'Yomiuri Giants factor' predicts Japan rebound

By Edward Neilan

Some Tokyo executives watch won-lost record of nation's favorite team to gauge economy.

TOKYO (JP): There may be hope for recovery of the Japanese economy this year, after all.

The reason for a glimmer of optimism about the long-sluggish Tokyo business outlook is that the only "reliable" indicator of a rebound has kicked-in.

By winning their first four games of the new Central League baseball season ending Tuesday, the Yomiuri Giants served notice that they will be a strong factor in this year's pennant race -- and that the Japanese economy will improve.

An improved Japanese economy will be good news for economies everywhere.

Kaichiro "Ken" Someya, who is now Director of the Office of the President, Kikkoman Corporation -- the soy sauce folks -- let me in on the secret several years ago.

Basically it is that if the Giants do well, so does the economy; if the Giants stink up the place, the Japanese economy likewise gives off a foul odor. As a phenomenon it's part historical fact, part superstition, part mysticism.

"Expensive forecasting models, pressure from Washington, imported experts, sophisticated guidebooks and other devices are secondary tools when it comes to business year forecasts," Someya said.

He added "Many Japanese executives check the sports pages first and the business pages of the newspapers second. If the Yomiuri Giants are doing well, it means business will be good."

I started to protest: "But the World Bank and International Monetary Fund experts say that..."

Someya waved away my comment. "The Giants' magic comes from here." He punched his stomach. The old gut feeling.

Despite its casualness and hint of voodooism, I like Someya's theory better than economist Clyde Prestowitz' recent suggestion that the Japanese economy be turned over to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to solve all of its problems.

Or the prediction by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who recently came out of the woodwork as a Japan expert, that "Japan needs an economic revolution." He says either the U.S. and its G-7 partners will force change on Japan or a major economic catastrophe will occur, "hammering us all."

Some of these gurus, who were not so long ago touting "Japan as No. 1" before changing spots to "revisionist," overlook the cyclical factor in demanding that Japan be more like us"; "us" being the U.S., basically.

Last year the Giants' won-lost record was a dismal 63-72 for a fourth-place finish. It was also the year of a miserable Japanese business and financial performance, marked by bribery, scandals, loan exposure cover-ups and a large number of executive suicides blamed on fiscal woes.

Fans who live and die with the team expect much more. After all, since their founding in 1934, the Giants have won the Central League pennant 37 times and won the Japan Series 18 times.

A lot has been made of the differences between baseball as it is played in the U.S. major leagues and in Japan. Two books by Robert Whiting -- The Chrysanthemum and the Bat (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1977) and You Gotta Have Wa(New York, Macmillan, 1989) -- have become classics in providing the sense of how baseball is a metaphor for the differences.

Teams in the Central League and Pacific League may have up to three foreigners in a game at one time providing one is a pitcher. At one time, American ballplayers found playing in Japan a way to finish out their careers and pick up a respectable paycheck.

But since the Yakult Swallows outbid major league teams for Atlanta Braves' slugger Bob Horner in 1987, paying him US$2 million, the highest salary ever in Japanese baseball, the Japanese game gained instant respect.

Horner lasted only one season in Japan, leaving in frustration over "peculiar" strike zones, long practice sessions, endless meetings. He said of Japanese baseball "I don't know whether the Japanese system is good or not. I just don't understand it."

The Yomiuri organization, after all, is a business conglomerate itself, reaching into every aspect of Japanese life. Flagship of the group is the 10 million circulation Yomiuri Shimbun, largest newspaper in the world. There are other publications -- including Yomiuri Sports which is like a Giants' fan club newspaper -- and a range of enterprises from amusement parks to a travel service and a research institute.

Japanese and American baseball have some differences, despite basic similarities. Perhaps it is time for the experts to accept that there are different approaches to economics also.