A Spot Perhaps Not So Sweet

I heard a version of Jesper Koll's Japan bull speech

(Link)

in December.

Here is my biggest problem with it.

At 4:34 in the video, Koll shows a graph of the wages and bonuses a typical salaried worker receives over his or her lifetime. Wages remain low over the first 15 years of work, then rise rapidly, reach a peak at around 55 years of age, whereupon they decline until retirement.

According to Koll, the passage of the "Mick Jagger" generation (Jagger was born in 1943) from its wage peak and into wage decline and retirement accounts for 80% of observed deflation. One has to assume he is talking about consumer prices deflation. He is clearly not talking about deflation in real estate -- that he accounts for differently. He does not even mention deflation in equities, an interesting choice given his day job.

According to Koll, the massive deflationary pressure from declining wages and bonuses will reverse as the children of the Mick Jagger generation enter their high wage post-40 years of age period.

Ummm, cannot say that I agree.

On the first of this month, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released this graph.

Let us look first at the top solid line.

[Source]

In 1949, births topped out at a never-to-be-seen again 2,678,792. They fell precipitously, bottoming out at 1,566,713 in 1957 -- a 42% drop in just 12 years' time. Births recovered as the Mick Jagger generation began having children, peaking at 2,091,983 in 1973 (note - half of this generation have already entered the stage when their earnings accelerate). This new peak of births is 32% smaller than the 1949 peak.

After 1973, births fell slightly less precipitously than after 1949, hitting 1,431,577 in 1985 -- a 12 year fall of 32%. However, unlike in 1957, births have never recovered. Births have fallen slowly but steadily, declining 38% over the last 27 years, falling below the number of deaths (thick dotted line) in 2007.

So what does all this mean?

a) the numerically largest generation ever is leaving the workforce.

b) a numerically large generation is entering its high-wage period. However, their numbers are only around 75% of the generation whose total earning power they are supposed to be replacing.

c) there are dramatically fewer children and young people to serve as consumers and workers. Good for them on an individual level as they will (in theory!) be able to bid up wages and demand lower prices for goods. Bad for the country in terms of aggregate spending.

d) With births below replacement level, total population -- i.e., total consumption -- is going down and at an accelerating rate, the number of deaths over birth rising from 18,516 in 2007 to 210,000 last year.

Koll is probably right about a boom coming on. However, it is for the folks selling investments and savings vehicles to the echo generation. That generation has to plan for lifespans of 90 years and for taking care of elderly parents for two decades before falling themselves into decrepitude -- all with little help from whatever survives of the national pension system.

A surge in spending due to rising wages and bonuses?　The birth and death numbers do not offer solace.

And no no one in the Diet is losing much sleep over the implications of the above graph. To borrow a simile from Chris Rock, statistics and macro are like kryptonite to this blessed land's parliamentarians.

Catching Up

Even though it is now November, it was only yesterday that I took the time to listen to the 8 March 2012 Temple University talk by Kenneth Cukier, the former Japan economics and business correspondent for The Economist. In the YouTube video of the talk, Cukier denies he is anything of an expert on Japan, even after five years on the job. He remains baffled by the contradictions he has seen. Nevertheless Cukier leads the viewer/listener (Cukier speaks without slides, so there is nothing to watch) on a worthwhile tour of the various lenses through which one can view the Japanese economy and Japanese corporations. (Link)

At the end of his presentation, Cukier praises the work of the author Spike of the blog Spike Japan. Spike has produced some of the best writing ever on the down-at-the-heels side of Japan, in long essays laced with humor, affection and a heavy dose of statistics. The magazine is dead, which is sad, for Spike's travelogues, such as his latest on what he saw whilst on a trek through "the wettest, boggiest, squelchiest bits of Hokkaido" would certainly be gracing the pages of a thick and glossy publication. (Link)

Finally, I do not know whether the reporters of the Tokyo Shimbun read The Japan Times blog YenForLiving or whether blog authors Philip Brasor and Tsukuba Masako merely captured the zeitgeist (Link) but today's top story in the print edition of the Tokyo Metropolitan District's hometown newspaper is on the hurdle created by the kyotakukin, this blessed land's world-beatingly high and often non-refundable deposit required for a run for a Diet seat -- though, as frequent Shisaku commenter Troy has pointed out, the amount required for a run at a Diet district seat represents a one thousand yen contribution from three thousand supporters.

