The government in China reportedly is modifying the country’s birth control policy in Sichuan because of all the children lost in the recent tragic earthquake there. Because of China’s tough birth control policies, many of the young school students who died in the quake were only children.

Wang Xuegui is a 34-year-old villager who lived in the quake-stricken Yingxiu Town. Both of his two daughters were killed in the earthquake; their bodies were found under the rubble of their collapsed school building. Wang said he was still young and hoped to have children again. He hasn’t talked about this with his wife, who is recovering from a mental breakdown after the loss of their children.

Schools suffered disporportionally large damage in the earthquake, and because of China’s tough birth control policies, many of the students who died in the quake were only children. For many parents who lost a child, they lost all.

According to a new regulation issued by the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Commission, families like Wang Xuegui’s that lost their children or had children disabled in the earthquake are permitted to give birth again. Moreover, families of children who were killed or disabled in the quake and have at least one parent older than 50 will now receive an annual government subsidy of 600 yuan for each parent. Earthquake-impacted families (families that sustained injuries, deaths, or whose property was damaged) that have “illegal” children are no longer required to pay their “social rearing fee”, a fine imposed on families that have unauthorized children. Families that had illegal children of whom only one survived the earthquake can now qualify for the “Single Child Parents Privilege Certificate” and enjoy government subsidies reserved originally only for single-child-families.

Via Danwei

The same Washington Post reporter who gave us Jero earlier in the week (Blaine Harden) is reporting on the Japanese labor shortage due to the greying of Japan and a hesitancy to increase immigration to deal with the problem.

Now Japan faces a fundamental threat to its future — demographic decline that experts say will delete 70 percent of its workforce by 2050.  Inside the government, there is growing agreement that Japan can head off disastrous population decline by significantly increasing immigration. Japan has the world’s highest proportion of people older than 65 and the world’s smallest proportion of children younger than 15. Without immigration in substantial numbers, it will soon run perilously low on people of working age.

Yet among highly developed countries, Japan has always ranked near the bottom in the percentage of foreign-born residents. In the United States, about 12 percent are foreign-born; in Japan, just 1.6 percent. Most immigrants here are from Asia or South America. The largest number come from Korea (about 600,000 people), followed by China and Brazil. The Brazilians are mostly of mixed Japanese descent.

Yet there is little or no political will here to persuade or prepare the public to accept a sizable influx of foreigners. “There are people who say that if we accept more immigrants, crime will increase,” Fukuda said. “Any sudden increase in immigrants causing social chaos [and] social unrest is a result that we must avoid by all means.”

There is another way for Japan to slow population decline and maintain its workforce: persuade more Japanese women to marry, have children and remain on the job. The percentage of women who choose to stay single has doubled in the past two decades. When they do marry and have children, they drop out of the workforce at far higher rates than in other wealthy countries. To that end, the government is working on a bill to require companies to offer shorter hours to parents with young children and to stop requiring them to work overtime.

One concept you encounter quite a lot in Japan is sekinin, meaning responsibility or duty.

While the James Clavell cliches of Japanese who are bound by the bushido-esque code of honor aren’t very accurate when applied to the country today, I have noticed that the idea of sekinin o toru, or taking responsibility for something, does seem to be an important aspect of the Japanese character.

This can take many forms, with one of the most visible being the way students take responsibility for cleaning their own classrooms, including the toilets. Virtually all cleaning in Japanese schools is done by the students, who must learn to either take pride in their cleaning skills or study in a dirty classroom.

The idea of sekinin is important in a business environment, too, and when some new job presents itself to us at here at J-List, I’m always interested in the way our Japanese staff divides the work into logical sections and assigns different parts to each person, so everyone knows who’s in charge of what.

