When Consumers Cut Back: An Object Lesson From Japan

By HIROKO TABUCHI
February 22, 2009
The New York Times

TOKYO — As recession-wary Americans adapt to a new frugality, Japan offers a peek at how thrift can take lasting hold of a consumer society, to disastrous effect.

The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.

Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.

The Takigasaki family in the Tokyo suburb of Nakano goes further to save a yen or two. Although the family has a comfortable nest egg, Hiroko Takigasaki carefully rations her vegetables. When she goes through too many in a given week, she reverts to her cost-saving standby: cabbage stew.

“You can make almost anything with some cabbage, and perhaps some potato,” says Mrs. Takigasaki, 49, who works part time at a home for people with disabilities.

Her husband has a well-paying job with the electronics giant Fujitsu, but “I don’t know when the ax will drop,” she says. “Really, we need to save much, much more.”

Japan eventually pulled itself out of the Lost Decade of the 1990s, thanks in part to a boom in exports to the United States and China. But even as the economy expanded, shell-shocked consumers refused to spend. Between 2001 and 2007, per-capita consumer spending rose only 0.2 percent.

Now, as exports dry up amid a worldwide collapse in demand, Japan’s economy is in free-fall because it cannot rely on domestic consumption to pick up the slack.

In the last three months of 2008, Japan’s economy shrank at an annualized rate of 12.7 percent, the sharpest decline since the oil shocks of the 1970s.

“Japan is so dependent on exports that when overseas markets slow down, Japan’s economy teeters on collapse,” said Hideo Kumano, an economist at the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. “On the surface, Japan looked like it had recovered from its Lost Decade of the 1990s. But Japan in fact entered a second Lost Decade — that of lost consumption.”

The Japanese have had some good reasons to scale back spending.

Perhaps most important, the average worker’s paycheck has shrunk in recent years, even after companies rebounded and bolstered their profits.

That discrepancy is the result of aggressive cost-cutting on the part of Japanese exporters like Toyota and Sony. They, like American companies now, have sought to fend off cutthroat competition from companies in emerging economies like South Korea and Taiwan, where labor costs are low.

To better compete, companies slashed jobs and wages, replacing much of their work force with temporary workers who had no job security and fewer benefits. Nontraditional workers now make up more than a third of Japan’s labor force.

Younger people are feeling the brunt of that shift. Some 48 percent of workers age 24 or younger are temps. These workers, who came of age during a tough job market, tend to shun conspicuous consumption.

They tend to be uninterested in cars; a survey last year by the business daily Nikkei found that only 25 percent of Japanese men in their 20s wanted a car, down from 48 percent in 2000, contributing to the slump in sales.

Young Japanese women even seem to be losing their once- insatiable thirst for foreign fashion. Louis Vuitton, for example, reported a 10 percent drop in its sales in Japan in 2008.

“I’m not interested in big spending,” says Risa Masaki, 20, a college student in Tokyo and a neighbor of the Takigasakis. “I just want a humble life.”

Japan’s aging population is not helping consumption. Businesses had hoped that baby boomers — the generation that reaped the benefits of Japan’s postwar breakneck economic growth — would splurge their lifetime savings upon retirement, which began en masse in 2007. But that has not happened at the scale that companies had hoped.

Economists blame this slow spending on widespread distrust of Japan’s pension system, which is buckling under the weight of one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies. That could serve as a warning for the United States, where workers’ 401(k)’s have been ravaged by declining stocks, pensions are disappearing, and the long-term solvency of the Social Security system is in question.

“My husband is retiring in five years, and I’m very concerned,” says Ms. Masaki’s mother, Naoko, 52. She says it is no relief that her husband, a public servant, can expect a hefty retirement package; pension payments could fall, and she has two unmarried children to worry about.

“I want him to find another job, and work as long as he’s able,” Mrs. Masaki says. “We must be ready to fend for ourselves.”

Economic stimulus programs like the one President Obama signed into law last week have been hampered in Japan by deflation, the downward spiral of prices and wages that occurs when consumers hold down spending — in part because they expect goods to be cheaper in the future.

Economists say deflation could interfere with the two trillion yen ($21 billion) in cash handouts that the Japanese government is planning, because consumers might save the extra money on the hunch that it will be more valuable in the future than it is now.

The same fear grips many economists and policymakers in the United States. “Deflation is a real risk facing the economy,” President Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, told reporters this month.

Hiromi Kobayashi, 38, a Tokyo homemaker, has taken to sewing children’s ballet clothes at home to supplement income from her husband’s job at a movie distribution company. The family has not gone on vacation in two years and still watches a cathode-ray tube TV. Mrs. Kobayashi has her eye on a flat-panel TV but is holding off.

