Again On “2010 ACCJ Person of the Year”

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I was elected as the 2010 ACCJ Person of the Year in the end of 2010, and gave an acceptance speech this February at The Tokyo American Club luncheon.  The text of the speech is uploaded on my web site for your reference.

Recently, someone told me that Mr. Richard Smart posted an article about me, which, I think, was based on my speech at the luncheon, on the Tokyo Weekender titled “Kiyoshi Kurokawa, The Maverick”

Well, it is true that I speak my mind outspokenly although it may irritate some people, so it is quite natural for Mr. Smart to think that way.  However, I have never doubted that I might be wrong.  My point is that the Japanese society is a too insular minded, closed “Vertical Society.”

I know that many people will have hard feelings when truths are spoken and I don’t think we can do much about it.   However, it is very important that we speak what we truly feel.

You all know how the Japanese media coverage took the side of the government, trying to make things look better in their news coverage after the events of 3.11.  I think the credibility of Japanese journalism has fallen down sharply by their behavior of currying favor with power.  And now it is clear to the whole world that this attitude of flattering to power is not limited to the Japanese government, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), or Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
 
Where is Japan headed to?  I am a bit worried.

My Opinion Pieces in the New Komeito and Liberal Democratic Party of Japan Papers

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Last month, a dialogue with the Tetsuo Sato, former Minister of the Environment and current acting Secretariat General of the New Komeito and myself took place on the topic of “Japan Overcoming Crises and Making a Contribution to the Rest of the World ? The Lessons of Our Nuclear Disaster as a Resource for the Common International Good” (in Japanese).  This article appeared in New Komeito which is the official monthly journal of the New Komeito Party.  This debate took place one month after the earthquake on April 13th.  I hope you will forgive me for the delay in posting this information because, frankly, it completely slipped my mind.

The following topics were covered:

  • The real face of Japan
  • Leadership that is weak at the time of crises
  • A blueprint for disaster recovery
  • Japan in the world today

I wrote frankly about “political leadership (p. 3) of the current Democratic Party of Japan administration.

In this journal, a dialogue with the Kazuhisa Ogawa, an expert on Japan’s self-defense force, and another with Masayuki Yamanouchi, a historian and a great scholar appeared in the issues before and after mine.

A three-part series was published in the official weekly paper of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan in July.  The series was entitled “Contemplating the State of the Nation” and my theme was Social Welfare.  The titles of the articles (all in Japanese) are listed below:

However, when I talked with the editor on the phone and expressed my reservations that these three expansive themes would be extremely difficult to adequately cover over three installments in the available space with the end result being essentially being meaningless, the editor responded that he had gotten the exact same response from a number of people.

I did address these topics broadly over the three installments, and I was able to say what I wanted to say.

The final installation came out today and I, quite by chance, was in the offices of a senior Liberal Democratic Diet member in the afternoon.  He took a look at the article and offered up some comments.

The article did contain some rather critical comments in regards to the Liberal Democratic Party which is to be expected.

Today, more than ever, politicians have a huge responsibility in a Japan which is currently in a precarious position.

 

The Fragiligy of Japanese Elites, How to Make Leaders

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The whole world was watching Japan, holding breath, ever since after the 3.11.  I have been sending out series of hard comments in my blog (Ref.1,2), too.

Although what I have been saying was nothing new,  I have been saying the same things (in Japanese)for a long time, it seems that the management of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster by Japanese authorities made my points – the weakness of Japan ? becoming clear to the world.

The world media do not seem to report anything about Japan recently except for the nuclear power plant issue, though..…

The conduct of Japanese scientists also ruined the credibility of this nation.  Speaking in Japanese (not English) did not prevent the audience of the world to understand what are said and written.  My overall impression however, is that the comments by the Japanese scientists, especially on the nuclear power plants, were too vague and incomprehensible.  I know there are tons of reasons for this, but still, I have to say..….

In the morning edition of Nikkei Newspaper of May 9th, my comments (in Japanese) appear.  I would appreciate it if you could read this and think a little about it.  People are sending me many e-mails and messages on this article.

Here is another article (in Japanese) on Nikkei Newspaper quoting my comments, which was published a bit earlier.

To Overcome the Sorrow, a Gift of a Song from Korea

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This huge disaster is so overwhelming that I do not know how to express it.  At the same time, during these two weeks, I sensed clearly the great power of the internet age.

