JAPAN

Japan has a fair and open election system. The conditions for the registration of candidates are transparent, and the registration process is efficiently administered. However, candidates have to pay a deposit of 3 million yen (about €26,700 as of June 2010), which is returned if the candidate receives at least a tenth of the valid votes cast in his or her electoral district. The deposit is meant to deter candidatures that are not serious, but in effect presents a hurdle for independent candidates. The minimum age for candidates is 25 in the House of Representatives and 30 in the House of Councilors, the upper house.

Access to the media for electioneering purposes is regulated by the Public Offices Election Law, and basically ensures a well-defined rule set for all candidates. In recent years, it has been criticized as being overly restrictive, for instance by preventing wider use of the Internet and other advanced electronic data services. The restrictions, many of them dating to the pre-war era, were installed by a rather paternalistic leadership and include provisions such as severe limitations on door-to-door canvassing and on distributing election-related documents. With respect to advanced media in particular, a candidate is not allowed to update his or her website or to upload topical material, such as video of a campaign speech, to YouTube.

The Japanese Constitution grants universal adult suffrage to all Japanese citizens. No general problems with discrimination or the exercise of this right can be observed. Since 2006, Japanese citizens living abroad have also been granted the ability to participate in elections.

One outstanding issue is the relative size of electoral districts. Those in the countryside still contain far fewer people than in congested urban areas. The ratio of the vote weight in the least populated area as compared to the most populated district stands at 2.3. Several high courts, including the Tokyo High Court in February 2010, ruled that the 2009 lower house election was unconstitutional on these grounds, and the Supreme Court is expected to take up this issue late in 2010. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has announced that it wants to address this issue as well, but it needs a broadly based consensus if it is to change the electoral districts.

Appropriate campaign financing and cases of finance-law infringement have been hot political topics in Japan for decades. To some extent, the problems are structural. The multi-member constituency system in place until 1993 implied that candidates would be hard-pressed to distinguish themselves by party programs alone, but had to elicit support on a more personal basis, a costly proposition. Personalized local support groups (koenkai) thus became a deeply entrenched system for winning voter approval, and due to the tacit personal networking involved, are always dangerously close to engaging in illicit financial and other transactions. Moreover, the strict rules of the Election Campaign Law have the consequence that politicians always face incentives to somehow circumvent rules on electioneering.

Influential Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politician Kaoru Yosano, who was finance minster in the Aso cabinet, for instance, was implicated in mid-2009 in a scheme involving a dummy organization from which he received funds. Prime Minister Hatoyama was accused of receiving unregistered donations from his mother, which he said he was unaware of; this news angered citizens, and was said to have contributed significantly to his subsequent loss of popularity. The powerful secretary general of the DPJ, Ichiro Ozawa, has also been incriminated through a scheme to support his funding organization through a dubious land purchase. Aides to both Hatoyama and Ozawa have been arrested. Ozawa had to step down as leader of the opposition in early 2009 because of funding issues, to be replaced by Hatoyama. Despite these scandals, it is noteworthy that Japanese prosecutors and the media have in general played a positive role in countering the misbehavior of politicians.

Japanese media are free to report the news without official interference. While the courts have handled a few cases dealing with perceived censorship, there is no formal government mechanism infringing on the independence of the media. While NHK is a public broadcasting service, it stills enjoys freedom from interference in its reports. In 2007, there was some attempt by politicians to influence NHK´s reports on the North Korea issue, but this was successfully challenged.

Informally, however, media organizations have hesitated to take a strong stance against the government or to expose political scandals. Membership in journalist clubs has offered exclusive contacts. Established media members have feared losing this advantage, and have frequently taken nonadversarial opinions, although differences between major newspapers’ standpoints can be identified.

Japan has an oligopolistic media structure with five conglomerates that dominate the leading national newspapers and the major TV networks. These five include the Asahi Group (Asahi Newspaper, TV Asahi), the Fuji Sankei Group (Sankei Newspaper, Fuji TV), the Mainichi Group (Mainichi Newspaper), the Yomiuri Group (Yomiuri Newspaper, Nippon TV) and the Nihon Keizai Group (Nihon Keizai Newspaper, TV Tokyo). Another major force is NHK, the quasi-national broadcasting service. This organization has enjoyed close connections with the LDP-led governments despite formal freedom from interference, and has followed a rather status-quo approach. Critical coverage of issues by the other media groups is rather mild, although a variety of stances from left-central (in the case of Asahi) to conservative-nationalistic (Sankei) can be observed. Generally speaking, the small group of conglomerates and major organizations does not support a pluralistic landscape of opinions. Regional newspapers and TV stations do not play a serious competitive role.
New competition might be expected from interactive digital media sources such as blogs, bulletin boards, e-magazines, social networks and so on . Their use is spreading rapidly, and only 65% of those in their 20s still read printed newspapers, compared to 93% of those in their 60s.

