WORDWAR

Japan

Japanese Rule

As they lead the world into the twenty-first century, the Japanese have an educated and sophisticated citizenry, understand that information is the "ore" of the future, and are fast learning how to mine it. Canada is spending 50 percent more per capita for half the education that students are getting in Japan. Yet the Japanese are not satisfied and are changing their system. The next sixteen universities to be built in Japan will be private. The Japanese are also more attuned to global competition. In an information society, those with the best information usually win.
What enables the Japanese to move so quickly? For starters, they have a far higher literacy rate than we do in North America. In the United States about 20 percent of the people are illiterate and another 20 percent are functionally illiterate. In Japan, with a more complex language, the rate is 1 percent. Tests conducted in nineteen countries by the United Nations placed Japanese students at the top. American students were fifteenth. Tests conducted in 1982 by the British psychologist Richard Lynn showed Japanese children averaging IQs of 111. Half the American students rated under 100. Even more embarrassing was Lynn's estimate that only 2 percent of American kids had IQs of 130 or more. At least 10 percent of Japanese students exceeded that level.
To aid that high literacy level, Japanese book publishers turn out thirty-five thousand new titles a year. That is twice as many per capita as in the United States. And the Japanese read what they buy. Book clubs have never caught on in Japan; it seems the Japanese don't buy what they don't read. In North America hardly anyone reads Japanese authors, either in original or translated versions. Meanwhile most worthwhile books available in North America or Europe are also for sale in Japan -- in English or Japanese. The Japanese are more aware than we are of what is happening in other countries, especially in science, technology, and economics.
About 93 percent of all Japanese regularly read newspapers, more per capita than any other country except Sweden. Circulation figures in Japan are astronomical. Ashai Shimbun sells 7.5 million and Mainichi Shimbun 8.7 million -- per edition! Their staffs total eight to ten thousand per paper. They have their own aircraft fleets. They blanket the world.
Japan also has more than three thousand magazines. They are not all "intellectual," of course, but there is such a wide variety that a sizable segment of the Japanese public is continually exposed to sophisticated interpretations of complex problems. And their JISO satellite TV transmissions, emanating from either New York or Washington, provide more in-depth information than most North American TV broadcasts.
The Japanese have fifteen hundred Very High Frequency (VHF) stations and ten thousand Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) stations. Most are operated by NHK, Japan's version of the BBC. Half of NHK's stations produce only educational and cultural programming. Even stations classified as "general interest" devote less than 30 percent of their time to entertainment. The 470 VHF and 2,900 UHF private stations that are mainly entertainment-oriented are licensed on the proviso that they devote 30 percent of their time to educational and cultural programming.
Japanese news programs are, according to Robert C. Christopher, former senior editor of Newsweek and Time and author of The Japanese Mind, 孟uperior in depth and thoughtfulness to those offered by the major U.S. networks. NHK news staff drive hard for objectivity [while] there is more and better backgrounding than U.S. television offers. NHK also supplies most Japanese classrooms with TV sets and publishes hundreds of thousands of textbooks to accompany the educational TV programs.
I could fill the rest of this book with statistics related to Japan in the information society. One example: there are more telephones in Japan than in all of Africa, Southeast Asia, and Russia combined. The explosion of fax machines has forced the Japanese to increase telephone numbers to eight digits to handle the demand for new numbers.
What lies behind Japan's global leadership in the late stages of the second millennium? Simply put, the Japanese know the value of up-to-date information.

