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TOKYO, March 25, 2021– As foreign heavy-duty truck manufacturers consolidate amid Chinese truck makers’ surging growth in the global land transport sector and the imperatives to make rigs green, Isuzu Motor Co., a former GM-capitalized truck maker, March 24 agreed to join the Toyota Motor group and ally with the Toyota commercial vehicle unit, Hino Motors Co., in a tripartite tie-up.
The alliance, which is expected to increase Toyota’s hold of Isuzu over coming years, is a defensive move against foreign truck makers’ global expansion, particularly the Chinese truck makers that combined now hold more than 25 percent of the global truck fleet market.
Japan has four heavy-duty truck makers: Mitsubishi Diesel, which is a DCX group company; Nissan Diesel, allied with Volvo; Hino of Toyota; and Isuzu, in which Toyota currently has a minor capital interest.
After the alliance is sealed, Toyota would hold slightly more than 5 percent of Isuzu. The three companies will form a joint company that would be held 80 percent by Toyota and the remainder by Hino and Isuzu. Isuzu has a tech tie-up with Volvo and Hino with Volkswagen’s Traton unit.
Japanese passenger car makers excluding Honda Motor Co. and Mitsubishi Motor Co. have joined Toyota group – Daihatsu, Subaru, Suzuki. Mitsubishi left Nissan Motor after Nissan’s series of scandals, and Honda continues as an independent maker.
More consolidations are expected to ve inevitable for Japanese automakers as they struggle to catch up with vehicle electrification with foreigbn automakers. Save a very few, they could end up under foreign capital or become local Japanese firms, like many of those in the consumer electric and electronics industry.

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TOKYO, March 25, 2021—This is a story about bureacracy that’s so familiar to the Japanese for too long that they forget and accept recurring mistakes by bureaucrats, politicians and their business cronies. While bureacrats generally cover up law and reg violations with prowess, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which seves as the low-end of bureaucracy and caused the Fukushima nuclear power station meltdown with safety negligence, has revealed the Japanese government’s incompetence and arrogance, according to the Japanese nuclear regulatory commission March 24.

Nuclear Regulation Authority commission chair Toyoshi Fuketa told a March 24, 2021 news conference with frustration about its findings of TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power station, which has been idled since the Fukushima accident in March 11, 2011: ‘What’s being questioned now is TEPCO’s attitude toward atomic substance safety and security.’

Effectively, anyone can sneak into the Kashiwazaki power station with little difficulty, the commission determined. For example, Fuketa said TEPCO employees entered the Kashiwazaki central control room with false IDs and that security guards knowingly let them pass through the gates. ‘TEPCO doesn’t qualify for moving ‘nuclear) fuel in Kashiwazaki-Kariwa,’ he said, and explained that the comission decided to order TEPCO not to load or unload nuclear fuel rods into the power reactors for at least 2,000 hours, meaning that it cannot reopen the station for at least a year.

He said that while TEPCO has advanced technology such as those it deployed at Fukushima, its management was fraught with arrogance and ineptitude. As a result, indequate anti-terrorism and security and safety precautions at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa were widespread, such as not fixing security alarm defects, he said.

Further, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa station general manager and TEPCO headquarters have not been aware what kind of remedial safety and security measures were taken, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper reported March 25, quoting a NRA official as expressing disbelief that ‘TEPCO does not known the 101 of anti-terrorism policy!’

It was exactly the cause of the March 11, 2011 Fukushima meltdown. TEPCO totally ignored the tsunami risks triggered by the giant earthquake. Then-TEPCO CEO Tsunehisa Katsumarta told me in the late 1990s: ‘Our nuclear power stations are the safest power stations in the world. They can withstand earthquakes of unimaginable magnitude.’

His comments, full of arrogrance expressed with much bureaucratic hue, resonnated with TEPCO officials’s attitudes – equivalent to those of lowly bureaucrats – toward Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s safety and security precautions. Bureaucrats never learn.

(NRA’s March 24, 2021 news conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t4s_5D8WRk&t=282s)

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TOKYO, March 24, 2021—No matter how aggressively China harasses Japan, the Japanese government won’t – more like can’t – join the U.S.-EU sanctions against China over China’s human rights abuses against Xinjiang’s Uighur population.

