“Foreword to Dormitory Song ‘Toward the North Star’” (1931)

“Foreword to Kagoshima  H.S. 7 Dormitory Song ‘Toward the North Star’” (1931)

A star fell and lives there:
A town where the olive grows
In the southern land we adore.
With the brevity of our three dreamlike years together
And the happiness of a bond that will never be broken,
For days of garden parties
And starry nights under the window,
With melodies of the soaring emotions of youth,
We’ve put these feelings into song for you.
Music is the mother of sad times
And the companion of joyful ones.

“What Would You Do If You Were Invisible?” An Elementary School Asked Soon-to-be-Graduates in Questionnaire for Yearbook…After Distribution, It Found Some Answers It Didn’t Appreciate

“What Would You Do If You Were Invisible?” An Elementary School Asked Soon-to-be-Graduates in Questionnaire for Yearbook…After Distribution, It Found Some Answers It Didn’t Appreciate
Yomiuri Shimbun: もし透明人間なら？小学卒業文集の不適切回答は
March 28, 2012

This month, Asahigaoka Elementary School in Seki, Gifu sent a questionnaire to its soon-to-be graduates for use in their graduation yearbook, and in response to the question “What would you want to do if you were invisible?” certain students wrote inappropriate answers like “kill people” and “steal things.”

After the yearbooks were distributed and the answers in question were discovered, the school recalled the books and altered them.

The questionnaire included six questions which were thought up by the students themselves. One of these was “What would you want to do if you were invisible?” Seven people gave inappropriate answers to this hypothetical question. On the 16th, school faculty recalled the 80 yearbooks it had distributed and put stickers with answers like “meet famous people” on top of the inappropriate responses.

School principal Ryubun Tsukahara said, “Because these graduation yearbooks are meant to create memories that last a lifetime, we checked them over and over, but we didn’t check the answers to the questionnaire. I want to take another look at how we go about checking our yearbooks.”

Japan to Cut Number of Nat’l Public Servants Recruited in 2013 to 40% of Number Recruited in 2009; Number Adjusted After Complaints from Prefectures

Japan to Cut Number of National Public Servants Recruited in 2013 to 40% of Number Recruited in 2009; Number Adjusted After Complaints from Prefectures
Yomiuri Shimbun: 公務員採用、６割削減で最終調整…府省反発受け
March 27, 2012

The Japanese government announced that it had made its final adjustment to the size of the reduction in the number of national public servants it will recruit in fiscal 2013: 60% less people will be hired next year than were hired in 2009 (8511).

Specifically. the prefectures with the greatest cuts will see a 70% reduction while a 50% reduction will be requested from those with the least. Vice Premier Okada had announced recruitment would drop 70% compared to 2009, but every prefecture protested that, saying “extreme repression of recruitment would handicap day-to-day operations,” leading Okada to decrease cuts.

In addition, at a cabinet roundtable on the morning of the 27th, Mr. Okada newly asked each cabinet minister for his support, saying “As we head toward an unprecedented period of restraint, I would like to receive all the help you can offer.”

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Number of Persons Per Household in Tokyo Falls Below 2 for the First Time

Number of Persons Per Household in Tokyo Falls Below 2 for the First Time
Yomiuri Shimbun: 東京の１世帯当たり人数、初めて２人割る
March 15, 2012

As of January 1, 2012, the average number of persons per household in Tokyo was 1.99, the first time in city history the average fell below 2, according to a city survey.

The survey authors predict this rate will continue to fall as the number of elderly people living alone continues to rise.

The first survey was in 1957, and at that time the average was 4.09 people per household. As nuclear family homes (as opposed to extended family homes) and single person households increased, the figure fell below 3 in 1966 (2.97). In 1980, there were about 100,000 elderly people living alone in Tokyo; in 2010 there were 620,000. The city predicts the number will surpass 800,000 within the next 20 years.

According to the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, the national average number of people per household was 2.36 last year. At that time the lowest regional rate belonged to the capital at 2, and the second lowest belonged to Hokkaido at 2.06.

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“Don’t They Have Any Pride?” Minister Edano Criticizes China over Trademarks

“Don’t They Have Any Pride?” Minister Edano Criticizes China over Trademarks
Yomiuri Shimbun: プライドないのか…枝野氏、商標問題で中国批判
March 13, 2012

At a congressional budget planning committee meeting on the 13th, Minister of Economic Affairs Edano strongly criticized China over applications in that country to use Japanese agricultural produce and location names as trademarks, saying, “It’s a very grave state of affairs. If this kind of thing is done with impunity, isn’t it a problem for national pride? I want to ask them, ‘Don’t you have any pride?’”

