My opinion of this week(342):

Manifest

The general election is going on. The main topics of this election is,
of course, the word "manifest". When Democratic Party of Japan started
using this foreign word in stead of "Seiken Kouyaku" in Japanese, i.e.. 
political promises to execute after establishing new regime, I didn't like
to use such a kind of difficult foreign word rather than an ordinal 
Japanese. But the strategy of using this word seems to have succeeded 
in many ways. Mass media and many more Japanese people started to
consider the importance of political pledge when to choose a party and
a candidate in election. 
  
The Liberal Democratic Party and other ruling fronts tried not to
involved with this tactics of DPJ. But since the start of election
campaign, they are obliged to be involved more with manifest, because
mass media put more emphasis on comparison of manifest of each parties
when they report in their own media. That a way it is, as far as
election campaign is concerned according to my opinion.

But then, it's still true that LDP is trying to continue so called
an image campaign in the election. Two nice looking faces i.e.. President
Koizumi and Secretary General Abe symbolize their main election strategy.

Their manifest announced for the election is no good at all as far as
manifest per se. Most of them do not show any concrete contents and
time schedule to attain each contents. Including such major issues
such as privatization of Japan Public Road Corporation and postal
service business, they do not show any concrete contents and time
schedule to attain them. They just say that those will be discussed
further and grand design and time schedules will be announced by such and
such time.

A high school student wrote that fact in the letter to Asahi News Paper.
He wrote his impression when he read manifest of LDP. He said he was
quite disappointed with the contents of manifest of LDP which lacks
concreteness and materiality. They have no real substance. 

I quite agree with him. The same can be said with manifest of other
ruling and opposition parties in many respect. But it seems that 
manifest of LDP is the worst of all as far as my observation is
concerned. 

This is the election to select best menu of full-course provided by
two major restaurants  and several minor ones. The question is,of course,
whether or not cooking presented after order are just good as 
specification in the menu. But I think that real cooking ability can
also be judged based on the level of menu presentation. 
　
I mean to say that people should pay much more attention on manifest
itself when to select a candidate and a party to select in this coming
election.

2003/11/1
Tadashi HAYASE

My opinion of this week(343):

Dream team of Japan

I don't have much opportunity to watch baseball game in TV recently.
I have basically lost interest in baseball games themselves, especially
of Japanese professional baseball. The championship of Tigers in 
Central League after 18 years became a big topic in this season but I
myself didn't see their games including Japan Series with Hawks almost
at all.

I had more interest in good performance of Matui of New York Yankees 
rather than games in Japan as far as this season was concerned. I wrote
about it a few time in "My opinion of this week".

Although the motive was a kind of coincidence, I have seen  games of 
Japanese team for three days in Asian Baseball Games to select two 
representative teams from Asia for Athens Olympic Games next year. I 
have seen all games for three days with big excitement. I was much 
impressed to see how those players selected by the manager Nagashima 
played and contributed for the victory. The team was called a dream 
team. But the image of the team is quite different from the naming. 
They were not glaring and aggressive. But the team was really strong
and very defensive rather than offensive in nature. The strongest 
features is the team work rather than ability and capacity of 
individual players.

I don't know how those players were selected. But I understood the 
reason why those players were selected for their excellent defense
work. The principle rule of the Asian Baseball Games is that the team 
which lost lesser runs in total will be selected for the representative
provided that winning percentage were the same. 

Through out three games for three days, Japanese team had lost only
one run. All pitchers played very well. There were many very excellent
defense works by infielders and outfielders selected for the team.
Catcher Jojima didn't hit any homeruns but he made a great inside work
for the victory.  

I was impressed with many wonderful plays of players both in offence and
defense works. But I am totally impressed to see all players join together
for the victory. It is just like ball games played by high school students.  
All those professional players played like high school students. Those from
different teams had been united into one. 

Nagashima dream team is really something. I wish they could win gold metal
in coming Athens Olympic Games in next year.

2003/11/8
Tadashi HAYASE

My opinion of this week(344):

Nonparty affiliated voters 
 
Just after ballot counting started, several TV station reported that
ruling parties would possibly lose majority position in the diet.
But many people who expected the change of power in this election
were disappointed with the final result when they read newspaper next
day.  

DPJ(Democratic Party of Japan) has become No 1 in proportional-representation
constituency. They greatly increased a number of seats in the diet leaving
possibility to win following national election in the future. That's good.
But I wonder why the change and reform of Japanese politics goes so slow.

The biggest concern is voting behavior of nonparty affiliated voters. 
Voting rate was so low again at this time. If voting rate were higher
by 5% or more, the change of power would have surely become a reality.
The statistics shows underlying support of non affiliate people mainly
go to DPJ rather than ruling parties.  
 
In connection with this, I wrote this fact in ML saying that nonaffiliated
are eventually the people who have no sense of responsibility to reform
politics. Fujiki san was against it saying that not all of nonaffiliated
were irresponsible but some are surely people who have high political 
interest. I agreed with him, of course. The ballot of those nonaffiliated
who have high interest in politics  brought the result at this time. 

But it is also  an undeniable fact that there still exists 10 to 20%
people who do not go for voting while they have some great discontentment 
against the present politics. Why don't they go for voting?  To change 
their voting behavior seems to be the most important issue to realize
political reform in this country.

All opposition parties and mass media that support the necessity of 
reform of politics should pay much more attention to make promotional
campaign to improve voting rate of those nonaffiliated.

2003/11/15
Tadashi HAYASE

My opinion of this week(345)

Necessity of reform of UN

I read the article on Japan's contribution money to UN in evening
issue of Asahi Newspaper. Ministry of Finance has requested Ministry
of Foreign Affairs to reduce 19.5% contribution rate to 15% by 
sometime in near future.

I was surprised to read the article in detail. I knew the fact before
that Japan is now sharing the second highest contributions to UN next
to US. The contribution rate is decided by economic power of member
countries. But there are some doubt about that principle by itself.
Take contribution rate of US, for example, US is sharing only 22%
regardless their overwhelming economic power and GDP. That is
obviously too little compared with that high rate which Japan shares.

Permanent members of Securities Counsel of UN such as England, France,
Russia and China sharing only small percentage of contribution such as
5.5%, 6.5%, 1.2% and 1.5% respectively. China has been made such a great
economic growth in recent years. Why is the rate so low? 

While reading the article, I began to feel a kind of angry as well as 
fundamental doubts about it. 

It is true that Japanese economy made such a great progress after the
World War II. Such high  sharing rate to UN  and high contribution to
foreign aids was reasonable in those high economic growth rate days. 
But the situation is changing in recent years. Japan has been faced 
deflation economy and bad financial deficits  for recent years. The
deduction of foreign aid budgets including contribution to UN is 
absolutely necessary as Ministry of Finance advocates. 

The basis of calculation of contribution money for UN is obviously very
doubtful. In addition, Japanese position in UN is quite low regardless
it's high contribution at the present when we compare it with those 
permanent member countries of Security Council. 

The fundamental structure of UN was created by victor countries of
World War II almost 60 years ago. Their foundation still exist as they
were 60 years ago. Why is this? Some basic reform of all UN organization
is absolutely necessary as discussed many ways these days.

I just wonder how Ministry of Foreign Affairs will answer to this
request from Ministry of Finance. What is their stance on this issue?

2003/11/22
Tadashi HAYASE