Category: Japan

Copyright Term Extension in Japan: Balance shifting *against* extension?

Nikkei PC Magazine reports:

Arguments for Caution at Cultural Affairs Agency Deliberation Council on Copyright Term Extension Issue
May 16, 2007

The Subcommittee for the Protection and Use of Past Copyrighted Works Etc. of the Cultural Deliberation Council’s Copyright Commission, an advisory body to the Commissioner of the Cultural Affairs Agency on the copyright term extension issue, held its 3rd meeting of 2007 on May 16.

Continuing from the previous meeting, a hearing was held consisting of 17 people including stakeholders engaging in business activities related to copyright. This time, however, moderate-thinking lawyers and academics with a background in copyright made multiple arguments against term extension.

“Cases of Copyright Inheritance are Rare”

Professor Masaru Itoga (Library Information Science) of Keio University, pointed out that gaining permission to use copyrighted materials will become more difficult by extending the copyright term from 50 years after the death of the rights holder to 70 years. “With the exception of famous works, cases in which surviving family members inherit copyrights are rare. Also, finding the addresses of corporations is easy, but the contact information of individual rightsholders is not made public. If the copyright term is extended, there is a danger that there will be an increase in the number of works that are not passed on after the rights holder’s death and it is unclear who holds the rights to them.”

[snip issue of “free use labeling”]

“The International Balance of Copyright is -600 Billion Yen Annually”

Attorney Kensaku Fukui commented that while the US, Europe, and Japan have extended copyright term repeatedly, copyright term has never been rolled back, and called for caution on a hasty extension: “The effects from term extension will felt by posterity semi-permanently. I hope for and will watch carefully for a debate that will stand up to historical investigation, showing who and with what proof did people favor, oppose, or remain silent on extension.”

He went on to question: “Those in favor of term extension argue that if a database for copyrighted works is built then past works can be easily accessed. I think there is merit in that idea, but it would be difficult to create a database comprehensive enough to cancel out the problems posed by extension. The list of authors tops 790,000 just based on the archives of the National Diet Library. Extend that to overseas works and a database would grow exponentially in size if the copyright term is extended to 70 years retroactively. Are we going to place this cost on the Japanese people?”

Fukui also commented on the fact that according to Bank of Japan statistics, Japan’s international balance of payments for copyrighted works is negative 600 billion yen annually (meaning that more copyrighted work is imported than exported) and is growing year by year: “If prewar Western works’ copyrights continue to be extended, then over-importing and the international uneven distribution of intellectual property will become permanent. There are those who argue that ‘extension is necessary to protect the works of Haruki Murakami or Japanese animation,’ but these works’ copyrights will last for at least another 30 years. The decision to extend works such as those should be made based on the situation 30 years from now, and it is no reason to extend copyright term now. I think we should stop immediately trying to find a way to cooperate whenever we are told something by the US and Europe.”

“Economic effects of term extension no greater than 1-2%”

Keio University Professor Tatsuo Tanaka (Econometrics) claimed that the economic effects of term extension would be small and that the rational decision would be to promote use of the public domain. Tanaka explained his doubtful outlook: “Citing books with past case studies, the increase in revenue for rights holders due to copyright term extension would be only 1-2% of all copyright revenue. Will raising royalties from 10% to 10.2% actually boost creativity?”

Meanwhile, arguing that the term extension is set aside would allow works to be used freely in the public domain, Tanaka concluded that not extending copyright would be better for society: “Businesses that promote new uses by exploiting the public domain are increasing. For example, Aozora Bunko boasts a lineup of 6000 titles, and the top 1000 titles are viewed by 4.5 million people per year. Cheap DVDs sell 1.8 million copies per year. There are also many examples where works whose copyright terms have expired, such as Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Ayaka Hirahara’s Jupiter, have been recreated. On blogs and social networking sites, 10 million average citizens are creating and transmitting content. The public domain is the lifeblood of creativity for the next generation, and forms the basis for the average person’s creations.”

