Let’s look at the recent scandal revolving around Comsn. And remember, don’t trust everything you read on the Internet, especially here. If the issue interests you, please check out the many links below and double check me on my facts!

Who is Comsn?
Comsn is a large company in Japan with a staff of about 24,000 that provides nursing care for about 65,000 people through 2,000 facilities. Comsn is owned by the massive Goodwill Group which in terms of revenue is Japan’s biggest employment service.

What is the background for the recent scandal?
If you are sick in Japan, national health insurance will cover you generally at about 70%. Until the year 2000, health insurance provided very strong coverage of elder citizens, many of whom stayed in hospitals almost as if they were nursing homes.
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However, realizing that with the population aging fast this would be totally infeasible, government policy makers decided they needed to get all these older people out of the hospital. So they created a new plan which would give nursing insurance to those who qualified. Under this plan you could get home assistance or even go to stay at a nursing center, and be covered up to 90%. This would save money, because it eliminates the costly hospital room and the doctor.
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The first year the program was put into effect, it genuinely seemed to save money. But nevertheless the cost to the government of even just nursing insurance went from 3.6 trillion yen in fiscal year 2000 to 6.8 trillion yen in fiscal year 2005. You had people relying completely on house helpers despite the fact they were still capable of cooking and cleaning. You even had people in wheel chairs although they didn’t need them. So again in 2005 there was a revision to the nursing insurance law.
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Though it didn’t get a lot of attention in the media, the government added disclosure clauses because, as it turns out, a lot of the new companies were springing up to take advantage of the new nursing insurance law and it wasn’t at all clear that they were on the up and up. Presumably the hospitals had stricter standards, but these new nursing facilities didn’t. However, it was hoped through greater disclosure these companies could be discovered and penalized. Thus the new clauses in the revised law.
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So this brings us to the present, Comsn is basically one of the companies that has attempted to profit through the new nursing insurance law. They have been doing so fraudulently and without offering good services to their customers.

What did Comsn do that was bad?
Well, they’re service has been unreliable. Their workers have often been poorly trained. There are reports of them being rude and abrasive in their treatment of elder people. Sometimes they are late. One worker actually showed up drunk, another fell asleep on the job. (Some of this was on Tokudane this morning.)
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However none of that is illegal, per se. And, in general, it’s sort of what one expects from companies that get their money primarily from bureaucrats and not their customers.
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What Comsn did that was a problem was to lie to the government about their staff numbers (and perhaps qualifications) so they could get more money. Reimbursement procedures are very confusing, but apparently the government reimburses companies depending on their staff numbers and qualifications. Comsn has clearly been over-reporting their staff numbers. It’s also possible they may be violating certain other standards as well.

What’s the government going to do?
Huh? Do you think the government will actually do something? Okay … well, the government basically said it would no longer renew licenses for any of Comsn’s facilities, nor would it offer new licenses for five years. This would have resulted in most of Comsn’s facilities being shut down over the next five years. However, Goodwill Group the owner of Comsn said that they will merely transfer ownership of Comsn’s facilities from one subsidiary to another. This means no facility will actually be affected. The media feigned outrage, and then the designated bureaucrat in charge had the president of Comsn come over for a chat. They agreed to hold off any transfers for now, and will decide how to proceed in late July. (Conveniently after the elections.) More than likely the transfer will go through as it can’t be legally stopped. Goodwill Group will promise to be good, and if nothing else, will try to be much less obvious when it defrauds the government.

What’s this say about the looming health care crisis in Japan?
It says its going to be bad, bad and bad. You’ve got some form of opaque corporatism going on in Japan. People don’t really choose policy through their politicians. Instead, bureaucrats work out deals with various high powered executives and policy is sort of forged in ways that will generally benefit the status holders more than the recipients of the actual services. The only reason this issue came up at all, I am guessing, is that local level bureaucrats were sincerely concerned and forced the issue. Local bureaucrats actually have contact with the people they serve and understand their problems. They don’t, however, have the power to fix them.
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My prediction is that we’ll probably see a little bit of hand waving and then the issue will disappear. It will then return again in a more severe incarnation. I mean who doesn’t want someone cooking and cleaning for them if the government will pay for it? Who doesn’t want someone to look after a troublesome elder dependent, if it’s nearly free? Understaffed corporations looking to cash in big are clearly going to be out there ready to take up the challenge, whether it’s Comsn or somebody else.

News articles about Comsn:

• 2007/06/08 Ministry asks Comsn to freeze transfer plan, The Yomiuri Shimbun; Plan is likely to move forward, but under supposed government scrutiny.
• 2007/06/08 Ministry blocks Comsn’s cozy deal with NSS, The Japan Times; The headline reads blocked, but this is not true. The deal was voluntarily rescinded for now. Yomiuri’s take on this issue is clearer. See the article linked to directly above this one.
• 2007/06/08 Debt collector dropped troublesome Comsn, The Yomiuri Shimbun; “Comsn Inc. used a credit collection agency to collect individual payments from elderly people who used its nursing care service, and problems between the agency and clients occurred frequently … The collection agency canceled its contract with Comsn after three months because it received many complaints from users who said that they had already paid. … The agency judged it could not make a profit from the contract with Comsn because there were so many problems and terminated the contract at the end of January. The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan and the Tokyo metropolitan government also received similar complaints concerning Comsn.”
• 2007/06/08 Comsn closures worry customers, The Yomiuri Shimbun; Interesting stories from the customers. One person reports a drunken healthcare worker.
• 2007/06/08 Ward to lose its control of aged care, The Asahi Shimbun; This article bears no direct relation to Comsn, but is helpful in grasping the situation. The article states, “By counting the woman among the night-shift care workers, the organization received 3 percent more than it was entitled to from the insurance program.” What this means is how much money a company gets from the government health insurance is variable depending on whom they staff. It’s probably variable on a lot more as well.
• 2007/06/08 Comsn in trouble over penalties, The Asahi Shimbun; “Comsn Inc., the nation’s largest nursing-care services operator, faced the prospect Wednesday of having to close hundreds of branches in the next few years after the health ministry punished it for inflating staffing numbers for nursing-care insurance payments.”
• 2007/06/7 Comsn nursing centers to lose licenses, The Japan Times; “About 1,600 Comsn Inc. nursing-care centers will not get their licenses renewed because some were obtained fraudulently, government officials said Wednesday.”
• 2007/06/07 Comsn deserves licensing suspension, The Yomiuri Shimbun; “If such misconduct is allowed, the very foundation of the nursing care insurance system will be shaken. As such, the ministry had good reason to take the steps it did. … Nursing care insurance was launched to entice into the market nursing care companies seeking to make a profit and to ensure a steady supply of service providers. However, the government appears to have put quantity before quality and its supervision of the industry has been lax.”
• 2007/06/07 Govt curbs Comsn care licensing for 5 years, The Yomiuri Shimbun; “The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry on Wednesday ordered prefectural governments to stop renewing operating licenses or granting new operating licenses for nursing care facilities belonging to Community Medical Systems & Network (Comsn) Inc. until December 2011.”
• 2007/06/06 Welfare Ministry to refuse permits to home nursing provider COMSN over scandal, Mainichi Daily News; “The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has decided to punish major home nursing provider COMSN for submitting false declarations on its employees, by refusing applications from the welfare firm for permit renewals and the establishment of new facilities. … All of COMSN’s operating permits are up for renewal within the next six years, and the ministry’s move means that the firm, which operates about 2,000 business offices nationwide, will likely have no option but to pull out of the nursing business. … COMSN, which stands for Community Medical Systems and Network, is part of Japan’s Goodwill Group. It was founded in 1988, and employs about 24,000 workers.”

Company Links:

• Comsn Home Page
• The Goodwill Group, Inc.

News about the Revised Nursing Care Insurance Law:

• 2006/07/06 Adversely revised law forces over 1,000 seniors to leave care facilities for economic reasons, The Press Weekly; “Last year, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Komei Party, and the Democratic Party of Japan used their majority to adversely revise the nursing-care insurance law so as to exclude expenses for meals and beds in nursing-care facilities from insurance benefits, imposing expenses on users.”
• 2006/04/21 EDITORIAL: Reforms for nursing-care insurance, The Japan Times; Interesting background to the problem which spurred reform in the first place. For example, “Some people have begun to use wheelchairs even though they can still walk, and others have come to completely rely on helpers for household chores, including preparation of meals, even though in reality they are still capable of doing some housework themselves.”
• 2005/07/26 New Nursing Fees Hit Elderly / Revised Law Increases Cost Burden On geriatric Patients, The Daily Yomiuri via Global Action on Aging, Yoko Harihara and Takeharu Yasuda; Good background article for this topic.
• 2005/07/20 Social security cutback intended to ease burdens of corporations, Japanese Communist Party; “First, a series of cuts in social security services have been imposed. In the wake of an adverse revision of national pension systems, a revised nursing care insurance law was railroaded through this current Diet session by the majority of the ruling Liberal Democratic and Komei parties and the opposition Democratic Party. The revision is designed to have elderly people in care facilities shoulder the full cost for meals and rooms as ‘hotel-like costs.’ It sounds like ‘if they are unable to pay, they will have to leave.’”
• 2005/07/15 EDITORIAL: Preventive care for the elderly, The Japan Times; Article focuses entirely on benefits of plan, reduced costs and preventive treatment.
• 2005/06/23 Diet passes bill to curb geriatric care, The Japan Times; “Under the revision, elderly people at public nursing homes will have to start paying for accommodations and meals starting in October. The payments are expected to average 30,000 yen per month. The amendment also calls for the government to sponsor muscle training and nutritional counseling for the elderly to prevent them from needing nursing care in the future.”
• 2004/04/07 Nursing-care firms for the aged to face new disclosure law, The Japan Times, “The welfare ministry is considering requiring government-designated nursing-care firms for the elderly to disclose information about their operations, according to ministry officials. The move is aimed at helping users select appropriate facilities and address a recent series of bogus claims made by such firms for reimbursement under the government-managed nursing-care insurance program. … As of February, some 237,800 firms were designated to offer nursing-case services to the elderly under the program.”
• 2000/08/01 JAPAN”S MEDICAL SPENDING FELL IN FY2000 DUE TO NURSING INSURANCE, Asia Pulse News; I don’t have access to this story, but the headlines is revealing.
• 1999/04/15 New Public Nursing Insurance System, AP Worldstream via Pacific Bridge Medical; “Due to the unprecedented speed at which Japan’s population is aging, the Japanese government will introduce a new nursing care insurance system by April 2000. To date, insufficient nursing care services have created an immense financial burden for Japan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) system, as the elderly (which will reach 21% of Japan’s population by the year 2010) have resorted to long-term, medically unnecessary hospitalization. The new nursing care system, which is expected to save NHI about $10.4 billion, separates nursing services from medical care and introduces a separate social insurance scheme for the former. Instead of allowing the elderly to be hospitalized, most will either be brought home or placed in nursing homes. According to the MHW’s program model, those needing the least care will receive visits from nurses, home help, and day-care service once or twice a week; those in most need of nursing care will be looked after every day. Hospitals and wards, however, will be able to choose in April 2000 whether to accept patients under existing medical insurance programs or the new nursing insurance system.”
• 1997/06/20 CARING FOR A GRAYING JAPAN: Elderly Nursing-Care System Is In the Works Trends In Japan; “As part of the government’s response to the rapid aging of Japan’s population, a range of bills aimed at establishing a system of public nursing-care services are moving toward approval in the Japanese Diet, which ended its regular session on June 18. Discussion on the nursing-care insurance bills will carry over to the extraordinary Diet session scheduled to convene in the fall. Pending passage, they are slated to take effect from April 2000.”