Having a person’s name associated with a job is one way to create a sense of pride, and in restaurants it’s common to see a little clipboard hanging in the restroom indicating which employee has last cleaned, so everyone knows who is or isn’t doing his job properly if there’s a problem. I often wonder whether some of these little innovations might not be imported back to the West?

in an apparent chemistry experiment gone awesome, a 14 year old girl managed to not only to give herself considerable trouble breathing, but forced an evacuation of her apartment complex. according to police this is only an isolated incident in a series of similar experimentation through out the nation. driven to recreating this inspiring chemical reaction by educational websites around the world, many japanese both young and old are racing to combine household cleaning products in order to artificially create the chemical responsible for odiferous flattus.

when reached for comment about how and why so many people around japan would be performing their own trails with household cleaning chemicals when the results, in addition to being well known, are also so stinky; the head of a tokyo based group specializing in this field gave this observation…

“It’s easy, and everyone can do it,”

finally a family friendly way to introduce the children to the wonders of science through empirical observation of molecule creation. think of how little taro’s eyes will light up when you tell him you’re going to show him how to create a smell like a bad fart in an enclosed space. that rebellious and angsty girl airi will finally find something she could do when she is alone. your spouse could learn a good prank to pull next time you forget your anniversary. why not just surprise everybody and do it yourself? it just takes one’s breath away when considering all the people that could benefit from testing this home school biochemical reaction.

just remember for the sake of your neighbors, please put up a notice like the one listed in the article. it is always good to let the people living around you know that might not want to partake in your pursuit of knowledge that they may need to keep a wide berth. sort of like a mythbuster’s “science content” warning.

Travelling by train turned out to be more lucrative than a visit to a pachinko parlour for some commuters last week, it was revealed yesterday.

Commuters at Hisayaodori, Nagoya “got back 10,000-yen and 5,000-yen bills as change instead of 1,000-yen bills after a station employee mistakenly put the wrong notes in a subway ticket vending machine last Friday.”

Authorities said the station lost about 250,000 yen over three hours and that only one passenger had returned the money, which was when station staff first found out about the mistake.

According to subway officials, an assistant stationmaster, 57, placed 10,000 and 5,000 yen notes in the space for 1,000 notes by mistake. The vending machine cannot detect differences in notes, the officials said.

While some corners of the internet decry as a sign of the times (and presumably the imminent collapse of civilised society) the fact that only passenger returned the money, I have to ask, is it really surprising?

We all know that if you drop your wallet in Japan, you stand a better chance of getting it back than you would in a lot of other countries. But is there really a great well of civic rectitude that’s running dry? A senior Japanese acquaintance of mine remarked that on an individual and personal basis, each person is accountable, and therefore feels pressure to do the right thing. But anonymously and collectively, (and importantly, unaccountably) people are selfish chancers whatever their nationality.

CNN.com/Asia has a report claiming that business women in Japan are paying up to $50,000 a night to spend time with hosts that CNN referst to as “geisha guys.”

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) — At first glance, the man and woman at the nightclub look like any other couple on a date. He flirts and pours champagne. She looks at him and laughs.

Businesswomen in Japan pay up to $50,000 a night for male companionship from “hosts” like Yunosuke.

This isn’t a date, though. It’s business.

The woman, a successful executive, has joined a growing number of professional women in Japan in forking out from $1,000 to $50,000 a night for male companionship.

5 million yen per night for male companionship?

I guess it must be true. . . CNN wouldn’t post a report that is a load of BS, would it?

Thanks to John Serdy.

Today is the start of a new fiscal year in Japan and a host of new changes are set to kick in. . . some good for consumers and others not so good.

Gasoline
Gasoline prices will drop by about 25 yen per liter.

Clinical treatment fees
Costs for emergency, after-hours clinical treatment will go up.

Dependent elderly health insurance
Anybody 75 and older who is a dependant of their offspring will have to start paying health insurance from October.

Metabolic syndrome health checks
Medical clinics will begin offering regular check-ups and health advice related to metabolic syndrome for people 40 to 74.

National Pension bite
Will rise 310 yen per month to 14,410 yen for everyone.