That was confirmed by chief cabinet spokesman Katsunobu Kato at a regular March 23 news conference. ‘Japanense (foreign exchange) law doesn’t have provisions to conduct sanctions (against China) for direct or implicit reasons based on human rights (violations) alone,’ he said, in reply to questions as to whether Tokyo would join the sactions by the United States, the European Union, Canada and Australia.

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TOKYO, March 23, 2021—More than a year after the Covid-19 pandemic began gripping the world, countries began scrambling to develop and manufacture vaccines in much shorter times unimaginable before. Japan, the world’s third largest economy, was left out afar behind emerging countries. The reason is the country’s healthcare bureaucracy regulating pharmaceuticals and very limited Japanese participation in crinical trials. The result: only 0.5 percent of the 125 million Japanese have been innoculated amid prolonged uncertainties about how soon mass vaccinations will commence.
There had been indications that Japan, which global pharmas marveled at their Japanese counterparts like Takeda and Daiichi Sankyo for oncology and other ethical drug development in the 1980s,was slowing down in new drug R&D. Except for a few, Japanese pharmas’ stock prices have been languishing low after their drugs’ patent protection expired. Takeda’s stock price has been hovering below 5,000 for years after reaching a high of over 8,000 yen in 2008. The company has not rolled out for decades products visible to public attention like Pfizer’s Lipitor (patent expired).In Over the past decades since the early 1980s when Japanese pharmas were gearing to go global, they were hit by some serious pharmaceutical accidents including pharmaceuticals-induced HIV, aseptic meningitis caused by measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) combination vaccinations, and hipatitis-C infections caused by blood plasma products plus several more, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s.
Those pharmaceutical accidents prompted Japanese patients to sue the government – the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and pharmas. In turn, MHLW sanctioned much tougher clinical trials than before for any new ethical drugs to be marketed in Japan, be they locally developed by Japanese pharmas or developed overseas overseas pharmas. Foreign drugs, which had cleared Phase III clinical trials in other countries, in essence must clear MHLW’s regulations from scratch to Phase III even now. Pharmas also became unnecessarily sensitive about drug accidents, even about minor side effects that might develop with new drugs. And patients have become reluctant to take part in clinical trials – which are indispensable for Phase II and III trials.
It’s the story about Japan’s woeful delay in the Covid-19 vaccine development.
At a Sept. 17, 2018 joint seminar in Toyama, Japan, the U.S. pharmaceutical lobby PhRMA and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) said Japan’s clinical trials relative to global clinical trials were declining in terms of performance and that global pharmas were prioritizing countries and regions where clinical trials can be performed with ease while deemphasizing Japan. At the worst, the two lobbies warmed that Japan can be left out of global clinical trias.

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TOKYO, March 17, 2021—The most popular occupation that Japanese grade to high-school male students want to take up when they become of working age is the ‘salaried worker’ and the patissier for female students, according to Daiichi Mutual Life Insurance Co. survey results released March 17, 2021.
Approximately 3,000 students aged between 6 and 18 took part in the internet survey taken by Cross Marketing Corp. on behalf of Dai-Ichi in December 2020, according to the announcement.
Of grade school male students, 8.8 percent answered they want to become salaried workers when grown up, followed by YouTubers (8.4 percent), soccer players (7.6 percent), and game producers (7.2 percent). Of grade school female students, 14.1 percent went for patissiers; 7.1 percent teachers; 6.0 percent kindargarten/child nursing care workers; and 5.8 percent salaried workers.
Junior-high and high school male students rated salaried workers at the top (18.3 percent), followed by IT engineers (6.8 percent); public servants (5.7 percent); YouTubers (5.7 percent). Junior-high and high school female students ranked salaried workers at the top (13.6 percent), followed by public servants ‘.8 percent); nurses (6.9 percent); and patissiers (5.6 percent).
Both male and female high school students rated salaried workers as top. Males ranked public servants as third favorite occupation, while females rated as second.
(more information at: dai-ichi-life.co.jp)

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TOKYO, March 12, 2021—The hosting of the Tokyo Olympic games, postponed by one year for the COVID-19 pandemic, remains in limbo for continuing infection cases in Japan, compounded by radioation exposure concerns renewed by scientists and NGOs about the Fukushima nuclear power plant. That itself may not be new but International Olympic Committee chair Thomas Bach, who was re-elected March 11, ruffled the sentiment of many Japanese who are lukewarm to hosting the games in July by commenting that the IOC would secure Chinese-manufactured COVID-19 vaccines to be administered to athletes arriving in Japan this summer.

