Goodbye to The Godzilla Myth

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Something funny happened on Japan's way into the '90s.

The country is stuck in a severe economic slump that after three years is at best beginning to bottom out -- maybe. Though the stock market has turned up, it is still 50% below its peak. The banking system is staggering under bad debts, and almost every week another big manufacturer announces plans to cut production and trim its work force.

The nation is going through political turmoil unprecedented in four decades. Corruption in the party that has governed since 1955 has become so noxious that some of its most popular members are threatening to walk out. The ruling party could even lose its majority in the lower house of parliament, starting a period of prolonged floundering.

Japan is experiencing social strains -- a generation gap, a progressive graying of the population, a growing refusal by women to accept their traditional roles -- that are profoundly disconcerting to a country that moves in orderly lockstep. The once docile public has become so discontented that in a government survey of 10,000 people, 44.3% said the country was going in the wrong direction; only 31.4% thought it was on the right course.

The era of unrestrained growth and infinite success is over. The Japan that is experiencing its most profound dislocations since its resurrection from World War II hardly looks any longer like the all-devouring Godzilla of Western myth. Former French Prime Minister Edith Cresson's publicly voiced fear of Japan's "desire to conquer the world" sounds off-key, and American workers can stop their bitter jokes about how they will all be laboring for Japanese bosses.

To be sure, no one counts Japan out, or even very far down. The stumbling economy still stands an outside chance of overtaking the U.S. in total production sometime in the next decade. Though the Liberal Democratic Party is torn by scandal and dissension, no other party or coalition is anywhere near strong enough yet to snatch away all its power. What passes for social protest in Japan might look like placidity elsewhere. A Japanese gripe session is likely to end on the word shoganai (roughly: nothing can be done about it). Though rap music has come to Japan, the most assertive lyrics decry too much monosodium glutamate in Chinese food.

Yet rappers could easily find serious ills to complain about. Japan being Japan, outright unemployment during these hard times remains a low 2.3%, but that may be misleading. Some layoffs have been disguised by the practice of kata tataki, or shoulder tapping. A boss tells an employee, We have no work for you so you'll have to go -- and by the way, this is voluntary, right? A 51-year-old executive at a major musical-instrument manufacturer claims he was sent to sit alone in the basement under half the normal amount of lighting with no work to do until he quit. Workers urged to take early retirement, like older employees of a plant that Nissan plans to close in Zama, are not counted as jobless either.