Drawing conclusions from Japanese demographics

THE REALITIES OF DEMOGRAPHICS and the aging of Japanese society are causing some people, primarily in private-sector businesses, to draw their own conclusions and act accordingly. Meanwhile, others are oblivious to the new realities because they can’t see–or don’t want to see–beyond their own front yard. The latter group might wind up regretting their failure to pay attention.

Here are some examples:

Item 1

The Nishinippon Shimbun published a survey earlier this week that revealed 58 hospitals and clinics in all seven Kyushu prefectures eliminated their pediatric wards during the period from April 2007 to April 2008. The primary reasons cited for the step included the declining number of children and a shortage of pediatricians. In contrast, 35 facilities added an internal medicine ward.

Some hospital officials pointed out the difficulties of pediatric practice. Because both parents are working in many more families than before, they take their children for medical examinations during their off hours, when most examinations are being conducted on emergency patients. It is also difficult to determine the severity of a child’s illness, and illnesses in children tend to become more severe more quickly than in adults. That means pediatricians must work longer hours without a commensurate increase in pay.

The 2004 reform of the system for medical education resulted in greater freedom for students to select their course of study. Since then, the number of medical students choosing pediatrics has sharply declined.

One hospital director also cited business factors as a reason. The remuneration for treating children is low, their diagnosis and treatment involve a lot of time and trouble, and fewer tests and drugs are ordered. Pediatrics always has been a money-loser for hospitals, but the falling population of children has spurred the elimination of the wards that treat them.

Here’s what is being left unsaid, but is perfectly obvious: Bright young medical students have drawn the conclusion that pediatrics is not a growth sector in Japan, and some hospitals think the sector is more trouble than it’s worth.

Why are pediatrics wards becoming unnecessary in some hospitals?

Item 2

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released a report for 5 May–Children’s Day–estimating the national population of children on 1 April this year. The estimate counted a record low of 17,250,000 children aged 14 or younger, down 30,000 from the previous year. The number of children in this category have declined every year since 1982, or 27 straight years. According to the ministry, this age group accounts for 13.5% of the population, one of the lowest levels in the world. This percentage has been dropping for 34 consecutive years.

On the same day, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (link also on right sidebar) reported there will be fewer than 15 million children by 2015, and they will account for less than 12% of the population. The institute said that urgent measures were needed to deal with this situation.

The institute broke down the percentages by prefecture. Tokyo had the lowest percentage with 11.7%, followed by Akita with 11.8%. This is significant because these two locations represent different population extremes. It isn’t surprising that there would be fewer children in Tokyo, a megalopolis with a high percentage of singles. But Akita is a more rural prefecture with a much smaller urban population.

The prefecture with the highest percentage of children was sunny Okinawa at 18.1%. The only one in which the percentage of children rose over the past year was Tokyo–by 0.1%.

The private sector has drawn its own conclusions from this information and is taking steps to seize their financial opportunities.

Item 3

On the same day that its report on local pediatrics wards appeared, the Nishinippon Shimbun ran a feature explaining that Kyushu Electric Power, Saibu Gas, Nishitetsu Railroad, and other big businesses in the Kyushu region are ramping up their business investments in homes for the aged by building facilities on their unused land holdings. These companies are parlaying their name recognition to create facilities that provide services similar to those of hotels. Some are assisted care facilities that require initial payments ranging from several hundred thousand yen to several million yen, and a few upscale institutions require initial entry payments of more than 100 million yen (about US$ 952,000).

A facility built in Fukuoka City by Saibu Gas has 122 units on 24 floors with Italian furniture in every unit and a natural hot spring on the premises. The minimum entry fee is 30 million yen. It opened in 2006 and is now 40% occupied. Two of those units carried the 100-million-yen price tag.

The extreme aging of society

Recall that the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research forecast that children aged 14 and younger would account for less than 12% of the population in seven years. Statistics from the institute’s website also show that the percentage of Japan’s population aged 75 and older rose from 1.4% in 1930 to 4.7% in 1995 and to 8.8% in 2004.

Everyone knows the reasons for this: the Japanese are a healthier people to begin with, and they are living longer as a result of the advances in medical science.

That means the day there are more people aged 75 in Japan than those younger than 15 is just over the horizon. How far away is it? We might be able to count the years on our fingers, with a few toes thrown in.

To its credit, the Japanese government drew its own conclusions about this situation a long time ago. Japan’s semi-socialized medical system provides exceptional care with few of the drawbacks of the systems in Canada or Great Britain, for example. Until recently, the elderly were required to pay just 10% of their costs, and those who were registered as dependents of employed children (not unusual in this East Asian country) were exempt from payments altogether.

Considering the general abundance of modern life and the success of the Japanese pension system, the elderly—who are naturally the primary consumers of health care—had quite a deal for themselves.

But the country is in a difficult fiscal situation: gross public debt is more than 170% of GDP and is expected to continue to rise. More old people are using more health care resources paid for by public funds. And the tax-paying population is going to decline in the future, not grow.

The government began planning changes in the system a few years ago, and they inaugurated the new system on 1 April this year. Those people aged 75 and older will be required to be responsible for their own health care costs (though this has been purposely delayed to limit the political backlash), and there was a marginal increase in the monthly payments.

It’s difficult to blame anyone for the inevitable uproar that resulted.

Gray anger

The government is trying to keep outlays from getting out of hand. It’s not unreasonable to expect people to assume more responsibility for their health care, particularly when the system is so generous and affordable to begin with.

People who have ceded their responsibility for the basic functions of life to the government are not going to act their age when that government tells them fairness requires they start assuming more personal responsibility.

As the novelist Upton Sinclair once observed, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Replace salary here with benefits, and the statement describes the reaction of many Japanese elderly to the new system.

One old man on the street interviewed for national television blustered for the camera that it was as if the government was telling him it hoped he died early. In fact, some people have started calling this the “hurry up and die” insurance system.

The reaction was so intense it was cited as one of the reasons for the defeat of the ruling party’s candidate in a by-election for a lower house seat in Yamaguchi.

