My Opinion this week(34)

The death of the Princess of Wales

 The top news in newspaper of September 6th  was very symbolic. One 
of them is, of course, the news on the funeral of Princess Diana. The
other was on the death of Mother Teresa. I have nothing to say about
their news in which some of those facts were told about. The story 
about those two famous women in the world  was very interesting. 
President Clinton spoke in the radio that we human being should 
follow examples of those two great women.

　2.5 billion people in the world watched the funeral of Princess
Diana through TV. 6 millions of people in the UK participated inthe
funeral in one way or the other. Elton John dedicated a song singing
 " a farewell to the rose of United Kingdom ".

　In Japan, several millions of people watched the TV and recorded
this historic event in video tape according to TV news. I saw them
in TV news, of course. But I did not watch them so long. I rather
had some other interest by myself. I paid much more attention on how
newspapers and TV stations reported them and what kind of comments
and messages they would make in their reports.

  I also watched such an international TV news as CNN. It is natural
that there is no such report which provide some severe criticism 
toward Princess Diana on her past conducts and personal records. That
is natural etiquette to the woman who has just gone.

  Since the death of Princess Diana, there were some criticism toward
the royal family of the UK. General feeling of the public was that
the royal family rather lacks the warm concerns toward the death of
Princess in various way. And due to this pressure from the general
public royal family was obliged to take several unprecedented actions
concerning the funeral. I have never seen even a single report which
cast a doubt on such feeling of general public. I have a certain 
doubt about that fact.

  I do not deny any natural feeling of the people toward the man who
has just died by such a tragic accident. I have no intention to comment
on whether the reaction and action taken by the royal family during
this period were proper or not. But I just want to point out that I
have some doubt about the feeling of the general public toward Princess
Diana since the accident happened . When we evaluate this, we should 
also consider the fact that no royal families from the world including
Japan and Europe attended the funeral. Why is this?

  The reaction of the general public was overwhelmingly emotional as
far as I observed. And the all news media followed such feeling 
overwhelmingly as well. If we see all background and facts on how the
accident happened, we may have another look and another viewpoint on
this accident in the light of ethics and moral of human beings.

  The existence of paparazzi who chase  around the privacy of the
people is really out of question. It is a general public which allow
the existence of such paparazzi in one way. And when such tragedy 
happened, they started to blame them in other way. The first class
media should report about that kind of fact, about how emotional and
vague in reaction of general public . They should analyze such
contradictory feelings and provide the news as objective as possible.

  Prime Minster Blair said that England should create a permanent
memorial to Princess Diana but I have some doubt on this also. Such 
expression seems to be a kind of flattering toward the feeling of
general public by itself.

1997/9/13
Tadashi HAYASE

My Opinion this week(35):

What do contemporary consumers wish to buy?

   On September 11, the Economic Planning Agency announced that the 
nation's economy in the April-June quarter suffered its biggest 　setback
in 23 years hit by in personal spending. 　GDP shrank at annualized rate
of 11.2% and personal spending reduced by 23% from the previous quarter.
The reason  for such big  drop was repercussions from  the rush to buy 
before the consumption tax hike to be made in April.

  Every body will agree with that reason why there was such a big drop
in consumption in April-June period. However, I wonder if that is the
only and the main reason for the drop. There are ,I believe , some other
more long range and structural reason in addition  to such short range
reason.

  I think that there is some other structural reason for the overall drop
of consumption in recent years. Another reason for the drop in consumption
is  the  fears of consumers for their future concerning the increase  of
medical fees, stop of reduction in income tax as we enjoyed last year and
so on. It seems that the analysis by  EPA is quite shortsighted in  this 
respect.

  I believe that there are the third but the most important reason for the
drop of consumption in recent years. Although many consumers just want to
buy  some goods and  service which are unique and innovative , there exit
virtually no such goods at all in the present market.  We cannot find any
good and attractive goods on the shelves of department stores and discount
shops  and in  product brochures of  durable goods manufacturers.  In any 
durable goods,  the situation is same way.  We already have all sort of 
electric appliances in our home. Most households hold automobiles today.
There are no goods and services which we do want to buy next. 

  So  called 3C , color television set, cars and  air conditioners  are
now held by most households. Even personal computers which are said one
of the major products which create big consumption from now on seem to 
have already penetrated to some extent. 

  As  a matter of fact,  there  is no  discovery and  development of such
innovative goods and service on which consumers get excited as in the past.
It seems that the business enterprises totally lack the effort to develop
and cultivate new market for such goods and service.

  What is the goods and service which consumers wish to have today?  As
the famous A.H. Maslow's* five step theory of human  desires  describes,
people seem to have already fulfilled the desire for the materials, the
first step of the human desires. People and consumers are now searching
for another and higher desires i.e. the desire for the safety in life, the
desire for health and amenity, the desire to fulfill their own ego  and
values which they believe to have through their life.

