Concrete Opinion

After the second world war, in the 1950’s and 60’s Japan experienced a building boom. Not unsurprisingly perhaps, given the amount of destruction waged upon its cities and towns by the American air force. A lot of the old wooden buildings that had the quintessential Japanese flavor that we now only see in places like Kyoto or Nara were destroyed and new buildings erected in their place: A terrible shame, especially since many old neighbourhoods were destroyed not because they were damaged, but simply they were seen as a throwback to when Japan was an old fashioned, feudally governed country and now unrepresentative of the emerging Asian power that Japan was becoming.

So Japan’s love affair with concrete began – and the more the economy picked up, the more premises and building that needed to be built. Even the government, with its coffers steadily filling as the economic revival gathered pace got involved, it built the famous bullet train network as well as highways, express ways and local train networks that still are the envy of many countries in the world. At it’s height the construction industry employed more than 20% of the entire Japanese workforce, so construction companies came to wield considerable political clout too.

Some wily politicians realised that, with the vast amounts of money available for public works, companies would reward any information or help in swinging the contract their way. Japan’s pork-barrel had never been so full, and everyone was getting their share.

Unfortunately, what didn’t happen in tandem with the building boom was the evolution of a system of zoning building areas or anything resembling planning permission. Basically if you owned the land, and had the money to build, you could pretty much build what you wanted – such as a chemical works next to an infant school. It also meant that power cables are not buried (because that is more expensive for the power companies). In fact, most of the mountain views of Japan – and there are a lot – are almost without exception despoiled by ranges of power pylons criss-crossing their summits.

Of course, there came a point when the private sector’s needs were largely met, and the contracts for private construction declined. The construction companies began to put people out of work – and the politicians got scared. What should have been the planned downsizing of the industry never happened. That 20% of the workforce meant a huge number of votes – especially in rural areas – belonging to the ruling LDP party. The politicians themselves were also too used to the amount of kickbacks they were getting to entertain the possibility that this state of affairs couldn’t continue. So, the amount of public money available for construction grew and grew.

What was no longer being built by the private sector was built by national and regional governments with “donations” ending up in the pockets on local administrators, and local populations being saddled with buildings they don’t need. Projects such as flood defences have meant that EVERY river in Japan has been concreted for some part of its length, even in the cases where no flooding had ever happened in living memory. Of course, concrete does not allow for much of an ecosystem to develop, and the results for wildlife have been catastrophic. Mountains haven’t escaped either. They are given concrete frames over them to stop rock slides – imagine the expense of covering a mountain in a concrete lattice! Add to this thousands of culture centers and community buildings that have been built, despite an absence of need, in nearly every village and hamlet in Japan.

The government supplies low-interest loans for these activities, which communities take up only to find that the running costs for these buildings far exceed the amount of money to be made from them – causing a circle of debt to accumulate. The second largest city in the country, Osaka, is so overburdened with these kind of projects that it had to declare bankruptcy, and is now governed by central government. It reckons to be solvent again in 2050! But still the construction industry is not sated.

Local governments receive a set budget every year. A lot of this is earmarked by central government for construction projects whether there is a local need or not. Now here is the rub – if the money is not used, the subsequent amount of money budgeted to that local government will be smaller. There is no incentive to save money… the only way to assure that current levels of budget are retained is to spend everything allotted for a given year. Thus, the white elephants of modern Japan are born – more concrete, more buildings, more running costs for things that people don’t use. More rivers and mountains concreted, more old buildings replaced by concrete boxes.

Japan is looking less and less “Japanese” every year, and governments and regions becoming poorer whilst the bureaucrats and construction companies get wealthier and ever more powerful. Somebody has said it won’t end until the whole country becomes a car park.

Such a shame that everyones’ memories of what was a beautiful country have to be buried beneath it.

Musical Youth

On Sunday, I went to a music festival at the elementary school to which my girlfriend’s daughter goes. Since Mimata (the daughter in question) is only 7, I wasn’t expecting much, having  made similar “performances” myself as that age. I have to say I was mightily impressed. Thirty seven-year olds played an amazing piece of music on their pianicas (kind of a keyboard instrument that you blow into). I mean, the piece of music may have been basic, but they were note-perfect, and all in time with each other.

Now, I have no musically ability whatsoever and never have done. Schools in England seem to treat music as completely unimportant, and the idea that kids can play music instead of just generally making a racket seems overlooked. Yes, practice takes time, and the Japanese may be a bit masochistic when it comes to practicing, but it really pays off. Japanese kids are taught how to read music from age six, are required to have a pianica for school music lessons, and have a school performance each year. Someone like me, for whom written music is just a collection of dots and squiggles, is an anathema to any Japanese ten-year old. Everyone, whether gifted or not, played along with the rest of their class. No-one made any big mistakes, no one refused to play.