Yes, that is blubbering selfish stupidity, but no one seems anxious to set them straight. Indeed, no one explained the new system to them to begin with. Discussions about the reforms became public around the time the war in Iraq started, and the mass media, being an entertainment enterprise, knows it’s more entertaining when people die, preferably in explosions. Instead of covering a development that involved all Japanese, they devoted their time and resources to covering a story that involved almost no Japanese.

And when it became a public issue, the media chose to fan the political flames and turn it a potential election issue between the ruling party and the opposition rather than discuss it in a reasonable way.

Meanwhile, the Japanese government is not known for the ability to communicate with its citizens.

Failing to connect the dots

The only ones who seem to be unable to draw any conclusions are those people over the age of 75, though they are probably hiding their eyes deliberately. The government is fiscally strapped. Personal liability for health care costs is low. The population is rapidly aging, and more elderly are using health care services more often. The number of children is rapidly declining, which means the pool of potential taxpayers to pay the bills is shrinking.

And yen trees don’t grow in the gardens of Nagata-cho.

Responding to the criticism, Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo said the government would study ways to alleviate the burden on the lower-income elderly using funds from the national budget, but the new system would remain in place.

The contours of future developments are not difficult to make out, however. As health care costs continue to rise in tandem with the number of late-stage elderly, the older citizens will exercise their right to vote until they find a party that will shelter them from financial reality.

There will be no shortage of politicians volunteering for the task.

But that will inevitably place a larger financial burden on an increasingly smaller group of younger people who are employed. As with other social welfare programs, the Japanese health care system shares the same characteristics as a pyramid scheme—it requires a growing population to sustain, and that’s no longer possible in Japan. The taxpaying population won’t put up with it forever, and one day they will demand tax relief, perhaps with an American-style taxpayer revolt.

In that scenario, the logical first step would be to ration health care. Arguments in favor of that step already are being made elsewhere. As this article points out:

(In the book Setting Limits, author Daniel) Callahan proposed that the government refuse to pay for life-extending medical care for individuals beyond the age of 70 or 80, and only pay for routine care aimed at relieving their pain.

As we’ve seen, some people have been calling the new Japanese health care plan for the late-stage elderly the “hurry up and die” system. Of course that’s just silly, but it’s time those people started drawing conclusions of their own.

Otherwise, before too long, they might find that the rest of society really has begun to wish they would hurry up and die.

Ram jam city

EVERY ONE of the following statements that appeared in recent news articles is incorrect.

Reuters, 2 May

In a poll carried out after the government rammed a bill through parliament reinstating the gasoline tax from May 1…

Bloomberg, 2 May

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s ruling coalition pushed through revenue bills that will reinstate a gasoline tax…

AFP 2 May

Fukuda, concerned about a budget shortfall, rammed through parliament bills to reimpose a petrol tax that had expired, under pressure from the opposition.

Radio Australia 2 May

The bill which was rammed through parliament reinstates the 24 US cent tax. (sic)

The only way anyone can state that the bills were “rammed through” the Diet is if one is under the impression that minority parties in a parliamentary chamber should be encouraged to sign off on any legislation they oppose before it can be passed.

It’s as if these news outlets think the democratic deal is for all legislators to hold up their identification badges and vote in a display of unity for whatever idea the Great Man happens to be peddling at the time. That’s standard operating procedure in North Korea, and was in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Soviet Politburo. But some in the news media seem not to have noticed that’s not how it works in a modern democracy.

American Presidents can veto legislation they don’t care for, but if the Congress insists, it can override that veto with a two-thirds vote, and the bill becomes law. When a veto is overridden there, however, no one talks about how Congress “rammed the bill through”. The New York Times, an unrelenting opponent of the President, dealt with an override of a Bush veto this way.

Here’s the deal: If Japan’s upper house rejects a bill passed by the lower house, or ignores it for 60 days (which is what happened in this instance), the lower house can pass the bill a second time with a two-thirds majority of the members present, and it becomes law.

It’s all right there in the Constitution.

So what the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party did was simply follow Constitutional procedures. They reintroduced the bill into the lower house and passed it on a straight up-or-down vote.

No one in the opposition was locked out of the chamber, stripped of their credentials, had the safety of their family threatened, had their genitals taped to electrodes, or was taken outside and shot.

Of course they got all hot and bothered, but it’s a bit rich to complain about constitutionally correct behavior–particularly if the legislator who would complain is one who supports the policy of “defending the Constitution” to prevent the amendment of Article 9, the so-called Peace Clause.

Perhaps for some folks constitutional law is like a restaurant menu.

Now, this does not mean that anyone has to like the legislation or the fact that the tax was restored in this manner (and most Japanese voters don’t). And you can be sure the opposition will try to win votes in the next election by reminding the voters of LDP behavior (and they are sure to win some.)

But it was a simple legislative procedure. No one was strong-armed and no one is torching Toyotas in the streets.

What is does mean, however, is that the print and broadcast media would rather titillate their consumers rather than stick to reporting the facts and nothing but the facts in a news report, and leaving their Hemingway imitations for the op-ed page.

Here it is again: If your knowledge of Japan is derived from what you see, read, or hear in the Western media, then everything you know is wrong.

Yasukuni: The movie

HERE’S A CASE in which some politicians are getting it right, but for all the wrong reasons.

The case involves the incipient controversy over the documentary film Yasukuni, directed by Li Ying and slated for release on 12 April. The film has become controversial because to make it the producers received a 7.5 million yen subsidy (slightly less than $US 73,000) from the Japan Arts Council, an independent administrative body under the jurisdiction of the Agency for Cultural Affairs. One condition for receiving a JAC film subsidy is the absence of intent to deliver a political message. Some members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party think the movie fails to meet that condition, and the party’s Research Commission on Culture and Tradition plans to look into the subsidy system.

The movie, which was 10 years in production, focuses on a master swordsmith who made the so-called Yasukuni sword on the shrine grounds. The Japan Arts Council subsidy comes from a special fund that uses money provided by the Japanese government.