Recently in a radio program at antiwar.com Michael Scheuer stated the following:

I think part of America’s problem is that the American congress, and both parties are responsible, have abdicated their responsibility for declaring war. They passed these resolutions to allow the president to go to war and it lets them off the hook … it allows them to change their mind and to start attacking the president. I would think that one of the great safe guards for the American people against unnecessary wars like Iraq is demanding that the constitution be abided by. That there be a formal declaration of war that everyone of those 535 characters have to stand up and say yea or nea.

This is all too true.

Let’s travel back to 2002, prior to the Iraq war, to the American congress. There was a great debate over the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. In a speech delivered on October 8, 2002 on the floor of the House, U.S. representative Ron Paul stated the following:

This is not a resolution to declare war. We know that. This is a resolution that does something much different. This resolution transfers the responsibility, the authority, and the power of the Congress to the President so he can declare war when and if he wants to. He has not even indicated that he wants to go to war or has to go to war; but he will make the full decision, not the Congress, not the people through the Congress of this country in that manner. … My argument is when we go to war through the back door, we are more likely to have the wars last longer and not have resolution of the wars, such as we had in Korea and Vietnam. We ought to consider this very seriously. … I must oppose this resolution, which regardless of what many have tried to claim will lead us into war with Iraq. This resolution is not a declaration of war, however, and that is an important point: this resolution transfers the Constitutionally-mandated Congressional authority to declare wars to the executive branch. This resolution tells the president that he alone has the authority to determine when, where, why, and how war will be declared. It merely asks the president to pay us a courtesy call a couple of days after the bombing starts to let us know what is going on. This is exactly what our Founding Fathers cautioned against when crafting our form of government: most had just left behind a monarchy where the power to declare war rested in one individual. It is this they most wished to avoid.

Why did Ron Paul state this? He explained in an essay written around the same time as the speech:

The language of Article I, section 8, is quite clear: only Congress has the authority to declare war. Yet Congress in general, and the committee in particular, have done everything possible to avoid making such a declaration. Why? Because members lack the political courage to call an invasion of Iraq what it really is – a war – and vote yes or no on the wisdom of such a war. Congress would rather give up its most important authorized power to the President and the UN than risk losing an election later if the war goes badly. There is always congressional “support” for a popular war, but the politicians want room to maneuver if the public later changes its mind. So members take half steps, supporting confusingly worded “authorizations” that they can back away from easily if necessary.

Now, let’s fast forward again to the present, and look at what two prominent democrats said during a recent presidential debate in South Carolina:

Former Sen. John Edwards: No, I think that’s a question for the conscience of anybody who voted for this war. I mean, Senator Clinton and anyone else who voted for this war has to search themselves and decide whether they believe they’ve voted the right way. If so, they can support their vote. If they believe they didn’t, I think it’s important to be straightforward and honest, because I think one of the things we desperately need in our next president is someone who can restore the trust bond between the American people and the president of the United States. Because I think that trust has been devastated over the last six years. And I think, beyond that, it’s important for the president of the United States to restore trust between the president and the rest of the world. It is impossible for the United States of America to provide the stabilization and the leadership in the world that the world desperately needs from us unless, first, the American people trust their president, believe he’s an open, honest, decent human being, and the rest of the world has faith in the president of the United States.

Williams: Senator Clinton, I owe you a response probably in terms of your vote.

Clinton: Well, Brian, I take responsibility for my vote. Obviously, I did as good a job I could at the time. It was a sincere vote based on the information available to me.And I’ve said many times that, if I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way. But I think that the real question before us: Is what do we do now? How do we try to persuade or require this president to change course? He is stubbornly refusing to listen to the will of the American people. He threatens to veto the legislation we’ve passed, which has been something that all of us have been advocating for a number of years now. And I can only hope that he will not veto it. And I can only end by saying that if this president does not get us out of Iraq, when I am president, I will.

Former Senator Edwards is wrong. He talks about “anybody who voted for this war.” He nor anyone else voted for war. Instead he basically voted to give the president free reign to use military power in Iraq.

If the congress had voted to declare war on Iraq, they could now vote to end the war. However, as the congress turned their authority over to the president, they are free to support or not support the war depending on how many political points they can score.

What Ron Paul stated has turned out to be prescient.

Now, I bring this up to point out three things.

1. The English speaking media is happy to parrot out almost like a catch phrase that changing Japan’s constitution adds to fears of growing militarism in Japan. The blog, Ampoten, has written about this bias, and points part of the blame at the influence of the Chinese press. See here for the article. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in that article, but I do think most Japan watchers are familiar with the sort of knee jerk reaction to Japan changing the constitution. Immediately, article 9 is invoked and the return of Japanese militarism. What’s amazing here is that this is done in blissful ignorance that the American congress is not fulfilling its own constitutional duties by shirking off war responsibility onto the president, and that — at least according to authors like Andrew Bacevich — America has already traveled a fair way up the road to militarism. Basically, the perceived threat of militarism in Japan gets more media attention than the real presence of militarism in America.

2. Japan is not alone in using obtuse interpretations of its constitution in order to foster the growth of the military. Clearly, Japan should not even really have a military. Clearly, Japan should not be engaged in operations overseas. Yet it is. This is generally explained away using obtuse legal arguments which like the Emperor’s new clothes everyone knows are plain out silly, but that it is inappropriate to say so. Similarly, in America, the idea that the government can basically go to war without congressional approval has become ordinary operating procedure. No declaration of war was made prior to the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the invasion of Grenada, and in the recent war with Iraq. Not only that, but the American government constantly engages in proxy wars around the globe by funding guerillas (basically terrorists) so long as they are engaged against the enemy. It’s hard to view any of this as constitutional in the sense that congress has never formally declared war against any of these enemies. So when the issue of Japan reinterpreting its constitution comes up, perhaps reinterpretations of America’s constitution should be used as a comparison.

