COLUMN ONE : Hard Sell for Japan’s Military : With the armed forces held in low esteem, recruiters have one of the country’s toughest jobs, putting long hours--even their own money--into winning recruits.

He prowls the streets from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., working his personal contacts, exchanging favors for their information. He lends money to young men, takes them to dental appointments, entices them with free rides aboard military aircraft and ships. He approaches teen-agers at train stations and unemployment offices, following them down the street despite the inevitable rebuffs.

Hiroyuki Miyashita is polite, personable--and bullishly persistent. He has to be. He may have one of the toughest jobs in all of Japan: trying to persuade young people to join the Self-Defense Forces in a nation so allergic to the military that 70% view the troops primarily as glorified garbage collectors, who clean up after typhoons and other natural disasters.

For the first time since World War II, ground troops of the SDF were recently dispatched overseas, to Cambodia, under a new law allowing noncombat troops to take part in international peacekeeping efforts. They will struggle to monitor Cambodia’s fragile cease-fire--and to quiet the fears of their Asian neighbors still suspicious of Japan’s military intentions.

In truth, however, their biggest battle remains at home, a contest for the minds and hearts of their fellow citizens. For men such as Miyashita, the reaction of other countries to the Self-Defense Forces is peripheral to the central issue: how to keep the military amply supplied in the face of widespread public disrespect and of demographics that project a shrinking pool of recruitable youth for the foreseeable future.

“In America, everyone thinks the military is a natural thing, and they enjoy high status, respect and gratitude,” said Taichiro Okita, recruiting chief for the Tokyo district. “But in Japan, that doesn’t exist.”

As a result, the military has launched an unprecedented campaign to polish its image, increase the rewards of military service and lure youths into what has long been branded the “dirty, dangerous and demanding” work of Japan.

Social taboos compel them to try to sell the military without much reference to patriotism. Here, such appeals still stir unsettling images of imperialist right-wingers set on subjugating Asia.

Instead, the SDF is using a former Japanese beauty queen, furry puppies, smiling children--even women in bikinis and black leather--as new symbols to portray a less threatening, more open image.

Proposals to depict rugged men in planes and parachutes to convey a kind of “Top Gun” glamour were shot down because most Japanese TV stations still refuse to carry commercials showing military hardware.

“When I went to the United States and saw the Navy commercials with the jets taking off--waaaaahhhh!--I thought, ‘Oh, that’s cool! I want to make ads like that,’ ” said Takahiro Ishihara, a naval officer now studying advertising at Dentsu Inc. “But the concepts of patriotism and defending your country here are still weak. You can see the difference at baseball games: Americans sing the national anthem before the Stars and Stripes, but the Japanese just sprawl back and drink beer.”

Indeed, so skittish are the Japanese about their national defense that only 20% of those polled said they would defend their country with weapons if it were attacked, compared to 72% of Americans, according to a 1980 Japanese government survey. A greater proportion of Japanese--23%--said they would simply flee.

Those sensibilities have forced the military to stress other themes in its advertisements: the chance to contribute to world peace, the stability of a public servant’s job.

The SDF has hired Hakuhodo Inc. to craft the military’s first professional public-relations campaign, complete with spiffy new brochures, a logo and a slogan: “Peace, People, Japan.” Appealing to overworked company drones, the first-ever TV commercial portrays a former-beauty-queen-turned-SDF-member pitching the joys of life as a public servant with two days off each week.

The campaign’s aim is probably on the mark. A government survey showed that only 1% of recruits joined the forces “for the sake of my country,” compared with 36% who wanted to obtain job training.

“If you say patriotism, people will say, ‘Huh? Don’t be so serious,’ ” said Harumi Takakura, 19, a recruit who joined the military just out of high school because she could begin making money more quickly than by going to college. “Young people today want to know how much they can make and how many days off they can get.”

The stark recruitment brochures feature liberal use of large color photos and the word peace in virtually every subtitle. Some posters show a puppy thinking, “I like peace.”