Politicians Object

An association of young LDP members, chaired by lower house representative Inada Tomomi, asked the Agency for Cultural Affairs whether the financial support was appropriate. This prompted the distributor, Argo Pictures, to hold a “special emergency screening” for members of both the ruling and opposition parties, and about 40 showed up to watch.

After the screening, the LDP association met at party headquarters with a different group of young LDP parliamentarians with a long and cumbersome name that doesn’t translate comfortably into English but clearly expresses their aim of encouraging politicians to visit the Yasukuni shrine.

They certainly didn’t like what they saw. Some who attended the meeting objected to the use in the film of statements by two plaintiffs in a suit against former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro for visiting the shrine. The plaintiffs charged in their suit that the prime minister’s visits were unconstitutional.

Further complicating matters is the additional condition that only Japanese films are eligible for subsidies. Upper house MP Nishida Shoji wondered whether the film met that condition because it was a joint production with a Chinese company.

Ms. Inada later commented:

“I don’t feel like critiquing the content of the film because the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, but I have doubts that a government-affiliated organization should be providing subsidies to a film that deals with the political topic of the Yasukuni Shrine.”

Incidentally, both the Japan Arts Council and the Agency for Cultural Affairs think they followed the proper procedures for the grant, though a spokesman said there were bound to be different views on the film because it was a documentary.

Of course their views can be dismissed out of hand: they’re trying to justify their decision regardless of the merits of the case because they have to justify their existence. If they don’t have any largesse to hand out for film-making, there’s no reason for them to have a job.

The Real Issue

It’s reasonable to assume that Ms. Inada and the other Diet members who object to the funding do so because they disagree with the opinions they saw expressed in the movie. But would they be as anxious to make this an issue if the people making comments on Yasukuni visits in the film were supporters of those visits?

The opinions–whatever they are–shouldn’t make any difference either way. Those who oppose the Yasukuni visits should also be at the front of the line objecting to any government subsidies for the movie. The failure to object on principle lowers the debate to the level of cheerleading for the home team, which misses the point.

It’s a shame that Ms. Inada didn’t take that thought about Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression further, because that’s the crux of the matter.

The reason the government isn’t supposed to fund political opinions in a movie—or any medium at all—is because it violates the right of free speech and expression for any taxpayer who disagrees with that opinion.

The right of free speech includes more than the right to be able to stand up in a public place and say the government is wrong.

It also includes the right to keep one’s mouth shut and not express any opinion. Presumably, many of the people who would object to politicians visiting Yasukuni would also object to, say, the Tokyo Metropolitan District’s policy of having school teachers sing or play the national anthem. Some school teachers have been suing the TMD government because they think the policy deprives them of the opportunity to exercise their rights by forcing them to express what they don’t believe in.

Is it wrong to make a person sign a loyalty oath? If so, it’s just as wrong to force taxpayers to subsidize political opinions they dislike. After all, the taxpayers don’t have any choice in whether they have to pay the taxes, from which government agencies receive their funds, and the uses to which those agencies put those funds.

In this case, the government is forcing some people to pay for the expression of a political opinion with which they disagree. There are many things a government has no business doing, and that’s just one of them.

It’s unfortunate, but the most important argument in this debate is the one you’re least likely to hear.

Sentaku: Getting Japan to choose

日本を今一度せんたくいたし申候
I want to clean up Japan once and for all.
- Sakamoto Ryoma

THERE’S A REASON the activist group Sentaku chose this statement by Sakamoto Ryoma (1834-1867), a citizen-activist himself, as the inspiration for its activities and the name of its organization. Sentaku in Japanese means both to choose and to clean. (They are homonyms.)

Sakamoto lived during a time of yeasty ferment in Japanese history—the old order had succumbed to entropy, and a new order was struggling to be born. When Commodore Perry brought his black ships into Tokyo Bay in 1853, Japan was a technologically backward nation whose political structure was the very essence of top-down rule. It had been governed for 250 years by the Tokugawa shoguns, hereditary military dictators who strictly enforced the country’s isolation. Local government consisted of about 260 feudal domains, and an oppressive class structure stunted the nation’s growth.

A self-described “potato digger from Tosa” (now Kochi Prefecture) and a masterless samurai, Sakamoto at first wanted to expel the barbarian foreigners, but later came to admire the Western system of representative government and free trade with other nations. He played a key role in the events that led to the downfall of the Tokugawa regime when he and others convinced the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, to resign rather than face open rebellion. That finally placed Japan on the road to modernization and interaction with the world.

Sakamoto expressed the motive for his desire to make Japan choose when he write in a letter to his sister that his intent was to “clean up Japan once and for all.”

It’s Yesterday Once More

Today, Japan’s stagnant political system shares some of the characteristics of the terminal stage Shogunate that Sakamoto wished to scrub out. Entropy has had its way with the postwar paradigm of the so-called Iron Triangle: rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (the original grand coalition), the bureaucracy, and business interests working hand in glove.

This system once worked to Japan’s advantage because it allowed the country to pull itself up by its bootstraps in the space of a generation from the havoc wreaked by the war and climb into the ranks of the advanced industrialized nations, creating in the process the world’s second largest economy.

But the arrangements that allowed Japan to remake itself have become an obstacle to its continued progress now that success has been achieved. No iron triangle has the flexibility to permit a country to move swiftly and freely in a modern global economy and to reap the benefits of the unfettered talents of individual citizens acting on their own behalf. Iron becomes encrusted with corrosive layers of vested interests more interested in gaining the political upper hand and feathering their own nest rather than in the national welfare.

The behavior of national government is stifling the emergence of the reforms necessary for the sustaining the country’s prosperity and well-being, and the political class at the national level is more often part of the problem rather than part of the solution. While significant elements within the ruling LDP would follow the path to reform created by its icebreaker, former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro, they are stymied by the party’s ties to the bureaucracy and vested interests.

