Poverty threatening Japan’s society as new homeless people spread

Nov. 29, 2009

Poverty threatening Japan’s society as new homeless people spread

The time-honored stone building is part of the head office facilities of the Bank of Japan located a few kilometers north of Ginza, one of the busiest and most fashionable shopping centers in Tokyo. The two-story building faces a canal across a street to the west and above the canal runs an elevated expressway lane. The structure and a small bridge over the canal provide a good shelter-like environment for homeless people to live. Actually, “houses” of corrugated cardboard and wooden boards occupy some places around the bridge.
This is just one of the scenes one can see at corners of parks, station squares and other public places in Tokyo. As far as ordinary Japanese people are concerned, how the homeless live had been an unrelated problem until late last year, when a new breed of homeless people began to emerge amid Japan’s economic crisis.
Many Japanese companies resorted to firing contract or temporary workers in an effort to survive the global recession from late 2008 to this year. These workers’ contracts had been extended many times, giving them almost the same job conditions as those for regular workers, among them company housing. Some of them had no money to find their own housing and became homeless on the very day when their contracts were terminated. Eventually, they had to join the existing homeless people on the street.
Poverty is filtering into Japan’s society calmly and steadily. The Japanese government recently announced that Japan’s relative poverty rate had climbed to 15.7 pct in 2007. The rate represents the percentage of people whose annual income is less than half of the median of disposable income for each of the people, estimated at 2.28 million yen for the year under review. The finding means that one of every six persons suffers poverty in a country which had once boasted a stable society supported by many middle-income earners. The percentage was a staggering 54.3 pct for single-parent families.

A windy and rainy night, a rainy and snowy night. There is no means for me to tolerate cold during such a night. So, I nibble at hard salt and sip sake lees soup.

While coughing, sniveling and stroking my small beard, I tell myself cocksure there must be no one who is more talented than I. But because it is so cold, I pull hemp bedclothes over my head and wear all the short-sleeved clothes I have. Still I cannot warm myself. In a cold night like this, the parents of a person who is even poorer than I would be shivering from cold in hanger while his wife and children would be crying with weak voices. How do you make your living in such a situation?
People say the world is vast, but it appears to be small to me. People say the sun and the moon brightly shine on us and bless us, but they do not shine for me. Is this the case for other people, too? Or is this only for me?

I was born as a human being and I work just as other persons do. But I have nothing to wear other than sleeveless hemp clothes and seaweed-like ragged clothes. I have to live in a leaning, nearly collapsed house while having my father and mother sleep above my head and my wife and kids beyond my legs with straws placed as a mat on the ground. There is no fire at the kitchen and our rice cooker is left unused and covered with a spider’s web. They are begging for something to eat with feeble voices, but a whip-wielding village official’s voice is heard into our bedroom, just like the saying that a short thing should be cut even shorter. I wonder if leading a life in this world is really helpless like this.
(A personal translation)

This is a poem composed by Yamanoue Okura, a court official who was active early in the eighth century, when he was in his 60s. The long poem, which is included in Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, takes the form of a dialogue between two poor men. Unlike other waka poets of his age, who made poems about their beloved and kin or about noble persons, Okura left poems about the life of ordinary people.
The spread of people who have newly become homeless in Japan is attributed mainly to the global economic crisis that began in the autumn of last year. But some domestic structural reasons may also be cited for the phenomenon, such as competition-oriented business practices and a lack of social systems, something like a safety net, to rescue jobless people and get them back to the workplace.
The streets at Ginza are filled with many shoppers toward the year-end shopping season, but their purse strings appear to be tighter. People at the Bank of Japan buildings are racking their brains for a prescription to stimulate consumers’ demand and pull the economy out of the current deflationary spiral. But it is unknown if and how soon they will be able to find an answer to the question.

New challenge for Japan: Who is truly qualified to serve public? Govt people or citizens?

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.

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.

Japan’s food self-sufficiency and fate of rice

Oct. 28, 2009

Japan’s food self-sufficiency and fate of rice


Rice was always close at hand to Japanese people since the ancient times. The annual plant, which originally came from the Indochinese Peninsula, has continued to support people’s food life in the land which became to be known as Japan and formed a part of its traditional culture.
Japan was called the Land of Golden Ears of Rice in the Japanese myths.
Rice, ine in Japanese or called kome as a grain, is among the so-called five major cereals, which also include wheat, millet, foxtail millet and barnyard grass, but it is far more important than any other grains. A mythical episode says that a goddess named Ohgetsuhime produced the seeds of rice and wheat, and adzuki bean and soybean as well as silkworm from various parts of the body when she died.

