Youth Japan

The march of progress, Tokyo-style: Vacuum cleaners alert you when it's time to clean. Grandmothers in kimonos bow in gratitude to their automated banking machines. Workers on a Toyota assembly line in Toyoda City vote robot co-workers into the auto workers' union. Elevators stop where you tell them to. A woman calls the Matsushita Denko kitchen design showroom to complain because her kitchen doesn't look like the model she saw in a virtual reality walk-through demonstration.

The march of progress, Tokyo-style: Vacuum cleaners alert you when it's time to clean. Grandmothers in kimonos bow in gratitude to their automated banking machines. Workers on a Toyota assembly line in Toyoda City vote robot co-workers into the auto workers' union. Elevators stop where you tell them to. A woman calls the Matsushita Denko kitchen design showroom to complain because her kitchen doesn't look like the model she saw in a virtual reality walk-through demonstration.

And now the latest news about growing up in Japan: A lot of the young don't seem to want to. On a recent drizzling afternoon, Noriko Matsumoto donned a bright silk kimono and headed over to the local public hall to participate in Coming of Age Day, the national ceremony marking the attainment of adulthood at age 20--along with the right to vote, smoke and drink. But ask her if she really wants to come of age, and the response is a wail. "Nooooooooo! " Matsumoto cried.

And now the latest news about growing up in Japan: A lot of the young don't seem to want to. On a recent drizzling afternoon, Noriko Matsumoto donned a bright silk kimono and headed over to the local public hall to participate in Coming of Age Day, the national ceremony marking the attainment of adulthood at age 20--along with the right to vote, smoke and drink. But ask her if she really wants to come of age, and the response is a wail. "Nooooooooo! " Matsumoto cried.

"The East is not much less than half the world, an infinity of an infinity of objects and vantages, every single one complex with meanings. . . ." writes artist Leo Rubinfien in "A Map of the East," the just-published book of his Asian photographs. "It is for this reason that you cannot begin from trying to describe, to merely describe, but must attempt to evoke, always evoke." What Rubinfien has sought to evoke in his images is what he reluctantly calls "innocence."

Ryo Kawamura rode his first motorcycle at age 13--without a license. Soon he was stealing bikes and rebuilding them, taking his flashy, souped-up wheels out for wild rides with friends. "Riding strange bikes, making a big noise--it's fun," says Kawamura, now 25. "It's a kind of release."

The past, though it may be dead, is seldom allowed to rest undisturbed. History is constantly being reinterpreted, sometimes to the improvement of understanding, sometimes--as political fashions change--to support a cause. Every country of course seeks to portray its past in the best possible light, as a means to inspire patriotism and to encourage national self-esteem.

When Honda opened its U.S.-based car manufacturing plant in 1979, some Japanese employees were in for a surprise--Christmas in the United States. "Not all Japanese are Christians," said Koichiro Shinagawa, director of the Honda of America Family Center, which helps Japanese auto workers and their families ease into American life. However, many Japanese were already aware of Christmas customs, learned years ago from Western missionaries, he said.

Is it literature, or pornography dressed up as cherry-blossom art? Is it a mature, modern interpretation of a classic Japanese lovers' tale, or a stereotype-laden tour of the dark side of sexual passion? American readers will be able to decide for themselves this month when "A Lost Paradise," an English translation of the controversial Japanese blockbuster "Shitsurakuen," hits U.S. bookstores, one of the few Japanese titles to make it across the Pacific this summer.

When Bruce Lee died in 1973 after making "Enter the Dragon," the Kung Fu master was mourned by millions. But it wasn't just movie fans who lamented the death of Asia's first global superstar. Judging from the "Black Belt" exhibition on view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Lee also had a profound impact on an entire generation of artists. David Huffman, for example, gave up on his childhood dream of becoming a professional martial arts fighter to become a painter.

It's hard to zap through the television channels anywhere on the planet without quickly running into an American program. Yakut reindeer herders in Siberia tune into rebroadcasts of NBA basketball. Richard Dean Anderson, star of the U.S. action series "MacGyver," is a hero in much of Asia, and Spanish-speaking "Los Simpsons" are a hit in South America. In some countries of Europe, U.S. programs constitute fully half the national TV fare.

More than any event since the end of World War II, the Gulf War has prompted a sea change in Japanese thinking and policy. For the first time, a realization that Japan can no longer sit on the sidelines while the United States bears the burden of tending to the world has swept the country's leadership. Fears that inaction could isolate Japan and cost the nation its American alliance--its only real security guarantee--have spurred eye-popping changes.