Japanese Golf-Club Memberships Are Big Business

HIGASHI FUJI, Japan - Last month as the Tokyo Stock Exchange was plummeting in value, Fumio Takeuchi was jumping for joy.

``All I could think is that now, at last, maybe I will be able to afford a golf-club membership,'' said the Tokyo businessman.

Whoa! What do the wild fluctuations of Japan's stock market have to do with the price of golf memberships?

A lot.

Golf-club memberships are bought and sold on special trading-room floors as negotiable financial instruments, just like stocks. The nation's leading economic newspaper even calculates their collective value via something it calls the Nikkei Golf Index.

That concept was taken a step further last month when the Japan Golf Center Co. opened the nation's first golf-club membership trading floor where the buying and selling of some 400 golf memberships each day are tallied on a big board like prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

``When the Tokyo Stock Exchange fell 1,353 points on March 19 and the official discount rate was raised one percentage point the next day, sell orders of golf memberships ballooned,'' said Tsutomu Ishimura, a golf membership broker. ``People were selling off their golf memberships in order to make up losses they suffered on the stock exchange.''

Unfortunately for Japan's 12 million golfers, who must compete for time on 1,700 private and public courses, golf is not a game that just any serf can play. It is a game for corporate samurai armed with gold and platinum credit cards and huge expense accounts.

The average membership in a private golf club costs 40 million yen, or $258,065 - not exactly pocket change for Japan's hard-working middle class. And that reflects an 8 percent decline since the Tokyo Stock Market began its rapid descent in March.

``If the market drops another 10 percent, I may go get a loan for a golf membership,'' said Takeuchi, 60.

Yes, banks give loans for golf memberships. Tokai Bank, for example, will provide up to 50 million yen ($323,000) to purchase one. It charges about 9 percent for a 30-year golf-club loan.

The most expensive golf membership in Japan is the exclusive Koganei Golf Club - a vast oasis of immaculately manicured greenery near Tokyo where Takeuchi and other mere mortal golfers can only dream of flailing their niblicks and brassies alongside the likes of former Prime Ministers Yasuhiro Nakasone and Noboru Takeshita.

Why? First, there is the fixed 300-member limit. Then there is the cost of memberships - currently $2.4 million, or $300,000 less than in March and April, when the Tokyo Stock Exchange was losing almost one-fourth of its value.

Not long ago, a Japanese yakuza (gangster) don offered $3.8 million to gain entry to Koganei. He was refused.

``It wasn't because he was a yakuza,'' said one club member. ``Nobody really cares about that. It's that nobody was willing to give up their membership, even at that price.''

Any Koganei member who might have been tempted to take the $3.8 million and run (some purchased memberships 15 years ago when they went for a paltry $50,000) could, like millions of other less fortunate duffers, play on one of Japan's public or semi-private courses. Teeing off on such a course in the Tokyo area costs about 30,000 yen ($195) in green fees for one 18-hole round.

In the United States, by comparison, there are more than 13,000 golf courses, and memberships in even the most exclusive clubs are usually no more than $35,000. Green fees on public courses typically are $10 to $20.

``We Japanese consider America to be a golfer's paradise,'' said Takeuchi. ``But playing at a place like Koganei is like playing on God's private golf course.''

Most Japanese who say they ``play golf'' do so at one of the nation's 5,000 driving ranges - usually 100- or 200-meter-long, triple-decker affairs in residential areas. In land-poor urban Japan, where houses are crammed together in densely populated areas, driving ranges are encased in 100-foot-high green nylon netting designed to prevent errant golf balls from piercing the rice-paper windows and doors of neighboring homes or from beaning people on the streets.

Few of Japan's workaholic corporate soldiers are able to find the time or the money to play on a golf course more than five times a year, according to the Japan Golf Report. And things don't look as if they are about to improve.

The magazine reports that while 300 golf courses are in the planning stages, opposition to them is growing. The opponents are concerned that the courses' heavy use of insecticides and agricultural chemicals will pollute streams and ground water.

Meanwhile, Takeuchi can only sigh wistfully.

``I have a 20 handicap and I would just like to get it below 15 before I die,'' he said. ``But unless I can buy a golf-club membership I'm afraid I will be in a funeral urn before I learn to break 80 consistently.''