Japon. La face cachée de la perfection
Karyn Nishimura-Poupée is a French journalist who has been based for nearly quarter of a century in Japan, where she currently works for Radio France, the daily newspaper Libération and the weekly magazine Le Point, following many years at the AFP office in Tokyo. She is married to a Japanese man and has two “mixed-race children”, affording her, over and above her work as a journalist, an insight into the daily lives of the Japanese, right to the heart of the school system (our translation throughout). The author of the earlier book entitled “Les Japonais” (The Japanese), this second publication is a presentation, with genuine empathy, of the dazzling successes and assets of Japanese society, its specifics that may (or that have) captured her imagination, but also, in a register that perfectly matches her objectivity, its shortcomings. In other words, the hidden face of perfection that gives the book its title.
One Japan may hide another. The first is the Japan hospitality, cleanliness, of spotless, silent and comfortable trains that always run on time, with “staff everywhere to attend to the slightest need, who even come to assist a passenger in a wheelchair disembarking a train, fold out a ramp and take him to the lift”. It is also the Japan where you will not find any greasy food wrappings on the ground, or graffiti, or any vandalised benches or urban furniture. It is the Japan with “information, greetings, thanks everywhere; refusals, shouts or insults nowhere”. The second Japan is the one the author takes us on a tour of, behind the perfection that is more than surface-deep. The Japan that the Japanese are the first to suffer from, although their upbringing generally prompts them to suffer in silence.
Many of these imperfections are not the preserve of Japan alone. The same is true of its imperfections of democracy, with which the author starts the book. It is very true that there is a gap at least as wide between the professed democratic ideals and institutional reality in France, to mention just one European country. Because, although the author correctly describes the scarcity of changes in power and the “very indirect” nature of the choice of a “powerful Prime Minister” in Japan, there is much that could be said of the situation in France at the moment, where minority government leads the country without ever having secured the confidence of Parliament.
“The Japanese constitution establishes the principle of the separation of powers (…) and enshrines great many rights and freedoms: the right to join a union, the right to strike (other than for civil servants), the freedom of expression, religious freedom, freedom of association, the freedom to travel, the freedom of the press… it sets out equality between citizens and between men and women. There are even many opportunities for citizens to challenge and exercise checks and balances over MPs and institutions, and even powers to dismiss MPs or appointments” Nishimura-Poupée stresses, going on to point out that a dominant political party, the Liberal Democrats, managed to remain in power continuously between 1955 and 1993, then between 1995 and 2019 and once again since 2012. This is largely based on nepotism: “no fewer than 12.5% of the candidates in the general elections of 2021 stood in constituencies in which at least one of their antecedents or close relatives had been MP or senator”.
“Over the years I have spent observing curious Japanese politics, I have come to question one thing: if a democracy or government occasionally decides to interpret the Constitution or law for its own convenience, to rely on the fait accompli, then adjust the law in accordance with its own practices, destroy or falsify documents, arbitrarily deprive certain citizens of their rights without judgment and openly lie to the media, is it still a perfect democracy?”, the author writes, using five recent examples to justify her question: (1) the refusal, in 2020, by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to appoint six individuals proposed by a dedicated committee as members of the equivalent of the French Académie des sciences, contrary to long-established practice, followed by a reform in 2023 to confer the nomination rights upon the Prime Minister; (2) documents falsified to cover up the involvement of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife in the sale at a knockdown price of land belonging to the State (Moritomo Gakuen affair), which was a scandal between 2017 and 2021; (3) war reporter Junpei Yasuda stripped of his passport having been held hostage in Syria between mid-2015 and October 2018; (4) the holding of a state funeral in 2022 for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, by decision of his successor, Fumio Kishida, even though this practice, which existed under the imperial system, was abolished after the Second World War; (5) the incorrect translation into Japanese, and therefore for use by the country’s population, of the passage on the disposal at sea of contaminated water from the Fukushima power station, in the press release of the G7 summit of Hiroshima 2023.
“According to the Japanese Association of Journalists, more than 36 million newspapers were printed in the country on average every day in 2022 (…). That represents roughly one newspaper for every 3.75 people in the archipelago every day, compared to less than one for every 12 people in France, where the total print run of daily newspapers is in the order of five million per day”, the author points out, stressing that the major titles of the Japanese national daily press employ hundreds if not thousands of journalists. Although these figures appear prodigious, they are in fact “disastrous” in the sense that print runs have fallen by more than 30% in the space of 15 years. In 2011, the number of daily newspapers printed each day stood at more than 50 million. This drop can be largely explained by the development of new media and the fact that the Japanese press took a long time to adapt to the digital revolution. The journalist goes on to describe at length the shortcomings of the Japanese media sector, which is strongly based on a model of distribution of excessively factual and formalistic information, with equally highly formatted political communication, press clubs attached to every organ of State, with privileged relationships organising a form of control over information and a considerable element of self-censure. In 2022, Japan fell to 71st place in the Reporters sans frontières freedom of the press league table, before climbing back to 68th spot in 2023.
Together with the United States, Japan is also one of the only two “major democracies” in which the death sentence is still pronounced and applied out of the 55 countries in which it is still part of the criminal code. “For many, many years, there have permanently been around a hundred prisoners under sentence of death shut away in the six prisons in which there is a special area for the exceptional cases who await the day of their execution in isolation” and the “total lack of transparency is constantly being decried by lawyers”, Nishimura-Poupée explains.
