Tag: Japan

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Japanese prosecutors ‘Never say never again’ about false charges

CHINO, Japan, Aug. 15, 2024—Japanese public prosecutors ‘never say never again’ in leveling false charges against the innocent. When they lose court cases, they apologize and feign repentance but refuse to change their foundational approach toward people they arrest. That’s what they did in demanding capital punishment to a suspected person in a case having been fought over 40 years, and charging a senior bureaucrat with fabricating evidence in 2008.

More recently – apparently in light of growing public criticisms about public prosecutors – a court ordered a prosecutor to stand trial in response to a lawsuit, the first such court case–though the prosecutors office, with confidence that the prosecutor would prevail, is stonewalling about it with its policy of ‘it’s-our-decision-not-court’s’ to punish criminals. The Japanese judiciary and lawmakers, always on the prosecution side, are lukewarm about the case, raising doubts whether the man would be penalized.

Whatever the outcome, Tabuchi’s court case is likely to have great influence on future Japanese prosecutor and police criminal investigations. 

At the center stage of this saga is Shinobu Yamagishi, 61, who had founded and managed property developer Pressance Corporation of Osaka was arrested on Dec. 16, 2019 by the Osaka Pubic Prosectors Office Special Investigation Department. He was relieved of his CEO post on Dec. 23, 2019 by the board of the publicly traded company.

What led to his arrest and 248 days of imprisonment and daily interrogations at the Osaka Retention Center – and his entire business – were false testimonies made by a Pressance employee, and a business associate who told the prosecutors that Yamagishi was an accomplice in a fraudulent Pressance loan transaction to the business associate, according to a Japan Federation of Bar Associations website. Yamagishi sued the Osaka Public Prosecutors Office’s prosecutor who was in charge of his case. 

In more than 50 hours of interrogations of the Pressance employee, which were recorded both voice and video, Tabushi shouted, pounding the table loudly, apparently to solicit testimony that Yaamagishi conspired with him as well as other two arrested men in the fraudulent loan case. Worse, Tabuchi seemed to have ignored the fact that the interrogations were recorded, presumably with confidence that the prosecutors office would manage it to avoid lawyer and public scrutiny.

Yamagishi had been wrongly detanled for more than 200 days and he was told not guilty Oct. 28, 2021 by the Osaka District Court.

On Aug. 8, 2024, in response to Yamagishi’s lawsuit in June 2022, the Osaka High Court decided to try the prosecutor, Daisuke Tabuchi, 52, who was a key official investigating the Pressance loan case, for a Special Public Servant Violation and Intimidation law crime. Justice Koichi Murakoshi said in his ruling that Tabuchi in his interrogations used ‘coercive, insulting language, in unjust manner’ and ordered him to stand trial as defendant.

As had anticipated, despite its order to Tabuchi to stand trial, the high court authorized the prosecutors office to submit only 48 minutes of recording clips as evidence to be used in the upcoming Tabuchi trial out of about 50 days of recording, according to lawyers quoted by the Japanese press.

Tabuchi will be represented by a public prosecutor in coming court proceedings. At an Osaka District Court hearing on Aug. 11, 2024, Tabuchi agreed that his language used in questioning the Pressance employee was ‘inappropriate,’ according to media reports. Then the judge played part of the recorded voice and video in which Tabuchi was heard shouting at the defendant, ‘You’re lying… You’re a big criminal…Don’t BS. Don’t slight the prosecutors!…’ Tabuchi never apologized for his language.

Similar cases

Prosecutors’ false charges against Yamagishi are not uncommon. In the past, numerous others, including innocent ones, were unfairly charged and tried because of prosecutors’ illegal and unethical interrogation techniques.

Hakamada case – Iwao Hakamada, now 88, was arrested and charged for allegedly murdering four members of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture I 1966. He was given a death sentence but court had ordered a retrial for insufficient evidence presented by prosecutors. Retrial proceedings concluded on May 22, 2024, and the Shizuoka District Court is scheduled to deliver its ruling on Sept. 26, 2024. Prosecutors said only Hakamada, who was living in the family’s company billeting facility, was in the position to be able to kill the four persons. Hakamada admitted to the crime and had been imprisoned for nearly 48 years, then was released 10 years ago for his defense team’s demand for retrial.

