My opinion this week(103):
A red finance counter
On December 25th, 1998, Yahoo! Japan introduced one of home-pages as
"a good site today". Some other mass-media also introduced this site following
to Yahoo, so this site became very popular and famous among Internet users.
The site is showing a counter on a red national finance balance on real time.
The counter is showing two national debts, a long term national liabilities ,
the total national bonds to cover the liabilities and per capita number of
those two based on the statistics announced regularly by the Ministry of
Finance.
The site is offered as a link free site and except commercial purpose,
they allow any users to copy the counter to use them free to promote the
importance of the fact involved with this issue. In compliance with this
offer, I personally decided to pick up this here "My opinion this week".
@
A long term liabilities of this country is such a huge one and every
people know the fact that the country is just extending such a big debt to
the next generations. However, it is a kind of shock to see that the debt
continues to expand every minutes involving some new spending and interests.
This topic on the counter was also picked up in the Business Salon of BizTech
Forum of Nikkei BP and several comments were presented to talk about some
serious situations of financial condition of this country.
The discussion in the Forum was concentrated on whether or not people of
Japan or even Government authorities and politicians are quite concerned with
this serious situation and have some serious determination and action plans
to solve this issue. One participant of the Forum suggested that the Diet
install this counter just on the back wall of the Chairman of the House of
Representative. This suggestions should not be a joke.
@I personally believe that they should pick up this suggestion. I wonder
how the Government authorities and politicians are taking this serious
situation. If they are really serious about those numbers, they should
stop doing all sort of such unproductive and inefficient debate at the diet.
The Government should also stop introducing so many short sighted economic
policies to stimulate the current economy.
All people of Japan should understand the fact that such local promotion
tickets issued by the Government recently is no use to restructure a long
range needs for the country extending a basic solution just for the future.
If this situation continues without any remedies, the financial situation of
the country will get worse and the Japan Corporation will go bankrupt soon.
The answer how to get out of this danger is obvious. The Japan Corporation
should also conduct all sort of restructuring actions which are being taken
currently by all private firms. The central government reform plan which is
the basis of administrative reform plan in the future, was announced recently.
The plan to cut 25% of employees of the central government is also included
in this plan. However, more total and inclusive administrative reform plans
involving central and local government should be prepared and conducted as
soon as possible.
@It is the time that three basic structural reform including administrative
reform, legislative reform and finance reform must be done prior to any other
national policies at the moment.
1999/2/6
Tadashi HAYASE
My opinion this week(104):
What is the most important invention or discovery in the past 2000 years?
On February 4th, the article which says " What is the most important
invention or discovery in the past 2000 years?" appeared in Asahi News-
paper. This is to introduce one of the site of Internet which inquires
hundreds scientists on the above questions. It is very interesting
to read how those hundreds scientists including Nobel Prize winners answered
to this question. All written in English, so it is a kind of tough to read
all them through. But this is surely one of the most interesting site of
Internet that I have ever accessed recently.
Scientists include not only natural sciense scholars but also human
sciense scholars. So answers vary widely and some are quite unique
beyond our common sense.
Next year is the Year 2000. That is just 2000th year since the new era
started. It seems to be very significant to look back the history of human
being for 2000 years in this way.
There are several points of views to evaluate such answers. But I would
like to point out the following two in this connection. The first is the
fact that we must evaluate such answers in such long period of time as
2000 years. If the term is just recent 200 years or 300 years, the answer
would have been limitted much more. The answer might be "TVs, computers
and/or air planes" which are rather obvious objects which provided a big
influence on our daily life. But the question concerns for 2000 years, such
long long periods of time.
Well even so, it is possible that the answer would be TVs, PCs, and air
plaines. However, as far as I quickly checked all of the answer, I see
a dominant number of answers is "printing machine". After some time of
thought, I agreed personally that the answer is right. In such a long
history of human society, invention of printing machine had provided the
biggest impact on the tremendous advancement of natural and human sciences
which followed the invention of printing machine.
The second point I would like to mention is the followings. When we
talk about invention or discovery, we tend to limit the idea to natural
scienses. I am astonished to find that some scientists answered the
questionaire that the most important invention is Democracy. Yes, all of
the great inventions and discovery and the advancement of culture of human
society became possible by the construciton of the stable and democratic
society owing to Democracy. In other word, the history of human sciety of
2000 years is the history of the development of democratic system in the
human society.
A number of aruguments and debate done in this site is one of the most
exciting and informative which I have ever found in Internet which
represent a good example of summary of world history in this century. I
would like to recommend all of my friends who access my page to read this
Internet page as soon as possible.
1999/2/13
Tadashi HAYASE
My opinion this week(105):
Tokyo Governor Election
There are a lot of disputes among political world on the election of
Tokyo Governor which is to be done in this April. Every sources predicted
that Mr. Aoshima, the present Governor would come up again in the election,
but he announced the resignation from the Governorship as of this April.