There are reformists among the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, but the party lacks integrity in both senses of the word–it is composed of incompatible elements incapable of action as a cohesive unit without strict top-down party discipline, and its behavior in the Diet as a party seems designed only to create a Nagata-cho sturm-und-drang that would allow it to take power. Had the near-desperate electorate of Japan approved of their behavior, they would have given the party a mandate to form a government years ago.

But as in the latter days of the Tokugawas, a yeasty ferment is at work in today’s Japan that would transform Japan from the ground up.

One problem plaguing Japanese politics and society is that the traditional reliance on top-down control creates a tendency toward what the French call dirigisme, or government control and intervention, especially in business activity or the economy.

There’s no better illustration than the story former Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro told about his experience as the governor of Kumamoto Prefecture when he tried to move the location of a bus stop. “For an advanced country,” he explained, “this is embarrassing. To move the stop a few hundred meters, I had to send a delegation to Tokyo. In Japan, you can’t tie your own shoes without official permission.”

Many in Japan fed up with this state of affairs see in the current political stalemate an opportunity to finally generate a wave of reform from regional areas that would engulf and wash the center. The Sentaku group was formed with the same intention as that expressed by Sakamoto Ryoma: to clean up Japan by having it choose.

Sentaku: Choose Clean!

Officially launched on January 20, the group’s full name roughly translates to The People’s Federation for Cleaning (Choosing) Japan by the Regions and Individual Citizens.

One of the group’s founding members and its representative is Kitagawa Masayasu, who understands local Japanese politics from the inside out. A former governor of Mie Prefecture who retired voluntarily from politics after serving two terms, he is now a Waseda University professor and head of the Waseda University Political Platform Research Institute.

This is not a spur-of-the-moment commitment by Mr. Kitagawa—he has been involved with promoting bottom-up government in Japan for some years. In a speech earlier this decade, he declared:

“The excessive concentration of government and business organizations in Tokyo has resulted in a serious decline in the health of the regions. Those local governments with the intent to create reform will work together to change our social systems from the local level. Rather than fearing mistakes, it is more appropriate for us to move forward with a positive attitude and correct any mistakes. Fair competition among regional governments will surely spur our communities to engage in the reform of society.”

He is aware of the magnitude of his task. In an interview conducted a few years ago, he noted:

With local politics, it’s bad enough that the media doesn’t cover the chief executives, but they don’t even cover the prefectural assemblies. That’s both the national media and the local media.

At the Tokyo press conference held to unveil the group in January, Mr. Kitagawa explained that Sentaku was an organization for promoting true political reform for the next lower house election, expected sometime later this year. Considering Mr. Kitagawa’s long commitment to local reform and the ideas of the people he has brought on board, it seems likely that the organization’s efforts will continue after the election.

Sentaku’s parent organization is the Citizen’s Council to Create a New Japan, whose membership consists of leading figures in the private sector. That group has focused its efforts on having political parties and groups throughout the nation formulate specific policy platforms and present them to the public to offer them a choice. These goals are congruent with Mr. Kitagawa’s current efforts at the Waseda institute he heads.

At the inaugural press conference, Mr. Kitagawa seemed to be channeling Sakamoto Ryoma when he said:

“Today’s Diet is incapable of conducting debate that seeks a choice from the citizens and a systemic policy. Both the regions and the citizens still view the central government as their lord and master. We will provide a platform for encouraging serious debate among the parties and politicians.”

Specifically, Sentaku’s goals are the following:

• Reform citizen awareness, including the Japanese approach to living and working
• Achieve devolution to break free from (the ties of) the bureaucracy and central government authority and to achieve responsible political leadership
• Promote citizen debate focusing on policy that is based on regions, areas, and individual citizens, and rework the concept of the state. Cast aside the postwar democracy that leaves (policy decisions) to the politicians. Make the parties create and present specific platforms.

Mr. Kitagawa stressed that the group has no plans to endorse candidates. “We’re not a party. We’re offering a venue for debate.” He also noted Sentaku was not necessarily opposed to the idea of a grand coalition of the type discussed late last year by Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo and DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro.

Addressing Sentaku’s agenda for the immediate future, he said:

“We should have each political party present their platforms about major issues on which no agreement has been reached, and hold a general election for choosing a policy-based government.”

He also stated during the press conference:

“We are aware that this is an extremely important year that will determine Japan’s future. Yet, looking at current conditions in the government, the ruling and opposition parties, and the Diet, we are forced to say that they are far removed from the citizens’ expectations…Our past group has promoted the verification and evaluation of the platforms of the political parties, but the situation today is that those activities are insufficient. The role of Sentaku will be to seek the parties to fulfill their responsibility to explain by formulating policies and actively expressing our opinions from the citizens’ perspective in the process of creating platforms.”

The politician turned professor is not leading a solitary charge. The roster, background, and views of other founding members of the group offer an intriguing glimpse of the yeasty ferment at work at the subnational level in Japan and the diversity of the country’s political and social thought. Here are profiles of some of the members.

Matsuzawa Shigefumi

Mr. Matsuzawa is in his second term as the governor of Kanagawa Prefecture (where the city of Yokohama is located). He is a graduate of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, an academy for training a new generation of politicians with a long-term vision for the nation’s future. It was established in 1979 by Matsushita Konosuke, the founder of consumer electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial, when he became distressed by the direction of Japanese politics a generation ago.

A former member of the small Progressive Party (formed by the members of a slightly larger group who chose not to merge with the LDP), he became the youngest prefectural assembly member in Kanagawa history. Mr. Matsuzawa later joined the opposition DPJ and won election to the Diet, and was quickly enlisted into the party’s shadow cabinet. A proponent of Constitutional reform and a resolute stance against the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens, he ran against Kan Naoto for the party leadership, but lost. He left the DPJ in 2003 and won election as governor later that year. His political hero is former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Mr. Matsuzawa describes his vision for Sentaku:

“The perpetual crises generated by the two major parties are not the way to save Japan. Our objective is to have the national government implement true reform in their platforms. We will pressure the political parties to create real platforms and ask the citizens to make a choice. If devolution continues, we can smash the centralized authority of the bureaucracy and create a dynamic Japan.”

