Oh, No--Not Again : Yet another Japanese slander of U.S. workers

Someone in Japan has done it again. Two weeks ago, Yoshio Sakurauchi, Speaker of the lower house, blamed the U.S. trade problem with Japan on lazy, illiterate American workers. Just as the furor over his statements is subsiding on both sides of the Pacific here comes yet another round of America-bashing.

This time the comments come from, of all people, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, an internationalist well aware that careless, inflammatory statements are bad form and can only worsen already tense U.S.-Japan relations. Japanese criticisms of U.S. shortcomings are not entirely without substance--but they must be responsible and based on facts.

“I’ve long thought that Americans may have gradually lost their work ethic . . . to live by the sweat of their brow,” Miyazawa said before the budget committee of Japan’s House of Representatives. He was responding to conservative lawmaker Kabun Muto, who himself said that U.S. “auto workers were too preoccupied on Fridays with the coming weekend.”

The Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and the Japanese Embassy in Washington quickly expressed regret over any misunderstanding and said Miyazawa “has no intention whatsoever” of criticizing U.S. workers. The White House rightly defended American workers as “second to none.” “ . . . The American work ethic is legendary and has promoted the greatest prosperity in the world and throughout the world, including other countries like Japan . . . ,” a spokesman said.

Japanese politicians’ views mirror those of ordinary citizens but contradict the facts. A new Time magazine-CNN poll indicates that only 15% of Japanese see Americans as hard-working. In fact, by a measurement that uses gross national product, U.S. workers are No. 1 in the world in productivity.

A new book, “The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure” by Juliet B. Schor, shows that since the 1970s the normal American workweek has been rising. The average U.S. worker is now on the job an average of 164 more hours a year--equivalent to an extra month’s work. Ironically, Tokyo has been on a campaign to cut back on working hours of Japanese, who increasingly complain of overwork.

Miyazawa also criticized the U.S. “money market system” of junk bonds and leveraged buyouts as reasons for American economic problems. He barely mentioned the fact that in the 1980s Japan also used zaiteku , or financial engineering, to create a financial bubble that burst and revealed corruption in Japan’s unregulated stock market.

Such irresponsible comments create ill will among Americans, and that in turn fuels unwise appeals for protectionism in the United States.

In Japan, discretion has always been a virtue. It’s one best relearned quickly by top Japanese officials.