“I’m going to find a bargain, then wait until it gets even cheaper,” she says.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/worldbusiness/22japan.html

Japan's Double Oscar Victory

By Coco Masters / Tokyo
Wednesday, February 25 2009
TIME Magazine


It's not quite Slumdog's tale of rags to riches — more like shining maggots to Oscar gold. The path that led Japan to take its first Oscar in Best Foreign Language film at this week's Academy Awards started with the film's lead actor, Masahiro Motoki, contacting author Shinmon Aoki to quote a passage of his novel Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician in the actor's own travel diary. "Maggots are life, too," the passage, in the voice of the novel's protagonist, reads. "When I thought that, I could see the maggots shining."

Two days after the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, at least a thousand people lined up at movie theaters in Tokyo's Marunouchi district to see the film for which director Yojiro Takita brought home an Oscar. Departures (Okuribito) is the comical and dramatic story of an unemployed cellist who finds work cleaning and preparing the deceased for burial. The film has already grossed more than $34 million in Japan since its September 2008 release. (The film is scheduled for limited released in the U.S. in May.) Sales of Aoki's novel, on which the film is based, have spiked, along with advance sales of the DVD.

The win came as a surprise to many — and none more than Takita, the director, who hadn't prepared an acceptance speech. Not only was it the first time Japan has ever taken home two Oscars — the 12-minute The House of Small Cubes (Tsumiki no Ie) also won for Best Animated Short — but both films were in categories never before won by Japanese films. Departures won an upset victory over the Israeli animated documentary Waltz with Bashir and the French entry The Class, the story of a Paris schoolteacher. The last time that a Japanese film was nominated for the category of Foreign Language Film was with The Twilight Samurai in 2003. Samurai, The Legend of Musashi won an honorary foreign language film award in 1955 — but that was a year before the 1956 establishment of the foreign language category.

The turning point for Departures, which won the Grand Prix at the Montreal World Film Festival, may have been earlier this year, when the film won the audience prize at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January. "For me that's a bellwether," says Japanese film critic Mark Schilling."A lot of the Academy members live in Palm Springs and go to that film festival. They liked what they saw. I thought they responded to the craft of [the film], and the quality of it." Sachiko Watanabe, a veteran film critic for 35 years, says Sunday's wins herald that the era in which Japanese films are judged with a sense of exoticism is over. "The fact that the Academy Awards recognized this is a big encouragement to the Japanese film industry," she says. Festivals like Berlin, Venice and Cannes have recently given more recognition to Japanese films, of which more than 400 were released last year in the domestic market. They now outnumber foreign films being shown in Japan, and increased competition in the film industry is slowly improving the quality of films and creating an environment for movies like Departures, to rise to the top.

Despite a quiet opening in Japan, Schilling said he was hopeful that Departures would win. "The film didn't have blockbuster written all over it when it was released, and I don't think the producers and distributors had great expectations," he says. "But word got out that it was more than a film for old people and it became a mass phenomenon in Japan." Takita, 53, got his start in adult films but, until now, is probably most remembered as the director of the 1999 film Secret (Himitsu), which was eventually reamde by French director Luc Besson. Takita beamed as he spoke upon receiving the Oscar. "This is a new 'departure' for me. And I will — we will — be back." he said. Perhaps this year is the harbinger of future Hollywood endings for the Japanese film industry.

With reporting by Yuki Oda


http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1881620,00.html

Funereal flick out to reap Japan an Oscar

By Mark Schilling
20 February 2009
The Japan Times

Yojiro Takita talks about his funereal drama 'Okuribito' ('Departures'), Japan's big hope at this weekend's Academy Awards

The Japanese film industry now turns out about 400 titles annually, but in a given decade only a few Japanese filmmakers win major international awards — including the biggest of all: the Oscars.

One was anime auteur Hayao Miyazaki, whose 2001 megahit "Spirited Away" received an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Now there may be another — Yojiro Takita, whose 2008 drama "Okuribito" ("Departures") has been nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

"I'm happy and honored," Takita told The Japan Times — probably the 100th time he has said this to the media since the nominations for this weekend's Academy Awards were announced on Jan. 22.

This is just one of many accolades showered on Takita's film about Daigo, an out-of-work cellist who finds a new calling as a nokanshi — a professional who cleans and clothes corpses for funerals. The first was a Grand Prix at the Montreal World Film Festival last September, followed by a sweep of domestic prizes, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay in Kinema Junpo magazine's annual critics' poll, whose film awards are the oldest and most prestigious in Japan.

Getting the most local media attention, though, is the Oscar nod — "Okuribito" is the first Japanese film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film since Yoji Yamada's 2003 samurai drama "Tasogare Seibei" ("The Twilight Samurai"). Since the start of this award in 1947, only four Asian and three Japanese films have ever won it, beginning with Akira Kurosawa's 1951 classic "Rashomon."