Yamada Keiji

The Governor of the Kyoto Metropolitan District, Mr. Yamada has chaired a committee in the National Governors’ Conference focusing on the devolution of governmental authority.

Furukawa Yasushi

When elected governor of Saga Prefecture in 2003, he became the youngest governor in the country. Mr. Furukawa initially entered governmental service when he joined the former Ministry of Home Affairs, now the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. He has extensive experience in working with local governments to implement reorganization and promote local development. He was asked to consider running for governor of other prefectures, including Nagano Prefecture, where he was once assigned, but returned to serve in his home prefecture of Saga.

Higashikokubaru Hideo

The bien pensant pundits of Japan are quick to dismiss Mr. Higashikokubaru (on the left in the photo) because of his previous career as a comedian and the boorish, roughhouse behavior of his younger days. A former protégé of comedian, film director, and television personality Beat Takeshi, known internationally by his original name of Takeshi Kitano, the man once known as Sonomanma Higashi was arrested in 1986 when he got carried away with himself during a visit with his boss and a few other cohorts to the offices of a weekly magazine to complain about its coverage of Mr. Kitano.

After this and several other unflattering incidents, Mr. Higashikokubaru literally decided to clean up his act. He suspended public performances, started practicing Zen, and was admitted to Waseda University in 2000. By all accounts, his academic record was superb, and he graduated in 2004 at the age of 46. The subject of his graduation thesis was election campaigns. When the former governor of Miyazaki Prefecture, Ando Tadahiro, was arrested for bribery, Mr. Higashikokubaru saw his chance and returned to his childhood home to run for office, winning handily against an LDP-backed opponent.

His ability to handle a crisis was immediately tested by an outbreak of avian flu in his largely rural prefecture, which accounts for the production of 25% of the chickens consumed in Japan. He also assumed office at a time when scandals involving slush funds were coming to light throughout the country and the Kyushu region in particular. Mr. Higashikokubaru instructed prefectural employees to come clean about any potential problems. He suceeded beyond his expectations: through his efforts the prefecture recovered roughly 91.5 million yen (about $US 883,500) generated by illegal slush funds, exceeding the 76 million yen he had targeted. The money included cash returned by the disgraced former Governor Ando and the family of the late former Governor Matsukata Suketaka

While his celebrity is undoubtedly a factor, his constituents are thrilled by his no-frills style and his tireless promotion of the products of his prefecture; at one point last year his disapproval rating was under 2%. He has become famous nationally for using a phrase in the local dialect, “Miyazaki wo dogenkasen to ikan” (We must do something about Miyazaki.)

Mr. Higashikokubaru’s current efforts mesh perfectly with the objectives of Sentaku. While campaigning for election, the governor repeatedly emphasized that his goal was to achieve political reform in the prefecture and spread those reforms nationwide. Explaining the rationale for joining the group, he said:

“I can’t see any national vision or strategy. Isn’t it time to question the approach of the country as a whole, when politics is so stagnant and confused? This (Sentaku) is not a third force between the ruling and opposition parties. Both the opposition and the government parties should offer policies easily understood by the citizens, and allow them to be the standard by which a government is chosen. I want to speak to the national government from a regional perspective.”

He also said, “The reason (the group was formed) was dissatisfaction and distrust in the national government. It will not be possible (to put) regional finances (on a solid footing) without a debate on the consumption tax. The citizens are seeking a real forum for debate.”

Some have suggested that one flaw in Sentaku’s original membership roster was their failure to include a person associated with the media. This suggestion overlooks that Mr. Higashikokubaru is a media magnet who attracts publicity with little effort. (See here, here, and here for previous Ampontan articles about the governor.)

Ikeda Morio

Mr. Ikeda is the former president and chairman of Shiseido, the major cosmetics company, and is now a senior advisor to the firm. He was a member of the so-called Education Rebuilding Council, a group established by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo for the reform of Japanese education, which was since disbanded by his successor Mr. Fukuda.

Mogi Yuzaburo

Mr. Mogi is the chairman of the food products company Kikkoman. A graduate of the Columbia School of Business in 1961, he thus became the first Japanese to be awarded an MBA. Kikkoman enjoyed extraordinary success under his leadership. Mr. Mogi believes in training people with an international perspective for the era of globalization, and thinks the key to success for Japanese enterprises abroad is to form ties with local communities and rely on local personnel instead of sending Japanese from the home office.

Koga Nobuaki

Mr. Koga is the primary representative of organized labor. He is the former President of the Japanese Electrical, Electronic and Information Union and is now an official with Rengo, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation

Sasaki Takeshi

The former president of the University of Tokyo, Mr. Sasaki’s area of specialization is the history of Western political thought. He tried to reform the structure of the university (known in Japan for its conservative approach) but was defeated for reelection. He was awarded the Japanese Medal of Honor (Medal with Purple Ribbon) for his service.

Sentaku has succeeded in attracting more reform-minded local politicians to its cause since its inauguration six weeks ago. These include:

Terata Sukeshiro

The popular governor of Akita Prefecture, he initially ran at the request of DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro when the latter headed the small New Frontier party. He won despite the opposition of the LDP, which has continued since his election.

Kada Yukiko

Shiga Prefecture Governor Kada has a doctor’s degree in agriculture and is the fifth woman to serve as the governor of a Japanese prefecture. Still in her first term, she campaigned on a platform of freezing public works projects, including the construction of six dams and a new Shinkansen station. (This stance is often a winner among the Japanese public and just as often earns the enmity of the long-entrenched political interests allied with the construction industry.)

Her political philosophy as governor is that leaders at the local level should transcend political parties and treat the prefecture’s citizens as their party, echoing the same theme presented by Mr. Higashikokubaru in Miyazaki Prefecture. Neither of the two major parties supported her during her election campaign–the DPJ, ironically, because of her opposition to the Shinkansen station. She wound up with the support of the Social Democrats, a small party that contains what is left of the former Socialist Party, and defeated the candidate backed by the LDP, the DPJ, and New Komeito.

