TOKYO, Dec. 12, 2021—Panasonic Corp., bucking the global Shun-China move, has agreed with China’s TCL to have its television production, excluding high-end products, manufactured in China, starting in 2022, Japanese media reports said over the weekend.
The TV products to be manufactured by TCL on a so-called original equipment manufacturing basis are those sold in Asia and India. Panasonic will continue manufacturing OLED televisions and other high-end products in Japan.
In 2010, the company sold more than 20 million televisions globally but in 2019, the number fell to 5 million units, its television business registering losses in 2018 and 2019, media reports said. In 2020, Japan’s total television production totaled 5.4 million units, industry data showed. The company’s numbers and the industry data reflected rapid inroads of Chinese and Korean televisions in the Japanese market, reflecting that Japan is fast losing its global competitiveness for consumer electrical products across the board.
Notwithstanding that, Panasonic’s decision is viewed as controversial as many western democracies are trying to retire their China manufacturing activities and shift to other economies.
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Unicorn Financing for Enriching Japanese Bureaucracy
TOKYO, Dec. 8, 2021–Bureaucracy survival rests on the capacity for repeating and continuing what’s old as if new no matter whether they botched it in the past by rallying the big and and powerful. The Japanese government is going to do that from next year; it will revisit fostering dotcom unicorn businesses, its undertaking that flipped miserably in the pasts with hardly any results, by funneling government money into existing big Japanese businesses for their endeavors at new project startups.
METI, the trade ministry notoriously nationalistic and risk-averse, had come up with the idea of extending government finances to big Japanese businesses for their in-house startups and to independent unicorns that would rake in capital and human resources from big firms, according to recently Japanese media reports. The idea is presumed coined after the entrepreneur in residence concept long adopted by U.S. businesses, but the government is budgeting a ludicrously small 860 million yen ($8 million!!!) for it to help big businesses hire and retain 30-50 entrepreneurs (What?! Is that all?!).
Japan had 6 (Yes, six!) unicorns valued at more than $1 billion that have yet to go to IPOs as of this fall. The United States had 165.
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John Lennon’s Death And Harbor Attack Teach Us Peace’s Value
TOKYO, Dec. 8, 2021–John Lennon died on Dec. 8, 1980, a day after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor the Hawaii time previous day. Forty-one years and 80 years apart, the two tragedies are ingrained in me as lifetime lesson never to attack others and love peace. Concern is that countries and peoples around the world are headed in opposite directions, flexing muscles to attack others.
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China’s Population Exports Remain Unabated; Become Top Foreigner Share in Japan
TOKYO, Dec. 5, 2021—You can not underestimate China’s People Export sInitiative. They are all over the world, as we all know, as Chinese restauranteurs, massage and acupuncture therapists, boisterous tourists… At the current pace, they might take over the whole world over the next few decades. In Japan, resident Chinese now command the No. 1 population share among all legal foreign residents, the feat that they achieved in less than 5 years and almost doubling in 15 years. Several more decades forward, though, this may have to change.
The Japanese government Nov. 30 released details of its most recent census that showed that the number of resident Chinese in Japan in 2020 was 667,475, nearly double of 353,437 in 2005. And in 2010, Chinese dethroned Koreans as the largest legal resident bloc totaling 460,459, and representing nearly 30 percent of total resident foreigners, compared with 423,273 Koreans (of both South and North origins). Japan’s aggregate population in 2020 was 126.146 million, shrinking 0.7 percent and standing as the 11th largest populous country in the world. Of the total, resident foreigners accounted for 2.747 million, growing 43.6 percent from 2015.
Will this Chinese people exports continue a long time? It may over the coming few decades in line with the Xi Jinping Belt and Road policy, but beyond that the trend starts looking iffy as China’s population aging is likely to progress, if not at Japan’s pace. In May, the Chinese national statistics bureau announced that people over 65 years old accounted for 13.5 percent of the 1.411 billion population while child birth plunged 20 percent from 2019. A Japanese government population research researcher was quoted by Nihon Keizai newspaper May 12, 2021 as predicting that China’s population growth is likely to peak before 2030. Chinese people over 65 years old totaled 190 million, an all-time high and up 60 percent from 2010. In 2016, China revised its one-child-per-family policy to allow couples to have two children, but as proved by Japan’s failure to increase births with many incentives, it has yielded little result.
Aging and population contraction is a reason why Xi accelerates BRI: He wants China to become a intellectual property giant to feed its aging population with royalty income from high speed railways, nuclear plants, and other giant tech projects it is selling to emerging countries.
