While smoking rates have plunged throughout the rest of the industrialized world, Japan continues to have the highest percentages of adults who smoke: 55.2 percent of men and 13.3 percent of women in 1998. Both rates represent increases over the figures for 1997, which were 52.7 percent and 11.6 percent respectively. The rate for men is climbing back to near its postwar peak and is clearly on the increase among minors, male and female alike, even though it is ostensibly illegal for them to buy or use tobacco products.

Given this situation, it comes as no surprise that the government health bureaucracy should be embroiled in a mounting controversy over plans to reduce tobacco consumption in this country. The Health and Welfare Ministry had barely announced plans for a new campaign to reduce tobacco use by half by the year 2010 before Japan Tobacco Inc., the now-privatized giant domestic cigarette manufacturer, and industry associations representing tobacco farmers and retailers were up in arms, demanding that the target be dropped or reconsidered in view of its expected impact on their livelihoods. For the time being, the ministry is refusing to back down.

If its target is not to be considered hopelessly unrealistic, however, the steps undertaken to achieve it will have to be far more comprehensive and effective than any program to discourage smoking that the ministry has attempted so far. The proposal is part of an overall 10-year plan to improve the public's health in a number of areas, with special emphasis on the growing number of Japanese with diabetes as well as on tobacco and alcohol abuse. The smoking target was contained in a report titled "Health Japan 21" that was submitted by a subcommittee to the Health and Welfare Ministry's Council on Public Health. Official approval is anticipated by the end of the year following local hearings and solicitations of public opinion through the Internet.