Pension rights of divorced spouses
Spouses automatically entitled to half of pension payments for the term of their marriage.

Car liability insurance
Will rise for all vehicles by an average 22.2 percent.

New recycling laws
More separation categories for PET bottles.

Rewards for oldters who give up their driver’s licences
Oldsters who surrender licences will be entitled to discounts and higher savings rates.

Recording of interrogations
Suspect questioning to be recorded in audio and video.

Recognition of A-Bomb victims
Relaxation of rules will exapand the roles of recognized victims.

Part-time workers
No more wage discrimination against part-timers who perform duties of full-timers.

I caught a report on TV the other day about a unique problem Japanese companies are facing. It seems that the best young employees aren’t that interested in working for companies like Honda, Mitsubishi and Sony, and instead are looking to join Google, Nike, Nokia or Microsoft if they can.

These are gaishikei or “foreign capital” companies, a term which is loaded with images of open, flexible corporate culture where individuality and fresh ideas are encouraged rather than hammered down like the proverbial “standing nail.”

While working for a Japanese company offers more stability and less fear of sudden risutora (layoffs, from the word “restructure”), young people today prefer to work in an environment where they can make a more active contribution and distinguish themselves. The trend is supposedly happening in China, too, where U.S. firms like Motorola and Intel and are proving better at winning top applicants than Japanese companies.

One job-seeker interviewed said, “I have the impression that in U.S. and European companies, I might be fortunate enough to have an idea of mine accepted and turned into a product, allowing me to see the fruits of my hard work. But this would be difficult in a Japanese organization.”

It’s a long-term crisis for Japanese companies, I’d say: the kind of bold energy that led to game-changing ideas like YouTube or even Toys R Us just couldn’t have emerged from inside Japan, since so many industries are dominated by large, hide-bound companies.

There’s another reason Japanese might prefer to work for foreign-based companies: being able to say that you work at BMW or Intel is extremely kakko ii, and anyone with a career with a well-known foreign company will surely become popular with members of the opposite sex.

Something to think about the next time you are waiting for a train. . . An 18-year-old boy has been arrested for killing a man he pushed from a train platform into the path of an oncoming train. Apparently it was an act of random violence.

The teen was quoted by police as saying:

“I thought that if I killed someone I could go to prison. I didn’t care who it was.”

A Japan Talk podcast listener named Billy wrote in to let us know about a post he did in May of last year about an experience he has apprehending a chikan at a Tokyo train station. I found the story pretty amazing and Billy kindly gave us permission to reprint it here.

You can check out Billy’s blog here.

Chikan!

On my way back from work today, I passed through a very busy train station in Ikebukuro. While switching trains, I noticed a woman chasing after a man and pulling at his arm. They were yelling at each other and making a scene, but none of the hundreds of people around them seemed to take notice or even care… I thought I should do something.

I ran to them and asked the woman if she was ok… she told me she wasn’t… at this moment the man broke free from her grip and ran through the crowd to the exit. I took off after him and dragged him back to the woman. since my Japanese is terrible, I was looking for someone to help, but only a couple of people came, and no one spoke English. One of them, another woman, told me the man was a chikan.

Chikan is a Japanese word that means “molester” or “pervert.” It’s a big deal and very serious to accuse someone of being one. It is often used to describe men who take advantage of crowded places, like the train, to touch women sexually. I’ve been told that being labeled a chikan can ruin ones life.

I was not there to see what happened, and didn’t know if the woman was telling the truth or not, but all I kept saying was “lets go to the police” in Japanese. The man was shaking and the woman kept yelling, but no one was moving towards the police station. Eventually the man pulled out about $60 from his wallet and gave it to the woman. That seemed to satisfy her, and she let him scurry away. She turned to me and offered about $10, but I didn’t take the money…

Honestly… The whole money exchange bothered me. From what I understand, chikans are a serious problem in Japan. so much so, that they even have “women only” cars on some train lines during rush hour. While this constant molestation is a problem, most women don’t even press charges. Many don’t even say anything at all! um… yeah… of course it’s a problem…

These women need to stand up and say something… But, there is another problem… This woman was doing just that, but no one seemed to care. If I wasn’t there to grab this guy, he would have just ran away.