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Ignorance: Japan’s Justice Ministry Uses TikTok For Human Rights Promotion
TOKYO, Dec. 5, 2021—How ignorant and illiterate is the Japanese bureaucracy about what’s happening in the rest of the world? Very, as epitomized by the Ministry of Justice’s use of TikTok for ‘human rights promotion.
A famous young personality Ketcup (ケチャップさん@mijingiri), posted a TikTok video on defamation and slander backed up by the ministry’s posting, #誰かのことじゃない #法務省 (This isn’t about someone else).
A growing number of Japanese are developing awareness about human rights abuses but the country is years backward as a whole, particularly bureaucrats and public sector officials who work according to decades-old work ethics and ethos, though superficial modernization is being introduced such as long work hour reductions and increasing female officer populations.
In a recent walk outside Tokyo, I’d spotted a hair salon whose shop name was ‘Kurombo (Nigger) with a painting of what looked like a black child on the shop name plaque.
TikTok is a Chinese developed SNS. Though not confirmed, it’s reportedly raking in personal data worldwide and much of it can be used by the Chinese government.
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How Soon Will Korea’s Per Capita GDP Catch Up With Japan?
TOKYO, Dec. 3, 2021–The global economy is set to barrel forward at a rapid pace –4.5% in 2022 and 3.2% in 2023, the OECD recently reported. Japan is forecast to craw at 3.4% and a measly 1.1%, less than half of other G” countries’ growth. If not by 2024, Korea, now the 11th economy, may eclipse Japan before 2030 in per capita GDP. Korea is projected to grow 3.0% and 2.7%. Why such slow growth? Rapid aging and population contraction is definitely an underlying factor but there are more, among them, stifling structural impediments and regulations, which are properties that make the Japanese bureaucracy happy for helping keep their comfy chairs.
Countries Are Relaxing COVID Border Controls; Japan Keeps Tight Lid
TOKYO, Nov. 12, 2021—An American friend in California called me Nov. 12, 2021 to vent off his frustration about Japan’s COVID-19 border controls that have changed little despite rapidly decreasing infections. I explained it was government red tape kept by bureaucrats intended to protect them – not the Japanese population and/or foreign visitors.
The United States and many European and Asian countries recently lifted quarantine regulations for foreign nationals that have received two COVID-19 vaccines and carry PCR negative test certificates. Foreigners do not need to quarantine at all.
The Japanese border control remains as tight as when the pandemic was serious over the past two years even after relaxed regulations kicked in on Nov. 8,, 2021: Japanese nationals who visited foreign countries and returning to Japan must present vaccine certificates and PCR test negative certificates performed immediately before boarding their flights. After clearing immigration and quarantine procedures at airport, they are required to travel to their destinations on the means of transportation that prevent the potential infections of local Japanese – meaning special limousines. In reality, most Japanese take public transportation – trains, buses, and taxis – to get to their destinations.
‘I paid $200 for a PCR test to a clinic assigned by the ANA airline to obtain the negative test document,’ a Japanese citizen who arrived at Narita International Airport near Tokyo told me earlier this week. ‘If I hired a limo to get to my home, it would cost me another 30,000 to 40,000 yen ($300-400). It’s way too much.’
After arrival, they are currently required to quarantine for two weeks, during which period, local health office officials would make contact with SNS on video to verify whether they are actually observing the rules. Again, in reality, the arrived Japanese would visit local groceries and other places instead of locking themselves up in their destination points.
Non-Japanese visitors on business to and long-time residents in Japan are required to observe the same quarantine rules as Japanese citizens. They must present documents that their visits are bona fide business visits and stays.
Foreign tourists are banned entry altogether now.
The Japanese government is set to relax quarantine regulations further but not before 2022. It’s only gradually and slowly because, as in numerous other government policies, bureaucrats do not want to be held responsible if/when infection cases resurge.
Foreign tourists that had flooded the streets and shops of Tokyo and Kyoto until two years ago may forget about visiting Japan by the time quarantine rules are eased to other countries’ levels and may make the government’s target to attract 40 million tourists a pipe dream.
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Undocumented, Detained Foreigners Punished by Murphy’s Law in Japan
TOKYO, Nov. 9, 2021—In March 2021, a 33-year-old Sri Lankan woman, Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali, died at a Japanese immigration bureau detention center for serious illness and hunger, the physical conditions the Japanese authorities only reluctantly admitted posthumously and with few details. On Nov. 9, 2021, her family members filed a criminal suit with the Japanese public prosecutors against Nagoya Immigration Bureau officials for an intentional negligence of official duty and murder. Her death sparked an international uproar against Japan’s brutal treatment of undocumented foreign nationals in detention and those overstaying visas and without health insurance and money. The condition can be worse and probably in violation of human rights than what South American immigrants are exposed to at U.S. detention facilities at the U.S.-Mexico border.
