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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 4, 1992                   TAG: 9202040298
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MICHAEL HIRSH ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: TOKYO                                LENGTH: Medium

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IS JAPAN TURNING DOWN U.S. PLEAS?

The latest round of criticism of the United States from Japan's ruling elite reflects a hardening position that Tokyo has done all it can to help a nation it once revered and now more often pities.

In Japan's latest rebuke, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said Monday that U.S. workers were losing the drive "to live by the sweat of their brow" and a former Cabinet minister said Americans work only three good days a week.

The remarks suggests Tokyo feels it can't afford to bow to U.S. demands much longer. Its own economy is in a serious slowdown as well.

By making cutting remarks about U.S. economic practices, Miyazawa and his governing Liberal Democratic Party may be emphasizing a message that has come ever louder from Japan in recent months: The United States must get its own house in order.

The prime minister warned as much last fall, shortly before his election, when he told foreign reporters "almost all was done on our part that we could do" to ease Japan's chronic trade surplus.

Though they rarely have been so blunt as in Monday's parliamentarian debate, Japanese politicians had until recently grown used to criticizing U.S. economic practices with impunity. Few Americans paid much attention during the 1980s economic boom, particularly with the Cold War diverting their attention.

Japan finds itself for the first time part of a U.S. presidential race as some candidates focus on America's decline as a trading power.

The Japanese comments seem to draw from a well of rising resentment: a feeling that this image-sensitive nation, proud of its success, has taken enough abuse from its complacent postwar patron.

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