6/85Cost of having a car blessed at the Daishi Buddhist temple in Kawasaki, Japan: $10.77
8/85Rank of vehicles, tape recorders, and office equipment among Japan’s leading exports to the United States: 1,2,3
9/85Percentage of Nicaragua’s exports bought by Japan in 1980: 3
9/85After-tax profit margin of the average publicly held Japanese company (expressed as a percentage of sales): 1.4
Of the average publicly held U.S. company: 5.6
Percentage of goods imported by the United States that are: 68
In the United States: 32.3
7/86Amount of money Japan invests overseas each month: $7,000,000,000
8/86Percentage of Australian business executives who say the Japanese are untrustworthy and unethical: 89
1/87Number of newspapers sold each day, per 1,000 people, in the United States: 282
12/87Portion of all trading on the New York Stock Exchange this year that involved Japanese investors: 1/10
4/87Number of manufacturing plants in Tennessee owned by Japanese companies: 45
5/87Number of the ten largest banks in California that are owned by Japanese: 4
7/87Number of cars exported to Japan by West Germany in 1986: 53,916
By the United States: 2,345
10/88Number of Japanese children who have died since 1985 as a result of disciplinary beatings by school personnel: 5
Number that are American: 0
11/88Rank of “freedom” among the words that the Japanese associate most strongly with the United States: 1
In the United States: 1:10
2/88Dollars bought by Japan, Germany, and Britain in 1987 to support the currency’s value: 78,000,000,000
2/88Losses the top five Japanese insurance companies took on U.S. government securities in 1987: $13,000,000,000
4/88Percentage of Japanese cars sold in America last year that were manufactured here: 18
Percentage of cars sold in America by Chrysler last year that were manufactured overseas: 12
5/88Amount the Japanese spent last year on pinball: $55,000,000,000
Amount the Japanese spent last year on defense: $30,000,000,000
7/88Profits earned by Coca-Cola in Japan last year: $350,000,000
In the United States: $324,000,000
12/89Prize offered by Japan’s telephone company to any computer hacker who can penetrate its security system: $7,000
5/89Percentage of Japanese 16- to 18-year-olds who say they “worry very much about almost everything”: 73
5/89Percentage of Japanese overseas development assistance in 1987 that was tied to the purchase of Japanese goods: 28
Percentage of U.S. overseas development assistance in 1987 that was tied to the purchase of American goods: 55
5/89Estimated market value of all real estate in Tokyo: $8,000,000,000,000
Estimated market value of all real estate and public corporations in the United States: $8,000,000,000,000
7/89Rank of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Japan, among countries with the most industrial waste per square mile: 1,2,3
12/90Number of the 206 endowed professorships at M.I.T. that have been funded by Japanese companies: 21
2/90Percentage of the value of all foreign-owned U.S. real estate that is owned by Japanese companies: 15
Percentage of the value of all foreign-owned U.S. real estate that is owned by Canadian companies: 26
5/90Average ratio of a CEO’s salary to that of a blue-collar worker at major Japanese automobile manufacturers: 20:1
Average ratio at major US. automobile manufacturers: 192:1
In the United States: 2
7/90Ratio of Japan’s investment in Latin America to its investment in Asia: 1:1
7/90Total number of hours each school day the children of the president of Mexico spend learning Japanese: 3
10/91Percentage of Japanese who say that the Soviet Union is the greatest threat to their nation: 22
Percentage who say the United States is: 24
Percentage who rate U.S.-produced steel as “excellent”: 8
4/91Winning volume in the Japanese Annual Loud Voice Contest, held in Tokyo last December, in decibels: 115.8
8/91Estimated amount Japanese companies donated to American charities last year: $300,000,000
12/92Rank of the United States, among the world’s largest manufacturers of photovoltaic cells in 1980: 1
Rank of Japan, among the world’s largest manufacturers of photovoltaic cells today: 1
12/92Number of Korean noses cut off and taken during a 1597 Japanese invasion that were returned in November: 20,000
12/92Number of Japanese tour groups scheduled to visit the new Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minnesota, this year: 50
4/92Percentage of Japanese graduating high-school seniors who have taken at least six years of English-language classes: 100
4/92Percentage of Americans who say that the United States is “blaming Japan for its own economic problems”: 52
4/92Chances that a Japanese carsold in the United States was manufactured in the United States: 2 in 5
4/92Sales of Tupperware in Japan last year: $100,000,000
7/92Chances that a dollar loaned by a bank to a U.S. business this year will come from a Japanese bank: 1 in 10
10/93Percentage of all shares of Japanese corporate stock that is owned by other Japanese companies: 70
11/93Percentage of Japanese workers who say they would be “at a loss if given a month-long vacation”: 41
7/93Number of people arrested in Japan last year for the illegal sale or abuse of paint thinner: 21,203
7/93Ratio of Japanese schools playing the national anthem on the first day of classes in 1992 to those that did in 1985: 2:1
8/93Average value of the goods and services produced each year by a full-time Japanese worker: $38,200
Average value of the goods and services produced each year by a full-time American worker: $49,600