Other participants arguments’ included “I am negative on term extension, but even if the term is extended, I hope that the part of the term beyond 50 years will require a notification and that the term will not be categorically extended.” (Keio Univ. Associate Professor Kim Jong Kun [金正勲]), “As a part of a system for notification of intent, I would like a free use label to be created that indicates permission to freely use work in a museum.” (Akira Inoue, Director General of the National Science Museum)….. “Ryonosuke Akutagawa worried whether people would read his work 50 years in the future. The greatest hope of a creator is to have his/her work read by a great many people. Extending copyright term would decrease the opportunities for works to be used and lead to a cultural loss.” (Authoer/poet Chico Ryomi).

Still others’ contended: “For orchestras, the burden from usage fees they will pay to JASRAC due to term extension is a serious issue.” (Japan Orchestra Federation Standing Director Naomoto Okayama), “It is almost inconceivable that software will be used 50 years after [its copyright holder dies], making term extension unrealistic.” (Association of Copyright for Computer Software Executive Director Hiroshi Kubota)

Others Argue “We Should Lead the International Current”, “National Cultural Assets will be Lost”

Meanwhile, there were also arguments in favor of term extension, mostly from officials from rights holder groups. Hide Ikuno, Executive Director of the Recording Industry Association of Japan, noted that “copyright term for records is already greater than 50 years in 21 countries. Japan has the second largest record sales in the world, and is in a position to lead the international current.”

Kazuhiko Fukuodera, standing director of the Japan Artist Association, argued: “Edvard Munch is still copyrighted in the West but is public domain in Japan. When that happened, dolls parodying “The Scream” went on sale. We should not do things that are rude to creators. In 2009, Taikan Yokoyama’s copyrights will become public domain. The Taikan Yokoyama Memorial Center’s operating costs are taken care of in part by copyright fees, and if they become public domain the operations of the center could become difficult, leading to a loss of national cultural assets.

(by Kanto Kaneko)

Comment: Some things to be learned from/noted about this article:

1. Those who will benefit from copyright extension in Japan are overwhelmingly foreign rightsholders, such as the Beatles, Elvis, Disney and other popular foreign artists/movies.
2. The arguments for copyright extension, when shown in the light of day, are extremely weak (lead by following?!) and hold no legal water unlike the previous extension to 50 years to comply with the Berne convention.
3. The Japanese system of public hearings before advisory committees long before any cabinet decisions are made or laws passed can work much much better than, say, the American system in which copyrights can be extended through the sheer political will of Sonny Bono’s widow and Disney. This did not stop the copyright term for movies from being extended to 70 years after the rightsholder’s death due to foreign pressure from the US etc, but an increasingly copyright-conscious Japanese public may just save Japan as a bastion of consumer-friendly copyright term.
4. The bulk of the Japanese media, as major rightsholders themselves, spew endless anti-piracy, pro-rights management propaganda, though as you can see this is not always the case as there are opposing business/consumer interests involved. I’ll try and locate a good example sometime soon.

Strange confession note by boy who sawed off his mother’s head and brought it to the police

A terrible crime was committed in Fukushima, Japan recently:

17-year-old boy turns self in with severed head / High schooler tells police he killed mother
The Yomiuri Shimbun

A 17-year-old high school student was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of killing his mother after turning himself in at a police station in Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, carrying her severed head, police said.

According to the police, the boy, in his third year at a prefectural high school, came to Aizuwakamatsu Police Station at about 7 a.m. on Tuesday with the head in his school bag. He told the police he had killed his mother at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The police went to the boy’s apartment in the city, where they found the headless body of the mother.

The boy was quoted by the police as saying: “I killed her by myself at home early Tuesday morning while she was asleep. I wanted to kill somebody, whoever it was.”

Later it was revealed that the boy also sawed off his mother’s arm. After the crime, he went into an Internet cafe, watched a Beastie Boys DVD, and apparently wrote the following note (apparently leaked by police):

I have committed a crime that should never be committed.

–What was your motive?

A reason? Just because.

–Other people won’t be satisfied with that!

Well if I had to say something, I guess it’s a form of self-expression.

–You had no other way to express yourself?

Maybe not.

–Don’t you feel any regret?

Not right now. I feel relieved. But I’m sure I’ll probably regret it later.

–What will you do after this?

I will go have myself charged with the crime.

–Isn’t that a foregone conclusion?

Oh, you might be right. But at the very least there is no crime I desire in reality [Note: this line was a little hard to figure out. The Japanese is reproduced below:]
　あーたしかにそうかもしれません。でも現実でだけはボクの望む罪はないと思いますが。

–Do you feel like continuing on?

