Japan News, January 25th 2005
Some interesting news items about Japan recently:
Highlighting Japan’s reluctance to take in immigrants is this story about Japan deporting U.N.-recognized Kurdish refugees back to Turkey despite the fact that they will likely be persecuted there. In response to sharp international criticism, Japan belatedly allowed five of them, the mother and children, to stay in Japan–for one additional month only–after the two adult males, the father and eldest son, were sent packing. Not that Japan has always been the choice of immigrants, anyway–I recall hearing that when Japan has, in the past, opened its doors to refugees, though in far smaller numbers than other countries, few refugees choose Japan as the destination of choice. Even when other countries’ much larger quotas get mobbed, Japan’s quota has remained unfilled (though I don’t have a source on that).
Meanwhile, there is argument over the privatization of Japan’s postal system. I have to admit that wasn’t even on my radar. Many do not know that Japan’s post office is not just a post office–they also sell insurance and are the nation’s largest bank–in fact, it is the world’s largest bank, with trillions of dollars in savings and assets. When you go to a post office in Japan, there are windows for mail and others for banking and other services.
Under the privatization plan, the post office would be split into four groups (banking, insurance, and then mail services would somehow be divided into two different sections), but all four would remain connected under an umbrella organization–presumably so they can remain operating in the same locations instead of having to split the 24,000 post offices between them and opening up huge numbers of new offices. The privatization would begin in 2007 and be complete by 2017. The 290,000 workers for the post office would be transformed into private-sector jobs, which many are unhappy about, but it would also cut the federal payroll by a whopping 30% of its total.
It’s still not a done deal, but one way or another, it will almost certainly happen. The effects are anyone’s guess, though many see it as a sop to the banking and parcel delivery services, which would gain from lessened competition–since today the Japanese post office is not taxed, and has fewer restrictions than private commercial institutions. The claim that this privatization will benefit consumers is dubious at best.
The head of NHK, the government-owned broadcasting corporations, is being forced to step down after some scandals dogged his career. In Japan, every TV market has NHK as two of its stations–General and Educational channels, usually channels 1 and 3 on the dial–which are operated by the government. Broadcast satellite also has two NHK channels. Most foreign residents are familiar with NHK primarily as the organization that sends people to your door demanding that you pay a monthly fee for the NHK service, whether you watch it or not. They say you have to pay, but if you don’t there is no penalty. As for me, I refuse to pay for what is essentially a propaganda arm of the Japanese government, even if I did watch it–which I do not.
NHK is not like PBS in the U.S.–NHK is much more closely related to the government. As a case in point, the latest scandal was over an NHK documentary about sex slaves during Japan’s occupation of Korea. Some politicians–predictably–did not like the subject matter, and pressured NHK to censor parts of the broadcast, which it did.
Not that this is really shocking or worse than other countries, of course; actually, I think that at this time, American media are far more influenced by political pressure than NHK is.
North Korean residents in Japan are fearful of how the Japanese population will treat them as relations with North Korea are not going well, There have been many unsavory incidents including assaults on North Koreans–particularly high school students in recognizable garb. Much of the resentment stems from North Korea’s admission that they did indeed kidnap perhaps a dozen Japanese citizens some decades ago in order to use them to train North Korean spies bound for Japan.
Of course, there is rather supreme irony here, in that Japan has been incredibly obstinate in apologizing for or making reparations for its 35-year occupation of Korea, the kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of Koreans to Japan for forced labor, or using their women as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war. But a dozen kidnappings of Japanese by North Korea has Japan inflamed. I guess that there’s a 60-year statute of limitations or something.
Japanese citizens seem just as pessimistic about Bush’s second term as I am. In their man-on-the-street interviews, Japan Today printed eight responses to the question of whether things will get better or worse under Bush in the next four years. Three of the eight pleaded ignorance and refrained from opining, but the other five were less reticent:
“Of course, the world will be more dangerous. Bush is ferocious. He is for armed force and so I’m sure we will see more bloodshed and death in the next four years.”
“There is absolutely no way that the world will be safer. I don’t think Bush will withdraw his troops from Iraq. He won’t give in until he gets what he wants. Things will just get worse and worse. The Americans will see hell sooner or later.”
“I think the world will be more dangerous because of Bush. I don’t like the whole Bush family and the new administration. But since half the U.S. elected him, apparently they are not fed up with war yet. They still want to fight more. That’s a scary thought.”
Finally, every year, some institutions make predictions about the future. Also from Japan Today is the report on one magazine’s predictions, which include:
Global warming and the heat island effect will torment Tokyo even more this summer than they did last. Look for temperatures of 45 degrees and clouds of “killer bugs” breeding in the congenial torpor. AIDS will spread. Suicide, too, will rise among retiring baby boomers who have lost their reason for living, and among younger people who feel they never had one.
