Archive for April, 2011

Frustrated Fukushima Evacuees Unimpressed by Prime Minister’s Short Visit

Prime Minister Kan visited evacuees at shelters in Fukushima yesterday, perhaps hoping to show the public that the national government was working hard to deal with the ongoing nuclear crisis. Unfortunately for Kan, some evacuees were not in the mood to shut up and give the government a pleasant photo op:

One evacuee told him, “We have really been patient here,” while another evacuee said, “We are at our limit.” Kan deeply bowed to them and said, “The situation at the nuclear plant never leaves my mind, and I have been doing my best to take care of it.”

Kan first visited the Tamura city gymnasium where residents, mainly of Okuma, have been taking shelter. When he was about to leave the evacuation center after spending about 10 minutes there, some evacuees angrily shouted out, “Leaving already?” One evacuee told the prime minister, “You should try living here.” “If you’re going to visit evacuation centers, you should talk to everyone there,” said another.

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American Ambassador Buys Fukushima Products

American Ambassador John Roos made a public display of support for Fukushima products by visiting a shop in Tokyo and buying Fukushima sake:

A prefectural official showed him several goods such as a tofu product, and a brand of sake which won a top prize in a national competition last year.

Roos, who is a sake fan, tested 3 different brands, and bought one of them as a present for his wife.

A senior prefectural official says he deeply appreciates the ambassador’s visit and hopes the visit will help consumers realize the safety of Fukushima products.

Any liquor on sale now was probably brewed before March 11th, so it’s not exactly a direct statement of confidence in the safety of products harvested after the nuclear accident. Nevertheless, it was a very nice show of support for the economic recovery of Fukushima.

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Japanese Government Complains About International Herald Tribune’s Radioactive Apple Cartoon

The Yomiuri reports that the Japanese Consulate in New York has officially complained to the International Herald Tribune after the newspaper printed the following comic:

The consulate complained that it was “regrettable” to see such a comic, given the fact that the safety of Japanese food exports is being verified by customs officials in both Japan and America.

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The Telegraph’s Ridiculously Inaccurate “Flyjin” Article

The Telegraph has jumped on the bandwagon of foreign media outlets reporting about the “flyjin,” foreigners who fled Japan in the wake of the March 11th earthquake. The article, by Julian Ryall and Malcolm Moore, appears under the headline “Rebuilding Japan: Special scorn for ‘flyjin’ foreigners who fled country“:

Here is an excerpt of some terribly misleading and inaccurate parts of the article:

As Japan continues to grapple with its nuclear emergency, special scorn has been reserved for the “flyjins”, foreigners who made their living in the country but fled in the wake of the March 11 earthquake.

[...]

In addition, almost all Chinese and Korean residents in Japan have now left the country, despite no advice to do so from their home governments.

The sudden flight has dismayed the Japanese.

The claim that “almost all” of the Chinese and Korean residents in Japan have fled is jaw-droppingly inaccurate.

According to Japanese government statistics, in 2009 there were over 680,000 Chinese citizens and 578,000 Korean citizens residing in Japan. The number of foreigners who left Japan in the weeks immediately following the March 11th earthquake was 531,000. More than half of the departures were tourists, so they would not be included in the resident statistics. Although tens of thousands of Chinese and Koreans left Japan in March and more may have left the country in April, hundreds of thousands of Korean and Chinese citizens remain in Japan.

The article claims that the flight of foreigners has led to “special scorn” and “dismay” among “the Japanese.” What’s the source of this alarming information? One Japanese housewife. While what she says may be true, no attempt is made to actually verify it. If companies in Tokyo are indeed resentful about foreign employees who have left, why not interview somebody who is witnessing it firsthand?

The authors fail to inform readers that “flyjin” is not a Japanese term. It is a “popular” term that was invented by English-speaking expats and foreign reporters. I don’t think that it would be unreasonable to say that anger towards foreigners who left is very like the use of the term “flyjin” – it is something taking place mainly within Japan’s expat community.

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Tokyo Jewelry Store Burgled After Owner Fled Japan

A Sri Lankan jeweler who left the country in fear after the March 11th earthquake has returned to Tokyo to discover that a somebody had stolen his shop’s jewelry:

Before leaving the country, the man had apparently placed all of his valuable products in a safe. At some point during his one month absence, a thief broke into the store, opened the safe, and made off with the jewelry. Because the safe had been re-locked after all of the jewelry was stolen, it is suspected that the thief possessed a key.

The value of the stolen jewelry has been estimated at about 100 million yen (1.2 million dollars).

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Flight of Foreign Workers Could Damage Japan’s Recovery

Business Week reports that the March 11th quake and Fukushima nuclear accident have caused the exodus of many of the foreign workers who came to Japan under the “trainee” [研修生] visa program:

The aftermath of the earthquake suggests another weakness of the program: Some industries have come to depend on workers who are actively discouraged from putting down roots of any kind. When catastrophe occurs, Japan’s trainee workers have little reason to stick around. And while they make up only a small fraction of the overall workforce, they’re vital to certain parts of its agricultural, service, and manufacturing sectors. The Japan International Training Cooperation Organization (Jitco), the agency that administers the program, estimates that 70 percent or 80 percent of its more than 150,000 temporary workers have left the country since Mar. 11 and haven’t come back.

The Japan Agricultural Cooperative Assn. chapter in Ibaraki, a prefecture at the southern end of the coastal area hit by the tsunami, reports that it lost 387 of its 1,591 foreign trainee workers through the end of March. Half the 1,500 foreign workers at the Hidakaya noodle shop chain went home after the earthquake. Recruit, the biggest manpower agency, is having trouble finding candidates for low-wage openings.

The problem isn’t limited to the tsunami zone. The chief executive officer of Yoshinoya, another ubiquitous fast-food chain (specialty: “beef bowls”), just announced that it lost a quarter of its foreign workers in central Tokyo in the week after the quake and had to shuffle workers from other shops to make up for the shortage. “We are struggling,” says Fumio Kita, executive secretary of the Japan Textile Federation. “If things go on like this we won’t be able to turn out product, which will have a devastating effect on the entire textile industry.”

The absence of thousands of foreigners willing to perform menial labor for low wages could hurt Japan’s post-earthquake economic recovery:

Economists worry that the scarcity of labor could weigh down the recovery. “When the reconstruction starts and effective demand increases, the exodus of foreign workers will have an extremely serious effect,” Junichi Goto, an economist at Keio University, wrote in an e-mail.

For those who are unfamiliar with the “trainee” worker system, here’s a 2009 Al Jazeera report about it:

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