Auto Imports -- Phase Two

Not long ago, North American auto manufacturers held 85 percent of the world automobile market. Today it's down to 35 percent and falling. Already Japanese cars account for 40 percent of all the cars sold on the West Coast of North America -- 50 percent in some areas. By the end of 1995, the Japanese will control half of all North American car sales. They are now preparing to shift into "Phase Two."
When that occurs, the former Big Three North American manufacturers will probably see one of their members, likely Chrysler, fade from the scene. What's left will be the "Big Four": General Motors, Ford, Honda, and Toyota. North America won't be able to buy what they will collectively produce. Another company will have to go and it will not be Honda or Toyota.
The Japanese car manufacturing industry is now thinking "best packaging." This attitude incorporates attractiveness, sensitivity to the customer, and concern for the environment. It stresses the slogan of an earlier decade: "small is beautiful." To show how big their small thinking is, Nippondenso Co. Ltd., a major Japanese maker of car electronics, produced a display containing cars 0.2 inches long with glass wheels, which race along a display track. They contain motors smaller than a grain of rice. Nippondenso is not just watching the highways of the world's traffic systems but also human highways of blood circulation. An even-smaller model traveling in the bloodstream could one day clean up plugged blood vessels.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. has developed "concept" cars that appear to be the big-brother version to that Italian hit of the 1950s, the Lambretta scooter. With environmental pressure mounting, the Japanese realize that the market will eventually insist on further emission reductions. They want to be ready. Are you aware that today's small motorbikes emit fifty times more exhaust per horsepower than standard automobiles?
Don't be fooled by what appear today to be toys. Mitsubishi's mS.1000 car has solar-induced air conditioning. It reacts to the sun, starts the cooling unit, and powers the unit with the sun's rays. The car remains cool even when parked in the sun, and upholstery lasts longer. The paint, which is energy-efficient, can change from magenta pink to beige when the temperature rises above 80𧄌 and dispose of the heat, unless it is required in the winter.
Meanwhile, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. has a six-seater "Cocoon" built for senior citizens. Ever been inconvenienced by losing your car keys? The Cocoon can read your fingerprint, which was coded into the car at delivery. The car will open on command -- but just for you. Knowing some seniors' propensity for a quick snooze, the car will contain a buzzer that keeps drivers awake. The buzzer will also activate a steering wheel that emits an aroma that enhances alertness.
As the highways of the planet become more crowded, and governments are increasingly strapped to upgrade infrastructures, Japanese car manufacturers know small will continue to pay off. Smaller cars mean more parking space, more space on highways, and less fuel consumption. The day may come in some countries when governments may be forced to mandate car size for both space and gas consumption. The Japanese small-car strategy is to build on a utilitarian chassis. Frills can then be added at minimal cost.
Thinking smaller "speeds up the entire evolution of the company," according to Tokyo-based Douglas Kennedy, an industry expert. It will allow the Japanese to turn out new cars in half a year rather than the traditional North American cycle of three to four years.

Advanced Materials

Within ten years, new houses won't be made just of wood or bricks. Cars and engines won't be made of steel. Airplanes won't be constructed of riveted aluminum sheet metal. Leisure sports equipment will be composed of materials that don't exist today. This revolution doesn't bode well for North American or European business. Natural resources, as we have known them, will no longer be required in anywhere near the quantities they have been in the past.
The new structural materials are classified as ceramics, polymers, or metals. Now two or more of these materials are being combined to form composites that have superior properties to those of their constituent materials. These advanced materials are known as matrix composites -- ceramic (CMC), polymer (PMC), and metal (MMC). Also entering this field are other metal alloys and unreinforced engineering plastics, all called advanced materials.
The new materials are stronger, weigh less, and can endure far higher temperature ranges -- up to 30,000𧄌 -- than other materials. They may lend themselves to automated production techniques in ways not possible with Industrial Age raw materials. At the moment they are more expensive and difficult to fabricate, but that is about to change as a whole new discipline known as processing science develops. Calculations show that an automobile body containing 250 to 350 parts could be reduced, using PMCs, to something like ten parts. The result: less labor, faster production, more appeal, and built-in efficiency.
Canadian and American companies tend to be "pulled by the market." Until there appears to be strong consumer, industrial, or commercial demand for a product, they hesitate to invest in research and development or to prepare for volume production. In the case of these advanced materials, North American and European manufacturers foresee no substantial developments for ten to twenty years. They fear that new products may not be viable in the short term and that any investment during that time will be lost. Because their citizens have a low savings rate (in the United States now about 2 percent of gross income), money costs more than in Japan. North American companies are also forced to consider shareholders who are fickle and may depart if the next quarter shows no profit. Such companies might easily be taken over while money is tied up in future programs.
The Japanese, on the other hand, believe in "technology push." They think that if they create a new product and research the market intensively, they can force consumption by pushing the new advantages built into their latest product. By getting in not at the ground floor but at the excavation, they can achieve shorter development times.
The Japanese are also willing to sacrifice near-term profits to gain the production experience necessary to secure a sizable share of future markets. Shareholders see the advantage of long-term market share and forgo short-term profit for the larger capital gains to be made when the new market explodes. Their high savings rate of the past decade (averaging around 22 percent of gross income) lets Japanese companies borrow at low interest rates for new ventures. This philosophy has worked in the past with videocassette recorders, television, microchips, fax machines, and automobiles. Think it won't work in the future with advanced materials?