While ministerial press conferences have been more or less closed shops due to the “press club” system, the new DPJ-led government tried to open the system after its election in 2009, for instance by having a more liberal admittance policy, or by holding parallel news conferences so as to allow a wider circle of participants. Some senior ministry officials have also held Internet availabilities, followed by interchanges with the online audience. However, there has been no general overhaul of the system yet, and various ministries have followed different approaches.

Japan´s Act on Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs came into effect in 2001, followed one year later by the Act on Access to Information Held by Independent Administrative Agencies. In 2007, there were 61,000 requests for disclosure of information made under the former and 5,800 under the latter. Basic rights to access government information are thus in place, although a number of issues remain. Various exemptions apply, as for instance with respect to information regarding specific individuals, national security issues or confidential business matters. Claims can be denied, and the head of the agency involved has considerable discretion. An appeal is possible, but only in court, which involves a very burdensome process.

Civil and human rights are guaranteed under the Japanese constitution. Institutionally, courts are often considered overly tolerant with respect to the possibility of maltreatment by police or prosecution. LDP governments of recent years, including during the reporting period, have made little effort to implement institutional reform. Critics have demanded – as yet unsuccessfully – the introduction of independent agencies able to investigate claims of human rights abuse. Citizens have no legal ability to take their complaints to a multinational level, while many other countries have already signed the so-called Optional Protocols to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The new DPJ-led government has given the justice portfolio to former lawyer Keiko Chiba, who has a background in human rights activism. She has pledged to work on three reforms in particular: installing an independent human rights agency, ratification of the Open Protocol mentioned above, and a reform of the police interrogation rules. It is an open question to what extent she will be successful, as the Ministry of Justice is often considered a bastion of entrenched conservatism.

The freedoms of speech and of the press are guaranteed under Article 21 of the constitution. Reported abuses are quite rare, though it has often been claimed that the police and prosecutors are more lenient toward vocal right-wing groups than toward left-wing activists.

The three million descendants of the so-called burakumin, outcasts of the feudal period, still face informal social discrimination, though it is difficult for the government to counter this. Korean and Chinese minorities with permanent resident status also face some social discrimination, a situation true also for more recent Brazilian and Philippine immigrants. Naturalization rules were eased somewhat during the reporting period, and among the roughly 600,000 ethnic Koreans in the country, some 10,000 are being granted citizenship per year. However, even if a person does not want to or cannot become a Japanese citizen, he or she should be treated fairly.

Japan has a rather serious human trafficking problem with respect to menial labor and the sex trade. This also refers to underage foreigners facing such exploitation. Based on the number of cases prosecuted by the government, the authorities seem to have become somewhat harsher with traffickers, some of whom are involved with organized crime (yakuza).

Women still face some discrimination, particularly in the labor market. The wage differential with men has not significantly decreased in recent years, and the recent recession has not helped in this respect. While many observers expect that the DPJ-led government will introduce additional measures aimed at addressing these problems, progress may be slow. In recent months, the topic of whether married women may legally use their former maiden name has been discussed. While some use of nonregistered names is already evident in society, the coalition government, due to divergent opinions among its various constituent parties, seems unable to move forward on this issue.

In their daily lives, citizens enjoy considerable predictability with respect to law and regulations. Bureaucratic formalities can sometimes be burdensome, but they also offer relative certainty. Nevertheless, regulations are often formulated in a way that gives considerable latitude to administrators. For instance, needy citizens have often found it difficult to get welfare aid from local government authorities. Such scope of discretion is deeply entrenched in the Japanese administrative system, which holds both the advantages and disadvantages of pragmatism. The judiciary has usually upheld the discretionary decisions of the executive.

Courts are considered to be independent of government, administrative or legislative interference in their day-to-day business. The organization of the judicial system and the appointment of judges falls under the supervision of the Supreme Court, so the appointment and the behavior of Supreme Court justices is of ultimate importance. While a lack of transparency has been lamented, the Supreme Court has an incentive not to commit any major offence, because this would endanger its independence. Still, this implies that it leans somewhat toward the government´s position so as to avoid igniting any scrutiny of its strong role.