The author also describes the patriarchal and change-averse nature of Japanese society, despite stressing that contrary to popular belief, “Japanese women are not subjugated” and that at home, “the woman is the boss”. “Legally, the rights she enjoys are broadly identical to those of her male counterparts”, but “in everyday life, in professional life and concerning certain legal aspects, women are effectively treated with inferiority”. For instance, “the average annual income of men stood at 5.4 million yen in 2021, and 3.02 million for women”. This partly stems from a “conception considered outmoded of the division of labour”: the husband at work out of the home, the woman in the home. But this can also be explained by the “highly unenviable position of the male population”: “male employees are under an obligation to toil if not hard, then at least for a long time. Too long. And to agree to take on extra hours, for which they will not necessarily be paid, without demure (…). Not many women dream of a life like that of the ‘salarymen’, particularly given that they would have to add their professional responsibilities to their family duties, which men do not necessarily contribute to, at least as long as they are taking the role of ‘family cashpoint’”. “Additionally, the expression ‘career woman’ (…) also carries a pejorative connotation, basically meaning a woman who prioritises her professional ambitions and at the cost of her children – if she has them – or decides not to have them out of careerist selfishness”, Nishimura-Poupée observes. The consequence is that many women prefer to work part-time or in a job without too many responsibilities and that is not overly time-consuming, but also that “poverty rate for older women in Japan is nearly 23% – one in every four – while it is on average 15% in the countries of the OECD (5% in France)”.
At the same time, the marriage rate is in freefall (in 1970, only 1.7% of men and 3.3% of women were still single at the age of 50; those figures were 27.1% and 18.4% respectively in 2021) and the ageing of the population is accelerating. “At the beginning of 2023, more than 29% of the population of Japan were over the age of 65, compared to just 11% under 15”, which augurs ill for its ability to maintain the universal social system as it exists today into the future. Of the 114,300 billion yen (765 billion euros) of the budget of the Japanese state in 2023, 36,900 billion were earmarked for social insurance and 25, 200 billion to the servicing of debt, accounting for nearly 55% of the total, the author stresses, adding that in 2022 and 2023, “social spending directly linked to the ageing of society rose by nearly 3700 billion, following an increase of almost the same amount the previous year”.
“In Japan, working until the age of 80 or more is no longer a theoretical possibility or a distant future, it is already a reality”, the author goes on to observe. She adds that “in 2023, more than 16% of people aged over 75 were still working. Companies such as the major household equipment chain Nojima no longer have a retirement age and hire staff up to the age of 80”.
Finally, the journalist discusses the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has seen support in Japan for sanctions against the aggressor, aid to the country under attack and a generous welcoming of Ukrainian refugees, even though the country is generally reluctant, to say the least, to take in strangers, other than to cover its requirements for labour, university lecturers and researchers, among others. The warmth shown to the Ukrainians can be explained in part by the memory of the occupation of the Kuril Islands by Russia (then the USSR) and it has been followed by the announcement of an increase of the defence budget to reach the level of no less than 43,000 billion yen (290 billion euros) by 2027, or 2% of GDP, against the backdrop of concerns linked to the risk of Japan being drawn into the war, for instance if China should decide to follow Russia’s lead and invade Taiwan, provoking an intervention by the American military forces stationed in Okinawa. “This fear, together with the threat from North Korea, which is consistently testing missiles and could undertake a new nuclear test (bearing in mind that we do not know exactly the content of the agreements for these countries to supply Russia with weapons: Ed), and more general concerns about China (which is, among other things, laying claim to the Senkaku cluster of inhabited islands, which are currently controlled by Japan) are prompting Tokyo to acquire really additional resources”, our colleague writes, taking pains to reiterate that even within the Japanese elite, questions are still being raised about the potential destination of this financial manna. Unless it is used by the United States to “sell Japan useless equipment”. (Olivier Jehin)
Karyn Nishimura-Poupée. Japon. La face cachée de la perfection (our translation throughout). Tallandier. ISBN: 979-1-0210-5700-5. 350 pages. €21,50
Crises and Wars – EU Action Required for the Reform of the International System
in this article, published in the newsletter of the Cyprus Centre for European and International Affairs of the University of Nicosia, former European civil servant Kyriakos Revelas makes the observation that the international system is going through a transitional phase of uncertain outcome. It could end in a bipolar system with two antagonists, the United States and China, or a “multi-polar system, whose stability propensity is not known, but probably low”. In this extremely fluid context, three conflicts – the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Caucasus (dissolution of Nagorno-Karabagh, exodus of population to Armenia and Turkish-Azerbaijani intentions on the Zangezur corridor) – are aggravating the instability and threats facing the international system.
Although the author considers that the EU’s alignment with the United States concerning Ukraine is “understandable” considering the major repercussions for European security, he argues that a “European strategic reflection on the future security order of the old continent, not least in view of domestic developments in the US, is cruelly missing despite this being of vital importance for European security”. “The rise in military spending to support Ukraine has still to be translated into sustained efforts to consolidate the European defence industry”, he notes.
As for the Middle East, the EU has not used its financing strategically to effectively promote a two-State peace solution, he regrets, stressing that it should reflect on how it could better exploit the areas of water, energy and the fight against maritime pollution, with a view to sustainable development as a factor in the long-term stability of the Mediterranean and Middle East.
Finally, Revelas argues that the EU should, in the matter of urgency, work on the reform of the international system, taking account of the legitimate interests of all players, whether or not they share its views. (OJ)
Kyriakos Revelas. Crises and Wars – EU Action Required for the Reform of the International System. University of Nicosia. In Depth. Volume 20, Issue 4, December 2023. ISSN: 2421-8111. The review of the Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs (CCEIA) can be downloaded free of charge from the following address: https://aeur.eu/f/aaj