Japan’s Premier Hits U.S. Workers : Economics: Americans may have lost the drive ‘to live by the sweat of their brow,’ Miyazawa says. White House warns Tokyo such talk encourages protectionism.

Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, speaking just two weeks after a fellow politician touched off a transpacific row by calling U.S. workers lazy, said Monday that Americans may have lost their work ethic and the drive “to live by the sweat of their brow.”

Conservative lawmaker Kabun Muto, a former minister of international trade and industry, joined the critical chorus, saying that Americans work only three good days a week, because they are too preoccupied with the weekend to work properly on Fridays and then too tired from playing to throw themselves into their work on Mondays.

“I think Americans should learn to work properly from Monday to Friday,” said Muto.

Anticipating a backlash, the Foreign Ministry hastily put out a statement that Miyazawa “has no intention whatsoever of criticizing American workers.”

Ministry spokesman Masamichi Hanabusa later said that Miyazawa only intended “to stress, as part of his economic philosophy, the importance of producing things and creating value by the sweat of our brow in our approach to work. . . . The prime minister regrets any misunderstanding which may have been caused.”

The Japanese Embassy in Washington sent the White House a message that presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater characterized as an apology.

President Bush, asked to comment during a photo opportunity with the visiting president of Suriname, Ronald R. Venetiaan, said Miyazawa had “gone out of his way to make clear that he was not denouncing all American workers.”

Praising American workers, Bush added, “We can compete with anybody in the world if we’re given access.”

Fitzwater responded with a sharpness that reflected mounting American impatience with the war of words from Japan.

“The protectionist fires in this country are burning very hot,” Fitzwater said, “and these kinds of comments from any source are probably not helpful to that cause.”

He went on to offer an impassioned defense of American workers.

“The American work force is second to none,” he said, “and the American work ethic is legendary and has promoted the greatest prosperity in the world and throughout the world, including other countries like Japan.

“We have been a leader in these areas for many years,” Fitzwater added, “and any comments to the contrary are wrong.”

Fitzwater suggested that the remarks would spur Americans on to greater competitive efforts against the Japanese.

“These kinds of comments are probably helpful in the sense of stirring the rages in all of us,” he said.

Indeed, the remarks--expressing views widely held in Japan but not usually voiced in public--are likely to further inflame American resentment against the Japanese, who are increasingly seen as condescending and arrogant. In recent days, U.S. resentment over what seems to be unfair Japanese trade practices and a volley of insults has led to “Buy American” campaigns throughout the nation and an outbreak of hate mail and other acts of harassment against Asian-Americans.

Miyazawa spoke during a committee meeting on Japan’s budget, in answer to a question by Muto on how the U.S. economy might be revitalized. He said that the American sense of “producing things and creating value has become extremely loose” in the past 10 years.

The number of U.S. engineers has declined, as young university graduates flocked to Wall Street instead for big salaries in an era of junk bonds, leveraged buy-outs and large loans, he said.

“I’ve long thought that Americans may have gradually lost their work ethic . . . to live by the sweat of their brow,” he declared.

However, Miyazawa added that the Japanese have suffered the same decline in work ethic, as the so-called “bubble economy,” with its inflated land and stock market values, made overnight millionaires.

Muto said his remarks chiding Americans about working a full 40-hour week were made for “America’s sake.” He said it is important for Japan that the United States regain its edge as the world’s No. 1 economic power. But, he said, America has been in decline since the Vietnam War because of drug and other problems.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) made a sharp rejoinder, saying “I strongly disagree” with Miyazawa’s characterization of the U.S. work force.

“That kind of remark is destructive,” Mitchell said, “because it’s false and because it does betray a lack of understanding of what’s happening in our society.”

The latest flap is likely to mire Miyazawa deeper in the political swamp that has sucked down his administration since it won elections last fall. Hailed as a statesman when first elected, Miyazawa has repeatedly stumbled in both foreign and domestic issues. Two weeks ago, he was forced to defend himself against U.S. charges of backtracking on pledges to buy more American autos and auto parts. Those pledges, aimed at helping reduce the politically sensitive $41 billion U.S. trade deficit with Japan, were made during Bush’s visit to Tokyo last month.

At home, Miyazawa is being attacked for a new scandal involving Fumio Abe, his former close aide who was indicted last week for accepting bribes. And he is still being criticized for bungling the bill that would allow Japanese troops to be sent overseas for U.N. peacekeeping operations--his first major test as prime minister.

The latest round of verbal barbs against U.S. workers comes just days after the Miyazawa administration had scrambled to make amends for earlier remarks that American workers were lazy and that 30% were illiterate. Those remarks, by Japanese House Speaker Yoshio Sakarauchi, were denounced by Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe as “ignorant” in a visit to Washington Jan. 20.

Rejecting advice from bureaucrats to lie low, Watanabe accepted an interview with CNN and apologized for the comments.

“As far as I know, productivity in the U.S. is higher than in Japan,” he said. “I recognize that the U.S. literacy rate is nearly 99%.”

Watanabe was an interesting choice to take on damage control, because he is widely regarded as one of the loosest tongues in Tokyo and has himself been skewered for remarks viewed as racist. In 1988, he said blacks tended to declare bankruptcy in order to skip out on debts; he also called Chinese “cave-dwellers.”

Times staff writers Douglas Jehl and William J. Eaton, in Washington, contributed to this article.