Rice is in the ear and leaning in one direction in the autumn field.
I want to lean on your love in despite of bad rumor about us.
Bad rumor about our love bitterly pierces my heart.
I have never done this before in my life,
but I will wade across a river at dawn to see my lover.
(Personal translations)

These are poems composed by Princess Tajima, who left a few poems about her unforgivable love with Prince Hozumi, her half brother, in Manyoshu, Japan’s oldest waka poem collection. The year of her death is unknown, but she was believed to be in her late 20s when she died in 708. Prince Hozumi went out in heavy snow one day to visit the grave of Princess Tajima. He made the following elegy while having a distant view of her tomb on a hill in Yonabari, a mountainous area which was to the south of her former residence near the Imperial Palace:

She must be feeling cold.
Snow! Please do not fall so heavily on Ikai Hill of Yonabari.
(A personal translation)

Paddy rice blooms tiny white flowers from June to July. When it bears fruit, the ears droop down due to its weight.
Many of Japan’s traditional festivals are linked to rice as people continued hard efforts over the centuries to increase rice paddies by cultivating wasteland, controlling river flows and building irrigation canals. Farmers held festivals from spring to autumn while praying for and thanking for a bumper harvest for rice, not other grains. Rice was important not only for Japan’s food life. It was also an indispensable, pivotal product for economic activity until the end of the Edo Era. The rice-oriented economic system in the period led to the launch of a rice futures exchange in Osaka, the commercial hub of western Japan, in 1730. This was the first futures market in the world.
Rice is the staple food for Japanese people now. Rice has been so important a part of Japan’s society and tradition, but its fate is far from certain at present. The environment is becoming more serious than before for rice growers amid a continuous oversupply and declining prices, while consumers’ preference for food is diversifying.
Rice has been a politically touchy issue in the recent decades amid pressure from abroad to open Japan’s heavily protected rice market to imports. But Japan’s policymakers believe that measures should be taken to continue Japan’s rice production in order to maintain Japan’s food self-sufficiency and food security. They also believe that rice farming has numerous functions to play, preserving the natural environment and maintaining the rural community. Japan’s food self-sufficiency is picking up in recent years, but it remains as low as around 40 pct.
The Democratic Party of Japan, which has come to power after a recent election victory, has made clear a policy of introducing a producer-specific subsidy system initially for rice to cover a gap between rice prices and costs. But opponents and experts doubt if the system will work well, warning it may rather invite a moral hazard among producers. Japan is expected to need more time to find an effective prescription for saving Japan’s rice farming and making its rice and rice farmers internationally competitive.

Bush clover and slow, simpler life in Japan

Oct. 20, 2009

Bush clover and slow, simpler life in Japan

Bush clover, also called Japanese clover, is an autumn flower loved by many waka poets since the time of Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu. Japanese have many flowers and herbs to enjoy in autumn, maybe more than in other seasons. Bush clover leads the so-called seven flowers of autumn, followed by Japanese pampas grass, kudzu vine, a pink, Patrinia scabiosifolia, thoroughwort and kikyo bellflower in that order. The grouping originates from a poem composed by Yamanoue Okura, a poet of the eighth century who left many waka poems in the Manyoshu anthology. (An explanation about waka poems can be found in an author’s note in the blog post published on April 11)

When I count on my fingers the flowers in bloom in this autumn field,

I find seven kinds of flowers out there.
(A personal translation)

This is the poem made by Okura, who specifically lists up the seven flowers in another poem. The poem collection contains a total of 4,516 pieces of poems in 20 volumes. Of this, about 1,700 pieces mention the names of flowers or herbs. Bush clover, called “hagi” in Japanese, appears in 142 pieces, more frequently than any other species. Second was the Japanese apricot and third was “nubatama” iris.
Otomo Yakamochi, believed to be the editor of the poem collection, also composed a poem which refers to bush clover. He was returning a poem extended by a girl known as “Hekino Nagae." The poems of Yakamochi and the girl follow:

A cluster of bush clover in bloom in my garden:

I nearly mistakenly let it fall before showing the flower to my love.
When autumn comes, dews fall on the ears of “obana” (Japanese pampas grass).

I feel as if I were disappearing so quickly as the dews

because of the sorrow of love to you.
(Personal translations)

Bush clover, which belongs to the pea family, is a deciduous shrub and blooms from late summer to early autumn.
Hagi has been referred to in many poems not only in the Manyoshu era but also in the later periods Why has it attracted Japanese poets so strongly? The chief reason is its pretty shape, which fits waka poems, experts say. Hagi has a weeping habit and blooms a lot of tiny red-purple (sometimes white) flowers on slender branches. This has appealed to Japanese poets and people over the centuries.
Bush clovers seen in Japan are less brilliant compared to North American-grown species, many of which extend fountain-like flower branches in bloom. The Japanese species are also lower in height, about 3 to 4 feet. This is another reason for its popularity in Japan because Japanese like small and fragile things.
Despite its pretty, fragile look, hagi is a kind of “pioneer” plant and at home to poor conditions, such as dry soil. This eager-to-live, admirable appearance pleases Japanese people.
Tourist spots in Kamakura, south of Tokyo, attracts many visitors including those hoping to enjoy flowers on weekends. Hagi can be found at not only famous spots but also other places, sometimes on the roadside and on the fences of houses. Hagi should continue to be loved in Japan, maybe more widely than ever, because Japanese tend to prefer a simpler, slow life in view of the forthcoming environment-oriented age.