3. Now, the most important lesson to draw here is just how problematic changing article 9 of Japan’s constitution will be. Indeed a little bit of fear is not a bad thing. However, the fear should not based on some kind of irrational notion that Japanese are culturally militant. Instead it should be based on the fact that any country can have trouble controlling its military. A clear majority of Americans oppose the war in Iraq. A clear message was sent to congress last election to bring the soldiers home, yet there they are still in Iraq. Not only this, but everyday the rhetoric regarding Iran gets hotter and hotter. Will the president even bother to inform congress if it becomes necessary to bomb Iran? To what extent do people in America have control over the actions of their own military? Japanese people who fear overseas involvement and lack of control of their military should take note of this as they debate exactly how article 9 should be modified.

According to a recent article in the Japan Times:

The Tochigi Prefectural Government received a court order Thursday to pay 47 million yen in damages to two families for giving a gun permit to a man who shot their relatives, one fatally. Presiding Judge Setsuo Fukushima of the Utsunomiya District Court said giving the gun license to the man was illegal because the shooting had been “predictable,” especially by police officers who had intervened in disputes between the two female victims and the man, who were neighbors.

I’m sure I could find many examples of this in other countries as well, in particular, America. But I’m not entirely sure I see the reasoning behind suing the government here.

Basically, the 47 million will be paid by tax payers, right? It’s perfectly acceptable to tax people as the government needs money. It’s also perfectly acceptable for the government to use coercion in order to make sure people pay their taxes.

However, should it be the case that when the government makes mistakes taxes should be increased to pay financial compensation? Some people may not like to hear this, but this amounts to the government using coercion to make tax payers cough up money to pay for the government’s errors. Is this a good idea?

Maybe. I do feel genuinely sorry for the victims in this case. I can imagine some arguments that the victims deserve the compensation and as there’s no one else to hold responsible, the government has to pay. Indeed, perhaps that is so. I’m not really sure. A case like this certainly seems worthy of closer investigation. I’d guess both in Japan and elsewhere this is a common practice now?

But what I’d like to know is who will be held accountable next time the people go to vote for their local officials? Will this be a campaign issue? My guess is it won’t be, and there’s the real problem. The more compensation is paid for issues like this, the less motivation there is to fix the problem through the electorate.

Therefore I think the practice needs to be viewed in that vein and with caution.

The Constitution of Japan turned sixty last week on May 3. Shinzo Abe is intent on revising the constitution, in particular article 9, the peace clause.

There have been many news articles in the last couple of weeks, and here I provide a list of some of the more interesting articles that have appeared in English recently. I first summarize the main issues surrounding the constitution of Japan.

I may update this page in the future. Comments or corrections are always welcome. I plan to blog an opinion regarding article 9 in a separate entry soon.

Main Issues:

There are currently three main issues regarding the constitution in Japan, and it’s important to separate them out. They are as follows:

• Revision of the Constitution: Should the constitution be revised, and if so in what ways?
• Should article 9, the peace clause be revised so Japan can engage in collective self-defense and in missions similar to America’s actions in Iraq? (LDP)
• Should the separation between religion and government be slightly weakened?(LDP)
• Should there be greater decentralization? (DPJ)
• Should privacy laws be strengthened?(DPJ)
• Should article 12 be weakened to make it easier to appropriate land for public projects? (LDP)
• et cetera.
• Referendum-procedure bill: What sort of process should be set into law for allowing constitutional change?
• Should the referendum bill also include allowing people to have referendums on important issues? (DPJ)
• Should there be a minimum turn out in order for the vote to take effect? (DPJ)
• Should the mimimum age to vote in the referendum be 18 (DPJ) or 20 (LDP)?
• et cetera.
• Reinterpreting the constitution: Abe has set up a panel (of sycophants) who will attempt find a way to circumnavigate the constitution by using obtuse and dubious legal arguments. There are five four scenarios that will be considered.
• If North Korea shoots a missle at America, can Japan shoot it down? Presumably under the current constitution the answer is no.
• If China were to attack America ships in the Pacific, could Japan come to their aid? Presumably under the current constitution the answer is no.
• If while on a rebuilding mission in Iraq (or some palce) Allies were to come under fire, what kind of support would Japan be able to provide? Presumably under the current constitution the answer is none.
• If while visiting the United States in an official capacity a Prime Minister of Japan were to be accidently shot by Dick Cheney, would that constitute an act of war, requiring Japan to act in self-defense? Oops. Strike that. Mistake.
• What kind of rear line support can Japan provide for Allies who are engaged in combat? Presumably under the current constitution the answer is, none.

Newspaper Links:

• 2007/05/09 Revision risks freedoms, U.S. academic warns, Eric Johnston, The Japan Times. “For [Douglas] Lummis, the great fear is that if the LDP’s proposed Constitution were to actually replace the current one, the freedom of individuals to protest would be greatly curtailed. Under the LDP draft, human rights clauses have been reworded more in the fashion of the prewar Meiji Constitution, he said.”
• 2007/05/08 Not a Throwback to Fascism: Ex Anchor, Sakurai Weighs in on patriotism Hiroko Nakata The Japan Times; Yoshiko Sakurai says: “I wonder why it is such a big problem. No one has given me a satisfactory explanation … It is irrational to say that inclusion of ‘patriotism’ in the preamble of the Constitution would send Japan reeling back into fascism.” Perhaps it’s irrational to disagree with Sakurai in general. The idea that people should be required in the constitution to love their country is clearly frightening. It fundamentally misconstrues the purpose of government, which is to serve the people not vice versa.
• 2007/05/07 Constitution protects all: political expert, Reiji Yoshida, The Japan Times; Second-generation Korean’s perspective. Nice article.
• 2007/05/06 Collective defense right needs more than study, The Yomiuri Shimbun; Suggests reinterpretation is a good idea.
• 2007/05/06 Abe’s panel on defense dominated by hawks, The Japan Times. ” … the composition of the membership suggests that the panel’s findings may be a foregone conclusion in line with Abe’s stance, which favors allowing Japan to come to the aid of an ally — namely the United States — when it is under attack.”
• 2007/05/06 DPRK accuses Japan of retrogressively revising constitution, People’s Daily Online. Reading this is enough to make ME support revision.
• 2007/05/05 Nakasone proposes new top law preamble, The Yomiuri Shimbun; Yuck!
• 2007/05/05 Modify Constitution for modern world, scholar urges Akemi Nakamura, The Japan Times; Setsu Kobayashi, an constitutional scholar says we need more privacy in the constitution and agrees article 9 should be modified because of North Korea and terrorism. [Does he want Japan to make war on the terrorists?]
• 2007/05/05 Beware loss of peace clause: philosopher, Politicians seen sowing seeds of militarism under naive public’s nose, Setsuko Kamiya, The Japan Times. This article details Tetsuya Takahashi arguments against changing article 9 and 20. Some nice analysis from the left. Tetsuya Takahashi’s views on Yasukuni Shrine are here.
• 2007/05/04 Abe facing battle over constitutional change, The Yomiuri Shimbun; Ozawa plays politics and for now opposes revising article 9. Yomiuri says its a bad idea, I don’t think so.
• 2007/05/04 Japan’s new strategies, Asahi Shimbun; Preserve the constitution but create a law that spells out how Japan can use the Self-Defense force?
• 2007/05/04 Abe’s Constitutional Amendment Misses the Mark, Chosun Ilbo. Only six percent of Japaense support changing article 9.
• 2007/05/04 Nakasone: Constitution defective, preamble needs ‘love of nation’ clause, Masami Ito, The Japan Times; Nakasone wants to coerce Japanese to love their country by putting it in the constitution.
• 2007/05/04 Opposition Panel Head Speaks, LDP wants to cut freedoms: DPJ, Reiji Yoshida, The Japan Times; Article spells out what DPJ wants out of constitutional revision. Decentralize power, more checks in place to control the bureaucrats, and stand by the peace clause. Sounds good!
• 2007/05/04 Proponents of Article 9 like it just the way it is, Akemi Nakamura, The Japan Times. “Thousands of people gathered Thursday in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park to mark the 60th anniversary of the Constitution and to oppose moves by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party to amend it and its war-renouncing Article 9.”
• 2007/05/04 Constitution turns 60; Abe wants change: Polls find public split, protective of Article 9 The Japan Times; “Public support for constitutional change is mixed. In separate poll results published Thursday, the Mainichi Shimbun and Nikkei newspapers said 51 percent of those surveyed supported changing the Constitution. It was the first time those supporting a change topped 50 percent, the Mainichi said.”
• 2007/05/03 Abe rallies forces on constitutional revisions, Asahi Shimbun; Abe appeals to his base, while Nakasone says they’ll need the DPJ to make things happen.
• 2007/05/03 78% say Article 9 has helped keep Japan peace, Asahi Shimbun; “Only 18 percent of the respondents said the Self-Defense Forces should be turned into a “self-defense military,” showing a wide gap between public opinion and the direction of the revisions being pushed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.” Good.
• 2007/05/03 Editorial/The Constitution at 60, Asahi Shimbun; Is Abe two faced in regards to the constitution? What does he really envision for Japan’s future?
• 2007/05/03 Honoring the Constitution The Japan Times. What are Abe’s plans. He needs to spell them out.
• 2007/05/03 Katsuyuki Kumano: Appeal to U.N. on problems of referendum bill, Asahi Shimbun; Explains why Taro-san would not be able to vote under the current system.
• 2007/05/03 2007–historic year in top law’s history, The Yomiuri Shimbun; Revise article 9 because Japan is under threat? Let Japanese blood be spilt in Iraq? Use the SDF to keep North Korea nuke free?
• 2007/05/03 Japan must change Constitution to change nation: Abe, The Japan Times. Abe wants to change the nation. In otherwords he cares about Japan, but not the individual people in Japan.
• 2007/05/03 Proponent of rewriting Article 9 still wants limits, Reiji Yoshida, The Japan Times. “… [Hajime] Funada … argued that the right of collective defense should be exercised only in emergencies in areas surrounding Japan, and that revising the Constitution should explicitly detail such limitations to avoid any future government from stretching its interpretation.“
• 2007/05/03  Abe urges charter for ‘new Japan’ Aljazeera.net; “However, the limits of the article have already been stretched with the government interpreting its pacifist clauses to mean the country can have armed troops to protect itself, allowing the existence of its 240,000-strong Self-Defence Forces. According to figures from globalsecurity.org, Japan has the world’s sixth biggest defence expenditure, with a military budget of $41.75 bn in 2007.”
• 2007/04/14 Top law revision has taken big step, Shozo Nakayama, The Daily Yomiuri; Overview.
• 2007/04/29 Experts say time for top law revision, Kiyomi Arai, Daily Yomiuri; Taro Nakayama says: “When I visited Saudi Arabia, the country’s foreign minister greeted me at the airport, and the first thing he said was they wanted Japan to send Self-Defense Forces.” Nakayama wants to be able to say yes in the future.
• 2007/04/28 Collective self-defense panel to study 4 scenarios Asahi Shimbun; When can Japan argue self-defense, when it isn’t really the case and get away with it. Experts try to decide.
• 2007/04/28 Collective self-defense, Asahi Shimbun; Abe says, “A military alliance is an ‘alliance of blood,’ … If Japan is attacked by a foreign enemy, young Americans will shed their blood. However, under the present constitutional interpretation, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are not asked to be prepared to shed blood when the United States comes under attack.” How do Americans feel about this? At least some don’t like it.
• 2007/04/27 Constitutional Conundrums, New panel to debate collective defense, Hiroka Nakata, The Japan Times. The government will set up a panel in May to find a way to work around article 9 by redefining various terms. They should use linguists instead of hand-picked “experts”.
• 2007/04/26 Abe marks Constitution’s 60th year by calling it datedThe Japan Times; Abe says: “Under the current circumstances, I strongly hope that debate on a Constitution that describes how the country should be and establishes a new nation is actively carried out with the people …” The constitution should not be about forming a nation, as much as delineating a the rights of the people that live within the nation. This is the difference between traditional liberalism and nationalism.
• 2007/04/23 Referendum bill likely to be passed in May, The Yomiuri Shimbun.
• 2007/04/17 Response to Abe’s Drive, Support falls for amending Constitution The Japan Times. 57% of the people favor changing the constitution.
• 2007/04/17 Constitution referendum bill clears Lower House, Ruling bloc forces plenary vote; opposition foiled Masami Ito, The Japan Times; Good Overview of referendum bill.
• 2007/04/15 Ozawa killed dialogue on referendum, The Yomiuri Shimbun; Fascinating article discussing the politics behind the vote on the referendum. I don’t agree with the verdict of the Yomiuri Shimbun. As Naoto Kan stated, “”It won’t be all right unless the ruling parties wholly accept [the demands] formally.” Any thing less would have been unacceptable.
• 2007/04/14 House passes referendum bill, Asahi Shimbun.
• 2007/04/14 Charter referendum bill not a political tool, The Yomiuri Shimbun; Are referendums a good idea. The Yomiuri says no, but I would say yes. Give the people more power.
• 2007/04/14 Constitution bill lacks consensus The Japan Times; Editors of the Japan Times miss the point. Leadership is not consensus. That’s Abe’s one good quality; he wants to lead.
• 2007/04/13 Referendum bill OK’d, Masami Ito, The Japan Times. “A key House of Representatives panel approved a bill Thursday to set procedures for a national referendum to revise the Constitution, despite the opposition parties’ attempts to stop the vote by swarming the chairman.”
• 2007/04/09 Who will defend Japan’s Constitution?, Craig Martin, The Japan Times; Fantastic editorial. Reinterpreting the constitution is the judiciary’s job, not the legislature’s. Abe is seriously misguided. Save the constitution!
• 2006/11/01 Abe says he will tackle Constitution, including Article 9, Hiroko Nakata, The Japan Times. ” …Tokyo should shoot down any ballistic missiles that fly over Japanese territory toward the United States. Such action would require a major shift in the government’s interpretation of the Constitution, which, according to current thinking, bars collective defense.”
• 2006/05/04 Constitution survey shows 77% oppose changing Article 9, The Japan Times.
• 2005/03/01 Clampdown on freedom eyed in LDP’s Constitution, The Japan Times. Old story, but harrowing in its implications.
• 2004/04/21 LDP panel eyes changes to Constitution preamble, The Japan Times Dated, but interesting.