Square Logs

When I visited lumber mills and lumber retail outlets in Japan, I was impressed with the way the Japanese handle logs. By contrast, we appear to butcher and mutilate our timber. They treasure, enhance, and beautify it. I saw Japanese technicians study a log for hours before they decided how to cut it. When they did cut it, the waste material would fit in one hand. Many Japanese lumber mills cut only one log a day. They make more profit from that one log than some of our mills make on hundreds of trees.
Now the Japanese are going even further. They have decided that round logs have more value when they are turned into square logs. That way the largest amount of waste -- that lost in trimming a round log until it is square, and then converting it into two-by-fours or whatever -- is eliminated.
Scientist Yoshinori Kabayashi of the Nara Prefectural Forest Experiment Station near Osaka invented and developed a process that "cooks" round logs until they are square. The technique is startlingly simple. In his specially designed microwave "oven," the temperature of the log is raised to 250𧄌, thereby making the round log so pliable it can be massaged into the desired square shape. The log is allowed to cool to room temperature while still in the press process. Then it is heated again to the same temperature. The process does not damage wood fibers, but actually makes them stronger, denser, and less subject to warping or splitting. The specific gravity of the square log, its hardness, and its resistance to abrasion are all superior to that of the raw log. The pressure required to achieve the square profile is surprisingly low -- as low as 150 pounds per square inch. The log retains its square shape when released from the oven and the conversion pressure.
During the squaring process, as the logs are compressed, a considerable amount of water is ejected, usually about five quarts from a three-foot-long cedar log. The resulting log is firmer and denser; it has been bumped into a higher-grade quality. After the process, the quality of a cedar log approximates that of the more expensive Japanese cypress. According to a Canadian expert, that could turn a $70 log into a $210 product. How's that for value added? According to Kobayashi the possibilities do not stop there. Crooked, misshapen, and distorted logs, which in our forests today would be discarded or relegated to the chip pile, can be straightened and squared.
Because of its size, the microwave oven used in the laboratory process has been used to test only short sections of logs. Such an oven constructed to handle commercial lengths of timber in sixteen-foot lengths is estimated to cost about $150,000, a relatively minor expense. The implications could be industry-shattering. If the Japanese find it economic to supply all of their 300,000 sawmills with factory-produced industrial models of this equipment, they could substantially increase the value of any log. Competing companies around the world would be left behind.
The Japanese may agree to export their revolutionary log compressor -- at their price, and after they have supplied their own country -- to friendly countries first. For now, though, the Nara prefectural government is not allowing anyone else to use the patent. It appears that Nara officials want companies in their prefecture to receive first opportunities. "After one or two years," says Kobayashi, "it will probably sell licenses for the technology outside the prefecture."

