Women now comprise the majority of the poor and old in Japan, the world’s third largest economy and fastest-aging society. Credit: S. H. isado/CC BY-ND 2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Sep 18 2014 (IPS)

Fifty-four-year-old Marlyn Maeda, an unmarried freelance writer living in Tokyo who never held a permanent job, is now watching her dream of aging independently go up in smoke.

“I work four jobs and barely survive,” said the writer, who disclosed only her penname to IPS. Her monthly income after writing articles, working at a call centre, selling cosmetics five days a week and working one night at a bar hovers at close to 1,600 dollars.

Maeda belongs to the burgeoning ranks of the poor in Japan, a country that saw its poverty rate pass the 16-percent mark in 2013 as a result of more than two decades of sluggish growth that has led to lower salaries and the cutting of permanent jobs among this population of 127.3 million people.

She also represents an alarming trend: rising poverty among women, who now comprise the majority of the poor and old in Japan, the world’s third-largest economy and fastest-aging society.

“We have women who are desperate. Because they do not hold secure jobs, they endure searing problems such as domestic violence or workplace harassment." -- Akiko Suzuki, of the non-profit ‘Inclusive Net’
Indeed, Maeda points out her pay is now a low 50 dollars per article, down from the heady era of the 80s and 90s when she earned at least three times that rate.

Japan defines the poverty threshold as those earning less than 10,000 dollars per year. The elderly and part-timers fall into this category, and Maeda’s hard-earned income, which places her slightly above the official poverty line, nonetheless keeps her on her toes, barely able to cover her most basic needs.

“When the call centre cut my working days to three a week in June, and payment for freelancers [dropped], I became really worried about my future. If I fall sick and cannot work, I will just have to live on the streets,” Maeda asserted.

After paying her rent, taxes and health insurance, she admits to being so hard-pressed that she sometimes borrows from her aging parents in order to survive.

Maeda’s story, which echoes the experience of so many women in Japan today, flies in the face of government efforts to empower women and improve their economic participation.

In fact, a sweeping package of reforms introduced earlier this year by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was met with skepticism from gender experts and advocates, who are disheartened by the myriad social and economic barriers facing women.

Dubbed ‘Womenomics’ in line with Abe’s economic reform policies – based on anti-deflation and GDP-growth measures that earned the label ‘Abenomics’ in early 2013 – the move calls for several changes that will pave the way for Japanese women, long discriminated in the work place, to gain new terms including equal salaries as their male counterparts, longer periods of childcare leave and promotions.

Given the fact that 60 percent of employed women leave their jobs when starting a family, Abe has promised to tackle key barriers, including increasing the number of daycare slots for children by 20,000, and upping the number of after-school programmes by 300,000 by 2020.

Another target is to increase women’s share of leadership positions to 30 percent by that same year.

Writing about the scheme in the Wall Street Journal last September, Abe claimed the government growth plan could spur a two-percent increase in productivity over the middle to long term, which in turn could lead to an average two-percent increase in inflation-adjusted GDP over a 10-year period.

“We have set the goal of boosting women’s workforce participation from the current 68 percent to 73 percent by the year 2020,” Abe wrote, adding, “Japanese women earn, on average, 30.2 percent less than men (compared with 20.1 percent in the U.S. and just 0.2 percent in the Philippines). We must bridge this equality gap.”

But for experts like Hiroko Inokuma, a gender researcher focusing on the challenges facing working mothers, this is a “tall order”, especially in the light of “growing job insecurity, which is already leading to dismal poverty figures among women.”

Indeed, the numbers paint a grim picture: one in three women between the ages of 20 and 64 years of age and living alone are living in poverty, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR), a leading Tokyo-based think tank.

Among married women, the poverty figure is 11 percent and counts mostly older women whose husbands have died. Almost 50 percent of divorced women have also been identified as grappling with poverty.

In addition, the poverty rate was 31.6 percent among surveyed working women, compared to 25.1 percent among men.

Health and Welfare Ministry statistics indicate that Japan is now registering record poverty levels; the year 2010 saw the highest number of welfare recipients in the last several decades, with 2.09 million people, or 16 percent of the population, requiring government assistance.

Against this backdrop, Akiko Suzuki, of the non-profit ‘Inclusive Net’, which supports the homeless, explained to IPS that Abe’s proposed changes and targets are highly illusive.

“After years of working with low-income people, I link the increase in females grappling with poverty to the rising number of part-time or contract jobs that are replacing full-time positions in companies,” she said.

The nursing industry, for instance, employs the highest number of part-time employees in Japan, of which 90.5 percent are women.

Inclusive Net reports that women currently comprise 20 percent of the average 3,000 people per month actively seeking support for their economic woes, up from less than 10 percent three years ago.

“We have women who are desperate. Because they do not hold secure jobs, they endure searing problems such as domestic violence or workplace harassment,” said Suzuki.

Japan has 20 million temporary workers, accounting for 40 percent of its workforce. Females comprise 63 percent of those holding jobs that pay less than 38 percent of a full-time worker’s salary.

Aya Abe, poverty researcher at the NIPSSR, told IPS that poverty among women has been a perennial problem in Japanese society, where they traditionally play second fiddle to men.

“For decades women have managed to get by despite earning less because they had earning husbands or lived with their parents. They also lived frugally. The recent poverty trend can then be related to less women getting married or being stuck in low-paid, part-time or contract work,” she stated.

A highlight of the prime minister’s gender empowerment proposals is the plan to remove a sacred tax benefit for husbands that also protects their working spouses who earn less than 10,000 dollars annually.

The tax was introduced in 1961 when Japan was composed of mostly single-income households led by male breadwinners under the life-term employment system.

Proponents say discarding the tax benefit will encourage women to work full-time while others argue this could increase women’s vulnerability by stripping them of a crucial social safety net.

While the political debate rages on, hundreds of thousands of Japanese women are struggling to make it through these dark days, with no sign of a silver lining. According to experts like Suzuki, “An aging population and unstable jobs means the feminisation of poverty is here to stay.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

The atomic bomb dome at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. Credit: Freedom II Andres_Imahinasyon/CC-BY-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug 7 2014 (IPS)

It has been 69 years, but the memory is fresh in the minds of 190,000 survivors and their descendants. It has been 69 years but a formal apology has yet to be issued. It has been 69 years – and the likelihood of it happening all over again is still a frightening reality.

As foreign dignitaries descended on Japan to mark the 69^th anniversary of the atomic bombing Wednesday, the message from officials in the city of Hiroshima was one of urgent appeal to governments to seriously consider the enormous threat to humanity and the planet of another nuclear attack.

Survivors, known here as hibakusha, who have worked tirelessly since August 1945 to ban nuclear weapons worldwide, urged diplomats – including ambassadors from four of the nine nuclear weapons states (United States, Israel, Pakistan and India) – to heed the words of the 2014 Peace Declaration.

Representing the anguished wishes of aging survivors and peace activists, the declaration calls on policy makers to visit the bomb-scarred cities to witness first-hand the lasting devastation caused when the U.S. dropped its uranium bomb (Little Boy) on Hiroshima and its plutonium bomb (Fat Man) on Nagasaki three days later.

The Center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation reported earlier this year that the nine nuclear weapons states possessed a combined total of 17,105 nuclear weapons as of April 2014.
Some 45,000 people observed a minute of silence Wednesday in a peace park close to the epicenter of the bomb, which killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima before the second bomb claimed a further 70,000 lives in Nagasaki.

The tragic events came as Japan was negotiating its surrender in World War II (1939-45).

The presence of so many survivors, whose average age is estimated to be 79 years, provided stark evidence of the debilitating physical and psychological wounds inflicted on those fateful days, with many hibakusha and their next of kin struggling to live with the results of intense and prolonged radiation exposure.

In a tribute to their suffering, the Hiroshima Peace Declaration states, “We will steadfastly promote the new movement stressing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and seeking to outlaw them.

“We will help strengthen international public demand for the start of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention with the goal of total abolition by 2020,” the declaration added.

But the likelihood of this dream becoming a reality is dim, with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington reporting earlier this year that the nine nuclear weapons states possessed a combined total of 17,105 nuclear weapons as of April 2014.

The United States, the only state to deploy these weapons against another country, has steadfastly held out on issuing an official apology, claiming instead that its decision to carry out the bombing was a “necessary evil” to end World War II.

This argument is now deeply entrenched in global geopolitics, with states like Israel – not yet a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – vehemently protecting its arsenal as essential for national security in the face of protracted political tensions in the region.

Following Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, which resulted in 1,800 civilian casualties in the Palestinian enclave before a ceasefire brokered by Egypt came into effect Tuesday, some in the Arab community insist that Israel represents the biggest security threat to the region, and not vice versa.

China, a nuclear state with an inventory of 250 warheads and currently embroiled in a territorial dispute with Japan, was conspicuously absent from the proceedings.

With run-ins between East Asian nations in the disputed South China Sea becoming increasingly confrontational, peace activists here feel an urgent need to address tensions between nuclear weapons powers, including North Korea.

Professor Jacob Roberts at the Hiroshima Peace Research Institute told IPS, “The call is to ban nuclear weapons that kill and cause immense suffering of humans. By possessing these weapons, nuclear states represent criminal actions.”

He said the anti-nuclear movement is intensely focused on holding states with nuclear weapons accountable for not abiding by the 1968 NPT.

He cited the example of the Mar. 1 annual Remembrance Day held in the Pacific Ocean nation of the Marshall Islands, which suffered devastating radiation contamination from Operation Castle, a series of high-yield nuclear tests carried out by the U.S. Joint Task Force on the Bikini Atoll beginning in March 1954.

Thousands fell victim to radiation sickness as a result of the test, which is estimated to have been 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima blast.

In total, the U.S. tested 67 bombs on the territory between 1946 and 1962 against the backdrop of the Cold War-era nuclear weapons race with Russia.

In a bid to challenge the narrative of national security, the Marshall Islands filed lawsuits this April at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and separately in U.S. Federal District Court, against the nine nuclear weapon states for failing to dismantle their arsenals.

The lawsuits invoke Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which contains a binding obligation for five nuclear-armed nations (the U.S., UK, France, China and Russia) “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

As in Hiroshima, the United States has not apologized to the Marshall Islands but only expressed “sadness” for causing damage. A former senator from the Marshall Islands, Abacca Anjain Maddison, told IPS, “The U.S. continues to view the disaster as ‘sacrificing a few for the security of many’.”

The U.S. is not the only government to come under fire. Hiromichi Umebayashi, director of the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (RECNA) at Nagasaki University, is a leading advocate for a nuclear-free zone in East Asia and a bitter critic of the administration of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which is alleged to be currently pushing the argument that nukes are necessary for national security.

Umebayashi is spearheading a campaign to stop Japan’s latest decision to work closely with the United States, under a nuclear umbrella, on strengthening the country’s national defence capacities.

“North Korea’s nuclear threat in East Asia is used by the Japanese government to push for more military activities. As the only nation to be atom bombed, Japan is making a huge mistake,” the activist told IPS.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Efforts are underway to restore the tidal flatlands in Mikawa Bay in central Japan’s Aichi Prefecture. Credit: Aichi Fisheries Research Institute (AFRI)

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

Undaunted by Japan’s national consensus to boost the economy, which has been mired in lackluster growth for decades, environmentalists are taking baby steps towards incorporating climate change into national legislation.

Proponents of the plan to make Japan more environmentally friendly are up against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s popular ‘Abenomics’ regime that promises to accelerate the country’s two-percent GDP growth through a combination of fiscal stimulus packages and structural reforms.

Crippled by the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, Japan has seen an increase in fuel imports to make up for the deficit of nuclear power, which once supplied 30 percent of the country’s energy needs.

The world’s third largest economy, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of 5.93 trillion dollars, Japan now imports 90 percent of its energy, an arrangement that has left it with a deficit of 10.5 billion dollars.

"[Parliamentarians] need to realise that economic growth can only be sustainable by calculating the contribution of natural resources." -- Jinichi Ueda, deputy director of GLOBE Japan
It has also resulted in a sharp spike in carbon emissions – by 2012 the country had recorded an emissions rate of 2.46 tons per unit of GDP, compared to 2.3 tons in 2010. Japan now ranks among the world’s ‘top 12’ emitters of greenhouse gases.

Against this backdrop, environmentalists have watched with dismay as the Abe administration has backed away from the previous government’s promise to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Now, with their eyes on the upcoming GLOBE Summit of World Legislators scheduled to take place in Mexico City from Jun. 6-8 with the aim of formulating an international agreement on climate legislation, Japanese environmentalists and lawmakers are struggling to revive old promises.

GLOBE Japan – a case for environmental accounting

The Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment, or GLOBE, was founded in 1989 with the express goal of leveraging national legislation in response to urgent environmental challenges.

Now linked to the legislators’ protocol adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 2012, GLOBE prioritises lawmakers’ role in shaping a nation’s budgetary allocations to account for increasing natural disasters as a result of global warming, and to prevent the destruction of natural environments that has long been justified as necessary for economic growth.

One of the organisation’s projects that resonates particularly in Japan is the Globe Natural Capital Initiative (GNCI), which is based on the cold reality that the unsustainable use of natural resources does not, in the long run, accelerate a country’s GDP; in fact, it can actually make a country poorer.

“We are working hard to win the support of parliamentarians to implement legislation that will make environmental accounting a criteria for policy making,” Jinichi Ueda, deputy director of GLOBE Japan, told IPS, hastening to add: “It’s not easy.”

Environmental accounting considers the impact of economic activity on a country’s natural resources and calculates all related costs of development including, for example, the bill for cleaning up a contaminated site, waste management expenses, or environmental fines and penalties.

Ueda assists GLOBE Japan Head Yoriko Kawaguchi, a former foreign and environment minister known for her insistence on calculating the economic benefit of ecosystems.

Kawaguchi, now a member of the House of Councilors – the upper house of Japan’s National Diet – has launched study sessions for parliamentarians to deepen their understanding of the country’s natural capital, and gain their support for the GNCI.

“The first step to including environmental accounting in mainstream policy is to convince Japanese politicians through study programmes. They need to realise that economic growth can only be sustainable by calculating the contribution of natural resources,” Ueda asserted.

Already, Japan has embarked on meticulous research that can be deployed to motivate its political leaders.

A case in point is the Aichi Fisheries Research Institute (AFRI), which, under the leadership of Dr. Mitsuyasu Waku, is carrying out a multi-million-yen project to restore the tidal flatlands in Mikawa Bay, located in central Japan’s Aichi Prefecture.

Coastal wetlands formed from mud deposits, tidal flats are essential ecosystems, providing fertile breeding ground for hundreds of species and preventing coastal erosion. The tidal flats in Mikawa Bay are considered one of Japan’s most fertile fishing grounds, supporting a diverse array of marine species as well as the local economy.

Despite their documented benefits at the local and national levels, the tidal flats are an endangered ecosystem in Japan where, in the 1970s, 1,200 hectares of the rich land in the eastern part of Milkawa Bay was cleared in preparation for the construction of a harbour.

The result was a significant increase in ‘red tides’, also known as algal blooms – unusually high concentrations of aquatic microorganisms that can release natural toxins that are fatal to marine and coastal species. Red tides have long been associated with the high mortality rates of manatees, and can devastate fishing yields.

Speaking to IPS, Waku explained that the restoration and preservation of Mikawa Bay – famous for its massive catches of short-necked clams that provide a livelihood for thousands of fisher folk – strengthens the economic argument for protecting natural capital.

Clam catches in Aichi total roughly 20,000 tons annually, representing profits of some 39 million dollars for the local fishing industry every year.

“The economic benefits alone of maintaining tidal flats, not even including their natural water purification contribution, is pretty obvious,” Waku told IPS.

Other GLOBE proponents, such as Akiri Omori, a macro economist at Yokohama City University, believe that the key to implementing environmental accounting lies in highlighting the economic benefits of such legislature.

In an interview with IPS, he explained the challenge of changing the deeply-entrenched notion that protecting natural resources could undermine the nation’s per-capital GDP, a long-held belief that has put out roots during the reign of Abenomics.

“Balancing economic and environmental benefits is not easy,” he said, adding that the “fundamental clash” is caused by people wanting short-term results and refusing to exercise the patience required to “understand the limitless wealth provided by natural resources.”

Omori is currently developing robust indicators – such as calculating the economic benefits stemming from the sale of environmentally sustainable goods – that make a strong case for preserving natural capital.

An excellent example of this is the popular organic farming movement in Toyooka City in western Japan that is encouraging collaborative projects between food producers and local financial institutions.

Hirotaka Wakamori, head of the promotion section at an organisation called Eco Valley, told IPS that the number of eco businesses in Toyooka doubled to 41 in the last year, the result of a 2005 regulation passed by city councilors.

Termed the Environment Economic Strategy, the regulation allows the city to allocate up to 300 million dollars annually to support ventures between local companies and farmers.

“The project was started with the aim of protecting the environment from chemicals used in farming,” Wakamori explained. “The economic benefits for local farmers and the city financiers have convinced legislators to act faster.”

Organic farming constitutes a major breakthrough in Japan, which is second only to Israel in terms of the quantity of pesticides applied each year to agricultural land, totaling roughly 1.55 tons for every 247 acres.

Studies have shown that the manufacture and use of pesticides contribute about three percent of the 100-year global warming potential (GWP) from crops.

A movement towards organic food production, experts say, is just one of the many initiatives that require the support of strong national legislation in Japan.

(END)

Foreign workers rallying in Tokyo against discrimination and denial of basic rights. Credit: Catherine Makino/IPS.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Apr 23 2014 (IPS)

Desperate for more workers to support a construction boom, Japan has proposed to expand its controversial foreign trainee programme to permit more unskilled labour from Asia to work in Japanese companies for five years from the current three years.
The internship plan launched in 1993 invites foreign trainees to work in Japanese companies under the slogan of learning new technologies before returning home.

But it is ridden with problems."The new move is a clear example of a ‘use and discard foreign labour’ goal."

More than 200 companies were reported in 2012 for abuses such as low pay and long working hours for foreign workers. Activists view the trainee system as a blatant stop-gap measure to counter Japan’s aging population – a quarter of its 130 million people are above 65. From a peak of 83 million workers in 1995, their number had fallen by almost five million in 2012.

The construction industry badly needs foreigners for jobs such as plasterers and mold makers.

The government has now proposed a plan for trainees to extend their visas by two years for “designated activities” to pave the way for employment for trainees.

Labour activists say the move is suspiciously timed for Japan to host Olympics 2020, and that it will do little for the stated policy of the trainee system to exchange technology with developing countries.

“Japan’s immigration policy refuses to treat migrant workers as people with rights that must be protected. The new move is a clear example of a ‘use and discard foreign labour’ goal,” Ippei Torii, head of the foreign workers branch at Zentotsu, a leading labour organisation, tells IPS.

Zentotsu has taken up negotiations on behalf of several foreign trainees who have been discriminated against by their employees. A typical example is the ongoing cases of six Chinese women who were paid four dollars an hour, half of the official minimum wage, for three years at a sewing factory in rural Japan.

“They could not escape because each was saddled with 8,000 dollars in debt they had incurred in their home towns in China to brokers,” says Ippei.

