Author: Toshio Aritake

TOKYO, July 22, 2023—President Joe Biden’s July 21 announcement that seven top American A.I. Companies had agreed to voluntary safeguards on the technology’s R&D is a classic U.S. policy on government regulations – that the government, or bureaucracy, almost always trails behind business development.

Will the Artificial Intelligence Seven – Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI – actually agree to Biden is an open question as they fiercely compete with each other for supremacy to make their technology a global standard There’s also competition law questions.

Chances are that whichever among them prevail, its AI technology would be adopted for government contracts on defense, intelligence and many other administrative undertakings in a de factor industry-government collaboration that is dominated by business initiatives, with government, or bureaucracy, subserviently checking to see legality and ethical compliances.

This basic hands-off policy toward businesses (though self-explanatory and nothing new and repetitive) is how the U.S. thrives on inventions and advanced technology.

The case of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who was the chief developer of atomic bombs of that was dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, can be traced as a classic example in which Washington asked the scientist to pursue the Manhattan Project with government money, representing a democracy paradigm.

Europe is in quite different dimensions: Being in principle an autocratic continent, bureaucracy leads in many walks of European human activities (the U.K. might be an exception) including business and technology through government interventions applied before and after actual private-sector developments.

Adolf Hitler instructed the development of the Volkswagen (Beetle) for military use in Germany’s extremely frigid winter climate, so the vehicle’s engine was air-cooled. He also ordered building the Autobahn high-speed highway network for moving military vehicles fast and efficiently, the road concept conceived during the mid-1920s Weimar Republic era.

In the post-World War II period, Europe had led the work of reorganizing the previous European standardization regime as the International Organization for Standards (ISO) under the aegis of the United Nations Standards Coordinating Committee (UNSCC), giving ISO the UN recognition as the world standards regime. The ISO, based in Geneva, Switzerland, has historically been made up of European representatives on its board.

ISO, with its European influence, has effectively nullified the Japanese standards such as the Japan Industrial Standard (JIS) and Japan Agricultural Standard (JAS) that Japan sought to sell to Asian countries and ultimately around the wolds during Japan’s 1980s-90s GoGo era, making the two standards obsolete even in Japan. The Japanese could not understand that even though ISO was promoting its standards as private-sector rules, they were actually managed by European autocracy. During intense discussions on various ISO technical committees at that period, the United States had kept a neutral stance because the U.S. federal government hardly had national standards laws and regulations.

So the bureaucracy administrative differences continue existing to this day!

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TOKYO, July 14, 2023—Driving the last nail to the coffin of the faltering Japanese technology, a solid-fuel engine of Japan’s next-generation small-size rocket EpsilonS July 14 exploded in a terrestrial firing experiment, according to Japanese news reports.

JAXA, the Japanese governmental space development and exploration agency, has been developing the EpsilonS as the successor to the Epsilon rocket – Japan’s workhorse rocket – that the agency retired in 2022. JAXA is targeting 2024 as the EpsilonS first launch year. In March 2023, JAXA failed to launch the H3 large-size rocket.

North Korea,has been almost successfully launching long-range missiles with liquid fuel rockets, which experts said can also be used for lifting space gear. The United States and China are further distancing Japan in rocket technology: Whereas Epsilon and EpsilonS rockets are disposable, SpaceX rockets are reusable. Chinese rockets also are known to be reliable.

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TOKYO, July 12, 2023—By now, most countries and peoples pay little or no attention to Japan and its once-venerable manufacturers, the likes of Toyota, SONY and Honda. Their interest has drifted years ago to Apple, Tesla, Google, Meta and other American businesses. In a nutshell, the current situation amounts to the death of Japan – and it’s almost no exaggeration. How it happened can be seen in the following case. Read on:

On July 12, Honda Motor Co. as one of the 11 members of a business ‘consortium’ put out a news release that the companies have commenced an energy resource use experiment that the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry funds with a next-gen energy subsidy program. METI had held a public offering of the project via a nonprofit entity, the Sustainable open Innovation Initiative (SII), the news release said.

SII, which is headed by one Mr. Takashi Murakami as representative, has 16 board of directors and 

appears to have executives and employees sent from various industry lobbies, and companies that relate to energy, according to its website (sii.or.jp).

The website said that its board and one auditor have no work experience as government officials, which was a de facto disclaimer that SII is not a deposit for retired government officials.