Ms. Kada already has succeeded in freezing the construction of the Shinkansen station by refusing to prepare a budget for the related expenditures, which nearly embroiled her in a lawsuit that sought to recover damages.

Sentaku’s membership also includes the nation’s youngest mayor, 35-year-old Kunisada Isato of Sanjo, Niigata.

Joining in late February was Kojima Zenkichi, the mayor of Shizuoka City. Mr. Kojima explained that Japan was in a critical period in the second stage of reform for devolution. He said he wanted to work with the group to increase regional authority now that debate at the national level is stalled, which has created a sense of crisis among local governments. The Diet, said Mr. Kojima, is tied up in the issue of the gasoline tax and the road funds and there is little discussion reform or devolution. Sentaku, he believes, is the means to get the Diet to pay more attention.

To be fair, not every local politician is on board. Itoh Yuichiro, the governor of Kagoshima Prefecture, carped to the press, “I don’t know why (Sentaku) is necessary. It’s the job of the mass media to conduct debate regarding various issues and to create a venue for the exchange of opinions.” (Since Mr. Itoh was speaking to a reporter, it should be no surprise that his interviewer failed to follow up by asking why the mass media has so dismally failed to fulfill this function.)

Diet Liaison Group

When Sentaku was launched in January, Mr. Kitagawa also said he would seek the formation of a group consisting of members of the national Diet to work together to implement the group’s goals for the next lower house election:

We also will call on Diet members of all parties who agree with our activities and aims to form a new federation among themselves. We can provide the MPs with a platform for the debate required.

The formation of that group was announced on 3 March with the participation of 110 members from four parties, much more than the originally anticipated 70. Unlike the main Sentaku group, this is expected to be a temporary body for promoting the group’s aims in the next lower house election, expected to be held later this year.

The point was explicitly made that the Diet liaison group was not created to promote political realignment, which is the defining trend in Japanese politics at the national level and the backdrop to the tactical maneuvers of both parties that are ostensibly related to national policy. Prominent DPJ Diet member Noda Yoshihiko had this to say on his participation: “I am not one of those seeking a political realignment. I want to form a government without the LDP. I am interested in (a system) in which governments are formed alternately by the two parties.”

Kyoto Governor Yamada also explained the need for this liaison group: “The opposition of central government agencies has prevented debate on devolution. This way we can avoid the distorted connection with (the bureaucracy).”

Not everyone is sanguine about the prospects of success for the Diet liaison group. In an editorial, the Nishinippon Shimbun wondered if it would be able to focus on policy-based reform, considering that most Diet members are conducting themselves with an eye on political realignment. The newspaper also wondered whether this group would subvert the goals of Sentaku by serving as the means to accelerate the creation of alliances of politicians of different parties and lead to talks for another grand coalition. Indeed, the newspaper reported that one MP from Kyushu was instructed by his faction leader to attend the inaugural meeting for the specific purpose of confirming who was present.

Regardless of how its relationship with the Diet evolves, Sentaku now counts among its members 144 heads of local government, including 13 of the 47 prefectural governors. They have formed four committees to examine policy alternatives, including one for Diet reform and one for the reform of the bureaucracy and political leadership. The group has without question established a beachhead for itself as a vehicle for people of intelligence and accomplishment throughout the country who have long been dismayed at the inability of national politicians and other leaders to see beyond their immediate interests and recognize that without change Japan is headed toward a dead end. (Indeed, I am aware of no similar group anywhere else in the Western world; certainly no such group with anything approaching the credentials of Sentaku exists in the United States)

In the days of the post-bubble economy, the Asahi Shimbun asked executives of 200 Japanese corporations who from the past 1,000 years of world history, regardless of nationality, would be most useful in overcoming Japan’s financial crisis. The winner of the poll? Sakamoto Ryoma, the man who midwifed the birth of the modern Japanese state.

Most of the public shares Sakamoto’s desire to have the country choose a thorough cleaning, once and for all. The enthusiasm for Sentaku evinced by local politicians of different political backgrounds shows that the spirit for bottom-up reform is still alive and well.

This time, they might finish the job that Sakamoto Ryoma started.

More on the voting age in Japan

THE PREVIOUS POST reports on the debate within Japan about lowering the voting age from 20 to 18 for national referendums on Constitutional amendments. The Democratic Party of Japan, the primary opposition party, pushed for that change in the bill eventually passed by the Diet, and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan compromised on the condition that a study be conducted about the effect it would have on other laws.

According to one report, the DPJ’s position was that 18- and 19-year-olds should be enfranchised for a national referendum because a Constitutional amendment would have a greater effect on their lives than an ordinary election.

Now comes word just yesterday from the Sankei Shimbun that the officers of a DPJ committee for promoting political reform will set up a subcommittee to mull the idea of setting 18 as the age for the right to vote in all elections in Japan, as well as using the Internet in elections and ending the current ban on door-to-door election canvassing. (The latter is prohibited to prevent vote buying.)

Why the party changed its mind on the voting age (if that’s what this represents), is not known, but there are two possible reasons. The first would be to bring Japanese practices in alignment with those in other countries. That’s an argument many Japanese find intrinsically appealing. The other is that the party, with its center-left tendencies, might hope it would gain an electoral advantage from teenaged voters. (It didn’t work out that way for the Democrats in American national elections when the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18, however.)

Whatever the reason, the move by the DPJ demonstrates once again that whenever any political party anywhere says, “Just this once, and just for this purpose,” it’s safe to assume it won’t be long before they’re touting it as a universal principle.

Endnote: The party subcommittee will be chaired by Noda Yoshihiko, who has an interesting background. He was graduated from the elite Waseda University, and one of his first jobs was as an inspector for a municipal gas company. He is known as one of the most persuasive (and long-winded) speechmakers in the party.

Mr. Noda also takes an interest in science and technology, and is a member of the party’s “working team” to examine the military uses of outer space. He favors a change in the government’s Constitutional interpretation that outer space cannot be used for defensive purposes, placing him in his party’s hawkish wing.