Mr. Deguchi is a friend of mine who regularly posts very nice articles to his mail magazine (in Japanese).  Originally being a journalist and newspaper reporter, collecting information and writing the coverage in an article is what he does best.  I am always impressed with his highly professional writings.  Mr. Deguchi and I have also been working together for about 3 years on a project of learning the history of Korean modern medicine

While I was browsing through twitter, I noticed quite a number of comments that said songs would be a very useful tool to support people in a tragic circumstance like this.  I think it was partly because reports on television were too standardized, lacking different approaches.

I happened to find a beautiful song and video from Korea for this tragedy, so I sent them to Mr. Deguchi.  He needed to know the meaning of the words of the song, so I asked a Korean friend of mine who sent me the Japanese translation immediately.  There was also another video which had Japanese translation in it.    Here, I will introduce to you a part of them.  Attached to the song and video are moving comments by Mr. Deguchi.
They are here (in Japanese).

The song is introduced in the section of ‘Korean singer Cho Sommo moves people’s heart with his song.  This video makes people cry.’ (in Japanese)

 

Recommend Taking a Leave of Absence From School: Support Youth Who Go Abroad!

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Throughout 2010 I have recommended that people, especially students, take a leave of absence from school. Response from the youth is not bad.  I’ve gathered that this idea is spreading gradually so I sent an article to Asahi Shinbun and it appeared on the ‘My Point of View’ column in the Jan. 14th morning edition.

In a quite limited space, I argued as below, which I summarized in a list. The title of my article is the same as this posting.  Please forward this article to your friends in any way you please, like e-mails, blogs, or twitter. 

Japanese youth are by no means insular minded. Youth are reflection of the society of the time.

Governments, industries, and educational institutes should do better.  Mind you, youth is our only hope and resource for Japan tomorrow.

 “My Point of View

  • I have recommended taking a leave of absence for some time now.  It is because I sincerely wish that youth can broaden their horizons while they are still undergraduate students.
  • A broad human network is a strong tool for leaders to be, in whatever field.  As globalization continues, international friends you make through your travels who are not affiliated with any one particular organization are a huge asset. Sharing meals together, and experiencing the world together is so important.
  • You can take courses at universities, join NGO activities at the developing countries, or maybe experience internships at global enterprises.  What bothers me now is that currently we do not have any good, stable system to encourage youth who wish to go abroad.  From the emails and conversations I have with students, the most urgent problem to be addressed is the problem of tuition.
  • National universities waive the tuition during the period students are on leave, but private universities sometimes continue to charge tuition.  You get an impression that those universities are putting management before education.  What a disgraceful and sad thing to do.  Can’t they exempt tuition while students are on leave?  This, however, is not the problem of universities alone.  I believe that there are many things that government could do.
  • There are of course other problems beside tuition.  For instance, we need better system that will acknowledge the experience gained overseas; such as exchange of units or transfer of students for a certain period.  I would like to know the thoughts of the university administrations.
  • For Japanese youth, my advice is not to be insular minded, but to challenge, to go abroad.  I have an impression that both students and their parents, because they seek too much of a safe and stable life (especially after the economic bubble burst), tend to avoid the risk of international study.
  • Typically in Japan, students busy themselves with company interviews (shu-katsu, in Japanese) in their junior year at university.  The students think of nothing else but to get a job offer from as many companies as possible, as quickly as they can.  This is not a way to nurture global talents.  If we cannot educate the talents of the next generation, we cannot stop this nation’s decline.  Even now, existence of Japan is fading away in many international political, economical, and diplomatic scenes.  I am deeply concerned.
  • Youth in other nations are aggressively working their ways to the top universities of western countries. These are the locations where many of the world’s leaders emerged. These universities not only provide high quality education, but offer you settings to develop multi ethnic, multi national human networks.  The more you are exposed to friends from different histories or cultures, the clearer vision you will have for your future.  International education is not good only for the individuals, but will also play a significant role in the making of a nation because these global talents will become the central working force in any political, economical, or social organization of the country.
  • So, let us together encourage Japanese youth to go abroad for training.  Universities, industries, parents ? in short, the society as a whole, must share this vision.  By supporting youths who take leave of absence from schools to go abroad, we can nurture our ‘human assets’ and create hope for a brighter future for Japan.”

