WIT Life #52: Manifesto Woes
Anecdote Article, Article/Journalism, Japan Trends, Translating/Interpreting, WIT Life 
Comments Off on WIT Life #52: Manifesto Woes
WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter/Translator/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03). Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
The Manifesto is the imposing name of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)’s platform for its new government, one that promises to “put people’s lives first.” In order to accomplish this, its five pledges are the end of wasteful spending, childrearing and education, pension and medical care, regional sovereignty and employment and the economy. Although great in theory, new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is realizing that these goals are easier to state than actually carry out. Japanese ministries and agencies asked to spend a record 95.04 trillion yen ($1 trillion) next fiscal year, risking expansion of the world’s largest public debt.
This creates the issue of whether the DPJ can fulfill its election pledges without worsening an already significant debt burden. In response to this, Fujisankai carried out a survey on 50 people passing through Ginza regarding whether they support implementing the Manifesto despite the costs involved, or suppressing the use of deficit-covering government bonds. More than a third voted in favor of the latter, with only 16 respondents opting for the Manifesto. Some of the detractors were a young mother who said that although she liked the “child allowance” (up to 312,000 yen per year for child through junior high, a main feature of the DPJ platform), she didn’t want to see her country in debt. Another was an older women who wondered how many generations down the line Japan’s trillions of yen of debt would extend. The proponents of the Manifesto included another young mother holding her baby saying she supported it primarily because of the child allowance. A middle-aged man commented that unless the DPJ went ahead with the Manifesto, the party would lost credibility regarding the reform it has advocated.
There was a related article in yesterday’s Daily Sun announcing that in addition to single mother households receiving a child-rearing allowance from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the same would take place for single father households as of August of next year on a three times per year basis. The amount each time depends on the parent’s income, and can range from 9850 yen to 41720 yen for the first child. For the second child 5000 yen can be received, and for the third and beyond 3000 yen. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 single father households will be eligible, and the distribution of this new source of support for dads is clearly outlined in the Manifesto.
An article in today’s New York Times discussing a 57 year-old dam project in Gunma Prefecture illustrates “the near total dependence of local communities on the purse strings of the central government,” another key aspect the Manifesto seeks to change. As the article details, “Political experts say [Hatoyama’s] biggest challenge will be to wean regional communities from their reliance on Tokyo.” An article regarding a similar project in my JET home prefecture of Kumamoto appeared in the Times earlier this year with similar themes. I remember this being an issue when I lived there and it was being pushed by the (first female!) governor at the time (the current male governor opposes it). These are just some examples of how Japan, the world’s fourth largest dam building nation, going forward will have to better evaluate exactly where its public funds are going and for what purposes. Only with such scrutiny and tough decisions will PM Hatoyama and his new administration be able to come anywhere close to carrying out their Manifesto.
Comments are closed.