The law of unintended consequences

THE HEADLINE ON THIS KYODO REPORT is incorrect. It reads, “Hatoyama starts debate on lowering legal age”.

Here’s the first sentence:

Justice Minister Hatoyama Kunio told an advisory board Wednesday to study the possibility of legally lowering the age of adulthood from 20 to 18.

It’s incorrect in this sense: the debate actually started last May, when the Abe administration passed a law defining the conditions for a national referendum to amend the Constitution, should one be necessary.

A voting age of 18 was incorporated into that bill at the insistence of the Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s primary opposition party.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party didn’t like the idea–and still doesn’t–but they compromised to get the legislation passed. The DPJ had a laundry list of more proposed additions, but the LDP thought they weren’t essential to the intent of the legislation and used its majority to enact the bill. Naturally, the English-language media pitched the story this way: “LDP Rams Bill Through Diet”.

As the story notes, the provisions of the bill have ramifications that extend beyond national referendums, including the drinking age and the smoking age. It fails to note, however, that they also affect other matters, such as the age for assuming legal responsibility for contracts. In fact, several hundred laws and regulations will now have to be reexamined.

Is lowering the age of adulthood a good idea? The Kyodo article quoted a doctor as suggesting the drinking age should be raised to 22. Indeed, there has been a growing awareness in America lately that for many, childhood is being extended and adulthood deferred or avoided altogether. (See here, for example, or the contrasting reviews of the book, The Death of the Grown-Up, one by the NYT, and the other by Michelle Malkin. Enterprising Googlers will find many more opinions and articles.)

Some would entertain the idea of raising the age of adulthood even higher than 22, but the necessity for most people to have full-time employment by that age makes the suggestion both impractical and unfair.

Regardless of where one stands on the issue, it is regrettable that a measure with such far-reaching consequences was adopted as part of a back-room political deal to pass legislation, without public debate or a preliminary examination of its potential effects.

But then, isn’t one sign of adulthood the awareness of the consequences of one’s actions and the willingness to take responsibility for them?

UPDATE: Here’s a more detailed look at the story by the Yomiuri.

Still, the issue has turned out to be needlessly confusing. Try this:

If the Civil Code is not revised and the referendum law’s stipulation setting the age at 18 goes into effect, people at 18 and 19 will be allowed to vote on constitutional amendments, but will not have the right to make binding contracts and take other legal steps.

And compare it to this:

In March last year, the ruling parties reached a compromise with the DPJ and agreed to change the age limit in the referendum law to 18. But the law has a clause that the age limit in a national referendum can be maintained at 20 until the legal adulthood age in other laws is lowered to 18. Thus if the adulthood age in the Civil Code is not lowered, there will be no problem in implementing the national referendum law.

This has become much too complicated for an issue of such importance.

Japan to enhance governmental support for historical preservation

THIS MIGHT BE HARD TO BELIEVE—it was for me—but the Japanese government’s financial assistance for historical preservation is rather limited. Only 10 local governments are covered under a 1966 law that restricts urban development near historical areas. Two of them, not surprisingly, are Kyoto and Nara.

There is also very little financial assistance from the national government for ensuring the survival of historical buildings through restoration and repair. As an illustration, there were 10,900 such buildings in the central part of Kanazawa, Ishikawa, in 1999, but that number had fallen to 8,700 by 2007.

This state of affairs now seems likely to change, as the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport has formulated a plan for providing financial subsidies to local governments to promote urban development that takes historical scenery into account. The ministry, the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and other government bodies will submit a bill incorporating this plan to the Diet during the current session.

According to news reports, the bill would permit local governments to apply for financial assistance for urban development plans that incorporate the preservation of scenic areas, subject to the approval of the national authorities. The government would provide from one-third to one-half of the expenses for restoring, repairing, or moving historical buildings, and for supporting traditional activities, such as festivals.

Under the terms of the legislation, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs would offer guidance for repair techniques. The bill also would simplify the procedures for converting historical buildings to other uses, such as eating or drinking places. (There’s an example of how well the Japanese handle such conversions about a 10-minute walk from my house. A 19th-century bank has been turned into a museum with a coffee shop and restaurant, and is often used for small-scale concerts.)

Two cities that stand to benefit from the legislation include the aforementioned Kanazawa and Hagi, Yamaguchi. Kanazawa is noted for Kenroku-en, a famous garden that has its own website, and a castle district with old homes. Meanwhile, see this page for an explanation of the attractions of Hagi, which include the homes of samurai and tradesmen dating from the Edo period.

In fact, some of Hagi’s attractions can be seen in the accompanying photo. Yes, they’re models, and yes, they made sure to scrub the location well before taking the picture, but I’d rather lean against a wall in that neighborhood than go to a shopping mall any day!

Japan’s economy no longer “first class”?

JUST AS THE JAPANESE ECONOMY seemed to be waking from a nearly 20-year coma as if it were a Far Eastern Rip Van Winkle comes some discouraging words from Ota Hiroko, the Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy. Delivering the government’s economic address at the start of the new Diet session (roughly an economic state of the union speech), Ms. Ota said the Japanese economy could no longer be termed “first class” despite the ongoing expansion, the country’s longest in the postwar period.

She cited as one reason for her assessment the fall in the country’s per capita gross domestic product to 18th among the 30 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2006, the sixth straight annual decline. She said the country had been left behind by the dynamic changes in the global economy, and that it had not formulated a framework for continued growth.

Ms. Ota also noted that Japan’s share of aggregate world income had fallen below 10% for the first time in 24 years.

This address provides the backdrop for what many observers think will be the most contentious issue of the current Diet session, the government’s proposal to renew a temporary surtax on fuel.

Two Gas Station Bills in a Row

The debate in the Diet between the government and the opposition has shifted from the renewal of one gas station law to another. During the extraordinary session of the legislature just ended, the Diet passed a bill resuming the Japanese contribution to NATO’s military efforts in Afghanistan by refueling their vessels in the Indian Ocean. MPs will now discuss the renewal of a tax that will determine just how much drivers will pay at the pump when they refuel their cars—and gasoline prices have soared here as they have everywhere else.

