WIT Life #81: Japanese high school tuition
Anecdote Article, Article/Journalism, Japan Trends, Translating/Interpreting, WIT Life 
Comments Off on WIT Life #81: Japanese high school tuition
WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
There is a bit of a controversy brewing over implementation of one aspect of the DPJ’s Manifesto. This is the proposal of free tuition for high schools currently being debated in the Diet. Students have to pay to attend high school as Japanese education is only compulsory through junior high. The question here is whether North Korean schools in Japan (of which there are 10 and where about 2,000 students of both North Korean and South Korean nationality are enrolled) should be similarly subsidized considering that Japan imposes economic sanctions on North Korea and in light of the yet unresolved abduction issue.
PM Hatoyama is waffling on this issue, with him initially making a statement favoring their exclusion but lately saying the government was undecided. He declared there is a need to set solid criteria to determine if the schools offer curricula equivalent to those at Japanese schools. New Komeito and other political parties have supported including them as part of the proposal, on the basis that diplomatic concerns should not interfere with children’s education. An editorial in today’s Mainichi Daily News argues that: “These students, born and raised in Japan, have been and will be members of Japanese society. The free tuition measures, as with the child allowance program, are based on the principle that society as a whole should bring up children.” Stay tuned to see how these political pressures play out
In other news, Forbes just released its annual list of world-wide billionaires, and this year 22 Japanese made the list, 5 more than last year. The highest ranking one was #76 Tadashi Yanai, whose wealth is estimated at 6 billion dollars. He is the 60-year old founder and president of Fast Retailing, of which Uniqlo is a subsidiary. Coming in at #721 was 33-year old Yoshikazu Tanaka, the world’s second-youngest self-made billionaire after Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. His worth is estimated at 1.4 billion dollars, and this entrepreneur is the founder of Japan’s second most popular SNS behind Mixi, Gree.jp. Japan is said to have 30% less billionaires than last year, faring slightly better than its neighbor South Korea who lost 2/3 of theirs.
Comments are closed.