The news release nevertheless affirmed the modern Japanese government-business hierarchy that Honda, a former maverick samurai of Japanese industry, has voluntarily joined as part of the government-sanctioned establishment, or was sucked into it.

Either way, the release effectively underscored that the mighty METI works as the composer and maestro of this project and its member companies, including Honda, seem to assume the roles of lieutenants and foot soldiers reporting to the government.

This is a graphic picture of why Japanese companies have lost innovative wills and instead look up to the government for coordination and adjustments with other companies in the consortium. It’s in marked contrast to the United States, where private-sector innovations and skills pioneered and supersede government interventions, and quite apart from China where private-sector innovations blossom freely initially, then picked by the government later. 

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July 8, 2023—’The World Is Flat’ – Journalist Thomas Friedman’s 2005 book predicted that the birth of the internet will contribute a lot in making wherever you are the same as wherever others are. He was almost right: People in the United States wear clothings that are similar to those in other countries – sweat shirts and short pants in summer and hoodies and skinny gym pants in winter. In another example of the flattened world, people consume increasingly similar food; ramen in New York is no longer an exotic and burgers in Seoul are as common as kimchi. It’s as if the world is moving according to Friedman’s predictions. 

Steadily progressive societal and cultural assimilation had seemed like the inevitable norm until the late 2020’s no matter what world leaders had to say about sovereignty, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020. Foreign travelers to the United States felt like visiting their own countries’ spots when they landed at Los Angeles or New York, paying their ways to hotels with credit cards and making calls from their phones seamlessly. Now, it’s a bit of struggle – though not of the kind that causes panic – for visitors to the United States if they fail to make prior arrangements before leaving their countries.

Typically, a visitor would have his/her smartphone installed with a sim card that enables making phone calls, checking emails, and tapping into websites, all transactions seamlessly. Visitors would 1) use their home country phone careers’ roaming options to do that (expensive), 2) purchase a prepaid sim card in the United States (which is what many people seem to prefer), or 3) sign on to long-term American career contracts (unrealistic).

Over years, I’d been adopting the 2nd method: Going to a local Verison, AT&T, or T-mobile shop to purchase a U.S. sim card. It was a simple piece of work taking no more than half an hour to activate my smartphone as a U.S. phone. It was not easy, on the contrary, when I visited a West Coast city recently. I was told by a Verison shop clerk that the career (or the shop I visited) did not sell prepaid sim cards If I wanted a U.S. sim, he told me, I needed to get onto a monthly contract. ‘You can cancel the contract anytime after getting your sim,’ I was told.

A T-mobile shop had a prepaid sim card but it sounded far more costly than I thought, so I did not bother buying one. Yet another career did have a decent deal for frustrated guys like me, so I bought a sim starter kit and slapped the sim into my iPhone. It didn’t activate so I gave up on that sim and decided to settle on wi-fi connections alone during my visit, feeling exhausted and somewhat angry, the first hurdle I had to experience.

Many retailers were offering discounts on merchandise, including Macy’s at San Francisco’s Union Square and other retail outlets, so one day I went to one of the stores to tap its offers. The store clerk asked me whether I had a local address and/or a phone number. I told her that I was a visitor, then she told me that I could not qualify for a discount. (I could of course have used my hotel address/phone number.)

Smart phone-only transactions were another invisible barrier to me. For people like me without active local smart phone connections, transacting for smart phone-only payments was anything but frustrating. Luckily I was carrying some cash, though.

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June 30, 2023–In recent years, the west has been threatened by what it sees as China’s increasingly hegemonic approach and information-technology penetrations, and in retaliation, is countering with defense buildup and economic sanctions. Is China an ultimate threat to the world? The west’s policy toward China and its leader Xi Jinping is wrong, says a long-time anti-war China expert.

Whereas many in the west started wars, China did not. It was Japan that invaded China in the run-up to World War II by forming the puppet Manchurian government of Aisingioro Pu I as the last Chinese emperor. Germany invaded the European Continent under Adolf Hitler. The United States went to Vietnam and more recently Afghanistan. China did not militarily intervene in other countries in the modern era.

