Japan: Planning for the Future 日本：将来に備えて
PBS has started a new series about Japan. You can view the first episode at the following URL.
米国の公共放送ＰＢＳが日本を紹介する番組のシリーズを始めました。第一回目はここで見ることができます。
聞き取りやすい英語だと思いますが、文字起こしをしてみました。
台本を見ながらご覧になると英語のリスニングの練習になると思います。
聞き逃しても後追いしやすいように、改行を多めに入れました。
安倍政権の政策を、今まで見た中で一番分かりやすく解説していたような気が…。
文字起こしをかなり頑張ってやったので、皆さんもぜひビデオを最後まで見て下さい。
次回の文字起こしは無理かも知れません！
This Is America and the World
With Dennis Wholey
We recently visited Japan, which for us continues to be one of the most unique countries in the world.
Tokyo was just named the safest city in the world and certainly is the cleanest and most polite.
The Japanese people and their culture, and Japan’s important role in the world cannot be ignored.
Over the next few weeks, we will explore Japan’s plans for revitalizing its economy, its world leadership in technology, and its vast and intriguing cultural depth.
On this program we will learn about Japan’s need to push out, away from Tokyo and revitalize local and regional economies.
We will hear about strategies to attract young people to new jobs in these areas and plans to create the economic security for them to have larger families.
We will meet top officials, visit areas of Japan new to most travelers, and get a step closer to understanding the incredible spirit of the Japanese people.
[Sponsors]
Peter Landers is Tokyo Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal. I spoke with Peter about Prime Minister Abe’s three-pronged strategy to get Japan’s economy moving forward.
Wholey: What’s his grand strategy for rebooting the economy of Japan and making it a player once again.
Landers: He talks about three arrows. The first is monetary stimulus.
That means just flooding the economy with more cash, flooding the banking system with more cash to reduce interest rates, hopefully increase lending, increase riskier investments.
When you’re getting nothing on your bank deposits, that may hopefully encourage people to invest in real estate. You do see a little bit more of that under Prime Minister Abe. So, monetary stimulus by the Bank of Japan is his first arrow.
The second arrow is fiscal stimulus.
Not so much as it might seem, but there has been government spending to stimulate the economy, more government spending to restore the areas in Northeastern Japan that were hit especially hard by the earthquake, new construction projects.
And then the third arrow he talks about is structural reform, and it’s a little bit vague what he means by that, but it could mean liberalizing the labor market, it could mean having special economic zones where regulations are reduced, getting more women into the work force, a lot of agricultural opening, trying to get Japanese farmers to have a more competitive structure that would allow them to export more overseas.
Wholey: So the third arrow, is that a kind of the revitalization or vitalization arrow that we are talking about?
Landers: Yes.
Wholey: Is that a fair term?
Landers: Yes, I mean it’s aimed at doing so, yes over the long term.
I mean I would make a distinction between short-term and long-term.
I think a year from now we will be seeing stronger growth.
Minister Ishiba is in charge of promoting the vitalization of regional economies in Japan.
His mission: confronting low birthrate and a declining population and aging society, and challenging the country’s Tokyo focus.
His goal? To create a revived economy outside the capital city.
Wholey: You have a big portfolio: population decline, and to vitalize local economy. How do you do that?
Ishiba: Yes, I ought not to use the word “revitalization” but more “re-creation.”
That is because when I was a student in junior high and senior high schools back in the 1970s, the population in Japan was continuing to grow in a linear manner, and the local areas were full of vitality.
If you look at the localities and the local communities, from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south, in almost all of these local cities you see a decline across the board.
If you look right in front of the railway stations, not many people there, and if you go to the shopping streets, all the shutters are closed on the shops, and if you go to the villages, all are so exhausted and fatigued, so to speak, so there seems to be decline everywhere in the local areas.
Wholey: So, decline of the rural areas, bad economic times, move to the major cities. All cry out for new policies.
Ishiba: Exactly. You are right.
Wholey: So we have to create new jobs, and move them out of the Tokyo area. How do we do that?
Ishiba: About five years ago, I was the minister for agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, and I have been engaged for many, many years in matters of farming, fishing, and the forestries.
Their production levels have gone down below half of the peak levels.
Amongst all the countries in the world, I believe this a country most appropriate to have farming, and fishing, and the forestry.
But how to realize such a potential? How to draw out the capabilities of such sectors?
It is something that we need to think duly, and if we can do that, then we will be able to create jobs and increase income.
Wholey: Declining population. How do you encourage young people to have more children?
Ishiba: There all sorts of reasons why they are not able to get married, not able to have two or more children, but the biggest reason is they don’t have enough income to sustain the marriage or to have two or more children.
Looking at the social welfare problems in Japan, the emphasis has been placed more heavily on the senior citizens.