Muraki case – In June 2009, Atsuko Muraki, director-general of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s Equal Employment, Child and Family Bureau, was falsely arrested by the Osaka Regional Public Prosecutors Special Investigation Department for allegedly assisting a welfare group to illegally receive postal serve discounts. 

Muraki was told by prosecutors to change her statement and that as long as she refused to change, ‘you will receive a severe punishment, prison term!,’ according to a defense lawyer group website, though her penalty should have been light even if she acquiesced to the prosecutors’ demand. She was released by putting a bail in November 2009 and spending as long as 164 days in prosecutor custody, having been denied release on bail for a few times.

Teikoku Bank case – In 1948, 12 Teikoku Bank (now Sumitomo-Mitsui Bank) Shiinamachi branch employees were poisoned and murdered in a bank heist. Sadamichi Hirasawa, an artist and painter, was arrested but he did not admit to the crime until his death in prison cell at the age of 95 in 1987. Police and prosecutors interrogated Hirasawa nearly until his death but totally absent active physical evidence and having had to rely on Hirasawa’s admission to the crime, court could not deliver a sentence to him.

Prosecutors’ approach doesn’t change

Public prosecutors would occasionally bow their heads at news conferences for having forced defendants to sign fabricated interrogation records that they have not committed or said. They pledge that mistakes never would be repeated. But prosecutors aren’t giving up their coercive interrogation techniques even if courts reject cases to uphold defendants’ innocence.

This centuries-old practice dates back to the Edo period when the feudal lords and their cronies were virtual gods – as they were called ‘Okami,’ meaning ‘up high.’

The samurai class that did the modern prosecutor work always made sure that whatever the outcome of their deeds, they will come out fault-free, and for that, they didn’t bother leveling false charges and hanging innocent people.

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It’s how Japan’s defense info (and indirectly U.S.’s) leaks to China and Russia

TOKYO, July 13, 2024—It happened in the past, albeit by a more obscure scale, compelling the U.S. defense and intel authorities to be cautious about sharing vital information with Japan. 

Every time missteps erupt, the Japanese government apologizes and promises ‘never’ to cause recurrence but they continue surfacing – by more often than before. Though classified defense information was not leaked to third parties this time, it’d be no surprise if it did given that the foundation isn’t likely to change. 

China and Russia have been seizing on this lax Japanese defense intel structures with precision, with their operatives in Japan disguised as journalists and embassy personnel as well as employees of Japanese companies snuggling up to Japanese Defense Ministry uniform officials to obtain vital info.

What can be done about it? In essence, very little, even though it’s not impossible if the World War II period Imperial Army legacy that still lurks around in the Japanese Maritime and Ground forces is thrashed and burned, the process that would take years as it concerns their core organization and administrative structures.

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(Yomiuri Japan News. Julyb13, 2024 on-line edition.)

The Defense Ministry took disciplinary action against an unprecedented 218 Self Defense Forces members on Friday for various code violation, including disciplining 119 members of the Maritime Self-Defense Force for mishandling classified security information categorized as specially designated secrets.

The ministry also announced punishment for misconduct including power harassment by defense bureaucrats and improper receipt of allowances by MSDF divers.

“We have been completely lacking in fundamental attitudes, such as respect for the law, sense of ethics and strict discipline,” Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said at a press conference held after the Cabinet meeting Friday. “I will do my utmost to quickly rebuild the Defense Ministry and the SDF and restore the public’s trust.”

Kihara himself will give back a month’s salary.

MSDF Chief of Staff Ryo Sakai will take a one-month pay cut as a disciplinary measure and resign. Administrative Vice Defense Minister Kazuo Masuda; Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida, who is chief of staff of the Joint Staff; and chiefs of staff from the Ground Self-Defense Force and the Air-Self Defense Force were reprimanded for shirking their supervisory responsibilities.

Specially designated secrets are information required to be kept particularly secret for the purposes of defense, diplomacy, counterespionage and counterterrorism. Those who handle them must undergo a security clearance assessment, in which points such as their economic conditions and potential criminal history are investigated. As of the end of last year, 135,479 people were qualified, of which 122,459 were connected with the Defense Ministry. These rules were stipulated in the Law on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, which came into effect in 2014.