And various confusions raised among major parties which prepare for the
election.
The first confusion was for the Liberal Democratic Party. For LDP, Tokyo
Governor Election has been the most difficult election in the past and they
lost in the election many times in the past. The last one was a typical
example. Due to non-partisan group of people, the candidate who was nominated
by LDP was defeated in the election against Mr. Aoshima, who was the candidate
backed up by none of major political party groups. Different from the governors
of another prefectures, the Governor of Tokyo is one of the important face
of the country. Any parties, especially such major party as Liberal Democratic
Party, wish to win in this big election by their own nomination. However,
it is very difficult matter because of existence of non-partisan group of
people in such a big city as Tokyo.
Then, LDP's strategy concerning the election is to win the election by
joint recommendation for a certain candidate in corporation with such
party as Koumei Party or even with Democratic Party that is the largest
opposition party in the Diet at the moment. When Mr. Hatoyama of Democratic
Party was about to go for election, LDP took a stance to support him
excluding Mr. Kakizawa, who was the first candidate for the election from
LDP. There is no integrity at all for that stance.
Democratic Party is the same way. We also see no integrity and constancy
as a political party. When they observed that LDP was willing to support
Mr.Hatoyama they refused to say that it was not allowed to do so for LDP.
They might have thought that the election would loose some meaning if the
election is fought in that way. Well, I see some meaning of discussion on
the difference between the management of the central government and the
local governments, but I see no meaning at all for such disputes among
political parties how to proceed governors election.
If a party member wishes to go for election without any nomination from
the party, all they have to say is yes or no. The party admit that free
hand and support him as a party in the election. If they don't agree with
it , they should nominate a candidate by their own name and support him only.
I also don't have any good impression concerning the candidacy of
Mr. Hatoyama , a member of the House of Representative. It was reported that
Hatoyama Family was against him that he would go for this election , for it
is only such a local election although it is Tokyo. Don't be fool of citizen
of Tokyo. Mr. Hatoyama seemed to postponed his decision until quite recently
in order to get support from two major parties such as LDP and Komeito in
addition from his own party.
It is the most important to discuss polices on how each parties and
candidates would reconstruct financial difficulties of Tokyo Prefectures.
All political parties are just interested in strategies how to win in
the election putting policy matters aside. They see no needs and wishes
of citizen of Tokyo.
I would like to warn those political parties that the same thing would
happen again when Mr.Aoshima won the Governorship four years ago without
any partisan support. I even wish that could happen again to let those
foolish politicians recognize their same mistake as four years ago.
1999/2/20
Tadashi HAYASE
My opinion this week(106):
Abolishment of a school of killifish
When we are children, we used to sing one good children's song named
"a school of killifish" . The song says: "A school of killifish is in a
river. Let's take a look at inside of water. You can find a number of
killifishes are playing at a school." That song remember us a sweet memory
of our childhood. But most of those killifishes are now dying out from our
land sooner or later.
In the middle of February, Asahi TV News Station reported that spinach
cultivated in Tokorozawa City of Saitama Prefecture contain high density of
Dioxin which is higher than the normal figures set as safe standard for
human body. As a result of this report, many orders for vegetable cultivated
by farmers in Tokorozawa had been canceled by buyers all over Japan.
They requested TV station to correct the contents of the news and should
apologize to say that the report is not quite right. According to the
investigation made by the authority of Prefecture, there is no immediate
danger at all so far as their vegetable are concerned.
Today there are many news on such topics as dioxin, environmental hormone,
in mass media. But this is the first case that become big issue as to whether
or not vegetables which we eat everyday are safe or not even contaminated by
dioxin.
I am not quite sure whether or not those reports on dioxin were quite
right and this is not the main topic in this opinion of this week. All
I have to say is that it was quite meaningful for our society paid so
much attention on this issue as environmental problems.
And it is quite meaningful also to see this announcement by Environment
Agency about this issue of extinction of killifish in along with the dioxin
issues mentioned above. The report also appeared in many mass media. The
report said that so many kind of killifishes which live in this land would
die out soon due to the destruction of nature, such as reconstruction of
rivers and use of agriculture chemicals in the agriculture. Many of those
small animals such as fishes, dragon flies and frogs are dying out from
this land. That is not only that level of story but the story of the
destruction of total natural environment of our land and of our earth.
As far as we read the report by the Environment Agency, they mentioned only
about the possibility of extinction of those species and made no comments
on how to save this situation. What is the most important is to say about
their policies and opinion as to the solution to protect this environmental
issues. All people in Japan are asked to think how to keep such a beautiful
natural environment so that that children's song would continue to be
sung by our descendants to follow in next generation.
1999/2/27
Tadashi HAYASE
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