Forecasts of warm winter unnerve business people in Japan

Sept. 29, 2009

Forecasts of warm winter unnerve business people in Japan


An official long-term weather forecast indicates that Japan will have warm weather toward this winter. This should be a source of headache not only for those working on winter businesses but also for people in industries like tourism. The Meteorological Agency of Japan recently said the El Nino phenomenon of a higher sea surface temperature in the central to eastern parts of the Pacific will linger in the months ahead.

The ongoing global warming has already tended to delay the colored leaf viewing season across Japan. Weathermen estimate Japan’s average temperature from autumn to winter has risen by 2 to 3 degrees centigrade over the past 30 years. Package tours to famous spots with maple trees are a main product for tourist agencies every autumn, but they are having difficulty determining the timing for organizing the tours because the start of the maple tree viewing season is becoming more unpredictable.

With neither warp nor weft fixed on the loom,

the young girls have woven beautifully colored autumn leaves.

The frost, please do not fall on the leaves.
(A personal translation)

This is a waka poem composed by Prince Otsu and included in Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, compiled in the eighth century. The prince, who was known for his talent as a poet but died young, likened the red and yellow leaves spreading on the hills to a work by nymphs.
Kamakura, south of Tokyo, is a major tourist spot and the home to a samurai regime from the 13th to 14th centuries. Deciduous trees in Kamakura, including gingkoes at a small park in Nishi-Mikado, do not turn red or yellow until late November or early December.
Japanese people are becoming aware of the need to make their life environmentally friendly to stop the global warming. Some experts say it is already too late, but people look more interested in using recyclable and energy-saving products to reduce CO2 emissions. If the climate change following the global warming continues, Japan’s four seasons are feared to become less visible than now. If so, businesses linked to seasonal needs will also be jeopardized, thereby affecting the economy as a whole.

Many people are coming to understand the seriousness of the global warming, but business people are generally reluctant to work with the government’s new initiative to reduce Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 pct by 2020 from the 1990 level. It is their turn to show their will to save the earth as corporate citizens.

Japanese having moment to relax in coolness in autumn

Sept. 22, 2009

Japanese having moment to relax in coolness in autumn


Autumn has come quickly this year to Japan. The mercury rises to about the same level as in summer in the daytime, but it is much cooler early in the morning and in the evening. Japan had a politically hot summer this year, paving the way for the first party-to-party transfer of power in 50 years. But voters are turning their eyes back to their busy daily life.
“Summer heats and the cold in winter linger, but only until the equinox days,” a Japanese proverb says. The autumnal equinox and the vernal equinox represent the full start of autumn and spring for Japanese, with Buddhist services held for ancestors during the equinoctial weeks.
The sky in summer was occupied by big columns of cumulonimbus or thunderheads, but they have been replaced by fleecy clouds on gentle autumn winds.
A waka poem included in the Kokinwakashu poem anthology of the Heian period goes:

There is no visible sign that autumn has clearly come,
but the sound of winds tells me so.
(A personal translation)

The poem, which leads the autumn section of the anthology, was composed by Toshiyuki Fujiwara, the poet who was active late in the ninth century. The poem depicts thin signs of autumn on a cool windy day, and it has been loved by many Japanese because of its intellectual but refreshing tone and rhythm.
Autumn has many faces for the season-conscious Japanese. Autumn is a season of art, a season of appetite, and a season for thinking calmly. People come up with the results of their studies during the hot summer.
As the dust of the crucial elections at the end of August is settling down, Japanese people are concerned now about the resumed spread of swine flu throughout the country. The death of a seven-year-old boy was linked to the epidemic this week, becoming the 18th fatal case in Japan. People should be busy watching the news about the flu and the course of new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s initiative to revamp Japan’s politics in the months ahead.

Future of friendly relations between Japan and U.S. shaky?

Sept. 17, 2009

Future of friendly relations between Japan and U.S. shaky?

