Think Global, Campaign Local

Last summer's convulsions over money and political reform in Japan tore apart the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and brought down the government. In the months ahead, as Prime Minister Morihiro Hosakawa consolidates the first non-LDP government in 38 years, and opens up the prospect of a new direction for the country, the debate is certain to move beyond narrow issues of politics and process to the deep wellspring of dissatisfaction with the overall quality of Japanese life. Much of that debate will be framed by the ideas of management consultant Kenichi Ohmae.

In the political turmoil of 1993, Ohmae has offered a more systematic, more integrated - and more radical - critique of Japan than any of the country's elected officials. His complaint is fundamental and sweeping: the Japanese people are working too hard, and living too meanly, in the service of a mercantilist economic ideology that can no longer guarantee success in the international economy.

"Japan has the potential to be a much better country," says Ohmae, chairman of McKinsey & Co. in Japan, a best-selling author there and in the United States, and one of the world's best-known corporate advisers. "The numbers in the economic statistics have been great. But life has not been too great."

Ohmae's blueprint for change would reverse virtually the entire direction of Japanese policy since World War II. For years, he has urged corporations to decentralize to meet the demands of the global economy. Now he is proposing to remake his country along the same basic principles: openness, de-bureaucratization, delegation of authority.

Last fall, Ohmae launched a citizen's movement to carry these ideas from his legal pad into the law of the land. He concedes this is a large undertaking, and he doesn't want to be considered unrealistic. So he has given himself 12 years to tear down Japan and rebuild it from the ground up.

Like Ross Perot - to whom Ohmae loathes being compared - Japan's most famous consultant is an unlikely tribune of the masses. Educated at MIT, a former nuclear engineer who joined McKinsey in 1972, Ohmae is known in the United States as the author of high-impact books and articles on corporate strategy, and in particular as a guru of globalization. In Japan, he has a much broader identity. In a society virtually devoid of public intellectuals or social critics, he is both. Over the past six years, his books on reforming Japan have sold close to 2 million hardback copies, making him one of the country's best-selling and most influential authors.

Not influential enough, though. When each new book hit the stands, Ohmae says, the sitting prime minister would flatter him with a meeting to discuss his arguments. "Nakasone, Takeshita, Miyazawa, they all read my books, they all asked me to give my point of view," he told me. "I was a fool to believe those guys would actually do it. But they were so sincere. They would give me a call and say, `Ohmae-san, what should I do about this?' And you feel, as a consultant, very good. You are spitting out your wisdom, they are taking notes. But they just want to take advantage of good ideas without implementing the fundamentals."

Ohmae's frustrations finally boiled over and he took action. His organization, called the Reform of the Heisei, has twin goals: to build a nationwide constituency for reform and to elect Diet members committed to his program. It's off to a good start. Last summer, 106 of the candidates endorsed by Ohmae's group were nominated for Diet seats and 82 were elected. Those candidates came from seven different political parties.

This approach is almost unheard-of in Japan. Reform, when it comes at all, has invariably been a top-down affair; both the culture and the electoral laws discourage citizens from seeking to influence the nation's political direction in any way except by casting their ballots. Ohmae is trying to shatter that tradition. Through rallies, television appearances, even a Clintonesque bus tour, he is recruiting members across the country who will support his organization with contributions of 10,000 yen (about $90) and extend its influence.

"This is going to reshape Japan," he claims in a tone that does not invite contradiction. "Because the people want change. And you see, in Japan the silent majority is silent. They don't complain. They learn how to live within the bounds. What I am doing is to have the silent majority speak up - and now they demand what they want."

It is one small measure of the Japanese public's traditional posture toward those holding power that the language has no word for "town meeting." I learned this when I attended a town meeting of Ohmae's group one gloomy Sunday afternoon in Sendai, a city of almost 1 million about two hours north of Tokyo by bullet-train.