Nov. 15, 2009
New challenge for Japan: Who is truly qualified to serve public? Govt people or citizens?
The nature-loving woman died of a recurrence of cancer last year after living an exciting but simple life as an interpreter for U.S. artists and a member of a citizens’ movement in her hometown. She was 56 and survived by her husband and a 17-year-old son. She died while watching the sea of her hometown facing the Pacific from her bed. It was about two weeks after she returned from the United States to live her last days with her family and friends in Japan.
Members of a local citizens’ group organized against a high-rise condominium project tried to field the woman, who was one of its leaders, as a candidate for a mayoral election believing she was qualified to do jobs to preserve the nature of the town. But her poor health and other reasons prevented them from realizing the idea. The group won a half victory in their movement against the project. They succeeded in getting the local government to pass a law to ban high-rise structures in the scenic seaside area, but they failed to do so for smaller buildings.
Grass-roots or citizens’ movements are not new ones in Japan. Citizens’ movements became active in the 1970s. Movements by citizens and volunteers have spread widely in recent years to various parts of people’s daily life, including care for children, support for the handicapped, the sick and the elderly, education of young people and the preservation of the nature.
New challenge for Japan: Who is truly qualified to serve public? Govt people or citizens?
The nature-loving woman died of a recurrence of cancer last year after living an exciting but simple life as an interpreter for U.S. artists and a member of a citizens’ movement in her hometown. She was 56 and survived by her husband and a 17-year-old son. She died while watching the sea of her hometown facing the Pacific from her bed. It was about two weeks after she returned from the United States to live her last days with her family and friends in Japan.
Members of a local citizens’ group organized against a high-rise condominium project tried to field the woman, who was one of its leaders, as a candidate for a mayoral election believing she was qualified to do jobs to preserve the nature of the town. But her poor health and other reasons prevented them from realizing the idea. The group won a half victory in their movement against the project. They succeeded in getting the local government to pass a law to ban high-rise structures in the scenic seaside area, but they failed to do so for smaller buildings.
Grass-roots or citizens’ movements are not new ones in Japan. Citizens’ movements became active in the 1970s. Movements by citizens and volunteers have spread widely in recent years to various parts of people’s daily life, including care for children, support for the handicapped, the sick and the elderly, education of young people and the preservation of the nature.
The phenomenon comes at a time when people have become eager to know who is truly qualified to serve the public. It has been generally believed that jobs for the public are performed by national or local government officials, but the notion has come to be doubted as bureaucrats’ behaviors and their quality as public servants are under criticism. This is a reason why Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama called for exploring what he termed a “new concept of the public” in his recent inaugural address to the parliament. Who is truly qualified to serve the public or the common good? And what is the public after all in today’s society amid diversifying values? The main player in today’s Japan should be a people-oriented network society, with ordinary people ready to help each other at various places and occasions, Hatoyama believes.
In Japan, the emperor system represented the ultimate value throughout the periods except a few centuries ruled by samurai warlords.
From today, I will never look back on myself.
I will move on as a great shield of the Emperor.
(A personal translation)
This is one of a series of poems composed by “sakimori” soldiers and adopted for Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, compiled in the eighth century. Imamatsuribe Yosofu, the author of the poem, is believed to be a noncommissioned officer who led a small sakimori unit.
The emperor system and based on the system, bureaucrats’ strong clout on Japan’s politics were in force in the prewar period, or to be more precise, until after the end of World War II in a different manner. Prime Minister Hatoyama, inaugurated in September, aims at a thorough review of Japan’s postwar politics calling for redefining bureaucrats’ role in Japan’s policy making to let them support and facilitate people’s various activities.
The woman and her husband moved to California in the 1970s and started their life there almost from scratch. She found a telephone interpreter’s job with AT&T and her husband became a craftsman. Meanwhile, her younger brother and his pop music band had become popular in Japan when the couple was trying hard to establish their life in America. She became to be known as the pop star’s sister when she returned to Japan after about 20 years of life in the U.S. “I was always cautious toward people who approached me only because my brother is a celebrity. I had found myself used shrewdly by these people for their purposes. But I had made up my mind to use all means available to stop the condo project,” she wrote in her first and last book, published a few months after her death.
My wife knew the woman, Eriko Iwamoto, and met her a few times through a local citizens’ group to provide mainly home stay support to visiting foreign youths. “She was just a common person and she didn’t look like a celebrity’s sister. She was not arrogant at all,” my wife said. She wanted to live longer, but her life must have been satisfactory because her activity inspired many people to work together to protect their life and preserve the environment, her friends believe.
In Japan, the emperor system represented the ultimate value throughout the periods except a few centuries ruled by samurai warlords.
From today, I will never look back on myself.
I will move on as a great shield of the Emperor.
(A personal translation)
This is one of a series of poems composed by “sakimori” soldiers and adopted for Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, compiled in the eighth century. Imamatsuribe Yosofu, the author of the poem, is believed to be a noncommissioned officer who led a small sakimori unit.
The emperor system and based on the system, bureaucrats’ strong clout on Japan’s politics were in force in the prewar period, or to be more precise, until after the end of World War II in a different manner. Prime Minister Hatoyama, inaugurated in September, aims at a thorough review of Japan’s postwar politics calling for redefining bureaucrats’ role in Japan’s policy making to let them support and facilitate people’s various activities.
The woman and her husband moved to California in the 1970s and started their life there almost from scratch. She found a telephone interpreter’s job with AT&T and her husband became a craftsman. Meanwhile, her younger brother and his pop music band had become popular in Japan when the couple was trying hard to establish their life in America. She became to be known as the pop star’s sister when she returned to Japan after about 20 years of life in the U.S. “I was always cautious toward people who approached me only because my brother is a celebrity. I had found myself used shrewdly by these people for their purposes. But I had made up my mind to use all means available to stop the condo project,” she wrote in her first and last book, published a few months after her death.
My wife knew the woman, Eriko Iwamoto, and met her a few times through a local citizens’ group to provide mainly home stay support to visiting foreign youths. “She was just a common person and she didn’t look like a celebrity’s sister. She was not arrogant at all,” my wife said. She wanted to live longer, but her life must have been satisfactory because her activity inspired many people to work together to protect their life and preserve the environment, her friends believe.
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