Bach said the IOC would purchase Chinese vaccines for athletes playing in Tokyo and Beijing winter games later this year. The Chinese Olympic Committee, Bach said, offered to provide Chinese vaccines as additional quantities to vaccines to be secured by Japan for athletes participating in the two games and that the IOC would foot the bill.

Bach’s remarks about the Chinese vaccines drew immediate response in Japan: Japanese Olympics minister Tamayo Marukawa told reporters March 12 that the Japanese government had not been informed by the IOC about the Chinese vaccine offer or that Tokyo made proposals to use Chinese vaccines to the IOC nor China. She also said that Chinese manufacturers have not applied for Japanese government approval for Chinese vaccines. She reiterated Japan’s ground rules for athletes that in order to take part in the Tokyo games, vaccinations are not predicated.

Bach’s remarks to use Chinese vaccines at the Tokyo games amounted to an affront to the Japanese public already frustrated about Japanese pharmas’ inability to develop COVID vaccines and came when the Japanese economy is being farther distanced by China as a third-largest economy.

On top of this humiliation, many foreign media entities have refreshed their concerns about radiation from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi newclear power pstationt, casting much skepticisms to the Japanesse government and TEPCO assertions that radioactive emissions are controled. Some news outlets said the Fukushima areas where the Olympic torch relay is scheduled as the key routes – the Tokyo games’ key agenda is Fukushima reconstruction and human diversity – poses radiation risks to athletes and partcipants. That’s enough to make the Japanese un-supporting to host the games.

On February 28, TEPCO announced that it had succeeded in remotely pulling out lthe ast six of the 566 nuclear fuel rods used in the Fukushima Daiichi’s third nuclear power plant from the spent power rod pool, and stored them in what is called the rack. The third plant developed hydrogen explosions, along with the first and second plants of the Daiichi station on March 11.

The TEPCO operation might have been timed to the 10^th memorial of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear meltdown as a show of improvements of Fukushima radiation decontamination.

But contrary to what might have been intended by the Japanese government and TEPCO, local media outlet articles are expressing fresh doubts about anything to do about Fukushima and nuclear power. Kahoku Shimpo newspaper, which commands the largest circulation in the northern Japan region, has been running series of comprehensive articles about nuclear power. Its articles sharply criticized TEPCO CEO Tomoaki Kobayakawa for not visiting Fukushima on March 11 while asking where Fukushima Daiichi nuclear waste goes (Nowhere to go!).

The disasterous Fukushima Daiichi aftermath reality is doesn’t end there: Greenpeace’s March 9 report said radioactive levels in most Fukushima province areas where the Japanese government said have completed decontamination work were ‘highly above’ the government’s maximum safe level of 0.23 micro siebelt per hour and that in areas where the government directly performs decontamination work, ‘only 15 percent’ has been completed.

‘The 7/10^th of Fukushima landmass is mountains and forests, and this means that most mountains and forests have not been decontaminated (for difficulty to decontaminate),’ the report said. Because of this government inaction, radioactive substances are seeping into underwater, rivers and lakes and ponds, impacting fauna and flora, it said.

And along major traffic arteries, including Route 4, 6 and Joban and Tohoku Expressways, massive amounts of big black plastic bags containing radioactive waste are stored with no possibility or schedule for disposal. These routes are going to be where Olympic torch runners will run from March 25. Will they run? Some registered runners have begged off.