Minister Noda announced that Japan is working with the Chinese government to improve its trademark registration system, saying that “While it’s only been a little bit, there has been a change of posture [on the Chinese side], so we want to follow up on that and request strict application of the law.”

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Taiwanese Representative Unable to Make Floral Tribute at Japanese State Memorial Service…JP Prime Minister Expresses Deep Regret

Taiwanese Representative Unable to Make Floral Tribute at Japanese State Memorial Service…JP Prime Minister Expresses Deep Regret
Yomiuri Shimbun: 追悼式で台湾代表が献花できず…首相、深く反省
March 13, 2012

At a Diet budget committee meeting on the 12th, Prime Minister Noda apologized to Taiwan because its representative did not have the opportunity to present a floral bouquet at the state memorial service for Great Tōhoku Earthquake victims the day before. “There is truly no excuse. I wish to deeply reflect on our inconsideration.”

This was his reply to a question by Liberal Democratic Party Representative Hiroshige Sekō. The total amount of Taiwanese public and private donations to disaster relief totalled about 20 billion yen ($242 million), the most of any country in the world.

Representative Sekō also criticized the Prime Minister by saying that when the Emperor and Empress left their seats, “everyone in attendance, regardless of their country, should have stood.” Cabinet Secretary Fujimura said, “(The point of order) was packed in by the secretariat, and I heard about it right before. All I can do is apologize.”

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The First Anniversary of The Great Tōhoku Earthquake

Japanese expatriates attend a first anniversary memorial service in a New York City church the night of March 10. (Kyodo News Service)

“We Won’t Forget You”: Memorial Services for Victims of Great Tōhoku Earthquake Held Across America
Jiji News Service: 忘れない…米国各地で追悼行事

NEW YORK – On the 10th, cities across America, especially those with many Japanese residents, held memorial services for the Great Tōhoku Earthquake, which occurred one year ago. In New York City, about 100 groups who have contributed to the relief effort cooperated to hold a memorial for the victims. One person after another spoke words of encouragement for those who continue to suffer from the crisis.

Consul General Shigeyuki Hiroki and about 1100 others attended. After a moment of silence, local doctor Kamal Ramani spoke. Immediately after the earthquake, he went to Sanriku village in Miyagi to provide voluntary medical care. He continued to help after that by starting a psychosomatic medicine clinic in the area. “We won’t forget you,” he said at the service with conviction.

I Love You Japan ~For 3.11 From U.S.A.~ (Students from every state in the Union sing words of support to Japan.)

“Fukushima Will Absolutely Be Reborn”…1200 Pray Silently at State Memorial Service
Asahi Shimbun: 必ずや再生…追悼式で1200人黙祷

About 1200 people attended the government’s Great Tōhoku Earthquake First Anniversary Memorial Service held in the National Theatre in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo the afternoon of March 11, including the Emperor and Empress, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, and victims’ surviving family members from across the country and abroad. Everyone prayed silently at 2:46 PM, exactly one year after the earthquake. After the Prime Minister spoke, the Emperor gave words of his own.

He said, “There will be many difficulties on the path to the disaster area’s recovery from this day forward. I expect that all our citizens will continue to extend their hearts to the victims, and the disaster area’s condition will continue to improve.” Prime Minister Noda said, “We are now one day closer to the disaster area’s recovery.” He said Fukushima Prefecture, the site of the nuclear disaster, “will absolutely be reborn. We will put all our energy into returning our citizens’ beautiful hometowns to them.”

Photo Album: The Disaster Sites Today…Let’s Expand the Support Circle!
What can we do to redouble the recovery effort? Gō blog’s purpose in making this album is not only to record the support efforts undertaken until now, but also to widen the support circle and bring more people together to shape the future.

Protestors hold a banner in front of Tokyo Electric Power Company reading, “Bring Fukushima Back.” These members of civic groups reiterated demands that the reactor be decommissioned and victims be justly compensated. (Uchisaiwai-cho, Tokyo. Jiji News)

Protest Song: 東電に廃炉 (Pun w/Double Meaning: Let’s Go to Work for TEPCO / Let’s Decommission TEPCO) – English Subtitles

Poor Chinese Selling Organs to Japanese on Black Market; One Community Has Become an “Organ Village”

Poor Chinese Selling Organs to Japanese on Black Market; One Community Has Become an “Organ Villages”
Jiji Press: 中国で日本人に生体闇移植＝違法行為か、貧困層ら売る―「臓器村」存在
Report from Beijing February 20, 2012

Several Japanese are going to China and secretly buying kidneys from the poor to receive in transplants, this newspaper learned on the 20th. Several parties involved in Chinese organ transplants have affirmed this information; they say “30-40 Japanese people come to China each year to receive kidney transplants, and most of those organs were purchased.”