Not really.

–If you keep going, what will you do next?

I don’t know since I’ve just been acting on my whims.

–Don’t you feel like killing yourself?

No, that would be scary. Plus I promised I wouldn’t kill myself.

–Who did you promise?

I don’t want to say.

–Why not?

Just because.

–Aren’t you being evasive by saying “just because”?

Perhaps. I’ve always been running away like that anyway.

–Any last words?

Thank you for putting up with my nonsense all this time.
(Thanks to the Daily Yomiuri and ZAKZAK)

Comment: This is a sad tragedy that seems to contain similarities to both Columbine (troubled teenager who couldn’t make it through his last year of high school), the Virginia Tech slayings (weapons bought beforehand, a pre-planned media strategy and a clear “self-expression” motive) combined with the all-too-common Japanese mother-son tension. The reports that I’ve seen so far seem to regard this crime as a total aberration by a troubled youth, which it is. But it looks like this sort of thing could be prevented. It’s been reported that it was known that he had been skipping school and a doctor had already diagnosed him as “mentally unstable.” As hard as it is to rein in rebellious teenagers, it’s sad that there wasn’t more done to try and help (or at least medicate) someone with clear mental problems before he became a danger.

Dentsu in the News, Part 2: The Bad News

The Japan Communist Party flexes its awesome research muscle:

Dentsu Takes 40% of Government Public Relations Contracts
Representative Yoshii Presses Officials on Connection with Golden Parachute Scheme

At the May 11 Lower House Committee on the Cabinet, it was revealed that Dentsu is substantively monopolizing contracts for “government public relations” that the Cabinet Public Relations Office prints in newspapers, with the company garnering nearly 40% of the total value of contracts. The situation was brought to light via a survey conducted by JCP Representative Hidekatsu Yoshii.

According to the survey, of the 13.2 billion yen in contracts government PR placed in newspapers from FY2001-2005, Dentsu was the top recipient with 4.9 billion yen, or 38% of the total. Hakuhodo, the second largest recipient, received 2.4 billion yen (19%), while other companies all received less than 10% apiece.

In response to a request from Yoshii for disclosure of the expected bidding prices, Director Yasuyuki Takai of the Government Public Relations Office refused the request, stating that the office “uses regular competitive bidding.”

Yoshii pointed out that there are too many advertisement placement companies that participate in bidding but later withdraw. For example, from FY2001-2005, Nihon Keizai Co. (printers of Nikkei Shimbun etc) withdrew the most times, 101. The fewer times a company won bidding, the more times the company placed a bid but later withdrew. Yoshii concluded: “This is just too unnatural. I suspect this is a case of ad industry-related bid-rigging intended to maintain Dentsu’s unipolar control.” Takai repeated that “Withdrawal from bidding is the bidding company’s decision.”

A survey by the House of Representatives Research Bureau shows that as of April 2006, 12 [retired officials from the Govt PR Office] were in post-retirement jobs at Dentsu, while 5 were at Hakuhodo. Yoshii pointed out that this practice of “Amakudari” was likely behind the rigged bidding, and emphasized, “If [the current govt] says it will reform the public servant system, it should first thoroughly reveal the true state of amakudari.”

In other news:

Dentsu “Pale” in Apology for Retooling Reds Stadium Seats
May 10, 2007

The Japan Football Association revealed on May 10 that it had granted advertising company Dentsu permission for a Kirin Beer commercial that made unauthorized modifications to a photo of Saitama Stadium filled with supporters of the Urawa Reds without noticing the changes.

The Association claimed it had not received an explanation of the changes from Dentsu, who was in charge of the production. The modifications violate the J-League’s rules for commercial use of photos. JFA Executive Director Kozo Tajima commented, “This is very regrettable and unpleasant. I cannot express how sorry we are to the supporters of the Japan National football team.” The morning of the same day, a representative of Dentsu visited the JFA to apologize. The advertiser, Kirin, reportedly was also not made aware of the changes.

The advertisement that caused the controversy was part of a rally campaign for the Japan National team. The seats in Saitama Stadium were changed from the Urawa’s red to the Japan National team’s blue, and the ads were seen in newspapers nationwide from April 27.