But catchy posters aren’t enough, officials say. The forces are also striving to improve military benefits and living conditions, which by U.S. standards remain Spartan. They are modernizing buildings, increasing off-base housing for married couples, reducing the number of people in barracks, paying more for risky work, improving retirement benefits, offering fast tracks for officer candidates, even sprucing up uniforms.

For instance, most unmarried SDF members still room in military barracks sleeping 40 to 50 people in bunk beds, a style most of the U.S. forces had eliminated by 1980 in favor of semi-private rooms with two people each. Japanese officials are trying to reduce the room count to between five and 10 people and to use dividers to create a sense of privacy, an increasing demand of younger Japanese, said Rear Adm. Tadahiko Furusawa.

The most ambitious proposal would build a naval apartment complex at Kure Base in Hiroshima, complete with private rooms, sauna, pool, gym and cafeteria. If approved, it would serve as a considerable incentive for the military branch that is having the toughest time recruiting members, mostly because of long tours of sea duty in cramped quarters, Furusawa said.

The admiral, who has studied the U.S. military’s benefits system for various ideas, said all forces are increasing their budget by 30% to 40% a year to improve such quality-of-life areas. Although the defense budget had concentrated on modernizing equipment, such as ships and planes, until the mid-1980s, the spectacular rise in civilian standards of living made the military realize that it had to keep up in order to attract recruits, he said.

Because the military’s starting pay is not very different from that of the private sector, the lack of such benefits is viewed as a key recruiting disadvantage. Monthly starting pay is about $1,150 for privates and about $1,400 for officer candidates. Private sector starting pay is about $1,400 monthly at the bigger firms.

However, officials say there is no chance of adopting U.S.-style privileges, such as a commissary purchasing system--which allows members to buy food and other goods nearly at cost--tax-free food and housing, discount lodgings around the world and special recreation facilities.

“Before the Pacific war, the imperial navy and army had a lot of special privileges, but we lost the war and lost such recognition,” Furusawa said. “Now the people would not accept us enjoying such privileges anymore.”

For the moment, the military is benefiting from new public interest, thanks to the controversy over the peacekeeping law, the Cambodia peace mission and a minesweeping operation in the Persian Gulf last year. Even though some of the publicity has been negative, SDF members say that’s better than the usual routine: no publicity at all.

College freshman Atsushi Kojima says the national debate over the peacekeeping bill last year prompted him to consider for the first time a military career. He has all but decided to join the military after graduation from Kanagawa University, despite his parents’ opposition.

“I felt someone had to do something to help secure world peace,” said Kojima, 19, who along with 200 other civilians rode a destroyer escort on a recent Sunday afternoon in yet another SDF public-relations event.

The nation’s economic downturn has also given the forces a temporary lift. As of March, the military’s 90,740 applicants represented the highest figure since 1987. Officer candidate applicants increased by 13% in 1992 over the previous year, while those for privates, seamen and airmen also showed a slight rise.

Most conspicuous, recruiters say, is the rise in female applicants, many of whom face discriminatory work force reductions in the private sector. In the Tokyo district, for instance, the number of women taking the military application exam more than doubled--26 compared with 12 last year, Okita said.

Indeed, relative job equality is one sales pitch the SDF deliberately makes to women--with visible success. Although women account for just 3% of all forces, compared with the U.S. figure of 12%, the number of female recruits has steadily risen each year, from 524 privates in 1980 to 1,413 in 1990.

At Camp Asaka outside Tokyo, in a warehouse filled with broken military vehicles, Miyuki Kawakoshi, 19, joined the other student grease monkeys--all male--in learning how to take an engine apart. She said she joined the SDF because there was no sex discrimination and because she saw a chance to acquire various kinds of job training.

“A typical office worker sits in front of a desk all day and has to serve tea,” said Noriko Watanabe, 19. “But here we can develop talents such as signal operating and rifle practice.”

The women of the armed forces have also become recruiting bait for men. As a measure of officials’ intention to raise the military’s profile, they permitted several women to bare themselves in a “Women of the SDF” swimsuit layout in a pulp weekly magazine two years ago--even as the national police and firefighters rejected similar requests. This year, officials allowed a feature in the same magazine using four models in bikinis and black leather provocatively sprawled atop a tank and in front of a helicopter.