One little Japanese girl died in 1911 before going to America with her adoptive parents, a U.S. missionary and his wife, but people in Tokyo’s Azabu-Juban firmly believe her soul lives with a monument built in her memory in their town. Kimi Iwasaki, or Kimi-chan, died of illness at the age of nine at a Methodist orphanage in an area which is now a part of Azabu-Juban, uptown Tokyo. Local people, led by a group of shop owners, hoped to build a statue of Kimi-chan as a symbol of their “town of smile.” Her statue was set at a square in the heart of the town in February 1989. The 65-centimeter-high statue later became an icon of a charity, which has so far drawn about 11 million yen of donation.
Kimi’s story is only a tiny episode in more than 150 years of relations between Japan and the United States, but people in Azabu-Juban remember her story as their treasure.
The United States concluded a treaty with Japan under the Tokugawa shognate regime in 1854, becoming the first Western country to do so. The first chief of mission came to present his credentials to the shogunate exactly 150 years ago, in 1859. The treaty pulled Japan out of two and a half centuries of isolation under the Tokugawa regime. The Meiji government, which toppled the shogunate, strived for Japan’s modernization by inviting foreign scholars and engineers in various fields. Europeans made major roles in establishing political, social and other core systems in Japan. Americans were less visible in these fields, but they left their footprints mainly as educators and religious leaders. Charles W. Huett and his wife Emma, said to be Kimi’s adoptive parents, were among U.S. missionaries who disseminated Protestantism in Japan. They operated mainly in Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, early in the 20th century.
Kimi is said to be the model of a famous children's song. Titled “A little girl wearing red shoes,” the song was published in 1922 with the lyrics written by poet Ujoh Noguchi. Kimi’s mother, Kayo, was an unmarried mother. When she decided to marry a young settler farmer in Hokkaido, she sent Kimi away to be raised by the Huetts through her father-in-law. At least she believed so, and her daughter was to go to America with the adoptive parents. But Kimi’s poor health (she had contracted tuberculosis) kept her from traveling to America. Kayo later came to know Ujoh, the poet who wrote the lyrics, and told him about her daughter. She believed this became the song.

The little girl was wearing red shoes, and she has been taken by a foreigner to his country.

She got on a boat at Yokohama, and she has been taken by a foreigner to his country.

She must be blue-eyed now and she must be living in the foreigner’s country.

Whenever I see red shoes and whenever I see foreigners, I think about the little girl.
(A personal translation)

Relations between Japan and the United States have continued to develop while undergoing unfortunate incidents, notably the Pacific War from 1941 to 1945 or more recently, frictions over the U.S. military presence in Japan. But Japan-U.S. relations are expected to enter a new phase under Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s fresh regime, inaugurated this week. Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan put an end to the pro-Washington Liberal Democratic Party’s almost uninterrupted rule for the past 50 years in recent parliamentary elections.
Hatoyama hopes to establish a truly equal partnership between Japan and the United States. He is expected to move to review important security pacts with the United States. This has led observers to warn that relations between the two countries may become shaky from now on. In an attempt to eliminate U.S. policymakers’ concern about his policy stance, Hatoyama assured U.S. President Barack Obama in a recent telephone conversation that he is not anti-American. Actually, Hatoyama, the U.S.-educated scholar-turned politician, cites President John F. Kennedy as his most admired person.
Kimi’s episode came to be known in 1979, when a TV program producer in Hokkaido released a book about the girl’s fate based on her half-sister’s accounts and his own survey. The theory shown in the book was later challenged by one writer, who argued the story was a fabrication with no evidence linking Kimi to the U.S. missionary or the song. The criticism was “incorrect and really regrettable,” said Kimitoshi Yamamoto, a local shop owner who serves as manager for the charity in Azabu-Juban.
Kimi-chan’s statue was set at the square, Patio Juban, on a rainy day, recalls Yamamoto. Passers-by and shoppers were limited with many shops closed for a regular holiday. Someone placed 18 yen near Kimi-chan’s feet in the evening of the day. This was the start of a charity, said Yamamoto. Small amounts of money were found near the bronze and red granite statue almost everyday since then. The money from unknown donators has been contributed mainly to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Local elementary school children visit Kimi-chan’s statue as part of curriculums to study about their community. The children say, “I feel sorry for Kimi-chan,” and this reminds them of the preciousness of their life with their mothers and families, according to Yamamoto. “Kimi-chan is dead, but she tells us many things,” he said.
Relations between Japan and the United States have become solid and matured as a result of decades-long grass-roots interchanges across the Pacific on top of bilateral political and economic pacts. Their relations are unlikely to be damaged easily as Hatoyama is expected to devote his energies initially to forming ties of mutual trust with President Obama.

An author’s note: Following is a melody for the first four bars of the song, “A Little Girl Wearing Red Shoes”: CD-EflatF-G-G/G-AflatF-G-G/G-C-Eflat-C/D-D-D-x. C, D and E in the third and fourth bars are one octave higher.