The cases of misconduct by the ministry and the SDF announced Friday fell into four categories: mishandling of specially designated secrets; improperly receiving perks for diving missions; improperly receiving food and drink on an MSDF base; and abuse of subordinates by defense ministry bureaucrats.

A total of 58 cases of specially designated secrets being mishandled were uncovered: 45 by the MSDF, nine by the ASDF, two by the GSDF and one each by the Joint Staff Office and the Defense Intelligence Headquarters. The information has not been leaked outside the SDF, according to sources.

Within the MSDF, a series of cases were confirmed in which personnel who lacked the proper qualifications were on duty at combat instruction centers (CIC) — areas with computer screens displaying information such as ship wake — and on the bridges of 38 vessels.

Kishida apologizes for SDF scandals

By Hirotaka Kuriyama / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Fumio Kishida apologized Friday for a series of scandals involving the Defense Ministry and the Self Defense Forces.

“I must apologize for the concern we have caused the people of Japan,” Kishida told reporters the outskirts of Washington, where he was visiting.

“Defense Minister [Minoru] Kihara must exercise strong leadership and do his utmost to regain the nation’s trust,” he added.

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China expands its territorial claim toward Japan: Next target is Senkaku

TOKYO, July 7, 2024—As expected and as if scripted, China has installed a buoy on Japan’s continental shelf in the Pacific, the Yoimiuri Shimbun daily reported July 5, in its methodical expansion into other countries’ sovereign waters. The next Chinese move, likely more aggressive, is set to be Senkaku Islands claimed by both countries where China also had floated buoys earlier and chasing after Japanese fishing boats as it is doing to Philippine fishermen.

Despite the escalating Chinese aggression, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said only that the Chinese act was ‘regrettable.’ A Chinese spokeswoman said July 5 that the area is an international water, not Japan’s, describing the buoy installation as legitimate by international law.

The buoy is located north of Okinotorishima Island, a tiny speck of rocks that emerged as a result of a deep ocean volcanic eruption about two decades ago that Japan registered as its territory with the United Nations and that China unilaterally denies as a rock and not an island.

More details as reported by the Yomiuri as follows:

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A Chinese government vessel in June installed a buoy on Japan’s continental shelf in the Shikoku Basin region, north of Japan’s southernmost Okinotorishima Island, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

While China has previously installed buoys in the East China Sea including an area near the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, it is quite unusual for the country to install a buoy in the waters under the jurisdiction of Japan on the Pacific Ocean. The government is examining the purpose and other details of the buoy.

The Xiangyanghong 22, a large Chinese working ship, in July 2023 installed an ocean survey buoy with a diameter of about 10 meters in Japan’s exclusive economic zone about 80 kilometers northwest of the Senkaku’s Uotsuri Island without permission. It is believed that wave and other data collected by the buoy is transmitted to China using satellites. The government has demanded the immediate removal of the buoy at summit meetings and foreign ministerial meetings between Japan and China, among other occasions, but China has not responded to the requests.

According to multiple government sources, Xiangyanghong 22 left Shanghai on June 5 this year and arrived in the Pacific Ocean via the Osumi Strait off the coast of Kagoshima Prefecture. It then installed the buoy in the Shikoku Basin region in mid-June. The buoy is reportedly smaller than the one installed in July 2023 and is equipped with a light emitting device that can be seen from ships traveling nearby at night.

The Shikoku Basin region is surrounded by Japan’s EEZ and covers an area almost equivalent to half the size of Japan, which is 378,000 square kilometers. Since there are no islands in or around the region, it is supposed to be outside the EEZ. However, the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) recognized the Shikoku Basin region as Japan’s continental shelf in 2012, with Okinotorishima Island as its base point. Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, Japan exercises sovereign rights over the continental shelf for the purpose of exploring the sea bed and exploiting its natural resources.

Unlike EEZs, oceanographic surveys conducted in waters above continental selves do not require approval of coastal states. However, mineral resources including rare metals are said to be distributed in the seabed of the region, and if the recently installed buoy is related to the exploration of the seabed and other such activities, it is highly likely that it violates the U.N. convention.