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TOKYO, March 4, 2021—There’s no need trying to find old black and white Japanese films to watch the shady transactions between samurai and merchants on Netflix or Amazon Prime: The scene was remade on March 3 – in 4K precision full-color television live! – in parliament sessions.
Rich merchants bribing samurai to gain favors was as ubiquitous as commoners presenting small gifts to landlords and relatives during the 270 year Edo period through 1840, though theTokugawa shogunate discouraged and dissuaded over time – unsuccessfully.
‘Echigoya (a highly successful Edo period garment and loan merchant)! You also are a rascal,’ so would growl a samurai domain lord on a detachment room tatami floor of a posh restaurant as he opens a box of sweets with a grin. He would examine it to make sure that what’s hidden under the top tier of the gift box he was presented are glittering fresh gold coins tightly squeezed in. The domain lord would exemp the merchant from a cobwebt of red tape, relax strict business zoning rules for store expansion, and other accommodative measures.
On the Diet (parliament) floor March 4, the modern transactions among prime minister Yoshihide Suga, his spokesperson, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC) minister and the ministry’s bureaucrats, his son, Seigo, who had worked as Suga’s secretary and currently is employed by Tohoku Shinsha Film Corp. production of Tokyo. The former national telecom, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. CEO and top officials also were involved in separate yet related transactions.
Nitty-gritty details aside, the big picture is the remake of the old samurai films: The domain lord (the MIC senior officials on behalf of prime minister Suga and the MIC minister) and spokeswoman Makiko Yamada (resigned in response to the scandal) – politicians and bureacrats – were invited in several ooccasions October-December 2020 to expensive dinners at an exclusive Tokyo restaurant and other places by Suga’s son and TFC executives (merchants), and given gifts and tax coupons (though probably no gold and silver coins stashed underneath the gifts). NTT CEO Jun Sawada and other NTT officials also invited MIC executives to posh dinner over the past few years, including 2020 summer.
TFC said in a Feb. 26 statement that its CEO had resigned and it relieved the executives involved and transferred Suga’s son to the Personnel Department – a pat on the shoulder reprimand.
By law, public servants are banned accepting mealsand grafts exceeding $90 per time.
At stake: Preferential licensing and deregulations for 5G radio signal spectrums to deliver next-gen broadcasting and telecom services, as well as numerous other domestic and cross-border communications services.
Suga’s son, reportedly 40 years old, had joined TFC afer working as his father’s secretary while Suga was MICminister.
Starting spring 2021, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI (au), Yahoo (Softbank), and Rakuten would revise smart phone subscriber data services, some of them involving lower fees, at Suga’s executive ‘order’ issued last year. They all need MIC approval for revising fees that they charge consumers and businesses, so obtaining information about government policies and thinking – especially of Suga, who servied as MIC minister earlier – is vital.
TFC, though it’s a content producer, has a high stake in government telecom and broadcasting policy for its broadcasting channels for Japanese chess and Go games, TV drams, foreign films and others broadcast via its Start Channel, now being transmitted over Broadcast Satellite (BS) 4K technology that requires high-speed spectrum.
Those ‘merchants’ all need Shogun and domain lord patronage for their businesses. It’s same act having been played for decades and centuries amost since the beginning of the Edo period in the early 1600s. During Japan’s go-go era of the 1970s to 1980s, bureaucrats were pampered even more profusely: Top officials of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Posts and Telecom (and probably other ministries) were given special accounts by commercial banks and securities companies at traditional Japanese restaurants and Ginza bars. They would invite their subordinates to those places, some of them nightly, and the restaurants would send bills to the banks and brokerages.
In the 1990s, the Ministry of Finance was rocked by a major scandal known as the ‘No Pan Shabu-shabu’ (beef stew served by waitresses wearing no underwear). Senior and mid-level bureaucrats, including some I used to know, were reprimanded. They were invited by commercial banks and brokerages to the occasions, costing them far more than what the current bureaucrats were given.
But unlike now – when Japan has become far poorer than back then – senior bureaucrats below top levels have to go home by public transportation unless they are given limo treats or tax coupons.

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TOKYO, Feb. 18, 2021—So, this is how Kabuki actors play – or not play – the same acts over and over, and for centuries: 

‘They’ have chosen on Feb. 18 Seiko Hashimoto, the Olympic game minister, as successor to Yoshiro Mori, the Tokyo Olympic games organizing committee president who had resigned for his sexist gaffes. ‘They’ are the ones, including prime minister Yoshihide Suga and Canon Corp. CEO Fujio Mitarai, that endorsed as the new president the 56-year-old woman athlete-turned Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker that Mori dotes on as his’daughter.’