Blog Links:

• 2007/05/07 Article 9 and Constitutional Revision, Spider-Man, and Population Decline: TPR News for Monday, May 7, 2007 Trans-Pacific Radio; “His [Shinzo Abe’s] panel examining the right to collective defense, one of the central issues in current interpretations of and future revisions to Article 9, consists of 13 members. Of those 13, 12 have made public statements, on the record, criticizing the current interpretation and calling for reinterpretation.”
• 2007/05/07 Japanese Constituion and Militarizing the country, Fox Devil“Japan’s long time adversaries North Korea and of course China are both heavily armed and outwardly aggressive nations that I am sure would just love to level Japan flat and claim it as there own … Those Japanese who would like to consider militarizing the country should definately take into account exactly what that would mean for them.  Competing in today’s military landscape means maintaining a nuclear capability, period, if you don’t got em then you’re not in the running.”
• 2007/05/07 Where do we go from here? Celebrating Protest; “Apart from a few radical voices that somehow manage to get airtime in the media, I am unsure whether we can label those who favor revising Article 9 as blood-thirsty warmongers who will use Japan’s officially recognized military force as an excuse to repeat past transgressions (of course, Ms. Nakajima herself said nothing along these lines, but such people have been portrayed in this way).”
• 2007/05/06 The constitution revision blitz, Observing Japan; “In any case, Amaki concludes that the DPJ is probably, for the most part, full of advocates of revising Article 9 anyway, implying that the whole debate about revision is a farce, driven more by the DPJ’s electoral interests than by genuine disagreement with the LDP.”
• 2007/05/05 Seijigiri #23: Abe, Aso and Kyuma to the US, and the state of constitutional reform in Japan Trans-Pacific Radio; “We look at opposition to constitutional reform - which is usually taken to be the re-writing of Article 9 - and especially opposition from New Komeito, who is the Liberal Democratic Party’s coalition partner in the Diet. Could there be a split in the ruling coalition over the coming years? What of consensus within the LDP itself?”
• 2007/05/05 Article 9 第九条, Sponge bear“Being under the nuclear umbrella of the United States has allowed Japan to focus its energies in areas other than national security. Those times, however, are changing. North-East Asia is a dangerous place, and the constitution might need to be amended to reflect the changing realities of the new era.”
• 2007/05/05 Toward a Japanese Constitution, Asian Cable“What has emerged is the fruit of a bunch of old pols working behind closed doors to change a document that was written by a bunch of foreigners working behind closed doors. Why couldn’t Japan convene a constitutional convention to write a new charter? Then it might have a genuine “Japanese” constitution.” [Incremental change works best in my book.]
• 2007/05/04 Abe urges charter for ‘new Japan‘, Online Writing and Research File; Check out this blog, they ask many pertinant questions such as, “Why are the amendments necessary for the next generation of Japanese to feel pride and confidence in Japan?”
• 2007/05/03 Japan’s constitution turns sixty Observing Japan; “Again, as with the transformation of the US-Japan alliance, what matters is the process: if constitution revision results from a genuine debate, engaging all parts of Japanese society, as opposed to being imposed from above, then indeed constitution revision can play an important part in rejuvenating Japanese society in the twenty-first century. But if it just perpetuates heavy-handed, top-down rule from above by authorities in Nagata-cho and Kasumigaseki, then constitution revision is the wrong policy at the wrong time for the Japanese people.” Nicely stated.
• 2007/05/03 Constitution Day Peace March, Brian’s Meandering Mind; “You could be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled into a strange sort of festival if you happened to be in central Tokyo’s Hibiya Park today … No, today a more serious undernote ran through the crowds and at three o’clock sharp, sent them streaming into Ginza chanting slogans and waving placards bearing cartoons of men in fatigues programming school children to become killing machines.”
• 2007/05/02 Japan Constitution - Article 9 JapanNewbie. “However, if the constitution is revised, it better be done after heavy discussions with China, Korea, and other neighboring Asian countries and not unilaterally, or there is sure to be heavy political backlash.” Is Harvey serious?