The Asahi Shinbun newspaper, January 14, 2011, page 19

The Economist, Sarcastic But Honest: ‘Food For ‘Zombies’, ‘The Civil Service Serves Itself’

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I would say that ‘The Economist’ competes for the 1st or 2nd position as the most widely read weekly magazines in economy.  This magazine even picks up the issues of its home country, Great Britain with plenty of sarcasms, to report to its people and the world what they need to know.  This precisely is the most important and basic mission of journalism, the foundation for its credibility.  The Economist has its own ‘unique, cool’ style in writings, titles, figures and charts which makes it so special and unsurpassable.

Those, I think, are the reasons why The Economist or Financial Times are so highly evaluated, being read by business people throughout the world.  In short, their works are professional.

Japanese journalism is quite different here.  Basically it is rather on the establishment side as you see for example by the system of members only ‘Press Club (Kishya Kurabu)’ and their reports are in large part targeted to Japanese only, i.e. mere 2% of the population of the whole world.  It is a matter of course then that journalism of the ‘global age’ will not develop in such circumstance. I doubt that they (Japanese journalists) have such ambition to be global in the first place.

I have recently introduced to you in my blog one of the articles of The Economist and here I would like to call your attention to a good sarcasm in the article (1) and another in the ‘On-line’ edition (2).

Please refer to the original for the full text but:
In (1), the subtitle is striking; ‘Food for zombies’(click here for Japanese translation of the article). They write how Japanese government endlessly supports not well performing big companies, and new enterprises hardly emerging, so many no-good companies survive, thus only to become ‘zombies’. This is a keen observation which I totally agree.
In (2), the title is; ‘The civil service serves itself’ describing the irresponsible current mechanism and governance of Japanese bureaucrats or civil servants; they enjoy ‘Descent from Heaven (Amakudari).’ Spending huge amounts of public money for themselves.

The world is noticing the reality of Japan.  What will become of our national credibility?

These days politics seems to be occupied with nothing but their struggles within the party.  Our country is having 5 prime ministers in 4 years – an outrageous nation (Tondemo Kokka) – are we going to have the 6th prime minister beginning later this month?

What has become of the elites of ‘intellect’ of this nation (Ref.1); ‘legislators, governments, industries’ and ‘academics’, I wonder?

Don’t they care any more about the people of Japan?

Does Japan now have to head for the crises ?

China Ranks 2nd, Japan Goes Down to the 3rd in the World in GDP; From the Article of The Economist

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GDP of Japan which used to be the 2nd largest in the world fell to 3rd after China.

This news itself is not so much to worry about because GDP is strongly affected by the size of the population. China with population 10 times larger than Japan to overtake her (Japan’s) position of the 2nd in the world ranking of the GDP was something that was predicted for a long time the only question being ‘when’.

What truly matters is the GDP per capita.  Japan has fallen off the position of the 2nd in GDP per capita the world and has keeping places somewhere around 18th or so for quite a while.  This is not surprising, since, to begin with, Japan’s GDP has not grown in the least for these 15 years.  I suspect that Japan is the only nation in the OECD (in Japanese) that has not achieved any growth in GDP for these 15 years.

Up to date no signs of growth are observed in Japan, and few in the world expects little sign of change from Japan, thus no investments come to Japan.  Changes in other OECD nations are obvious since the 2008 ‘Lehman Shock’ but Japan is still lingering in that terrible situation of ‘no economic growth, increasing its dept only.’ 

The Economist, as always, is pointing out the important issues clearly in its article of August 19th ‘Watching China whizz by’ (Click here for Japanese translation of the article). Views of Professor Ishikura, one of my friends, appear in the article, too.  As I say, larger corporations can not make decisions or is late when they do.  As the article points out, big companies are basically all the same in their conducts, our government does not dare to let incompetent companies down so it makes many ‘Zombie companies’ surviving.  This will discourage new enterprises to emerge.  Don’t they realize that the market and business of the world has changed drastically?   We are now in the age of ‘Demand-driven、Open and Disruptive Innovation.’

Anyway, as you see in the chart in The Economist the rate of growth of economy in China is extraordinary.

Not knowing your partners, not having multitudes of networks of friends of long time in growing developing nations can constitute big handicaps for our future growth.  Just to give you an idea, for example, the estimated growth rate of the whole Africa is 5.6%.  What are your business strategies?

Immersed Deep in Debt, Japan At The Brink of Default?

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In the world, especially in the ‘developed countries’, government spending is soaring up high while economy recovery is still slow (although not as slow as Japan…)  so the increase of national debt is now being a deep concern to many government leaders. 