After Mori reluctantly agreed to relinquish his post early February, They have been huddling together almost everyday and sometimes twice a day to discuss who should be appointed as successor to Mori in a high wire balancing act in deference to the Olympic principles while heeding to the more important issues of domestic politics and public opinions.

The selection as expected has proved too tall a task for ‘them,’ perhaps beyond their and Japanese sports societal abilities, for it amounted to overhauling the bureaucratic system, in which most of them belong to, the system that has survived to date no matter what happened in the past and regardless of changing times.

Mori made remarks that slight women ーー”Women talk too long at meetings.” – contravening one of key objectives of the upcoming games: “Accepting and respecting differences in race, color, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, level of ability or other status allows peace to be maintained and society to continue to develop and flourish.’

Even though Mori, an 83-year-old former prime minister, resigned, he continues to remain as one of ‘They’ and loom over other inner circle members as the supreme advisor to all Japanese athletic organizations, including the Olympic games.

‘They’ include: Suga, former Japan Football Association chair Saburo Kawabuchi, Canon Corp. CEO and Tokyo 2020 game honorary chairman Fujio Mitarai, Japan Olympic Committee member and Judo champion Yasuhiro Yamashita, JOC director general and former Ministry of Finance vice minister Toshiro Muto, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, and former prime minister Shinzo Abe.

Mori’s successor was supposed to be chosen by the 8-member (4 women and 4 men) ad hoc committee on the next Tokyo game president formed after Mori agreed to step down: The members include the deputy Tokyo governor, JOC’s Yamashita, sports agency director-general Koji Murofushi, and Canon’s Mitarai. The committee has been meeting frequently after Mori decided to resign but the meetings are held behind closed doors with no minutes kept or news conferences held.

Notwithstanding, Hashimoto’s name surfaced on Feb. 16 and 17– not from the ad hoc committee but from LDP members and Suga’s office ‘Kantei,’ suggesting that the selection work is led by lawmakers, and the ad hoc committee members were effectively relegated to be junior Kabuki actors with no power and acts to play in the Olympic theater except to hold closed door meetings at a Tokyo hotel. The organizing committee refused to identify the 8 members or where its meetings were held but the media easily got wind of the information with stake-up. 

When Mori decided to resign, he asked Kawabuchi in person to succeed him, the appointment that was not backed by Suga who do not get along well with Mori and who was afraid about public criticisms that the successor was decided in secrecy and not in a democratic way. 

The media did precisely that, blasting the way Kawabuchi was named. So They deleted Kawabuchi’s name and in place, floated Judo athlete Yamashita. The public trashed his name too by criticisms on social media for his failure to immediately criticize Mori when he made the sexist comment. 

LDP politicians thus came across Hashimoto’s name. She needed to be persuaded to take the risk of resigning as a lawmaker and hence her income source. Suga told Olympic Committee secretary-general Muto to talk to Hashimoto not to worry about her re-election in the next general election this fall.

As Mori’s successor, Seiko Hashimoto is expected to look up closely to Mori for advise, helping Mori to continue working as Olympic game kingmaker and keeping intact the Japanese sports world’s male-chauvinism ethos that a man that successfully manages an athletic world, like Mori for rugby, stands at the top of the world, and he can spread his might to politics as Mori did to become the prime minister, and the country as a whole.

Mori might have perfected executing this ethos by blending it into Japan’s centuries-old bureaucracy, where man’s values are determined by one’s position in the societal hierarchy of ranks and experiences. 

Politics are more complicated. Hashimoto would have to seek Mori’s advise at the same time she needs to consult with Suga, Koike and Mitarai since the men command higher positions than Hashimoto in the sports world and Japanese society bureaucracy hierarchy.

This is one of the ways that helped Japan become a more bureaucratic society.