Well… Actually… He still did just run away… And that’s what bothers me. The fact that this woman just took his $60 means that if this man really is a chikan, he got away with it… and cheaply too. He might be back in another train right now grabbing another woman…

Sadly, the cycle continues.

In still one more piece of news that does not bode well for Japan’s shrinking population, the number of single households here has surpassed the number married with at least one child households for the first time in 2006, according to a report published by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

There were 14.71 million single-member households, eclipsing the 14.55 million households of married couples with one child or more, which had prevailed until 2005, the report said Friday.

The research institute estimates the gap between the two categories will further widen, and in 2030, single households will increase to 18.24 million and households of married couples with one child or more will decrease to 10.7 million.

Households headed by people aged 75 or older will reach 11.1 million in 2030, almost double the 5.54 million registered in 2005. The number of single households where residents are 75 or older will increase to 4.29 million in 2030 from 1.97 million in 2005. Households headed by people aged 65 or older will rise from 13.55 million in 2005 to 19.03 million in 2030, according to the report.

according to an article released in february 21st by the economist, the magazine revisted an issue they first discussed in print a decade ago, namely “ japan’s amazing ability to disappoint.”

while the steady economic growth of the past few years has been an encouraging sign, there are major structural problems in the economy which threaten to relegate the japanese market to a decadent future where it would no longer be a “top-tier” economy, according to the economy minister, Hiroko Ota.

A film company is feeling the heat from Japanese extremists over a documentary they are planning to release about Yasukuni Shrine.

“The threats began about two months ago, when we started press screenings of the movie in Japan,” [Chinese-born director Li Ying] told The Hollywood Reporter in Berlin, where “Yasukuni” screened at the Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum sidebar. “The threats have gotten worse and worse as we have gotten closer to the Japanese theatrical release of the film in April.”

Here is another one of those stories that pop up every now and again that seem to indicate some Japanese men have a definite problem interacting with members of the opposite sex.

In this episode, Daisuke Nunomura, a 28-year old male employee of Skymark Airlines has been arrested for abusing a female coworker whom he locked in his car for five hours at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

Nunomura originally met his 28-year old cabin attendant victim about two years ago, and immediately started to bombard her with e-mails and letters. Apparently upset that she spurned his love attack, Nunomera ambushed the woman and forced her into his car, where he held her captive for about five hours, during which Nunomura allegedly head-butted the woman.

The woman eventually was able to escape by telling Nunomura that she needed to go to the toilet. She an e-mail message to a friend when Nunomura left her alone.

Nunomura admits to the charges against him, but refuses to give police a reason for acting as he did, telling them, “I’ll tell you about the motive for my crime later.”

Ain’t love grand!

below the buzzing metropolis of tokyo in the depths of a high rise building is a microcosm of an agricultural revolution. in a facility staffed by former freeters looking for a source of lasting employment, there are six rooms dedicated the the seeding, germination, and successful growth of various vegetables. why is this anything exciting, you might ask?

while for the last century large scale indoor cultivation has been commonly practiced around the world and indoor greenhouses and grow rooms are used by people as varied as researchers to marijuana growers, what is interesting about this experiment is the intent and unintended consquences. pasona o2, unlike its counterparts has among it goals the employment of that portion of disaffected japanese youth. in addition it is a live testing of the marginal transformation of land to capital in an urban environment.

while at first this may seem unexciting, to me it is intriguing for two reasons. first of all it is an introduction to a field of steady work for moderately educated youth to introduce themselves to both industrial and agricultural technology. while these are seemingly dying arts they are also heavily subsidized industries and thus a safe bet. secondly, while the proprietors may not see this as the future of farming, it was an object of debate in an environmental economics class in which i once enrolled. in an area where land prices are high and the soil quality is poor enough that it must be continually augmented by expensive fertilizers, there could conceivably be a situation, provided a cheap source of electricity, where hydroponic gardens in skyscapers could be the source of food to a nation and the nations to which it exports.

hat tip to pruned

By now just about everyone knows how Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Japan. If you don’t you can do a search of JAPUNDIT or the net for many different ways to tell the same story.