I want to sort of think aloud about an article that appeared in the Japan Times, entitled Bullying caused boy’s suicide, high court rules

Bullying caused boy’s suicide, high court rules
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By JUN HONGO
Staff writer
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The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday expanded a lower court ruling and ordered Tochigi Prefecture and the city of Kanuma to pay a combined 8.6 million yen in compensation to the parents of a 15-year-old boy who committed suicide after being bullied at school.

That’s the equivalent of about $73,000.

It is the first time a court has acknowledged that depression caused by bullying resulted in suicide, according to the lawyers for Katsuji and Haruyo Usui.
The Utsunomiya District Court ruled in September 2005 that Takehito Usui was bullied at school and ordered Kanuma’s board of education, Tochigi Prefecture and the victim’s classmates to pay a combined 2.4 million yen in compensation.

So the lower court stated that there should be compensation for the bullying. They ordered compensation by the school district *and* the victim’s classmates because of the bullying. The amount was about $20,000.

But the district court did not agree that the bullying was the cause of the November 1999 suicide.

Why is it the courts job to determine why the boy committed suicide? Note, motivation is important in murder cases, because it helps establish blame, but we know who is to blame for the boy’s suicide in a literal sense. The boy is. Trying to look at various factors that influenced the boy’s decision and assign blame there is similar to saying criminals commit crimes because they were brought up poorly and are therefore not responsible.

The law isn’t suppose to work this way nor should it.

This prompted the parents to appeal.
The parents claimed the board of education and the prefecture could have prevented the suicide, which they say was directly caused by the bullying in class and had asked for 110 million yen from the two defendants for not doing their duty to protect their son.

I’m sorry, but the parents are simply wrong here. The bullying that took place at the school was wrong. There are not ifs, buts or ands about it, it was horrendously wrong. But to the extent that human beings are legally responsible for their own actions, it does not make sense to assign the blame for the suicide on anyone else but the boy.

Saying the bullying caused the suicide is saying something along these lines:

1. The boy was a machine, such that when certain things happened, suicide became inevitable. The people who set off this chain of events was the school board, therefore they are responsible.
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2. Suicide was the only solution available to the boy for the problem of bullying. That is, when school boards fail to act against bullies, such as those involved here, students have no recourse but to take their own lives.

Presiding Judge Hiromu Emi said Usui’s suicide was caused by the bullying, and agreed the boy had been bullied in class and “the teachers did not provide the required protection for Takehito.” He said the boy was harassed for a long time, causing him to become depressed.

There is no known medical (physical) test for depression. It’s true that some people can take certain popular drugs and these drugs make some feel better. Prozac for example. If people wish to do this, then that seems fine to me. For some it might even be a good idea. However, just because a drug made someone feel better, can we really say they were diseased in the absence of any hard criteria?

Note, we have to be very clear here. The claim of depression is not being used in a passing way, they are claiming the boy had a (mental) disease. They are saying he had a disease and that this disease was caused by the school board. And they want the court to legally acknowledge this. But then why not say that the parents failed because they did not get the boy medicine for his disease?

The parents said they were satisfied that Wednesday’s verdict included the acknowledgment that the bullying was the direct cause of the suicide…

Sorry to be so coarse here, but the direct cause of the suicide was the decision of the boy to take his own life. To argue otherwise is to argue against the notion that humans are responsible for their own actions.

… but said they would appeal the case to the Supreme Court because the high court did not hold the board of education directly responsible for the suicide — only for the bullying — ruling there was insufficient evidence to support the claim.
“The court ruled that bullying caused the suicide but denied that the school was responsible for what happened on its property. It doesn’t make sense,” Katsuji Usui, 54, told reporters.

This just sounds confused to me. The bullying was responsible for the suicide, but the board of education was not responsible for the bullying? It should be just the opposite.

According to the court, Usui’s classmates began harassing him autumn 1998 when he was an eighth-grader at Kitainukai Junior High School. The other children physically attacked him, forced him to expose his genitals in the classroom and stole his belongings.

School is compulsory. You are legally obligated to go. So the boy was legally obligated to go to a place where he was forced to show his genitals and physically attacked. There should be criminal charges here. For the minors, I would suggest they be treated however the law treats minors. For the school officials involved, they should be arrested for negligence. But apparently none of this has happened.

Instead, we have the parents wanting to say the school board caused the death of the boy by not correcting his tormentors, who by tormenting the boy gave him a sort of terminal disease.

The problem is clearly that the law is lax, and the parents *correctly* feel justice has not been served. They are looking for some way to show the suffering brought upon their son by the bullying that took place, and have for various reason latched on to the idea that the suicide was caused by the school board in some scientific sense.

While causality might be easy to establish for a physical law of science, even attempting to establish the same for human behavior undermines the notion of human responsibility, which is necessary if the legal system is to work at all. Here I’m basically a student of Thomas Szasz.

He began refusing to go to school in November 1999 and was found hanged at his home on Nov. 26.
The suit was originally filed in July 2001 against Kanuma and Tochigi Prefecture and two of Usui’s classmates, who cannot be named because they are minors.
The two classmates and their parents reached an out-of-court settlement last July for 1.2 million yen each and an apology to Katsuji and Haruyo Usui for having bullied their son.
Kanuma and the prefecture have continued to fight the lawsuit.

The two boys should have been criminally charged, at least in so much as a minor can be criminally charged, or at the very minimum they should have been given a stern warning by the police the first time an incident like this arose.

What would have happened if all those involved had been adults and the incident had happened at a major Japanese company? Would there have been speedier intervention by the relevant authorities? Are children less important in some way?

