COLUMN ONE : In Japan, ‘Bubble’ Has Burst : As the overblown economy of the 1980s deflates, $400 dinner shows and bloated expense accounts are out. Instant-soup dinners and workplace cutbacks are in.

The impeccably coiffed proprietress wears a giant pearl ring and diamond-studded watch as she greets her first-class business customers at Amour, her elegant hostess bar in the tony Ginza area of Tokyo. But what’s wrong with this picture?

Fusako Mizuyoshi’s business is about to go belly-up.

At the height of Japan’s economic boom a few years ago, Amour was filled with customers flush with virtually unlimited corporate expense accounts. They consumed $1,600 bottles of Ballantine Scotch and flirted with attentive hostesses.

On a recent night, however, only two customers showed up. Amour’s earnings are down by half. Mizuyoshi spends her days frantically calling clients and sending them letters, asking them to stop by.

“Please, I’m on the verge of bankruptcy,” she tells them.

“So are we,” retorted one irritated customer, abruptly hanging up.

As Amour goes, so goes Japan. The nation’s high-flying days of easy money, soaring land and stock values and an orgy of spending are over. A string of bad economic news has cast a gloom over the land: a record number of bankruptcies; banks reeling from bad debt; two consecutive quarters of negative growth for the first time since the 1973-74 oil shocks; the recent announcement that officials here have finally owned up to the problems and revised downward the government growth forecast to 1.6% from 3.3% for the current fiscal year ending this March.

Predictions that the economic slump may linger for as long as five years have jolted many Japanese into abruptly scaling back the luxurious lifestyles of the superheated “bubble economy” days.

“It’s so painful that people can’t even talk about it,” said Yoshihiro Emoto, 69, who runs a landmark eel restaurant in front of the once-glittering Tokyo Stock Exchange. “The lords have become beggars.”

Thirty-year-old stockbrokers who once pulled down $50,000 annual bonuses are now forgoing his grilled eels, which cost from $14 to $26 a dish; Emoto’s business has fallen by half in the last 18 months.

Just as eels are out, so are other luxuries such as: fugu, the exotic blowfish that commands $240 a plate; overseas vacations; weekend golf; discos and fancy health clubs; taxis; Beaujolais nouveau; drinks that supposedly give a boost of energy; $400 dinner shows at fancy hotels, which used to be de rigueur for young couples. All have shown marked declines in business.

Fat corporate expense accounts are also out; “stingy, stingy” ventures are in. Companies are slashing overtime pay, scaling back board director salaries and bonuses and embarking on cost-cutting rampages.

No idea seems too small: One auto maker requires workers to turn in old ballpoint pens as proof that all ink is used up before issuing a new one. Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, to improve productivity by shortening endless meetings, has taken the chairs out of some conference rooms. President Shiro Fujita claims that meeting time has been cut in half, although one employee said the race to book rooms with chairs “has turned into a war.”

In the new, more frugal era, used cars are in. So are good-luck cat statues-- maneki neko-- sales of which have doubled at Odakyu and other department stores; people buy them to wish for a better 1993.

Soy sauce, fermented bean paste and Japanese instant soup stock are also in. That’s because executives who once feasted on Emoto’s eels and caroused in places like Mizuyoshi’s Ginza bar are going home to eat instead. Kikkoman, a leading soy sauce maker, reports an 11% sales increase over the previous year. The Marukome Co. sold a record 184,000 tons of bean paste in 1992. Ajinomoto’s soup stock is up 5%, while its frozen-food sales have increased by more than 20%.

Which reveals other recession victims: Japanese homemakers.

“My husband used to go out golfing with the company on the weekends, but now he stays home,” lamented one Tokyo homemaker, shopping in the Ginza. “I have to cook for him and I’ve lost my own free time.”

Yumi Ishizuka, 31, has not only lost some of her own time. She has also had to go out and find work after her husband’s auto company reduced his overtime, cutting their monthly income from $2,500 to $2,000. Because half of that goes to pay the mortgage, the $500 loss hurt. She decided to find a part-time job addressing envelopes for a direct-mail company but manages to bring in only $80 a month. Although she would prefer a better job, the market is tight.

As firms pare their payrolls, the number of jobs per job-seeker fell below the 1-to-1 ratio for the first time since 1988; there now are 96 jobs per 100 job-seekers, compared with a high of 147 jobs per 100 job-seekers just last March. The manufacturing sector, for instance, offered 28.9% fewer jobs in October than the previous year, the Labor Ministry reported.

As a result of the squeeze, the Ishizuka family no longer eats out. Tokyo Disneyland is off limits as well. Instead, they picnic at public parks. “Instead of financial luxury, we now have the luxury of time--although I’m not sure which is better,” Ishizuka said.

The crunch is even on for Japan’s DINKs (Double Income No Kids), childless working couples. Take the case of one Tokyo couple. He is a 35-year-old employee at the Tokyo Stock Exchange; she is a 34-year-old office worker in the publishing industry. Stripped of overtime, his monthly pay has dropped to $4,100 from $6,560 in 1990, his annual bonus to $9,840 from $16,400.

During the good years, the couple took overseas vacations to such exotic locales as Egypt at least twice a year; they ordered at least two custom-made suits at $1,000 apiece; they bought a new computer annually. They racked up $1,200 of goods on their charge cards each month--paying off the balance in cash--and celebrated their wedding anniversary with a $700 dinner at a high-class restaurant in the Akasaka district.

