Want Controls Relaxed

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30668, 6 February 1965, Page 16

Want Controls Relaxed

He was speaking at an informal reception given to the mission yesterday afternoon by the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce.

As a gesture of friendship Mr Sato presented (above)

the president of the Canterbury Chamber (Mr A. R. Mackay) with a seventransistor pocket radio the size of a matchbox.

Mr Mackay asked Mr Sato why it was that no-one in Christchurch had heard the mission was coming till the afternoon before their arrival. He also asked Mr Sato why they had not brought samples of their products, and why had they not made prior contact with other Christchurch representative groups such as importers, manufacturers, and so on.

Mr Sato said the mission’s purpose was to promote the

export of various Japanese sundry goods and consumer goods, and to study the New Zealand market condition. The trip was very rushed. Identification Mr R. C. Neville of the Canterbury Chamber had great difficulty in finding out what type of firms the Japanese businessmen represented and what their products were. Initially he thought that the leader, Mr Sato, was a brewer. In fact, Mr Sato, is lawyer. One Japanese, Mr Rikio Kurihara, said his company Nosawa and Company, Ltd., bought New Zealand dairy products. Another, Mr Keigi Orikasa, of Maruzen Company, Ltd., said his company already exported marking-pencils to New Zealand. Mr Neville told the mission Japan’s goods must be good and must be cheap to have any chance of success on the New Zealand market. “At the moment no-one wants your stuff enough to make the Government relax the import control,” he said. “If you can make efforts, so our people say your products ‘are desirable,’ they will be bought. It is a matter of convincing the New Zealand consumer.”

Mr Mackay pointed to Mr Orikasa’s modern Japanese tie; and his pearl tie-pin and then ran his fingers over Mr Orikasa’s suit.

“You can’t get these things in this country,” said Mr Mackay. “Now if we can get 10,000 Japanese a year to pay us a visit, your trade or sales with New Zealand would increase 100-fold.

“They would meet a lot of New Zealanders. They would say ‘that’s a nice new suit, I’d like to be able to buy one of those in New Zealand.’ ”