Today the older people in Japan are number one or two in the world when it comes to life expectancy.
Wholey: So, as we finish do you think that Prime Minster Abe, with your help, the government, the big employers can get this country’s economy moving forward?
Ishiba: Unless we do that, I don’t think the Japanese economy or Japan as a country would be sustainable.
Wholey: So this is a critical time.
Ishiba: The LDP government several times has taken on the challenge of revitalizing the local areas.
But as you have also rightly pointed out, what is different this time is, if we fail this time, Japan will no longer be sustainable.
So the government right now has a very strong sense of crisis.
Wholey: You say this is a very serious time for Japan. How much time do we have?
Ishiba: In order to revitalize the local areas and put a stop to the decline in population, and as much as possible to try to produce food and energy inside Japan, in order to achieve all these policies and goals, what we need to see is the local communities and local governments to take initiative, take ownership to revitalize the local areas.
Those should be highly credited. And what the central government should do is just to keep providing support in money, human resources, and information to be provided.
Those will be the only roles for the central government.
And if we can, in five years from now, see such movements to be full-fledgely happening in the local communities, I think that that would have been a good thing. So five years.
I will give five years in that those local cities would no longer backtrack and backpedal, and the mindset of all the people in the local communities needs to be changed.
So I think that we need to do that in five years.
Actually, it may take twenty years or thirty years.
However, if we can make it to that extent in just five years, then I think that the job is well done.
Wholey: Five years.
Ishiba: Only five years.
To learn more about how Japan is developing its regional economies, we visited several new companies that are creating jobs in regions far outside of Tokyo and energizing the economy.
Strawberries are Japan’s favorite fruit, fish is a staple of the Japanese diet, and knitting seems to go hand-in-hand with mending fishermen’s nets.
Three entrepreneurs underscore the innovative spirit of the Japanese people.
Wholey: Are strawberries very popular in Japan? Do people love strawberries here?
Iwasa: Strawberries have been the top favorite fruit in Japan for thirty years.
Wholey: So when they say G.R.A., what does G.R.A. stand for?
Iwasa: General Reconstruction Association.
Wholey: So this is part of the government’s revitalization effort.
Iwasa: We collaborate with the government, and we try to do something to vitalize the Japanese agricultural abilities and vitalize the community which was hit greatly by the great earthquake and tsunami.
Wholey: So when that happened, what was your idea?
Iwasa: My hometown his here, Yamamoto Town. When the big disaster happened, I was in Tokyo operating an IT company, but I didn’t know whether my parents were safe or not, so I came back and then looked at this area.
It was a devastating sight, a very tragic scene. So at that time I felt a sense of mission that I had to do something.
Right after the disaster, I myself and some traditional farmers started to work in the traditional way to reconstruct the agricultural community.
But if we do the traditional way of agriculture, it just gets back to the original situation before the disaster.
We had almost nothing after the disaster, so we thought maybe we should consider making this area the number one strawberry growing area in the world.
And after that we collaborated with the central government and government and considered how to invigorate Japanese agricultural to make it number one in the world.
Wholey: So, in the big picture you are working with the government to work on new technologies for farming. Is that the mission of G.R.A.?
Iwasa: Talking about agriculture, we think about some kind of crop-demanded technique or skill.
Of course, the traditional ones are very important, but we try to put science and technology into agriculture to make agriculture a big industry.
Through this activity, maybe some young people will want to come here to work in this local area, which will lead to the vitalization of the community and also can increase the employment in this area.
So we have a vision. So were are talking with the government from the viewpoint of a framework for reconstruction and revitalization of the local community.
Wholey: So one of the keys to economic recovery is to grow the agricultural sector.
Iwasa: Agriculture has less impact on the economy when you consider a short period of time.
But for the middle and long term period, I think that Japan’s agriculture will help and support the Japanese economy greatly.
Wholey: I hear you have written a book. You’re a famous author.
Saito: Actually, I am not a famous person, so without the disaster I would not have thought about writing a book. But after the disaster, we thought we should keep a record of how we restarted our work.
We have two plants near the sea, and also the two stores, and also the offices and my houses. Actually, on the very day, I was in the plant close to the sea, but all the facilities were flooded away by the tsunami.
But right after the disaster, we started to evacuate so that after the big vibration of the earthquake we began to evacuate so that all the staff was safe, and also the staff helped by elderly parents to evacuate, so our family members were also safe.
After the earthquake, its about forty minutes for the tsunami to come into the area so everyone had time to evacuate to higher ground. In this Kesennuma City alone, 3,000 people lost their lives.
Wholey: Have you always been in the fishing business?
Saito: When this company started, the company took care of the fishing vessels at that time.
