The White Peril 白禍

Another important step in the "trinity reform" package:

On 30 November, the LDP's policy research committee approved a proposed agreement between the government and the ruling coalition on reform of the tax, financing, and administrative relationship between federal and regional governments ("trinity reform"). In order to decrease the amount Tokyo gives to regional governments in subsidies, the federal government lowered its contribution (in percentage terms) to allocations for children and expenditures on educators who work in public elementary and junior high schools.

The decrease comes to ¥654 billion. One way the agreement was finally reached was by saying goodbye (that's the metaphor in Japanese, too--well, it's more like "seeing off," but the image is the same) to cuts in livelihood protection expenditures, which the regional governments had viciously opposed.

For those who don't know, "livelihood protection" is basically the system that guarantees a minimum standard of living for citizens. Workers pay into it at the same time as they pay into the national pension system; the payouts they receive, by contrast, come from the pension system alone, unless they end up impoverished. Why would federal and regional governments get into a tussle over which kind of funding to cut? Take a look:

At the NHK Hall in Tokyo's Shibuya on Monday [14 November], where a meeting to promote the decentralization of power was held, Tamotu Yamade, chairman of the Japan Association of City Mayors and mayor of Kanazawa, criticized the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare for agreeing to even part of the subsidy cut proposal.

"The problem of livelihood protection costs is merely a transfer of the burden" to local governments, he said.

"Reforms without ideology will leave the root of the evil behind. We must staunchly fight," Yamade said, triggering thunderous applause from about 3,000 mayors and local assembly members attending the meeting.

At a news conference after the meeting, Aso said, "We would like the prime minister to take leadership this year to the last moment, unlike last year."

Local governments are opposed to cuts in subsidies for livelihood protection, which [sic] the Finance Ministry is pushing for such cuts. The local governments are willing to accept cuts in subsidies for facilities at public schools, but the ministry is against that.

From the beginning, the Finance Ministry has been reluctant to subsidy [sic] reductions which do not lead to spending cuts, but is poised to oppose reductions in subsidies for school facilities, whose source is construction national bonds.

Over the last fifteen years, the number of people drawing on livelihood protection has risen, naturally, at the same time as the economy was frequently slumping. Spinning off repsonsibility for the program could easily stick regional and local governments with new collection and accounting headaches without increasing their discretion over where money and resources go. Note also that it's about as easy to get the federal government to agree to issue fewer bonds as it is to get Courtney Love to take fewer drugs.

In separate but not unrelated news, the government plans to restructure out-of-pocket payments for patient care in the National Health system:

On, 30 November, the government and ruling coalition decided on the broad outlines of two-phase reform for the health care system that would raise the amount patients pay for medical care beginning next year. First, the percent paid by high-income patients 70 and over will increase to 30% from the current 20%; after 2008, the percent paid by middle- and low-income patients between 70 and 74 will as a rule increase to 20% from the current 10%. Conversely, the plan folds in an expansion--from younger than 3 to younger than 6--of the age at which payment for children is slightly decreased to 20%. The goal is to hold down increases in health care costs by keeping an eye on payments exacted from people during their child-rearing years while making those from the aged more appropriate.

So many dropped balls are coming to light in the Aneha scandal that I'm starting to expect Mr. Moose to wander by at any moment. One of the sticking points thus far had been over the degree to which the federal government should be helping out people who've been stuck with unsafe condos. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport has come up with a partial plan:

Residents of housing blocks built on falsified structural integrity data who took out loans with the government's Housing Loan Corporation to purchase their now unlivable homes, will be allowed to defer their loan payments, Construction and Transport Ministry officials said Sunday.

This will be the first step the government has taken to help those living in 230 condominiums in question. However, only 14 of the households, or about 6 percent, of them took out loans with the corporation.

Thus, the ministry is also looking into possibly assisting residents who borrowed from private financial institutions, the officials said.

...

