The Cabinet Office has introduced a mandatory national walking timetable, requiring every citizen to move at a pace of 62 steps per minute between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., after economists forecast a sharp slowdown in Japan's third-quarter economic growth. Officials said the measure would restore momentum to household spending by slowing down the time people spend in the street, where, according to ministry analysts, most of the country's unplanned purchases were failing to occur.
Inspectors from the newly created Department of Measured Movement began issuing stamped pedometer cards at major railway stations in Osaka and Nagoya on Monday. Commuters who arrive at the platform ahead of their assigned minute are asked to wait in marked waiting areas, where a ministry official reads aloud the consumer price index for ten minutes. Several department staff said the queues now extend past the stations and into adjoining convenience stores, which the ministry has classified as temporary economic zones.
Retailers have been instructed to replace their shop windows with plain grey panels, a change the ministry says will encourage shoppers to deliberate longer before entering. Restaurants in Kyoto have been given a compulsory slow-meal menu in which each dish must be eaten over forty minutes, and the ministry has begun supervising the chewing rate of diners at official lunch counters.
« We are not asking the economy to stop, » said Deputy Minister Hideo Tanabe at a press briefing. « We are asking it to think about what it is doing. » The ministry has scheduled a review of the timetable for next quarter, and has already begun drafting a second phase that would require households to eat dinner in the same posture at the same hour.