THe following is a simple video that I shot at the local supermarket last week, where they had literally stacks and stacks of chocolate in preparation of this special day.

In some countries, they take a much dimmer view of Valentine’s Day.

A recent Japan Times article about warnings eminating from an annual gathering of business leaders in Kyoto over the the political situation here and its affect on Japan’s “place on the world stage,” reveals that some “leaders” in Japan seem to prefer the relative harmony of a one-party dictatorship over a two-party system of checks and balances.

Opposition party control of the Upper House since July has created political gridlock that is hurting Japan’s international reputation, participants said.

Solutions offered to break the deadlock were sometimes radical. Kyoto University professor Terumasa Nakanishi, a strong advocate of Japan having nuclear weapons, suggested the Upper House be abolished in its current form.

If this guy is a professor (which, I guess, makes him among Japan’s best and brightest), then Japan may be worse off than we imagine. The people voted the opposition (Democratic Party of Japan) into power in The Upper House because they were dissatisfied with the policies and practices of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and their coalition partner New Komeito Party. So in response this geek says Japan should simply abolish the Upper House in order to give the LDP and New Komeito a free hand, effectively spitting squarely into the eye of the Japanese voting public.

But even Nakanishi seems to have realized what a wacky notion this is, for he offered an alternative “plan,” albeit one that is no less wacky than the first (emphasis mine).

More moderately, [Nakanishi] also favors a coalition government.

“Two main parties, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan, forming a coalition government is the only way to break the stalemate,” Nakanishi said, to the approval of many of the senior business leaders present.

Well, this approach accomplishes essentially the same thing as the first: that is it basically nullifies the results of the Upper House election and gives notice to the people of Japan that their votes mean absolutely nothing. It tells them the system is not only rigged, it is owned and operated by a small group of self-anointed, self-important elitists with a sense of entitlement that they feels puts them well above the law, the constitution, and the will of the people they govern.

What is the biggest threat to Japan according to these “leaders?”

Why, nails that refuse to be hammered down to the benefit of the powers that be, of course.

Many participants complained bitterly about what they see as self-centered behavior by corporations and individuals, especially among the younger generation[.]

Police have arrested a Tokyo man who is suspected of having made more than 10,000 calls for directory assistance because he was lonely and wanted to hear the sound of a womans voice.

Takahiro Fujinuma, who called into the services as many as 200 times a day, was arrested for making 2,600 of the calls from June to November of last year and charged with obstructing business.

“I wanted to talk to women as I felt lonely,” Fujinuma was quoted as telling police. “Although the Dial Q2 telephone service costs money, the 104 directory service is free as long as you don’t ask for a telephone number, so I made calls again and again,” he said.

Thanks to Mr. Pink

For those needing another statistic indicating that the Japanese population is aging, the National Police Agency (NPA) has revealed that people 65 and older accounted just about half of all traffic fatalities last year.

The poll showed there were 2,727 elderly people who died in traffic accidents in 2007, making up 47.5 percent of all traffic accident fatalities across the nation, which stood at 5,744 in total. The figure was the highest since records started being kept in 1967.

Meanwhile, traffic fatalities involving young people aged between 16 and 24 stood at 670 in 2007, about one-third of the figure reported in 1997.

Before giving the impression that demented geezers are dying because they are running into brick walls in their Toyotas, it should be pointed out that half of the fatalities involved seniors being killed while they were on foot.