Gloom and doom indeed. 45 degrees C? That’s 113 degrees F! And swarms of killer bugs, eh? Here comes the apocalypse!
with regard to NHK, i must disagree. I think NHK news is so far above what passes for news in the USA that the two cannot even be compared. USA TV news is utter crap. NBC nightly news, the highest rated news in the USA is 21 minutes. Into that they try to put the world’s important news plus news important to America. And lets not forget the ‘feel good’ pieces.
At least NHK reports news. And does so in depth. The Niigata earthquake for example.
Now I am not saying NHK is the end all of news but I would rather watch them than anything the US has to offer.
BTW I watch NHK high vision BS and gladly pay my monthly fees. NHK provides some high quality stuff. You should check it out.
peace
mashu
Mashu:
You have a point in that there is some quality stuff on NHK, but there is also a lot of crap; PBS does a much better job, IMHO. I also got tired of English-language shows which got dubbed in Japanese but which offered no alternate audio channel for the original English.
But mostly, the political slant on the news got to me just like it does in the states now. I recall a piece on the film market in Japan, when Fujifilm was using its influence on retailers to keep Kodak out of the market. NHK News ran a pro-Fujifilm piece which “proved” that Fujifilm was not doing so by finding one out of a dozen kiosks in a scenic park that carried Kodak film, and showing interviews with other kiosk owners claiming that Kodak “didn’t try” to sell film to them; then they went to Yodobashi camera, and interviewed a regular clerk who said there was no pressure from Fujifilm to quash Kodak’s sales–as if a clerk would be in on such a deal. The case shown in the article I linked to above is simply confirmation that they’re still bowing to political pressure and domestic prejudices and coming out with the same kind of pieces.
I agree with you on the idea that the US media is more affected–as I mentioned in the post–but that doesn’t make me willing to pay for the same kind of slanted news from NHK.
The world’s largest bank is Citigroup and Mizuho is second (I think) not the Japanese Post Office.
The world’s largest bank is Citigroup and Mizuho is second (I think) not the Japanese Post Office. The Merger between Tokyo Mitsubishi and UFJ if that had taken place would have put it at number one.
Hmmm… I guess it depends on who you ask. The International Herald Tribune says it’s the Japanese post office bank with $3.2 trillion in assets (though other articles report from $2.2 trillion to $3.6 trillion). CNN cited Citibank, but without an asset claim. The Washington Post claims your names, the Mitsubishi/UFJ merger outstripping Citigroup and Mizuho, though it claims the new merger would have only $1.7 trillion in assets. Other sources claim it’s the Deutsche Bank, like this 2003 Labor Department page, but most of the sources for this claim are 5 years old or older, and most claim assets just of $1 trillion. Recent news sources, like Bloomberg and MSN, are citing Citigroup, again without asset numbers. The Financial Times (subscription required, so no link) votes for Mizuho, however… I could probably go on and on.
But of all the citations, the one with the greatest asset cache would be the Japan post office. Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe it’s just how they measure “big.” Ideas?
Luis,
I wonder how refusing to pay NHK fees plays with the idea of not wanting to rent to foreigners. After all, if you refuse to pay, your landlord or apartment manager might get an earful from the NHK guys.
Not that i in anyway approve of the no gajin policy–have been a victim myself, but what business seeks out potential trouble?
Mashu:
I don’t think the NHK thing and the apartment thing are really comparable. One is refusing to pay for a service I don’t use, the other is refusing to treat people equally due to discrimination. As for my apartment manager getting an earful about NHK, I find that really unlikely. I’ve never heard of such a thing happening, and can’t imagine that the manager would care, even if it weren’t a large entity. How could they get into trouble?
As for getting into potential trouble, that should not be a valid excuse for blanket discrimination. I used to debate with this conservative at GEnie online service years back, a guy named Frank who said it was his right not to employ blacks because statistically they were more likely to be criminals and steal from him. Same issue: a business operator discriminating against a racial group based upon a stereotype. Now, Frank actually had hard stats behind him, but he was of course not in any way justified in what he claimed was his right. You can’t use the actions of some members of a group to discriminate against the entire group.
Yeah, I guess if they defined the post office as a financial institution and measured all the parts of it, it may well be the largest institution in the world but if you just look at the banking part it probably isn’t.
Re: NHK, I’ll just say briefly that there’s far, far more crap on the commercial stations in Japan than on NHK, and yes, though their English news sucks (why don’t they hire professional voice announcers for the English!?, not to mention offering more news than the normal 75-80% mundane Japanese political fare), there are quite a few quality PBS-like programs — from replays of the US version of CNN, PBS’ Newshour, ABC Nightline, an occasional movie, and countless MLB games, which is the primary reason I opted to reluctantly pay the exorbitant fee (20,000-30,000 yen a year, I think). Gotta have my Ichiro (and Matsui-Matsui & others) fix for 9-10 months a year, ya know.