But after I married my husband, we began to engage in processing of the fish.
Wholey: Processing of fish. So how does that work. Is there a plant where the processing takes place? Where is that plant?
Saito: Before the disaster, our plant was in what we call Shiomi-cho just in front of the sea. But after the disaster, now we have the plant downstairs.
Wholey: Here?
Saito: Yes.
Wholey: So, a family business.
Saito: Yes.
Wholey: And you’re the boss. Don’t tell anyone.
Wholey: When you go into the other area with our cameramen, what will he see? What’s happening there?
Saito: In the plant, we are cooking Pacific saury, and then take some process to make it safe, and then we pack the product.
In that one room, we do the whole process, from cutting the Pacific saury, cooking it, and processing, and to the packaging, all the processes.
Mitarai: When the earthquake happened, I was working in the government of Bhutan, a small country in the Himalayas, and I was working there.
But when the earthquake happened, I felt like isn’t it the time for me to work for my own country, not for other countries?
So I decided to come back to Japan and work around this Tohoku area. Just by chance, I came to this town, and I met the people here, and I was very much attracted because Kesennuma is such a small town in Tohoku, and I had the typical image of the rural area of Japan, like people are domestic.
But people here are quick hunters and risk takers and put the money to build big ships to go for fishing. So the people here are quite unique in Japan, so I was attracted very much, and I wanted to know more.
Wholey: So how did this knitting business come about in this area?
Mitarai: The first thing I wanted to do is to create a new industry which could be sustained after the temporary charity activities leave.
And in order to create the new business, I thought what could we do? But one constraint is that the ground has sunk because of the earthquake and we couldn’t build anything, so we couldn’t do any business which we need to build factories, for example, at the beginning.
So we needed to start something we could start without a big initial investment. And knitting, you know, you can start with two sticks and yarn.
That was something feasible at that moment. And moreover, when we told this idea to the people here, people told us “Oh, that’s what we have been doing for a long time.”
Because it’s a fishery town, many people knit sweaters for the fishermen, and also, interestingly, fishermen knitted the sweaters by themselves.
Because it is a deep fishery, it takes three months to go to the place to fish. Then fishermen have the time.
So as a time killer, they knitted their own sweaters. So the people here are quite familiar with the culture of knitting. So it was the key to start this business.
Wholey: I’m wondering if the knitting has anything to do with like repairing the fishing nets.
Mitarai: Yes, not directly connected, but because of the culture of knitting the fishermen’s nets or repairing the nets, people are familiar with knitting, the behavior of knitting itself.
Wholey: You’re knitting sweaters and selling them to whoever wants to buy, right?
Mitarai: Yes.
Wholey: And how many people are involved in the knitting?
Mitarai: Now, over thirty, actually 35 knitters are working at the company, Kesennuma Knitting.
Wholey: So, now it is a full-fledged business, but how do people find out about you?
Mitarai: At the beginning, my business partner had his own website, and he introduced us, our story, on his website.
It is quite popular, so it was the first step. And after that, now sometimes were are covered by media as well.
Wholey: Aha! Here we are.
The city of Kobe, destroyed by a powerful earthquake twenty years ago, is a prime example of Japan’s ability to rebuild, re-create, and revitalize.
Wholey: This is the 20th anniversary of a huge earthquake here. Try to tell us a little bit about the earthquake, the destruction, the devastation of this entire city.
Hisamoto: That was January 17, 1995. A huge earthquake suddenly struck this area of Japan.
The earthquake hit this area at 5:46 a.m. That’s when most people were still in bed, and many people were crushed under the rubble of the collapse of buildings and died.
And after that, as most buildings were made of wood, the fire occurred, and that burned down much of the city and killed 4,571 citizens in total.
And all the lifelines including water and electricity were cut during that time of the earthquake in Kobe. Our expressways were collapsed, and because of those devastations, the citizens had a real hard time.
Wholey: How about Kobe in the future? Where does it fit into Prime Minister Abe’s revitalization of the economy?
Hisamoto: Kobe has just passed the twenty-year mark after the major disaster, so it is time for us to go to the next stage.
And the key to the next stage for Kobe will be to develop as a bio-medical cluster even further.
In the Port Island of Kobe there are as many as 290 companies which have already invested, and that includes the National Institute Riken, and there we have the world’s fastest supercomputer K, which is a national project.
And the national government has a project to replace the fastest supercomputer with an even faster computer in the near future.
Through such initiatives, we would like to accelerate research and development activities in Kobe and even advance some technologies which are developed in Kobe and those findings will be reflected in the new drugs or pharmaceutical products which will provide the benefits to the health and welfare of the people.
We have three key things to which we can make positive contribution to the world: safety, health and wellness, and disaster reduction.
[Credits]
