Or else you might become the Finance Minister of Japan:
The full story is here. He says it’s the latter, but we all know better.
UPDATE: News services are now reporting that Nakagawa is going to resign, citing this incident as the cause. Apparently they finally got over their implicit agreement not to mention his obvious drinking problem.
Very interesting post at Japan Probe on possible quasi-corruption at CLAIR, the affiliate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in charge of its share of the JET program:
The Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR), the governmental organization responsible for the JET Program, could be in trouble. Popular Osaka governor Toru Hashimoto has started questioning CLAIR’s use of funds and has announced that the Osaka government may reduce its financial backing to CLAIR next year (90% of CLAIR’s financial backing comes from money paid by local governments, and Osaka pays a big slice).
The JET program is one of those rare Japanese government programs in which overlapping ministries successfully cooperate – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in charge of most of the administrative details of selecting applicants, the education ministry places them in schools, and the internal affairs ministry coordinates with local governments. Well, it looks like part of the compromise reached between the ministries was that at least the internal affairs side gets to set up a swank suite of perks for retired bureaucrats.
As I have done before, I am cross-posting my comment at Japan Probe to encourage discussion of the issue on my comments section. I began in response to earlier commenters who apparently take any mention of the JET program to debate on the JET program’s merits and the usefulness of eikaiwa teachers in general (of course I would never do that):
Did you notice that this issue has NOTHING to do with the merits of the JET program itself? The problem is that the bureaucrats have turned parts of the program into their own slush fund, which enriches their post-retirement accounts and improves their golf scores at the expense of the Japanese taxpayers and maybe even people who didn’t get accepted to the JET program (since part of the acceptance cutoff is no doubt due to budget constraints). It’s so laughable for them to have overseas offices since they don’t even process the applications – that is the foreign ministry’s job.
This misappropriation issue isn’t any reason to end the JET program. In fact, considering all the extra money they are raking in it looks like they could be accepting even more JETs. I have argued elsewhere that it may have outlived whatever functionality it had as an English teaching program, but as Yomiuri documented around its 20th anniversary the program itself has by and large been extremely beneficial to the teachers who come and have a once in a lifetime experience (or get a foothold for a life in Japan), the schools who want foreign English teachers, and Japan’s soft power as the program generates massive goodwill and a niche workforce of Japan-savvy English speakers.
But if one of the organizations involved is being exploited for no real reason but to provide an excuse for internal affairs bureaucrats to get post-retirement salaries and live the Japanese dream of endless enkai and golf with their coworkers, then Hashimoto is right to use his spending authority to try and put an end to it. As much of a showboat as he can be, that’s an example of real leadership and sticking up for what’s right.
I understand the motivation for post-retirement income, but what I will never get is why these oyaji seem to love drinking in their work suits and basically never leaving the damn office. If you are going to misappropriate funds, at least do what American politicians do and get sweet renovations to your house!
They have 12.7 billion yen a year in unused funding! I propose using that money to send free cookies to every woman who gets pregnant. It will help alleviate the low birth rate AND I’ll only overcharge the government 50 billion yen 5 billion yen a year — big savings!
Hiroshi Yamaguchi is an Associate Professor of Global Media Studies at Komazawa University. I am translating his rant-ish essay below because it is such an illustrative look at how the media tends to move debate forward in this country. He applies this general frame work to some older scandals such as the earthquake safety scandal of 2005 and the Livedoor scandal of 2006, but you can see this process playing itself out anytime you turn on one of those panel debate shows.
2009/02/11
Responsibility does not add up to 100% — reposted
I feel a little bad about repeating the same ideas, but often in a different context the same words might have a different meaning. So anyway, I am going to repost what I wrote on my blog around two years ago. Please understand that I am not just being lazy. This passage can also be found in my book currently in stores Risk’s True Form (リスクの正体) but I think the same things could be applied to the recent so-called “self-responsibility” debate.
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* I don’t think responsibility adds up to 100%
Problems develop one after the other in our society, but I feel like the flow of debate over those problems is always similar. I have always wondered why this is so, and I have concluded that the common thought process is something like this:
Views on “responsibility” (責任 sekinin; the same word is used in Japanese to mean “liability”)
The common flow of debate is as follows. First, a problem occurs. Let’s assume A causes damage to B. Almost simultaneously, an argument springs up over “responsibility.” In fact, many many types of responsibility:
There may be more, but I think that’s about right. It’s actually quite a substantial list. It is strange that no matter what happens, there are always those who blame the prime minister or the United States (there are some who even try to blame corporate accounting fraud on the prime minister, but I wonder if they are really serious), but in many cases this is no laughing matter. What comes next is a battle of criticism falling somewhere along this range of opinions:
Then, this sort of debate gets bogged down and leads to a stalemate situation, people lose interest and eventually forget about it. Then, a similar problem occurs. I have been wonder just why it’s always, always like this.