No Child Left Behind - The Latest Statistics On Daycare

Note: this is an expansion of comments originally left on The Japan Times' YenForLiving blog.

During the recent recent Annual Meeting in Tokyo, the IMF released a paper with the grandiloquent title "Can Women Save Japan (and Asia Too)?". I say grandiloquent because the paper is a scant four pages long, with the below as the first page (the bolding is my own; I have also fixed the typos):

"It is very difficult for women in Japan to balance raising children and working full-time," says Naomi Nakamura, a 35-yearold physical therapist from Yokohama who is now on maternity leave looking after her four-month-old baby girl. "Many companies do not allow shorter working hours, and even if they do, female employees are often reluctant to work part-time because of the atmosphere at work," explains Nakamura, who also has a three-year-old son.

For Nakamura, work, child rearing, and home are literally a balancing act. After her son was born, Nakamura was lucky to find a day care center near her job, but she still had a 20-minute bike ride to work with her son on the back. She tried to find an educational day care center for her son but, with none available, she had to put him in a center that provides only child care. She shopped for her groceries on her way home, putting the groceries in a basket at the front of her bike and her son in a seat on the back.

Like most Japanese fathers, Nakamura's husband works late every night, so she feeds
the children, bathes them, and puts them bed herself. She then cooks dinner for herself and her husband. They eat late at night and go to bed exhausted.

She struggled to find a child care center for her son and felt uncomfortable leaving the office early if the center called because he was sick. Before she went on maternity leave, her husband usually took their son to the center in the morning and she picked him up in the evening. But when her husband was on a business trip, which happened quite often, both tasks fell to Nakamura. "I feel very sorry for my colleagues who have to do extra work when I have to leave the office," she says.

Still, Nakamura feels lucky compared with her friends because her job skills are in demand. Many of her friends are being told they cannot have their old jobs back or are struggling to find part-time work because employers look askance at someone who may have to take leave to care for a sick child.

Nakamura's story is common to many women across Japan and in parts of Asia. their daily struggles balancing work and home are so daunting that many feel they have to choose between raising children and building a career.

This is a story of struggle? Nakamura Naomi of Yokohama could bicycle to work in 20 minutes? She sometimes had to take her son to childcare in the morning and pick him up in the evenings, though most of the time her husband would do the morning run?

This is not a story of struggle. For anyone who has lived in this blessed land for any period of time, this is a description of heaven.

As for the rest of the paper, it only barely escapes being so much intellectual kapok stuffing. One does learn one interesting fact:

Self-selection into non-career-track positions is another possible reason for the small number of women managers. this process appears to start early on, with gender ratios in top universities already showing divergence. At the University of Tokyo, for example, where entrance is based on test outcomes, less than 20 percent of the student body is female.

I admit surprise at the gender-skew at Todai, if indeed this is the latest ratio.

It is also good to have some IMF-certified numbers to toss out when one needs some talking points:

- "In Japan, the size of the working-age population, ages 15–64 is projected to fall from its peak of 87 million in 1995 to about 55 million in 2050—approximately the same size as the Japanese workforce at the end of World War II."

- "If, over the coming 20 years, Japan raised its female labor participation rate from 62 percent to 70 percent—that of its Group of Seven industrial countries (G7) compatriots excluding outlier Italy—then its per capita GDP would be approximately 5 percent higher."