On the other hand, China claims that Okinotorishima is not an island but a rock and that neither an EEZ nor a continental shelf can be established based on it. China has repeatedly conducted oceanographic surveys and military exercises in the western Pacific including areas near the island. Since it could install buoys in Japan’s EEZ in the Pacific Ocean side in the future, just like in the East China Sea, the government is stepping up vigilance and surveillance activities.

Hayashi: ‘Disappointed’

“It is regretful that China installed the buoy without explaining its purpose, plan and other details,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a press conference Friday.

Hayashi also said that Tokyo has asked Beijing to provide a transparent explanation about it. According to him, China has explained that the buoy is designed to observe tsunami and is not intended to violate Japan’s rights over the continental shelf.

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Number of unclaimed remains in 2022 jumps 30% over 5 years

TOKYO, June 3, 2024—The number of unclaimed remains in 2022 in Japan jumped 32 percent compared with 2018, according to a newspaper survey published on June 3.

The Yomiuri daily newspaper said its survey of 74 Japanese municipalities taken between February and May 2024 showed a total of 11,602 persons’ remains were unclaimed, up 32 percent from 2018, with big cities like Tokyo, Yokohama and Sapporo showing conspicuous rises – reflecting problems leading to isolated deaths and not claimed by kins.

Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare demographic data showed the 2022 number of deaths at 1,569,050, up 15 percent from 2018, so the survey mirrors unclaimed remains were double the national deaths.

Reasons are diverse and complicated, such as that seniors facing death had been living alone and isolated from relatives and society, the condition that’s becoming increasingly pronounced in Japan as family relations are steadily thinning, as well as the high and growing cost of funeral services. In Tokyo, most crematoriums are owned and managed by a Chinese controlled company that roughly doubled the cremation fees.

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Orange juice products disappear from Japan, indication of growing food shortages

TOKYO, April 29, 2024—Perhaps a first confirmation of tightening food supply, decreasing production and the eventual acute shortages that Japan would run into over the next decade: OJ products are fast disappearing from store shelves as imports are dwindling and prices go sky high because of shrinking production in the United States and other exporting countries that are being ravaged by climate change.

The April 30 Japan Agricultural News daily reported that three top orange juice and product packaging and distributing companies – Morinaga daily, Meiji Meg Milk, and Asahi Beverages have been or planning to indefinitely suspend deliveries to retail stores. Morinaga sold Sunkist OJ and Meiji Meg Dole products.

Imports account for 9/10th of Japan’s orange consumption.

Morinaga and other companies are asking domestic citrus growers to increase production and harvesting, yet many growers are failing to respond because of aging – a classic pattern of Japan’s disruptive food supply chain.

A Nagano farmers market in central Japan April 1, 2024 newsletter for its member farmers said its business is poised to become unviable as the number of visitors has plunged to half in 2023 to 10,767 from 20,850 in 2013 as supply volumes and varieties of farm goods dwindle corresponding to farmer population aging, rising fertilizer, pesticide and insecticide prices, and stagnating selling prices. The market decided to close twice a week to cope with the situation but if conditions don’t turn around for the better, it could fold in less than two years, a market employee told The Prospect.

Production of most other crops is facing the same challenges. In Kitami, Hokkaido, farmers had quit growing sugar beets, and they now are growing only potatoes – a disease risk they decided to take to raise a single crop for lack of young labor and costs. ‘Potatoes are easy,’ a farmer told The Prospect April 29.

High value crops are what entrepreneur farmers are growing such as $20 a pop strawberries and $300 melons – arbitrarily contributing to Japan’s declining food production and supply.

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It’s all up, up, up in Japan’s new business year, fanned faster by tourists

TOKYO, April 12, 2024–April 1 is the first day of Japan’s new business year. Young people starting work for the first time and students entering school are welcomed at entrance ceremonies against the backdrop of cherry flower pedals play in the spring breeze. People, fauna and flora and houses all look being uplifted and smiling.

Not this spring.

The weather was nasty. Strong, cold, typhoon-grade powerful winds with occasional downpour, clearly a climate change impact, ruthlessly whipped them all, disabling ceremonies and ubiquitous sakura (cherry) flower parties under the open skies. 