Essentially, the root cause it that people are confused about the word “responsibility.”
There are several types of responsibility. People often talk of the difference between the “responsibility to compensate” and “the responsibility to explain,” but there are others, such as “the responsibility to adopt countermeasures” and “the responsiblity to seek the truth” and even something like “the responsibility to quietly accept the results.” If these are mixed up, then then discussions will never reach a conclusion. When debating, often what you emphasize will differ from what others emphasize, but if all the different kinds of responsibility are mixed up, it becomes impossible to understand the other side’s way of thinking. You’ll react, “Why would you say such a thing? That’s not what’s important!” But really, both sides’ arguments are important.
So, if the argument is mixed up, everything will lead to the conclusion that “the person responsible should compensate for damages.” In other words, the point of view becomes such that responsibility always adds up to 100%, and the argument is over how to divide that up. [In reality,] the responsibility to explain does not always lead to liability to compenate for damages, and in many cases those responsible for adopting countermeasures are different from those who are liable to pay compensation. But if someone argues that C is in the wrong, to the people arguing that A is in the wrong it will seem like that person is trying to lessen A’s responsibility. That is these intense debates develop. Or at least that’s how I see it.
Responsibility is not the sort of thing that adds up to 100%. Of course, the responsibility to compensate for damages does add up to 100%, so there is a specific amount of damages and the argument is over how to determine who is responsible for what portion. That is fine. However, when it comes to other types of responsibility, such as the responsibility to explain or the responsibility to seek the truth, or the responsibility for creating the foundation that caused the ensuing situation, or the responsibility for not helping the victims even when you could have helped, or any other kind of responsibility, shouldn’t all the responsible persons each take 100% responsibility? We should ask not “who has responsibility” but rather “what is your (or my) responsibility in this case?”
There is an argument over “the general penitence of the 100 million” (NB. 一億総ざんげ ichioku souzange, the argument that the Japanese public bears collective responsibility for the Japanese aggression/destruction in WW2), and some counter that this thinking minimizes the responsibility of the leadership. I cannot say since I do not know the circumstances of the time, but I do not think this is a very fruitful argument. Regardless of the leadership’s responsibility, I think [the “penitence” position] was meant to say that “the 100 million” aka the Japanese people all should be aware of their own responsibility. In light of the recent earthquake safety fraud scandal (added Jan. 22, 2006: In fact, the case of Livedoor’s violations of securities laws could apply here), separate from the issue of who should pay for the costs, shouldn’t we debate who should have done what and what should be done in the future? Of course, this is an issue of what “you yourself” should do. Such debate would do nothing to lessen the compensation liabilities of the businesses that committed the fraud, nor would it free the government from its responsibilities to explain and adopt countermeasures. Added up, I am sure it would come to 200 or even 300%.
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Allow me to supplement the above for the current context. Regarding issues such as the firing of temporary workers, economic disparity, and the “lost generation” (NB. young people who came of age during the “lost decade” of the 1990s), I am not saying that there are never any cases where the employees in question should be held responsible at least a little. Similarly, I am not saying that there are never any cases in which the corporations, the government or the generations that grew up before the lost decade should be held responsible at least a little. Reality is much more vague, complicated, and diverse than that. This should be obvious if you think about it rationally.
Most of the people involved in this debate are probably fully aware of this. That must be why they are in fact arguing that someone has more responsibility than someone else, under the title “who has responsibility?” There are times when that is fruitful. Such a determination is required when considering what countermeasures to take.
However, looking at the overal picture, I don’t think we have reached that stage yet. At the very least, society at large is most likely looking at these debates in terms of a conflict between Faction A and Faction B, in other words the winner will be either “the people 100% on Faction A’s side” or “the people 100% on Faction B’s side.” In fact, what is said between those two factions is more like criticism than debate, and this is in fact going on in the various media outlets. Any work they are doing to find common ground is not being sufficiently communicated.
We are called upon not to determine “who” should act but “what should be done.” The bigger the issue, the fewer people there are who can dismiss it as having nothing to do with them. John F. Kennedy once famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” I think this quote applies in this context, but at the same time and in the same way, we should think not about making demands of the temporary employees who were fired or the members of the lost generation, but rather what we can do for them.