["excluding outlier Italy" – oh, how that phrase must make Richard Samuels smile (Link)]

It is hard not to use the word fatuous when describing the paper, when this is the final paragraph:

If Nakamura lived in Sweden, she would have the support she needed to "have it all," and wouldn't think twice about going back to her previous job after maternity leave. Making it easier for women like Nakamura to stay in the workforce will make it easier for Japan to remain a player in the global economy. Making the most of Asia's women is an equitable progrowth strategy that makes good sense.

"If Nakamura lived in Sweden..." – leaves one breathless, does it not, the presumption?

Going back to Nakamura's so-called struggle with childcare, the government in late September released the figures on the nation's daycare centers (hoikuen) and pre-schools (yochien) as of April 1, 2012 (Link – J).

The key takeaways are:

- while the number of children being born is declining, the number of children at daycare or in pre-schools is growing at a rate of 3% per year. In between April 1, 2011 and April 1 of this year, the total number of children in daycare and childcare facilities increased by 55,851 to 2,176,802.

- while the number of children attending daycare or in pre-schools is growing fast, the number of children on waiting lists to get into childcare facilities is declining. The total number of children on waiting lists nationwide on April 1, 2012 was 24,825, less half of the year-on-year increase in the number of children attending day care or pre-school.

- in between April 1, 2011 and April 1, 2012, the total number of daycare centers and pre-schools increased by 326, to 23,711 – again, increasing despite a year-on-year decrease in the total number of eligible children

- 23 prefectures reported having fewer than 50 children on waiting lists; 11 had no children on waiting lists at all. The numbers for the previous year were 20 prefectures with fewer than 50 children on waiting lists and 9 prefectures with no children on waiting lists (Link - J)

- the Tokyo Metropolitan District, where most foreign journalists and researchers live, remains the outlier in terms of unmet demand, with 7,257 children on waiting lists — 29% of the national total. Even in the TMD, however, there was a year-on-year decline in the number of children waiting for inception, there being 7,855 on the waiting lists in April 2011.

- in Nakamura Naomi's home prefecture of Kanagawa, the prefecture with the third highest number of children on waiting lists after the TMD and Okinawa, the number of children on waiting lists plummeted, from 3,095 to 2,039, in between April 2011 and April 2012.

So in terms of access to childcare, Nakamura Naomi of Yokohama does not need to move to Sweden. It is moving to her.

Later - More sauce.

A more leisurely reading of the government's September 28 report reveals that Ms. Nakamura's Yokohama not only was the municipality with the largest increase in the number of children entering daycare or preschool (+2627 children from April 1, 2011 to April 1, 2012) but the also the municipality with the biggest drop in the number of children on waiting lists (-792, from 971 on April 1, 2011 to 179 this April).

By contrast, Osaka City -- which has a certain famous individual as its mayor -- was the municipality with the greatest increase of the number of children on waiting lists, from 396 on April 1, 2011 to 664 on April 1 this year.

Armageddon Can Ruin Your Whole Day

The most hilarious line I have read in a long while:

"If Japan's finances collapse, social order would collapse as well. That would be a tough environment to raise children."

You can find it a huffing-and-puffing Reuters piece on a heretofore unknown sweeping social trend: Japanese buying overseas real estate and non-yen currencies in order to have a safe haven to which they will flee prior to Japan's descent into chaos. (Link)

I know that it is in the writ of wire journalists to alert their most important readers (private investors and money managers) as to emerging social trends. That way said readers can get in on the opportunity before everyone else does. It is in the writ of editors, however, to cool the jets of journalists with "Uhhhh, how sure are we that we are not being sucked into someone else's marketing scheme?"

As for the book whose sales supposedly validate the trend of Japanese seeking security oversees, Escape from Japan (Nippon dasshutsu), check out the home page of its publisher, Asa Publishing (Link - J).

Yes, there's the link, that jittery thing on the right.

And In The Other Japan...