Economics of Scope

One Japanese construction company has probably spent more on research and development in residential construction during the last decade than the entire Canadian residential building industry has during the last century. The Misawa Corporation, the largest home builder in the world with well over 350,000 houses built the old way, is now producing ceramic homes at its Nagoya plant. These homes are guaranteed for twenty years, require no fire insurance, and incorporate technologies and research findings unknown in the west. To put it simply, sand (silicon and limestone) goes in one end of the production plant and a house comes out the other. On-site erection time is around 2.5 hours. The three-story houses run from twelve hundred to eighteen hundred square feet.
More importantly, Misawa has conquered "economies of scope." These are not the economies of scale of the Industrial Age -- whereby you can make ten thousand identical homes more cheaply per unit than you can make ten -- but economies of scope that permit the construction of ten thousand different homes at almost the same price per house that it costs to produce ten thousand identical homes! It's all in the computer software and the five-story production building. Refrigerators in these homes are still in the kitchen, but the irritating hum of the motor has been removed -- and placed in the garage, where the heat from the motor keeps the car warm. Other features include fiber-optic cabling for the home computer system and sensors that exchange shower humidity for cooler, dryer outside air when required.
In the commercial construction of hotels, office buildings, and apartments, another astonishing development has come from the Ohbayashi Corporation of Osaka. They build the first floor of such buildings, and then that floor (in reality a robot) builds the rest of the structure! The only humans constantly involved in the actual building process are those in the control tower monitoring computer operations -- operations that continue twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, uninterrupted by labor or weather problems. Think of the dramatic savings in short-term financing costs alone.
In another development, the La Foret Engineering and Information Service Company of Tokyo has already provided seventy-five installations worldwide (most in Japan) with their himawari (Japanese for sunflower) zero-voltage interior illumination system. The company has erected satellite-like rotating dishes that each contain a packed cluster of Fresnel lenses. These dishes follow the movement of the sun, collecting and intensifying sunlight and feeding it through fiber-optic cables to building interiors. Along the way they subject the light to a "light-shift," removing the harmful ultraviolet rays, converting the infrared to heat if desired, and bringing only "pure" sunlight to the people and plants in the buildings. The benefits? Cheaper cabling, lower insurance, much longer cable runs without power boosters, a cleaner, maintenance-free installation, and no risk of short circuits. I don't know of a single North American construction company taking advantage of this technologically superior system.

Robotic Construction

The arrival of robots and automation on the factory floor signaled the beginning of the decline of union power. Computers marched into the office and increased the productivity of (remaining) office workers. Now comes the most dramatic production development yet -- office buildings, apartments, and hotels built by a robot.
As mentioned, Ohbayashi Corporation introduced early in 1990 the world's first virtually workerless automatic construction machine. Robots have been used in the Japanese construction industry for some time, but only the single job/single robot type. Ohbayashi's revolutionary concept involves robotization of the entire construction system. Known as the Fully Automatic Building Construction System (FABCS), it is protected under six patents.
All components of the new building -- pillars, beams, external wall panels, internal partitions, ceilings, floor slabs, and other units -- are factory-produced to precise specifications. Components are stored in a warehouse near the assembly site or underneath the robot machine. Inside the warehouse, self-propelled stacker cranes convey components horizontally or vertically to position. As assembly progresses, preprogrammed cranes retrieve the right parts at the right time and stack them on conveyor cars.
The heart of the system is the Super Construction Floor (SCF), an automated factory with walls and a roof. Identical numbers of pillars are located at the exact spot and angle as called for in the building design. Each pillar contains a hydraulic cylinder, which supports the SCF and lifts it up to the next level when a floor has been completed.
Inside the SCF, overhead cranes cover the entire floor. Each crane has its own complement of robots: assembly robots, welding robots, inspection robots, exterior panel installation robots, interior component placement robots, and so forth. Robots and cranes are computer-controlled from the control room on top of the SCF, assuring precision and accuracy in placement and assembly. Self-propelled conveyor cars and elevators carry components and materials automatically to the assembly site.
When the SCF starts first-floor assembly, hydraulic cylinders on its pillars are extended so the SCF stands one story off the ground. When pillars transported by crane to the assembly point arrive, all the original pillars retract individually into the SCF, making room for the new pillar. The pillar is then welded to the base by the welding robot.
When all pillars are attached, beams, floor slabs, wall panels, and interior material are automatically added by the overhead cranes and their associated robots. Once the floor is complete, the hydraulic cylinders are extended, raising the SCF up one more floor. The process is repeated until the building is completed.
Completely workerless, the FABCS is not subject to labor shortages or disruptions. Dangerous work is done by the robots, so on-site safety is enhanced, with no workers' compensation premiums or claims necessary. The temporary structures and scaffolding required is limited. Noise pollution on the site is minimal. Operations are not affected by adverse weather conditions. Working seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, these nonstop operations result in rapid completion and lower financing costs. Prefabricated components and materials mean increased precision and quality. Design, estimates, and execution are done through the Computer-aided Design and Computer-aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) system. The fabrication of such components will create new industries.
Ohbayashi points out that each building must be designed with this type of automated construction in mind. Each floor must be the same size, but varying interiors are possible. Most economical are high-rise buildings that require repeated executions of the same procedures. Thus, high-rise residential buildings, office buildings, and hotels are the most appropriate uses.
Ohbayashi considers the FABCS just the beginning. Long-range plans include even taller high-rise buildings and eventually construction of a lunar city. This company is thinking ahead. North America, meanwhile, steadfastly refuses to keep pace. Last year alone the Japanese installed more robots than have been installed in all of North America since robots were first developed.