This anniversary, they simply congratulated each other. Their credit-card spending is down to $330 a month. They never used to look at prices in supermarkets; now they do. “Before, even if we spent $700 on dinner, it didn’t seem expensive. Now it does,” the wife said. “It’s a mental change.”

Still, she added that her husband’s reduction in overtime has allowed him to come home at 5 p.m. instead of 10 p.m. and spend more time on his hobbies. “You can’t buy that with money,” she said.

As hard-driving workers spend more time at home, another distinctly Japanese product has felt the crunch: The market has fallen flat for drinks filled with vitamins, herbs and caffeine that supposedly provide a burst of energy. Sales were down 2.2% industrywide over the previous year; the chain drugstore Hoshi Seiyaku recorded a 6% drop in its vitality drink sales.

The spending cutbacks by well-heeled couples have reverberated throughout the economy in other ways as well.

The number of Japanese traveling overseas, compared with the previous year, dropped by 3.3% to 10.6 million in 1991--the first decline in 11 years. Although travel picked up slightly in the first half of 1992, it plunged again after September as summer bonuses came in smaller than expected. That has hit earnings of such companies as Japan Airlines, which has imposed pay cuts of up to 15% on its directors and eliminated such perks as hired cars.

That, in turn, has put a crimp in the taxi business.

Expensive French restaurants are closing down in the Imperial Hotel and other prime locations. Beaujolais nouveau was so trendy here that “I drank Beaujolais” became a greeting. But imports have dropped by two-thirds since 1988.

Most major hotels reported significant drops in reservations for their holiday dinner shows, which used to be booked months in advance by young couples. Just before Christmas, the Miyako Hotel was only 70% filled for its $400 dinner show featuring singer Roberta Flack; by Christmas Day, its second show still had not sold out. The Hotel Okura waived the prepayment, and the Tokyo Hilton offered 20% discounts; neither sold out their rooms. Rather than posh hotels, the more economical “home parties” were the big news.

Another trendy fixture among free-spending youth, private fitness clubs, are also hard-pressed to stay in shape. About 70 clubs closed in Tokyo as of August, the Sports Business Research Institute reported. Such clubs, which charge $400 or more just for initiation and another $80 monthly fee, seem an extravagance today--especially when public fitness centers charge $2.40 for a two-hour workout on much the same equipment.

In the party district of Roppongi, 14 discos have closed in the last year, according to Tokyo police. Many of the discos have installed karaoke boxes so people can croon in private rooms for just $40 a night. “Just when discos became bigger and investment increased, the bubble burst,” said Michihiko Sugihara, managing director of the Nova International disco chain.

Nighttime entertainment has also fallen off big time in the corporate world. Indeed, the Japanese have coined a phrase to describe the three sectors hardest-hit by the slump: “the three K’s”: kosai (socializing), kotsu (transportation) and kokoku (advertising).

Tsutomu Koike is in the eye of the storm as a Tokyo taxi driver--a breed particularly hard-hit by cutbacks in kotsu. Times were when Ginza clients had to wait an hour for a cab; businessmen once thought nothing of two-hour, $320 taxi rides from Tokyo to Nagano. No longer.

Now cabdrivers wait in line, parked one behind another in the Ginza and in front of major stations. And few customers take extravagant rides anymore, such as the client who sent only his luggage from Tokyo to Osaka by cab.

“Luxuries are out,” Koike says as he calculates his day’s business in his darkened cab in front of Tokyo Station. On this day, he has carried 10 passengers during his 12-hour shift, way down from the normal 18 or so but still better than many of his colleagues. Business overall is down by half.

There is a symbiotic relationship between people like Koike and Mizuyoshi, the Ginza bar owner. Drivers used to keep busy shuttling customers to places like the Ginza and, in the wee hours of the morning, all the way to their homes. But since most firms have cracked down on entertainment, they don’t go there as often. And since firms have cut back taxi reimbursements, executives rush to catch the last train instead--which means they leave places like Amour far earlier than before, if they go at all.

To make matters worse, the economic slump has sent more people into the taxi business for part-time jobs, further increasing the competition. “It’s gotten horrendous,” Koike said.

As for advertising, Dentsu Inc. reported that growth fell to 2.9% in 1991, compared with the 10% average every year since 1987. Although 1992 figures are not yet available, a spokesman said negative growth is expected for the year.

Over at Nissan, quotas have been imposed on the number of copies that office workers can make. As a result, staff members try to cajole colleagues to lend them their electronic keys to the copy machines, thus, allowing them to exceed their copying limits. “It’s become copy hell,” one office worker said.

Shin Nittetsu (Japan Steel) may have the most direct approach: Besides announcing curbs on overtime, it simply locks the entrance gate on weekends to keep workers from sneaking in to work.

But in the cost-savings sweepstakes, NTT may be the most creative. Aside from the “no-chair meetings,” the firm has put out a 150-page guide on ways to economize--including shutting off one-third of the building’s lights and installing mirrors between them to spread around the diminished light through reflection instead.

How long the cost-cutting wars last is anyone’s guess.

But Emoto, who has been through many a slump in his 43 years as a famous eel meister, doesn’t expect to be selling many eels for a long time.

Of his broker clients, he says, “You can see it in their eyes--the sadness as they walk around town. It’s going to take them 10 years just to forget.”

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