...the one that is fabulous, successful and full of youthful energy, a shock: Maeda Atsuko (20) is "graduating" from AKB 48. The gigantic group's pivot point, two-time winner of the title of Party Leader (sosai) announced her retirement/ascension/eviction at the end of the group's concert on Sunday (J and SP -- I cannot help myself: the news sounds so much more poignant and significant en español).

Serious discussions must have already begun on whether the fans of AKB 48 can be brought together for a snap election of a new Party Leader, so as to avoid leaving the group, the fandom, the marketers, the makeup artists, the clothes designers, the lighting crews, the semi-closeted nympholeptics leaderless.

Questions will also now grow ever louder as to whether Shinoda Mariko, the oldest member of the group at 26, should not also announce her departure.


Later - Oh dear, I was pipped by Japan Probe. Oh well.

Later still - And yes, they can sing beautifully, when they try (Link).

Just Catching Up

Following up on the recent post on the new societal panic, the double deaths of caregiver and dependant living in virtual isolation (virtual in that the most famous cases have taken place in urban environments) is a The Mainichi Daily News editorial on the subject (E).

In the recent post on the hanging of Ozawa Ichiro's portrait in the Diet, there was the mention that the House of Representatives Steering Committee had approved the hanging of troubled lawmaker Suzuki Muneo's portrait in the House as well.

Here it is folks, in all its ragged glory.

Let's call the style "Hokkaido Primitive."

Some might say that the portrait makes Suzuki look demented. Some might argue that for Suzuki, demented is a step up.

And yes, that is Sato Masaru on the left, the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucrat who spent 512 days in pre-trial detention for refusing to answer questions about Suzuki's under-the-table dealings and the man who called Suzuki "MOFA's Rasputin."

Image courtesy: Jiji Press

Fewer Than Two Continued - On Death And Dying

Where the new figures for household size in the Tokyo Metropolitan District intersect with the prevailing zeitgeist in two ways.

The first is the reporting of the increasing number, as if it were a surprise, of famous persons dying alone (kodokushi) and not being found for several days or even weeks.

The first really shocking case was of the former porn actress, television talent, then later blogger and AIDS activist Iijima Ai, who was found dead in her home three weeks after her last blog post in December 2008. The 2009 discovery of the body of longtime film and television superstar Ohara Reiko in her home two weeks after anyone last heard from her further shocked the country. Newscaster and television talent Yamaguchi Mie was found dead alone last year under similar circumstances.

Of course, with the greater number of persons living alone, that the number of persons dying alone should be rising should not surprising. Given the anonymity of the big cities and the hyper-sensitivity over respecting a person's privacy, that persons are not being found dead for days or weeks should also not be surprising.

That the number of persons dying alone at home has not, until recently, been a societal obsession can in part be traced to the incredible rates of hospitalization of the very ill and very old, with over 82% of deaths occurring in a hospital and an addition 3% in special homes for the aged (J - page 9).

Iijima, Ohara and Yamaguchi were 36, 62 and 51 years of age respectively at the time of their deaths. Both Ohara and Yamaguchi had spent many years prior to their deaths caring for aged and incapacitated parents.

It is in the latter situation that the new figures on the size of households gives folks the heeby-jeebies, though in the case of Ohara and Yamaguchi, the parents each had been caring for had either been moved to an elder care facility or died.

In recent weeks there have been a spate of stories about caregivers dying, leaving their disabled or senile charges to die of starvation, thirst or cold. The most shocking was a case in mid-February of a 45 year-old woman dying, leaving her four year-old mentally retarded son to die a few days later of an as yet unrevealed cause, despite visits to the home by what were supposed to be help providers. In more recent days, news organizations have been reporting on couples or parent-child homes where the deaths of the caregiver have left the other, incapacitated resident to die, either slowly or quickly, from lack of care. Despite the fact that these pairs of individuals are not technically dying alone, these types of double deaths are being classed kodokushi.