Currently 19 percent – or 136,603 – of all foreign workers in Japan are trainees. Nationals from China, Vietnam and the Philippines top the list. About 15,000 of the foreigners are employed in construction. Their average wage is around 1,200 dollars per month, plus payment for overtime work.

Jotaro Kato at the Asian People’s Friendship Society (APFS) tells IPS that the government must enact a working visa for unskilled workers. “The [proposed] increase in foreign trainees smacks of a typical bureaucratic approach and is not a sustainable solution to a crucial national issue.”

Following a clampdown, the number of foreigners overstaying has dropped to about 6,000, from a high of 250,000 recorded in the nineties. “Because of the crackdown, poor people from Asia are now entering Japan as trainees or extending their stay by applying for refugee status, or marrying local people in a desperate bid to live here,” Kato tells IPS.

The Construction Workers Union is opposed to the new trainee plan on the basis that it would increase the number of low-paid foreigners, posing a risk to the higher salaries of Japanese workers.

The Japan Federation of Construction issued a statement last week calling for doubling the number of female workers from the current 90,000 over the next five years to bridge the gap between supply and demand.

In a Yomuiri newspaper public opinion survey in March, only 10 percent of those polled were ready to accept unskilled migrant workers, because of concerns such as crime. An overwhelming 85 percent supported more women in the workforce as a solution.

Japan has an embarrassingly low acceptance of foreigners – less than two percent of the Japanese population. This includes almost 400,000 people under the Special Permanent Residents category reserved for people of Korean descent who were born in Japan but have not become citizens.

With only 1.1 percent of its workforce comprising foreigners, Japan is at the bottom of the list among industrialised countries. Germany comparatively has 9.4 percent and the United Kingdom 7.6 percent.

Even South Korea, facing a workers crunch, showed higher figures at 2.2 percent in 2011, the result of offers of a three-year working permit for foreign labour.

In the face of the looming demographic crisis, Japan too has had to make some changes in its immigration policies.

Two Economic Partnership Agreements were signed with Indonesia and the Philippines in 2008 that included a provision for nurses and caregivers from those countries to work in Japan. About 750 nurses have arrived in the past five years.

Japan’s nursing industry is grappling with a shortfall of 43,000 nurses, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. Many Japanese nurses quit after starting a family because they are unable to cope with the long working hours in hospitals.

Japan introduced a policy in 1990 to permit Latin Americans of Japanese descent to work as temporary migrant labourers. More than 220,000 arrived, mostly from Brazil. These Nikkeijin as they are called are descendants of Japanese who had emigrated to Latin America in the 1920s.

The Nikkeijin policy changed soon after the 2008 global financial crisis, when the government took the unprecedented measure of offering free transport to Japanese Brazilians who opted to return to Brazil.

Indonesian and Filipino caregivers who study and work in Japan have struggled with passing tests to continue nursing in Japan. Of the first 104 Indonesians candidates, just 24 passed in 2011. Others are still studying.

“The bottom line must be a policy that accepts overseas unskilled workers as human beings who will enter Japan to work and start new lives,” says Jun Saito at the Japan Centre for Economic Research, a leading think-tank. “They are not robots to be returned after their visas end.”

A protest against nuclear energy in Tokyo. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Feb 7 2014 (IPS)

Tokyo, one of the largest and most energy-guzzling cities in the world, is set to hold elections for a new governor Feb. 9. Analysts say it could prove crucial in stopping the Japanese government from restarting some nuclear reactors this year.

It could also mean a big push for renewable energy.

Professor Yurika Ayukawa, a climate change expert at the Chiba University of Commerce, told IPS, “Only political leadership will bring an end to dangerous nuclear power in Japan. That is why a strong showing by the more popular anti-nuclear candidate in the race is vital this month.”“The painful irony is that Japan is already a world leader in innovative carbon-free technology that can replace nuclear energy.” -- climate change expert Professor Yurika Ayukawa

“The painful irony is that Japan is already a world leader in innovative carbon-free technology that can replace nuclear energy,” she said.

The latest face of Japan’s anti-nuclear movement is 76-year-old gubernatorial election candidate Morihiro Hosokawa, a former prime minister who in 1993 broke the long political hold of the powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Hosokawa entered the race only in January but his pledge to ban nuclear power and push renewable energy as a replacement taps into public anguish over the Fukushima nuclear accident Mar. 11, 2011 following a massive earthquake and tsunami.

“If I am elected I will adopt a zero nuclear policy. The message to the world is Japan will replace dangerous nuclear power with renewable energy,” Hosokawa told the press.

Up against him is Yoichi Masuzoe, who has the support of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of the LDP. The latter is now pushing nuclear power as a viable energy option for the Japanese economy, which is the third-largest in the world.

The industrial sector accounts for 43 percent of the nearly 860 billion kilowatt national energy consumption recorded in 2011. The transport sector, at 24 percent, is the second-biggest consumer.

Despite continuing radiation contamination in the Fukushima area and the surrounding sea, Abe argues that nuclear power is a must and cites better safety rules for reactors as the way to go.

LDP has long backed this lucrative power source and enacted policy to extend large subsidies to utility companies to construct expensive nuclear plants that supplied almost 30 percent of national energy until the Fukushima accident.

The Fukushima accident has nevertheless prodded breakthrough measures by the government to support renewable energy as it grapples with the bitter reality of public distrust and a hefty rise in expenditure on the import of fossil fuel to cope with the loss of nuclear energy.

A key departure from the traditional energy policy that has been pro-nuclear is the allocation of state funds coupled with much needed deregulation measures to support the expansion of low-carbon technology – mostly solar, wind and biomass – enacted during the past two years.

The 2012 national energy policy, for example, has set new targets for renewables from the current 11 percent to 35 percent by 2030. Over 700 billion dollars has been pledged to achieve the new target.

A notable step in April last year was the newly established feed-in-tariff system that is aimed at prying open the protected and lucrative utility market by accelerating private investment in renewable energy industries.

Under this system, a state-supported tariff system extends premium prices to renewable power sold by private companies to mainstream utility companies.

Taking prompt advantage of the new system is Solar Sharing Association, a private company that provides technology to farmers to install solar panels on their land and to sell the excess power generated through this investment.

“The concept of our company is to increase solar power output in the country and decrease dependence on nuclear energy. We target farmers who want to increase their income,” explained its spokesperson Mayumi Yamada.

The company has over a hundred members. Kenta Hiaasa, a farmer who installed solar panels on his land last July after investing 8,000 dollars, told IPS that his monthly income from the venture is hitting 1,500 dollars.

Other important developments recorded in this sector are an increase in wind power. This move is targeting the now barren tsunami-hit northeastern coasts of the main island and Hokkaido.

Hokkaido Power Company has pledged to buy 390 million kilowatts of wind energy, or the equivalent of energy produced in three nuclear reactors, from private companies during the next 10 years.

The project will cost the utility company 30 million dollars, mostly supported by the new tariff system.

Despite the important gains in Japan, Ayukawa points out that the biggest hurdle for the renewable sector is the lack of a clear government stance on nuclear policy.

“Much of the official estimates and targets to purchase alternative energy are made by companies against a backdrop that nuclear power is still an option. This policy is not a stable foundation for renewables to be expanded,” she said.

This is the crucial reason why election for a new Tokyo governor could signal long awaited change.

A kamikaze plane on display at the Peace Museum of Kamikaze Pilots in Chiran in Japan. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
CHIRAN (Japan), Jan 26 2014 (IPS)

They were known as the Kamikaze who swooped down on enemy ships with their bomb-laden planes – with the pilots inside. A museum here is now planning to register the last letters of Japan’s famed World War II suicide bombers as a Unesco Memory of the World document. The museum is calling these records “symbolic” of the country’s commitment to peace.

The move comes amid continuing political tension between Japan and its former East Asian colonies, China and the Korean peninsula, over its war past.

The Kamikaze pilots were a special task force assigned to protect their country from Western Allied forces at the tail end of World War II. The official number of Kamikaze deaths is 1,036.“Goodbye. I have nothing more than wishes for your happiness.”

Storytellers employed by the Peace Museum of Kamikaze Pilots describe them as brave young men who sacrificed themselves to protect Japan from the invading Western colonial powers.

“The last letters written by the Kamikaze before they took off on their planes show that remarkably they did not hate their enemy but rather only wanted to serve their country and protect their families,” said Satoshi Yamaki, the curator.

“The registering of their messages as a world document is to recognise their courage and Japan’s pledge to never enter a war again. Their letters are symbolic of Japan’s commitment to peace.”

Yamaki heads the impressive Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots launched in 1988. It nestles among the quiet green hills of Chiran town in Kagoshima prefecture on the island of Kyushu.

Chiran was host to a former airstrip where the Kamikaze took off in 1944 to dive with their planes into American naval ships approaching Okinawa. The southernmost island is the site of the only land battle fought in Japan before surrender on Aug. 15, 1945.

“Goodbye. I have nothing more than wishes for your happiness,” 23-year-old Capt Toshio Anazawa wrote to his sweetheart. “Forget the past. Live in the present,” Lieutenant Aihana Shoi Heart wrote in a letter.

Funded by the local Southern Kyushu government, the museum hosts more than 700,000 visitors annually.

The move to resurrect the Kamikaze stories, almost 70 years after Japan surrendered to U.S. forces and pledged to become a nation of peace, symbolises the mixed emotions and the continuous struggle of the Japanese to come to terms with their nation’s fractured war past, say analysts.

“The story of the Kamikaze is tragic and courageous and there is a national yearning for world recognition. But the Japanese mourning has become increasingly sinister against the [backdrop of] political exploitation of Japan’s war past,” said Yoshio Hotta, an expert on Japan-U.S. relations.

A prominent visit in December by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a nationalist, to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined among the dead, exposes vividly how the country remains mired in its difficult past.

While Abe declared he went “simply to pay respects to Japan’s war dead” and also to pledge not to wage war again, the visit provoked condemnation by Chinese and South Korean leaders who accuse Japan of continuing to be unrepentant of its past aggression in Asia.

Japan occupied northern China in the 1930s and is also held responsible for the infamous Nanking massacre in 1937 when the Japanese army was accused of raping and killing civilians and of pillage.

The Korean peninsula was invaded from 1910 to 1945. Japan imposed a brutal leadership, including a ban on the local language and culture. During World War II, tens of thousands of Koreans were conscripted into the Japanese army and as forced labour for Japanese companies.

The controversial system of “comfort women” – mostly young Korean women and also others in Chinese Manchuria and other parts of Asia who had to provide sex to Japanese soldiers – remains a simmering bilateral issue.

Abe’s Yasukuni decision has led to greater volatility between Japan and China, which are already clashing over territorial claims. The Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea are claimed by both countries. The Chinese name for the islands is Daiyou.

Reflecting historical bitterness, a scheduled meeting between South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Abe to discuss the comfort women issue was cancelled last month by Korea. The United States also took the unprecedented step of criticising the visit.

But old timers remember the Kamikaze with reverence.

Sho Horiyama, 91, a former Kamikaze who visits the Chiran museum every May to pay respects to his former colleagues, expresses frustration over the long unresolved clash with Japan’s neighbours over war history.

“When I heard Emperor Hirohito declare Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, I cried that I had not died for my country,” he told IPS. “Why cannot Japan be proud of the Kamikaze after their incredible sacrifice?”

Horiyama was 22 in 1945 and ready for his mission that was thwarted when his country was defeated. More than a million people died, including 250,000 Japanese soldiers, during the war, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Takeshi Kawatoko, 86, a storyteller at the Chiran museum, says, “Can we not respect their bravery and commitment to their country?”

He told IPS that the Kamikaze represent the Japanese samurai traits of putting loyalty over personal needs, a character that is deeply embedded in the national psyche.

“This is what I want the world to understand. It fills me with sadness when we cannot explain the past to Japan’s younger generation that has grown up hardly knowing the brave deeds of their ancestors.”

Japanese protesters are determined to defy efforts to reopen Japan’s nuclear energy installations. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Oct 15 2013 (IPS)

Two and a half years ago, Ayako Oga, now 30, found herself helpless as an earthquake and the tsunami it triggered hit Japan and crippled four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. She and her husband were forced to abandon their village Ookuma Machi, barely five kilometres away.

The once-farmer is a leading activist today in Japan’s growing anti-nuclear movement, joining hundreds of Fukushima residents affected by the Mar. 11, 2011 tragedy to protest against a government plan to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been aggressively pushing an economic agenda that has come to be called Abenomics, declared at a press conference last month, “We will restart nuclear power plants on the basis of the world’s strictest safety standards.”“Representing important evidence of the dark side of nuclear power is something I have to do.”

With her worst fears come true, and now living with hundreds of evacuees in Aizu Wakamatsu, a town 100 km from the damaged plant, Oga is determined not to let this happen. “Representing important evidence of the dark side of nuclear power is something I have to do,” she told IPS.

Anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan peaked in the wake of the Fukushima incident. An opinion survey conducted by leading daily Tokyo Shimbun in July 2012 showed nearly 80 percent of the 3,000 respondents were opposed to nuclear power. Not surprising, given that the disaster forced 85,000 people to leave their homes, contaminated vast swathes of land and hit incomes of farmers and fisherfolk.

However, Oga and other anti-nuclear activists could well find themselves on the losing side now as the Liberal Democratic Party government and large corporations push for restarting the reactors, citing an energy crisis and economic losses.

Currently, Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors, which met 30 percent of the country’s energy needs, are shut down for various reasons, including routine inspection. The world’s third largest economy (GDP: 5.96 trillion dollars) imports almost 90 percent of its energy, leaving it with a trade deficit of 1.02 trillion yen (10.5 billion dollars).

With winning local approval as one of the conditions to restart the reactors, the government is publicising the stringent safety standards on the basis of which it will resume nuclear energy production.

The country had established an independent Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) in September 2012 comprising top scientists and safety experts. Its head Shunichi Tanaka, a scientist and native of Fukushima city, had officially stated that the official response and that of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which operated the Fukushima plant, was “groping in the dark.”

The NRA’s new safety guidelines, which came into force in July this year, are based on the concept of defence-in-depth. This requires a strengthening of the third and fourth layer of defence as well as the prevention of simultaneous loss of all safety functions due to earthquakes, tsunamis and other external events.

Operators are also required to check for active earthquake faults while building reactors, have higher tsunami protection walls and secondary control rooms.

People do seem to be buying into the government promise of safe nuclear reactors. Another survey by Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun in July this year registered a dip in support for abolishing nuclear power – 40 percent of its 1,000 respondents supported the restart of nuclear reactors with higher safety guidelines compared to 37 percent in February.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a scientist who has worked on reactor design for decades, likens the struggle of the anti-nuclear activists to a fight between David and Goliath.

“Activists are up against a powerful government and rich corporations who aim to justify nuclear power,” he told IPS. “They have the necessary clout to sway public opinion in Japan, where economic profit is what matters.”

He thinks the official moves to push safety standards and win public approval are gravely flawed.

“Besides the lack of transparency in the procedure of restarting the plants, a key point is that officials have still not scientifically revealed the real cause for the Fukushima accident,” he said.

Many scientists are critical of the official explanation that the 13-15 metres high tsunami alone damaged the reactors. With the reactors still in a crippled state, hard-core scientific evidence is yet to come, some say.

Professor Hiromitsu Ino, a nuclear safety expert and now head of the newly established Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy, is one such critic. “I am not satisfied with the current official safety regulations because they do not include public interest and ethical aspects of nuclear power,” he told IPS. “This can be developed only after close discussions with people, and needs time.”

Ino also thinks that the new guidelines are not strict enough. For instance, he says, they permit energy operators an indefinite grace period to instal filters in boiling water reactors, viewed as critical to lessen the toxic impact of a hydrogen explosion.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster is believed to be the worst after Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. It remains an ongoing crisis, with the government battling to contain leaks of highly toxic ground water spilling into the sea and surrounding areas.

On Oct. 10, high levels of radioactive caesium were detected in the seawaters close to the defunct reactors, according to TEPCO.

In August, the Fukushima prefectural government released new statistics on thyroid testing on almost 200,000 children. The figures, reported in Asahi Shimbun, showed 44 children and youth diagnosed with or suspected to have the disease. They were aged between six and 18 years when the accident occurred.

Oga says her husband visited their former home in August as part of a visit arranged by the government for displaced nuclear refugees to sort out their documents and belongings.

“I did not join him even though I was keen to see my old home,” she told IPS. “I wanted to avoid radiation because I want to have a child in the future. Young people like us realise that we have only ourselves to rely on and change the world.”

Life for Yoshihiro Watanabe and his wife Mutsuko, mushroom and rice farmers from Fukushima, has changed drastically since the disastrous meltdowns in the Dai Ichi nuclear plant that was hit by a massive tsunami after a 9.0 strong earthquake struck on Mar. 11, 2011.

“Dangerous levels of radiation from the crippled nuclear reactors have effectively forced us to stop our mushroom cultivation and reduced our farming income almost 80 percent,” Watanabe told IPS.

He added that the family is also taking extreme care to protect their health by choosing only “safe” food, resulting in “a nerve-wracking lifestyle.” Exposure of food to radiation increases cancer risks.

Under limits set by the Japanese government, food products that report contamination exceeding 100 becquerel per kilogram cannot be sold. Becquerels are a measure of food radiation."The priority is safety and our own judgment, a major step away from relying on the government to protect us."

Watanabe’s 200-year-old farm lies in Dateshi  Ryozenmachi, a small farming town 55 km from the now defunct Fukushima nuclear reactor. This year, the official Deliberate Evacuation Area was reduced to a 40 km radius around the damaged reactors even though radioactive risks have been noted in areas up to 100 km away.

Watanabe says he faces an uncertain future. “The nuclear accident has dealt a solid blow to farming in Fukushima by contaminating vast swaths of land and frightening Japanese consumers so much that they shun our products.”

Fukushima prefecture has the third-largest number of farmers in Japan producing a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and processed products.

Watanabe says the biggest hurdle farmers face now is the lack of a clear radiation risk standard that can be accepted by all. The failure of a convincing standard is bad news for agriculture.

The mushroom variety that Watanabe grew on mountainous land in the area continues to show levels between 700 to 1000 becquerels per kilogram. That is up to 10 times the permitted figure.

New groups comprised of concerned residents and scientists have been launched to promote monitoring of food in a bid to restore the lives of affected Fukushima farmers, now dependent on government compensation.

Manabu Kanno who heads the group Rebuilding a Beautiful Country from Radiation told IPS they launched an inspection service soon after the nuclear accident through a non-governmental fund. The group aims to protect hard-hit local agriculture.

It currently supports more than 90,000 farming households who pay a nominal fee to have their produce inspected for contamination and declared safe for consumers.

“Livestock farmers are the worst affected as milk has shown high levels of radiation. But there are some glimmers of hope two years after the accident because radiation levels are decreasing,” said Kanno.

Farmers are now growing new crops such as cucumbers and opting for direct sales to customers rather than selling at supermarkets, where products labeled from Fukushima are shunned. Some farmers have also restarted rice cultivation this year.