The Japanese try to build the group ethic up from very young. If you make mistakes or don’t try then you are not simply letting yourself down, but also your group (or class, or family etc), so these kids practice like crazy, not just for their own benefit, but also to avoid the shame of letting down their classmates. Though the group mentality has its downside (which we will surely merits its own post sometime), it is mightily impressive to hear the sixth grade (twelve year olds) play the Marsellaise with the all the pomp and vigour that would make them right at home at the Last Night of the Proms, without missing one note or beat.

The British school system could learn a lot.

Red Dwarf (Super Nova cont’d)

Just a brief update on the Nova story from two or so weeks ago: The company has filed for protection against its creditors here in Japan, confirming what everyone feared: Nova is on its very last legs. Not last on the list of creditors are the some 4,500 foreign teachers here and all of the Japanese staff (some of which haven’t been paid since JULY!).

I walked past the Nova in my little city here today to find the shutters down and hastily pasted signs on them saying that the branch had closed and a number to call: a free phone number, so lord knows how many hours people will have to wait, or rather be made to wait to make their claims for refunds. Of course if customers with outstanding credit with Nova are counted among the creditors from whom Nova is to be protected, then we really are in trouble. Not only Nova, but the whole business of foreigners teaching in Japan is going to be hit with a lack of confidence, as well as a surplus of teachers and falling wages.

**UPDATE** According to the Times (nice to know I’m so on the button eh? – bringing you the news after it hits Britain!, and then courtesy of my brother in France) but not only my local Nova has closed, but EVERY Nova in Japan. That is  a lot ladies and gents. But then, so is the 210 million quid that the company owes.

(Super) NOVA

English teaching in Japan has always been big business. Owing to the downright awful standard of English education in the school system, most Japanese wishing to master the language turn to the private sector. One of the largest private providers of English education is a company called Nova, which employs around 4,500 foreign staff in Japan.Nova’s sales techniques have always been quite forceful. Having worked their myself, it was not unusual to see sales staff corralling a new customer in a sales booth for hours on end, literally wearing down their resolve until the contract was signed. Nova sells its lessons as packages of points: A lesson cost a set number of points, and the more points you bought, the cheaper each individual lesson became. For example, 30 points might cost 20 000 yen (about 100 British Pounds) but 60 points might cost 35 000 yen. Thus customers were pressed to buy larger and larger amounts of points on the basis that the more they spent, the better value they received.

Customers paid everything up front (or financed via Nova’s credit options), and in such amounts that it didn’t take a genius to realise that customers were being sold amounts of points that wiould take years to use. In the meantime their needs to learn English might change or a whole host of personal circumstances could intercede and require that they terminated their contract with the company.

However, small print in the contracts, unmentioned by the sales staff in the sales process, stated that on cancelling a contract the customer was to forfeit a great number of their outstanding points. For example, cancelling a contract with 200 points remaining might only yield a refund to the monetary value of 125 of those points – a difference of tens of thousands of yen. Very sharp practice indeed.

Eventually METI, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, took Nova to court over this practice, and it was proven to be illegal. A rare victory for the customer in a country where consumer rights rarely make news.

METI’s penalty to NOVA was a ban on recruiting new students on long term contracts for a period of six months. Since NOVA bascially worked as a Ponzi scheme, needing to recruit more and more students each month to maintain its cashflow and expansion plans, they basically lost all of their revenue and liquid assets over night. While the consumer has celebrated a victory, the staff of NOVA, both foreign and Japanese are feeling the pinch: salaries for most NOVA staff, due on the 15th, have not been paid at the time of this posting. For foreign teachers, abroad without money, without job security or even a means to get home the situation must be very alarming indeed. Nova doesn’t pay unemployment insurance or national health insurance for its members, preferring its own in-house schemes, so some teachers are really going to be in trouble.

Even for those of us lucky enough not to be directly affected, it will still have serious repurcussions: 4,500 teachers looking for work at the same time in an already crowded market is going to push up competition for jobs, push down wages and increase job insecurity. For schools other than NOVA, the level of distrust generated towards the industry by these events has yet to be measured. There could be some stormy times ahead for all of us working in English education in this country.

And yet, NOVA is still recruiting teachers at it’s London office as we speak.

Noh, noh, definitely Noh.

Last weekend, me being the occasional culture vulture, we went to see a Noh play.

Noh is a kind of sylized Japanese art-form that is part play, part traditional music, which relates a story using about four or five actors, along with musicians and a chorus. It dates from the 14th century, which explains my first problem with Noh… had no idea what they were talking about. Not just me, even the Japanese around me were checking their translations. Thing is of course, the more you read the translation (at my reading speed anyway), the less you see of the action.

By far the strangest part was the music – it’s sort of an atonal collection of whoops from the chorus, to not-entirely challenging drumming from the musician, though there is a kind of badly tuned flute too. And the dancing – well all I can say is, well…. watch!

Actually this video is a bit more lively that what I watched. The one I watched was only semi-professional: kind of the Cotswold Players of the Noh world.

I love Japan, I’ve read more books about the culture and history than I can count. But Noh lost me. I was more confused leaving than I had been coming in! I don’t want to criticise, or seem like a philistine but I have to say… I don’t get it!