Japan looks toward new lifestyles By Dave Barrage

TOKYO--Japanese attitudes toward family, upward mobility, business and the country's relationships with other nations will undergo change in 1993, spurred by last

According to Dentsu, Japan’s domestic and foreign problems, some of which are deemed structural to the economy, will be addressed this year as the country tries to enact major social reforms under the theme “quality of society.”
A consumer society that prefers quality to quantity is on the way, as are shifts in corporate values and changes in family attitudes. In the family, for example, changing attitudes toward marriage and an increase in the number of people living alone are eroding the nuclear family, forcing the search for new family values.
So says “Japanese Trends in 1993,” a report compiled by the DIHS, a “think tank” rounded by Dentsu in 1987. The study notes that the Japanese are powerfully influenced by the collapse of the world order and international political turbulence. It said that Japan should be a driving force in this new world order by swiftly recovering from its economic slump and cooperating internationally to increase the flow of capital.
According to Dentsu, the Japanese have come to perceive quality of life as very important and that the nation must lay the social foundations required to raise living standards. This calls for structural reforms in Japanese society to create a political system that can make swift and accurate decisions. The Dentsu think tank predicts that Japan will undertake such reforms this year.
Copyright Adweek L.P. (1993)