With Japanese enjoying, if that can be the term, extended lifespans, and the chances of one member of a two-person household being seriously incapacitated in some way increasing, the number of these kinds of double deaths is sure to increase unless civil society or local government develop ways on keeping tabs on caregivers and their charges. A great deal of help is currently available. With the society as a whole aging, however, the capacity for society or local governments to continue to provide help services will diminish.

Some companies, such as the ALSOK corporation, advertise home surveillance cameras for younger relatives to keep tabs on the status of their elders. The concept seems way too creepy and invasive to come into common usage, however. This may change. Indeed, the installation of cameras might come to be seen as a natural part of the aging process -- that once you are past a certain age, you will never have a moment's privacy again, even in your own home.

Fewer Than Two

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up
Until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky

This is for all the single people
Thinking that life has left them dry
Don't give up
Until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try

- America, "Lonely People" (1974)*

If you are in the Tokyo Metropolitan district, and you are alone, you are not alone. Indeed, you are in the whopping majority.

The TMD released the results of its survey of households yesterday. As of January 1 of this year, Tokyo had 12,686,067 residents living in 6,368,485 households, an average of 1.99 residents per household. Considering the number of families with children in the TMD, the balancing number of persons registered as living alone is simply immense -- over 60% of all households registered.

The Mainichi Shimbun provides a nice graph of the crash in the number of persons per registered household since 1957, the first year the survey was conducted.

TMD Governor Ishihara Shintaro, ever the one to come up with the conservate morality play view of a situation, remarked, "I am shocked. It a matter of grave concern. It's truly unhealthy. I feel as though the family unit has fallen to pieces."

If so, then our dear governor (How is it possible that he has won election four times?) should be worried about our neighbors to the north, with all their cows, corn and sunflowers, for the next in line is Hokkaido, with 2.06 residents per household. (J)

The TMD being the great vampire squid of Japan's prefectures, it still managed to eke out a 0.31% increase in its population, the 16th straight year of population growth, despite its shrinking household size (J). It also has remained relatively youthful, with persons in their 30s being the largest age cohort and the percentage of those over 65 years of age still a low (for Japan) 21% of the population. (J)

So all the ongoing creative destruction, with old neighborhoods and commercial properties being demolished and being replaced by high-rise and low-rise condominium and rental units is not necessarily cheap financing leading developers to run amok.

* Yes, I know that the song is an appeal to rebith through faith in Jesus Christ. However, it was either this or "Eleanor Rigby."

Photo credit: MTC

Two Earthquakes, One National Broadcaster

Two fairly large earthquakes struck Japan's eastern coast last night, a 6.8 temblor at 6:09 far off the coast of Hokkaido and a 6.1 temblor near to shore at 9:05. The earlier one released the greater energy (seven times as much, the Richter scale being logarithmic - correct me if I am wrong) but the latter one was the one causing damage and injuries. The latter one shook the bewillickers out of Tokyo, guaranteeing it would get better press. It even seems to have scared a 95 year-old woman to death, leading to an official count of one fatality.

The timing of the two quakes could not have been more apt for NHK. They gave the national broadcaster a chance to try out its new, hysterical style of delivering earthquakes and tsunami warnings during what are normally news time slots.

Whereas in the past bulletins on tsunami risks were delivered in a flat, informative tone and were checked first with the Japan Meteorological Agency, the new, post-3/11 mode of operation is to, frankly speaking, go nuts as soon as possible, warning viewers in staccato, barking tones to be prepared to run to higher ground even before the JMA has made any predictions.

The new style, which NHK previewed only last week as a part of its pre-3/11 build up is in answer to criticism of the broadcast community for failing to instill sufficient panic in the residents of the Tohoku last year, and in particular for following in lockstep the predictions of the JMA as to the size of the incoming waves. The initial JMA predictions were for a 3 meter wave, then a 6 meter, then finally a greater than 10 meter wave for many parts of the Tohoku (the highest crest was an astonishing 39.7 meters at Miyako City - J).