Yet China has been expanding its reach geographically and culturally: It has build an airstrip built in the Spratly Islands claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei and China; Hong Kong, formerly a British colony, is now under full Chinese government administration, with anti-China activists jailed; it is imposing curfews and severe restrictions against the Uyghurs of the Xinjiang autonomous region; and its murky borders with Russia now have more Chinese residents and soldiers. Chinese workers and tourists are all over the world visiting world-famous spots and spending money, and cooking Chinese dishes for locals and building railways and other structures.

Then there is the Taiwan issue at the center of all problems related to Beijing: China and its leader Xi Jinping, expressing resolve to take over the island economy by 2027, are sending its fighter aircraft, naval fleets and coast guard vessels daily to intimidate the island and neighboring countries, including Korea and Japan. Japan’s Senkaku Islands is one of the targets being harassed.

Rodger Scott, a pro-China long-time anti-war activist based in San Francisco, recently told me that the U.S. strategy of ‘surrounding your enemy’ would divide the two countries to a dangerous point of destruction.

Scott thinks that whatever the west does to staunch the technology flow or sensitive material exports to China, it doesn’t work, as other countries, both pro- and neutral to China, function as intermediaries for China’s imports. He also thinks that China’s sunshine diplomatic policy is superior to that of the United States in garnering support from countries in distress and in need.

He definitely sounds too naive in this divided world where the powerful and smart rule but seems to give us some food for thought to make it a more comfortable place.

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Rodger K. Scott

I’m very troubled by and militantly opposed to the U.S. plan to send nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea. I believe that plan will inevitably increase tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula and bring the world closer to a nuclear confrontation. This plan also reveals that the United States is preparing for war with China. Sending nuclear submarines to South Korea and interfering in the internal affairs of China on the issue of Taiwan continuing as a province of China or a sovereign nation whose independence the U.S. has promised to defend militarily if necessary are both dangerous and provocative acts that peace-loving nations and people throughout the world oppose.

I commend the organizers of the recent conference at American University to reform U.S. interventionist foreign policy in Latin America by abolishing the Monroe Doctrine. My two-year experience in the Peace Corps was directly affected by the bloody, inhumane consequences of that policy. I joined the Peace Corps in August, 1963 and was selected to serve in a teacher-training program in the Dominican Republic; however, in the fall of 1963, about two weeks before our academic training at East Los Angeles State College ended, a right-wing military junta overthrew democratically elected President Juan Bosh, who was regarded as an honest and highly respected leader. Those of us who had been selected to work in teacher training were given the choice of going to the Dominican Republic as part of the Community Action Program or to Bogota, Colombia in an Educational Television Program. I chose the latter and our group received a two-week crash-training program of 14-hour days in producing educational television programs.

The Peace Corps administration, however, informed us shortly after we arrived in Bogota in December, 1963 that we weren’t needed in educational television and would be assigned to teach English as a Second Language at Colombian universities. That was my assignment until my service ended in July, 1965.

Bob Zech, one of my roommates in the Peace Corps academic training phase at East Los Angeles State College, came to visit me in Bogota. Bob had gone to the Dominican Republic in the Community Action Program around the end of November, 1973. My friends in Bogota found it interesting that he spoke Spanish fluently with a prominent Puerto Rican accent. He was the son of a German-American missionary of the Lutheran church and had received all of his education in Puerto Rican missionary and public schools. Bob wrote me several letters after that visit but I never saw him again.

The corrupt and brutal right-wing junta ruled the country from September, 1963 until April 24, 1965, when young, progressive military officers led a popular rebellion; however President Lyndon Johnson sent U.S. Marines 4 days later to abort the rebellion. Peace Corps volunteers involved in Community Action reported that they strongly supported the popular rebellion and that many volunteers worked as couriers for the rebels. I was surprised and pleased by those reports since some of those Peace Corps volunteers had called me a “pinko” in Peace Corps training classes because I expressed admiration for the revolutions in Cuba and the People’s Republic of China. I also spoke Spanish fluently and got along well with other volunteers and the staff and faculty training us. People who disagreed with my political views often added that they liked me better than my politics. That group also included my friend and former roommate Bob Zech.