The ministry holds that the condominiums' builders should fulfill the defect liability to rebuild the buildings free of charge before the ministry assists residents, but it is not clear how such firms, including Huser, will handle the problem and whether they have the necessary funds to rebuild the housing blocks.

The ministry is searching for a way to extend a helping hand, as it will take time for the residents to rebuild their lives and they may be forced to repay their loans at the same time they pay rent on new homes.

I hope my arch tone over the last week hasn't made it seem that I regard this story as a joke. While it's true that we're very lucky no one was killed here, a lot of people have poured savings into mortgages that are now proving worthless. There's nothing funny about that.

There's also nothing funny about the fact that, as the Asahi reported this morning, it's beginning to look as if everyone--and I mean everyone--involved in these construction projects failed to be vigilant:

The reports submitted by Aneha, who is based in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, were supposed to be thoroughly checked by eHomes Inc., a private-sector inspection company.

At the same time, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport only carried out perfunctory reviews of the work done by eHomes in its annual inspection of the company.

To compound matters, a number of local governments were also lax in their efforts to unearth irregularities in reports put together by Aneha.

Land ministry officials searched the offices of eHomes in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on Thursday and Friday to look into the company's inspection procedures.

Sources said that eHomes apparently failed to reconfirm the information included in the structural-strength reports as required by the Building Standards Law.

The whole point of building redundancy into these sorts of procedures is to put as many pairs of eyes as possible on the same information: what one person doesn't notice, everyone else will. What actually appears to have happened--all Tragedy of the Commons-like--is that everyone assumed everyone else was being vigilant, so once Aneha had put his fraudulent structural integrity reports into circulation, the falsifications weren't discovered.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport made an announcement today:

On 28 November, reacting to the scandal in which Aneha Design falsified the structural calculations for apartment complexes and other buildings, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport firmed up new policies of systemic revision that would require the name of any architectural subcontractor that performed structural calculations to be recorded in any application for a building permit. The intention is to have revisions enacted and implemented in basic construction laws governing application documents by the end of the year.

Well, okay. I'm sure anyone who sees the name Aneha on a building permit application from here on will be sure to put it in the "Reject" pile. Otherwise, if there's a way this will help ensure greater vigilance on the part of those in charge of inspection and certification, I'm not sure what it is.

Like other federal ministries, the MLIT takes the tack that the safety of the public is too important for its operations to be spun off into private hands. Since protecting its citizens is the government's primary responsibility, I'd be inclined to agree. But the above policy appears to add only a little more paper pushing (never a hard sell on bureaucrats). The fact is that it's already the job of functionaries in government construction agencies to review structural calculations, and they didn't do it. Perhaps the rules themselves could use some revision, but the major issue is pretty clearly the mindset. It's not clear what anyone plans to do to change that.

If you care to depress or scare yourself, BTW, the Japanese Nikkei now has a handy category page dedicated to the Aneha scandal--certain to be updated frequently for the foreseeable future, if this week is any indication.

They've arrested Shingo Nishimura. I don't see much in the Nikkei report that adds to what we've heard over the last week, up to this anticipatory report from a few hours ago:

Opposition lawmaker [lower house, DPJ--SRK] Shingo Nishimura will likely be arrested today in connection with allegations he allowed a former employee to pose as a lawyer to work on out-of-court settlements, sources close to Osaka prosecutors and police said.

They said two of the Lower House member's aides likely will also be arrested.

Police believe the aides introduced Nishimura, a member of Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan), to 52-year-old Koji Suzuki in 1998.

Suzuki, who formerly worked in Nishimura's law firm in Osaka Prefecture, was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of mediating insurance settlements for traffic-related cases even though he is not a member of the bar.

The sources said police suspect Nishimura permitted Suzuki to mediate in 40 or so settlements, all of which took place after December 2002.

Plenty of fraud to go around these days. It's alleged that Nishimura falsely claimed for tax purposes that Suzuki was a salaried employee of the firm but instead put the designated amount into an off-the-books fund.

This weekend's earthquake in China not only is sad in and of itself, but is especially sobering for those following what's happening with Japan's beleaguered construction industry and government bodies.

