Category: Ranting

Ranting

One arm of the JET program possibly misappropriating funds

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!

The Japanese art of non-debating, by Asst. Prof. Hiroshi Yamaguchi

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.
***
* 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:

  • – A is wrong. A has responsibility.
  • – No, in fact there is a fixer C pulling the strings behind A.
  • – The ministry of X regulates this issue. The ministry has responsibility as the regulator.
  • – This problem was brought upon us by the Koizumi administration’s policies.
  • – A has connections with a senior official in the Y Party. There’s got to be something to that.
  • – The mass media’s reporting of this problem has been terrible.
  • – Isn’t it actually B’s own responsibility?
  • – This is a conspiracy by the Americans!
  • – It was better in the past, but the youth these days are no good!
  • – It’s the education system’s fault. Schools these days don’t teach anything worthwhile.
  • – A made too much money. We should take this opportunity humble him.
  • – There are people in this world who have it tougher than this. It makes no sense to ignore them just to help B.

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:

  • – I cannot believe people would say it’s B’s own responsibility.
  • – It is too simplistic to only criticize A. We have to go after C who is pulling the strings.
  • – A has no capacity to pay damages. The government should do something.
  • – I don’t think it makes sense to blame everything on bureaucrats and the government.
  • – Don’t bring up generational conflict in this case!
  • – The idea of a fixer behind the scenes is hogwash.
  • – Don’t turn this into a political fight.

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%.
*****

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?”

In a world full of knowledge, there is no more excuse for ignorance!

Friday food for thought:  I think a lot of people didn’t really need a university study to tell them that some people are just wilfully ignorant. But just in case you needed proof, here is an article from last month:

Robert Proctor doesn’t think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases.

He has developed a word inspired by this trend: agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.”

As Proctor argues, when society doesn’t know something, it’s often because special interests work hard to create confusion. Anti-Obama groups likely spent millions insisting he’s a Muslim; church groups have shelled out even more pushing creationism. The oil and auto industries carefully seed doubt about the causes of global warming. And when the dust settles, society knows less than it did before.

…Maybe the Internet itself has inherently agnotological side effects. People graze all day on information tailored to their existing worldview. And when bloggers or talking heads actually engage in debate, it often consists of pelting one another with mutually contradictory studies they’ve Googled: “Greenland’s ice shield is melting 10 years ahead of schedule!” vs. “The sun is cooling down and Earth is getting colder!”

I notice this all the time. On the one hand, Wikipedia has effectively made asking people questions obsolete — for any given factual question, Wiki is almost always going to give you a more reliable answer (with sources!) than any of your friends. And Google Maps and the like have destroyed the art of giving directions.

But at the same time, the human mind has an instinct to filter out unnecessary information. Sometimes you just have to ignore stuff you don’t care about, but at other times, for example, I find myself subconsciously avoiding looking up the history of bands, and the only reason I can think of is that I like believing in the image of the band better than I would knowing the actual facts.

METI rushes to adopt anti-SLAM policies

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.
…
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).”
…
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.

F-U journalism from Matt Taibbi

Following on the heels of yesterday’s post on a 1993 long-form, take-down profile of Gregory Clark, readers might be interested in taking a look at Matt Taibbi. He is a true master of what I call fuck-you journalism, something of a subset of gonzo style. If you thought the reporter for The Australian was a little harsh, you haven’t seen anything. Taibbi has got to be the biggest out-and-out dickhead in the entire business, though I am sure he could find far more biting insults for himself. Some choice bits:

On the death of Yeltsin:

Death of a Drunk
At long last, former Russian president and notorious booze-hound Boris Yeltsin dies

Boris Yeltsin probably had more obituaries ready in the world’s editorial cans than any chronically-ill famous person in history. He has been dying for at least twenty consecutive years now — although he only started dying physically about ten years ago, he has been dying in a moral sense since at least the mid-Eighties. Of course, spiritually speaking, he’s been dead practically since birth…I once visited Boris Yeltsin’s birthplace, in a village in the Talitsky region of the Sverdlovsk district in the Urals, in a tiny outhouse of a village called Butka. I knocked on the door of the shack where Yeltsin was born and stepped in the soft ground where his room had once been. Boris Yeltsin was literally born in mud and raised in shit. He was descended from a long line of drunken peasants who in hundreds of years of non-trying had failed to escape the stinky-ass backwater of the Talitsky region, a barren landscape of mud and weeds whose history is so undistinguished that even the most talented Russian historians struggle to find mention of it in imperial documents.

