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quite chilling. And certainly it is of
litt le comfort to America's trad ing
partners who depend upon sales to
the huge U.S. market-and who can
logically be expected to restrict their
markets to American goods if things
get out of hand. Mr. Meany did not
refer to the fact that nine million
Americans- about 10 percent of the
U.S. labor force-earn their living
one way or another from imports.
What would happen to thei r jobs in
an all-out trade war?
"Jap-bashing"
According to
The Wa/1 Street Jour–
nal,
the J apanese have become in–
creasingly sensitive about being cast
as the villains in the growing trade
brouhaha. Says the New York fi –
nancia! dai ly: "There are in–
dications that many Japanese are
becoming resentful of what they
consider unwarranted, ill-conceived
and hypocritical attacks on their na–
tional integrity. The attacks were
described in a recent London
Sun–
day
Times
article as 'Jap-bashing.'"
T he
Journa/
further reports a se–
nior
adviser to the Japanese govern–
ment as saying: "We were pushed
into a corner 40 years ago. I t isn't
good to see similar unfortunate and
dangerous pressure being placed on
us again."
T he J apanese insist that. despite
their admittedly stitf import restric–
tions, now is not the time- politi–
cally- that they can atford to throw
open the doors to American prod–
ucts and endanger the markets of
domestic manufacture rs. The Japa–
nese economy is in the throes of a
four-year-long recession. Bank–
ruptcies are running at record levels.
More than one million Japanese are
out ofwork. At least aoother mi Ilion
are "underemployed"-kept on
company payrolls performing tr ivial
functions. (Japan's unemployment
rate is only two percent, which, by
Japanese standards, is high in a
country where a lifetime job with a
company is taken for granled.)
lncrease Japan's Military Spending?
Sorne Japanese officials are seri–
ously concerned about the outcome
of continued U.S. resentment
toward J apanese trade policies. A
senior member of Japan's ruling
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP),
10
Eiichi Nakao, said Japan's re lalions
with the United States had wor–
sened to the extent thal, given a
similar situation in the past, it could
have precipitated a war.
Pressure by the United States
upon Japan in the months ahead.
UPI
especially if the trade imbalance
does not right itself as expected,
could lead lo potentially undesir–
able results.
Tadae Takubo. foreign editor of
the government-affiliated
Jiji
Press.
expresses fears about such dan–
gerous side etfects: "l am pessimistic
about the future of U.S.-Japan rela–
tions," he says. "Many problems
plague our dealings- the trade im–
balance, fishery and air negotia–
tions , and of course the issue of
reprocessing nuclear ma terial.
"What 1 am very worried about is
military expendi tures. Dissatisfac–
tion that Japan is spending less than
one percent of its gross na tional
product on defense has been smol-
dering in the U.S. One way to re–
duce U.S. economic d ifficult ies,
according to American officials. is to
ask Japan, first. to improve its de–
fense capability; second, to share
the expense of running overseas
military installations; and. third, lo
take over a considerable portian of
economic aid to Southeast Asían na–
tions. 1 suspecl that U.S. pressure on
Japa n to do this will become
enormous in the futu re.''
A mi l itari ly strong Japan. of
course, could have a profound de–
stabilizing effect upon al! of Asia.
In a conversation published in the
Tokyo public alfai rs monthly
Chico
Koren
and reprinted in
A tfas World
Press Review.
Takubo added: "We
have only three ways to survive as a
nat ion. One is to find natura l re–
sources in Japan, another is to buy
them from others, and the third is to
get them, without paying, through
violence. What we have been doing
is making as much money as we can
and buying resources from other
countries with that money. But what
wi ll we do when we can't do that
any longer? lt is possible that we
will again gel emotional. We should
not forget that il was the U.S. trade
embargo which triggered World
War ll in the Pacific."
Jn the same article, Takashi Ho–
som, an adviser to the Industrial
Bank of Japan, added : ' 'Japan's pa–
cifism is not deeply ingrained. There
is a lways a danger that emotional–
ism can swing in the other direc–
tion."
Japan Can Change Fast!
Amer icans have come to take mod–
ern Japan for granted. At lhe end of
the Second World War the Japanese
forswore militarism. even to !he
point of outlawing war as a recourse
of the state in its own constitution.
I ns t ead the J apanese nation
placed the tolality of its etforts at
national reconstruction in the egg
basket of world trade. The goal was
to become the world's number one
trading nation; to become an eco–
nomic, not a mílitary, superpower.
The nation's miJjtary defense was
commilted almost enlirely into the
province of the very nation which
had brought the Japanese Empire to
atomic submission, the Un i ted
Stales.
The
PLAIN TRUTH Apri l 1978