Born in 1955 in Toyama Prefecture, Takita rose up through the ranks of Japan's then-massive erotic-film industry, directing a popular series of porn comedies about commuter-train molesters. In 1985, he made his first straight feature, the black comedy "Comic Zasshi Nanka Iranai!" ("Comic Magazine"), but his first big hit was "Kimurake no Hitobito" ("The Yen Family"). Scripted by Nobuyuki Isshiki, this 1988 indie comedy about an avaricious family cleverly skewered bubble-era excesses.

Takita made five more comedies with Isshiki, but his career took a more serious — and mainstream — turn with "Himitsu" ("Secret"), a 1999 weeper about a high-school girl (Ryoko Hirosue) whose soul enters her mother's body when both are involved in a traffic accident. The film was a box-office success in Japan and later remade by Vincent Perez as "Si j'etais toi."

In the current decade, Takita has tried various genres, from period fantasy (the two "Onmyoji" ["The Yin Yang Master"] films in 2001 and 2003) to samurai swashbuckler ("Mibugishi-den"; "When the Last Sword is Drawn"; 2003) and youth drama ("Batteri"; "The Battery"; 2007), but more with the local mass audience than critical prizes in mind.

In September of 2006, Takita agreed to direct "Okuribito." Star Masahiro Motoki had first had an idea for a film about nokanshi nearly seven years earlier and finally sold his pitch to producers Toshiaki Nakazawa and Yasuhiro Mase, who proposed the project to Takita.

"I thought there was something different and interesting (about this film) when I first read the proposal," Takita told The Japan Times in an interview at the Yokohama Film Festival on Feb. 1, where "Okuribito" won prizes for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress. Smoking one cigarette after another with a long plastic holder, he spoke in quick, nervous, if affable, bursts.

"I had never seen this sort of material before," he said. "But in choosing all my films I find something to be interested in — so it wasn't unusual in that regard. It was hard to imagine how it would do commercially, though."

Takita filmed "Okuribito" in the winter of 2007, with Tsutomu Yamazaki playing Daigo's grizzled, but supportive, funeral-home boss and Ryoko Hirosue as Daigo's much younger wife Mika, who is at first appalled by his new profession, but comes to understand it. Working from a script by Kundo Koyama, Takita leavened the film's serious drama with touches of his trademark humor, including a memorable opening scene when the hero discovers that the young woman he is preparing for her last rites was really a transvestite.

"It's not easy, getting the right balance between drama and comedy (with this sort of story) — one mistake can throw everything off," commented Mase, who first worked with Takita on "Himitsu." "But Takita was able to do that well in the delicate world of this film — that's what makes him so special."

Released in Japan last September, "Okuribito" became a favorite with not only critics but also audiences, recording more than 2.6 million admissions and earning more than ¥3 billion at the box office. These are astounding figures for a Japanese film not based on a popular TV show, anime, manga or novel, and whose subject matter is fraught with cultural taboos.

"It's really hard to know how well a film of this sort will do at the box office until it opens," Takita said. "As for why it's done so well . . . it's a little bit strange for me to be analyzing this, ha ha . . . but I think the people who saw it understood it and told their friends about it. In other words, it was a word-of-mouth success, which is something I'm happy about."

Takita felt from the beginning, though, that "Okuribito" had the potential to be an extraordinary film with "a positive message."

"The hero is someone who had never had to make choices about his life," he explained. "From the time he was small his life had been decided for him by others. It's the story of how he grows as a human being and discovers his own sense of values."

It's also about how Daigo and his young wife, who at first sees his new profession as both icky and low status, come to better know each other and, in Takita's words, "find love and hope." Initially, however, Mika was supposed to be about the same age as Daigo — that is, their late 30s (Motoki is now 44) — but the search for a suitable actress came up blank. Then Takita suggested the younger Hirosue, who had starred as a teenager in "Himitsu" — and proposed her for the role to Mase.

"In the beginning (Daigo and Mika) are somewhat naive — they don't know a lot about the world," Takita explained. "Then they are faced with a crisis and have to deal with it — and in the process, grow as people. For that reason, I thought that a younger actress would be better — she would be better able to show that change.

"Also, Hirosue has a wide range. I saw that when I directed her in 'Himitsu,' where she played a mother as well as a high-school and college student, when she was still in her teens."

But the film's center is Motoki, who rose to fame as a singer with boy-band Shibugakitai in the early 1980s but has since developed a career as a serious actor, working with such leading directors as Masayuki Suo, Shinya Tsukamoto and Takashi Miike. As the nokanshi, Motoki expresses not only a musician's grace and precision, but compassion and respect for the deceased by attitude and gesture.