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TOKYO, Feb. 3, 2021―It was hardly a surprise when Taro Kono, Japan’s Covid-19 vaccination minister, told a Feb. 2 news conference that vaccine supply schedules to Japan ― probably referring to Pfizer vaccines ― have not been fixed in response to the European Union’s vaccine export regulations to clear all EU member consent. What was surprising was the Japanese vaccine minister’s blatant media gag request.

For weeks, prime minister Yoshihide Suga’s administration has been stoking public expectations for vaccinations to start from February, first to medical workers and then senior citizens. Kono said earlier that Pfizer vaccine program would start from February, then he very recently revised his comment and said the start would be no earlier than April 1.

But on April 2, he told reporters, ‘The EU has explained to us that they will make their best efforts but that the supply schedules for Japan are not fixed yet.’ On Jan. 29, the EU announced that it would require member countries’ approval for exporting Covid-19 vaccines manufactured in the region, including Pfizer products. 

Even though over the weekend, the fact that it took nearly 5 days for Kono to announce the virtual indefinite postponement underscored the poor communication between him and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, as well as possible overnighting of duties on the part of the Japanese diplomatic missions in Brussels.

Kono admitted at the same news conference that Japan’s vaccine distribution schedules are being delayed by the EU’s measure and apologized to local governments standing by for supplies, according to Japanese media reports.

     The national broadcasting station, NHK, Feb. 2 quoted Kono as asking the media ‘to refrain from covering and reporting’ vaccine supplies from overseas for what he described as ‘security viewpoints.’

     Kono made the comment in response to a Fuji TV report earlier that the first parcel of Pfizer vaccines is expected to be delivered to Japan on Feb. 14. 

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TOKYO, Jan. 30, 2021―In Akira Kurosawa’s highly-acclaimed 1952 film, ‘Ikiru,’ a mid-level Tokyo city official nearing his retirement, played by Takashi Shimura, is busy rubber-stamping documents and waiting for the work to end every day in a typical do-nothing bureaucrat manner. The film’s monotonous tone takes turns and the character morphs into a real living creature after he was diagnosed as terminally ill. He abruptly starts listening to and acts for the people that he had ignored for 30 years becoming a hero at his death

In the present real world, however, bureaucrats stick to the ‘Do Nothing’ policy and they observe it far more diligently than in 1952 busying at ‘creating’ work for themselves and getting paid far more than their private-sector peers. The number of Tokyo city area employees, at slightly more than 170,000 now, has been decreasing but the real Tokyo bureaucrat population is unknown because, unlike in 1952, many quasi-public corporations and other entities have been founded.

In a central city of less than 60,000 residents, one section of the city office, which previously assigned once officer to coordinate with local NPOs, added a new staffer two years ago. And when one NPO organized a city event, the section has assigned nearly half a dozen staffers, instead of three or so previously.

The city and the same NPO used to meet every month to coordinate for various events but from mid-2020, they decided to meet every other month. The city technically can use emails and other telecom means to coordinate details with the NPO but somehow, they increased the volume of documents substantially, making detailed prints  of photos , maps and texts and one wondering how much time and resources had to be spent (wasted, partially) to produce such documents. It’s little wonder why the section added the second staffer.

At one of 23 Tokyo ‘ku’ city offices, a different variety of bureaucracy is being practiced. Unlike in 1952, when much of Tokyo city’s works had been administered directly by bureaucrats such as the Ikiru actor, Japanese public sector entities outsource enormous amounts of work to outside contractors ― office cleaning, libraries, public transportation, water safety, construction, and so on.

Those ku offices might have outsourced too many works, The Prospect’s research suggests. In one example, a ku’s one section has outsourced part of its sports facilities’ work to an NGO and another work to a different NGO. The ku’s sector instructed the head of the facility to coordinate among the facilities and two different NGOs. The result is a near bureaucratic impasse as none of the entities is volunteering to be in charge out of ‘consideration’ for other parties.

In the end, to break the deadlock, the ku’s section, which is responsible for the budget and planing for the sports facilities had to intervene, telling the three parties that the ku had received resident requests for change and had to administer. The ku section’s official in charge of the sports facilities told The Prospect that he had never made on-site visit to any of the facilities or talked to ku residents.

This is how bureaucrats are trained to become more bureaucratic than the Ikiru character before he learned about his terminal illness.

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