Philanthropy expected to work more for Japan in low-growth era

June 28, 2012

Philanthropy expected to work more for Japan in low-growth era

Kurume City is just one of medium-scale towns in Japan, but its citizens are much luckier than those of other cities, because they can enjoy their time at cultural and other facilities contributed by a self-made businessman linked to the city.
The Ishibashi Cultural Center, which is the biggest one of those contributed by Shojiro Ishibashi and his family, is located on a 42,000-square-meter site in the heart of the city. It is actually a complex of buildings and houses, including an art museum, a library, a concert hall and an amusement park for kids. Around a pond in the center of the site are many kinds of flowers and trees, which entertain citizens throughout the year. In spring, visitors can view cherry trees, roses and flowering dogwoods and in summer, irises and water lilies, and in autumn, colored leaves and again, roses.
In  the middle of June, a festival featuring some 10,000 purple and white iris flowers planted on the edge of the pond attracted tens of thousands of people not just from the city, which has a population of 300,000, the third largest in Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, but also from neighboring areas.
On a sunny Saturday during the festival, visitors were enjoying their time strolling around the pond and in the gardens as.meals and drinks as well as attractions were provided in the open air. A group of three women, in their 50s and 60s, were having a chat on a bench near the pond. “We’ve just come on a very good occasion,” said one of them. Some people were taking pictures in front of the irises, while other people, young and old, were watching water birds and creatures down from a bridge over the pond. After spending their time around the irises, some visitors also enjoyed themselves at the art museum, which boasts of a big collection of modern Japanese paintings, some of them designated as national cultural assets. The collection has also been donated by the Ishibashi family.
Shojiro Ishibashi was born in 1989 as a small merchant's son in Kurume. He started his career with his family, but he later became independent and his rubber footwear business made a big fortune to him. After his death in 1976, his family continued the business and it has become the world’s largest automobile tire manufacturer, called Bridgestone Corp.
Many local Japanese cities are struggling amid Japan’s long-drawn-out economic difficulty. Kurume, which is home to Bridgestone, is relatively in good shape compared to other cities of similar scale. The city hosts one of its key tire manufacturing plants.
Bridgestone has also been active in philanthropy for the city and its citizens. Some other major Japanese companies also support social and cultural activities to demonstrate themselves as good corporate citizens. But Japan’s business community has not necessarily been serious about philanthropic activities.
Japan is expected to remain in a low-growth period in the years to come because it is faced with the aging of society and in addition, a time-consuming task of rehabilitating the areas extensively devastated by the earthquake-triggered killer tsunami waves in March 2011. The low growth society will not allow any companies to be successful singlehandedly. It should urge greater efforts to boost the bottom of Japan’s economy as a whole by mobilizing all energies and wisdoms to that end. This means that companies’ philanthropic activities will become even more important than ever for Japan’s society in the years ahead.