"More important than the way an actor says his lines are his expressions," Takita commented. "It's really difficult to get that sort of thing right — there are so many ways to see a character. What's good about Motoki is his transparency; he lets you see into his (character's) thinking and behavior."

What are the chances of "Okuribito" landing an Oscar? Takita would rather not speculate, but Mase noted that the film, with its upbeat story of an unemployed middle-aged man finding a new life, has zeitgeist appeal.

"The whole world is in a recession now," he said. "The timing is right."


http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ff20090220r1.html

Marriage agencies in Japan

02 February 2009
The International Herald Tribune (Herald Asahi)

The inability of many young Japanese men and women to find partners on their own has placed marriage agencies in an enviable position.

As many as 600,000 people--60 percent of them men--are thought to be relying on help from one or more agencies to meet their prospective life partners. Their quest for companionship has inflated the industry's market value to 50 to 60 billion yen, according to the economy ministry, which oversees it. But as the industry grows, so do customer complaints about business practices as well as churlish rivalries among operators

A system designed to certify excellence among agencies, introduced by a nonprofit organization (NPO) in December, has failed to bring order to the nebulous trade. Not long after the move was announced, a different group declared it would issue a rival certification later this year

The confusion shows no sign of abating

The first push to regulate Japan's vast array of marriage agencies began in January 2007, when a team made up of academics and others created an NPO to consider qualification systems for marriage councilors and other life consultants

The Japan Lifedesign Counselors' Association (JLCA), headed by Hiromitsu Haraguchi, a former official of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, drew up a certificate for excellent marriage agencies and finished screenings in December

JLCA has already awarded its "Certificated Matchmaking Service (CMS)" credential to 176 offices in 36 prefectures. Among the recipients, which account for about 4 percent of the industry, are heavyweight operators Zwei and Sunmarie. Beneficiaries of the CMS mark are entitled to display it in their offices or advertisements for three years

To screen agencies, JLCA used guidelines devised last July by the Service Productivity and Innovation for Growth, a body made up of academics, bureaucrats and businesses and headed by Jiro Ushio, one of Japan's pre-eminent business leaders

The guidelines include: EWhether an agency has clearly defined the nature of its services; EWhether it advertises its services without exaggeration; EWhether it explicitly reveals conditions for entering into contracts and canceling them; and EWhether it protects the privacy of its members

JLCA is funded by a screening fee (157,500 yen per case) and CMS mark display fee (8,400 yen a month)

"Because we don't (directly) rely on marriage agencies for our (operating) funds, we're able to carry out screenings in an impartial way," said Haraguchi

One recipient of the CMS mark is Tokyo-based Ginza Avenir, which has a membership of about 350 people

"There are all sorts of companies in this industry, including disreputable ones, so this system is useful because it allows me to elevate my brand. It's also helpful for consumers," the firm's representative Yurika Kitagawa said

The government-affiliated National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan received 2,974 complaints or consultations about marriage agencies in fiscal 2007. That figure is not lower than it was in 2004, when the industry became subject to regulations under the law on specified business transactions. Most complaints and consultations concern contracts or their cancelations. Typically a disgruntled client might argue that "the solicitation (to become a member of a marriage agency) was coercive" or that "when I canceled my contract halfway, I was made to pay exorbitant cancellation fees." In response to JLCA's move, however, 12 agencies and related bodies complained the screening fee was too high and the screening process too vague. The group includes O-net, Japan's biggest operator

In a December meeting, the group decided to set up a new organization and issue a different certificate from the end of the year

"Behind the move are a rivalry between major marriage agencies and a competition for members," an industry source said

The one-upmanship has confounded the economy ministry. An official from the ministry's Service Industries Division, however, was diplomatic: "These actions (of the two rival camps) are voluntary so we can't comment on them. We just hope that the confusion will be eventually resolved in a way that can obtain understanding from consumers." According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the average ages of men and women who married for the fist time in 2007 were 30.1 and 28.3 respectively. In 1970 they were tying the knot about four years sooner

Whereas in the past, unions between young men and women were commonly orchestrated by friends, colleagues or--especially in rural areas--older women in their community, now such matchmaking is less common.

Princesses Preen in a Pauper Economy

By Michiko Toyama
February 3 2009

The three girls walking down Meiji Street in the heart of Tokyo's Harajuku district are talking loudly in cute high voices, sometimes breaking into giggles. They could be any group of teenage girls on a merry shopping expedition in the Japanese capital's mecca of youth fashion — except for the fact that they are clad in clothing and accessories that mimic the look of comic-book heroines wearing the style of 18th-century princesses.