News is pouring in. The city of Hiratsuka in Kanagawa Prefecture (near Yokohama and the ancient capital of Kamakura) has acknowledged that it failed to check Aneha's structural strength report:

Municipal officials in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, failed to detect an architect's lies about the quake-resistance　of a hotel, saying his structural-strength report was simply too big to be checked in time.

Hidetsugu Aneha, the Chiba Prefecture-based architect at the center of the growing scandal involving unsafe buildings, compiled the report for Park Inn Hiratsuka.

...

"The structural strength report was a very thick one measuring about 10 centimeters, and it was very difficult to check it thoroughly in three weeks,'' Hiratsuka Mayor Ritsuko Okura said Thursday.

The oversight came to light after officials of the city's urban policy department reviewed the report.

The 14 columns on the first floor of the hotel had between 60 and 70 percent the required strength, sources said.

Sounds like responsibility-dodging, huh? It may be worse than you think. In the week-and-change over which this story has been unfolding, it's becoming clearer and clearer that at least some of Aneha's falsifications should have been caught a long time ago. An on-site manager for the construction firm that built Sun Chuo Home # 15 in Funabashi apparently alerted the company as it was being built that it had too few girders. I'm quoting this at length so I can inflict on my Japan-based readers the full, creeping sense of horror I experienced when first reading it:

An expert analysis has revealed that structural integrity data on two apartment buildings submitted by architect Hidetsugu Aneha had less than half the required earthquake resistance, with overly small pillars and girders used in the calculations.

The analysis was provided by a first-class architect asked by The Yomiuri Shimbun to evaluate the plans of Aneha, who has admitted falsifying structural strength certificates for 22 buildings in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

The expert said the structural data were an outright falsification, with various data combined to reduce material costs, and it was hard to imagine how the inspection agency involved failed to notice.

Concerning the structural integrity data for Sun Chuo Home No. 15, an apartment building in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, the architect said, "I had an uncomfortable feeling looking at it at first glance."

The 10-story ferroconcrete building was designed by Aneha Architect Design Office in Ichikawa in the same prefecture, and constructed and sold by Sun Chuo Home Co. The Construction and Transport Ministry's recalculation found the building has only 31 percent of the necessary strength.

Bear in mind that these two condominium complexes were in Chiba Prefecture; they are not the same hotel that Hiratsuka is admitting it rushed through, and maybe Aneha was more careful to cover his tracks there. For his part, Aneha is accusing three of the construction firms with which he contracted of pressuring him to allow them to cut corners on structural strength.

Several hotels have been closed. A few days ago, the city of Yokohama ordered a condominium evacuated, and now the federal government has stepped in, with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport taking the unusual step of threatening to invoke the building standards law to force people out of condos designated unsafe if they refuse to evacuate. It's also proposing, naturally more stringent inspection procedures:

Checks will be tightened on construction authorization procedures in the wake of a scandal that has uncovered dozens of apartment blocks and large buildings built using falsified structural integrity data, the government said Saturday.

The Construction and Transport Ministry plans to introduce a manual on how to check the structural integrity data of building designs, as well as a random survey of government-designated private inspection companies.

The ministry will submit the draft reform plan to the Panel on Infrastructure Development, an advisory body to the construction and transport minister, at a meeting to be held next month.

Reviewing the checking system is one of the most important tasks to prevent a recurrence of the problem.

"Until now, the system was based on trust in the inspectors," a ministry official said. "But we must base it on the view that human nature is inherently evil."

Those who want to see the original of that last dramatic sentence can find it here: "これまでは設計者や、建築確認を行う民間機関、自治体などへの信頼が前提だったが、今後は性悪説に基づいた制度に変える。"

I didn't mention the China earthquake just because of its fatalities, BTW. Its magnitude was 5.7. That's the Richter scale for released energy, not the JMA scale for surface vibration--still, by all accounts, the quake and aftershocks were strong but not major. I assume they were of about the intensity at which Aneha's falsely certified buildings are expected to be at risk of failing.