In line with this reasoning, the Supreme Court engages only in concrete judicial review of specific cases, not in general review of laws or regulations. Some scholars say that the constitution could allow room for a general judicial review process.

A major recent reform was been the introduction of lay judges (saiban-in). This system was actually implemented during the reporting period, and the first cases handled by both professional and lay judges were widely reported in the media in 2009.

According to the constitution, Supreme Court justices are appointed by the cabinet –or in the case of the chief justice, named by the cabinet and appointed by the emperor – but the actual process lacks transparency. Supreme Court justices are subject to review in the next lower house election, and to another review after the passage of 10 years, if they have not retired in the meantime, but the public has little knowledge enabling them to decide whether or not to approve a justice on their ballot sheet. In the lower house election of 2009, nine of the 15 Supreme Court justices were up for review, and all passed, as in every previous case. In response to the call for more transparency, the Supreme Court has put more information on the justices and their track record of decisions on its website. The electoral review was duly covered by the media, but did not stir up major debate.

Reports of corruption and bribery scandals have accompanied Japanese politics for decades. These problems are deeply entrenched in the way politics are organized in Japan, for instance in the way Japanese politicians need to secure funds for (re)election purposes, how they rely on local support networks, and how they have to “deliver” to their constituencies in return. These scandals have been common in recent years, concerning both the long-reigning LDP and the DPJ. In early 2010, then-DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa came under strong pressure because of an investigation into his alleged acceptance of bribes and purchase of land with the money.

In spring 2010, then-Prime Minister Hatoyama argued in favor of a revision of the Political Funds Control Law during the ongoing parliamentary session, seeking to ban donations from corporations and other organizations. This was possibly designed to distract attention somewhat from Ozawa’s problems, but it is unclear whether the initiative will be successful.

In general, Japanese governments have been able to create an economic policy framework providing certainty to businesses, supporting the corporate sector in creating one of the world´s most competitive economies. This basic trust in the economic policy landscape is also evidenced by the fact that long-term interest rates for Japanese government bonds have remained low, despite the aftermath of the Lehman collapse that affected Japan as well as other countries, and despite the ever-mounting public debt.

These general remarks notwithstanding, LDP-led governments until late 2009, and afterward the new DPJ-led government, have all been challenged by the fact that the export-led expansion of the Japanese economy which started around 2002 came to an end in late 2007, well before the Lehman collapse in September 2008. This fact called for a recalibration of government policies to support the domestic economy. The LDP governments during the reporting period offered an unconvincing response. Both promised to support the domestic economy by giving assistance to disadvantaged regions or social groups. How to finance these endeavors while avoiding a misallocation of resources, such as providing support for small, uncompetitive businesses in the countryside, has been left unsolved.

Consecutive Japanese governments have been able to keep unemployment at tolerable levels. While there were many concerns earlier in the decade about rising unemployment for the young and for elderly people, unemployment rates even for those groups have stayed comparatively low. Hidden unemployment is rising, though, and it remains to be seen whether layoffs will ultimately increase more visibly. Societal concerns have shifted to the issue of the rise in non-regular employment. According to the OECD, one in three workers aged 15 to 24 was employed in non-regular work by 2007. Overall, the share of non-regular jobs increased from 16% in 1985 to more than one third of the total in 2008.

The LDP-led government under Aso answered the challenge of the global financial crisis through major stimulus programs, which compared favorably with significantly smaller programs in several other leading western economies. This helped significantly in keeping unemployment rates stable. Moreover, portions of the anticrisis program were used to support labor-market policies. The new DPJ-led government has promised to support weaker members of society such as the disadvantaged non-regular employees. In one major measure, the government introduced a bill in March 2010 that would limit the use of temporary employment. While this serves the political clientele of the ruling coalition, the economic consequences are doubtful at best. It is discouraging that the government seems to be more determined with respect to distributional issues than in laying the groundwork for an improvement in the quality of labor use, as suggested by the OECD.

Following the years of economic reform under Prime Minister Koizumi (2001 – 2006), later governments have become ever more restrained in their support of a pro-business approach. Even with the most recent LDP-led government under former Prime Minister Aso, the emphasis had shifted strongly in favor of recalibrating earlier reform measures that had gone too far in the eyes of leading politicians. As a case in point, former reform minister Heizo Takenaka has totally lost influence, and has withdrawn from political functions.