The stakes remain high. More than 150,000 people who lived within the danger zones around Fukushima reactor continue to live as “nuclear refugees” in other cities to avoid radiation.

The Ministry of Environment is conducting a decontamination programme which includes removing topsoil from affected land. The programme is expected to take at least five more years to complete.

Consumer skepticism remains high, especially among families with small children, the most vulnerable to radiation exposure.

Mizuho Nakayama, head of the group Protect Kids from Radiation, told IPS that “the Fukushima accident has drastically altered the notion of food safety, particularly for mothers who want to protect their children from contaminated agriculture.”

Mother of a four-year-old herself, Nakayama said the current radiation measurements released by the government are confusing for ordinary parents. Her group monitors the official data in terms of risk for children.

“Our food shopping patterns have changed. The priority is safety and our own judgment, a major step away from relying on the government to protect us,” she said. “For the first time, we have been jolted into realising we cannot trust government radiation limits.”

Farmers are not the only ones still affected. Last week a group of fishermen from Fukushima lodged a protest with the Tokyo Electric Power Company that owns the damaged reactor, to stop the leakage of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.

There are only 100 Iriomote wildcats left in Japan. Credit: Japan Tiger and Elephant Fund (JTEF)

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

Efforts to protect the critically endangered Iriomote wildcat, a spotted, shy, feral creature native to the tiny Iriomote Island that forms part of the Okinawa Prefecture in southern Japan, are becoming a highly respected model of conservation here, where the government’s uneven track record in protecting imperiled species has frustrated wildlife activists for decades.

A unique collaboration between diverse stakeholders including government agencies, non-governmental organisations and local groups is helping to preserve the dwindling wildcat population, now numbering just about 100 animals, down from an estimated 300 about a decade ago, experts say.

Iriomote cats have long roamed the forests on this hilly, semi-tropical island, but infrastructure development and expanding farms and sugarcane plantations have encroached on the creature’s natural habitat, while speeding cars on huge roads that now snake through their territory have resulted in untimely deaths of the protected species.

The two-year-old conservation effort has made significant inroads into protecting the cats by pooling a wide range of skills, public resources and native knowledge.

Specific initiatives include wildlife awareness projects targeted at the local population, comprised primarily of subsistence farming and fishing communities; the building of tunnels that serve as safe passageways for animals attempting to cross the roads; and popular tours for visitors to observe the animals in the wild.

“The steady decline of Iriomote wildcat numbers is [due to] rapid economic development on the island,” explained Kumi Togawa of the Japan Tiger and Elephant Fund, an NGO that works to curb the illegal wildlife trade, and reduce domestic demand for wildlife and related products.

She told IPS that recent surveys conducted among the 2,500 islanders of Iriomote indicate rising awareness and respect for conservation work.

“The consensus among the people here is that if they do not protect the species that are native to their land, they will soon loose a key aspect of their cultural identity,” said Togawa.

Susumu Murata, a volunteer conservationist who patrols the streets at night in his car to prevent speeding vehicles from crushing the nocturnal animal, says the natives have “locked hands with the government and conservation experts to work for one purpose – to save the Iriomote cat from extinction.”

During the past two spring seasons, Murata has single-handedly rescued at least 10 kittens and moved them to safety, far away from the deadly roads.

Education campaigns seeking to transform the Iriomote cat into a local icon have been particularly rewarding, as schoolchildren take on the struggle and begin to influence the adults.

The Okinawan archipelago boasts a high level of biodiversity and is home to some of Japan’s rarest wildlife, which the country is finally recognising as part of its national heritage that must be protected at all costs.

This past March Japan took the unprecedented step of listing the hitherto neglected Ryukyu black-breasted leaf turtle in Appendix II of the internationally binding Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).

Endemic to the Ryukyu Islands, a cluster of volcanic islands in southwest Japan, the creature was classified as a “national monument” of Japan back in the 1970s, which amounted to a nationwide ban on the sale, capture or transfer of the turtle without the explicit consent of the commissioner for cultural affairs.

This did not, however, prevent foreigners from trading the animal, which has recently made appearances in mainland China, Hong Kong and on various websites online, prompting Japan to submit a proposal to CITES, the first time this nation of 127.8 million people has done so.

“The proposal to list the Ryukyu black-breasted leaf turtle is a small but significant step for Japan,” said Kahori Kanari, senior programme officer with the wildlife-monitoring network TRAFFIC, who recently co-authored a report supplying evidence of the emergence of an illegal Asian trade of this species.

Another positive indicator of Japan’s move towards a new conservation model is the recently unveiled National Biodiversity Strategy for 2012-2020, outlining national targets that run parallel to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets agreed upon at the October 2010 meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, including fostering community support to protect the environment.

Marisa Aramaki, wildlife trade officer at Japan’s Environment Agency, told IPS, “We are working hard to strengthen domestic laws to protect biodiversity after decades of destruction.”

The loss of the Japanese otter is a case in point. The animals have not been spotted in the rivers, their natural habitat, for over 10 years, resulting in the species being officially recognised as extinct in 2012.

Aramaki says the primary reason is the pollution of Japanese rivers from mining and other industrial projects. She called the loss of the otter a “bitter reminder” of the need to work with local communities to find lasting protection mechanisms for endangered wildlife.

A whale of a problem

While conservationists are pleased at the changes taking place, they are also painfully aware that sporadic breakthroughs do not mean they are nearing the end of their long struggle.

The most recent reminder that the future of wildlife conservation is far from rosy came on Jul. 17, as public hearings at the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) drew to a close on the case between Australia and Japan, regarding the latter’s whaling practices in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica.

The case, filed by the Australian government last month, referred to what Japan calls “scientific whaling expeditions” during which it catches up to 1,000 minke whales per month for “research purposes”.

Western animal rights groups have long been crying foul over this practice, accusing Japan of using research as a façade for commercial whaling activity. The fact that whale meat is sold on the domestic market shortly after the so-called research has been conducted bolsters these claims.

Tohoku University Professor Atsushi Ishii, an expert on the Japanese whaling industry, told IPS, “The fight to protect the environment here is constantly up against powerful economic and political interests.”

Research indicates that Japan forks out 10 million dollars in subsidies for each whale hunt, a hefty sum that the government defends as not only necessary for gathering scientific data but also as an important national tradition worth preserving.

Japan’s catches of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a key ingredient in many of the country’s highly prized sushi dishes, have also run into international conflict with conservationists who have lobbied hard and won conditions to control overfishing, which is resulting in depleted fish stocks.

Bluefin populations have dwindled down to just 17 percent of their 1975 levels, with Japan consuming 80 percent of the global catch. Here again, activists clash with business interests: prime cuts of bluefin sell for about 14 dollars per piece in upscale restaurants, while an auction in Tokyo this past January saw the record-breaking sale of a single 489-pound bluefin tuna for 1.8 million dollars.

The same goes for conservationists who come up against the fantastically profitable mining industry, which is poised to hit 3.59 billion dollars by 2017.

Until Japan is able to reconcile these contradictions, environmentalists face a long battle to win concessions and protections for Japan’s endangered wildlife.

Members of Girls Farm, based in Japan’s Yamagata Prefecture, are changing the image of agriculture. Credit: Girls Farm

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jun 26 2013 (IPS)

Yukako Harada, an energetic 29-year-old, is part of a small but determined band of women farmers working hard to revitalise Japan’s moribund agricultural sector, which is feeling the crunch of an ageing population and a flood of cheap imports.

From accounting for half the country’s economic output just after World War II, agricultural production has shrunk down to just 1.2 percent of the world’s second largest economy, generating only 39 percent of Japan’s food needs.

“It’s time for a makeover, to save Japanese farms,” Harada told IPS. “And the only way to do this is to get youth and more women involved in agriculture.”

In 2010, Harada, who was born in Tokyo, joined the Girls Farm, a project launched in Yamagata Prefecture, located in the Tohoku region of Honshu Island, by a local female farmer keen to change the stodgy image of Japanese agriculture.

Here, 400 km west of Tokyo, fertile land produces rice, watermelons and grapes. Thanks to Girls Farm, the region is quickly becoming the poster child of a new and improved agricultural system, as images of smiling young women working happily in the fields dispel the stereotype of farming as a gender-biased and backbreaking activity.

According to Professor Masao Fukunaga, an economist specialising in rural development, there is a renewed interest in farming not so much as a profit-generating activity but as a mental release from the stresses of city life, as well as growing awareness of the need to boost the country’s food security.

Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate, in terms of caloric intake, continues to hover at 39 percent, a steep drop from its former 73 percent in 1965. In comparison, the United States registers a self-sufficiency rate of 100 percent.

Rice production, heavily subsidised by the government, is the only crop that can feed Japan’s population of 127 million without relying on imports of staples like wheat, meat and vegetables.

In 1999, 2.8 million households were involved in commercial farming enterprises; today that number has fallen by 200,000 families, who are now heavily dependent on non-farming income.

In total, the agricultural industry comprises just over one percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which touched six trillion dollars in 2011.

This situation, experts say, is the result of a national policy that ignored agriculture in favour of industrial development – through the auto manufacturing and electronics sectors – to turn Japan’s devastated post-war economy into a high-tech exporter nation, and the third largest economy in the world after the United States and China.

The downside of that march into material prosperity, according to Yoshie Oguno at the ministry of agriculture, fisheries and forestry, was that it bulldozed a huge part of the agricultural sector.

Urbanisation spread rapidly, vast areas of rural farmlands were converted into factories, and family farms – averaging one to 1.5 hectares – were left in the care of ageing parents as their children moved to the cities in search of better paying jobs in more lucrative fields.

Data from the ministry of agriculture suggest that in the 1960s, an average of seven million people per month migrated from rural to urban areas.

But now, the prospect of footing huge bills for food imports to feed a massive ageing population is pushing the government to invest heavily in solutions to reverse this trend.

It recently poured 50 billion dollars into efforts to promote awareness on women farmers’ right to land ownership and income, cutting against the grain of traditional farming culture where farm titles are held by the husband or father in a family.

“This is the only way to go if we are going to attract the younger generation who expect gender equality,” Oguno told IPS.

Professor Tomoko Ichida, an expert on farming populations, told IPS that simply improving women’s income could have a positive impact on the limping sector.

“My research has shown that women farmers are good at innovation. They are bringing new value-added products – jams and pickles made from fruit and vegetables, or small restaurants, for example – into the market, which have become popular with Japanese consumers,” she said.

Government data released in 2011 showed that more than three-quarters of new agribusiness ventures – the ministry recorded 10,000 start-ups in 2010 – were headed by women, highlighting the shifting gender dynamics in an industry that was, until a few years ago, controlled by men, with women only entitled to a meagre share of joint family income.

Yoshiko Kaido, 61, hailing from the Tokyo suburb of Ibaraki, won a Mayor’s award for her jam-making business in 2003. “I now have my own income that is separate from the family farm,” she told IPS. “It makes farming far more worthwhile.”

While farm workers are keen to see results right away, experts caution that the change will not take place overnight.

“The going is still tough,” Harada told IPS. The most recent official data indicates that 60 percent of female agribusiness owners earned less than 30,000 dollars annually.

Seminars on business management have become a popular means of creating self-sufficiency among women business owners, but experts say a lot more needs to be done to encourage the youth, who accounted for six percent of the agricultural workforce in 2011.

Despite some shortfalls, the tides seem to be turning, and if the government lays its plans carefully, it could usher in a new era in which women buoy up a productive and lucrative agricultural sector.

Oil storage facilities in Bentiu in South Sudan's Unity State. Japan is heavily reliant on oil and gas imports. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
YOKOHAMA, Japan, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

Acutely aware of China’s strong presence in resource-rich Africa, Japan, the world’s third largest economy, is beefing up its relations with the continent. Participants at a high-level donor conference hosted by Japan this week stressed the need for closer engagement, not through the traditional grants and assistance loans that have hitherto defined the relationship, but rather through trade and investment led by the Japanese private sector.

“Africa’s growth is registering, on average, more than six percent annually, and the continent represents a growing population and important regional market,” Mokoto Ito, spokesperson for African development at Japan’s foreign ministry, said at the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) that concluded today in Yokohama, capital of the Kanagawa Prefecture.

“Japan can play an active role by investing in infrastructure and providing industrial technology to boost manufactured goods through capacity building,” Mokoto added.

His words clearly reflect Japan’s domestic interests – for instance, Africa’s natural resources are vital for Japan’s energy needs that are heavily dependent on gas and oil imports.

They also point to a sense of competition with neighbouring China, whose trade receipts with the African continent hit 138.6 billion dollars last year according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), far outstripping the 30-billion-dollar bilateral trade partnership between Japan and Africa.

TICAD, a two-decade old forum that seeks to create dialogue between African and Asian partners, supports initiatives that will simultaneously boost African ownership and partnership with key Asian economies. It enjoys the backing of major players like the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the African Union.

Addressing the leaders of some 40 countries who gathered here from Jun. 1-3, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that, in addition to Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) of 14 billion dollars, Japan would also offer up to “32 billion dollars in public and private investment in support of Africa’s growth.”

In what experts have identified as a jab at China’s controversial presence in Africa – where 127 billion dollars worth of investment in extractive and industrial projects has been labelled a “resource-grab”, without corresponding attention paid to human development indicators– Abe promised not to “explore and dig resources simply to bring them to Japan. We will support Africa so that African natural resources will lead to African economic growth,” he said.

Abe also urged greater transparency in business transactions and promised to do more to protect the rights and security of some 30,000 Africans living and working in Japan.

But despite these assurances and expressions of goodwill, some experts are disappointed that participants did not tackle the prospect of a closer relationship from a human rights perspective.

For Akio Shibata, head of the Natural Resource Research Institute, a think tank that focuses on agricultural development, TICAD’s message that growth can be achieved through private investment and trade spells danger for the vast rural populations that continue to grapple with abject poverty across the African continent; according to the World Bank, 48.8 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa still live below the poverty line.

“I was disappointed because TICAD has left out pressing issues like high levels of maternal mortality, environmental protection and equal wealth distribution, which are also keys to sustainable development,” he told IPS.

He believes that promises to extend Japan’s technological expertise to support structural reform will pave the way for commercialised mining and agricultural, which could negatively affect small-scale farmers, who comprise over 70 percent of the populations in most African countries.

“A focus on developing large-scale agricultural projects is a danger for the small-holder farmer who faces the risk of big companies entering rural agriculture and leaving them landless or without jobs,” he said.

The professor was speaking at a session led by rural farmers in Mozambique’s Tete province who are protesting the Triangular Cooperation Programme for the Agricultural Development of Tropical Savannahs in Mozambique, also known as ‘ProSavana’, that will convert swathes of the savannah, particularly along Mozambique’s northern Nacala Development Corridor, into a commercial agricultural enterprise that will produce soya beans for export.

Mozambique is currently recording gross national product (GNP) growth rates of seven percent, but is listed as one of the three worst performing African countries on the human development index, which tracks achievements in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including health and education equality.

Augusto Mafigo, a grain farmer who leads a union network in Mozambique, says farmers have stepped up protests against ProSavana out of fear that they will lose their small plots of farmland when companies start to acquire land for the project. Considering the fact that 80 percent of the labour force in this country of 23 million people is comprised of small-scale farmers, such a scenario would be disastrous for millions of peasants.

Still, African delegates welcomed the idea of a more active Japan, engaged in developing the continent. “Japan brings quality technology and can play an important balancing role to China’s heavy (hand) in African countries,” Tseliso Nteso, an official of Lesotho’s ministry of finance, told IPS.

Other country leaders expressed hope that TICAD’s message of increased public-private partnerships could signal the beginning of a new development paradigm, one that would be “kinder” to the continent’s vast marginalised populations, especially in the sub-Saharan region.

Zuzana Brixiova, economist at the African Development Bank, added that the new and improved relationship between Japan and Africa might also be able to meet pressing global issues like depleting natural resources, climate change and expanding inequality, by focusing on sustainable, rather than extractive, development.

She told IPS it was crucial to set up “stable standards in development that can ensure inclusive and structural reforms in order to produce value added goods.”

Eighteen-year-old Shapla, a garment worker who survived the Apr. 24 factory collapse, lies on a hospital bed in Dhaka. Credit: Nari Uddung Kendra (the Centre for Women’s Initiative)

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
DHAKA, May 10 2013 (IPS)

Last month, 18-year-old Shapla was just another one of thousands of garment workers employed in a factory in Savar, a suburb of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka.

Today she is a handicapped survivor of one of the worst industrial accidents in history: the collapse on Apr. 24 of the massive Rana Plaza, a building housing five factories, that buried scores of workers under a wave of cement and glass.

The death toll reached 996 on Friday, though officials and families are still counting the bodies and searching for others beneath the rubble.

“I am desperate about the future,” Shapla said, echoing the sentiments of hundreds of female apparel workers like her who lost their limbs on that fateful day.

The young mother is now recovering in a hospital in Dhaka after her hand was amputated. Having survived the collapse, Shapla is considered one of “the lucky ones”, but she is loath to see the bright side, as her handicap will almost certainly prevent her from finding work.

Experts say that women, who make up 80 percent of the workforce in this country’s booming garments industry, have borne the brunt of this tragedy. According to initial reports, over 80 percent of those who lost lives and sustained injuries in the collapse were women.

“They are now socially and economically heavily disadvantaged,” said Mashud Khatun Shefali, founder and head of Nari Uddung Kendra (the Centre for Women’s Initiatives).

A leading advocate for female garment workers’ rights, Shefali says her organisation, which has lobbied for better conditions such as safe housing for workers, is now focusing on helping female survivors overcome the trauma of the accident.

Some of the workers are “so badly affected that they say they never want to work in factories again,” Shefali told IPS. “They need long-term physical and mental rehabilitation…and they need to be accepted as disabled persons by their families and society.”

A woman named Nazma Begum, whose legs have been amputated as a result of her injuries, told a local television station this week that she “worried incessantly” about how she would handle her disability, until her husband assured her of his continued support and love.

The dark side of manufacturing

Over the last decade, Bangladesh – a country of 150 million of which 49 percent live below the poverty line – has become a crucial player in the international apparel trade by providing a vast supply of cheap labour.

Bangladesh’s garment industry is now the third largest in the world after China and Vietnam, bringing in 20 billion dollars or roughly 80 percent of the country’s annual foreign exchange.

Major apparel companies based in the West and wealthy Asian countries like Japan and South Korea began shifting their production centres to Bangladesh when old manufacturing hubs like Thailand began to raise wages.

Mass-produced and bargain clothes that include such labels as Gap, Primark, HMV, Walmart, Sears and American Apparel are all manufactured here and then sold in the importing countries.

The biggest to the smallest of these factories are staffed by mostly young women hailing from rural areas, who come to the cities in the hopes of acquiring skills they have no access to in Bangladesh’s agricultural regions.

When they arrive in the city, they often live together in close quarters, sharing bathrooms and food.

Uneducated and illiterate, these women have few means by which to earn a steady income; their vulnerability makes them easy prey for manufacturers who claim that, in order to remain “competitive” on the world market, they must hire the cheapest possible workforce.

According to Shefali, young women often start off as interns, meaning they do not receive a wage but instead labour for a stipend that can be as low as a dollar per month.