Simultaneously, we have to think about what things got to be the way they are. There may be some disreputable temporary staffing agencies. There might be some common practices in the temporary staffing industry that should be reformed. But just because that’s so, arguments that fundamentally reject the temporary staffing business go too far. This business was born out of a societal need, and plays a major role in our society. This is the exact converse of the notion that fired temp workers and the lost generation cannot totally be held personally accountable for their circumstances. If you want to change the present, you must turn your eyes to the factors that led to the present situation.
I repeat: responsibility does not add up to 100%. Quite the contrary, each of us has 100% responsibility for ourselves. To acknowledge this is to take the first step toward escaping the endlessly repeating zero-sum game of asking “who is in the wrong?”
Looking for a transcript of Treasury Secretary Geithner’s congressional testimony, here is what Google recommended to me as a common search:
“Geithner Jew” — is he even Jewish? Apparently not.
I guess these searches could be coming from curious Jews wondering if one of their own was promoted to high office.
I’ve been wanting to replace my aged and moderately decrepit EOS 300D for a couple of years now, and I have finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade to a brand-spanking new 50D next week. Problem is, I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t buy a new camera until I put some serious effort into going through my photo archive and actually selecting/posting a substantial number of galleries. This means that I’m going to try and blow through as much as I can in the next few days, starting here.
These photos were taken in the pedestrian area in front of Akihabara Station on June 1, 2008, exactly one week before the infamous massacre there. It had become a tradition for various cutesy female models to pose for Otaku photographers and do publicity in this area. There are many thousands upon thousands, if not millions of photographs of cosplay and moe models so when I happened to pass by the area, I decided to take some photos of the men who actually take those photographs. I don’t know if these events have made a comeback in the months since the grim events of the following week, but either way these photographs document the sort of people who were the victims of the tragedy.
See Flickr Flash slideshow, or individual photos below the jump.
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Continue reading Photo festival part 1: Osaku amateur photographers in Akihabara
WOODS HOLE — A federal appeals court recently upheld a ruling from a lower court that dismissed a lawsuit from a former Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researcher, who claimed he was unjustly fired for not believing in evolution.
Nathaniel Abraham, who was hired as a postdoctoral investigator in fall 2004 for his expertise in working with zebrafish, sued WHOI for discrimination in 2007. Abraham claimed he was fired after admitting he was a Christian who believes in creationism and the infallible word of God.
However, WHOI officials told the Times that Abraham’s job description clearly stated he would have to apply evolutionary theory in reviewing the results of research.
A U.S. District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit in April 2008 because Abraham did not file his discrimination claim within three years of being fired.
On Jan. 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling.
Abraham’s last known job was teaching biology at Liberty University in Virginia, a college founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Academic freedom is a grand thing, but to deserve academic freedon, one should probably be doing academics-and of course fulfilling the actual job description one agreed to when hired. As a personal note, I’ve spent a lot of time near the WHIO, located in Woods Hole, Cape Cod, Massechusets as Woods Hole is a division of Falmouth, where my father’s parents used to live when I was a child, and where my father now owns a second house. The aquarium was a lot of fun as a kid, as well as the tiny bridge that opens for passing ships, which I thought was the coolest thing ever when I was small enough for the bridge to seem big.
NYT has a report on the situation in Dubai:
With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.
The government says the real number is much lower. But the stories contain at least a grain of truth: jobless people here lose their work visas and then must leave the country within a month. That in turn reduces spending, creates housing vacancies and lowers real estate prices, in a downward spiral that has left parts of Dubai — once hailed as the economic superpower of the Middle East — looking like a ghost town.
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“Why is Abu Dhabi allowing its neighbor to have its international reputation trashed, when it could bail out Dubai’s banks and restore confidence?” said Christopher M. Davidson, who predicted the current crisis in “Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success,” a book published last year. “Perhaps the plan is to centralize the U.A.E.” under Abu Dhabi’s control, he mused, in a move that would sharply curtail Dubai’s independence and perhaps change its signature freewheeling style.
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But Dubai, unlike Abu Dhabi or nearby Qatar and Saudi Arabia, does not have its own oil, and had built its reputation on real estate, finance and tourism. Now, many expatriates here talk about Dubai as though it were a con game all along. Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out.
Also, check this video from German TV (in English, via The Big Picture):
When you are trade minister and the economy is in trouble, the last thing you need is to get SLAMMED!!!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
ANALYSIS: Exit Strategy Needed As Govt Role Expands
TOKYO (Nikkei)–The Japanese government is becoming more active in combating the ongoing downturn, and while such efforts might be necessary, an exit strategy must be formed so that the economy is eventually able to thrive without life support.