—
Also, former Dentsu executive and noted novelist Iori Fujiwara (known for the Naoki award-winning Terrorist’s Parallel, a story of the men and women who gave their lives in the 1960s student communist movement) has died of esophagal cancer at age 59.

A brief and random tribute to Masaru Inoue, father of the Japanese railways

Masaru Inoue, father of the Japanese railwaysIf you go to the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station, you can see a big statue of this fellow, Masaru Inoue (井上勝).

Inoue was one of five Choshu samurai sentsmuggled to England in the mid-1860s to figure out how to modernize Japan. He studied railway technology at the University College London, and following his return to Japan served as head of the Japanese national railway program, in some form or another, from 1869 to 1893. During this time he supervised the building of Japan’s first railway line from Tokyo to Yokohama (the first Tokyo station has been reconstructed and can now be seen in Shiodome), and the eventual completion of the Tokaido Main Line between Tokyo and Kobe in 1889.

In his later years he was made a Viscount and served in the House of Peers (sort of the old Japanese equivalent of Britain’s House of Lords). He is also the last “i” in the Koiwai food company, which he co-founded in 1891.

So next time you pass through Tokyo Station, tip your hat to a fellow who helped pave the way for the most awesome railway system in the world. (Or, if you don’t have a hat, do what I do and just take pictures.)

Another Casualty of JASRAC’s Fun Police

I recently came across this sad story in my referrals:

Live music spots are disappearing one by one in Japan!
2006-11
I am a live Jazz fan, and often go to Jazz clubs in my home town. Recently I visited one of my favorite clubs and was informed that live jazz was to be canceled at the end of the month.

I couldn’t believe it, and asked why this was going to happen. The owner replied “JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, equivalent to ASCAP) ordered retrospective fee payments for the last 10 years of the club’s operation. There’s no way I can afford to pay, so I’ve decided to stop live music”. The JASRAC representative then presented a scrap of newspaper with a story reporting a recent lawsuit and subsequent closure of another Jazz club that had fought, and lost, a similar situation. In the end, however, the owner decided to submit to JASRAC’s demands and pay the fees.

JASRAC also refused to negotiate future licensing costs, and stated that a fixed fee must be charged regardless of how many live performances are held. The club could have one live show each week, or a show every day of the year, and the cost would be the same. JASRAC also refuses to reveal how they calculate fees for each club.

In Japan, NHK(National publicly funded television) fees must be paid by all people that own TVs. However some people manage to avoid paying fees, are unaware of fees, or simply slip though NHK’s administrative cracks. When these people are discovered, NHK usually just asks these people to begin payments from the next month onwards. JASRAC, however, demands payments for the past 10 years.

Does JASRAC truly protect the rights of musicians? I often by CDs from musicians playing at live Jazz clubs. I believe live Jazz promotes CD sales and helps artists succeed.

It’s just appalling that JASRAC can nitpick and police even the most minor activities. The hyper-aggressive protection of intellectual property is not just limited to JASRAC, mind you: Johnny’s Talent Agency (the promoters of SMAP etc) fiercely guard their superstars, a practice that leads to odd rivalries and ridiculous news like Takuya Kimura refusing a major movie award for no apparent reason. Disney is also particularly heavy-handed. I read (on 2ch mind you) that Disney once forced a school to remove an image of Mickey Mouse from their pool that was to be used in an event. How can a culture of openness, ambition and imagination flourish when there’s an environment that often punishes even modest forms of creativity?

Dentsu in the News, Part 1: The Good News

Lots of Dentsu-related stories in the pipeline these days. But first, the good news:

* Dentsu reports revenue exceeding 2 trillion yen, but sees slower growth ahead

From Asahi:

On May 11, Dentsu reported 2.939 trillion yen, or a 6.7% boost, in consolidated revenue for the 2006 fiscal year, the first time the company’s total has ever topped 2 trillion. Revenue in the major media (TV, newspapers, magazines, radio) all slightly dropped, but ticket sales for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, which was undertaken by a Dentsu subsidiary, pushed up the total.

Operating profit (which is mentioned last in the Asahi report) grew at a similar pace of 6.9% (30.6 billion yen or approx $1.7 billion). To compare, OmnicomGroup, the largest Madison Avenue ad company, posted $11.3 billion in revenue and $1.5 billion in operating profit.