In principle, organ transplants to foreigners has been illegal in China since 2007. Last year, the sale of organs was made illegal as well, further exposing the strength of the organ trade. An organ donor shortage in Japan is deepening, but Japanese citizens’ involvement in the black market could cause problems of its own.

In 2010, the NPO (non-profit organization) International Medical Information Center, which connects Japanese seeking donations with Chinese hospitals, heard from a doctor in a Shandong Province military hospital that “we use intermediaries for organ transplants” and introduced the NPO to a broker in Beijing. That broker said, “we use organs bought and sold on the market for organ transplants.” The NPO sensed the broker’s offerings would be illegal and refused.

This broker also told the NPO, “One rural village in Linyi County, Shandong Province is an “organ village”. A group of people there have organized the sales of their own organs. There are 15 we can use.” The market price for a kidney is about ¥50,000 Chinese yuan (about ¥620,000 Japanese yen or $8000 USD). Factoring in commissions for the broker and doctor, however, the total amount Japanese and other foreigners have to spend for a kidney transplant rises to ¥500-600,000 RMB (¥6.25-7.25 million JPY or $80,000-95,000).

A source familiar with transplants indicated that “transplants to Japanese people are occurring in places like Shandong, Tianjin, and Hunan.”

Until some years ago, most Chinese organ donors were prisoners on death row. Because of ethical and human rights complaints by the international community, the Chinese government now requires the consent of both prisoners and their family members in order to use executed people’s organs for transplants. Until now, most organs received by Japanese and other transplant patients in China came from death row, but these days kidney sales are rampant all over the country.

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Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Cuts Government’s Money-Losing Bottled Water Company, Campaign Spending, and Own Salary and Benefits (Twice)

Mayor Hashimoto Directs Government’s “Honmaya” Water Brand to Cease Production
Yomiuri Shimbun: 橋下市長、大赤字の「ほんまや」生産中止を指示
January 25, 2012

Osaka Mayor Tōru Hashimoto announced today that he had directed the city water department to cease the bottling and selling of city water for public relations purposes. A 500 ml plastic bottle of this “Honmaya” water cost ¥100. The mayor explained, “There’s plenty of mineral water in the world. It’s just not necessary for the city government to put more pressure on private firms and lose money by selling its own water.”

Honmaya water was put on sale to dispel the perception that “Osaka water is gross.” It has been available in city supermarkets since March 2007. In 2010, 510,000 bottles were produced.

Last May, the product received a first plaze prize from the food and beverage evaluation group Monde Selection. In July, former mayor Kunio Hiramatsu brought the product to an international water treatment trade fair in Singapore to show off his city’s water purification prowess. After the Great Tōhoku Earthquake last March, large quantities of the water were sent to the disaster areas as relief supplies.

But one of Honmaya’s biggest problems was that the city didn’t have bottling facilities, so it had to consign that task to private companies, which ran up the costs. The product lost ¥15 million ($170,500) in fiscal 2010.

Mayor Hashimoto told the press that “if we could find an overseas buyer for the purification technology, we could enter a technical cooperation agreement. We don’t have to put this product in plastic bottles.”

Mayor Hashimoto’s ¥5 Million of Campaign Costs Less Than Any Election Winner in 20 Years
Yomiuri Shimbun: 橋下流５００万円選挙、過去２０年で最低
January 25, 2012

Osaka Mayor Tōru Hashimoto’s campaign for last November’s election cost ¥5 million ($65,000), the least of any winning candidate in the last twenty years.

A big reason for his savings was his tag team campaign with Mr. Ichirō Matsui, the victorious candidate for the governor’s office, which allowed the two to share campaign headquarters. His “bargain-basement campaign” cost less than a third of that of his rival, then-mayor Kunio Hiramatsu. Election experts were shocked by the figures and said “only someone as famous as Mr. Hashimoto could do something like that.”

According to the income and expenditure report the campaign sent to the city election office, the Hashimoto campaign spent ¥5,007,996, far below the previous modern record held by the 1999 Takafumi Isomura campaign. The figure is even more conspicuous considering that some candidates for the city legislature from single-member districts spent close to ¥6 million on their own campaigns last April.

The biggest difference between Hashimoto’s campaign and those of his predecessors was the amount of spending on campaign headquarters. This was also the big difference between Hashimoto’s campaign and the ¥15,575,470 Kunio Hiramatsu campaign: Hiramatsu spent ¥5.72 million on headquarters while Hashimoto spent just ¥750,000. The mayor’s philosophy was that “laying out money for opulent headquarters that the voters never even see is useless.” Instead, he and Mr. Matsui shared buildings that the Osaka Restoration Association, the political party they represent, was already renting, so this third party also shouldered many typical campaign costs.

