WIT Life #229: Shaking things up
Translating/Interpreting, WIT Life, Writers 
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WIT Life 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.
This week the New York Times has had a host of articles about recent economic, business and political decisions in Japan. One that came out today discusses the efforts of Haruhiko Kuroda, the new Bank of Japan governor, to drastically change Japan’s economic policy in order to escape the deflation that has plagued the country for an extended period of time. He will attempt to achieve this by doubling the amount of money in circulation and bringing annual inflation to about 2 percent. However, some experts question whether monetary policy alone can end Japan’s deflation, as the country has other deflationary pressures like an aging/shrinking population and heavy regulations burdening the economy. A certain result from these new policies will be a weakening of the yen, which is a boon for Japanese exporters.
Another article talks about the changes the Japanese Cabinet has proposed in regard to the energy sector. It is trying to fix the struggling electricity industry by forcing utilities to split power generation and distribution into separate businesses, as they are currently together. The country’s largest utility and operator of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), was nationalized because of rising costs from the nuclear disaster. TEPCO is opposed to this new initiative, but doesn’t have much of a choice due to its perilous financial state.
Finally, check out this short article and accompanying video featuring voices from those in the nuclear disaster’s affected area.
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