The people in the Dominican Republic overwhelmingly supported the insurrectionists and were outraged by the invading U.S. Marines and 82^nd Airborne. A letter from one of Bob Zech’s friends described the auto accident that took his life: In Santo Domingo a taxi driver saw another taxi with 3 young people he took to be Americans in the back seat, then increased his speed and rammed the Taxi, killing all three passengers: Bob and the couple, who were also Peace Corps volunteers. A second account I found online was different: Six Peace Corps volunteers were returning to Santo Domingo in a van and a military jeep hit the van in a head-on collision, killing Bob and another volunteer and wounding several others. The online source also reported that 42,000 U.S. Marines and Paratroopers killed 2,000 rebel soldiers and 1,000 civilians—and 44 U.S. troops were killed and 283 were wounded. A second letter from a Community-Action volunteer informed me that one of the Peace Corps volunteers who was working as a courier for the rebel forces had been so severely traumatized by the invading U.S. forces’ attacks on Dominican military forces and civilians that he was sent to a psychiatric facility. I believe his last name was Early and that he had called me a “pinko” in our classes at East Los Angeles State College.

I was saddened and outraged by the news of Bob Zech’s death and the bloody U.S. intervention to abort a popular rebellion to oust the oppressive military junta that had overthrown Juan Bosch, the progressive, democratically elected president, to avoid a “Communist Takeover” in the Dominican Republic. I decided to organize a protest at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. Another American, Owen Lopez (who was not in the Peace Corps but was a friend and colleague of Revolutionary Theologian Camilo Torres, who had been killed a few months before by Colombian troops in the northern mountains of Colombia) and 10 Colombians joined me. Most of them were students at the University of Colombia, where Torres had been a highly respected Professor of Sociology.

We started the protest on the sidewalk in front of the U.S. Embassy. Around 15 Colombian soldiers with automatic weapons stood at parade rest in front of the entrance. We had placards in English and Spanish, denouncing the armed intervention of a sovereign country: PEACE CORPS–NOT MARINE CORPS IN LATIN AMERICA, SANTO DOMINGO IS A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY, NO INTERVENTION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, SUPPORT DEMOCRACY NOT A FASCIST MILITARY JUNTA, STOP KILLING THE DOMINICAN PEOPLE, THE U.S. SUPPORTS FASCIST TRAITORS, THE WORLD SAYS STOP THE KILLING.

After marching up and down the picket line for 15 minutes some of us tried to open the door of the Embassy. The troops allowed us to knock on the door, but it was locked. Press from Colombian newspapers took photographs and conducted brief interviews but the coverage was minimal and didn’t mention that any one was a Peace Corps volunteer. My naïve hope was that a demonstration by Peace Corps volunteers would generate some international coverage.

After the demonstration, we crammed the people and placards into a sputtering station wagon made in East Germany and drove to the University of Colombia. The entrance had an archway with a message in large red letters: CAMILO NO TE LLORAMOS PERO TE VENGAMOS. After he was killed by the Colombian troops with other revolutionaries, the Colombian government kept that operation and Torres’ killing secret for several months. There was speculation that U.S. advisors directed or participated in the operation.

We spoke with some of the leaders of a large demonstration who welcomed us and invited us to speak about the demonstration in front of the Embassy. I stepped forward and the speaker, who probably shared the view of most Colombian progressives that Colombia didn’t need Los Cuerpitos de Paz (as they referred to us) to bring social and economic justice to their country. The Colombians I knew demanded an end to U.S. intervention in Latin America and the pillaging of their natural resources. The students thanked us for protesting the bloody U.S. intervention in Santo Domingo and hoped the international press would cover our protest.

I tried to express in Spanish that I concurred that the Peace Corps was a form of U.S. cultural imperialism but that the Peace Corps volunteers in the Dominican Republic that I had trained with recognized that the intervention was totally wrong in supporting the fascistic enemies of the people; also that many Peace Corps volunteers supported the progressive rebels, including serving as couriers for the heroic rebel forces. I also pointed out the parallels between the intervention in Santo Domingo and the Vietnam War and that more than 500,000 U.S. troops were destroying Vietnam to prevent a “Communist takeover.”

The Peace Corps leaders didn’t appear to know about the Embassy demonstration until the State Department informed them that Owen Lopez and I had been boasting of that effort to friends at the Colombo-American Center. Bill Rodgers, the assistant director of the Peace Corps office in Bogota, didn’t express any criticism of the action, in part maybe because my service was scheduled to end in two months and any punishment would certainly have been covered by the press.