Within a year, they move on to operating more sophisticated machinery and drawing a regular salary, she added.

Most women sew, wash and pack garments for roughly 30 to 40 dollars a month, working a daily average of 10 hours, seven days a week. In contrast, men tend to be hired for high-level positions, such as quality control and management.

The garment sector has been hailed as one of the country’s biggest employers, bringing a steady wage to thousands of women. But a string of tragedies has recently highlighted the hazardous nature of this work.

Last November, over 100 garment workers perished in a fire in the Tazreen Fashion Factory on the outskirts of Dhaka. Survivors of that tragedy claim they tried to escape, but were locked in by the factory managers.

Similarly, on Apr. 24, employees were threatened with dismissal if they failed to come to work, despite warnings that the eight-storey building, which only had a permit to house five floors, was unsafe. A week before the incident large cracks had begun to appear on the ceilings, prompting engineers to issue warnings that a collapse might be inevitable.

Negligence of workplace safety is just one of many labour violations women workers face. Sometimes they are forced to work 14-hour shifts in order to turn around a quick profit for the factory owners.

Still, activists point out that in a Muslim country with high poverty rates, the garment industry provided a rare opportunity for women to leave their homes and raise their status from housewives to breadwinners.

This increased economic independence enabled them to exercise more autonomy in their own lives, to choose their own husbands and enter into marriages on more equal terms.

But the Savar tragedy has dealt a hefty blow to this hard-earned status.

Sharmin Huq, a retired professor at the Dhaka University who specialises on the handicapped sector, fears that social discrimination will make life harder for women than ever before.

Those who survived the tragedy will likely lose their jobs, as their injuries will prevent them from performing at the level demanded by factory owners.

Huq told IPS that generous donations pouring in from countries like the United States and Germany to help the survivors must be channeled directly towards “the large number of (affected) female workers, to help them re-start their lives.”

This includes support for everything from acquiring artificial limbs to accessing regular counseling to deal with the trauma of the tragedy.

Japan’s crucial official development assistance (ODA) is declining steadily, even while poverty in Asia continues to rise. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, May 1 2013 (IPS)

As Japan slips from its former top spot as the world’s biggest donor, experts here are worried about long-term changes in the country’s development assistance programme, which has played a crucial role in global poverty reduction efforts.

Japan’s spending on official aid fell 3.1 percent from the previous year to 10.49 billion dollars in 2012, revealed the latest data published last month by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which placed the country in fifth place on its list of major donors, behind the United States, UK, Germany and France.

The same survey, testing the United Nations recommendation that donors allocate 0.7 percent of their gross national income (GNI) for international assistance, indicated Japan is at 18^th place in the GNI scale, with an allocation of just 0.25 percent on official development assistance (ODA).

Overall, Japanese ODA has dropped 47 percent compared to its peak in 1997, according to the government. The OECD attributes the decline to a “fall in bilateral grants and reduced contributions to international organisations”.

Analysts predict the gloomy trend is here to stay, leading to a strategic shift in how aid is allocated.

“Domestic economic constraints and security threats in East Asia have made national goals the priority in Japan’s ODA budget,” Professor Massaki Ohashi, a veteran ODA analyst, explained to IPS. “This change, from the traditional focus on poverty reduction in recipient countries, is a serious concern for us.”

Head of the Japan NGO Centre for International Cooperation (JANIC), an umbrella civil society organisation, Ohashi says ODA spending will now be directed at shoring up struggling Japanese companies facing competition from cheaper goods manufactured in rising Asian economies.

For instance, signature Japanese telecommunication brands such as Sony and Matsushita (also known as Panasonic) are no longer the household names they once were in Asia or Africa, given the encroachment of cheaper Chinese or South Korean products that are popular with the expanding middle classes on the continent.

In an interview with IPS, Hirokazu Hiratsuka, an economist at the Mizuho Research Institute explained that Japan’s inward-looking ODA policy will be strengthened under the conservative administration of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who has made economic revival — under the term “Abenomics” — the leading national goal to counter the rising economic clout of China and South Korea.

Yen loans that support major infrastructure projects comprise more than 50 percent of ODA, but have been decreasing by an average of 16 percent annually. Grants for poverty reduction efforts, which formerly made up 40 percent of Japan’s official assistance budget, are also declining.

The focus now will be on securing Japan’s domestic economic interests. Hiratsuka stressed that Japanese aid will also be directed at developing legal frameworks for free trade agreements (FTAs) in Asia and global business regulations that will allow Japanese companies to exercise greater influence in the region.

A case in point is the Japan-led special economic zone (SEZ) adjacent to the Thilawa port in Myanmar (Burma), scheduled to start this year, which will open the doors for Japanese companies to launch businesses in the resource-rich country. With 70 percent of the zone reserved for manufacturing plants, Japanese conglomerates like Mitsubishi, Sumitomo Corp and Marubeni will be the main participants in the project.

Japanese ODA will be used to boost Yangon’s electricity generation capacity that will supply the SEZ, located 23 kilometers south of the capital.

Currently, Japanese businesses occupy just 0.64 percent of total foreign investment in Myanmar, lagging behind China’s 34 percent and South Korea’s seven percent, according to the Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Japan has also promised to increase economic assistance to Sri Lanka, in an effort to boost bilateral trade and investment.

A recent government statement highlighted the importance of maritime cooperation between the two countries to protect “stability” in the Indian Ocean, a jab at China’s support for infrastructure development on the island of Sri Lanka, including the construction of a new port in the southern coastal city of Hambantota.

Fighting back the changes in ODA policy, JANIC is lobbying hard for the protection of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Japanese aid policy, against pending cuts slated for the next fiscal year that started in April.

With poverty in Asia increasing along with economic growth, JANIC is struggling to keep poverty-reduction targets on a list of priorities for ODA, but these pleas may be falling on deaf ears.

The steady decline in development assistance has turned the spotlight on the future of Japan’s most important foreign policy, formulated back in 1945. Compensation payments to former colonies after its defeat in World War II and generous technical assistance to developing countries earned Japan, the richest country in Asia, respect and admiration in recipient nations, helping to bolster its image as a crucial pillar in the post-war global economy.

Now, “the country needs to figure out ways to make contributions that no other country can offer”, according to an editorial in the Nikkei, Japan’s leading economic daily.

Many experts favour the idea of leveraging Japan’s leading edge in science and technology — such as stem cell research, transport and environmental protection – to combat lower aid disbursements.

Professor Takeshi Inogchi, an international relations specialist, told IPS the dip in ODA poses a serious challenge to Japanese influence in developing countries and particularly in Asia where new aid powerhouses like China and South Korea are gaining steam.

“Japan, a resource-poor country, must react quickly to these new challenges. Not being a military player, we need to ensure friends in Asia that can defuse the territorial tensions with China in particular,” he told IPS, referring to clashes between the Japanese and Chinese navies over the Senkaku Islands (known as Diayou in China), an uninhabited archipelago claimed by both sides.

(END)

Crowds line the red carpet to greet film stars at the Okinawa film festival. Credit: Courtesy Suvendrini Kakuchi

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
GINOWAN, Japan, Apr 10 2013 (IPS)

The island of Okinawa has long been known as the base camp for a majority of the United States’ 50,000 troops in Japan. But now, against the backdrop of escalating nuclear threats from North Korea, local leaders are pushing hard to promote this island – the largest of 60 that comprise Japan’s southern prefecture – and its surrounding islets as a lucrative site for commercial enterprises.

“Okinawa, with its unique culture and natural surroundings, wants to expand its tourism industry and become an Asian hub for education and entertainment,” Shigenobu Asato, chairman of the Convention and Tourism Bureau, said in his keynote address at the Okinawa Film Festival that ended Mar. 30.

“The Okinawan slogan now is ‘Be Innovative’,” he added, referring to official efforts to push investment in entertainment and entrepreneurial activity on this island.

Under the terms of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Cooperation and Security Treaty Okinawa is home to two-thirds of U.S. military and naval bases in Japan and has long played a critical role in East Asian security. For the U.S., the archipelago fanning out into the Pacific Ocean towards Taiwan is the perfect spot from which to observe – and contain – China’s naval presence in the region.

The island witnessed the only land battle fought between Japan and the U.S. in World War II that ended with Japan’s defeat in 1945. Though the U.S. handed control over the island back to Japan in 1972, it retained bases on 18 percent of the territory, a situation that over 90 percent of Okinawans continue to protest today.

Striking an upbeat note about an incendiary topic, Asato outlined a host of new strategies developed by local governments in the prefecture—such as plans to establish university campuses and transform the island into an Asian entertainment centre — as priority goals in a bid to replace Okinawa’s dependence on military bases.

Currently, U.S. military and naval bases lease large swaths of land, mostly in central and southern Okinawa where 80 percent of its 1.5 million residents live. The rent, which amounts to a little less than six percent of the prefecture’s gross income, supports local landowners and allows those areas hosting camps to receive large government subsidies: In 2012, central government subsidies for Okinawa amounted to over two billion dollars; in 2013, the number was estimated at 3.1 billion dollars.

The U.S.’ military presence has shored up the island’s struggling economy: Okinawa’s per capita income is roughly 20,000 dollars, the lowest in Japan. The bases have not only provided rent and subsidies but have created a market for entertainment venues, bars, restaurants and taxi services for military personnel.

But the resulting social and political costs have been high.

The security cooperation treaty brought with it impunity for U.S. servicemen based here. A wave of violent crimes – including several rapes of local women — by U.S. personnel, combined with environmental damage and pollution, pushed many more Okinawans into the ranks of the anti-military base protest movement.

With opposition heating up since last November, local officials have been working hard to “wean” Okinawa’s economy off the military bases.

The city of Ginowan, home to military stations like the controversial Futenma Air Base, is one of the locations in urgent need of alternative forms of development and income.

Ginowan Mayor Atsushi Sakima used the recent film festival as a platform to present plans for the establishment of the Ginowan City Entertainment Village, an ambitious project being done in partnership with Yoshimoto Kogyo Company, a major mainland-based player in the entertainment industry. The project aims to establish art schools and creative spaces as alternatives to military sites.

Enter geopolitics

But Okinawans’ aspirations for a military-free island must contend with a hostile political climate. On top of North Korean threats, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative administration faces difficult territorial and fishing disputes with China and South Korea.

“Making peace with the Okinawans has become a crucial domestic challenge for Abe. Okinawa (has been) a vexing issue for Japanese prime ministers, (none of whom) have made much breakthrough,” Tetsuo Kawakami, professor of international relations at Takushoku University, told IPS.

He believes the hawkish prime minister is especially keen to win Okinawa’s support for his attempts to change Japan’s “peace” constitution that “renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” under Article 9.

Abe argues that constitutional revision regarding this article is crucial to guarantee Japan some protection and make provisions for self-defense as tensions rise in the Asia Pacific region.

The latest annual Diplomatic Blue book report unveiled last week by Japan’s Foreign Ministry stressed the need for strengthening the Japan-U.S. Security Alliance to contain “threats” to Japan’s land, sea and airspace and the lives of its people.

The report cites territorial clashes with China over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, claimed by both sides. Known in China as Diayou, the chain of uninhabited islets is rumoured to shelter large deposits of natural gas. Though the territory has long fallen under Japanese jurisdiction, South Korea, which refers to the islands as Dokdo, and Taiwan, calling them the Tiaoyutai Islands, have also laid claim to the archipelago.

Set against this tense background, the Japanese government made the landmark decision last week to publicise its timeline to return land leased to the United States military near the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa to the municipal government.

The deal was reached last year, based on the condition that U.S. troops would be transferred overseas. Abe has attempted to accelerate the process with Washington with the intention of nudging Okinawa to agree to the relocation of the Futenma Air Base in the densely populated city of Ginowa to Nago, a picturesque seaside resort.

Miko Higa, who heads the Okinawa-based Research Institute for Peace and Security, told IPS the government’s proposal to return the land at the Kadena base is welcome, but will face opposition if linked to the concept of relocation.

“The core issue facing Japan’s security is building trust with Okinawa. That process will take long and should not be linked to Abe’s defence plans that aim to strengthen military relations with the United States, which will be a heavy burden on Okinawa,” he said.

A Mar. 23 editorial in Okinawa’s leading newspaper ‘Ryukyu Shinpo’ expressed similar sentiments, describing Abe’s proposed plan as “nothing less than a denial of democracy in Japan”.

Now, according to Higa, “Abe faces an excruciating gamble” – and so do the people of Okinawa, who may only experience peace at the expense of economic security.

(END)

Miles of farmland around the crippled Fukushima reactor have been transformed into contaminated wastelands. Credit: Hajime NAKANO/CC-BY-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 26 2013 (IPS)

Pushed and pulled in opposite directions, the future of Japan’s energy plans in the wake of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant two years ago is emerging as a fight between national economic advancement and what anti-nuke activists call “the lives of the people”.

“The tug-of-war between the government and opponents of nuclear power has become an excruciatingly difficult issue in Japan,” Professor Takao Kashiwage, nuclear technology expert at the prestigious Tokyo Institute of Technology, told IPS.

“The emotional (turbulence) following the devastating consequences of the Fukushima accident is masking a real and objective debate” about the country’s energy needs and its nuclear future, he added.

Kashiwage sits on the official cogeneration energy committee and backs Japanese Prime Minister Shintaro Abe’s energy platform that calls for a re-start of Japan’s nuclear reactors after the implementation of new safety standards that will be established by an independent expert commission in July.

“Japan’s energy security is heavily dependent on nuclear power. To halt this source (that produced around 30 percent of energy needs prior to the accident) completely is too drastic a step for the country,” he explained. Japan currently imports 84 percent of its energy needs.

On the other side of the fence are anti-nuclear activists, who have drawn negative attention to the development of nuclear power plants by Japan’s nine most powerful utility companies, supported by public funds on the basis of creating a secure supply of energy for resource-poor Japan.

Large sums of revenue were poured into cash-strapped localities to host nuclear plants that were touted as “safe”: according to official estimates, a single reactor costs about 10 billion dollars, though activists say the amount is much higher when other expenses, such as support for new facilities and subsidies for hosting local governments, are taken into account.

But, as the Fukushima accident made tragically clear, those projects failed to meet safety requirements such as contingency plans for large-scale evacuation of residents in the event of a crisis.

Activists point to the heavy toll the Mar. 11 disaster took on communities living close to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors as one of the more jolting examples of the tragic human consequences of nuclear power. They have also called attention to the environmental risks of storing radioactive material that could easily poison the surrounding area.

Indeed, life-threatening radiation leaks have already forced entire communities to leave their homes and jobs, with more than 300,000 people still living in temporary housing, scores of families separated and miles of farmland transformed into contaminated wastelands, unable to produce a single edible crop.

Yasuo Fujita, 67, is one of these many nuclear refugees.

His family had lived for several generations in Namie village, located just seven kilometres from the stricken nuclear plant. Shortly after the meltdown, he was forced to give up his beloved sushi shop that he had run for 30 years and move to Koto-ku, a Tokyo ward.

Today Fujita is still waiting for compensation from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to restart his life. “I lost everything in a second because of the Fukushima accident,” he told IPS.

“Despite government plans to rebuild Fukushima within three to four decades, nobody believes they can return. With (scores of) young people now moving away, there is no point in returning even if the government does make the area safe again, a prospect we do not believe in anyway,” Fujita added.

Anti-nuke environmentalists teach schoolchildren about solar panels as an alternative to nuclear power. Credit: Courtesy Morihiko Shimamura/Otentosan Project

Meanwhile, the announcement last Monday that cooling of the spent fuel rods of three reactors at the Fukushima plant would be suspended due to a power outage created national panic and exposed a key problem in Japan’s nuclear industry: the lack of transparency leading to poor information dissemination and negligence of solid safety procedures.

The ‘Yomiuri’, Japan’s leading daily, noted on Thursday that TEPCO’s public announcement of the problem on Monday evening came too late, and illustrates the company’s “lax safety measures”, including the absence of a back-up plan to deal with accidents.

But as Japan’s massive fuel bills continue to rise for the second straight year – in February liquefied natural gas imports grew 19.1 percent, contributing almost 40 percent of the record 8.2-billion-dollar trade deficit, according to the Finance Ministry – and household utility bills climb 20 percent on average to meet increasing electricity costs, public support for the anti-nuke camp appears to be wavering.

An opinion poll conducted by ‘Asahi’, Japan’s leading national newspaper, in February revealed that 46 percent of respondents were in favour of continuing nuclear power if safety measures are strengthened — higher than the 41 percent who support total abolishment.

Only two of Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors – units 3 and 4 of the Ōhi nuclear power plant located in the Fukui Prefecture – are operating, while the rest have been closed for maintenance or repairs, bringing nuclear power supply to almost zero.

This is a drastic reduction from pre-Fukushima levels, and a huge set back for national plans to grow the energy source to 50 percent of total supply.

Faced with the stark reality of the impacts of the accident and deep public commitment to avert another disaster, Abe is currently pushing safety measures, including installation of the new Nuclear Regulation Authority, comprised of independent experts, which has already issued seismic warnings against two nuclear power plants.

An upcoming national election in the summer marks an important turning point. If Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party wins, experts contend the coast will be clear to restart idle nuclear plants.

But Aileen Smith, head of Green Action and a leader in the anti-nuclear movement, told IPS that activists will do their best to halt these plans, applying pressure in the form of lawsuits and large public protests and demonstrations.

“The government is talking of restarting idled plants. But the dangerous reality on the ground is such that utility companies applying for permission will face an uphill struggle,” she said.

(END)

Demanding rights for nuclear workers. Credit: National Union of General Workers.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 11 2013 (IPS)

Japan has promised to scrap the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactors that faced the world’s worst nuclear accident. But Hiroyuki Watanabe, councillor in Iwaki City located 30 kilometres from the accident site, greets such intentions on the second anniversary of the disaster on Monday with misgiving.

“I see problems in Fukushima increasing, not decreasing. One of the biggest issues facing the country is the lack of qualified workers in Japan who can meet the enormous challenges ahead,” he told IPS.

Iwaki City lies in Fukushima prefecture, and was affected badly by the triple disaster – earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident – that struck on Mar. 11, 2011.

The city is also host to J-Village, a former soccer field now the entry point to the zone around the stricken nuclear plant. Around 3,000 workers commute daily from the new base camp to work on the damaged reactors. They change into radiation protective gear before boarding special buses that take them to their work place almost an hour away.

Watanabe says he must fight for the rights of these workers who spend eight hours daily in dangerous surroundings.

“Workers face the risk of radioactive contamination. They are also employed by companies that do not treat them fairly in terms of work conditions and wages. My work is to protect them and make sure their employers and the government treat them right.”

Watanabe, a member of the Communist Party in the Iwaki local assembly, is not alone. The increasingly difficult looking road ahead as Japan struggles to deal with the damaged reactors has led labour unions to launch separate organisations to take up the issues faced by nuclear workers.

Keiji Watanabe, general secretary of the National Union of General Workers, said there is an urgent need to create a strong protection base for the nuclear workers. Dismantling the plant could take up to four decades.