Revenue in the 4 mass media, which make up 65% of the company’s non-consolidated profits (or 48% of consolidated revenue, which would mean that the Dentsu parent company’s total of 2.169 trillion make up 73% of total Dentsu group revenue), dipped 0.7% to 1.410 trillion yen.

A surprising note in this profit announcement is that Internet ads are not Dentsu’s biggest growth area, as earlier reports from Dentsu might have seemed to indicate. Internet ad growth of 14.8% (21.5 billion yen) lost out to outdoor ads, such as train ads, grew 19.2% (43 billion yen) with the rise of ads coordinated with web content (infrared bar codes, search keywords). Note, however, that these two areas remain small compared to Dentsu’s traditional businesses. However, Dentsu is predicting huge growth in the Internet sector in general, and sees its share in the Net ad market going from a present 15% to 20% by the end of FY 2009.

But the overall outlook for Dentsu is for slower growth, for reasons which an AP’s report goes into more detail about (unsurprising for an article aimed at investors):

Dentsu, the world’s fifth-biggest advertising company behind Omnicom Group , WPP Group , Interpublic Group and Publicis, said growth might also be held back by a wave of mergers among its client base.

The company, whose rivals in Japan include Hakuhodo DY Holdings Inc. and Asatsu-DK Inc., forecast group operating profit to rise 1.6 percent to 63.8 billion yen ($532.2 million) in the current business year to March 2008 on sales of 2.107 trillion yen, up 0.6 percent.

The profit estimate is in line with the consensus of 64.2 billion yen from a poll of 13 analysts by Reuters Estimates, but the forecast for sales growth is decidedly below the expected growth rate of about 2 percent for the Japanese economy.

The seemingly conservative forecast also comes with Japanese corporate profits at a record high.

“We are always told that our forecasts are conservative, but one factor probably at play here is the fading correlation between corporate profits and the economy on one side and growth in advertising spending,” Dentsu Managing Director Setsuo Kamai told a news conference.

Kamai said the trend could be explained by a handful of factors including booming industry consolidation in Japan, which leads to fewer advertisers, and a move by an increasing number of companies to lower costs by combining their brands.

For 2007/08, Dentsu expects its revenues to get a boost from the IAAF World Championships in Athletics Osaka 2007, elections in Japan and the Tokyo Motor Show, but no event on schedule is likely to match last year’s soccer World Cup in Germany.
…
Dentsu logged strong revenue gains to the information and technology, food and retail sectors, which offset declines to makers of cosmetics and toiletries, producers of home appliances and electronics, and consumer finance firms.

Speaking of profits, Hakuhodo just posted its first loss (due to lower than expected real estate revenue and dips in auto ads and government PR work) since converting to holding company status in 2003. It posted a 2% loss in revenue (1.884 trillion yen) and a 1% loss in operating profits (24.4 billion yen). Bad news for Hakuhodo, good news for Dentsu.

A new president will be leading Dentsu:

Dentsu to name Takashima president
Kyodo News

Dentsu Inc. is set to appoint Executive Vice President Tatsuyoshi Takashima as president of Japan’s biggest advertising agency, while the current president, Tateo Mataki, will become chairman, company sources said Saturday.

He is expected to accelerate a shift in Dentsu’s business base from newspapers and television to relatively new media such as the Internet by continuing the efforts of Mataki, who aggressively concluded capital and operational tieups with startup companies specializing in Net advertising.

Meanwhile, Dentsu is consolidating some of its various Net ad subsidiaries (in the affiliate advertising section [similar to the Amazon Associates program]) to form a more unified strategy:

Dentsu to Merge, Amalgamate Action Clip
May 10, 2007

Dentsu and Cyber Communications (CCI, a member of the Dentsu Group) announced that they intend to merge Dentsu subsidiary Action Clip and CCI subsidiary Criteria Communications.

CCI will continue to exist but will amalgamate the two companies in a cash tender offer. The ban on cash tender offers to shareholders in the case of an amalgamation merger that absorbs the target company was lifted as of May 1.

Action Clip’s affiliate operations will be united with Criteria’s advertisement distribution network with the goal of consolidating the Dentsu Group’s affiliate business.