One of the things commentators have been saying since yesterday is that Jiangxi Province was lucky in a sense: most of the houses that are falling down are only one or two stories, so injuries and fatalities have been minimal. The hotels and apartments we're talking about here in Japan are all, to my knowledge, multi-story structures. (At least one mentioned above is ten.) If, in the worst-case scenario, one of them collapsed, dozens of people could be buried in moments.

Fortunately, counts of deaths and injuries in eastern China don't seem to have ballooned overnight, so resources can probably be devoted to assisting those who have been displaced. It's cold at night now, so keeping people out of the elements will be the first priority.

The Liberal Democratic Party celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its founding yesterday:

The Liberal Democratic Party marked the 50th anniversary of its founding Tuesday and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a celebratory convention the party's mission now is to implement structural reforms on a par with the Meiji Restoration and the postwar economic miracle to cope with a changing world.

"In Japan's modern political history, two big reforms can be called 'miracles.' One was the Meiji Restoration of 1867-68, and the other is the reform that came 60 years ago after the defeat in World War II," said Koizumi, who is also LDP president, at the convention in Tokyo.

The Meiji Restoration marked the transfer of power from the feudalistic Tokugawa shogunate to a new central government, ushering in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) and forcing the country out of three centuries of isolation.

Koizumi noted that the two reforms were achieved after many people were killed.

"How can we, in a peaceful way, implement reforms to deal with ongoing change around the globe?" he asked. "That is the duty of this governing party as it marks the 50th anniversary of its founding."

The party also publicized some of its new platform, including one that's been both controversial and anticipated:

Secretary General Takebe officially unveiled the new party platform, the goals of which are a new ideology that embraces "contributing to the realization of world peace," "passage of constitutional revisions," "revision of fundamental education law," and "achieving small government."

Former Prime Minister Mori, chair of the party's drafting committee for constitutional revisions, announced proposed revisions that stipulate that Japan maintains a "self-defense army" and add new rights related to privacy and the environment.

I haven't seen anything about phrasing that would give Japan the right to participate in "collective defense" missions, which was the other big military matter under discussion in the drafting committee.

To complete the set of contentious meetings this weekend, Prime Minister Koizumi met with Russia's President Vladimir Putin:

In summit talks Monday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to expand their economic ties but broke no new ground on the Northern Territories dispute.

Japanese officials described the Tokyo talks as frank and thorough. Both sides seemed happier skirting the contentious territorial issue--apparently for fear of having to make drastic concessions that would not win public approval at home.

The two sides signed 12 agreements ranging from energy development and telecommunications to fighting terrorism and promoting tourism.

...

Analysts suggested that Moscow feels it has the upper hand right now because the Russian economy stands to benefit from high oil prices. In addition, a swell in nationalistic sentiment in Russia may make it more difficult for Putin to give ground on the dispute.

After nine years here, I have to wonder: When and where is nationalist sentiment ever not swelling in Asia and its environs?

The Nikkei editorial on the meeting this morning added uncharacteristically little. Besides the dispute over islands, the negotiations for a Siberian pipeline didn't produce an agreement as firm as Japan would have liked.

DPJ leader Seiji Maehara spoke about ROK President Roh on Asahi Television this weekend:

On an Asahi television program on 20 November, DPJ party chief Seiji Maehara expressed the following judgment about the pursuit of a resolution sought by South Korean President Mu-Hyon Roh to the issues of Takeshima (Korean: Dokuto) and history textbooks: "I'm not sure what Mr. Roh is thinking--telling us to find a resolution to the Takeshima problem when they (Korea) are already actually governing it. On the textbook problem also, hasn't he [displayed] a shallow understanding of Japan's approval system?"

I think all the chumminess probably comes from their shared genetic heritage.