“The grave situation in Fukushima as well as possible accidents in other nuclear plants in Japan demands the work of tens of thousands of men and women in the decades ahead. This unprecedented situation has awakened us to the dire need to set up units that can deal with the emerging labour issues,” he told IPS.

A major grouse among labour activists is the lack of clear rules for nuclear workers. Currently the workers, divided by skill ratings and age, are employed by hundreds of subcontracting companies that have contracts with Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which operates the Fukushima plant.

Several workers hired by companies have raised their voices against the system of “commissions” by temporary employment agencies.

About 90 dollars a day are added as special allowance to the salaries of temporary staff hired to clear contaminated debris and carry out repair work. But, said Hiroshi Goto who worked in the Fukushima Dai Ichi reactor, they face up to 50 percent deductions by the employers.

“This cannot be tolerated,” he reported in Sekai, a leading Japanese monthly magazine. He said workers are helpless in demanding better conditions from TEPCO.

Pressure from activists has led Japan to register stricter national contamination standards. Such conditions, labour activists say, would lead to a scarcity because many Japanese workers will have to leave their jobs to protect their health.

Difficult employment conditions have already resulted in a rapid drop of workers willing to work in Fukushima. Watanabe from Iwaki said the majority of the 3,000 working at the reactors are local people from Fukushima who lost their farming jobs because of the contamination of their land.

“The majority of the workers are older people who need jobs to survive,” he said, and this could mean that Japan has to import workers to meet the looming crunch.

Against this backdrop, conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has declared that the nuclear reactors will be restarted for some time once their safety has been confirmed in order to provide the country with stable energy supply – 30 percent of the national energy supply is dependent on nuclear power.

In the meantime, almost 60,000 Fukushima residents remain dislocated from their homes with no prospect of returning due to the decontamination work.

“Two years after the Fukushima meltdown, we are still looking for answers to pave the way forward. The situation continues to be a nightmare lesson for Japan,” said Watanabe.

Yukiko Takada. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 10 2013 (IPS)

Japan prepares to mark the second anniversary of the Mar. 11 triple disaster – an earthquake, tsunami and a critical nuclear reactor accident – with much soul searching across the country.

For Yukiko Takada from Otsuki-cho, a scenic fishing town in Iwate prefecture that was turned into rubble in a few hours on that fateful day, the upcoming memorial Monday will simply be another day.

“For me, as it is like for the survivors who experienced the horrible tragedy, everyday remains a memorial, not just March 11, as we struggle to accept what happened and to get our lives back after the devastation,” she tells IPS.

The young woman represents one of the more poignant stories in lessons learnt following the disaster. Takada launched her own community newspaper last June. It was a project, she says, that was imperative to the recovery of the local community.

Otsuchi Shimbun, published weekly, provides up to date information on issues such as relocation of families, temporary housing, employment opportunities and local government decisions. It plays a crucial role in the rebuilding of people’s confidence.

Supported mainly with revenue from local ads, the newspaper, a one-woman show, carries diverse voices, and includes a focus on women. Takada says women have displayed mind-boggling will power to restart their lives for the sake of their families.

Takada is planning a daily version of the paper later this year.

“The lack of correct information for disaster-struck people left them vulnerable and scared, and this problem needed to be addressed desperately as people sought to rebuild their lives,” she says. “Mainstream media outlets could not fulfill this role because they were busy filing stories aimed at readers outside our area.”

Reiko Masai, head of Kobe Net, a pioneering women’s organisation tackling disaster and gender issues that was established after the devastating Hanshin earthquake that hit Kobe city in western Japan in 1995, says that “two years after the disaster, despite national funds being poured into recovery, confusion and despair remain huge problems in the daily lives of the people. Takada has proved that women can be key to overcoming this struggle.”

Disasters are common in earthquake-prone Japan. It also leads with state-of-the art disaster prevention. But the 9.0 magnitude earthquake two years back that led to a 10-metre high tsunami has left the country still facing enormous challenges.

Almost 20,000 people died that day, a figure that shocked Japan given its national policies supporting regular earthquake drills, earthquake forecast technology and a range of safety precautions.

Currently about 160,000 people are still living in temporary housing with no hope of returning especially to areas hit by radiation contamination from the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor.

Takada recalls how she barely escaped the tsunami. “I was in the neighbouring city when the quake hit. I quickly jumped into my car to return home. As I was driving, the road began to disappear in front me – it filled up with seawater from the tsunami. I abandoned the car and ran up a hill to save my life.”

Otsuki-cho, a bustling town of 16,000 people well known for its supply of fresh oysters, abalone and seaweed to the city markets remains a barren town today. It faces a population crunch as people either move out or into temporary housing.

Women face higher risks. Statistics after the Kobe earthquake indicate that the number of deaths of females between 70 and 90 years of age was more than double that of men in the same age group, mainly because women live longer and alone.

Stress and trauma also affect women more, given their childcare responsibilities. The Fukushima Women’s Network has noted high levels of anxiety among mothers of relocated families.

Gender has become an important concern in mainstream policy making now thanks to women’s groups that have lobbied hard the past two years.

The gender equality bureau in the Cabinet Office released new gender-based guidelines in disaster planning last year. These include provisions for women-friendly shelters, protecting women from sexual harassment, and employment information for women.

“There is no doubt that women’s concerns are slowly entering mainstream policy,” says Masai. “But there is still much work to be done, especially when it comes to getting women into leadership roles in disaster prevention and post-disaster planning. That is our next step.”

The All Obachan Party is attempting to break through old-fashioned, male-dominated politics. Credit: All Obachan Party

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Dec 18 2012 (IPS)

The return to power of Japan’s conservative and hard-line Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Sunday indicates that voters traded urgently needed social and environmental reforms for traditional male-led leadership, according to analysts here.

Youth and feminist organisations who had campaigned vigorously for better environmental protections, labour equality and the upholding of regional peace ahead of the elections, expressed frustration about Sunday’s outcome, lamenting that the victorious LDP is yet to present concrete policies to tackle Japan’s most pressing problems.

Three years ago the Japanese electorate ousted the LDP in favour of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). This year the pendulum has swung back in the opposite direction. “It’s time to give the LDP a chance at tackling national problems. The ruling DPJ was a disaster,” Keitaro Noguchi (34), a company employee, told IPS, summing up the overall post-election mood in the country.

LDP leader Shinzo Abe, whose brief term as Prime Minister ended abruptly in 2007, is now set to take back the reins.

A hawkish politician, he has raised his profile by promising to usher in a militarily stronger Japan – against the backdrop of a simmering territorial dispute with China regarding a cluster of islands in the East China Sea – and rekindle the economy by boosting expensive public works programmes to create new jobs.

The LDP is also faced with the monumental task of addressing the country’s consistently low growth rates – less than two percent for the past two decades, according to the Cabinet’s Office – while simultaneously attempting to reduce a soaring public debt and meet the social security demands of unemployed youth and a rapidly aging population.

But while these high-profile issues will almost certainly receive their fair share of political attention, activists are concerned about two areas they fear will slip beneath the radar of the incoming administration: the country’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of the disastrous accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor following the earthquake and tsunami last March; and job stability for youth and women, both grappling with badly paid or part-time work.

“The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will definitely turn its back on the policies of the outgoing centre-left government, which set a target of eradicating Japan’s nuclear dependency by 2030,” said Koichi Nakano, a well-known political analyst at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Speaking to foreign reporters, Nakano explained that power companies, which have pushed nuclear energy onto the national development agenda, have thrown their support behind the LDP.

“Japan’s green movement, which promotes clean energy as a replacement for nuclear power, has not been successful. A more hawkish regime that commands a strong majority in the Japanese Diet (the upper and lower houses of parliament) will stigmatise anti-nuke protestors as dangerous radicals. I see more arrests of activists,” he said, referring to the Sept. 16 arrests of 16 activists at a large anti-nuke rally here.

The election result has also been a bitter disappointment for women’s groups who have been lobbying for better treatment of female workers currently comprising 80 percent of the country’s part-time or contract labour force; stable childcare; and welfare for the elderly, who are overwhelmingly women.

Professor Chizu Arashima of Kobe Gakuin University based in west Japan, views the LDP election victory as a step back for women’s rights and employment.

“As a working mother of three sons I am bracing for the return of old-fashioned LDP family values that promote divisive gender roles that push women to stay at home, have babies and rely on men,” she said.

Arashima is a member of the three-month-old All Japan Obachan Party – a women’s organisation based in Osaka, Japan’s second largest city – which is now gaining public recognition for helping raise women’s voices on national policies and close the gender gap in the political realm.

‘Obachan’ is a gender-biased term in Japanese that pushes the image of active middle-aged women who are ready to challenge men. Kyoko Tada, a legal expert and a founding member of the organisation, told IPS, “The title (was chosen) deliberately to call attention to a sector that is determined to break through old-fashioned male-dominated politics.”

She said the group has gathered more than 1,000 members nationwide already, and is gaining support for its alternative views, such as its anti-war stance, support for fostering community strength, an anti-nuclear policy and advocating for the use of tax money for social security services rather than public works programmes.

The organisation faces many hurdles in overcoming gender disparities in the political sphere. Only 38 female candidates, from a total of 225, won seats in the parliament during this election, a major dip from the 54 women who won seats at the last poll in 2009.

Already, Japan has been ranked as low as 110^th on the World Economic Forum’s latest gender gap survey, which rates countries based on gender equality in political representation.

Arashima explained that the outcome of this election proves that women have been lured by the hope that the LDP will improve the economic situation and ensure income stability.

“The lack of public discussions that should have highlighted alternative choices for women is a key lesson for activist groups this time. We are determined to address these issues,” she explained.

(END)

For many Japanese women, old age is becoming synonymous with poverty and loneliness. Credit: Isado/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Dec 10 2012 (IPS)

When Hiroko Taguchi retired this past April, at the age of 64, from her job as an insurance sales agent, she joined the rapidly growing ranks of Japan’s aging women who now outnumber their male counterparts.

Taguchi, a divorcee who lives alone, is heavily dependent on her pension to support what will likely be a lengthy retirement, given that women in Japan live, on average, about seven years longer than men. A survey conducted earlier this year by the Health and Welfare Ministry revealed that women account for 87.3 percent of Japan’s record number of 50,000 centenarians.

“I am lucky I did not quit my job when I married, as was the norm for women of my age,” Taguchi told IPS. Indeed, she is one of a very small number of women in Japan for whom old age is not synonymous with poverty and loneliness.

Most of her contemporaries who were part-time workers or full-time homemakers in their youth and middle age now draw monthly public pensions of just 500 dollars or less – barely enough to cover their living costs.

A patriarchal social structure that has boxed women into the role of caretaker and homemaker is largely responsible for the vulnerable situation many old Japanese women now find themselves in.

According to government data, 70 percent of women leave their jobs when they start a family, returning to the workplace – often as part-time workers – only when their children are older; this pattern significantly reduces their chances of drawing a decent pension after retirement.

Additionally, the fact that women are experiencing increasingly long life spans means that many outlive their husbands and become entirely reliant on the state welfare system.

Social experts here say Taguchi’s sunset years provide a spotlight into the diverse issues that women in Japan’s graying society face today.

“More women than men face poverty in their old age given their (life spans) and lower incomes,” pointed out Professor Keiko Higuchi, an expert on aging populations at Tokyo Kasei University, as well as an advisor to the government on gender and policies that affect the elderly.

Aging in a patriarchal society

Japan currently has the world’s fastest aging society. Experts estimate that by 2025 more than 27 percent of the population will be over 65 years old.

If the present trends continue, experts predict that 40 percent of the senior population will be female: women are clocking 86.5 years, compared to 79.6 years for men.

Higuchi, who is also a prominent women’s rights activist, has lobbied the government long and hard to develop policies that meet the needs of elderly women.

Among the many issues that aging women face are loneliness, higher prospects of disability and growing poverty in a nation that is grappling with a huge public debt and threatening further cuts in social services and state welfare.

Official statistics from the Health and Welfare Ministry confirm this grim picture – government data shows that 80 percent of those over 65 years and living alone are women, mostly divorcees and widows.

Women also comprise 70 percent of the population in nursing homes, with poverty affecting 25 percent of the female population over 75 years compared to 20 percent among males.

The Ministry also reported that in 2011 there were almost 420,000 women over the age of 65 who depended on welfare handouts, compared to 324,000 men.

According to the prominent Japanese feminist Junko Fukazawa, who counsels women facing domestic violence – a risk she says is increasingly common for older women living with their husbands or sons – deep-rooted gender discrimination makes women even more vulnerable to the troubles of the sunset years.

Social traditions that have forced women to take care of the family while men worked outside “is the prime reason why women give up their jobs when they have children, (and end up with) lower paying jobs and financial instability in their old age”, Fukazawa told IPS.

“The situation is ironic,” she added, pointing out that those who have traditionally been the primary caregivers for young and old alike are now becoming a population that needs the most support.

The critical need to focus national aging policies on women is gaining traction around the world. A new report, ‘Aging in the Twenty-First Century’, released in September by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), calls on governments and other stakeholders to take heed of the mounting body of evidence that women are living longer than men, and adjust their national plans accordingly.

The report documented figures around the world that showed that for every 100 women aged 80 years and over, there are only 61 men.

Aging in Japan, the world’s third largest economy, illustrates some of these pressing issues against the backdrop of a shrinking working population, which is expected to plummet from 80 to 52 million by 2050.

For the younger generation of Japanese women, who are coming of age during a time of government austerity and desperate attempts to reduce public spending, the forecast is alarming.

Already this generation of women is beginning to feel the crunch of poverty, with Labour Department statistics pointing to a rise in lower-paid part-time female employment, a trend that indicates an erosion of retirement stability for a large portion of the labour force.

For Higuchi, “The current aging picture clearly shows that Japan’s economic growth policies have eroded traditional family values that protected old people and have been particularly unfair to women.”

Meanwhile, women like Taguchi are moving cautiously down the road. “Acutely aware that I would face a lonely future, I have saved for decades and will continue to do so. At least I can avoid poverty – I hope so, anyway.”

(END)

The bulk of the U.S.’ 47,000 troops in Japan are based in Okinawa. Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/CC-BY-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Nov 25 2012 (IPS)

Okinawa, the largest of a group of 60 sub-tropical islands forming Japan’s southernmost prefecture, has an equable climate and preferential treatment for United States servicemen under the Mutual Cooperation Security Treaty between the U.S. and Japan.

According to Chobin Zukeran, a member of the House of Representatives from Okinawa, the archipelago is the perfect U.S. base because it fans out into the Pacific Ocean towards Taiwan, making it a vital bulwark for U.S. military strategists concerned with containing China.

Here is where the bulk of the U.S.’ 47,000 troops in Japan are based.

But Okinawans, who number roughly 1.4 million, have long opposed U.S. military presence on their homeland, which experienced the only bloody ground battle between Japan and the invading U.S. military at the end of World War II in 1945.

Since the return of the islands to Japan in 1972, over 90 percent of Okinawans – concerned about their personal safety and noise and environmental pollution – have supported the demand for a complete removal of the bases, which occupy 18 percent of their land.

Now, a string of recent incidents involving military personnel has pushed opposition to the bases into outright protest and threatens to foil the U.S.’ plans to beef up its military in the Asia-Pacific region.

On Nov. 7, Christopher Browning and Skyler Dozierwalker were charged with raping and injuring a local woman on Oct. 16, in a case that sparked widespread protest across Okinawa.

“Okinawa’s struggle against the U.S. military bases is reaching a turning point. We are prepared to take our demands all the way to Washington to end the deadlock,” Zukeran said at a press meeting in Tokyo earlier this month.

Frustration with impunity for U.S. troops on the island is nothing new. In 1995, the gang rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen resulted in a U.S.-Japan agreement to reduce U.S. military presence on the Okinawan chain of islands, but this did little to appease the local population.

“The rapes and a skewed sense of justice when these crimes involve U.S. servicemen is the worst form of violence against women,” said Ryuichi Hattori, a member of the Social Democratic Party that has traditionally led political demands to have the bases removed from Okinawa.

Statistics compiled by the police indicate no fewer than 6,000 cases of crime – including violence and rape – since 1972.

Catherine Fisher, an Australian national who was raped in 2002 by a sailor stationed on a ship on the U.S. naval base of Yokosuka, 64 miles south of Tokyo, was among the first women to speak publicly about the latest crime.

Fisher took her own case to the U.S. in September in pursuit of her attacker who had been honourably discharged by the U.S. military, although he was found guilty by the Tokyo district court in 2004 and ordered to pay damages.

“I was determined to receive justice and challenge a system that is totally unfair. Perpetrators, when they are U.S. soldiers, have legal protection and this must be changed,” she told IPS.

Fisher is currently touring Japan to gather support for her demand that perpetrators of crimes remain in Japan to face trial. She is also trying to set up a 24-hour rape crisis centre that can deal specifically with crimes committed by U.S. military servicemen.

Yet another wave of protest is growing over regular crimes committed by U.S. marines who frequent the bustling bars of Okinawa and participate in its vibrant nightlife.

Masayo Hirata, a former counselor for women seeking advice on their problems with U.S. troops – including offspring abandoned by fathers returning to the U.S. – says romantic liaisons with locals are common.

“Marrying or having relationships with American servicemen has become common these days among younger generation females who meet them in bars,” she said.

These interactions are a big part of the problem, according to protest groups, which include academics, lawyers and local politicians.

Sexual exploitation of local women has also sparked protests in other Asia-Pacific countries hosting U.S. forces, such as in the Philippines, which has a ship repair and recreational facility.

Public protests compelled the Philippine Senate to vote against the renewal of the lease on Clark Base in Angeles City in 1991 – a decision that many Okinawans found encouraging.

South Korea, officially at war with North Korea, hosts 37,000 marines located around the country, but the brutal killing in 1992 of a local woman working in an entertainment area close to the bases triggered demands for an end to the arrangement.

A 2010 survey conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun and Ryukyu Shimpo newspapers found that 71 percent of the Okinawans polled felt that the presence of U.S. troops was not necessary and 41 percent wanted the bases removed.

Campaigns have also focused on environmental degradation caused by the construction of military bases.

Human sit-ins against the construction of a heliport off the northeast coastline of Henoko, a quiet village, were forcibly disbanded. Locals, along with environmentalists on the mainland, claimed the heliport construction endangered coral and the native dugong population.

Okinawans say their daily lives are consumed with gnawing fear of accidents from U.S. fighter airplanes that also create deafening noise as they fly into U.S. bases located in densely crowded areas.

Animosity has recently been aggravated by the deployment on the island of Osprey aircraft, with locals voicing concerns over the poor safety record of the plane, which is capable of taking off and landing vertically.

Prof. Tsuneo Namihara, sociologist at the Okinawa University, explained to IPS that the recent territorial clashes between Japan and China over the Senkaku islands, claimed by both countries, have made it more difficult to get rid of U.S. bases.

“As a result, I fear the anti-base movement will veer away from the traditional pacifism (associated) with the local protests. The younger generation is getting impatient with the heavy hand of the Japanese government that is ignoring the wishes of the local population,” he warned.