At EU, Greece fell into insolvency, Spain and Portugal may also become excess debts and the value of Euro is facing crisis.

Economy in Japan still continues to be in bad shape.  Japan has seen hardly any significant GDP growth for these 20 years.  National budget this year consists of more government-bonds than tax revenue, and policies they come up with only demands more public spending.  Japan’s total debt (mostly government bonds) is now close to 200% of its GDP.

Nonetheless, I don’t see any self control in Japan in the way they issue national bonds, and compared to other nations Japanese experts, academics and media are being too diffident in expressing concerns on the national debt of our country.  Could it be because the volume of the dept is too huge (200% of GDP)?  I feel that it looks almost like a ‘drug addiction’ symptom.  On top of that, aging of our population is accelerating making it almost impossible to pay off the debt. The younger generation must be feeling, though vague maybe, more and more insecure and depressed.  I must say that our generation is so very irresponsible.

So-called ‘experts’ of ‘Japan Inc’ used to say until a few years ago that since Japanese people have about 1400 trillion yen in savings etc., there is really no over-debt or even possible default in Japan.  But don’t you feel that such kind of commentaries and voices have not been heard in these days?  Why is this?

In late January this year, the Standard and Poor’s (by the way, it appears to have made some illegal moves again in the ratings of financial institutions in relation to the recent Goldman-Sacks incidence….) lowered the credit of Japan by one rank.  Japanese media stangely reported this only a bit,  which is a mystery to me since this is such a big problem.

Come to think of it, the last time they lowered the rank of Japan (was it May, 2002?) the whole ‘Japan Inc’, made a big fuss out of this down-grading, media reporting on this sensationally, ministry of finance sending letter and advertisements of protests even to foreign media.  For example see this article. Do you remember?  It was very different from what we are seeing now.  Have you thought about the reason why it is so?

So, what is the current status of Japan exactly?  It seems obvious that paying back of debt (200% of GDP) of Japan is already impossible.  So the credit of this nation will inevitably deteriorate, growth in economy is hardly possible…..  Next fiscal year I see no other choice for Japan than to ask other countries to buy significant portion of our national bonds since domestic demand will not cover the whole amount (though having sold them almost entirely domestically was not normal in the first place, generally speaking.)  If this happens, then the interest rate would go up to at least about 4-5%, repaying back of the debt would be even more difficult, government debt would go skyrocket high, inflation will follow; the life of people will be more and more painful.

Japanese politics is miserable today.  ‘The Iron Triangle of Policymakers, Industry, and Government’ (‘Japan Inc’) that has dominated this country for a long time proved itself to be awfully incompetent.  It is not hard to guess what the ‘elites’ at the government and/or ministry of finance are thinking.  They are hardly likely to take responsibility to themselves, they would blame the cabinet (policy makers) for its poor work.  I can see the scenario in which the people of Japan, especially the younger generation, are forced to fall into poverty.  It is such a mess.  I think I can even foresee the steps those ‘elites’ are likely to take in the future.

Recently, Minister of Post System, Kamei raised the maximum amount of Yubin Chokin (savings at the Japan Post Office) to 20 million yen.   Isn’t this strange?  We can even interpret this as some kind of apparent conspiracy of trying to sell national bonds of next year within Japanese market only.  So is this again that same old ‘putting off of the problems’, ‘conspiracy’?  Is this their strategy to survive another one year without raising the interest rate and not causing inflation?  The decision was announced too suddenly which adds to the strangeness.   But, having this done, it is yet quite doubtful the budget of the next year (year 2011) can become toward recovery path.

In the end, the interest rate of Japanese government bond will rise, amount of repayment of the debt will increase, Japan Yen will go down, and hyper-inflation will take place.  Can you see how awful this would be?

With the election of the Upper House ahead, policy makers can not bring up the issue of raising sales tax, can not act to bring drastic changes to the government, can not decide… and the same goes with the government, media, and academics, too.  Even media seems reluctant to send out messages broadly on such a bad and painful issue; I am not sure whether they are being controlled by the government or worrying about the advertisement fees that established companies pay to them.

At any rate, after the economy bubbles burst in Japan in 1990, the interest rate sank to extreme in around 1998, causing a large bulk of our savings to flow overseas, and it is highly likely that those money worked in part as a trigger of the ‘sub prime’.  I suspect that after the sub prime burst the bubbles in the world, our savings will never come back.