President Bush is in Kyoto and met with Prime Minister Koizumi today. The Nikkei reports on Xinhua's reaction:

On 16 November, the PRC state news agency Xinhua reported of Prime Minister Koizumi and US President Bush's meeting that "they emphasized the importance of the Japan-US alliance" and displayed alarm as it related such items as Koizumi's mention of the importance of US military personnel stationed in Japan.

The Asahi has a more wide-ranging rundown, including this related point:

The Japanese prime minister also brushed aside criticism that he has focused too heavily on U.S. relations while ignoring ties with Japan's Asian neighbors.

"There are some people who believe that Japan should not pursue its relations with the United States too far, and if that creates some negative elements, then Japan should strengthen friendly ties with other countries.

"But that is not my thinking."

Bush also had a message for China, saying leaders should not be afraid to give freedom to their society.

The U.S. president went on to say that the Liberal Democratic Party's landslide victory in the Sept. 11 Lower House election underscores the strength of democracy in Japan.

Koizumi and Bush confirmed that their countries will work in close cooperation so that China becomes a constructive partner.

The evening edition of the Nikkei has a picture of the two at Kinkakuji, which unfortunately doesn't appear to be on-line. This is the only one I can find posted.

Quick Japan news: the ROK Foreign Minister took a swipe at Japan for the Yasukuni Shrine issue at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Pusan:

Ban stated, "Japanese leaders have not been capable of squarely acknowledging past history; their pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine are undesirable." While he avoided mentioning Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi and Foreign Minister [Taro] Aso by name, he did criticize the policies of the Japanese side.

I believe that Ban is usually referred to as the "Foreign Minister" in English, though the kanji title would mean something closer to "Minister of Diplomacy and Trade." Whatever his title, and however generic his statement, it is evidence that the ROK is not softening toward Japan on the Yasukuni issue--not surprising, given that Koizumi's new cabinet includes a new member or two known for nationalist leanings.

...

The seven federal ministries asked to cut their budgets have come up with only ¥28.9 billion of the requested ¥630 billion. That's a whopping 4.6%. Let's hope the regional government bodies don't spend it all in one place.

...

The government has established a central processing center for information about possible money laundering and financing of terrorism.

...

Has anyone heard anything about Minerva? Minerva is the probe that was launched off the Hayabusa spacecraft and was supposed to land on the Asteroid Itokawa. Apparently, the Hayabusa was ascending too fast and so the Minerva's trajectory was screwed up--such aerospace geeks who may be reading this will probably be wincing at that description, but I was only half-paying attention to NHK when the announcement was made. There didn't seem to be a way to get the Minerva back on course, so they were fearing it might be lost. I hope not. Japan's aerospace programs have had a lot of embarrassing failures over the last several years.

You may recall that even of the federal ministries have been instructed to cut their budgets for subsidies; the odds are that they won't reach their targets:

The deadline passed at noon today for responses from seven federal ministries to a proposal to cut a collective ¥630 billion from their budgets, as apportioned by the Prime Minister. By noon, the number of submissions was stalled at two: from the Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry and from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The other five, such as the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, are set to submit their proposals this afternoon, but [their proposed cuts] are not expected to meet the ¥630 billion objective. The Prime Minister's office indicates that it expects things to be settled up by the end of the month, but the journey promises to be rough.

I haven't seen an update since that story was posted at 13:00, and if there was one on NHK, it was delivered while I was out of the room.

*******

So this whole bird flu thing? Gives me deep thoughts. Like, you know, what if we all totally get sick and die? We've certainly been hearing about it, though there was nothing that seemed interested enough to post. Today, the Ministry of Health, Labor...oops! Labour--the u is very important...the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare announced that it's going to take a six-phase approach to preparation:

On 14 November, the MHLW unveiled a "plan of action" that stipulated a phase-six policy to contend with new forms of influenza; the risk that such forms will appear has increased. [The policy provides for] coordination if certain measures become necessary: the stockpiling of antiviral drugs will be increased on a large scale; in the event of a global outbreak, schools will be closed and large assemblies banned, commuting to workplaces will be restricted, and citizens will be instructed to restrict their movements by international air and maritime transport. Taking the MLHW's directive into account, prefectural governments will begin generating independent proposals [for their own local policies] in earnest.