In preparation for the protest, I recalled the presentation of a distinguished Swedish political scientist to our group during the academic training at East Los Angeles State University. He lamented the Cold War between the two super powers and the complex implications of the many forms of imperialism. In the question-and-answer session after the lecture, one of the volunteers asked him:

“What do you think about the Soviet enslavement of Eastern Europe?” He responded: “I have a problem with the term ‘enslavement’ but I am opposed to all forms of imperialism; however, since you are an American, I would think you should be more concerned about what your country has done—and continues to do—in Latin America. You have such a long history of intervention, including armed invasion and exploitation of their vast natural resources.” This exchange occurred a few days after the U.S.-backed military junta had overthrown Juan Bosch, the democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic.

I’m very much encouraged by the current role the People’s Republic of China is playing on the international diplomatic scene. The PRC is also playing an important role in trying to end the war in Ukraine, including the 12-Point Peace Plan and the recent telephone call from President Xi to President Zelensky. China has also worked effectively in the important efforts to bring together and re-establish relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. These efforts should help in solving the terrible humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and this kind of enlightened negotiation presents evidence that complex, intractable struggles can be resolved through good-faith negotiation and mutual respect of the negotiators. China also deserves commendation and support for the offer to assist in negotiating the long Israeli-Palestinian struggle. I also support the efforts of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa to create a multipolar community of nations to replace the unipolar U.S. -dominated Community of nations that has existed since the end of World War Two. In my view, major nations like India, Brazil, and South Africa have been denied the decision-making roles that they have deserved in modern history. I believe the shift from a uni-polar U.S.-dominated community of nations to a Multi-polar community of nations would be more successful in settling disputes through negotiation as opposed to interventionist wars and occupation. This global transformation could also lead toward a more democratic and just international monetary system that would replace the U.S. dollar as the world currency.

I am convinced the United States must reform our foreign policy in significant ways, including stopping the interventionist wars and occupation that have proliferated since the end of World War II. Dr. Marc Selden, the late and distinguished China scholar of Cornell University, commended the heroic role of the United States in helping to defeat Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany; however, he added: “Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has committed more war crimes than any other nation on earth.” We must also stop, I believe, the U.S. consistent support of the Apartheid Israeli state’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people and U.S. efforts to prepare for war against China.

The United States and China are not enemies. Both countries need to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of one another and collaborate with mutual respect and positive ties to lead the world in solving the problems that threaten all of humanity: nuclear destruction, global warming and various forms of environmental degradation. We also need to work together to eliminate the racial, social and economic justice inequities that divide and threaten us—and have impoverished most of the world. I believe the Biden administration’s preparation for war with China increases the chance of that war occurring and the dangerous, provocative decision to send nuclear submarines to South Korea and the belligerent statement to defend Taiwan militarily if necessary send a signal that the United States regards China as an enemy.

I concur with some of the world’s best minds in the United States and throughout the world that surrounding Russia by expanding NATO to thousands of miles of the Russian border has been a significant cause of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and that U.S. efforts to contain and prepare for war against China are comparably belligerent and dangerous.

Ex-President Trump’s description of the Covid Pandemic as the “Chinese Communist virus” and absurd, comparably xenophobic statements by other ignorant Americans in high places have contributed to the increase in Asian hate crimes and anti-China sentiment. President Biden’s policy of preparation for war with China and the increasing U.S. military presence in East Asia revive the anachronistic military strategy of “surrounding your enemy,” which is intended to divide two great nations of the world rather than unite us when humanity is facing threats of destruction.

For most of my adult life I’ve worked with anti-war, civil and human rights activists in the struggle for social and economic justice. I have learned valuable lessons from those remarkable people. They are ordinary workers, as ordinary as snow in the first light of morning or stars on a summer night, and they know that the world’s greatest threats can be solved by the international solidarity of the working people who understand and practice the Golden Rule of economics: Treat others as you would have them treat you. They also tell us by word and deed the following: “I know the history of my people and I respect our heritage, but I know that my people are neither better nor worse than the rest of humanity. We’re simply links in that long human chain.” They are telling us to listen to the billions of people across the globe who are saying stop the war in Ukraine, stop the expansion of NATO, and stop the preparation for war against China.

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TOKYO, May 15, 2023―More jobs for bureaucrats and higher taxes for individuals and businesses, a recipe for Japan’s weakening:

Legislation to transition Japanese society into decarbonation May 12 cleared the lower house of parliament enabling the Japanese government to sell 20 trillion yen in ‘GX bonds’ from 2023 and collect fresh new environmental taxes from fossil fuel businesses, and to build a new government organization for administering programs, according to the House of Representatives website.