Even more chilling than the frigid spring for people was what economists termed a inflation third wave carrying goods and service prices of all conceivable items, from more than 2,800 groceries, parcel delivery fees, National Health Insurance premiums for people over 75 years, ending of government subsidies for Covid-19 vaccines, NHI premium surcharges to finance proactive child birth programs. Numerous other prices and fees have gone up, such as museum and park admissions.

The hike, which began two years ago, has roughly doubled Japan’s grocery inflation to date and restaurant prices even more, economist said.

The third wave rise coincided with the country’s most popular tourism season, though the fowl weather appeared to have preempted the over-crowing of popular tourist spots such as Kyoto. And yet, the tourist season just started, with more than 20 million Japanese people projected to travel during the late-April to May 5 Golden Week vacation period.

Most starred hotels are filling up and the effect is rippling to so-called business hotels, the accommodations for local traveling workers, where rates have nearly doubled year-on-year.

The bottomline: combined with the yen’s fresh decent against the U.S. dollar and other key currencies, Japan’s CPI inflation is threatening to go sharply higher over the country’s target inflation of 2 percent.

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Japan begins shedding statehood dangerously toward centralized administration

TOKYO, March 4 2024—More than three decades after the Diet (Japanese parliament) unanimously adopted a resolution to promote decentralization of government, thus gradually empowering municipalities the regional authority to share administration with the national government, the tide is dangerously flowing back. And the shift is bringing about changes in public administration, some dramatically, by the central and local governments, making American debate about federalism and states’ statehood looking more democratic and healthy.

Perhaps the most hyperbolic case is the Japanese supreme court decision Dec. 20, 2023 on the Okinawa prefecture vs. the Japanese government on the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corp. Futenma Airbase to Henoko shore. Okinawa had refused to authorize Henoko shore reclamation work for environmental degradation, irreversible damage to corral habitation and other reasons. The high court ruled that Okinawa is obligated to authorize work and gave the central government to directly perform work instead. In an earlier local referendum, Okinawa voters voted down the central government’s request.

The court decision and the Japanese government’s hardball approach toward Okinawa were not isolated from other policies Tokyo had been taking during the reins of the late prime minister Shinzo Abe, particularly since 2020, when Japan was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic as it struggled to ask all 125 million citizens to obtain the ‘My Number’ taxpayer ID card.

The ‘move toward centralization of power as a countermeasure against the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020 has intensified, resulting in discrepancies in policy measures and confrontation between the national government and local governments,’ Kunihiko Ushiyama, professor of the school of political science and economics of Meiji University, wrote on Oct. 25, 2023.

Centralization of government administration to the national government, which can be interpreted as a simplistic form of U.S. federalism, has a long suffocating period in Japanese history.

During much the 270-year-long Edo period through the mid-1800s, the country’s administration had basically functioned on local ‘Han (samurai war lord domain)’ statehood The Tokugawa Shogunate commanded supreme authority over other ‘Daimyo (domain lords),’ the shogun’s power was superlative, his administrative policies weighing on what top Daimyos had to think and decide at a ‘Roju (senior baron and chamberlain’ conferences, and thus he could not make his own decisions.

Those Daimyos came from many regions of Japan, all of them maintaining high levels of autonomy from the Tokugawa Shogunate. Thus, by mid-Edo period, the Shogun had been made a figurehead, stripped of all important duties, his daily life, including his night life with wife and mistresses in the (O-oku (the Shogun harem), and what he ate, fixed rigidly by chamberlains. No freedom and little power. He was not permitted to eat a piping hot grilled ‘sanma (weak sword fish, the variety that only poor people consumed then),’ given only after his aides sample the delicious warm fish for poison.

The long statehood period ended come the Meiji Restoration period (1868-1912), when the Tokugawa Shogunate was toppled by the new government force (called the ‘Kangun’) that introduced Japan’s first constitution, the Great Nippon Imperial Constitution) in 1889, that articulated the centuries-long ambiguity of national-state administrative authority to the central government by elucidating that the emperor assumes sovereignty of the nation (Article 1). This policy had been observed rigidly until 1945, the year when Japan officially surrendered to the U.S.-led occupation forces. In 1946, the current Constitution was enforced that accorded sovereignty to the Japanese people (Article 92) and government administration is entrusted to their representatives by the people, as well as that local entities shall make own decisions on organizations and administration (Article 93).