Japan’s obsolete songs, part 1 of ?

“My Pager Won’t Ring*” the opening theme from a 1993 TV drama series. Thanks to whoever posted it and thanks in advance to the good folks at TV Tokyo for not suing the crap out of me for using their ultra-dated content.

For a more recent technology-centric piece of pop culture, may I direct you to Atlanta rapper TI’s 2005 hit “What You Know” which prominently features “chirping” the two-way walkie talkie function currently popular in US cell phones. I get the feeling it too will seem dated 14 years from now, though the smoothly-epic synth-heavy production will live on forever (as, I suspect, will jokes about “getting a midget pregnant”).

* This literal translation doesn’t quite convey the loneliness implied by the song title. Perhaps a better interpretation would be “My Pager Won’t Ring (And I Miss You)”

22.5% of food left uneaten at Japanese wedding parties

That’s a whole course! Maybe for my wedding party I should volunteer 1/5 of my wedding meals to get sent to North Korea.

Other stats from this Shukan Toyo Keizai article:

Average cost of a wedding: more than 3 million yen (US$25,000) in 2006. The cost of weddings has been rising since 2003, when the Japanese economy started turning around. (Source: wedding planning site Zexy.net)

Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) researched how much food is left uneated at wedding parties (披露宴 routinely make up 3/4 of the cost of an entire wedding) by surveying 40 wedding halls nationwide. The figure of 22.5% (19.2% when you exclude drinks) is light-years away from the amount of food left uneaten at home (1.1% according to a 2005 survey) or in restaurants (3.1% as of 2006). And it’s a high percentage even compared to food at regular banquet-style parties (宴会) that offer alcohol, 15.2% of which goes to waste.

Perhaps that has something to do with the sheer amount of food served at wedding parties, which is averages an enormous 2230g — almost four times the average 600g served at cafeterias and restaurants. That means people who simply can’t finish more than what they usually eat in an entire day are wasting an entire meal’s worth of food, or 500g.

Why so much food? The STK conjectures that since people want to give their guests the best possible service, it’s either become a tradition or people are trying to be ostentatious by offering more food than necessary. But as someone planning a wedding party myself, I think the most obvious explanation is that the event halls need to justify charging 10,000 yen per plate plus open bar charges.

Tokyo Shimbun on the Faltering Council for Economic and Fiscal Policy

Even though today is a lamer-than-lame newspaper holiday, I thought I’d take some time out of my busier-than-usual schedule to introduce a sharper-than-you’d-think editorial from the unexpectedly-lucid-and-candid Tokyo Shimbun:

[Editorial]
A Thought to Begin the Week: The CEFP Has Forgotten How to Fight
May 6, 2007

The Council for Economic and Fiscal Policy, which is supposed to be an “engine for reform,” has started to lose steam. Most papers emanating from the Council look like they were written by the bureaucrats, and we do not see an attitude of striking at the vested interests.

The CEFP debates the Basic Policy (an outline of the Kantei’s budget proposal) and critical issues of economic and fiscal policy an advisory body to the prime minister. The meetings are attended by the PM, who serves as chairman, the Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy, who runs the meetings, along with 4 private-sector members, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, and the Governor of the Bank of Japan.

Legally, the Council is no more than a forum for “investigative deliberations,” but during the Junichiro Koizumi administration it had become a de facto “policy-making institution.” How did it get that way? It had a lot to do with their dynamic style of infighting.

Strategies Formed at Behind-the-Scenes Meetings

Former MIC Minister Heizo Takenaka, who was a key actor in the Koizumi-era reforms, wrote in a recent book that there were 3 interrelated keys to managing the Council: “strategizing at behind-the-scenes meetings,” “unified statements from private-sector members,” and “authoritative statements from the prime minister.”

You may think: “What? There were secret meetings?!” But in fact that’s what happened. Prior to Council meetings, Takenaka held detailed discussions with his small group of trusted staff made up of secretaries and reformist bureaucrats, finalized policies, and submitted them to the Council as private-sector member papers. In other words, he finished deliberations behind the scenes before his policies were brought out in the open for debate.

And that’s not all. He made backdoor preparations for critical policies and objectives that were close to being finalized, and even the occasional conclusion to debate on policy details, by meeting with the prime minister beforehand. He would then allow the opposing forces to speak for as long as they like at the actual meetings, then have the prime minister make a definitive statement when he saw that the debate had played itself out.