"My father asked me, 'Where on earth are you going in that?' " says Mayuka Watanabe, laughing. She is a 17-year-old high school student sporting a headband with a big ribbon and three pink roses. Her friend Miki Takahashi, 18, who takes her fashion inspiration from Cinderella, adds, "People look at me and sometimes even point a finger at me. Once a little kid on the train looked at me and exclaimed, 'Look, there is a fairy!' which was kind of embarrassing, but I didn't care because I just wear what I like." Sanae Nagamine, a 21-year-old waitress from Hitachi in northeastern Ibaraki prefecture, had to take a two-hour train ride to join her friends on this pilgrimage to Jesus Diamante, one of the first fashion brands to promote hime-kei, as the look is known, with its frilly pastel frocks and ringlet hairdos. With money earned from part-time work, the girls plan to shop for two hours at the brand's Harajuku store before heading to its Shinjuku branch. "I love their design. It amps me up!" enthuses Nagamine.

Hime-kei appears to have been inspired by American filmmaker Sofia Coppola's movie Marie Antoinette, with its lush rendering of the decadence of the court of Louis XVI. The rush of young Japanese women to emulate the look of 18th-century French aristocrats has grown from a fad into something of a movement, whose leader is the popular singer Ayumi Hamasaki. It even has its own magazine, Koakuma Ageha, with a circulation of 350,000. If Coppola's movie created the wave, Osaka-based Jesus Diamante was ready to ride it. Established in 2001, the label had offered luxurious clothing styled for a hypothetical heiress with a likeness to French actress Brigitte Bardot. But the impact of Marie Antoinette prompted it to introduce such lines as Marie Wanpi, with a ball gown sporting a large ribbon on the chest and a Cinderella coat with a fur collar and sleeve edges.

Takatoshi Imada of Tokyo's Institute of Technology, Value and Decision Science sees hime-kei as a response to an unsatisfying way of life. "The hime-kei girls removed the borders between the virtual and real worlds," says Imada, who believes the phenomenon is rooted in a rejection of the goals of advancement through hard work in an ailing market economy. "They longed for a different form of self-expression and sought a more meaningful way of life." Searching for meaning through the fashions of a doomed European aristocracy may be a form of protest against a business-driven contemporary Japanese culture, but it's certainly made healthy profits for the Jesus Diamante label. Today, the company runs four stores; by mid-2007 it had earned more than $14 million from selling dresses that run from $500 to $600 each and coats that cost up to $1,500. The average client spends $1,000 a month in support of her princess habit — but some spend as much as $4,000 a month. Most clients are girls in their teens to mid-20s, but there are some women in their 30s and 40s who wear the look.

Customer loyalty comes easily in a fashion movement that can seem to border on a cult. The company requires its sales clerks to model its wares, both in stores and on its website, and that has resulted in some of its retail staff developing their own fan bases. Most popular among them is Keiko Mizoe, 24, a staffer in the Shinjuku store with the flawless complexion of a porcelain doll. "When people started to call me Princess Keiko, I didn't like it and didn't know what to do," Mizoe confesses. "But then I started to think that if others see me in that way, then I have to act my part." These days she regularly models for Koakuma Ageha and sometimes even appears on TV. "Every day I enjoy very much being a girl. I am just an ordinary girl who happens to be a princess. The world is my oyster. I am the luckiest girl alive," says Mizoe, who is wearing a pink frilly dress with a big flower accessory in her perfectly curled hair. "I always want to enjoy the princess fashion and wear pink no matter how old I get."

"Every little girl loves princesses. And any girl at least once pretended to be one and liked pink and frills," says Yuri Chinomi, a designer and managing director for Jesus Diamante. "I was so happy when I got a dress with frills bought for me, although I could wear it only on special occasions. There are definitely adults who still remember that kind of excitement. I want them to feel it again wearing our fashion."

Adds Takako Hosomi, president of Princess House Inc., whose clients demand that their living spaces be transformed to mimic 18th-century European palaces: "It's every girl's dream to wake up on a splendid canopy bed with a kiss from a handsome prince."

In Japan's depressed economy, "princes" who can offer their brides an aristocratic lifestyle are an endangered species. But like the entourage of Marie Antoinette, the hime-kei girls keep on spending as if they live in their very own bubble economy.


http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1876620,00.html

related video:
http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bctid=9867184001

In Japan, New Jobless May Lack Safety Net

By Martin Fackler
February 7, 2009
New York Times

OITA, Japan — Koji Hirano said his “mind went blank” with disbelief when he and other workers at a Canon digital camera factory in this southern city were suddenly called into a cafeteria in late October and told they were being laid off.

The shock turned to fear when they were also ordered to vacate their employer-provided apartments, a common job benefit here. With no savings from his monthly take-home pay of as little as $700, he said, he faced certain homelessness.

“They were going to kick us out into the winter cold to die,” said Mr. Hirano, 47.