In fits and starts, the decentralization movement had spread in municipalities, finally culminating with the 2006 enactment of the Regional Administrative Authority Promotion Act and its enforcement in 2007. But contrary to what many local had hoped were for reactivating the then-already sliding local communities, the act turned out to be primarily for merging shrinking villages and towns under new, deceptively bright names like ‘green town’ or telling such consolidated municipalities to advertise their they now have clinics, hot springs, and other facilities – which the merged entities acquired from the acquired halves).

Decentralization should give local communities greater statehood and autonomy at administration, including taxes for ultimate empowerment in policy and action. What the decentralization led to after the law was introduced was local governments were given ‘passive freedom’ of administering policies on their own though passively, instead of being instructed by the statement.That’s far different from ‘positive freedom’ in which local governments explore something new on their own. In other words, local governments were asked to find solutions to problems they encounter without looking up to government for help – which is an impossibly tall wall for many that have been accustomed to following government instructions.

The top court ruling on the Futenma Airbase relocation may not be a good case to cite as an example of what will happen next in the re-centralization wave. But having coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the national government took a decisively powerful role by shoving aside local governments in vaccine distribution and numerous other policies, it’s a lead nevertheless that the bureaucracy, the prime minister’s cabinet and politicians can follow in their pursuit to re-muster power and authority in many other areas. 

The timing can be right for them as most of those policies, including the My Number card, subsidies, taxes and others will be connected via the government’s DX digitalization economy, societal platform, a highly complicated program that overwhelms lay people’s understanding.

So, at the end of the day, many Japanese do not feel comfortable about the ‘positive freedom’ drift and elect to entrust decisions to the ‘Okami (higher-up, government, politicians, God).’

Dangerous.

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Japan decides to relax restrictions on foreign workers

TOKYO, Feb. 9, 2024—In a policy shift from homogeneity to multi-racism, Japan Feb. 9 adopted a policy of proactively welcoming foreign labor by repealing the current system of locking foreign workers in a particular industry to ‘train and teach’ them special skills for low pays in workplaces suffering labor shortages, the system that workers complain about limited freedom and possible abuse.

The policy change to ‘symbiotic labor’ from the existing ‘techno training’ program that the cabinet ministers meeting today rubber-stamped seeks to secure foreign workers in less restrictive conditions than the current system that effectively exploits foreign labor for low pays in prison-like work environs, resulting in escaping workers and human rights abuses. Employer organization, led by the powerful lobby Nippon Keidanren, has been asking for overhauling the current system over the past decade.

In recent years, other countries, including emerging Asia, have been recruiting skilled and unskilled foreign workers as they ratchet up the global wealth ladder by elevating their socio-economic well-being with digitalization and cheap labor. Taiwan, for one, actively invites Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnamese and other Asian nationalities. Thailand, Indonesia and other relatively wealthy Asian economies are accepting Laotian, Cambodian, Myanmar and other workers.

This is resulting is competition of securing both skilled and unskilled workers across Asia and elsewhere, making the current Japanese train and teach method less attractive even for economically struggling countries – the reason for the necessity of its reform.

In the planned new program, a foreign national who basically has worked for two years in one workplace can change jobs and work locations, on condition that a special work skilled learned during the two years can be used in the new workplace. And those who can demonstrate sufficient Japanese language skills would quality for permanent residency.

Many unanswered questions remain, though, e.g., what kind of work conditions a foreign worker would be exposed during the first two years, including pays, health insurance and other social welfare services, as well as how foreign workers can develop and maintain friendly living conditions with Japanese.

In Warabi City, Saitama, a suburb northwest of Tokyo with the population of 67,100, foreign residents account for 12 percent, many of Kurds. Last year, the city’s general hospital was surrounded by rival Kurd groups over an incident that to date has yet to be known. Riot police mobilized and the Japanese media reported it as ‘a riot,’ sending shudders to local Japanese residents and planting a biased image to them about foreigners. The brief tension that swept through the city clearly was caused by a lack of information and communications between the Japanese and foreign residents. It’s the kind of things that need to be addressed under the new program.

As of 2023, foreign residents in Japan totaled about 3.2 million, or about 2.6 percent of the Japanese population of 125 million, the ratio whose curve has been steepening over the last two decades in an inverted graph relationship with the tumbling overall Japanese population arising from rapid aging.