And statements from the prime minister carry considerable weight. The last word would then become the conclusion, finalizing the direction of reform. It may not have gone exactly according to plan all the time, but this sort of scrupulous planning was absolutely critical to promoting reform. It feels like this is a secret that needs to be told now.

Make Proposals that Kasumigaseki Won’t Like

In the same book, Takenaka points out that “passion of the minister of state” and “conflict with the opposing forces” are golden rules for reform. In order to garner public interest and get public opinion on the reformists’ side, dramatic battles with the opposing forces within Nagata-cho (Tokyo’s political district) and Kasumigaseki (location of most bureaucratic offices) are essential. Takenaka pragmatically states that “Battles are actually welcome.”

Compared to the previous Council meetings, at present we are forced to conclude that they have lost the power to reform. That is made obvious by the conspicuous absence of scuffles with the opposing forces.

At the start of 2007, Kasumigaseki went after proposed reforms to the civil service with vigor. The placing of retiring bureaucrats in private-sector jobs using the government’s authority and budget to pressure companies will be banned completely. But even after this bill is submitted to the Diet, the opposing forces in Kasumigaseki are poised to continue their fight against the new proposal from behind the scenes.

Yet except for civil service reform, we can’t fight the impression that the Council is lamely debating topics with little element of conflict with the bureaucracy, such as economic growth, globalization, and productivity issues. One bureaucrat gave us the inside story:

“That’s because Minister Ota has avoided battles with Kasumigaseki and started meeting with bureaucrats at the paper-writing stages. If the bureacrats get their hands on something beforehand, it’s already clear who will win. There is just no chance for fierce conflict at the meetings.”

The last word from PM Shinzo Abe have also tended to fall short at “Please continue to consider this thorougly.” The number of reporters attending post-meeting press conferences has also shrunk.

Policies such as using IT to boost productivity are certainly important policies. Compared to before, the economy is steadily recovering, and we can understand that there is a diminished sense of crisis. Still, there will be no reform if all the Council talks about are general topics that receive unanimous approval.

Looking at the policy challenges listed early this year, they include issues such as fundamental reworking of government functions/organization (including reform of Independent Administrative Corporations), creation of a progress schedule for fiscal spending reform, and regional autonomy, but they have yet to be debated. These are just the sort of issues that Kasumigaseki hates, and therefore the ones that should be prioritized.

There are those who say “There is little benefit in making a show of bureaucrat-bashing.” However, isn’t breaking the current enmeshed system of vested interests, as seen in bureaucrat-led bid-rigging, what reform is about? If the Council aims to be the engine of reform, it cannot avoid a fight.

Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Hiroko Ota, who worked as Deputy General Director for the Minister and Director General for Economic and Fiscal Management under Takenaka, should understand this. Before she became minister, she even published a book titled “The Battles of the Council for Economic and Fiscal Policy,” from which we quote the following:

“Even if the Winds are Strong”

“Both the fight with vested interests and tension with the government ministries and agencies will likely continue. We should be much more concerned if the tense relationship evaporates easily… We must keep on fighting even if the winds are strong, and I think that if the pressure dies down under the current conditions, that means that the Council’s allure and raison d’etre have disappeared.”

We’d like her not to forget that original feeling.

Comment: I wouldn’t count on it. Abe’s pet causes, like constitutional reform and education, along with the possibly disruptive results of the upcoming Upper House Election, leave little room on the agenda for the relatively less sexy issues of economic reform. Abe will be happy to leave economic issues relatively out of the public light as long as the economy remains stable. And if an easy victory on civil service proves elusive, watch for that to fall to the wayside as well (which is sort of already has).

But with the Abe administration, the practice of setting up kantei-led committees to take the lead on policymaking (essentially to take the lead away from the traditional committees that operate under the auspices of various ministries) has caught on in the areas he really cares about, and while none of them have escaped derision in some corners of the press, they have continued to produce results in one form or another, such as the attempt to create a US-style National Security Council. While Koizumi was never able to get the LDP consensus he needed for his pet issues, Abe has the allies on national security etc (and the Diet numbers) to go the more traditional route.