It is illuminating to look at the role of postal reform. While this is only one area, although a particularly important one, it is understood in Japan to be emblematic of any government´s willingness and efforts to reform the enterprise sector. The privatization of postal services, which includes the leading savings-collecting organization in Japan, the Postal Bank, had been a centerpiece of Koizumi’s agenda, and a significant piece of the platform on which he won his landslide victory in the parliamentary elections of 2005. Under succeeding governments, politicians moved away from the original reform goals, and those who had always been against the privatization gained an ever-stronger position within the LDP and the government. During the final months of the Aso cabinet, when the election of 2009 was at stake, Aso openly declared that he had always been against postal reform and that he wanted to reconsider it. The DPJ-led coalition is even more clearly opposed to the postal reform, as one of its leading members, Financial Services Minister Shizuka Kamei, has always been an outspoken critic. During an important meeting in February 2010, it was decided that the government should retain 51% of the stock in the postal holding company.

Generally speaking, Japan has a modern tax system that allows its corporate sector to thrive, and which is reasonably fair. For instance, the tax wedge on labor income is one of the lowest among OECD countries, and thus encourages employment and growth. However, an increasing number of issues dealing with business competitiveness and revenue sufficiency emerged during the reporting period. Several equity issues have also persisted from the past. During the period under review, few concrete steps were taken to correct these deficiencies, despite several calls for a general tax reform, and despite plans to upgrade the social welfare system that appear to make the government’s revenue base less sustainable.
However, it must be acknowledged that the global financial crisis has made it extremely difficult to pass any significant tax increases, or even tax decreases aimed at enhancing equity or improving growth incentives. The 2010 tax reform program proposed by the new DPJ-led government, which passed the upper house in March 2010, concentrates on a number of technical issues for the business community but includes no major structural changes. For instance, tax haven rules are relaxed to allow for easier international supply-chain planning. The DPJ had also pledged during the 2009 electoral campaign to reduce the tax rate for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 18% to 11%. However, this raises equity issues and allocative concerns, as many SMEs seem structurally uncompetitive.

Public indebtedness n Japan is approaching 200% of GDP, or 100% on a net basis, the highest level of any developed economy. During the period under review, few concrete steps were taken to correct this situation, despite repeated calls for a general tax reform, and despite plans to upgrade the social welfare system that appear to make the government’s revenue base even less sustainable. The Aso-led government’s December 2008 social welfare program offers a case in point.

Japan has had a universal health-care system since 1961. The overall accomplishment of the country’s medical system is evident in the fact that Japan has one of the world’s highest life expectancies, and that infant mortality rates are among the world’s lowest. Despite these achievements, the health care system faces a number of challenges due to remaining weaknesses and newly emerging trends. One issue is quality. Several problems persist in various fields, including, for instance, an extremely long waiting period before globally top-selling drugs and medical devices are introduced in Japan, the professional standards of physicians, and rather high delinquency rates in paying dues to the National Health Insurance system. Another problem concerns coverage: Non-regular workers in particular sometimes lack coverage under the extant payment mechanisms. A serious structural issue is the aging of the population, which is leading to ever-rising cost pressure.
The DPJ, the senior governing party since September 2009, concentrated particularly on one aspect of the issue in its election manifesto: the perceived shortage of doctors. The number of doctors per head is some 40% lower than in Germany or France. The DPJ is considering measures such as an increase in medical services fees. Funding is to some extent earmarked as coming from regulated drug price revisions. Yet even if these measures are both appropriately executed and successful, other challenges associated with calibrating higher costs and acceptable quality in a rapidly aging population still linger.

Japan, once a model of social inclusion, has developed considerable problems of income inequality and poverty during the past decade.

The DPJ-led government is particularly outspoken on these issues. Equity concerns formed a considerable part of the DPJ´s electoral manifesto, and of former Prime Minister Hatoyama´s policy speech upon inauguration. It is an open question whether the government can muster enough funds to develop truly substantial policies for social inclusion, however. During its first months of office, the DPJ government gained less funds from scrapping supposedly wasteful fiscal programs than it had hoped. The most significant social inclusion measure put into legislative form in March 2010 involved financial support for households with school-aged children.

A major focus for family policy in Japan in recent years has been the attempt to improve the ability of women to balance work and family. According to the most recent OECD statistics, Japan has the group’s second-highest gender gap in terms of median incomes earned by fulltime employees, for instance. Although several policy measures aimed at addressing this issue have been implemented since the 1990s, challenges have remained quite severe. With respect to the sharing of housework and child care duties, for instance, studies have shown little has changed since the mid-1990s: Fathers and husbands still spend little time on housework and child care, even during weekends.