Reviewing Thomas Friedman’s latest book:

When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.

Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America’s ability to fall for absolutely anything—just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts— along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-stached resident of a positively obscene 114,000 11,400 square foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.

Where does a man who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a “Green Revolution”? Well, he’ll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian.

I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about—in particular his tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make them up even if you were trying—and when you tried to actually picture the “illustrative” figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.

Remember Friedman’s take on Bush’s Iraq policy? “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” he wrote, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.” Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman’s analysis of America’s foreign policy outlook last May:

The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging.When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.”

First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.

And on Tom Daschle (Glenn Greenwald dug this up when the tax problems that cost Daschle his cabinet position surfaced):

I know several reporters who are either officially or unofficially on “Whore Factor” duty, watching the rapidly kaleidoscoping transition picture and keeping track of the number of known whores and ghouls who for some reason have been invited to befoul the atmosphere of the next administration.

Obviously there has been some dire news on that front already. When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly shit my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist, whose visit to South Dakota on behalf of John Thune in 2004 was one of the factors in ending Daschle’s tenure in the Senate.

But in picking Daschle — who as an adviser to the K Street law firm Alston and Bird has spent the last four years burning up the sheets with the nation’s fattest insurance and pharmaceutical interests — Obama is essentially announcing that he has no intention of seriously reforming the health care industry. . . .

Regarding Daschle, remember, we’re talking about a guy who not only was a consultant for one of the top health-care law firms in the country, but a board member of the Mayo Clinic (a major recipient of NIH grants) and the husband of one of America’s biggest defense lobbyists — wife Linda Hall lobbies for Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Does anyone really think that this person is going to come up with a health care proposal that in any way cuts into the profits of the major health care companies?

That image has been burned into my head over the past week or so…

Of course, in Japan Taibbi would find himself up to his ears in defamation suits. In the US, he appears merely to be ignored as a sensationalist who can only get published in Rolling Stone.

Chocolate low-malt beer makes me sad

As a beer drinker (though I am really liking wine these days), this announcement was truly shocking:


I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — what a sad state of affairs! If I saw this at the store I might be forced to buy it for the novelty value, but apparently it’s only being offered online. Oh well.

This new chocolate low-malt beer (happoshu in Japanese) makes me sad, mostly because of the implications of the company’s decision to make chocolate happoshu instead of chocolate real beer.

What started as a clever way to get around a tax hike in 1994 has today resulted in low-malt happoshu and no-malt “third beer” gaining recognition among the Japanese public as cheaper, viable alternatives to the real thing. In my own life, it is typical to see housewives at the local Ito Yokado buying dinner with a cheaper beer alternative, either for the husband or to drink together (I do a lot of the grocery shopping).  How did things come to this?

According to the National Tax Agency, beer has long been Japan’s drink of choice. As far back as 1970, twice as much beer was consumed as Japanese sake. But for a long time, Japan has had a 40% tax on beer sales, higher than other advanced nations (UPDATE: in 2006 it was lowered slightly but remains high). This was never a problem when Japan’s economy was growing, but a tax change in the post-bubble year 1994 triggered events that would transform the local convenience store beer cooler:


Japan’s alcohol tax system divides beer-like malt beverages into four categories based on malt content: 67% or higher, 50 to 67%, 25 to 50%, and less than 25%. An alcoholic beverage based on malt is classified as beer if the weight of malt extract exceeds 67% of the fermentable ingredients. Since Suntory‘s introduction in 1994 of Hop’s Draft, containing 65% malt, a market has emerged for low-malt, and recently, non-malt beer substitutes.

With alcohol tax revenues decreasing as a result of happoshu’s popularity, the Japanese government eventually raised the nation’s tax on low malt beers. In 1996, the tax for products containing 50 to 67% malt was raised to that of beer. Brewers followed suit by lowering the malt content of their products. Today, most happoshu contains less than 25% malt, putting it in the lowest tax category of low-malt beer. In recent years, Japanese brewers have released dozens of brands in attempt to increase their market share. Many of these are marketed as more healthy products, with reduced carbohydrates and purines. Another trend is to use unmalted barley, such as in Sapporo’s Mugi 100% Nama-shibori.