The bill concerning the promotion of transitioning into decarbonation economic structure, or the GX promotion bill, was immediately sent to the House of Councilors for rubber-stamping before the current Diet (parliament) session adjourns in late June.

Superficially, the bill sounds good for the environment: It is part and parcel of Japan’s 150 trillion yen public-private investment necessary for its carbon neutral pledge by 2050. Reality is that money shall be spent (more likely to be wasted) in bureaucracy labor, travel and expenses, and other administrative costs, plus, of course for developing and selling unsuccessfully or short time junky goods and services of businesses that cozy up to national and local government offices.

To date, many municipalities have introduced and collected environmental tax in-kind and many programs earmarked for them have underused budgeted sums. Examples among those, in Nagano, which began collecting reforestation tax several years ago, are   forest therapies, proactive firewood use to lessen fossil fuel dependance, forestry use for schools, and reforestation of inner cities.

 Now, with the national government set to be in charge, wastefulness should accelerate.

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TOKYO, May 15, 2023—It was bound to happen, and it happened: More than 7,000 Japanese individuals who have signed on to the government’s ‘My Number’ individual ID card system had their personal information, such as birth and residence, mixed up with other cardholders’ information. And of the total of 7,312 foulups, five persons received different persons’ personal information, instead of their own, during he October 2021-November 2022 period, the government confirmed May 12, saying that the different persons’ information was perused by the five persons. The errors resulted from input mistakes committed by local government officials, Health and Welfare minister Nobukatsu Kato said at a news conference, as quoted by the Japanese media.
By the 2024 autumn, the Japanese government is scheduled to abolish the National Health Insurance certificate card system and consolidate the NHI service with the My Number card system as a means of tracking taxpayer information and government administrative cost saving — which it is campaigning as for ‘Japanese people’s convenience.’ The government is luring Japanese taxpayers to sign on to the My Number card system by offering 20,000 yen ($150) equivalent of cardholder point incentives to be used for consumption.
As of May 7, 96.7 million valid applications were filed with the government for the My Number card, or 76.8 percent of the Japanese population of 129 million, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Of the 76.8 million filed, the government issued 87.8 million My Number cards, representing 69.8 percent of the population.
The NHI policy card was consolidated into My Number card a few years ago on a cardholder volunteer basis, and since then, the consolidated card has been wreaked with troubles, such as not being able to be used as the NHI card and dispensing of different medicine from prescriptions.
The government asked Fujitsu Inc. and Fujitsu Japan Inc. May 8 to investigate their system accuracy following intermittent troubles relating to the card system.
MIC minister Takeaki Matsumoto told a regular news conference May 12 that it’s not MIC’s jurisdiction about the problem of patients at certain hospitals had their personal information mixed up with other people’s. It’s ‘an issue of data input by the insurer that manages health insurance’ and not of MIC — thus he started passing on his responsibility to other government and municipal entities!

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TOKYO, April 30, 2023—For the 12th consecutive year, Japan’s population shrank in 2022, with the velocity of decrease registering the steepest declining 0.42 percent to 124.9 million, and by 2070, the population would contract as many as 30 percent to 87 million, according to recent Japanese government data. Is it a crisis as the media report or a positive for the country?
The data came in the midst of the failure to yield results with a years-long government program to increase child birth, which has dropped to less than 800,000 from more than 2 million during the peak period of the 1970s, the most recently with subsidies by collecting special levies to senior citizens. After peaking at 128 million in 2008, Japan’s total population, including foreign nationals, has been falling and in 2022, registered the steepest ever year-on-year drop of 731,000. Subtracting foreign nationals, Japan’s population shrank 0.62 percent to 121.9 million, reflecting limited effects of the child birth increase program.
The total population, including foreign nationals, would slump to 87 million in 2070, the government projected, of which seniors over 65 years old would account for 38.7 percent from 28.6 percent in 2020, while child births would decrease to approximately 500,000.
The Japanese government and pundits decry the population decrease and shrinking child births as a serious democratic crisis that sap the country’s vigor and atrophy its position in the global theater. It may be so but the population growth since Japan ended its 270 year locked society policy and opened its doors to the world in 1953 had been unusual to say the least – from barely over 30 million to 128 million.
Many Japanese government policies during those intervening years to date amounted to ones for feeding its hungry population: agricultural acreage expansion by deforestation and military campaigns to China, Korean Peninsular, Southeast Asian countries to secure oil, minerals and other resources. A smaller population would mean Japan may be able to become self-reliant for resources as during its feudal period (though the country was hit by periodic famine). If realized, Japan can be a perfect model for SDGs.