Island of Innovation

Here's an example of the creativity that made America great in the past, but which is now more common in Asia. A "convertible" building has opened in Tokyo. Owned by IBA Inc. of Japan, the building is a hotel by night and offices by day. The basic business of hotels, of course, is providing overnight accommodation for travelers. IBA found the daytime emptiness unproductive and unnerving. What to do? IBA decided to end the hotel operations in the morning when most travelers leave and do a fast conversion to daytime office space. Nighttime beds are transformed into office couches, and secretarial help and office equipment replace room service and the ever-present Japanese massage.
Does the constant stream of hotel guests and office personnel ever get confusing? A simple solution prevents that. The magnetic hotel-entrance card won't let guests into hotel rooms until darkness falls. An early morning wake-up call gets them moving. (If you sleep in too late, you might wake up and wonder if you're dreaming.) In reality, of course, staff make sure rooms are ready well in advance of the switch. A hotel that last year grossed $5 million has almost doubled its gross income.
Another Japanese innovation is the artificial "island." This huge edifice, being designed by the Taisei Corporation of Tokyo in the shape of a seagull (and named "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"), will operate from a single-point mooring system adaptable to water depths from 150 to 500 feet. Engineering ensures that the island will always face oncoming wave action regardless of changing wind direction.
Such mobility guarantees that the sixteen fish farms located in the lee of the construction "wings" will always be in calm waters. The constantly changing ocean habitat will closely resemble the natural wild fish habitat. This prevents the pollution prevalent in the slow-moving waters of most shore-based fish farms, which can cause oxygen-deprivation, algal bloom confinement, and other ills. Expensive feeding costs associated with land-based, coastal fish farms will be eliminated because natural water-borne food will flow continuously through the fish farms of the artificial island.
The $450 million structure is about the size of ten jumbo jets. Floor space covers 560,000 square feet on eight floors, three of them below sea level. The island will contain a one thousand-room hotel with connected shopping arcade, convention center, marina, aquarium, and the world's first floating in-house sightseeing submarine base. It will also incorporate an ocean research institute, entertainment facilities, and a heliport. A pier twenty-six hundred feet long is designed to accommodate eighty fishing boats, and two hundred rooms will accommodate their crews.
The structure is large enough to ride out, in relative calm, the typhoons prevalent in the seas surrounding Japan. In fact, the higher the seas, the lower the operating cost. A wave power extractor and electrical generators, which will always face the wind, will absorb energy from oncoming waves and convert it into electrical power for the floating island while reducing the height of the waves. Overall island movement is estimated to be less than half an inch, even in waves up to ten feet high. Propulsion units will provide a steadying influence against changing tidal currents, waves, and wind.