Beer-flavored beverages collectively dubbed “the third beer“(第三のビール, dai-san no bīru) by the mass media have been developed to compete with happoshu. These alcoholic products fall under categories not yet as highly taxed. The third beer beverages either use malt alternatives, or they are a mix of happoshu and another type of alcohol. When comparing 350 ml cans, the third beer brands can be 10 to 25 yen cheaper than happoshu.

Effect on total consumption

These new, less tasty types of beer have grown in importance over the years. Third beer sales overtook happoshu for the first time in 2008, amid a record bad sales year for the beer and beer equivalent industry as a whole. Together, happoshu and third beer sold almost 90% as many cases as real beer (226 million vs. 256 million). In a matter of years, Japan may be drinking more loophole beer than the real thing. The bad sales were attributed to to price hikes (due to high commodity prices in the first half of 2008) and a general shift among consumers away from beer to other options or no drinking at all (due to being too old or a part of the supposedly vice-free younger generation).

Over a longer term, consumption of beer peaked in 1994 at 7 million kiloliters and fell 53% by 2006. The combined beer + happoshu + “other alcohol” numbers went from 7.09 million kL in 1994 to 5.9 million in 2006, a dip of around 18%. from the peak.

However, according to the tax authorities, overall alcohol consumption peaked in 1996 and fell 9.2% by 2006. It is clear that the decline of beer etc. was the biggest drag on the total, as no segment of the industry stepped up to take beer’s place. Beer’s share of total alcohol consumption declined from 73% in 1994 to just 66% in 2006. While shochu and liqueur (mostly chuhai aka shochu “alcopop”) and wine grew over that period (and sake, whisky, and brandy actually declined significantly), there is still nothing approaching beer.

Effects on drinking behavior, conclusion

The rise of happoshu came amid a major recession for the Japanese economy and the first instance of deflation for a developed economy in the postwar era. Just as the 1990s saw the rise of 100 yen stores and Uniqlo discount apparel, these near-beers are the product of downward price pressure and a relative impoverization of a wide swath of Japanese consumers.

This dual taxation appears to have created a similar dual structure in how people drink their beer. According to What Japan Thinks, while around three quarters of those surveyed drink at home, the overwhelming drink of choice was Happoshu: “over one in six of the total population drink happoshu almost every day!” So while a minority will drink beer or other alcohol, it’s clear that my observations of housewives at Ito Yokado aren’t just coincidence — as far as I can tell, the justification for drinking happoshu is that it’s cheap and tastes just good enough to be had with dinner.

The existence of these choices isn’t by itself a bad thing. I am not aware of the tax scheme in the US, but liquor stores are filled with nasty alternatives to good beer (some happoshu brands are much better than Schlitz, just to name one example). The only thing that angers me is that the tax policy has pushed the beer companies to pursue a decidedly low-quality product line in order to avoid their tax bills, to the point that it dominates their marketing such that even their novelty products are happoshu. Could it have been possible to negotiate an overall lower tax on beer that would maximize both quality and tax revenue?

Ultimately, the tax wars over beer ended up hurting everyone involved, concludes a helpful summer 2008 report by Shigeki Morinobu, a former tax regulator who was personally involved in the process between 1993-97. Annual tax revenues from beer and derivatives fell from more than 1.6 trillion yen in 1994 to 1.1 trillion yen in 2007, an enormous drop of 32%. The beer market has shrunk significantly, as detailed above.

Morinobu, in translation and with my full-throttled agreement:

And what about the consumers? The tax debate resulted in low-malt beers overflowing the store shelves. The flavor of beer-type drinks grew worse and worse, which constitutes perhaps the biggest factor behind the trend away from beer drinking, especially prominent among young people. Seen this way, it is clear there are no winners in this war over beer taxation.

In Germany, anything with less than 100% malt cannot be considered beer. Japan, too, should return to the root of the problem and recognize that creating good beer will increase beer’s overall consumption volume and in the end boost national tax revenues. This summer, I prefer to drink 100% malt, real beer.