The government is under immense pressure to take action amid the crisis. In early January, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) hastily created a program to inject public funds into nonfinancial firms. Late last year, METI was flooded with complaints — not only from small and midsize companies, but also from big ones — about the difficulty of securing loans from banks and fundraising through the issuance of corporate paper and bonds.
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The trend toward greater state involvement seems clear in Japan, with ruling-coalition lawmakers and business leaders now calling on the government to save jobs.“Speed is essential,” said METI Minister Toshihiro Nikai. “Unless we do something now, we will be slammed (by criticism).”
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Private-sector activity is essential to healthy markets. Without an exit strategy, the Japanese government and the BOJ will find it difficult to withdraw to their proper supporting roles, and the Japanese economy will be worse for it in the long run.Given that the current crisis is arguably the worst since the Great Depression, the government and BOJ likely have little choice but to take action.
I realize this is a semi-serious argument against how offering protection to industry over short-term concerns could crowd out the private sector and possibly lead to a deleterious trade war. But Nikai has it wrong — come September at the latest, the LDP is going to get totally SLAMMED no matter what.
And weren’t “the Japanese government and the BOJ” already fulfilling a fairly intrusive role in the Japanese “markets”? Sure, many of the lost decade/Koizumi-era programs had been put to rest, but not that long ago. Japan remains full of so-called “zombie” companies kept afloat by previous bank bailouts and the like, but these new measures outlined in this article would presumably create a new breed of these – companies that would be insolvent without direct government support (or indirect through government-mandated loans). So while I share the Nikkei’s concern that the government of Japan will soon essentially become the “main bank” of a sizable number of companies, I just want to mention that rather than going from a state of being merely in a “supporting role” to an active role, these measures appear to push the GOJ from an already pretty active role to a very active role.
This is pretty shady, but I wonder if they are really even in Tokyo?
Phil, a Financial Mail on Sunday reader from Berkshire, was contacted by Calderton Capital Partners, a Tokyo firm that offers investment advice as well as acting as middlemen in mergers and acquisitions.
Calderton had some good news for Phil. It wanted to buy his holding of shares in a small American company called TBXR, and it was willing to pay $130,000 (about £90,000). This priced his holding of just over 31,000 shares at more than $4 apiece – even though the last time Phil had checked the shares were closer to five cents (less than 4p). Still, it was certainly a generous offer. In fact, it topped the almost equally generous offer made to another reader, John from Cheshire, who was also contacted from Tokyo.
This time the contact came from a firm called Cook Capital Partners, and the caller told a curious story. John held shares in an American company called Accupoll that had filed for bankruptcy in 2006. But the caller said Accupoll had been taken over by a different company, Rudy Nutrition, and he represented a bidder who was willing to pay over $98,000 (about £68,000) for John’s shares.
Cook Capital Partners certainly seems to be a busy firm. At the same time as contacting John, it was also in touch with another Financial Mail on Sunday reader, Roger, wanting to buy his shares in yet another company, Genmed Holding Corporation.
And this was the biggest offer of them all – a mouthwatering $240,000 (£166,000) for shares that Roger had every reason to believe were actually worthless!
Now for the snags. Roger, John and Phil were all told that the shares they held carried a legal restriction that stopped the deal going through. But the good news was this restriction could be removed, if they paid legal fees up front.
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The up-front fees were not quite the only snags though. According to investigators at Japan’s watchdog Financial Services Agency, Cook Capital Partners is a scam. It is not registered with the FSA or licensed to carry out shares deals. There is even doubt that it is actually at its Tokyo address and telephone number.
Amazing news from the New York Times:
With the recession on the brink of becoming the longest in the postwar era, a milestone may be at hand: Women are poised to surpass men on the nation’s payrolls, taking the majority for the first time in American history.
The reason has less to do with gender equality than with where the ax is falling.
The proportion of women who are working has changed very little since the recession started. But a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men, who are heavily represented in distressed industries like manufacturing and construction. Women tend to be employed in areas like education and health care, which are less sensitive to economic ups and downs, and in jobs that allow more time for child care and other domestic work.
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As of November, women held 49.1 percent of the nation’s jobs, according to nonfarm payroll data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By another measure, including farm workers and the self-employed, women constituted 47.1 percent of the work force.
With that in mind, I wondered what the figures were for Japan. As it turns out, they are released monthly by Japan’s statistics bureau. The figures (PDF) include farm workers and the self-employed.
As of December 2008, of Japan’s 63.31 million workers, 36.92 million, or 58.3%, are men, and 26.39 million, or 41.7% women. Not even close!