Spending by Mayor Hashimoto’s campaign compared to winning campaigns of elections past. Figures are in the tens of thousands of yen.

Mayor Hashimoto Cuts Own Retirement Bonus by 84% to Match Governor’s Cut
Yomiuri Shimbun: 橋下市長、退職金８４％カット…知事と同額に
February 1, 2012

Osaka Mayor Tōru Hashimoto announced today that he would increase the size of his retirement bonus cut from 50% to 84% in order to match Osaka Governor Ichirō Matsui, who just announced a large retirement bonus cut of his own. Each will now receive a bonus of just ¥6.29 million ($78,625) upon leaving office.

The mayor said at a press conference that “the governor represents everyone in the prefecture, so it would be unacceptable for a mayor to make more than him.” He will bring the measure to the floor of the city legislature in February.

Last December, Mayor Hashimoto proposed a measure that would cut his retirement bonus from ¥39.53 million ($494,125) to ¥19.76 million. It passed. Now he wants to cut this bonus even more and also cut his monthly salary of ¥1.42 million ($17,750) by 30%.

Governor Matsui, based on the recommendation of the prefecture’s special deliberative council on employment compensation, plans to propose an amendment this month to cut his retirement bonus by 85%. If it passes, the Governor of Osaka will receive the lowest retirement bonus (¥6.29 million) of any governor in the country.

Mayor Hashimoto to Cut Own Salary Further: “Making More Than the Governor Would be Unacceptable”
Yomiuri Shimbun: 橋下市長「知事より上あり得ぬ」と自ら給与カット
February 28, 2012

Yesterday, Osaka Mayor Tōru Hashimoto announced that he was considering bringing a measure before the city legislature today that would cut his ¥1.42 million ($17,750) monthly salary by 42%, to ¥820,000 ($10,250).

He had already passed a measure to cut that salary 30%, to ¥990,000, but he would need to deepen the cut to bring his compensation below that of Governor Ichirō Matsui’s. He will also expand the cut to his retirement bonus, that is the bonus he would receive for leaving office after serving four years as mayor, from 50% to 81%, dropping this compensation from ¥39.53 million ($494,125) to ¥7.51 million ($93,875).

Governor Matsui just presented his compensation reduction bill to the prefectural legislature. If it passes, his monthly salary will be ¥910,000 ($11,375) and his retirement bonus ¥7.8 million ($97,500). Mr. Hashimoto plans to bring his compensation below Matsui’s, saying “the governor represents everyone in the prefecture, so it would be unacceptable for a mayor to make more than him.”

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Blind Spot in Anti-Monkey Electrical Fences Identified (The Fenceposts) and Addressed

Blind Spot in Anti-Monkey Electrical Fences Identified (The Fenceposts) and Addressed
Yomiuri Shimbun: サル用防護柵に盲点、つかむ柱に電流流したら…
February 5, 2012

Monkeys are plundering crops all over Japan. In response, the Mie Prefecture Agricultural Research Institute in Matsuzaka City has improved upon the monkey-proof electrical fence by electrifying the fenceposts, as well, so that monkeys can no longer climb up and over them.

The research institute noticed a flaw in typical fence design: though electricity ran across the highest horizontal post, it didn’t run through the vertical posts, and the monkeys took advantage of that.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, monkey-inflicted crop damages totaled 8500 tons and ¥1.9 billion ($19.8 million) in 2010, 400 tons and ¥200 million more than the year before. The general response has been to erect fences around fields and orchards, but farmers complained that even though the fences were tall, monkeys found spots that weren’t electrified and used them to cross over. Hence the Research Institute looked into the problem.

Its leader, Naoto Yamabata (42), studied surveillance film and realized that the monkeys were jumping fences more than two meters tall by taking hold of their posts. According to Dr. Yamabata, most fence makers do not electrify posts because they fear electrical contact with the ground will cause a short circuit. Dr. Yamabata solved the problem by wrapping aluminum tape and wire around the posts and running the power through them. Seven farmers in towns like Suzuka, Yokkaichi, and Taiki, in cooperation with local governments and agricultural improvement popularization centers, volunteered to install the new design for half a year’s trial starting last July.

One of these farmers, an 83-year old woman in Nishi-shonaichō, Shizuka, said that “last year, we couldn’t harvest any soybeans, cabbage, or napa, but this year they didn’t eat anything, and we had a harvest.” A Taiki farmer said that he harvested 1.7 tons of napa, and that was 1.7 tons more than he ever could before. The Agricultural Research Institute is planning to extend its trials to monkey-plagued farms in Tsu, Misugi, and Shiga.

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