The current economic crisis has spread joblessness and distress across the world, and Japan has been no exception — with output plunging at historic rates, the unemployment rate leapt to 4.4 percent in December from 3.9 percent the month before. But what has proved more shocking has been the fact that so many of those laid off have been so vulnerable, with hundreds and perhaps thousands finding themselves cast into the streets.

Mr. Hirano and the others laid off by Canon are part of a new subclass of Japanese workers created during a decade of American-style deregulation. As short-term employees they have none of the rights of so-called salarymen or even the factory workers for Japan’s legions of small manufacturers.

To make matters worse, they can expect little in the way of unemployment or welfare benefits. In Japan, a country with little experience of widespread unemployment until recently, there is an inadequate safety net for laid-off workers.

According to the Labor Ministry, about 131,000 layoffs have been announced since October. Of those, only about 6,000 were culled from the majority of Japanese workers who hold traditional full-time jobs, which are still often held for life. The overwhelming majority — some 125,000, the ministry says — are so-called nonregular workers, who are sent by staffing agencies or hired on short-term contracts with lower pay, fewer benefits and none of the legal protections against layoffs of regular full-time employees.

Mr. Hirano and other former temporary workers at Canon were allowed to stay in their apartments for a few extra months after a public outcry reached all the way to the prime minister. But others have not been so lucky. Over the New Year holiday some 500 disgruntled former temporary workers made homeless by layoffs built an impromptu tent city in a Tokyo park adjacent to the Labor Ministry.

As never before, the global downturn has driven home how a decade of economic transformation has eroded Japan’s gentler version of capitalism, in which companies once laid off employees only as a last resort.

“This recession has opened the nation’s eyes to its growing social inequalities,” said Masahiro Abe, a professor at Dokkyo University who specializes in labor relations. “There is a whole population of workers who are outside the traditional support net.”

Until a decade ago, nonregular workers accounted for less than a quarter of Japan’s total work force, and included subcontractors and others outside the lifetime employment system as well as students or homemakers working part-time jobs at restaurants or convenience stores.

But the number of nonregular workers took off after an easing of labor laws in 1999 and again in 2004 allowed temporary workers to work on factory lines and in other jobs once largely restricted to full-time workers. During Japan’s economic recovery in this decade, companies added millions of less expensive temporary employees while continuing to reduce overall numbers of full-time staff.

Today, 34.5 percent of Japan’s 55.3 million workers are nonregular employees, including many primary breadwinners for households, according to the Internal Affairs Ministry.

Under the nation’s traditional company-centered social welfare system, created after World War II, companies were expected to look after employees until retirement and beyond, serving as the main conduit for pensions and other benefits, and keeping jobless rosters empty by not laying off workers.

Even the limited government job-loss benefits were devised with lifetime employees in mind. To receive unemployment insurance, for instance, workers must have held the same job for at least a year, effectively excluding most temporary workers, whose contracts can be as short as two months. This has left at least half of Japan’s 17.8 million nonregular workers ineligible for unemployment aid, say labor experts and Labor Ministry officials.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Japan spends about 0.3 percent of its gross domestic product on unemployment benefits, far below Western European countries and about the same as the United States, which tolerates far more social dislocation and poverty than Japan.

According to labor experts and Labor Ministry officials, Japan needs to revamp the system to fit a more dynamic labor market in which not all jobs are held for life, and to prevent layoffs from being so financially devastating.

“Japan’s social safety net has failed to keep up with changes in the labor market,” said Yusuke Inoue, a section chief in the Labor Ministry’s bureau of stable employment. “We must build a safety net that suits this more deregulated working environment.”

After a public outcry, Tokyo has promised to expand unemployment benefits to those who have worked six months or more. The government has also tried to shore up the traditional system by pressuring companies to elevate more nonregular workers to full-time status, with Prime Minister Taro Aso telling companies in December that “regular employment is best.”

Some of the first layoffs to gain national attention were at two Canon factories in Oita, where some 1,100 temporary workers were let go, including Mr. Hirano.

As a temporary worker, Mr. Hirano was technically the employee of a staffing agency, and not of the factory where he worked. As a result, Canon executives even refused at first to accept a letter written by him and other laid-off temporary workers asking for their jobs back, Mr. Hirano said. After 30 minutes of discussion in front of the factory’s gate, the executives finally took the letter, he said. He said he never got a response.

In a written response to questions from The New York Times, Canon said it had underestimated the difficulties faced by the laid-off temporary workers in the current economic downturn and would offer them more aid, including help in staying longer in their apartments.

Mr. Hirano and other laid-off temporary workers said their annual pay was about $22,000 a year, below what many labor experts call Japan’s poverty line of $25,000 a year.

To make ends meet, even when employed, Mr. Hirano said he usually cooked a small stew of cabbages and carrots every night in the tiny kitchen in the corner of his one-room apartment. He added chicken to the stew only on days it was on sale at the supermarket, he said.