Recently the The Supreme Court of Japan ruled that a piano teacher had to play Kimi ga Yo during school ceremonies. (Link to Japan Times article about this.) This is a very controversial issue.

The editors of Yomiuri Shimbun endorsed the decision saying:

Tuesday’s ruling found the order in question constitutional, stating that the woman had an obligation to abide by the order issued by her superior as a government employee, and that the Education, Science and Technology Ministry’s curriculum guidelines and other school-related regulations require teachers to provide students proper education about the national flag and anthem. We find the ruling reasonable.

The Asahi Shimbun voiced concerns stating:

One of the five justices of the Third Petty Bench of the Supreme Court, which heard the case, voiced a dissenting opinion. “Coercing a person to cooperate with the singing of ‘Kimigayo’ at a public ceremony constitutes direct oppression against the person’s belief and creed,” the justice said. There must be many people who support this opinion.
The ruling is worrisome because it could be interpreted by the education ministry and the education board that the Supreme Court supports forced singing of “Kimigayo” and the hoisting of the Hinomaru national flag at school ceremonies. What needs to be made clear is that its decision only concerns piano accompaniment. It says nothing about the constitutionality of compelling teachers and children to stand up and look in the direction of the national flag and sing the song.

The Japan Times spoke out against the decision:

The ruling fails to properly consider the teacher’s spiritual pain caused by the principal’s order. It may lead many boards of education to think that they have a free hand in controlling school teachers who express dissenting views against singing Kimigayo while facing the “Hinomaru” national flag at school ceremonies …In refusing to obey the principal’s order to play the piano for Kimigayo, the Hino music teacher said the anthem is linked to Japan’s aggression in the past against other Asian countries; therefore, she would not sing it or play the piano accompaniment. She also said she could not let children sing the anthem without teaching them the history behind it … Clearly the top court gives priority to maintaining traditional custom and public order at school as embodied in the entrance ceremony. But it fails to consider whether forcing a form of expression — even if it is not verbal — on a person is tantamount to imposing related thoughts or ideas on that person.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Tokiyasu Fujita correctly pointed out that the piano accompaniment caused extreme pain to the teacher in light of her own beliefs and that the main point of the lawsuit should be whether coercion should be allowed in spite of such pain.
With the help of the recorded tape, the ceremony proceeded without a hitch, although some parents may have been displeased with the absence of a piano accompaniment. This prompts us to question why the education board was so intent on punishing the teacher even after the principal learned of her view on Kimigayo.

I’ve been aware of the Kimi ga Yo issue for quite some time. However, I wasn’t aware of the details of the recent ruling until the issue came up in NBR’s Japan forum recently. A poster there argued that if one viewed the situation with the eyes of an employer one had to admit the problematic nature of an employee voicing issues of conscience and then not doing their job. If the Supreme Court were to allow an employee to be exempt from some portion of their work due to an issue of conscience, this would be like opening Pandora’s proverbial box.

My response was to state the following:

I think one aspect of this that needs to be considered is that we are talking about teachers at public institutions of education. We aren’t talking about professional piano players.
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There is a very similar comparison that can be made with “the pledge of allegiance” in America. The pledge contains the phrase, “one nation under god”. Some teachers might feel it is a betrayal of their own moral system to say these words.
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Why should teachers be asked to betray their own moral system in front of their students? For the good of the nation? Aren’t the teachers guaranteed the right of having their own religious view?
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Some teachers are being asked to play an accompaniment, others are being asked to sing and look at the Japanese flag. Many of those who would prefer not to perform these acts, are suffering greatly. Here’s a link to a recent article in the Japan Times:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070118f2.html
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While I am on this topic, another issue of comparison with America would be evolution versus creationism in school. Should a science teacher have to teach “intelligent design” even if he thinks the theory is obviously false and merely an attempt to inject a religious agenda into school? Or worse, should a science teacher have to teach about “creationism”, especially in the case where he rejects it?
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This can be compared with the issues in Japan regarding Japan’s history. Should the comfort women issue be taught about in history class? How about the Nanjing massacre?
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I don’t think it should be so simple as to tell the teachers to follow one policy or else face the consequences. Teachers need to be able to have some freedom to exercise their conscience.
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At least one solution is to decentralize the authority to choose a curriculum. Instead of deciding these issues at the national level, how about asking teachers and parents to decide about them on a local level. As I understand this, at least some decentralization has been suggested, and Education (MEXT) Minister Bunmei Ibuki is against such policies.
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I really don’t want to run on here, but consider the case of sex education? No doubt there are many views on this, even in Japan. Or on a less serious note, how about school uniforms? Should girls have to wear skirts in school? I’m sure if we were to dwell on this no number of controversies would come up.
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Would it be so bad to encourage the local community to debate and decide about these issues, themselves? The result of course would be an increase of diversity in Japan as each local community came up with different decisions. Certainly something anathema to those government officials who lean towards the right.
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So I think the idea of a kihan-ishiki or normative consciousness, in which Japanese are suppose to all share certain common virtues is one that glosses over a lot that shouldn’t be glossed over. But as I understand it, at least some of these supposedly common virtues have been written into the recent revision of the Fundamental Law of Education.

Anyway, I think this is an important issue, and I am sorry to see that the Supreme Court of Japan feels a piano teacher can be coerced by threat of job security and income into playing piano accompaniment to song that once was written for a living god.

It’s often said that Japanese prefer non-legal solutions to their problems. So the following caught my eye:

One explanation is that Abe, like many other conservatives, genuinely believes that the Kono statement was wrong. They challenge the factual basis for the conclusion that the government was involved in coercion. This argument rests on the definition of the word “coercion,” a legal distinction that is jarring given the long-standing insistence that Japan is not a “legalistic culture” and operates according to more flexible principles. It also attempts to trump a moral argument with a legal one. Whether the army actually coerced the women or left that job to independent contractors (as one legalistic argument asserts), there is little doubt that women were forced into servitude at the army’s behest.

From an opinion piece in Honolulu’s Star Bulletin by Ralph A. Cossa and Brad Glosserman.