EVERETT KENNEDY BROWN/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY/ Japanese consumers, like these at an electronics store in Tokyo, are reluctant to spend because of worries about shrinking paychecks and unreliable pensions.

By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO - As recession-wary Americans adapt to a new frugality, Japan offers a peek at how frugality can take lasting hold of a consumer society, to disastrous effect.

The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning freespending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.

Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ‘80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.

The Takigasaki family in the Tokyo suburb of Nakano goes further to save a yen or two. Although the family has a comfortable amount of savings, Hiroko Takigasaki rations her vegetables. When she goes through too many in a given week, she reverts to her cost-saving standby: cabbage stew.

“You can make almost anything with some cabbage, and perhaps some potato, says Mrs.Takigasaki, 49.

Her husband has a well-paying job with the electronics giant Fujitsu, but“I don’t know when the ax will drop, she says.“Really, we need to save much, much more.

Japan eventually pulled itself out of the Lost Decade of the 1990s, thanks in part to a boom in exports to the United States and China. But even as the economy expanded, shell-shocked consumers refused to spend. Between 2001 and 2007, per-capita consumer spending rose only 0.2 percent.

Now, as exports dry up amid a worldwide collapse in demand, Japan’s economy is quickly weakening because it cannot rely on domestic consumption to pick up the slack.

In the last three months of 2008, Japan’s economy shrank at an annualized rate of 12.7 percent, the sharpest decline since the oil shocks of the 1970s.

“Japan is so dependent on exports that when overseas markets slow down, Japan’s economy teeters on collapse, said Hideo Kumano, an economist at the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.“On the surface, Japan looked like it had recovered from its Lost Decade of the 1990s. But Japan in fact entered a second Lost Decade - that of lost consumption.

The Japanese have had some good reasons to scale back spending.

Perhaps most important, the average worker’s paycheck has shrunk in recent years, even after companies rebounded and bolstered their profits.

Some 48 percent of workers age 24 or younger are temporary workers. These workers, who came of age during a tough job market, tend to shun conspicuous consumption.

“I’m not interested in big spending, says Risa Masaki, 20, a college student in Tokyo and a neighbor of the Takigasakis.“I just want a humble life.

Japan’s aging population is not helping consumption. Businesses had hoped that baby boomers would splurge their lifetime savings upon retirement, which began en masse in 2007. But that has not happened at the scale that companies had hoped.

Economists blame this slow spending on widespread distrust of Japan’s pension system, which is buckling under the weight of one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies.

“My husband is retiring in five years, and I’m very concerned, says Ms. Masaki’s mother, Naoko, 52. She says it is no relief that her husband, a public servant, can expect a hefty retirement package; pension payments could fall, and she has two unmarried children to worry about.“I want him to find another job, and work as long as he’s able, Mrs.Masaki says. We must be ready to fend for ourselves.