Tokyo's Underland

That's not the end of the Taisei Corporation's original initiatives. Besides artificial islands, the company is a pioneer in the development of underground facilities. When land cost was in the millions per acre, it cost two to three times as much to build underground as on the surface, so few did. Not long ago an acre of land sold in Tokyo for more than a billion dollars, which means building underground is now relatively cheap, an idea whose time has come.
The Taisei Corporation has designed the self-contained "Alice City" (as in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland), an underground metropolis designed for the twenty-four-hour-a-day twenty-first century. With the Taisei plan, underground space can be effectively used for many purposes. For instance, there are a large number of above-ground installations that would be more effective underground, such as power stations, warehouses, railway yards, and some specialized manufacturing facilities. The plan does not stop there. It calls for an elaborate infrastructure, including office and town space. In the infrastructure areas, the plan includes power generation, regional heating, waste recycling, and sewage treatment facilities. Such underground space can be spherical or cylinder-shaped.
Office space will house business operations, shopping malls, hotels, theaters, and sports arenas. Express elevators or an extension of an underground railway system will run to the bottom level. Solar domes or atrium space will eliminate any feeling of claustrophobia. As some office, commercial, and entertainment areas move underground, a ten-minute vertical commute may replace a two-hour run from the Tokyo suburbs.
An underground city has many advantages. Heating costs for the entire city are almost totally eliminated, along with the resulting pollution. The constant natural underground temperature allows the heat provided by the city's inhabitants and machines to be collected, filtered, vented, and sold to the buildings above ground at competitive rates.
Underground space is ideal for any city's infrastructure from the standpoints of isolation, sound insulation, and earthquake resistance. A side benefit is the preservation of the above-ground environment. How will people deal with the "depressing" feeling associated with subterranean development? Anyone who has seen the $2,500-a-second computer-generated graphics at Toronto's underground "Tour of the Universe" theater knows that you can very quickly forget you are underground when such holographic-type vistas are visible outside the window.
Construction costs have been carefully studied: a twelve-floor office space (260 feet deep) would cost about $577 million, and a 260-foot diameter and 200-foot-high infrastructure space with its base placed 530 feet below ground would run about $692 million. Total cost for a city of 100,000 inhabitants is estimated at $4 billion. A lot of money, you say? It's rumored to be roughly half the asking price of one other surface acre on Tokyo's Ginza strip!
To the Japanese, who have unbridled enthusiasm for the twenty-first century, underground development means more than just a few projects in their own country for today and tomorrow. They are well aware that the world population is going to continue to increase considerably before it slows down. Mexico City, for example, is projected to reach a population of thirty million within a decade. Other world centers face similar problems. With the experience gained in building the world's first underground cities, who will have the engineering know-how to capture such contracts when other world cities reach the density and land costs that make underground development economic? The Japanese, of course, whose actions today are usually based on their understanding of tomorrow.

Ski Tokyo?

Kazunobu Abe, chief architect for the huge Kajima Corporation, has sent me the outline, plans, and pictures for his new artificial reality "indoor skiing resort." It's called Urban Slalom, and there's nothing in the world like it. How would you like to try "hot-dogging" on the moon -- or over Manhattan -- or even through a tropical plantation? Technology makes it possible.
Abe is building a mountain in downtown Tokyo. He's putting a 200-foot-high, 30,000-square-foot building over it (with a floor area of 100,000 square feet) and making it snow inside! It will be an all-season, all-weather indoor ski resort in the heart of one of the world's most expensive, bustling cities. (Another is also planned for Osaka.) It will be a recreational resort to boggle the imagination.
Years ago, at the Boeing Research Center in Seattle, I "flew" the Lunar Lander in a simulated setting. It was an off-world version of the flight simulator used by major airlines to train air crews. The seeming "reality" of the experience can only be appreciated at first hand. Urban Slalom will be a further outgrowth of the same illusionary technique.
With the Japanese government urging its legendarily hard-working citizens to increase their leisure time and activities, and with economic, health, and social indicators worldwide pointing to increased attention to lifestyle, Abe is clearly onto something. And he is not limiting his scope to his own country. The plan could easily be adapted to the Caribbean or Saudi Arabia.
Urban Slalom has three ski runs (at least one with a sixteen-hundred-foot straight or spiral path). All have a base of five to eight inches of scientifically controlled powder snow laid down by nine machines. Using the latest reflection techniques (spatial dramatization), resortlike (and other) images will show on the surrounding walls. Courses of varying lengths and slope angles -- 5� to 30� -- provide introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses. Lifts quickly carry skiers back to the top of the "mountain" for maximum skiing time. The complex also includes fashion, gourmet, and physical fitness facilities. But the highlight may be a swimming pool that you can ski right into! Also included will be a communications salon and a golf school and driving range.
The Kajima Corporation hopes to create a sports complex that is an extension of everyday life, not something people would do just for a week or a couple of weekends a year, but that would make skiing in downtown Tokyo more like playing tennis or going to the theater. Skiing would become a sport where most of your time is spent enjoying your leisure, not fighting traffic trying to get to the slopes. One key marketing target group is middle-aged women, who in Japan now have the money and time to do what they couldn't in their earlier years.
The themes stressed time and again in Abe's plans and promotional material are quality and service. I expect the world will beat a path to his door, but he probably won't be home. He'll be out pushing the concept worldwide. I bet you'll find one of these artificial reality resorts in many of the world's major cities by the start of the third millennium.