It is thought that the initial, more conservative warnings misled some early evacuees to seek shelter at lower elevations, resulting in them being swept away when the very much higher surge arrived. In at least three instances, large groups gathered on a raised area or in a tsunami shelter that ended up being far too low, one of which is the now iconic Minami Sanriku Disaster Center.

Whether delivering disaster warning messages in a voice that it both louder and filled with more tension will save lives is a question. Certainly last night, when the tsunami from the first earthquake rolled in at a less-than-astonishing 10 centimeters in height, the new urgent warnings seemed somewhat silly. Then again, with the aging of the population, startling semi-somnolent viewers and listeners may be just what is necessary to get folks off their aging keisters and way up on higher ground.

The People's Prime Minister

It was a small item, but it looms large in my imagination.

On October 14, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko visited a day care center in Yokohama, joining the children for lunch. Here is the photo of the PM saying "Itadakimasu" seated at table with what look like the five year olds.

Considering how small the chair he must be sitting on, the PM's placid, almost beatific composure is remarkable. He looks utterly at ease and in his element.

It is hard to imagine Noda's predecessor Kan Naoto, an incorrigible adult, being able to pull this off. It is flat out impossible to imagine Hatoyama Yukio in this pose, nor any of the trio of Liberal Democratic Party prime ministers who preceded Hatoyama.

Could Koizumi have pulled it off? With teenagers, maybe. But with small children, probably not. Koizumi was cool, not child-like.

In the coming months and quite possibly years, we will have keep a sharp eye on the low key, accommodating style of this prime minister. His common touch -- arising from his literally being from nowhere, or as close to nowhere as one can get (both his parents being the youngest child of a large family -- i.e., the inheritors of nothing -- and his father's being a Ground Self Defense Forces member, meaning that the family had no town to call its home) and his necessary reliance on the national safety net (of all prime ministers in history, he is the one with the fewest assets) is linked to an inspiring, if sometimes overwhelming, desire to get things done. The economist and former minister Takenaka Heizo has warned the Noda Administration that it is tackling too many issues at once, that it should concentrate on two or three main issues, so as to guarantee they receive the attention necessary for success.

Noda and his advisors are ignoring this sound advice, tackling issues both pressing like Japan's galloping demographic imbalance and ancillary, like the recent blowup over participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The PM and the Democratic Party of Japan's policy makers have proposed tax rise after tax rise, even grasping the third rail of Japanese politics -- the raising of the consumption tax to 10% -- and survived. To be sure, the prime minister's poll ratings are down from his initial numbers -- NHK's most recent poll (J) finding support for his cabinet at 45%. Considering how many different sacred cows the PM and his people have gored during his first two months in office, 45% is a very respectable number.

The Noda administration's success will depend on how well it can continue to impress with the themes of humility and sacrifice. Noda has already received a thumbs up review from a very hard-to-please senior figure as regards his low-key demeanor. His response to the provocative Obuchi Yuko speech in the Diet was admirable for its restraint. As for sacrifice, Noda, unlike his predecessor, seems to derive only benefits from calling attention to the needs of those displaced by the triple disaster of 3/11 (he also seems more than willing to wield the suffering caused by 3/11 to batter his opponents senseless). "Sacrifices have to made," has been his motto since his second speech at the DPJ congress that elected him party leader, and not even sacrifice-be-damned stalwarts like Kamei Shizuka, Hatoyama Yukio and Haraguchi Kazuhiro have been able to say much in response.

I would be pushing the envelope to call Noda "better even than Koizumi" -- the other prime minister who was able to call for painful national sacrifice with the populace backing him up -- but from what I have seen these first two months, Noda is certainly "the best since Koizumi."

Image credit: Tokyo Shimbun

Grayscale

A slideshow of a recent visit to Sugamo, currently being cheerily promoted in the media as "the Ginza for Silver Set." A decidedly downscale and dowdy Ginza, more indicative of a rather more economically stressed retirement than one would believe the happy talk media would want us pondering.