9/93Number of copies of The Concept of Honest Poverty sold each day in Japan since it was published last September: 2,300
1/94Price of a pair of used Air Jordans in Japan: $60
1/94Profits earned last year by two men selling used girls’ underpants from vending machines in Japan: $96,000
11/94Ratio of the number of miles driven by the Japanese to the number of miles they ride on trains each year: 2:1
12/94Sheets of uncut dollar bills bought from the Treasury Department last year for use as wrapping paper by a Japanese florist: 500
2/94Number of animals a Moscow circus left on a Japanese dock in 1992 to make room on its ship for newly bought cars: 93
6/94Number of dues-paying members of the Osaka, Japan, chapter of the Hillary Rodham Clinton Fan Club: 6
3/95Minimum price of a competition-level koi, a Japanese show carp, from Konishi Koi Farm in Hiroshima: $100,000
7/95Number of the world’s twenty largest banks that are American, Chinese, or Japanese, respectively: 0,1,11
8/95Percentage of Americans who don’t know that Hiroshima was the site of the first atomic-bomb attack: 35
Percentage who believe the attack was ordered by Richard Nixon: 1
10/96Years it took the Japanese government to apologize for using South Korean POWs as “comfort women” for its troops: 51
2/97Amount that Western Village, a Japanese theme park, spent constructing an 80-foot replica of Mount Rushmore: $30,000,000
10/98Total bad debt Japan estimates is held by its banks, expressed as a percentage of its GDP: 17.5
12/98Estimated number of Japanese who have taken a “ gospel and rhythm ” class this year at Harlem’s Memorial Baptist Church: 300
4/98Length, in feet, of a wooden penis carried through the streets of Komaki, Japan, during a spring fertility ceremony: 8.3
6/98Total value of all Japanese capital held in no-interest savings accounts or cash: $5,544,889,025,400
8/98Estimated number of firebomb-wielding live bats that the U.S. considered dropping on Japan in early 1944: 1,000,000
1/99Value of each 20,000-yen government-issued “ shopping voucher” to be received this year by 35 million Japanese: $165
5/99Average duration in hours of the stupor induced in Japanese beetles by the consumption of geraniums: 8
1/00Years after Portuguese adventurers brought guns to Japan in 1543 that Japan owned more guns than any other country: 57
1/00Estimated number of Japanese peasant uprisings in the following 268 years under the Tokugawa regime: 3,000
10/00Average number of people living per square mile in the Gaza Strip, New Jersey, and Japan, respectively: 8,000, 1,100, 828
12/00Days after his appointment last July that Japan’s top finance regulator resigned over “suspicious” payments he’d received: 26
12/00Months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that the United States enacted a complete embargo on trade with Japan: 5
4/00Estimated portion of whale, dolphin, and porpoise meat consumed in Japan last year whose pollution levels were toxic: 1/2
6/00Number of immigrants Japan would require in order to maintain its present workforce through the year 2050: 30,450,000
6/00Number of Japanese couples who used Dolly the cloned sheep in their wedding photo before researchers ended the practice: 1
6/01Holes of golf that Japan’s prime minister played after learning of February’s fatal collision of a fishing boat and a U.S. sub: 3
7/01Rank of cancer and suicide, respectively, among the top causes of death of Japanese bureaucrats last year: 1,2
11/02Ratio of Japanese killed in 1945’s U.S. atomic-bomb attacks to Iraqi children killed due to U.N. sanctions: 1:3
4/02Number of accidents the U.S. nuclear submarine that capsized a Japanese fishing boat last year has had since then: 2
7/02Number of subscribers to Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s email magazine Lionheart: 2,200,000
8/02Estimated number of survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bomb attacks in Japan now living in the United States: 1,000
1/03Ratio of kilotonnage of U.S. bombs dropped during the Gulf War to that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima: 7:1
2/03Number of deaths in 2001 that the Japanese government classified as having resulted from overwork: 143
5/03Number of Japanese children who refused to attend school last year, according to Japan’s government: 138,722
9/03Price a San Diego physicist paid at auction in June for mechanisms used to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: $167,000
6/04Decimal places to which Japanese scientists have estimated pi: 1,241,100,000,000
7/04Days after McDonald’s CEO died of a heart attack last April that the firm’s ex-CEO for Japan did the same: 2
1/05Chance that a Japanese grade-school student reports never having seen a sunrise or sunset: 1 in 2
3/05Number of homosexual penguins found in Japan’s aquariums and zoos last year: 46
9/05Number of consecutive years that the value of housing in Japan has dropped since its housing bubble burst: 14
3/06Number of copies sold in Japan since last summer of a comic book about the worthlessness of China: 180,000
3/06Chances that a Japanese person will make eye contact during conversation with another Japanese person: 2 in 5
2/07Average number of times an adult worldwide has sex each year, according to self-reporting in polls: 103
Percentage brought to trial who are convicted: 99.9
5/08Days of “heartache leave” that employees of one Japanese cosmetics company are allowed to take each year: 3