Robotized Stores

Think robotized supermarkets are a thing of the future? The Japanese supermarket chain Seiyu is already into the tenth year of operation of its ultra computerized store -- the first in the world -- in the Nokendai section of Tokyo. The store features standard high technology: automated billing, accounting, inventory control, and robots to handle the merchandise. But would you expect an "Information Salon" where parents can leave their children while they shop? Kids can learn English in a "Star Words" game or be guided by an actual Masai chief (on a laser videodisk system) in a search for animals in "Jungle Game." Children as young as three, along with their sometimes computer-illiterate parents, are introduced to the educational uses of computers and knowledge-enhancing videodisks. The salon also has a piano-playing robot, and another robot that puts jigsaw puzzles together.
The concept could change retailing forever. According to Seiyu President Seiji Tsutsumi, the focus is now where it belongs: "on the person-to-person relationship between customer and retailer." Clerks now actually help the shopper instead of carrying crates of lettuce or stacking shelves. No humans are involved in that process. Everything from unloading trucks to stocking shelves is done at night, by robot, when the store is empty. Videotapes of the robots' night actions are played for customers' education the next day. The stockroom keeps track of every sale, re-ordering according to past demands based on day, time, season, and product.
The automated process begins outside. The parking robot opens the gate and hands you a magnetic-tape parking card. If you hold a credit card from the supermarket's parent company, Saison, you require no cash. The charge is added to your account. A "Cosmo Planet" robot welcomes you at the door. You might expect the speech but not the change in facial expression as the robot greets each shopper. This robot was the official mascot of Expo 85 held in Tsukuba.
Prices for each item are clearly shown by light-emitting diode displays. They are updated daily by the central computer. As the shopper's hand reaches for an item, an infrared sensor detects the hand and gives a recorded description of the item being selected. Roving robots announce specials and new products. A recipe-information system can do an 850-item search at the request of the family cook. Nutrition evaluation services and household programming services are imminent.
The meat section is the high-tech star of the store. The shopper views, from the outside, a robot-operated, self-enclosed, sanitary environment. After selecting the cut of meat, the thickness, and the number of slices, the shopper is shown the price and can then accept or reject the order. If satisfactory, the order is sliced, weighed, wrapped, and priced. Meanwhile a female voice explains everything in the thirty to forty-five seconds taken by the whole process.
Behind the scenes a computer handles all the requirements for a store that receives 6,000 customers each day: lighting, air conditioning, freezers, and sterile kitchens. More than 150 sensors handle security, disaster warnings, and other systems, while a spray-mist system sterilizes the food-processing area.
Never happen here, you say? If you think not, you're probably one of those people who believed that blacksmiths, steam engineers and milkmen had job security. What about the argument that people will always want the personal touch, and that automation is too impersonal? At Seiyu, one store executive told me that sales at this store are well above those at their non-robotized outlets, partly because clerks can now really provide personal attention to the customer.