Mr. Hirano and others said they had applied for a dozen jobs each, with no luck in the current market. With their meager savings running out, they said, they had applied for welfare a half dozen times in two months, only to be rejected by officials who said they were not trying hard enough to find new employment. The officials said the former workers were ineligible for unemployment support because they had worked at Canon less than a year.

Just in case he gets kicked out of the apartment suddenly, Mr. Hirano has packed most of his belongings in a half dozen cardboard boxes that sit in a corner of his room, next to an unmade futon and a table covered in résumés.

Mr. Hirano and his co-workers said they felt betrayed. They said that they had believed that if they worked hard, Canon would reward them with an offer of direct employment, at higher pay.

“We did our best, so Canon should have taken care of us,” said one 32-year-old laid-off worker who was so ashamed of his situation that he asked that only his family name, Murakami, be used. “That is the Japanese way. But this isn’t Japan anymore.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/world/asia/08japan.html

Getting a glimpse behind the mask

By Natsuko Fukue
6 February 2009
The Japan Times

It happens in Japanese cities every winter and spring _ the mask attack. These white strips of cloth obscuring your fellow commuters' faces have long been a common way to ward off influenza and hay fever, but their popularity is soaring higher than ever this winter because of frequent reports about an outbreak of a new type of flu. ``The media have been repeatedly giving a warning of a new type of influenza outbreak, so people may have thought they should store some masks and use a mask more often,'' said Yukihiro Hosoe, manager of the advertising and marketing strategy department at Kowa Co., Japan's leading health care product company. Sales of masks from September to December increased 1.5 times compared with a year earlier, he said. The firm conducted an online survey of 520 men and women at the end of the year to find out why they bought masks. According to the survey, 72 percent bought masks to keep from catching the flu.

As far as catching a cold, however, Hosoe said wearing a mask will not offer 100 percent protection. ``The best use of a mask is when it is worn by a person who already has a cold,'' he said. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry also said people cannot completely avoid inhaling the potentially infectious aerosol droplets from coughs and sneezes by wearing a mask because air comes in through the gap between the mask and face. It is more effective if sick people wear masks, it said. One reason masks are popular in Japan is that many people commute by public transportation. In Tokyo especially, trains are packed and people stay on them a long time, unlike in New York or London, according to Hosoe. ``That's why mask sales are much higher in the metropolitan area than in the countryside,'' he said. Masks in Japan date back to the early 20th century, when they were seen as a way to keep warm. Use of gauze masks spread widely after World War II, Hosoe said. By the time the 1980s rolled around, masks also became common in spring hay fever season. He said gauze masks for flu and hay fever that Kowa started manufacturing in 1985 became a big hit despite a price tag of Yen 350, nearly double the cost of the company's previous version. Hay fever became a major issue around that time because cedar trees planted by the government after the war for flood control and afforestation were reaching maturity. In 2003, health care company Unicharm Corp. entered the market with a disposable ``three-dimensional'' mask, designed especially for pollen prevention. According to the company, a three-dimensional mask fits the face perfectly, making it easier to breathe through than a normal mask. Its unit price is set lower than a gauze mask or a mask for flu because people with hay fever buy them every year and use them over a longer period than people suffering from a cold. Although the gauze type commanded 80 percent of the mask market in 2002, disposable masks have gradually taken over, now accounting for eight out of every 10 sold. The health ministry also encourages people with a cold or the flu to wear a disposable nonwoven mask that blocks 95 percent to 99.9 percent of air particles, instead of a gauze mask, which is less effective at blocking germs from coughs and sneezes. The mask market continues to grow, jumping from Yen 5 billion in the 1980s to Yen 120 billion in 2007, according to Hosoe. Health care companies have a special challenge selling masks to women reluctant to wear them because they are not fashionable. In 2005, Kowa started selling masks in a light pink color for women designed to make their face look healthy. ``In fact, as many pink masks are sold as white masks. Some consumers tell us they are cute,'' Hosoe said. Kowa also developed a mask with a special coating to avoid spoiling makeup. Unicharm even debuted its ``Mask Collection'' drive in 2007 in collaboration with GiRLSGATE.com, a blog server for young female celebrities, to propose various fashion styles that go well with masks. Some women, meanwhile, find masks useful for a different reason _ they provide a handy cover when they aren't wearing makeup. ``Japanese women don't like going out without makeup, but they don't have time in the morning,'' said Chieko Ito of Kowa's advertising and marketing strategy department. ``So they just draw on their eyebrows and put a mask on.''

Japanese firm pays £780,000 compensation over man 'worked to death'

By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo
03 February 2009
Telegraph.co.uk

A Japanese company has been ordered to pay more than £780,000 in damages to the relatives of an overworked employee who committed suicide.