(END)

Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Construction Bank, speaks about China's five-year plan at the World Economic Forum in Sept. 2011 Credit: World Economic Forum/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Oct 13 2012 (IPS)

Developing countries – ­relegated to the sidelines of the West-led postwar expansion – have emerged as the saving grace of the global economy against a backdrop of calls for a new economic model that can ease the ravages of globalisation and address the lack of confidence in market-based systems.

Indeed, supporting economic growth in developing countries in a way that expands domestic productivity and stimulates global demand has been a core message at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) underway in Tokyo this week.

Financial leaders and influential policymakers have also identified the importance of investment in infrastructure and technology transfer in order to boost sustainable growth in developing economies.

“The envisaged global superhighway has not realised enough growth in the world,” said IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, pointing out that economic expansion is currently being recorded mostly in developing countries.

Speaking at a discussion on globalisation here, Lagarde says the key economic challenge today is the trend of decreasing job opportunities for youth, suggesting that nations can help each other in meeting these challenges.

“I fear an intergenerational conflict if our financial model leaves increasing debt for the younger generation,” she warned.

Western economies in particular have been hit with massive unemployment among the younger generation. Unemployment rates are as high as 50 percent in countries such as Spain and Greece, both dealing with severe austerity plans imposed by global financial lending institutions.

But Asia, by contrast, has been recording expansion. China, Asia’s growth engine, has shown an average annual 10 percent GDP growth over the past decade and is now the world’s second largest economy.

But even that expansion is slowing down as Asia and Africa feel the impact of slow demand in the West, a situation that has raised new fears of further global recession.

In a statement after a meeting Thursday, the Group of Twenty Four, comprising rapidly developing and emerging economies, stressed the importance of a significant mobilisation of resources and investment, especially in infrastructure.

It also called for strengthening existing financial architecture and institutions, but said it anticipated a large funding gap given the scale of needs.

“We are seriously concerned about the fragility of the global economic and financial situation, particularly in view of low growth and continued uncertainties and risks within the Euro area, notwithstanding the recent policy actions and the buttressing of firewalls, as well as risks from possible aggressive fiscal tightening in the United States,” the G-24 said in a communiqué released here.

“Moreover, instability in financial markets, fiscal adjustments and deleveraging by banks has impacted growth, with adverse effects on the economies of many emerging market and developing countries,” it added. “World trade growth has sharply decelerated and the flow of capital (to these countries) has become more erratic.”

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, says the time has come when no country, business, organisation or civil organisation can think individually or in isolation. “To ease fears that point to an expanded global recession, we need to think on a global partnership base. Leadership needs to be distributed collectively,” he said.

Japan, host of the IMF-WB meetings and currently struggling with growth rates of less than three percent, has been working to play a key role in the exploration of a new economic way to go forward.

While government subsidies to companies have helped to restrain unemployment – now around four percent – Japan has also been grappling with increasing inequity since its rapid post-war economic development ended in a long recession for the past three decades.

Participants agreed that globalisation is here to stay, but that the search continues for a more inclusive model where rich countries share policymaking and technology with frontier economies to create a more balanced allocation of natural resources and achieve sustainable growth.

This means an acknowledgement of the emerging scenario where secure jobs are no longer the norm. “The young must be supported and educated to create their jobs,” Schwab said.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf explained there is an imperative need to invest in countries such as hers, where the government struggles to provide funds to empower vulnerable sectors.

“We need a new economic model that emphasizes…sustainable growth in developing countries that is based on scaling up our infrastructure that can shift the emphasis where natural resources can be secure,” stressed Sirleaf.

*This story first appeared on IPS TerraViva

Keiko Shoji (left) started sewing classes for women affected by the Great Eastern Quake after the reconstruction of her own home. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
SENDAI, Japan, Oct 10 2012 (IPS)

The debris of the devastated Arahama elementary school yielded two enduring lessons for its principal, Takao Kawamura, in the months after the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan’s north-east coastland on Mar. 11, 2011.

“The first lesson is that we survived the horrible tragedy simply because we were prepared for disaster,” he explained to a group of international development officials who visited the area on Wednesday on the sidelines of the 2012 International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank (WB) Annual Meetings here.

“The other is the important challenge we face today,” he pointed out. ”We are committed now to be even better prepared for the next disaster by learning from what we missed out on that fateful day.”

Kawamura shared his insights from the rooftop of the now abandoned school, where a rescue helicopter had landed as he instructed a team of teachers to protect the lives of his trapped students after the 10-metre tsunami destroyed the rest of the building.

The experience of communities like Kawamura’s illustrates the need to mainstream disaster risk management, called DRM, into the development agenda under a plan by the Japanese government and the World Bank in Sendai.

The officials’ visit to Sendai was part of the ‘Sendai Dialogue’, where delegates from leading aid and financial organisations, national and local government officials, the private sector and civil society, gathered for two days to discuss ways to strengthen international commitment to mitigate the impact of disasters around the world.

The dialogue also highlighted the focus on disaster risk management and prevention of this year’s IMF-WB meetings.

“We learned many lessons following the disaster through reflecting on the role of a city government in regards to disaster preparation,” Sendai Mayor Emiko Okuyama said in her opening remarks at the dialogue. “Based on a policy of disaster mitigation, we are undertaking a comprehensive approach including the implementation of multiple safeguards and the development of a new environmental policy including energy measures.”

Sendai City, a city of 1.6 million people and the gateway to the north-east of Japan, lost 891 people in the Great East Japan Earthquake. Though by no means a small number, that was a casualty count reduced in no insignificant way by strict quake-resistant building codes in Japan.

Indeed, stories of quake survivors vouch for the need to build resilience at the official, regional and community levels.

Kawamura explained that Arahama, a large flat farm area dotted with 1,600 households just 15 kilometres out of Sendai, had one of the most active disaster preparedness programmes. This was why none of the students died in the school, he added.

In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, the children did not panic because rescue drills had been held regularly in the school, one that had also stocked relief supplies. In fact, just a few days before the March 2011 disaster, Kawamura had decided to take the relief goods kept in the gymnasium on the ground floor to higher areas – and this prevented them from being lost in the tsunami.

Data has shown that when the tsunami struck, the school, which had been built as an earthquake evacuation site, held strong as did most buildings across Japan. But what had not been foreseen was the unprecedented height of the tsunami, which reached up to almost 15 metres and swept through the tall pine trees that had been planted on the coastline as a breaker.

Says Norizami Ootobu, who heads a massive debris cleaning programme in Ido, directed under the Sendai city government: “We now realise that it is impossible to be hundred percent secure against a disaster. The best way to deal with the crisis is to put in the prevention steps that will minimise the impact.”

Concrete evidence of the benefits of being better prepared for disaster, in the form of research-based risk assessments, were presented in Sendai by disaster and financial experts.

Disasters are by no means the concern only of poor or developing countries, but they often suffer more damage when these occur. World Bank research has shown that developing countries will be hit heavily by disasters from climate change and vast urban growth. Economic losses have been estimated at one-third of official development assistance, and that 1. 2 trillion dollars have been lost in disasters.

Equally sobering was the statistic that the official budgets for disasters provide for spending less than four percent on prevention. Most of such resources are extended to emergency or reconstruction.

Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank, explained that there has been growing evidence that “greener and inclusive growth with investment in disaster risk management (should be) to be part of global development agendas.”

But officials from emerging economies said this is tough for many developing country governments.

Nadeem Ul Haque, deputy chairman of Pakistan’s planning commission, explained the government’s priorities lie heavily on schemes such as providing jobs for 90 million local youth and providing health and necessary infrastructure.

“Electoral issues are the current demands of the people. The dilemma for governments is current priorities versus future disasters,” he explained.

Sendai’s experience also showed that resilience to disasters did not always mean heavy spending, and can be achieved through community and private sector collaboration.

In fact, the private sector’s role has been significant in Sendai’s post-disaster rehabilitation through the provision of loans for affected businesses and the reconstruction of houses.

Smaller businesses too have contributed solutions not only by providing recovery funds, but by becoming potent players in disaster prevention and preparedness and in the process helping ease the burden on public funds.

Take the case of Takeshi Niinami, chief executive officer of Lawson, a trillion-yen business comprised of convenience stores across Japan.

After the Great Quake, Lawson sprang into action in the Tohoku area by providing food for the tens of thousands who sought refuge in evacuation centres. Eighteen months later, Niinami told TerraViva, the company remains involved by supporting the education for children who have lost homes or family members.

Said Niinami: “Global business today is being able to work closely with the community, which is what I realised through my work in disaster relief. Unless we work to protect the community, business cannot prosper.”

*This story was first published by IPS TerraViva.

According to popular belief, the world’s rapidly ageing societies face the risk of poverty, dementia and loneliness. But not necessarily so, says a United Nations publication unveiled in Japan Monday. Better management by governments can support a better life for the elderly, and lead them to becoming important contributors to society, it says.

The report ‘Ageing in the Twenty-First Century: A Celebration and A Challenge’ published by the United Nations Population Fund with HelpAge International, a leading non-governmental organisation, points out that ageing can be a cause for celebration if the elderly enjoy economic and social security.

“Longevity is a triumph of development,” Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund told IPS. The elderly can make a social and economic contribution to society, he said. “Harnessing these contributions will be very important.”

He pointed out that population ageing is no longer a developed country phenomenon. By 2050 nearly 80 percent of the world’s older persons will live in developing countries, making a population of 2 billion, or 22 percent of the global population. In 2000 there were already more people aged above 60 than children under five.

Japan is the world’s oldest country with 30 percent of its 123 million people above 60 years of age. The situation is commonly described as a national financial and social burden. But Richard Blewitt, CEO of HelpAge International, pointed that this status is cause for celebration as it proves the country has invested heavily to promote life expectancy and provide its citizens better health access and economic security.

“Well done, Japan. Older people are active in many ways as growth givers. We need to rethink the value of the elderly,” he told IPS.

But Japan does grapple with important issues that face its ageing population. Three million Japanese suffer from dementia. Abuse of the elderly, especially older women, has grown steadily. More than half of the elderly in Japan live alone.

In dealing with this, Japan has emerged as a leader in dementia care. It has extensive programmes to care for elderly citizens, including mobile units visiting communities. Despite the burgeoning healthcare budget, Japanese social security policies continue to offer health and home care for the elderly.

Experts here commended the new UNFPA report, pointing out that the decision to launch the report in Japan has boosted the status of the elderly, and projected the need for care for the elderly to be brought into the international debate.

“The report has turned the spotlight on re-examining ageing as an international issue,” said Junko Fukazawa, 64, a care giver attending a symposium on ageing held to mark the launch of the UN report. “It is a landmark step in Japan where ageing experts have worked hard to bring the issue from a closed family affair into a social phenomenon.”

Fukazawa said her father died last month at a hospice. Arrangements she made to provide for her father’s care allowed her to continue with her career. In her mother’s generation care for the elderly was the sole responsibility of women, she said.

Dr Babatunde said the time has come to raise the importance of the greying generation in the international development agenda, after decades of ignoring one of the most important global issues.

He called for care for the ageing to be incorporated as a Millennium Development Goal, and for increased support for new research and data collection.

A highlight of the UN report was a global survey that showed how more than 60,000 persons above 60 in 60 countries are campaigning with the aim ‘Age Demands Action’. The campaign calls on governments and on the international community to address the rights, concerns and needs of older persons.

Voices collected in the report of more 1,200 older people in different countries suggest how older people want to play a role in society.

Participants of Duan Yuezhong’s Chinese language class conducted in a local park. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Sep 29 2012 (IPS)

While the 40^th anniversary of the normalisation of Japan-China relations passed under a dark shadow of rising tensions and bitter territorial disputes in East Asia, a strand of citizen-based diplomacy at the grassroots level is emerging in Japan as a path towards regional reconciliation.

Sabre rattling between Japan and its neighbours – namely its primary economic competitors, China and South Korea – reached new heights at the United Nations General Assembly currently underway in New York when Chinese president Hu Jintao dismissed Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda’s claims to a disputed chain of islands as “illegal and invalid”.

The uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea, which may shelter large deposits of natural gas, are known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, Diayou in China and the Tiaoyutai Islands in Taiwan.

The possibly resource-rich cluster that lies below Japan’s southernmost island of Okinawa has long been a major bone of contention between China and Japan, with Taiwan, too, laying claim to the territory.

The Japanese government’s proposal to buy the islands from a private owner sparked a wave of protest across 50 cities in China earlier this month.

The violence, which included the destruction of several Japanese establishments, forced a number of staff members to relocate back to Japan, while hundreds of Japanese tourists cancelled their visits to China.

The Senkaku Islands were not the only source of conflict at the U.N. this week. On Thursday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak rejected Noda’s vow to protect Japan’s sea and land space – an obvious reference by the latter to the dispute with South Korea over ownership of Takeshima, a pair of rocky islets known in Korean as Dokto.

A street poll conducted by the Tokyo-based Nippon Broadcasting Corporation this month indicated the Japanese public wants the government to take a stronger stance in these territorial disputes, particular where South Korea is concerned.

East Asia political experts here view these tensions as a further threat to the rocky bilateral relations that have existed since diplomatic ties were established with China in 1972 and with South Korea in 1965.

But a growing number of concerned citizens are convinced that grassroots efforts and local diplomacy can help defuse tensions between the agitated neighbours.

These concerned voices are calling for a cooling down of the situation in an attempt to prevent mutual economic losses, trade boycotts or suffocation of the free flow of students, professionals, artists and information between the various countries.

A citizens’ movement for change?

Duan Yuezhong, a Chinese national living in Tokyo, is very dedicated to this movement. Undeterred by political hot-headedness, he is conducting a discussion group for the Japanese public.

“Nothing can stop my efforts in Japan towards a citizen-based approach to nurture closer ties between China and Japan. To withdraw now is to give up on the future,” he told IPS.

Yuezhong, a former journalist in China, has spent almost two decades in Japan. He owns a publishing company that prints books specialising in Japan-China relations and also conducts popular Chinese-language classes at a local park.

Yuezhong has great faith in the fledging citizen’s movement that highlights the need for political restraint and the importance of objective negotiations between countries.

Akiko Ozaki, a Japanese businesswoman who set up a travel agency in China two years ago, echoed these sentiments. She appealed to participants of her annual tour to Dalian, a major port city in the northeast of China, to go ahead with their visit scheduled for next month.

“My tour may survive. For ordinary people like us who have developed close business ties with China it is very difficult to throw away (our) hard work because of political (stubbornness),” she told IPS.

While economic ties have cemented East Asia as a formidable bloc — China has now overtaken the United States to become Japan’s top trading partner — mistrust is deep-rooted due to Japan’s history of colonisation in the region.

“There is a huge perception gap when it comes to understanding Japanese colonisation in all the three countries,” according to professor Masao Okonogi, an expert on Japan-Korea relations at Kyushu University.

“Against the growing international clout of China and South Korea, Japan must seek to put the past behind it,” he explained.

In an effort to do just this, Okonogi participated in several joint study programmes on history that took place on an annual basis between Japan and South Korea until the project was disbanded two years ago.

“Political interference on both sides dealt a severe blow to crucial attempts to foster a deeper sense of mutual understanding of the historical past but we must persevere,” he explained.

Yoichi Tao, scientist and manager of Global Voices – a website that hosts a myriad opinions including those of Chinese and Korean students in Japan – says space for wider debate on differences between Japan and its East Asian neighbours is crucial.

“Pursuing economic development has pushed the vital importance of bridging (misunderstandings) to the back burner. The latest upheaval has (proven) that the economy alone does not bring stability in East Asia,” he told IPS.

Kao Hui Fen, a Taiwanese national in Tokyo, cannot agree more. Fen says after fifteen years in Japan she has become more outspoken about Japanese colonisation of her country, an approach that has not caused her problems.

“I tell my Japanese friends that colonisation is bad. They do not respond angrily and some are even willing to discuss the past objectively,” she said.

Tao believes that sharing honest opinions at the civilian level can weaken conservative and narrow political agendas that have long divided Japan and its closest Asian neighbours.

“People can lead the way forward in East Asia where emotional historical issues have bogged us down for too long,” he said.

(END)

Unhappy with her employer of five years, Chikako Harada, 34, quit three months ago and has just started on a new job with a large Internet sales company. 

“My English language capabilities give me an advantage in Japan’s difficult job market,” she explained. 

Harada may not represent the norm among female workers, but experts say she reflects the new determination of young Japanese women to make their way in a difficult job market through flexibility. 

“Women in their twenties and thirties are redefining the old labour model that worshipped lifetime employment in the male-dominated corporate world,” says Midori Ito, head of Action Centre for Working Women, an organisation that supports females in the labour market. 

“By being able to handle different jobs women are ushering fresh ideas into a bleak job market,” says Ito. 

As Japan grapples with growing unemployment, with companies preferring  part-time hiring to beat the economic recession, women are emerging as important role models, say labour experts. 

Prof. Fumio Ohtake, researcher on labour issues at the prestigious Osaka University, explained to IPS that the employment crunch has turned attention on conventional female work profiles marked by the sort of flexibility that can beat shrinking job opportunities. 

“In the male-dominated corporate world, female workers have commonly been relegated to the sidelines. It’s time to review the old image and take a lesson from the way women juggle their careers to survive,” Ohtake said. 

Japan’s 1985 equal opportunity law is rarely invoked and companies have  continued discriminatory practices with impunity. As a result, Japan has consistently ranked as the most unequal of the world’s rich countries, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s “gender empowerment measure.” 

Japan’s lifelong employment system, viewed as the lynchpin in Japan’s postwar economic miracle, favoured men based on their traditional role as family breadwinners. 

But, as companies cut back against a long economic recession the traditional job market is steadily being replaced by part-time or contract jobs, where women may stand a better chance. 

Indeed, new job opportunities over the past few years have mostly been part-time, and contract jobs now account for almost 34 percent of Japan’s 63 million labour force, including unemployed people. 

Women now comprise 70 percent of part-time employees, working mostly in the welfare and service sectors as homecare providers and in the restaurant business where salaries are on an hourly basis with few benefits. 

Aware of rising public anxiety over jobs, the government in August pledged to examine the status of part-timers and non-regular workers with a view to getting companies to offer full-time employment status for employees on the rolls for more than five years. 

In October, Japan will also raise the minimum wage to seven dollars per hour in a bid to raise the income of part-time workers. 

But experts are critical of the new measures as being piecemeal and not supporting long-term changes in the job market. 

Ito has long campaigned for ‘decent work’, an international concept that calls for employment that respects the rights of workers. Ito beleives that the job crisis can become a catalyst for both male and female workers to lead stable and content lives. 

“Younger women such as Harada, with her determination to find new jobs, reflect the desire among single women – and now an increasing number of younger men – to cope with the risk of joblessness by developing new work ethics and standards,” she told IPS. 

Yoshiko Otsu, head of the Society of Working Women, an established organisation that provides support for female part-time workers, acknowledged to IPS the need for such changes to cope with the increasing hardships. 

“The current situation is difficult for women workers whose status makes them vulnerable. The government must support women who want to break free of traditional shackles, but the new laws that promise to force companies to give them full-time jobs are unreal,” she said. 

Otsu’s organisation fields hundreds of inquiries each day from female contract employees who complain of unpaid salaries and sexual and power harassment from their male bosses. 