Veterans howled. That, however, didn’t deter officials from reprinting the swimsuit photos in a military magazine distributed to 80,000 ground troops.

“The veterans regard tanks as sacred weapons to defend the country, and we were called Benedict Arnolds for trivializing them,” said Yoshiju Otsuka, public affairs officer at Camp Asaka. “There was negative publicity and positive publicity.

“But certainly,” he added with a satisfied nod, “it was effective.”

The forces will also get a boost from an unlikely direction: Japan’s education system, whose efforts to promote pacifism have resulted in virtually no classroom instruction on national defense, let alone on the military. Unlike those of the United States, Japan’s forces are not allowed to recruit on campus.

And although support for the troops is far stronger in the outlying islands of Kyushu and Hokkaido, teachers in Tokyo and other major urban areas do not generally suggest the military as alternative careers to students. Some have even tried to dissuade those thinking of joining, recruiters say.

But beginning next April, the Ministry of Education has ordered that all junior high textbooks contain instruction on the right to self-defense, the national defense efforts of various nations, and the Self-Defense Forces’ purpose and duty. It is, SDF members say, a small step toward greater public recognition and understanding.

As long as no mishaps occur in Cambodia, SDF members are confident that their public image will continue to improve. It has already. More than 20 years ago, at the time of public fury over the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, military officer Noburo Okoshi frequently felt compelled to lie that he was an office worker. And when members rode the subway in uniform, people would hurl insults at them or try to pick fights. Today, the city of Yokohama still refuses to allow the navy to use its port.

But when naval forces returned from their minesweeping operation last year, they received a hero’s welcome, accolades from the Kuwaiti government and a new sense of pride for having accomplished a real mission, Ishihara said.

Still, recruiting remains a tough calling. Japan’s baby boom generation peaked in 1973. That means the number of people who turned 19 this year--209,000--will drop steadily beginning now. Reflecting that reality, the forces have reduced their recruiting targets--which they’ve never made anyway.

In Yokosuka, Miyashita scurries around equipped with three fat folders filled with dossiers on 45 prospects. He also keeps track of his 22 collaborators, most of them retired SDF officers or other supporters who donate $200 a year and give him a lead on recruit prospects.

The care of his network consumes much of his time and some of his own money. Miyashita even took one of his collaborators on vacation because the man, who runs a garbage disposal firm that does business with the military, was old and couldn’t drive.

He spends his own money to print up recruiting postcards and lent one prospect $800 to fix his teeth. The young man joined the SDF but quit after 10 months and still owes him $250.

“If we only had to pay $160 to get one person to join, we’d all do it,” Miyashita said. “It’s so much easier.”

In three years, he has landed 18 recruits--a better than average record. Most of them were the result of personal introductions, although he cornered two at the unemployment office, one in the park--and one who volunteered after seeing Tom Cruise in “Top Gun.”

Telephone work is largely a waste of time. Most of the time, protective parents block the contact. Out of 300 phone calls Miyashita reckons he’s made, only 20 or 30 people even consented to a home visit. Only one took the qualifying test--and he washed out over the health exam.

Still, the recruiter never seems to lose heart.

As dusk fell on a recent Friday, Miyashita walked up a narrow side road and tapped on yet another door. Down the stairs bounded a shaggy-haired youth in jeans and T-shirt, who had taken the naval exam two years ago but opted for a construction job at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka. Miyashita, however, had kept track of him. During the last phone call a year ago, he learned that the youth was interested in airplanes.

So the recruiter explained that the SDF was planning to hold a special event to give selected civilians a chance to ride a YS-11 aircraft.

Then, the pitch. “How about it? Won’t you take a ride?”

The youth paused. His face lit up, and he nodded eagerly.

A hit! Miyashita visibly relaxed. Ever on the prowl, he added: “Don’t you have a friend?” The boy said he’d ask around.

As Miyashita settled behind the wheel to drive back to the office and call it a day, he issued his appraisal. “I think,” he said with a pleased look, “that one will probably join the SDF.”

Megumi Shimizu, a researcher in The Times’ Tokyo Bureau, contributed to this report.