The agricultural firm made the payment after the 33-year-old worker killed himself four years ago after becoming depressed due to his growing workload.

A judge at Kushiro District Court on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido ruled the co-operative failed to fulfil its duty to ensure workplace safety and prevent his death.

Ordering the company to pay £785,500 (100 million yen) in damages to the worker's relatives, Judge Tadahiro Okayama told the court: "The course of suicide arises from his work."

Mr Okayama added that the co-operative "could have prevented [the suicide] if it had taken appropriate measures such as restricting his working hours and recommending him to visit a psychiatrist", according to Kyodo news agency.

While thousands of workers are estimated to die every year from overworking and a growing number of relatives are seeking compensation, the amount of damages awarded in the latest Hokkaido case was unusually high.

Deaths related to workplace stresses are becoming an increasingly serious phenomenon in modern day Japan, due to a burgeoning office culture famous for its long hours, strict codes and hierarchical structures.

Testimony to the growing problem of overworking is the existence of the word "karoshi" – meaning death from overworking – alongside a national karoshi hotline and a law specifically created to compensate relatives of karoshi victims.

As many as 2,200 workers committed suicide in Japan due to work conditions, according to police figures, while a further 10,000 are estimated to have suffered work-related heart attacks or strokes during the same year, according to Rengo, a major labour union federation.

The current climate of economic decline has prompted some analysts to predict that incidents of death from overworking will steadily increase over the coming year due to soaring workplace stresses.

Martin Schulz, a senior economist at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo, told Bloomberg, "Karoshi will likely pick up again."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/4448881/Japanese-firm-pays-780000-compensation-over-man-worked-to-death.html

In Japan, you are what your blood type is

By Mari Yamaguchi
2 February 2009
TOKYO (AP)

In Japan, "What's your type?" is much more than small talk; it can be a paramount question in everything from matchmaking to getting a job.

By type, the Japanese mean blood type, and no amount of scientific debunking can kill a widely held notion that blood tells all.

In the year just ended, four of Japan's top 10 best-sellers were about how blood type determines personality, according to Japan's largest book distributor, Tohan Co. The books' publisher, Bungeisha, says the series — one each for types B, O, A, and AB — has combined sales of well over 5 million copies.

Taku Kabeya, chief editor at Bungeisha, thinks the appeal comes from having one's self-image confirmed; readers discover the definition of their blood type and "It's like 'Yes, that's me!'"

As defined by the books, type As are sensitive perfectionists but overanxious; Type Bs are cheerful but eccentric and selfish; Os are curious, generous but stubborn; and ABs are arty but mysterious and unpredictable.

All that may sound like a horoscope, but the public doesn't seem to care.

Even Prime Minister Taro Aso seems to consider it important enough to reveal in his official profile on the Web. He's an A. His rival, opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa, is a B.

Nowadays blood type features in a Nintendo DS game and on "lucky bags" of women's accessories tailored to blood type and sold at Tokyo's Printemps department store. A TV network is set to broadcast a comedy about women seeking husbands according to blood type.

It doesn't stop there.

Matchmaking agencies provide blood-type compatibility tests, and some companies make decisions about assignments based on employees' blood types.

Children at some kindergartens are divided up by blood type, and the women's softball team that won gold at the Beijing Olympics used the theory to customize each player's training.

Not all see the craze as harmless fun, and the Japanese now have a term, "bura-hara," meaning blood-type harassment.

And, despite repeated warnings, many employers continue to ask blood types at job interviews, said Junichi Wadayama, an official at the Health, Welfare and Labor Ministry.

"It's so widespread that most people, even company officials, are not aware that asking blood types could lead to discrimination," Wadayama said.

Blood types, determined by the proteins in the blood, have nothing to do with personality, said Satoru Kikuchi, associate professor of psychology at Shinshu University.

"It's simply sham science," he said. "The idea encourages people to judge others by the blood types, without trying to understand them as human beings. It's like racism."

This use of blood-typing has unsavory roots.

The theory was imported from Nazi race ideologues and adopted by Japan's militarist government in the 1930s to breed better soldiers. The idea was scrapped years later and the craze faded.

It resurfaced in the 1970s, however, as Masahiko Nomi, an advocate with no medical background, gave the theory mass appeal. His son, Toshitaka, now promotes it through a private group, the Human Science ABO Center, saying it's not intended to rank or judge people but to smooth relationships and help make the best of one's talents.

The books tend to stop short of blood-type determinism, suggesting instead that while blood type creates personality tendencies, it's hardly definitive.

"Good job, you're done. So how do you feel about the results?" one blood type manual asks on its closing page. "Your type, after all, is what you decide you are."


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h5LIxdCxYM6wV0C9h8ln4GNZPLcQD962SVEG4