  I  have no intention to  discuss about such theory in detail.  But the
ultimate and the highest desire which man wish to attain is the achievement
of  their own ego and personal values.  What  they want to have is various
hardware, software and services which are helpful in attaining such desires.
There may be many such products which fit to attain such desires. One typical
examples  which exists  today are PCs ,  peripherals and software of various
kind.  Keywords to select such software are tools for intellectual production 
virtual reality, edutainment, 3D games and so forth.

  The  market for such products  are limitless.  But Japanese made products
which attain international acceptance in  such area  are not so  many  in
numbers yet. Japanese makers are far behind to U.S. manufacturers in this 
respect. In certain area as games, some Japanese manufacturers attain
some position in the market. But total development capability for such products
is still behind to those of the U.S. manufacturers.

  Does Japanese entrepreneur understand such circumstances? Does officers 
of EPA realize another but more basic reason for today's weak consumption
in our economy?

1997/9/20
Tadashi HAYASE

*A.H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality
N.Y. Harper & Row Co,1955

My Opinion this week(36)

A parody of magical cutting

  Only eleven days have just passed since the start of Hashimoto Cabinet
and Mr. Koukou Sato, a  Cabinet minister, is obliged to resign from his
position.  His  appointment to the post caused an uproar because  of a
conviction for bribe-taking in the 1976 Lockheed payoff scandal.  Sato
had maintained he has done nothing that makes his position as a Cabinet
minister untenable.

  But the Liberal Democratic Party was quite upset by the threat  from
two allied parties,  the Social Democratic Party and the New  Party
Sakigake. They stressed  that  they would stop the alliance with the 
Liberal Democratic Party if Mr. Sato would remain as a cabinet member.

  At first Mr.Sato said he would never resign the Cabinet member but he
was forced to quit because of a  lot of pressure from the inside of his
Party and outside of political world.  I was quite surprised to see how
easy the appointment of such important cabinet membership had just been
withdrawn.

  A lot of criticism and doubt had been provided when there exited such
plan to appoint him as the Cabinet  member  before the new Cabinet was
born. Although there was a strong pressure from Mr. Nakasone, the former
Prime Minister on Sato's appointment to the Cabinet member, it was Prime
Minister Hashimoto who finally decided the  appointment. Mr.Kouichi Kato,
the Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party and other leaders 
of the Party agreed with that decision also.

  But they had changed their mind so easily when they faced the political
pressure from the Social Democratic Party  and  the New Party Sakigake
indicating the possibility of dissolvement  of  their alliance with the
Liberal Democratic Party.

  This is so called the "Tokage no Shippokiri"  which  means the leaders
of the organization often try to avoid their  responsibility by cutting
out some of their men in the lower position as a lizard run away from
enemies by cutting out his tail in danger.

  Prime Minister Hashimoto surely expressed his apology on this matter.
But is that all? Is that all what he should do?  In contrast to the word 
"Tokage no shippo kiri" , there is another proverb that says "Naite Bashoku
o kiru". This proverb means leaders should cut out any of their subordinates
if they had done some serious mistakes on their job, although the subordi-
nates are very important or even intimate to them.

  That is quite understandable. However, Mr. Sato has made no mistake at
all as a cabinet member.  When the new Cabinet was born,  Mr. Hashimoto 
assured his capacity as a  cabinet member for he has done a good job as
the Director General of Administrative Reform in the Liberal Democratic
Party, although he was involved with the Lockheed case.

  It was obvious that the Prime Minister and the leaders of the ruling
party had made  serious  mistakes on his appointment.  Those leaders
discarded Mr. Sato in order to  protect  their political power and the
Party. It's a kind of magic show.

  The reaction and movement of all other parties including opposition
parties and two allied parties is  not quite acceptable as well. They
started to take a kind of strong attitude after they noticed some strong
opposition from the public on this appointment.

  The opposition parties  had  suggested that they might  present the
resolution to reprove Mr.Sato on this assignment. But such resolution
itself does not make sense according to my opinion. It is Mr. Hashimoto
not Mr.Sato who should be blamed for. It should be  a non confidence
bill to the Cabinet and not be the resolution to reprove Mr.Sato on his
assignment. Are they ready to present such bill to the diet ? It seems
that they are kind of reluctant to do so.

  Is this because that there is no possibility at the House of Representa-
tive for the bill to pass because the Liberal Democratic Party has gained
majority vote at the moment?  Or is this because they are afraid that 
the diet would be dissolved provided that the bill had been passed?

  Mr.Hashimoto is  responsible for the matter 100%  at any rate. All
politicians know this but they are just pretending to  act  something 
right. If Mr.Hashimoto appointed Mr.Sato confidently, he  should  keep
its position. And once the resolution of non-confident bill against this
cabinet passed at the diet, his cabinet should make general resignation
or he  should  dissolve the diet for the general election to ask the
the public opinion in the country.

1997/9/27
Tadashi HAYASE