She is critical of new regulations by the government, saying that companies could easily resort to terminating the services of their female workers before they complete five years – making women even more insecure in the job market. 

While concrete statistics for new opportunities for women have not been recorded, existing data by researchers indicate that females are becoming leaders in the niche for opportunities in community work. 

Miki Hara, owner of ‘Drop’, a non-profit company based in Yokohama that offers services to mothers with young children, agrees. “My own experience has shown that it is possible to be financially independent by being innovative,” she explained to IPS. 

“The idea of starting a company that provides space for new mothers and their children to do things together came to me after rising public debt led to new official policies that recognised that bureaucrats alone cannot solve community issues,” she said. “We have to learn to support ourselves.”   

Drop now employs five fulltime workers and more than 30 part-timers. The going is not easy but Hara says her company has a pioneering role in community work.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Sep 2 2012 (IPS)

Yumiko Yonekura, who survived last year’s massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated Tohoku in northeast Japan, has just launched ‘Hot Care Kesenuma’, a welfare company that provides special care for feeble elders in the affected region.

“The idea of starting my own company that deals with care giving emerged when I was in the evacuation centre after the disaster. People were helping each other to survive and this encouraged me to contribute to the devastated community,” she told IPS.

Yonekura, 52, lives in Kesenuma that recorded 1,300 dead or missing following the Mar. 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami when waves as high as 30 metres crashed into the picturesque towns and villages that dot the coast of Miyagi prefecture, about  200 km northeast of Tokyo.

Miyagi along with Iwate, Fukushima, Akita, Aomori and Yamagata form the Tohoku region that was worst affected by the tsunami and the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that followed.

Even before the disaster Tohoku had a depressed economy that caused the steady migration of its young and better educated population to the cities, leaving behind men and women well past their prime to struggle with family-run farming and fishing.

It took exceptional courage for Yonekura to start her company and win respect as a woman who could make a mark in disaster recovery in Tohoku, a backward and  tradition-bound region where the average age is 65 years.

Yuko Kusano, of the Sendai-based Jo-Net that supports female survivors, says Yonekura has proved that disasters can catalyse change in women – even if they have lived a major part of their lives in the patriarchal culture of Tohoku.

“The loss of family members, jobs and homes forced women in Tohoku to rethink traditional roles that expected them to be supportive wives and mothers,” said Kusano who assisted Yonekura at the beginning.

Achieving income sustainability and security are a major concern among gender experts who support the idea of female disaster survivors searching for financial independence.

Experts point out that most jobs available for women who no longer work in family farms or fishing are part-time, such as in reconstruction projects or as office workers in local companies that are cutting costs.

Women’s groups report that younger females, faced with a lack of jobs in their damaged towns, are forced to leave for the big cities where they end up in the sex industry.

“Long-term stability in a post-disaster society can be achieved only by planning carefully. Education, skill building and, most importantly, providing space for women to learn through discussions that they can do it, is the way to achieve gender-led recovery,” says Hiromi Narita, a gender expert.

Narita who leads seminars in computers and business skills at a single mothers forum, a section of the Miyagi local government said, “We have seen an increasing number of single women from the disaster areas joining our classes with the intention of finding new jobs or securing the ones they already hold down.”

While jobs for women have taken priority in disaster recovery, there is a need to provide emotional support since a large number of survivors are suffering from depression and anxiety.

Medical records filed from the Tohoku area indicate an increase in heart disease, hypertension and depression linked to inability to adjust to drastically altered lives in cramped and lonely evacuation centres.

The health and welfare ministry reported in April that the longevity of Japanese women, once ranked a high 85.90 years, has dropped by 0.04 years following the disaster. Females comprise half of the 345,000 people listed as displaced.

Rei Yamaya, who is a counsellor at the Morioka Women’s Centre, explains that her work with many of the women has revealed that trauma lingers but is ignored by authorities as a key concern in gender-based disaster recovery.

“In Tohoku’s conservative society, women rarely speak of depression or reach out for help for fear of appearing as bad wives or incompetent mothers. Reaching out to these survivors must, therefore, be sensitive to local cultural constraints,” she said.

Yamaya’s group has started cafés for women as a space where they can talk without fear of discrimination. “By eating tasty food along with their children, they break through their silent suffering,” she said.

The centre is supported by international funding, seen as an illustration of the lack of official support for trauma support programmes, other than tax concessions and other incentives to attract investment in Tohoku.

Yonekura agrees. Apart from providing health services to the elderly, she also plans to extend her work to provide emotional support, given the urgent needs in her community.

“I had to work hard to even convince my husband to allow me to start my own company. I can sympathise with female disaster survivors,” she said.

Says Kusano: “Basically, the women are starting from scratch, knowing that there is no returning to their former lives. We have to work together to learn to accept that a disaster can result in change for the better – learning new skills is the easy part.”

Community learning events are offered to raise awareness of the importance of the windmills built by the East Izu local government. Credit: Courtesy of East Izu government.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug 28 2012 (IPS)

Renewable energy is emerging as the “clinch deal” in Japan`s painful power crisis that pits the government and business against public demand for zero nuclear power. But experts say the going is easier said than done.

“Renewable energy is now seen as the way forward for a decision that is heavily political. But issues remain contentious,” said energy expert Professor Takao Kashiwage, the advisory head of the government`s New Energy Subcommittee.

Kashiwage points out that renewable energy sources – mainly solar, wind, small hydro and geothermal from hot springs – while seen as a solution are still fraught with uncertainties given their dependence on the vagaries of the weather or public support.

“For a leading economy such as Japan`s, I would support keeping nuclear power as a firm option even though we must work to lessen that percentage,” he told IPS.

He explained that research has shown windmills located on Japanese seashores produce power that drops during the summer when winds are usually not strong. And in winter, when daylight hours shrink, solar generated energy is less abundant.

Even geothermal, touted as a vital energy investment in Japan given the country’s abundant hot springs, is facing a battle with local resorts – the Kusatsu Hot Spring Resort association, on Kyushu island, announced opposition to developing the clean energy for fear that the precious mineral hot springs would decrease in supply.

Japan is set to unveil a new energy policy this month that aims to reduce the country`s dependence on nuclear power drastically by 2030. Nuclear power officially supplies 30 percent of national needs, a figure that has changed given the temporary halt of 52 of Japan`s 54 nuclear reactors.

The devastating Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011 has forced Japan to phase out nuclear power. High radiation spewed from the damaged reactors contaminated large swaths of farmland, the ocean and cities and forced tens of thousands of people out of that area in the northeast of the country.

The bitter test now for Japan is to ensure a stable supply of electricity from alternative energy sources to match the nuclear power output that provided over a trillion megawatts per hour.

Anti-nuclear advocates say they are determined to keep the pressure on the government, to force a pledge for zero nuclear power in the upcoming energy policy.

“Civic protests must highlight the actual economic benefits of their movement. Energy efficiency technology development in Japan will support economic growth and also reduce our dependence on power,” said Professor Masaru Kaneko, a leading opponent of nuclear power.

The cabinet sees energy policy as a choice between two scenarios. On one hand, zero nuclear power, which would boost renewable energy dramatically to 35 percent as well as increase the use of fossil fuels. The other is maintaining nuclear power, but at a reduced rate: less than 20 percent.

The first option is rejected by nuclear proponents, who warn that higher electricity charges as Japan imports fossil fuels and invests more on new electricity grids would lead to business decline and security risks in the next few years.

The Japan Association of Corporate Executives released a statement this month warning that it was against the national interest to abandon the peaceful use of nuclear power and scrap-related technologies.

The Japan Research Institute reports companies will face higher production costs given higher generation costs for renewables.

Indeed, electricity charges this month have risen, albeit slightly (less than 10 percent per kilowatt per hour). This is nevertheless expected to dampen business growth significantly and increase unemployment, while pushing companies to move abroad.

But politicians are reluctant to announce a solution, fearful of a backlash from the electorate. A government opinion poll released this week showed nearly 50 percent of respondents want Japan to abolish nuclear power by 2030, and also indicated that the more informed people are with regard to energy issues, the greater their support for reducing nuclear reliance.

Sumio Saito, an energy consultant with Wind Connect Japan, a new company that promotes alternative energy, says there is no turning back to nuclear energy, even though Japan will consume more fossil fuels in the short term.

“Fossil fuels are needed in this transition period as Japan moves away from nuclear power. This could be viewed as a ‘grace period’ in the short term despite the increase in greenhouse gas emissions as a result,” he said.

An illustration of the growing commitment to change are the efforts of the local government in East Izu, a hot spring resort located on the coastline of Shizuoka prefecture, 200 kilometres west of Tokyo.

Three windmills supply one-third of the town`s 6,300 households with energy that is first sold to the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Takumi Umehara of the local government explained to IPS the income from wind power sales is used to subsidise solar panels for households. The way forward, he said, is to raise awareness among the community of the need to support renewables.

“We have discovered that the only way to combat local opposition to renewables, from noisy or upset hot spring owners, for instance, is community understanding. A major part of this process is providing studies and research that show them the benefits of renewables,” said Umehara.

East Izu also has plans to develop geothermal power by tapping local hot springs.

Izu is a picturesque sea and mountain resort that is prone to earthquakes. “Our natural vulnerability gives us all the more reason to develop safe energy,” he pointed out.

Sachiko Masumura (79) was standing just two kilometres away from the hypocentre of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan over six and a half decades ago.

She lost her mother and two siblings to the horrific heat, flames and radiation that engulfed the prefecture on Aug. 6, 1945, instantly wiping out 120,000 people.

Three days later the United States dropped a second plutonium bomb, ‘Fat Man’, on Nagasaki, killing 74,000 people according to government records.

Thousands of others, like Masumura’s father, who died last year from leukaemia, suffered the after-effects of radiation for years.

Masumura’s son is disabled from a brain disorder, a disease she links to the long-term impact of radiation. Though it is certainly horrifying, her family’s story is not one of a kind.

The 67^th anniversary of the 1945 U.S. bombing, the world’s only nuclear attacks on a country, is felt most sharply by thousands of second generation bomb survivors, whom the Japanese government refuses to recognise as ‘official’ victims of the tragedy.

Kasuki Aoki, a second generation ‘hibakusha’, the Japanese term for atomic bomb survivor, told IPS that children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims face a double struggle: first, to gain recognition and insurance from the state as legitimate victims suffering from genetic side-effects of radiation; and secondly as bearers of their parents wishes for a nuclear-free world.

“My parents, whose lives were torn apart when the bomb was dropped, wanted (nothing more) than to see a world rid of nuclear weapons and radiation. This is a fight we children have to follow through by speaking up on their behalf,” Aoki, who now works in the Hiroshima Kyoritsu hospital, told IPS.

He also pointed out that the responsibility of carrying the torch for family members that suffered enourmous physical and mental damage from the bomb is daunting for the second generation, now in their fifties and sixties, who are themselves struggling to secure welfare protections from the state, such as free medical support.

The government justifies its position by stating that there is a lack of concrete evidence of health risks among the offspring of survivors of the explosion.

But those born after 1945 point to countless studies and reports by Japanese and U.S. research organisations that prove a much higher genetic risk of cancer for children of bomb survivors.

Further, scientific research conducted by numerous organisations including the Hiroshima Red Cross and Atomic-bomb Survivors hospital has proved time and again that those who were directly affected suffer higher rates of cancer, especially leukaemia, from exposure to high doses of radiation.

Hiroko Sakaguchi, who makes annual trips to the U.S. to speak out against nuclear weapons, states she has cousins who have died of cancer. Her own mother was affected by the bombing in Nagasaki that left her weakened and infirm for the rest of her life.

Shinichi Oonaka (64) is a second-generation hibakusha in Hiroshima and spokesperson for a recently formed group under the umbrella Japan Atomic Bomb Sufferers Organisation, one of the largest in Japan, with more than 200,000 members.

He told IPS that members of his group have begun to retire from their jobs and now find themselves facing a vulnerable future.

“While we had jobs we were entitled to regular medical check-ups, but that will no longer be the case,” he pointed out.

Oonaka plans to form a lobby to pressure the government to permit free and regular cancer check-ups by extending official hibakusha recognition to second-generation survivors.

But there are many obstacles to this process. Oonaka told IPS that second generation victims remain scattered and reluctant to speak up for better treatment, fearing the same social discrimination that plagued their parents for decades.

“Physical scarring and particularly the risk of cancer made marriage and jobs almost impossible for hibakusha,” said Oonaka, whose father, a former Japanese soldier stationed in Hiroshima city when the bomb was dropped, subsequently married a hibakusha, a common practice among first generation survivors.

In response to the government’s indifference, Masumura launched the Kogane Friendship Organisation for people with brain disorders in July. “ We cannot wait for the government to help us anymore,” she said.

“My death wish is to see my son, who represents the second generation of hibakusha, live independently,” she told IPS.

High-profile international personalities, including the eldest grandson of former U.S. President Harry Truman, who ordered the bombings, attended the memorials this week in the two cities.

Clifton Truman, attending the functions out of respect for the dead, listened to the stories of the survivors and said, “ It is now my responsibility to do all I can to make sure we do not use nuclear weapons again.”

Oonaka says he is content to hear such comments from the former enemy, which he views as a step towards hibakusha’s dream of ensuring such suffering is never repeated.

(END)

In Japan, anti-nuke protests draw tens of thousands of average citizens. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug 9 2012 (IPS)

A new wave of anti-nuclear protests in Japan this summer, sparked by the disastrous meltdown at a power plant last year, suggests that civil society is no longer willing to allow the government to take the lead in deciding the nation’s energy policy.

A clear example of the impact of grassroots activism was the decision on Aug. 3 by leading prosecutors, after months of deliberation, to accept criminal complaints against Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Japan’s largest utility corporation that operated the now-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor.

“The new move by prosecutors is a cornerstone in our long and hard fight to force TEPCO to face its criminal responsibility. It is an unprecedented achievement for civil organisations in Japan,” Hiromi Ebisuwa, a veteran activist in Fukushima who is leading the criminal complaint, told IPS.

The lives of tens of thousands of residents, including young children and infants, were drastically affected when they were forced to flee dangerous radiation exposure after the nuclear accident at Fukushima, which followed a massive earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11 last year.

Since Jun 1,300 residents in Fukushima prefecture have filed complaints with the Fukushima District Public Prosecutor’s Officer. They have identified 33 people, including former executives at TEPCO and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, as culprits in the crisis, for failing to install anti-tsunami protections in the nuclear reactor.

The criminal complaints centre on negligence resulting in death or injury and the violation of the environmental pollution offense law.

Yet another example of the spreading anti-nuclear mood in Japan is a complaint filed against former senior Tokyo Electric Company (TEC) officials by a citizen’s group at the Kanazawa District Public Prosecutor’s office in Ishikawa prefecture.

TEC is debating re-opening its Shiga nuclear power plant in Ishikawa, located on the northwestern coast.

For Aileen Miyoko Smith, head of Green Action, a leading local environmental organisation, the latest developments in the anti-nuclear movement mark a critical juncture in Japan’s energy policy.

“The results of strenuous grassroots efforts after Fukushima, unprecedented in recent decades, are now (visible) in the Japanese political and social spheres,” she told IPS.

She, like other experts, believe the horror of the Fukushima accident, coupled with public outrage about the tragedy, contributed significantly to the temporary halt of operations in all of Japan’s 50 commercial reactors.

National energy security

Today, despite the summer heat, Japan is operating on less than three percent of its nuclear power, another major development for a country that has long touted nuclear energy as the lynchpin of its national economy.

Still, the coast is not clear for protestors. In July, despite continuous public opposition and demonstrations, the government, pointing to the need for secure energy supplies and with the consent of the cash-strapped local Oi government in western Japan, restarted two of the region’s four reactors.

Japan, the world’s third largest economy, currently imports 100 percent of its oil and coal supplies. Nuclear energy provides almost 30 percent of national needs, a figure that represents the country’s desire for energy self-sufficiency.

Indeed, the debate on prioritising between phasing out nuclear energy versus boosting economic growth is now a critical public issue—a July survey by the Japan Sustainable Institute showed that over 80 percent of those polled were against nuclear power.

However, more than 50 percent support a 2050 deadline for closing down all reactors, which illustrates the fact that concern over national energy supplies dilutes the urgency for immediate action and alternatives.

Still, breakthroughs by activists have been monumental.

The local government’s decision to re-start the Oi power plant in May was preceded by months of painful wrangling between national and local governments.

The final decision came only after the government pledged to promote higher safety levels under an independent nuclear regulatory authority that is now investigating the threat from a fault line found underneath the Oi reactors.

Now, leading intellectuals such as Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe and former prime minister Naoto Kan have joined the weekly protests.

As the movement gains steam, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was forced last week to issue a statement that he will meet the organisers of the weekly protests, a drastic change from his stance hithero, which, for many activists, was characterised by his comment, quoted in various local weeklies, that the demonstrations were simply “nosiy”.

For the past two months Misae Red Wolf has been a key organiser of the weekly anti-nuclear demonstrations that snake past government offices in Tokyo, sometimes drawing more than 100,000 people demanding the abolition of nuclear power.

Addressing a crowd in the searing summer heat, Misae demanded the immediate halt of operations in the two newly re-activated nuclear plants and the overall abolition of nuclear energy in Japan.

“Grassroots activism is the way forward. We have been waiting too long for a reliable answer from the government, which continues to ignore the voices of the people who have suffered too heavily from the nuclear accident,” she said.

Eiji Oguma, a prominent Japanese sociologist and professor at Keio University, describes the popular demonstrations as a sign of growing distrust of the country’s political and bureaucratic leadership following the Fukushima accident, and frustration at policies that do not reflect the will of the people.

“Dissatisfaction with politicians has accumulated over 20 years of economic stagnation. The Fukushima disaster and the decision to restart Oi has brought it to a critical point,” a July article in the prominent Asia Pacific Journal quoted him as saying.

The growing rift between politicians and their electorates led to the launch this July of the Green Party, which stands on an anti-nuclear platform and promotes welfare stability for the elderly.

Akira Miyabe, spokesperson for the Green Party, which will debut when it presents its candidates for next year’s Upper House elections on the proportional representation platform, explained to IPS, “The new political party represents a fresh start in Japan.”

“Green Party involvement in gathering criminal complaints against TEPCO for the Fukushima accident is aimed at changing the cozy ties between government and business that has been the (driving force) behind nuclear power in Japan,” he said.

(END)

To meet the demands of a rapidly ageing population, Japan has loosened its notoriously strict immigration and nursing regulations to accept foreign caregivers. But new evidence indicates deep cracks in those piecemeal gestures.

This month, in a surprise move, two qualified Indonesian care workers who had arrived in 2008 to obtain Japan’s difficult caregiving licence, left the country. They were among 35 Indonesians who had passed the exam and found employment here.

In an interview with Japanese television, one of the workers, Peramono, cited family concerns before he left Japan. “My wife is asking me to return to the family,” he explained simply.

The Indonesian caregiver had entered Japan under a bilateral economic partnership agreement (EPA) between the two countries. Japan has signed similar EPAs with the Philippines and Vietnam, unique agreements that officially aim to boost economic ties and under which Japan has agreed to accept foreign nationals for healthcare training.