The new DPJ-led government has shown itself determined to introduce more tangible policies. As an election pledge, the DPJ promised monthly payments of 26,000 yen (roughly €200) for each new child up to the age of 15, along with the introduction of more state-supported day-care facilities, tuition waivers and other measures. As the reporting period closed, the government was about to introduce half of the monthly payment program. However, the country’s difficult fiscal situation has led to some debate as to whether the expensive program will be effective, and whether it can be financed to the full.

With a rapidly aging population, Japan faces critical challenges in setting up and administering a sound, equitable and distributionally acceptable pension system. The last major overhaul was based on 2004 legislation and became effective in 2006. Under its provisions, future payments will rise less than inflation, payments (after an intermediate period) will commence at age 65 instead of age 60, contributions top out at 18.3% of income, and a payout ratio of 50% is promised. However, the program’s assumed relationship between future payment levels, contributions and the starting age for receiving benefits is based on optimistic macroeconomic forecasts. Following the experience of the global financial crisis, these assumptions seem increasingly unrealistic, and further reform is needed.

Another critical issue is old-age poverty. A third issue concerns the technical efficacy of the mechanisms employed. At this point, the assets of the Government Pension Investment Fund are mostly held in Japanese government bonds. Given the financial precariousness of Japan´s public debt, it seems advisable to spread the risk further, but this might lower public trust in the soundness of public debt. A major technical issue was the government’s recent loss of millions of pieces of contributor data, which led to a public uproar in 2007. LDP governments were unable to handle this controversy in an acceptable manner, and the loss of faith in former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, which eventually led to his sudden resignation in September 2008, was partly related to this pension scandal.

However, the succeeding Aso and Hatoyama governments still had to deal with the lost data issue. Separately, Hatoyama suggested the use of more tax revenues to finance the pension system, but no specific policies have been put in place; it is unclear which (new) sources of tax revenue could be used for this purpose. At the time of writing (August 2010), more concrete proposals for pension reform were expected later in the year.

None of the governments serving during the period under review proved to be particularly proactive in supporting integration and immigration, despite calls in 2008 by a Japanese business organization (Nippon Keidanren) and others to develop a “Japanese-style” immigration policy. Indeed, the views on foreigners expressed by former Prime Minister Aso, as well as many of the statements made by his followers, were seen by many as problematic. Prime Minister Hatoyama announced at the APEC summit in November 2009 that Japan might accept more immigrants, but he also noted that he was broaching a “sensitive issue,” and that prejudices in the population remain.

Under its post-war constitution, Japan has in a formal sense renounced war and is not allowed to keep military forces. While it does maintain so-called self-defense forces, Japan nevertheless has had to rely on a strong military alliance with the United States and its nuclear umbrella. At the same time, Japan has had to manage a delicate relationship with neighboring East and Southeast Asian countries, many of which it had occupied or colonized before World War II. With the rising importance of China as a military as well as economic factor in the region, triangulation between these relationships has become increasingly demanding.

There are conflicting views among Japanese intellectuals and politicians on how to reconfigure Japan’s security posture and its alliance with the United States. While some opinion leaders believe that less reliance on the United States and new multilateral security arrangements are called for in the post-Cold War era, more cautious observers (and the LDP mainstream) point out that in the face of threats from North Korea and in view of a rising China, Japan’s national security can be guaranteed only through continued reliance on the United States. Policy preferences on security and defense issues vary widely within the DPJ. Even before the 2009 election, DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama proposed the establishment of a “more equal” alliance with the United States. This seemed to suggest that he – and possibly the government led by him – wanted to distance himself somewhat from the United States and instead seek closer relationships with Pacific Asian countries.

Japan enjoys a reputation for a very low crime rate. For major crimes such as homicide or hard drug abuse, this is well deserved. Major terrorist attacks have also posed little concrete threat in recent years; the last major incident was the subway poisoning by the notorious Aum Shinrikyo cult in the mid-1990s. With respect to lesser offences, particularly with respect to burglaries and robberies, Japan now occupies only a middle rank among OECD countries. Another issue is the existence of organized gangs (so-called yakuza), which have never been eradicated, although incidents in which these groups molest ordinary citizens seem rather rare.

Japan was a global leader in terms of antipollution policy and energy conservation during the 1970s and 1980s, partially due to research and development and the forceful implementation of its breakthroughs, and partially to the relocation of polluting industries outside of Japan. More recently, Japan has been faced by two major concerns; first, how to contribute successfully to the global reduction of CO2 emissions, and second, how to improve the energy mix of the economy.