Marine Ranching

During the construction of the 1985 world exposition at Tsukuba, Japan, I watched workmen erect the first himawari (designed by Kei Mori). During a later trip to Japan, I saw it work. The himawari helped one ordinary -- not genetically altered -- tomato seed turn into a "tree" fifteen feet high and thirty feet across that produced fifteen thousand tomatoes during a six-month period. This giant tomato plant was inside, in the shade!
Dr. Mori has not taken early retirement. He has opened his himawari -- Japanese for sunflower -- to new worlds. Not content with bringing a new, ultraviolet-free form of healthful sunshine to house and building interiors, Dr. Mori has now embarked on one of the most revolutionary concepts to come out of Japan: to move the sun to the bottom of the sea.
As mentioned, the himawari is a cluster of Fresnel lenses about seven feet wide, enclosed in an acrylic ball, and sitting on a rotating frame that tracks the sun. This surrounding ball filters out the majority of harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. The "pure" sunlight is concentrated through the lens and directed, via fiber-optic cables, to an interior, darkened area where the sunlight is released (Dr. Mori speaks of "value-added solar rays"). This can be a residence, an office tower, an industrial plant, a hothouse, or a mine. No longer is this experimental: 146 patents have been approved and another 322 are pending. There are now more than fifty completed installations worldwide, the majority in Japan.
The most recent conceptual jump was the idea of carrying this sunlight to the ocean floor. Dr. Mori recently presented this concept at the first annual meeting of the Japan Institute for Macro-engineering. He outlined his idea for a "marine ranch." It would even be viable under the floating cities now being considered for the ocean off Japan.
On the piers anchoring such a floating city (at least thirty feet below the surface and above the seabed), observation corridors would be arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Photosynthetic chlorella culture tanks would hang from the corridors. With sunlight directed through fiber-optic cables from Mori's "optical radiator" onto these tanks, food would grow rapidly as the tanks are continually fed nutrients from the rich lower stratum of the sea. As part of this process, the ocean-ranch system would alleviate the stratification problem that affects all large bodies of water, especially in the summer.
At an optimum time the tanks would be discharged, pouring the mature chlorella algae into the surrounding area for the benefit of the lower levels of the food chain. With the increasing abundance of such food, higher levels of the aquatic food chain would also proliferate. First smaller, then larger fish would be attracted to the area, thus naturally restocking the sea. A more important though subtle effect is that a natural cleansing system would be created. By recycling bottom waste into higher forms of organic material, the ocean-ranch would purify the water.
The Japanese have also made great strides in raising salmon. In the late 1980s, they announced that they had raised the king (coho) salmon for the first time in captivity. Years ago they had tried the same experiments with devastating results -- half the fish died. They have finally succeeded by thinking differently and using unconventional methods.
Salmon breed in fresh water, spawn upriver, and then die. When hatched, the fry spend about a year in their freshwater habitat and then return to the sea for their growth cycle, which varies depending on species. In North America, we usually catch them as they return to spawn. We use expensive netting techniques and lots of gasoline. It isn't cost efficient, and it depletes available resources.
The Japanese tried keeping the fry in fresh water for shorter periods of time. That didn't work. Then they tried longer periods. Finally they hit upon the secret. If you keep salmon in fresh water for two years, they don't grow any larger than they did after one year, but they develop into "superfish." They swim faster and are more successful in competing for natural food.
So the Japanese released these fry into fenced-off areas called "crawls" -- salt water fjords, in effect. In just six months these fish experienced an average weight gain of 600 percent, from ten ounces to almost four pounds. It was unheard of. And their food was natural because of tidal flow through the barrier nets. The operators could check on them for disease with minimum effort. The free-swimming area was large enough to prevent seabed fouling. The grown salmon were easily harvested without damage. These higher quality fish were processed nearby immediately. Compare this to the standard technique of putting them in the ship's hold, packed with ice, to travel for two to ten days before processing.
This is not good news for the North American salmon fishery, and Japan's innovations do not stop there. The Japanese recently accomplished an even more remarkable feat by breeding lobsters in captivity.