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Risks of over-dependence on behemoths

TOKYO, Dec. 1, 2023—Elon Musk is teaching us something important about size, dominance, and famous brand loyalty: Keep a friendly arms-length distance from behemoths and avoid over-dependence on them.

Musk Nov. 29, 2023 sad at a New York Times DealBook Summit, ‘Go xxxx yourself!,’ to one of the biggest advertisers of X, formerly Twitter, according to media reports, analyzing that X’s survival is being timed.

Whether Musk’s expletives reverberate to his Tesla, Space-X and other businesses is unknown but in light of the U.S. government’s over-dependence on the two companies, damage is likely to be limited. NASA relies extensively for launching space probes and rovers on Space-X rockets, the Pentagon needs Musk’s Starlink satellites, and the White House’s transport electrification program needs Tesla’s charging stations, which commands more than 60 percent of U.S. charging units.

So Musk is effectively the un-appointed top secretary of the While House, like Henry Kissinger was for Richard Nixon and other presidents, his businesses woven inexplicably and tightly in American politics to society.

That’s what Musk is telling us to rethink more loudly, thank you. Over coming years, lawmakers, businesses, and consumers may pause before making choices for befriending with behemoths that dominate everything, from politics, marketplaces and products. Some already learned the perils of over-dependence on a single supplier: Germany on Russia for natural gas and the United States on China for toys and a whole gamut of consumer products.

Apple’s iPhones are another product that dominates some smartphone markets, including the U.S. and Japan, where market shares are 56 percent and 46 percent, respectively, though the levels are not irreversible. In a highly competitive global auto market, Toyota Motor is not a dominant existence, except in Japan, where its share has always exceeded 50 percent, empowering it to be the retail price setter.

What happens when a single business controls nearly all of a marketplace, like Amazon’s cloud service in Japan with over 90 percent market share of public-sector cloud services? Competition disappears, and even though the Japanese government recently picked a small, obscure IT company for a government cloud service, whether it can continue for long is seen with skeptical eyes.

In such a setting, breaking up monopolies may be one of the first policy tools likely to be considered, as already being mulled by the Department of Justice regarding Google, Amazon and other big techs.

While shying away from the dominant force, Toyota’s position in Japan can be comparable to Musk. Not only CEOs of rival Japanese automakers, politicians and business executives look up to Akio Toyoda, the company’s chair, when commenting on industrial policies, clearly with the view that the Japanese industry is underpinned by Toyota’s prosperity and absent it, the Japanese economy would be at the bottom of the OECD ranking.

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Hats off to India’s successful rescue of tunnel construction workers

TOKYO, Nov. 29, 2023—Though details are sketchy and unverifiable, the reported successful rescue of all 41 workers from the collapse of tunnel construction is more than being reckoned with as miraculous and great.

Just like the country’s landing of a Moon rover, Chandrayaan-3, on the planet’s south pole, India’s technicians registered their tenacity and will power to save the 41 lives – who could well have been abandoned as dispensable low-wage labor had it happened a decade earlier.

It appears, to me, to be a combined yield of cumulative technology improvements the country has built up over decades and prime minister Narendra Modi’s policy campaign to uplift his country’s global image.

It’s an analogy in stark contrast to what would be like if a similar accident happens in Japan: The prime minister’s office would convene an emergency cabinet meeting, instructing heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ Fire and Disaster Management Agency, the Ministry of Defense, the National Police Agency, the Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare, and possibly other ministries that can offer technical and other assistances to come to rescue work.

In reality, though, that emergency cabinet meeting would caution that rescue staff to be dispatched newly to the disaster scene should be extra careful not be get involved in secondary disaster, so those staff would be at the scene but are not likely to engage in the real rescue work that is likely being done by those that were initially sent to the scene.

Even though there has been no comparable disasters in Japan for years, those trapped in the (hypothetical) accident thus may not gain access to much-needed medicine, water, food, oxygen and other vital needs in time since non-first-arrived rescuers may not be allowed to jump into the scene by risking their lives.

Plus, one can speculate from the photos of the Indian tunnel construction site that Indian engineers might have acquired advanced skills in drilling safely and other necessary arrangements as they did in landing the moon rover.

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