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TOKYO, April 25, 2023—Chinese consumers’ ranting and calls to boycott BMW cars following the ice cream giveaway discrimination incident at this year’s Shanghai motor show is a familiar montage of Chinese uproars against the foreign dominance having reverberated in other consumer products and likely to continue until Chinese products command critical mass global market shares – like solar panels.

Smartphones sold in China had been those assembled in China or imported from mother countries of Japan, South Korea, European nations and the United States. Save Apple’s iPhones, Samsung, SONY, Google and probably others folded their Chinese manufacturing operations by around 2020, deciding that they cannot compete with their Chinese rivals that had for years did manufacturing work on a so-called ‘original equipment manufacturing’ arrangement that enabled Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, and others to acquire western proprietary smartphone technologies.

If smartphones are the latest high-tech area that China is gaining its and global market shares (though it’s being hamstrung by the U.S. chip sanctions), it has expanded into television, encroaching world markets for low-cost LCD products. Chinese OEM companies had effectively stole manufacturing tech from Panasonic and SONY, for example, by letting workers produce Chinese brandname TVs at night after daytime manufacturing of Japanese products.

And decades earlier, China was given critically-vital steel-making technology at Baoshan integrated steel plant built with Japanese government foreign aid as part of Japan’s war compensation in the 1980s, when China lagged decades behind western countries in making much-needed steel products.

China also acquired solar panel making technology from Japan’s Sharp, Sanyo and other makers that aggressively set production facilities in China – only to be pilfered by Chinese businesses through joint venture requirements that favored the Chinese, diplomacy, and industrial espionage.

Now, it has steel – though still far from conquering the world market; solar panels, EV batteries (n-but not controlling tech because it cannot access to advanced chip technologies), while its space program is set to set human foot on the Mars as the first humans.

So the Chinese are resolved to be No. 1, dominate Planet Earth, managing the population of 6 billion from the center of the universe (which is China’s country name). So it was not surprising to see the BMW ice cream incident. ‘Don’t underestimate the Chinese! Kowtow to us! Tienamen Square is the center of the world!’

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TOKYO, March 26, 2023—This is a typical case that bureaucracy kills the economy and saps the vigor of society: Japan, which was the first country that commercially used electric vehicles in the 1960s, is shrinking EV charge stations. It has a goal to increase the number but pales when compared with other leading economies, thus effectively have lost the global vehicle electrification race – and with it, eventually, the auto industry, the engine of the country’s growth.
After peaking at 30,320 in 2020, the number of EV charge stands in Japan shrank 1,087 to 29,233 in 2021, according to a geographic mapping company Zenrin.
The Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry in July 2021 set a new target of increasing the number of EV charge stands (not stations having more than two charge stands) to 150,000 by 2030, a five fold increase from 2020 as part of the national policy of urging automakers to sell only new EVs, hydrogen fuel-cell, and plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2035.
EV stations that have more than one EV charge stand also decreased to 22,000 in 2021 from 25,000. And quick charge stands continued to be limited, representing about 2/5th of the 2021 total.
The number of gasoline stations has been on a steady decrease, not surprisingly, to now about 29,000.
Why EV stands are being closed? One reason is that existing stands were installed about 10 years ago with government subsidies and many are becoming too old and dangerous to continue using. EV stand durability for safe and secure use is said to be 8 years.
Then there’s the cost issue: Installing one stand costs about 5 million yen ($35,000) and the annual maintenance and repair is about 1 million yen ($7,000). Most stands aren’t used sufficiently to cover the investment and upkeep.
Disappearance of government subsidies is compounded by rigid regulations that ban installing EV stands at gasoline stations under the Fire Prevention Law.
And most quick charge stands are located at automobile dealers. If you’re driving a Toyota, you’d want to charge at a Toyota dealer, not at a Nissan dealer. It’s the natural human behavior and proving to be a small hurdle.

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