The Indonesian immigrants’ decision to leave, though it represented only a very small percentage of foreign workers, shocked Japanese officials, policy makers and caregiving companies, all of whom are grappling with the daunting prospect of supporting a graying society with inadequate help.

Twenty-three percent of Japanese citizens are over 65 years, making the country home to the world’s oldest population. Japan already needs 200,000 nurses and is projected to lack 1.27 million caregivers by 2025.

Worst of all, records indicate a growing number of “lonely” deaths among the elderly (people over 65 years of age), who die alone and whose bodies are not found for several days. That number has now reached 15,600 annually, according to the Nissey Research Institute, an insurance company.

In an effort to tackle the problem, the Japanese government has rushed to implement new regulations over the past two years. For instance, companies that hire foreigners are required to pay wages equal to those earned by local employees.

Under the various EPAs, foreign caregivers are also given three-year visas to prepare for the state exam and, if they pass, are offered the chance to stay in the country indefinitely.

“But,” pointed out Waka Asato, associate professor at the prestigious Kyoto University, “the Indonesians’ decision to return home even after passing the national test is a clear indication that Japan is not tackling the situation properly.”

Asato, an expert on foreign caregivers, said Japan lacks the proper social and economic infrastructure to accept newcomers, especially Asians, into the growing caregiving market.

Some of the main obstacles, he explained to IPS, are the extremely difficult national licence exam, which foreigners are expected to take in the Japanese language.

Thirty-five out of the 94 Indonesians that took the test passed in March this year. It was the first time that Indonesian and Filipino caregivers, arriving under EPAs, had taken the test.

Norio Tokunaga, head of Kuwaoen, a large nursing company, explained the toughest issue is Japanese laws that do not permit foreign trainees second chances if they fail the national test.

“After three years of gruelling work and study, they have to take this test, which even the Japanese find difficult. When they fail they have to leave. This is a key reason for the lack of motivation among foreigners,” he said.

Yet another problem is laws that do not recognise foreign trainees as regular staff during their training period, even though they have basic skills and are learning on the job.

“The Indonesians who apply have basic nursing licences in their home countries, skills which they deepen while on the job in Japan. But when they are not permitted to take on duties like the regular employees, they feel left out,” Tokunaga told IPS.

He explained Japanese laws require three caregivers per resident in the nursing facility. But when foreign trainees are not included in this system they become ” invisible” in the company and at risk of missing out on economic merits such as annual bonuses.

Experts contend these issues prove that the caregiving legal system does not meet the needs of the industry.

“They are not treated as individuals with residential rights of their own. It is an illustration of official discrimination against foreigners that is deep-rooted in Japan,” said Manabu Shimasawa, an immigration expert at Akita University.

Japan is debating introducing a new welfare tax to meet the country’s expanding medical and social needs. It is also considering increasing payments to nursing and care service companies. New technology for the elderly is booming, including multi-functional robots that can talk and feed the infirm.

“Still,” says Asato, “the bottom line is that the elderly need a loving hand extended by a professional caregiver to help them lead emotionally and physically stable lives. This basic need is ignored by the government.”

(END)

For the past two decades Masao Ishiji (59), has been fighting tooth and nail to ban the operation of four nuclear reactors that dot the western coastline of Oi in the Fukui prefecture facing the Japan Sea.

Earlier this week, that desperate battle reached a critical front. When the Oi municipal assembly passed a new resolution Monday to restart Unit 3 and 4 reactors that had been closed for a year for stress tests, anti-nuclear activists knew they had reached a crucial juncture in their fight to eradicate nuclear power from the country.

“The new Oi decision is a blow to the anti-nuclear movement,” explained Yuki Sekimoto of Greenpeace, Japan. ” It is also a stark reminder of the excruciating position faced by the local residents. They have to chose between their jobs or stopping nuclear power, a very unfair situation.”

Indeed, Mayor Shinobu Tokioka, who now faces the difficult task of approving the local assembly decision, told the Japanese media on Monday that his main consideration was the potential damage to the local economy brought on by a prolonged halt of the reactors.

Local surveys conducted by Ishiji and his supporters from Wakasa, a town of 9000 people sandwiched between the Oi reactors, indicate residents are torn between loosing their jobs and facing a possible accident similar to the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe caused by a massive earthquake and tsunami last March.

More than 90 percent of the 400 people polled said they were concerned about the lack of a safe evacuation plan in the face of another earthquake severe enough to damage reactors.

But the risk of ordinary people like local shopkeepers and innkeepers, who cater to the nuclear industry, loosing their jobs, also remains a grave threat.

“These are their biggest concerns. The Oi decision to restart the reactors has created a tense situation in the surrounding areas,” Ishiji reported at a large meeting of anti-nuclear NGOs in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Trend of nuclear-powered employment

The Oi nuclear reactors were built in the mid 1970s when local towns and villages comprised of farmers and fisherfolk grappled with a declining youth population and a faltering economy.

Ishiji said he used to work for the local forest industry that was hit by cheap timber imports from Asian countries.

“Japanese timber could not compete with Asian resources, leading to the neglect of our forests. The younger people moved to the big cities in search of better paying jobs, leaving behind a vulnerable local economy,” he explained.

During that period, many of Japan’s cash-strapped local economies turned to nuclear power plants, which rich utility companies and government bureaucrats were touting as a safe way for Japan to pursue economic growth.

The building of reactors was accompanied by generous subsidies from the central government for the construction of roads, schools and other infrastructure that brought jobs and revitalised the local economy.

But the destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor last year was a drastic jolt to the long tradition of ‘nuclear-powered’ employment. Tens of thousands suffered radioactive contamination, and businesses and agriculture faced bankruptcy.

The incident thus created widespread anti-nuclear public sentiment – more than 70 percent of Japanese now report they do not trust nuclear power, making local politicians wary of restarting nuclear reactors in their constituencies. In fact, 50 operational nuclear reactors have closed down since early May.

Oi’s reactors are owned by Kansai Electric Power Company, the second largest utility company after Tokyo Electric Company, which is now saddled with debt after the disastrous Fukushima nuclear accident.

Utility companies have warned of looming power cuts this summer as a result of the nuclear power plant closures. Nuclear power currently provides at least 30 percent of national energy and was set to increase to 50 percent, until the accident last March brought things to a standstill.

Professor Takao Kashiwagi, expert at Japan’s prestigious Tokyo Technology Institute and a governmental adviser, pointed out that Fukushima has paved the way for more stringent safety measures for nuclear reactors, including higher tsunami barriers and the involvement of independent experts to monitor utility plants.

“Japan’s energy security must not be a political issue,” he told IPS. “The restart of nuclear reactors must have firm leadership based on concrete scientific research,” he said.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, say they remain undaunted by the Oi decision, which has become a watershed moment in their activism.

Aileen Smith from Green Action, a leading environment organisation, said that Fukushima was a brutal awakening for many to nuclear power’s fatal toll on humanity and the environment.

Additionally, “Fighting against nuclear power is closely linked to supporting employment,” said Ishiji who is now advocating for the development of alternative energy sources in Fukui.

(END)

The discovery of radioactive contamination in ‘shiitake’ mushrooms grown in Manazuru town, Kanagawa prefecture, some 300 km away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has raised public clamour for compensation.

Soon after the discovery, on Apr. 5, Kanagawa authorities directed farmers and organisations dealing with agricultural produce not to ship shiitake mushrooms, a delicacy prized for its nutritive and medicinal properties in East Asian countries.

Some of the Manazuru mushroom samples were found to have over 141 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kg, while samples taken from Murata, Miyagi Prefecture, showed cesium levels as high as 350 becquerels.

The discovery comes as residents of areas surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi reactor, hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11, 2011, are raising compensation demands from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Residents of the once scenic Odaka village, located 10 km from the plant, who have been forced to abandon their farms, schools and homes, have pinned hopes for adequate recompense on a lawsuit they filed against TEPCO in February.

“The lawsuit is the only thing we have to give us some meaning to our lives after we lost our homes, livelihoods, community and the trust we had for the authorities,” Susumi Yamasawa, who heads a local citizen group that has filed the suit, told IPS.

Yamasawa, 69, a farmer who had cultivated rice for decades in Odaka said: “Life was peaceful and we did not worry too much about risks from the nuclear plant nearby until the accident.”

“The hardest is seeing our close-knit community disintegrate,” Yamasawa said. “Youth and children have left the area to avoid the radiation risk. The future is bleak.”

Yamasawa’s lawsuit adds to a whole clutch filed by citizens affected by the nuclear accident who are blaming the government and TEPCO for the predicament they find themselves in.

“Patience is running out,” Ryuzo Sato, an Odaka resident, told IPS. He feels that the availability of temporary housing, monetary reimbursements and living allowances can never fully compensate for what the residents have lost.

Official reported last month that TEPCO may have to pay out 56.2 billion dollars – a figure that could escalate – in compensation for business and financial losses from the nuclear accident. More than 1.7 million people have been affected to varying degrees.

Hiroyuki Kawai, who is leading 42 shareholders in their bid for compensation from TEPCO for negligence at the tsunami-sparked disaster at the plant, said senior managers must be made to pay personally.

The TEPCO shareholders are suing 27 executives of the company for 68 billion dollars, a record sum in the world.

Kawai, who has represented several anti-nuclear movements in Japan, said the case is aimed at fixing individual responsibility for the drastic mistakes made by members of the TEPCO management.

“TEPCO failed to take into account earthquake and tsunami warnings that were made by researchers who pointed to the huge risk posed on the Fukushima nuclear reactors from a disaster…The accident clearly points to negligence and irresponsibility on the part of individuals who represent the management,” Kawai said.

Yui Kimura, a shareholder, told media on Mar. 27 that the plaintiffs had repeatedly raised the issue of risks to the nuclear plant from an earthquake and tsunami, but the management ignored their concerns.

“The Japanese system is such that TEPCO is not investigated by prosecutors for their mistakes. Our decision to go to courts is to force the individuals who made the mistakes to take personal responsibility and pay from their own pockets,” she said.

TEPCO has assigned pay and bonus cuts on its employees and set up panels to collect compensation. The utility has borrowed public money and is reporting a 7.6 billion dollar loss after the decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

Kawai said the crux of the lawsuit is to reform the Japanese system which allows failed directors to hide behind the corporate wall, stepping down from their positions when they make a mistake, but nothing more.

“The only way to remedy an unfair the system is to get the people who made the wrong decisions to pay for their mistakes using their own assets,” Kawai said.

Reports issued after the accident illustrate lack of an emergency manual in TEPCO to deal with a severe accident and blatant disregard for safety measures in the plants including safety drills.

“When we used to protest against nuclear power, we were looked down upon by the public as strange people,” said Kimura. “Now they know the truth and support us. Nuclear power is about vested interests. We must stand up and protect life.”

The Fukushima crisis could have been prevented if TEPCO had carried out simple preventive measures, such as placing an emergency power source on higher ground, Kawai said.

Radiation leaked over a large area, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes and rendering farming impossible in an ever-widening radius – as illustrated by the radioactive shiitake mushrooms in Kanagawa prefecture, part of which falls in the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area.

On Mar. 17, a government panel recommended that about 74,000 dollars be paid to each individual unable to return home for the next five years because of radiation contamination – though this is seen as inadequate.

The money is also intended to compensate for the mental suffering of evacuees whose homes “are in a zone where it is difficult to return for a long time,” said the compensation panel under the ministry of education, culture, sports, science and technology.

Victims who fall in that zone will receive the full value of their real estate, as calculated before the disaster struck, if the recommendations of the panel are followed.

Japan’s plan to resume official development assistance (ODA) to Myanmar, announced this week, is problematic for a country faced with a dauntingly large disaster recovery budget for areas hit by the earthquake and tsunami last year.

But proponents of renewing ODA to Myanmar (also known as Burma) argue that the move is important for Japan, a country that seeks to boost its diplomatic clout in the world through development funding.

In an editorial in December 2011, the ‘Nikkei’, Japan’s leading financial daily, criticised the nation’s falling aid budget – Japan has slipped to sixth place from being topmost international donor in the 1990s – pointing out that ODA has traditionally earned the country international respect and economic growth.

The editorial said that “the resumption of foreign aid for Myanmar is expected to further promote democratisation of the southeastern country as well as to help Japanese firms establish a foothold in that market.”

The contrasting viewpoint, however, questions the prudence of hiking ODA against Japan’s own economic problems – growth for the past decade hovers at less than two percent of gross national product.

Critics point to the looming expenditure, estimated to be over 222 billion dollars to rebuild damaged infrastructure and business in the earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern coastal areas, as a key national priority.

Indeed, former prime minister Naoto Kan had declared after the Mar. 11 disaster last year that Japan will be cutting its foreign aid budget of around five billion dollars further to help fund a supplementary budget for reconstruction.

Japan has been slashing its ODA budget for the past 14 years to cope with increasing public expenditure to meet the needs of an ageing population, reducing fiscal debt and a high value yen that is encouraging Japanese companies to move to cheaper manufacturing sites abroad.

Prof. Kei Nemoto, expert on Myanmar and Southeast Asia, contends that domestic pressures will mean Japan will pledge ODA to Myanmar on a piecemeal basis rather than go ahead with large new commitments.

“Taking a decision to extend aid to Myanmar is an extension of Japanese diplomacy that is closely aligned with Western policies that support the democratic process in the country by investing in its economic development,” said Nemoto who teaches at the Sophia University in Tokyo.

“Yet, Japanese support will be cautious given its own domestic restraints,” Nemoto added.

Japan is planning to announce a restart of yen loans to Myanmar when its civilian leader, President Thein Sein, visits Tokyo later this month to attend the Japan-Mekong Summit.

Under review also is the cancelling or partial waiver of Myanmar’s debt of 5.8 billion dollar development loan extended for projects before aid – both loans and grants – was frozen in 2003.

Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba, commenting on the latest election results in Myanmar, said Japan is committed to backing democracy and national reconciliation based on political and economic reforms now enacted in the country.

Gemba praised the victory of the National League for Democracy, led by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in the by-elections held over the weekend.

Analyst Toshihiro Kudo at the Institute of Developing Economies, a quasi-government think-tank, forecasts a fast developing bilateral relationship between Japan and Myanmar that will focus on promoting economic ties.

“Cooperation with Myanmar is important for Japan that is attracted to the country’s natural resources and young labour that can support Japanese companies that are investing abroad,” he opined.

On the democratic and human rights front, Kudo explained that Japan will be supporting more reforms but, in keeping with its traditional stance of pushing for compromise politics, will prefer to wait for results rather than take a hardline approach.

“In contrast to the Western push for human rights improvements, Tokyo’s diplomacy with conflict-ridden countries follows a more carrot approach with promises of rewards for democratic steps,” he said.

A step in this direction is Tokyo’s plan to provide funds to set up a Japan friendship centre in Yangon that will serve as a platform to promote technological and cultural cooperation.

Experts view the new structure, to be established later this year, as setting the stage to include educational projects to foster the modernisation and globalisation of the isolated country.

The gentler approach, according to Nemoto, will serve Japan to regain its presence in Southeast Asia, a thrust that is needed against the growing influence of China during the past decade.

Grassroots organisations based in Tokyo that have worked long on environment destruction in Myanmar and human rights violations among its ethnic minorities hope that the resumption of Japanese aid will be linked to development that respects people.

Yuki Akimoto, expert on Myanmar at Mekong Watch, a Japanese non-governmental organisation that works to prevent negative environmental and social impacts of development in the region points to stoppage of Japanese aid for hydro-electricity projects in keeping with the international aid embargo.

“We assume Japanese yen loans will be earmarked to revisit the construction of the (Salween) dam, a project that will be monitored closely by us,” she said.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi and - -
TOKYO, Mar 7 2012 (IPS)

Devastating as the Tohoku earthquake was it gave the local women of the remote region an opportunity to come into their own and take on leadership roles in an essentially patriarchal country.

“Women in Tohoku were viewed as helpless in comparison to their counterparts in the big cities,” says Prof Akiko Nakajima, specialist in gender-based architecture at the Wayo Women’s University, Chiba. “The disaster has broken this myth,” she said.

Tohoku consists of the six prefectures of Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi and Yamagata – all of them battered by the Mar. 11, 2011 earthquake and the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that followed.

The women of Tohoku, a region with a harsh climate, have traditionally pitched in to help out with the heavy work of farming and fishing, most of it now destroyed by radioactive contamination.

“With more time away from their gruelling work schedules, rural women are speaking out, seeking new jobs to support their families and taking leadership in recovery,” Nakajima told IPS.

Nakajima pointed to women’s groups in Tohoku and Tokyo lobbying for gender-based recovery and rallying to join anti-nuclear campaigns after the disastrous nuclear accident.

Fearing for the safety of their children, Tohoku’s women joined others in demanding their evacuation and the shutdown of all nuclear plants in Japan.

A landmark in their protests was the October-November sit-downs in front of government offices in Tokyo that Ayako Oga, a female activist in Fukushima, described as “women demanding development that puts protecting human lives at the forefront.”

An outcome of the protests is a government concession to treat gender as a separate category in official disaster recovery documents.

“Till Tohoku happened, Japan’s disaster protection and mitigation policies had failed to mention women as a separate sector with specific needs,” says Akiko Domoto, governor of the Chiba prefecture, a suburb of Tokyo.

“The change, treating gender separately in many official platforms on disasters, lays the foundation for us to forge ahead with even more concrete support for women survivors,” she said.

Domoto, one of Japan’s first female governors, is known for her work in promoting women’s rights and health activism.

A key initiative in the growing momentum for gender equality in disaster management is the recording of women’s voices from affected areas.

“There has been a lot of lesson learning as far as I am concerned,” said Fumie Abe, 45, whose home in Minami Sanriku was swept away by the tsunami. “My daily life is no longer what it was before and I am now a stronger person.”

Abe was a member of a group of ten women who had gathered for a community meeting to share their disaster experiences and voice their opinions towards recovery.

The data collected by women’s groups indicated, for instance, that they suffered heavily from lack of privacy and security in shelters and also faced gender discrimination in gaining financial aid and livelihoods.

Kyoko Sato, who lost all she owned to the tsunami, now supports her family by working as a part-time manicurist in a city located more than a 100 miles away.

“Life is now unbelievably different. Despite worrying about the future, women are learning to speak out,” she said.

The recording session, supported by financial aid from Japanese gender activist groups, helped rural women gain computer skills and use digital communication to document and publicise their findings.

Nakajima traces part of the success to Japan passing an equal employment opportunity law in 1986 that fostered an increase in the number of working women and sensitised the public to the need for female empowerment.

An important development following the passage of the law – that allowed Japan to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women – was the establishment of gender equality centres across Japan.

Yoko Sakurai, head of the Disaster and Women Centre in Yokohama, says the Tohoku disaster catalysed recognition of the special needs of women through the gender equality centres.

She told IPS that she is now lobbying for a new regulation that would make gender equality offices across the country central to all disaster protection activities.

“Gender equality offices play a big part in providing special support for women during disasters. The next step is to put this work on the official agenda,” Sakurai said.

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