The worst-case scenario, as projected at the moment, is one fourth of the Japanese population infected.

*******

Among other threats to health, there've been a lot of interesting homicides in the news here lately. One of the more chilling is one that, fortunately for the intended victim, didn't come off. The chilling part is that the plan could be put into motion in the first place:

The arrest of a 16-year-old girl who allegedly tried to poison her mother to death with thallium raises the question of how the student was able to obtain the poison so easily even under tightened controls following similar crimes.

The investigation by the Shizuoka prefectural police has so far found that the high school student in Izunokuni possessed various kinds of chemicals. About 30 substances, including thallium, were seized during the police search of her room at her home.

The girl told the police she had bought the thallium at a nearby drugstore.

However, the Poisonous and Deleterious Substances Control Law bans drugstores from selling such poisonous substances to those aged under 18.

It also requires buyers to submit a form listing their name, address, occupation, the amount of chemical they have bought and other items when they purchase such substances.

The Health, Labor [!] and Welfare Ministry instructs drugstores to check buyers' identity and ask them why they want to buy toxic substances.

Someone apparently read Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse.

In another archetypal case--this time with a more tragic ending--a high school girl in one of the outer municipalities in Tokyo Metro was killed by a classmate with a crush that spiraled out of control:

A schoolboy accused of killing 15-year-old Yua Koyama last week because she had gone cold on him had been seen gazing longingly at her suburban Tokyo apartment for hours some weeks ago, a witness told the police.

The 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also told investigators that he burst into the Koyama home without prior notice as soon as Yua's mother, Kimiko, left for work on Thursday, the day he is alleged to have killed the fellow student from his high school.

Police have transferred the boy to the Hachioji Branch of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, where he awaits his fate.

NHK reported the day after the killing that a neighbor had heard noises coming from the apartment, including the girl's screams for help, but assumed that she and her mother were having a fight.

Koizumi's three-pronged reforms (usually more literally translated "trinity reforms") are not part of his campaign that we'd been hearing a whole lot about lately, what with the emphasis on Japan Post and the resulting landslide election victory and cabinet reshuffling. They're back in the spotlight these last few days, though. Yesterday, the government made a few announcements:

On 8 November, the federal government gave instructions to slash ¥630 billion from the budgets of seven ministries. The purpose of the move is to effect decreases in the amount spent on subsidies, in line with the ¥600 billion worth of the tax revenues that will no longer be transferred to the federal government as a result of the national and regional three-pronged reforms. Though the goal is to speed [the implementation of the Koizumi administration's platform through] cabinet-level leadership, Kasumigaseki has objected to what it sees as quotas. The government and the LDP have mobilized their machine to take the lead politically through, for example, the new establishment of regular talks between the vice-ministers and the party chairman.

"It is necessary for us as the cabinet to throw even more energy into coordinating [these reforms]. The relevant cabinet members, we would ask to marshall all their resources swiftly"--so said Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe at an informal gathering after an 8 November cabinet meeting. He requested concrete proposals for fulfilling [each ministry's quota of reductions in] allocations by 14 November.

That was one of those little articles that are easy to understand but surprisingly difficult to translate. (Or maybe the difficulties I was having in getting it into non-mangled English were a signal that I was missing something, but I don't think so.)

Assuming the vice-ministers referred to are the administrative vice-ministers, the meetings with the LDP point person are going to be very important. When cabinet ministers appointed by the PM (and their immediate subordinates) have problems, it's usually because they run afoul of and are outmaneuvered by those under them: the career bureaucrats, who are led by the administrative vice-ministers. These are the people who have devoted their entire post-university careers to going up the escalator in their chosen arm of the government, and they are notoriously resistant to change--especially the kind of change that involves cutting their budgets, and thus their power and influence.

