Put Quality of Life First, Japanese Told

The government, in a sharp departure from past directives, said today that Japan must lessen emphasis on its quest for material wealth and focus on the search for human fulfillment in the 1990s.

Japan’s powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the government agency most often credited with guiding the country to economic superpower status, appears to have changed directions in its blueprint for the next decade.

“Although Japan has achieved a high level of material wealth . . . this material wealth was accomplished by emphasizing growth and production over human issues,” the report said.

“It is now important that Japan creates an environment that will enable individuals to lead a leisurely life,” said the report, the “International Trade and Industrial Policy in the 1990s.”

The ministry’s plan for the 1990s does not abandon the goal of economic growth but places greater emphasis on quality of life issues.

In the past three decades the ministry has pushed the Japanese to work hard and save money, while targeting specific industries for growth.

The formula has worked and the Japanese now have the highest average income among major countries.

But something is missing, the report said.

Many of the practices that contributed to Japan’s economic miracle are called into question in the report.

Long working hours and men who devote their lives to the company at the expense of their families were on the ministry’s hit list.

The report called for “building a social framework that enables men and women to cooperate and share domestic tasks, such as housekeeping, child-rearing and care for the elderly that until now have fallen mostly on women.”

The ministry also said it is “absolutely necessary” to obtain the goal of 1,800 working hours per year, compared to the 2,100 hours per year Japanese workers average now.

Many of the changes called for--such as opening markets to foreign goods, cutting prices and streamlining the distribution system--are reforms the United States has been pushing for in its trade negotiations with Japan.