In Japanese I’ve enjoyed a number of specials and documentaries that I’ve seen nowhere else, and certainly not in the typical tabloid/sensationalistic style that’s more prominent on channels like Yomiuri TV, or those Wide shows with their running reporters literally chasing after the story. Sure, these NHK shows are often from a Japanese slant, but is it really all that different in the States? I seriously doubt it. I do agree with you, though, that no such station on the level of PBS exists in Japan, a detriment to everyone, IMO. The fact that there aren’t any commercials on the NHK stations is actually quite nice too. (Japanese CMs are so amazingly inane; I think I’ve had enough back-and-forth bobbing heads, and group bobbing to boot!, to last a lifetime or three.)
All that said, a couple years we got cable TV (Kintetsu cable, here near Nara), and in order (in fact, the ONLY way) to get the NHK stations — the two regular ones and the two BS ones — was to sign a special NHK form with the cable company. If we refused to sign it, i.e., refused to pay the NHK fee, they simply wouldn’t feed us the signals. To this day I look at it as nothing less than extortion, safely protected by the Japanese government, who as you say, benefit immensely from the coverage they’re able to force into people’s homes. But I had to have my baseball, so mumbled some choice words for the cable guy and signed away. Now I’m stuck with it so can’t back out of paying even if I wanted to.
Is this kind of racket the norm for cable companies in Japan? What about satellite companies? I know that Japanese people traditionally don’t dive into their pocketbooks to make donations for various causes as is prevalent in the States, but has NHK or the Japanese govt. ever considered a PBS-style pledge drive once a year instead? Seems far more democratic to me.
…there are quite a few quality PBS-like programs — from replays of the US version of CNN, PBS’ Newshour, ABC Nightline, an occasional movie, and countless MLB games, which is the primary reason I opted to reluctantly pay the exorbitant fee (20,000-30,000 yen a year, I think).Actually, the whole Ichiro thing is what broke me from from NHK altogether. I am not that big a fan of baseball (football would be another thing), and when the news shows I used to watch (Nightline, News Hour) were commonly cancelled for baseball, I just got fed up and stopped watching. Having been in Japan for a long time and having witnessed the whole Japan/US sports melodrama here, from Randy Bass to Konishiki to Ichiro, I am not all that fond of the Japanese style of sportsmanship and attention focus. American players in Japan get more dumped on by Japanese audiences and columnists, and Japanese players in the US get apotheosized. Way too much of a double-standard there for my tastes. But mostly, I just got a bit too tired of NHK being the “Ichiro Channel.”
Sure, these NHK shows are often from a Japanese slant, but is it really all that different in the States? I seriously doubt it. I do agree with you, though, that no such station on the level of PBS exists in Japan, a detriment to everyone, IMO. The thing is, though, that NHK is supposed to be public, and therefore without a slant at all. PBS is very objective, the complaints of conservatives to the contrary; with in-depth coverage on shows like the News Hour and their level coverage, it gives you the idea about what news coverage on TV should be. NHK is supposed to be like that, but they are not.
The fact that there aren’t any commercials on the NHK stations is actually quite nice too. Not a problem for me anymore with my TiVo-like HDD recorder box… Just let the show run ahead 10 minutes or so using the live-pause feature, then zap through the commercials.
All that said, a couple years we got cable TV (Kintetsu cable, here near Nara), and in order (in fact, the ONLY way) to get the NHK stations — the two regular ones and the two BS ones — was to sign a special NHK form with the cable company. If we refused to sign it, i.e., refused to pay the NHK fee, they simply wouldn’t feed us the signals.Wow, I’ve never heard of that before. The cable I’ve gotten has always included it free. Of course, now that I’m using SkyP and not BS (sic), the NHK BS channels are not even available to me. And unless you have cable or BS, you can’t get the better NHK fare, including the News Hour and Nightline.
I haven’t signed up for BS TV, so I don’t know if they make you pay, but I would not be surprised. Honestly, though, I think it is waaay too pricey. Right now, between SkyP satellite (with SuperChannel, AXN, and so forth) and BitTorrent downloads of a dozen different US TV shows, I have no problem finding enough to watch….
My feeling about the NHK thing is a matter of perspective. I pay because I feel paying is better than not paying.
My money helps my local NHK affilate operate (in some small way) and helps people I know who work there keep thier jobs. (again insome small way).
My money helps pay for a commercial free station that when it is really ON has outstanding stuff.
My money helps me feel connected to Japan as a whole. I am paying just like everyone else. Sure I’d rather not pay–as would countless millions of Japanese–but we do pay. For the above reason and others.
Japan is my home. I treat the same as others who call it their home do. To do the opposite is to REALLY be a foreigner.