I Went skiing in balmy tokyo last week - indoors. to avoid throwing people out of work, a Japanese company that once built icebreakers adapted to market reversals by constructing a huge steel chute and making real powder snow inside; the subway takes you to the slope. It was surprisingly decent skiing, but even stranger than expected: chilly, windless and unnerving. Sounds like U.S.-Japan relations lately. (Sorry, for Americans visiting Japan everything's a metaphor.) Instead of the predictable, almost comfortable, noise that usually accompanies trade disputes, the latest one over cars is disturbingly quiet and cold. American officials from tough-talking trade negotiator Mickey Kantor to the usually cautious striped-pants crowd at State have moved beyond irritated to plain fed up. Japan's currency has tripled in value against the dollar in the past decade, and the cost of Japan's imports is almost unchanged. As any Econ 101 student can tell you, that's impossible without widespread market rigging through cartels and regulation. For their part, Japanese officials, especially the younger ones, have decided the usual gaiatsu (foreign pressure) game is getting tired and insulting. With no cold war to buoy it, the U.S.-Japan partnership may soon sink to sullen.
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