Some more thoughts on eikaiwa, this time less bile-fueled

I am looking back at some of my writing on eikaiwa and it is pretty cold-hearted, Internet Toughguy stuff (calling them pathetic and useless only to halfheartedly apologize later). I guess as someone the same age as many of these eikaiwa teachers I had trouble seeing the forest for the trees, but forgive me for only just appreciating that:

(a) for a lot of these eikaiwa teachers it is their first time in the work force, so it isnt really fair to lay their industry’s shortcomings at their feet; and

(b) the service offered by eikaiwa schools isnt that much different from the borderline-deceptive practices of a lot of businesses, but you don’t see me calling moisturizer salesladies a bunch of charlatans for peddling dubious claims, or insurance salespeople scheisters for convincing salarymen to gamble their life savings on risky annuities.

Part of the reason eikaiwa can come off so ugly from the Westerner perspective is because, often for the first time, we are only looking at the dark underbelly of the business instead of the neat and polished exterior. Usually we are happy to be fooled into thinking we need cold soda and DVD recorders, but when Westernness and dreams of a better life are being so clearly deceptively sold, it turns our stomachs.

Imagine if our first experience with the circus was to see a clown with his wig off, makeup smeared, and sipping from a flask? I think we might have a hard time enjoying the show after that.

Even without deception, the fundamental principle of selling something is to create demand where it might not otherwise be. That may be hard for me to appreciate as someone who sits at a desk and translates all day. My job seems to have limitless demand that almost literally falls in my lap, and more importantly I have never had to convince someone to have something translated. But were I to lose my job I’d be back in the business of marketing myself as the right person to turn your Japanese documents into proper English.

Google trends snapshot — US vs. Japan

Here is the lost of top 40 hot searches in Google’s new Japanese-language Google Trends. 17 are for celebrities, all Japanese except for Prince Charles, who is in Japan to visit the imperial family, among other things. Also a bunch about financial services.

Across the Pacific, the US hot searches included just 8 queries looking for info on celebrities, (including Obama, the biggest celebrity in the world). Lots of queries for specific movies practical services, or specific web memes like the “la times obama video” or the “live your life video”.

My armchair conclusions? Thanks for asking! I realize that these lists are hardly a robust look at what people search for in general, but I think this just underscores the huge role celebrity-obsession plays in driving Internet traffic in Japan, while the US is all about funny videos and piracy. Celebrity blogs are a major reason to be on the Internet these days, to the point that J-Cast news maintains a running feature covering some of the quirkier entries.

Lists after the fold.

Continue reading Google trends snapshot — US vs. Japan

Japanese TV is full of dangerous frauds

Japan Probe had an thoughtful post on one of Japanese TV’s more prominent fortune-tellers:

Last night, TV Tokyo aired a special warning viewers about disasters that are bound to hit Japan in the next few years. They included:

A cholera outbreak will come from the sea and kill 5,000 Japanese between now and 2011

Famine will hit Japan and thousands will die of starvation between now and 2011.

In 2011, water shortages will lead to global war, and Japan will participate in the conflict.

The predictions were made by Jucelino Nobrega da Luz, a Brazilian con artist. Instead of giving viewers background information about how Jucelino is a fraud, TV Tokyo found experts and spun their explanations about there being “a possibility” that outbreaks of disease and famine could occur into supporting evidence for Jucelino’s claims.

Here was my comment in response:

My stomach churns each time I see this man on TV. The most sickening display was when he claimed to know where Lindsay Anne Hawker’s killer was hiding out. The rawest form of exploitation of an unsolved murder, and there wasn’t even a token disclaimer to let viewers know the man is completely full of it. I guess a dead foreigner is easy since she has so few friends inside the country. He and all the fortune tellers on J-TV have no place outside the most fringe areas of daytime TV infomercials but no they get prime time booking and complete reverence and respectability.

Someone said the appearance of this man on Japanese TV was not a Japan-specific issue, but while it may be true that other countries have bad and even harmful TV, what has it got to do with Japan? Of course this man’s respectful treatment on Japanese television is hugely relevant to Japan…

The Japanese people are bombarded with a massive amount of false and dishonest TV images depicted as non-fiction, and it is not limited to fake psychics (for example, is it any wonder that some people were willing to believe that Asahara Shoko was a messiah with the ability to levitate when he used to BE one of these respected figures on J-TV?).

With so much disinformation in their lives can it be any wonder that many people never find their way to the realm of rational debate over national issues of importance?

TSA is on kabuki alert

America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don’t you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks, but does not say.

And, as always American thinks: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and embarrassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would even admit privately that all this harassment is only the government’s way of showing that it is “fair,” of demonstrating that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line.

That’s from Peggy Noonan‘s new book Patriotic Grace, as quoted here.