The temporary surtax was levied in 1974, nominally for just two years, to cover a shortfall in the revenue needed to pay for a five-year plan for road construction that had been implemented the year before. Japan in those days was still very much in the Era of Rapid Growth mode. But politicians everywhere are loath to abandon cash cows, so it’s no surprise that successive governments kept renewing the tax for more than 30 years (though its Japanese name still contains the word “temporary”).

The legislation authorizing the tax will expire at the end of March, which is the end of the Japanese fiscal year. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party wants to keep the tax alive, while the primary opposition group, the Democratic Party of Japan, wants to kill it.

The basic tax on gasoline is fixed at 24.3 yen per liter by law, and the temporary tax doubles that. Gasoline (in my neighborhood) sells for about 145 yen per liter, or roughly $US 5.10 per American gallon, so the levy is both a substantial revenue source and a burden on business and the consumer.

The LDP argues the measure will serve as a de facto carbon tax and help the country cut carbon emissions by reducing gasoline consumption. Meanwhile, the DPJ claims the tax hurts people with lower incomes.

Of course there’s more to it than that.

Supporters of the Status Quo

Since the tax revenue is used for road construction, extending the tax will keep the spigot open for public works projects, delighting the large construction companies. Construction industry support for the LDP over the years is one reason the party has dominated Japanese politics for so long.

One aspect of the LDP’s recent governmental reform efforts, however, has been the attempt to loosen the grip on power of the so-called Iron Triangle of interlocking interests between business interests, the party, and the government. This has naturally led some of the party’s traditional supporters in the construction industry to shift their support from the LDP to the DPJ. (Despite the DPJ’s calls for real reform, one of their strategies for gaining control of the government is to assume the role of pork distributor after the LDP abandons the field.)

Another group typical of those supporting the continuation of the “temporary tax” is an association in Kyushu formed to promote the construction of the Kyushu leg of the Shinkansen high-speed railway, now partially open and scheduled for full completion in three more years. The association’s members are not just business interests; the governors of the four prefectures through which the main route will pass are also involved and strongly support the tax measure. Their primary concern is how they’ll be able to afford the infrastructural improvements needed in conjunction with the Shinkansen, such as access roads.

And the governors of the eastern Kyushu prefectures, where the Shinkansen will not run, are anxious to see the tax retained because they were mollified with the promise of a major expressway construction project after they complained that the western part of the island was getting all the pigmeat with the Shinkansen extension.

Those Seeking Relief

Opposition to the tax is not simply populist sentiment, however. The higher fuel prices hurt small businessmen, farmers, and fishermen. One representative of the maritime industry told a regional newspaper reporter that the average income of fishermen has fallen by half over the past five years because of declining catches, and that higher fuel prices are causing even more pain. (It takes a lot of money to fill up a fishing boat’s gas tanks.)

Finding themselves in the same boat, but on dry land, are the small independent farmers who also require fuel to operate their equipment, and who, like the large construction companies, also turned their back on the LDP in last year’s upper house election to switch to the opposition for similar reasons. Finally, smaller construction companies are clamoring for cheaper gas even though they realize it will mean a commensurate decline in public works projects. The owner of a small construction company in Nagasaki told the same reporter that conditions have become so bad that several companies in his area have sold some of their vehicles.

Both sides make valid arguments, and the resolution of the matter will benefit some at the expense of others, as well as influence trends in the no-longer-first-class economy.

Because this issue is more likely than the Indian Ocean refueling issue to have a direct impact on the lower house election many observers expect to be called later this year, public opinion could be the decisive factor for resolving the debate. That would certainly be a new development for Japanese politics.

On the one hand, the business-friendly, right-of-center LDP is behaving as if it were the Green Party when it talks up the merits of the tax, while the left-of-center, labor union-backed DPJ finds itself supporting a measure that will primarily benefit small businessmen, farmers, and fishermen in the private sector in addition to the general consumer.

Perhaps that’s what they mean when they say politics makes strange bedfellows.

Japan to add language requirements for long-term visas?

FREQUENT COMMENTER MAC sent along a link to a BBC report in the comments section that was too interesting to stay buried:

Officials are investigating how a scheme adding a language requirement for long-term residency visas and work permits could be implemented.

Capital idea!

As with every question, there are of course pros and cons.

The pro:

Officials say Japan’s Foreign Minister, Komura Masahiko, has long held the view that it would be better if long-term visitor (sic) could speak Japanese. Mr Komura says…it would improve their quality of life, and society as a whole here would benefit too.

He hits the bulls-eye with the first reason.

The con:

But some here fear that requiring all foreign workers to learn Japanese before they arrive could harm Tokyo’s efforts to attract international business and to compete with other Asian cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.

Requiring language proficiency of all foreign workers would definitely cause problems for the businesses in every sector in which they are employed. It would not cause serious problems by demanding the same of long-term residents, however.

But this is the BBC, so they will find a way to cast Japan in a negative light. Here’s how they conclude their report:

Last year an opinion poll carried out for the government found that more than half the foreigners who live in areas where they mix with Japanese people would like more opportunities to interact with them. But only one in 10 of the Japanese living in the same areas wanted to talk to someone from abroad.

That raises more questions than it answers. “More than half of the foreigners”? How much more than half? This suggests that a significant percentage of foreigners don’t want any more opportunities to interact with Japanese than they already have.

If that’s the case, one has to wonder what they’re still doing here. They can’t all have been assigned to work in Japan against their wishes by their employers.

And how was that last question for Japanese worded? Were Japanese-fluent foreigners specified, or just foreigners?

If it were the latter, it would be understandable. Who wants to hang out with someone you can’t understand? (Only the adventuresome, the bored, or the inebriated.)

I doubt very much it was the former. Japanese-fluent foreigners get to talk to everybody. Most Japanese are thrilled to be able to converse with a foreigner who understands Japanese. I take a brisk, hour-long walk every morning before starting work, and I can’t count all the people I wind up talking to: The guy who runs the hardware store on the corner down the block, a young guy doing the laundry for a hote