If you don’t have enough money and health insurance and/or a job, Japan is a perilous country to live as a foreigner. If you don’t have any of the three and get caught by immigration officials, you’re likely to be confronted with one bad thing after another.
Arriving in Japan as a foreign tourist without a traveler health insurance and get sick, you would be asked to pay a medical bill 2 to 3 times higher than the Japanese who are covered by the National Health Insurance policy. That’s not surprising and unusual for international travelers in many countries. It’s the reason why they buy insurance before leaving their home countries.
If/when foreign nationals who overstay their visas and don’t have a job and/or health insurance are caught and detailed by the Japanese immigration authorities, they may be exposed to Murphy’s Law conditions.
According to a recent Mainichi newspaper article, a 42-year-old Cameroon woman died Jan. 23, 2021 in a Tokyo hospital apparently for insufficient medical treatment at an Immigration Bureau detention facility. She arrived in Japan in 2004 and applied for refugee status but had been rejected and detailed twice. In 2018, she was released from the detention center but was diagnosed for breast cancer and became a homeless. She was aided by homeless supporters and, at their urging, applied for permanent residency. The document was delivered to her 3 hours after her death. Her hospital bill, 7 million yen ($68,000), remains unpaid, the newspaper said.
Foreign nationals without long-term stay or permanent residence visas, and without deep pockets, face much higher medical bills than NHI holders whose medical payments are closely regulated by the Japanese government. Non-NHI medical costs have risen even steeper after the Japanese government ran a medical tourism campaign to lure affluent medical tourists from China and elsewhere a few years ago since hospitals can charge whatever they want. That’s bad news for poor undocumented foreign nationals, particularly those that are detained by the Immigration since the authorities basically encourage detainees to pay for their medical costs.
The vicious cycle doesn’t end there: Undocumented foreign nationals are denied the right to apply for the government’s minimum living protection program that gives the monthly survival stipend plus rent-free housing and medical insurance.
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Toyota Unions Snuggle Up To Ruling LDP For First Time
TOKYO, Oct. 25, 2021–Since 1946, the year after Japan lost the World War II, Toyota Motor Corp.’s labor unions, now unionizing more than 350,000 workers as the single largest Japanese corporate labor, have been endorsing Democratic-Socialist candidates in parliamentary elections — not the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that the automaker’s management maintains cushy relationship with.
This year, for the first time ever, though, the unions have decided to break ranks with the Democratic Socialists in the run-up to the October 31 parliamentary general election after Shin-ichiro Furumoto, a former House of Representative lawmaker who had been given the lawmaker’s seat with the Toyota worker votes, decided not to run during the current election.
Furumoto joined Toyota fresh off university and had headed the federation of Toyota labor unions for several years, later was elected six time as a House of Representative lawmaker at one time serving as parliamentary vice finance minister when opposition parties governed the Japanese government. The Toyota unions (https://www.kabanet.org/) continued supporting the Democratic Socialists (now named the Constitutional Democratic Party) even after the LDP regained parliamentary majority. In 1949, the unions negotiated Toyota’s wage reduction demand and won an agreement never to discharge workers in exchange for a 10 percent wage cut.
Furumoto, 56, appears to have made the decision to step down in deference to the Toyota unions’ increasingly snug relationship, in lockstep with the company management — particularly CEO Akio Toyoda, with the LDP.
The arms-length distance between the unions and management almost gone, Toyota may be losing a big bloc of stakeholders that have guided the company at its crises and apex. Is it a healthy move or not?
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Landmark (Almost) Court Decision on 2 Refugees to Japan
TOKYO, Sept. 22, 2021—Hurray to a Japanaese Court for overcoming the bureaucracy seniority: On Sept. 22, 2021, the Tokyo District Court’s justice Yutaka Hirata upheld two Sri Lankan refugees’ claims for the right to sue the Japanese government for failing to give them the right for fair court proceedings against the immigration office’s forced deportation.
It was the first such case on forceful deportation of foreign nationals, many of them seeking asylum in Japan yet having been deported to their homelands or third host countries without having their cases heard by court.
In December 2014, the two Sri Lankan nations visited the Tokyo immigration detention center in order to seek temporary restraint order at detention facilities. Their pleas were denied and they were immediately detained and thrown back into the facilities.
The two nationals filed petitions for dispute to be taken up in court in December 2014 but were deported from Haneda International Airport.
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