To recap, the three prongs of reform are

• to slash outright federal subsidies to regional and local governments
  
• to overhaul the federal "revenue sharing" system, in which tax revenue comes from local taxpayers to Tokyo, is divided for redistribution in little packets after being haggled over by agencies in the federal ministries, then makes a U-ey back to local governments (or local branches of federal agencies)
  
• to make up for the resulting loss of federal subsidies by increasing the amount of locally collected taxes that goes straight into the coffers of regional and local governments--which is to say, to decrease the role of the federal middle man

You can imagine what the middle man thinks of all this, but self-serving complaints from Kasumigaseki are not the only ones being leveled at Koizumi's plan. The "three-pronged reforms" have been portrayed as simply shifting much of the government debt burden from federal to regional bodies. One might note that, given the federal government's notorious wastefulness in handling money, shifting its debt somewhere--anywhere--can hardly make things worse. There's another problem, though, as noted, for example, in this Asahi editorial from a month or so back: decision-making power is not necessarily being decentralized along with tax collection.

With regard to the transfer of 3 trillion yen in tax revenue, some people say a figure of 2.4 trillion yen has already been agreed upon. But in reality, the Education Ministry is still against slashing 850 billion yen from compulsory education fees now paid from national coffers. The Central Council for Education, an advisory body to the education minister, took an extraordinary vote during a recent meeting. It is scheduled to issue a report shortly recommending that state funding of compulsory education be maintained at current levels.

In addition, entities like the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, or the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, have refused to cooperate with a plan submitted by the National Governors' Association to abolish state subsidies.

Thus, the situation has not changed from last year. Koizumi is still at odds with the ministries.

Final resolution of the issue depends on the outcome of talks between the government and the ruling parties. In order to prevent having the subsidies under their control abolished altogether, the various ministries will probably offer their own versions of reducing subsidy rates, or suggest ways to switching to grants, whose purpose is not designated, and, therefore, more convenient for local governments.

But we cannot approve of switching purpose-specific subsidies to nonspecific grants. This would allow the ministries in Tokyo to retain their power of allocating money. That would be counterproductive to the decentralizing principles of reform.

It's worth noting that while left-leaning organizations such as the Democratic Party of Japan and, uh, the Asahi editorial board are reliably against privatization, they often do support decentralization of government budgeting and allocation. Whether that testifies to their economic liberal-mindedness or to the sheer undeniable inefficiency of the bureaucracies is an open question.

It will be interesting to see what happens on and after the fourteenth.

The asbestos scandal has been one of the biggest news stories of the year here in Japan. It doesn't seem to be getting much attention from Western journalists here, though I suppose I could be missing things. I don't think so, though, and it's kind of bizarre, because the issue taps into the sorts of broad-brush changes in society that journalists like to play up--especially old favorites such as emerging problems with Japan's national health system.

This is from the latest from the Nikkei:

The Ministry of the Environment announced on 4 November that, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, it will establish an investigative committee to determine the medical criteria for diagnosing illnesses caused by asbestos. The committee's goal is to set recognition criteria for confirming the presence of five kinds of ailments, including not only lung cancer but also mesothelioma and asbestos lung.

On 16 November, the Environment Ministry will gather six medical experts and open the committee's first meeting. The plan is for the committee to meet once a month and to have generated a report within a year. [I'm not sure whether they're referring to the fiscal year here; if so, that would be by April.--SRK]

The government is in the process of establishing new laws to give relief money to residents of areas upon which asbestos has had an impact on public health. The confirmation criteria will be centered around lung cancer. The government's judgment is that it is necessary to put in place medically detailed criteria for adding [people to the list of] relief money recipients, given that [diseases such as lung cancer] can also be caused by smoking and other factors besides asbestos exposure.

One of the growing number of televised specials on the asbestos problem, aired a few weeks ago, showed a thin, weak old man with mesothelioma (I never thought I'd need to learn that word in Japanese, much less use it so often) weeping piteously and telling the reporter, "I can't believe that they already knew about these health risks in America twenty years ago, and our government is only getting around to doing something now."