Economy in Japan is very much in danger zone now (Ref.1,2). Political leadership have been unable to raise taxes because of coming election, large companies seem unable of doing good job in selecting and focusing.  They are still reluctant to offer key executive positions to non-Japanese or women so there is not much hope ahead.  It’s OK to discuss ‘this and that’, but what matters is action.  Mega companies are also low in spirit and seem to be thinking only about ‘inside’ factors.  I truly feel the necessity of more and more aggressive, positive management such as ‘M&A’.

Internationally speaking, reputation of Japan has dropped sharply, and I even sense the air of ‘not wanting to get involved with’ feelings sneaking into the minds of people outside of Japan.  ‘Weak’ is not the correct word to describe Japanese economy of today, rather it is ‘paralysed’.

I have cited articles from ‘The Economist’ again in this posting as I have done in many of my other columns. The reason for doing so is given in my column of February 15, ‘Toyota’s Problems and Sufferings: Eyes to See From Outside, Hearts to Sense Outside’ .

 

Canada: From Asahi ‘Globe’

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The Asahi Shinbun has been issuing 8 pages special features twice a month for several years now.  Its contents, topics are quite unique, and I enjoy reading them very much.

As the title shows, each issue analyzes ‘The Globe and Japan’ from different perspectives and from a very large point of view.  They are truly nice special issues.  I imagine that this idea came from the Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Funabashi because it reflects what he has been in various global stages..
 
What makes this even more impressive is that all articles are available for reading‘On-line’ (in Japanese) After they are printed on the newspapers they will post full articles within several days.

The new April 21st issue focused on ‘Canada’.   I was also interviewed perhaps because I have broad connections with faculties and students of Canadian universities (Ref.1) (Please search by keyword of ‘Canada’ for more columns in this web site).

This feature begins like this; ‘Japan and Canada both has a risk of being overlooked because of the super-powers beside them.  How to cope with this circumstance is our challenge for the 21st century….   In meetings of Japanese and Canadian university faculties such topic was raised…..’  Please read for yourself and find out how it continues.  Canada has a population of about 10% of the U.S.A, and so do Japan which is 10% of China.  The article is of quite interest in discussing how Canada manages to collaborate with the Giant neighbor, U.S.A on one hand and keep one’s identity on the other hand.

Canada is one of my favorite countries, too.  To put it in one sentence, I might describe Canada as ‘a country that inherited the good things of Great Britain and put away with the social classes of the British society.’  ‘The good things of Great Britain’ would be; that with a bit of socialism, its functioning democratic system, quality higher education, has a number of wonderful universities.  Regarding the health care system of Canada which is run as a core public sector as Michael Moore shows in his film, the quality of care is high, co-payments are low for the patients, and is trusted from the people.  The quality of physicians and faculties are also superb.

Canada was the country least affected by the financial crisis in 2008.  The banks stayed outside sub-primes.

I came to Toronto yesterday.  At dinner, I heard that even in Calgary, a city of 1.3 million, large proportion of local residents has habit of not locking the entrance door of their homes.  A good old life style still remains.  This episode is introduced in the film of Michael Moore, too.

I have one request to the Asahi Shinbun.  Why not have such wonderful features translated in English, on its ‘On-line’ version at least?  It is very ‘mottainai (wasting good things)’ to limit the readers to Japanese only.

Learn from Korea? Why not?

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As I have mentioned in my previous posting, Nikkei newspaper published an editorial urging Japanese to learn from Korea.  Good idea.  Nuclear plants, Samsung, Hyundai, Vancouver Olympic… Korea has been giving us blows on our nose in rows these days. 

By the way, JBPress or other web news in Japan which I comment on every now and then – they are pretty ‘cool’ actually.  Just recently too I found on JBPress an article by Mr. Toru Noguchi featuring Samsung titled ‘Vancouver Olympic, the true winner was Samsung; another long term strategy on project development here, its not just about semiconductor or LCD’ (in Japanese)

How are Japanese newspapers reporting on these issues, I wonder?  The direction the world is headed is clear enough.  What can I say if Japanese newspaper publishing houses still keep on competing over the volume of circulation and stick on ‘Kisha club (Japan National Press Club) or Members Only’ policy.

On the other hand, Korean media also reports on learning from Korea.

JoongAng Daily posted an article "Japan is now learning from ‘Korea express’ " on its Japanese web site, commenting on Nikkei editorial and also commenting to the special feature of Nikkei Business which I have touched upon in my previous posting on my web site.  They also included my comments, through an interview over telephone to me in Paris.