With regard to the Kyoto goals set for 2012, by 2005 Japan was already some 8% beyond the base level of 1990, unable to achieve any significant reduction compared to 1990 by the 2008 – 2012 reference period. In June 2009, then-Prime Minister Aso announced a medium-term target for 2020 of a 15% reduction compared to 1990 levels. In September 2009, Yukio Hatoyama received considerable international attention when, as the incoming prime minister, he repeated a pre-election DPJ pledge to achieve a 30% reduction in CO2 levels by 2020 as compared to 2005 (or 25% compared to 1990), on the condition that all major emitters reached a treaty setting fair and realistic reduction levels. Domestically, he faced considerable criticism from industrial associations and trade unions, because it was feared that such an ambitious reduction might only be realized by forsaking growth. Although the DPJ had promised to install a mandatory cap-and-trade regime, which would make industrial adjustment unavoidable, as well as introduce a carbon tax, the draft bill eventually released by the Environment Ministry in February 2010 did not contain a mandatory system; moreover, it was not specified which industries would be subject to the regime.

With respect to energy mix, LDP-led governments for many years supported a growing role for nuclear energy in electricity generation. However, after a number of accidents in power plants, it became more doubtful whether such a strategy would remain politically feasible. In a remarkable policy shift, Japan introduced a feed-in tariff system in November 2009 to support renewable energies; however, this is so far limited to solar power, with a relatively short guaranteed support period of 10 years. As of April 2010, the METI industry ministry was preparing a new framework plan for energy, which was said to aim for a rise in the share of emission-free electricity sources from the current 34% to 70% in 2030.

Japan developed into one of the world’s leading research and development (R&D) nations during the postwar period. Current policies are based on the Third Science and Technology Basic Plan, put into effect in 2006. The policy field is overseen by the Council for Science and Technology Policy, which is headed by the prime minister and oversees the various ministries and agencies involved, a fact offering evidence of the high status given to this issue. Following the success of the DPJ in the September 2009 elections, the coordination authority was supposed to be transferred to a newly created National Strategy Office, but progress on this matter has proved slow. Basically, the government has in recent years sought to focus its expenditures on R&D areas it considers “strategic”; in October 2008, it therefore introduced a process for the prioritization of science and technology (S&T) matters. As an additional measure to focus policies, five top-priority policy issues were defined in 2009: transformative technologies, low-carbon technology, S&T diplomacy, regional empowerment through S&T, and pioneering projects for accelerating social returns. In fiscal 2009, 35% of the funds earmarked for strategic priorities were allocated to five areas, including fast breeder-reactor technology, rockets, ocean and earth observation systems, supercomputers, and free-electron X-ray lasers. The matrix of “priorities” is considered somewhat bewildering by many observers.

R&D-related policies have played a considerable role in the anticrisis stimulus program as well. As the reporting period ended, the new DPJ-led government was still in the process of clarifying its priorities, which will enter the Fourth Basic Plan in the near future. It is generally understood that “green development” will play a leading role, in line with U.N. backing for a “Green New Deal,” and the prospect of social returns will receive wider attention.

Education has always been considered to be a strong point in Japan, a country with a Confucian tradition in which parents take great care and often go to significant expense to offer their children good schooling.

However, the Japanese education system faces a number of challenges. One is to deliver adequate quality. To make tertiary education, particularly university education, more effective, the 2001 administrative reform transformed the national universities into independent agencies. However, the recent Review of Tertiary Education in Japan, published in early 2009 by the OECD, found that the indirect influence of the ministry in charge (MEXT) remains high, and recommended that the government “leave detailed operational plans to the institutions.” A second issue is concerned with reconciling the education system’s diverse needs and stakeholders. The inclusion of women is still suboptimal; there are comparatively few graduates in engineering and natural sciences; vocational training needs further support; and the number of foreign students is still small, making up only 2.7% of university-level enrollments. A third issue is the problem of dealing with growing income inequality and the economic downturn. Many citizens who consider the quality of the public school system to be lacking send their children to expensive cram schools; but given economic hardship, poor households may have to give up educational opportunities, future income and social status. In this context, the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education allowed schools in its jurisdiction to return to the six-day school week system in early 2010; this is intended to increase quality without forcing parents to pay for extra cram schooling. As for the effects of the recent global economic crisis, many young school and university graduates have been unable to find adequate employment, the highest number since 2000.