There was special pathos there. The Japanese health system is designed around the idea that collectivism and federal involvement produces better care. People are aware that there are treatments available abroad that are not available here, and there's the occasional scandal when a pharmaceutical company produces non-performing drugs. For the most part, though, people have tended to believe that the close ties between civil servants and health care providers ensured the best of both worlds--more standardized, more equitable, less expensive, more readily accessible. Japan's high average life expectancy seems to bear that out.

Japan's last major public health scandal involving industry was, of course, Minamata disease; there was a feeling that, with the money and resources poured into the health care system by the former Ministry of Health and Welfare--and with federal agencies for just about anything and everything--that sort of thing couldn't happen again. But it has. Bureaucracies in Japan love to keep records, but they don't like to share information with each other. The asbestos scandal, in which key ministries and agencies didn't communicate with each other, is like many of the hospital screw-ups that have become staples of the nightly news here: patient and personnel records often aren't transferred, and when they are transferred, they often aren't verified. It remains to be seen how many asbestos victims will qualify for compensation. The numbers reported vary widely, but it's at least in the thousands.

The Nikkei's latest poll [insert usual caution] finds support for the Koizumi cabinet up to 56%:

The Nippon Keizai Shimbun Corporation conducted a rapid opinion poll on 31 October and 1 November in response to the formation of the third Koizumi cabinet. Support for the Koizumi cabinet was at 56%, an increase of 9 points from the last survey at the beginning of September. The proportion (down 6 points over the same period) that did not support the cabinet was 30%, a manifestation of [the administration's] maintenance of its vigor since its crushing victory in the lower house elections. The percent of those surveyed who "had esteem" for the members of the new cabinet was 49%. That far exceeded the 24% who "did not have esteem"; expectations have solidified around the struggle for reform to be waged through the "post-Koizumi" candidacies of [cabinet members] such as General Secretary Shinzo Abe.

That last sentence is so deformed in my version it gives me physical pain, but I don't really have the time to fuss over it. In any case, the idea comes through that, if the Nikkei poll is remotely dependable, Koizumi's continuing popularity with the Japanese electorate, combined with the reputations that several of his new cabinet picks have already been cultivating, mean that his new administration is starting out once again with the public's endorsement.

Prime Minister Koizumi has announced the results of his cabinet reshuffling:

Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi, at the first meeting of his third cabinet of the evening of 31 October, laid out the fundamental direction [of his latest administration] in five items:

1. To persevere in [transferring power and resources] "from public to private" and "from Tokyo to local districts"
2. Economic vitality
3. Ensuring safety and security in [Japanese] life
4. Diplomacy, national security, disaster management
5. Political reform

Concerning structural reforms, he stated that "the October 2007 privatization of Japan Post will be smoothly executed" and that "the scale of government will be limited through a review of the financing of programs, general labor costs for private sector employees, and the management of government assets and bonds."

Particular positions of interest: Shinzo Abe is the new Chief Cabinet Secretary. Taro Aso is the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. Sadakazu Tanizaki was reappointed as Minister of Finance. Each has been tipped as a possible successor for Koizumi, who has vowed to step down in 2006 and has not been grooming any obvious candidates to take over at that point.

Aso, the new Foreign Minister, was previously Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. A few weeks ago he got in PR hot water for calling Japan a "single-race" nation. You can imagine how resident Koreans and indigenous ethnic minorities loved that. He's had a reputation for being tart-tongued for quite a while, though, and he's been a rising star in the LDP for some time. The last outspoken rising-star Foreign Minister under Koizumi was Makiko Tanaka, and we all know what happened to her. The post of Foreign Minister is a particularly strategic one at the moment, given Japan's delicate relations with the PRC and the Koreas and its push to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Aso's profile on his website is here. A less interesting English version is here at his old ministry.

BTW, in addition to Minister of Finance Tanigaki, banking/Japan Post reform czar Heizo Takenaka was reappointed to his posts.

Added on 2 November: Didn't anyone catch that "Heizo Tanaka" screw up? Glad I seem to have seen it first.