model in order to bring about an economic revival – indeed, that adopting ‘the American way’ is the only way out of the protracted slump."

Professor Sawa goes on to explain his thesis, but I’m more primitive and simplistic. I believe it was a case of "pride goeth before a fall." The Japanese, preening themselves on their success, never thought beyond the next day’s profit, convinced that their engine would be chugging along ever faster, and ever forward, forever. They forgot that their banking system, and even their keiretsu approach, were too feudal in methodology to last the course. Inevitably, the "bubble" burst.

And yet, the Japanese go on producing. Their industries, while suffering setbacks, with unemployment on the rise, remain strong in infrastructure. And the Japanese, while not as workaholic as half a generation ago, remain diligent. They’ll be back, but not before experiencing more pain – and learning from their mistakes. That’s why there’s an American and English expression, whenever an experiment or undertaking is launched: that everybody must learn from "trial and error." If there are no errors, nations wouldn’t be composed of human beings, but of supermen and superwomen.

In our own case, we must be on the brink of success: Because we’ve been committing so many errors.

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Of course, the Commission on Elections won’t budge on the question of scheduling a "special registration" for new voters. Comelec Chairman Alfredo Benipayo is right. Unless the elections are postponed from their May 14 scheduled date, there’s no time left in which to register four million "new" voters.

Not only does "haste make waste", but a hastily-conducted registration would give an opportunity to the dagdag-bawas artists to pad the voters’ lists and prepare for tomfoolery in the coming polls.

It’s better to risk "disenfranchising" four million possibly qualified than risk "franchising" four million flying voters, or "ghost voters", or swarms of the birds and the bees.

Let’s hold the May 14 elections, and see what happens. Will President GMA’s slate sweep the elections? Unless the current government shows more moxie and demonstrates more savvy, we may be in for a few surprises.

God and "People Power" (and the citizens who elected her Vice President), plus, okay, the military and police who gave the process a little nudge, made Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo President and Commander-in-Chief. Keeping the Presidency is up to her – and this can be done by making the people happy, safe, secure, and in good spirits. Anything less than that would make even winsome La Gloria’s term of office very short, indeed.

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It’s five degrees Celsius outside, but the day is sunny and bright – although it snowed in Tokyo two days ago. This writer’s journey from Naha City, Okinawa’s capital, to Tokyo was painless and pleasant.

Naha has a sleek, efficient, and bustling airport. The tourist shops, there, however, sell gaudy junk, but that’s what holidaymakers seem to want. The Japan Airlines’ checking counters are run by very polite and helpful young women who confiscate your hand-luggage with such an apologetic smile that you’re actually happy to comply.

JAL has the gimmick of calling the seats in Business Class, "superseats." This euphemism actually works – you feel like a super-passenger. Once airborne, you notice that the lady purser-chief stewardess goes from passenger to passenger, bows deeply, and welcomes each of them "aboard." They say that all that smiling and bowing done by the Japanese are all hypocrisy and just hot air. On the other hand, it makes a nation – crowded in a nightmare density of over 800 persons per square kilometer – move forward smoothly. Give me such "hypocrisy" anytime. As for that jibe about "hot air", that’s all that’s pumped into automobile and other vehicles' tires – yet smooths the vehicle’s passage over the potholes, bumps, and the otherwise savage terrain of life.

At the risk of sounding defensive, let me hasten to say that this is an endorsement gratis et amore. I’m travelling on a fully-paid ticket, not on a freebie or a discount.

Japanese "efficiency", by the way, is not perfect. The flight from Okinawa to Tokyo’s Haneda airport (where domestic flights land, instead of at the much farther out Narita international airport) was a breeze. We had just over two hours of easy sailing before we slid to a landing at Haneda. Afterwards, it all unravelled. The aircraft parked on the tarmac, and all the passengers had to descend the steps of a portable stairway, hand-luggage and all, stagger onto buses, which then proceeded to weave in and out for almost 20 minutes until they came to the JAL terminal.

We even had to wait for three minutes on the flight line as a huge Boeing 777-300 of All Nippon Airways (ANA) cut across our path, revving up for the thrust of a powerful take-off. Those monster aircraft will soon dominate the skies, I’m told (although those at Airbus dispute this). Soon, they’ll be designing flying cruise ships – with swimming pools and movie houses on deck. When that happens, I’ll opt to walk.