Kazuo Wada

Four months after Chinese troops bloodily suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing's Tien An Men Square, the headquarters of Yaohan International moved from the sleepy countryside town of Numazu, Japan, to Hong Kong. The decision made Yaohan the only Japanese company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to have moved its international headquarters overseas. Yaohan Chairman Kazuo Wada, 62, said the move was religiously inspired.

Four months after Chinese troops bloodily suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing's Tien An Men Square, the headquarters of Yaohan International moved from the sleepy countryside town of Numazu, Japan, to Hong Kong. The decision made Yaohan the only Japanese company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to have moved its international headquarters overseas. Yaohan Chairman Kazuo Wada, 62, said the move was religiously inspired.

Yaohan International Co., the Japanese department store chain that has moved its headquarters to Hong Kong at a time when other firms are moving out, plans to expand into China during the 1990s. "Hong Kong is the most suitable location for expansion into Chinese markets later on," Chairman Kazuo Wada said in an interview. Wada, whose parents set up a small greengrocers store in the Japanese coastal town of Atami in 1930, sees the move into China happening in two stages.

Yaohan, a market/department store chain in the Orient and Costa Rica, has opened its first department store in the United States, along with a market, in Little Tokyo Square on Alameda Street between 3rd and 4th streets. The opening also marks the first business to open at Little Tokyo Square, the newest shopping, dining and entertainment center in the Japanese area. Tokyo Bowl, with 40 bowling lanes and a coffee shop, lounge and video-game parlor open 24 hours a day is due to open next.

A new term, Kanan Keizai-Ken (South China Economic Sphere), has begun to appear in Japanese mass media in reference to Hong Kong, Taiwan and China's Guangdong and Fujian provinces. Repeating a pattern elsewhere in Asia, Japanese investments in the area are booming--overwhelming the American position in the region and reflecting what bankers and economists see as part of a bigger shift in Japanese assets to Asia, with a relative decline in emphasis on the United States and Europe.

A young Chinese man cranks out strands of pink pasta at one counter while, at another, a woman squirts, washes and wipes a window with a three-in-one window wiper. A second man twists a plastic juice maker three times and pours out a cup of orange juice. "Look," he says, pulling out a hammer and hitting the juice maker as a curious crowd gathers. "It's very strong. I can hit it with a hammer and it won't break."

The head of Science of Happiness, Ryuho Okawa, says he is Buddha reborn, his wife was Florence Nightingale, and a Golden Age will begin in 2020. Of his "revelations," at least one seems to echo the fears of many Japanese these days: Last year, Okawa warned that Aum Supreme Truth--the cult that many suspect killed 10 people last week by releasing poison gas in a Tokyo subway--was trying to destroy the nation.