The Baby Boomers start marching...

...out the door just when the competition for their services heats up.

Japan budget airline short of pilots, shares dive
Reuters

TOKYO, June 3 - Skymark Airlines (9204.T: Quote, Profile, Research), a discount domestic carrier, will cancel 168 flights in June due to a shortage of pilots, sending its shares to their lowest level this year.

The shortage comes after two pilots retired at the end of May, and the cancellations account for about 10 percent of all its scheduled flights this month, affecting four routes and about 9,000 passengers, Skymark said.

"With the absence of two pilots, we could expect some unexpected flight cancellations, and we decided it would be better to cancel them ahead of time to limit further problems for our customers," said Skymark spokesman Shuichi Aoyama.

He said it was still unclear whether its flight schedule would go back to normal in July.

Skymark said it was in the process of switching all of its fleet from Boeing 767 aircraft to smaller and more fuel-efficient Boeing 737 aircraft by 2010, but the two pilots who retired had licenses for the 737.

"The battle to secure pilots is accelerating in Asia as the number of discount airlines increases due to emerging economies such as China and Southeast Asian countries," Aoyama said...

Thus, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, did the Asia-Pacific cage fight for talent and skills begin.

Light Blue for Boys, Pink for Girls, Yellow for Flashing Warning Lights

Chihō bunken - "decentralization"-- the verbal smokescreen deployed by those advocating pseudo-reforms that eviscerate citizens services while failing to increase transparency or stamp out fraud and waste. See "shell game" and "horse manure."

According to today's Yomiuri Shimbun, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour is considering relaxing national minimal standards on the facilities and grounds for day care centers (hoikuen) in favor of allowing local municipalities to set their own standards.

Uh-oh. A problem nobody thought existed is about to be solved by the tempting local municipalities to skimp on childcare facilities.

Niwa Uchirō, the chairman of general trading giant Itochū and the Chairman of the Commission for for the Promotion of Government Decentralization (Chihō Bunken Kaikaku Suishin Iinkai) presents the planned relaxation of national standards of the sizes of rooms and playgrounds as responding to the regional (environmental?) variation:

"Having a single standard from Hokkaidō to Okinawa is bizarre. There is no scientific basis for it."

But Niwa-san, the proposed revision is not about the maximum size of facilities, of the area of open space, indoors and outdoors, per child. If we were talking about taking advantage of regional differences, the ability to expand the beyond the minimum grounds would make sense--as land is abundant in all but a few areas.

The Yomiuri correspondent dutifully repeats the canard that this sudden plan to hand off to the local municipalities the ability to set the standards for child care facilities is necessary because relaxing the standards would make it possible to enroll more children in non-standard facilities, eliminating need for children to be on waiting lists.

In the example in the Yomiuri article, municipalities with children on waiting lists but insufficient open land to build a center to national standards could convert a floor of an office building near a train station into a day care center. Impoverished rural communities could convert old, unused elementary or middle schools into day care centers.

Now color me stupid, but this slide in the Ministry's own March 2008 Powerpoint presentation on Japan's day care facilities indicates to me that the Commission seems a little too eager to fulfill its mandate of promoting decentralization.

Slide #8 tells me the number of children on waiting lists to get into day care centers is 17,926.

You read that right: fewer than 18,000 children are on a waiting lists nationwide. At the same time, some 2.11 million children are currently enrolled in day care--meaning that over 99% of the children seeking immediate entry into day care centers are enrolled in facilities operating according to the current national standards.

There is no waiting list crisis.

What is more, the number of children on waiting lists has fallen by 31% over just the last five years, from 26,000 children in 2002 to under 18,000 in 2007. Given the decline in the number of children nationwide, this seems to a problem that is going to solve itself.

Furthermore, as the right graph shows, 70% of the children on waiting lists today are from 74 municipalities--with the remaining 30% coming from an additional 294 municipalities.

A small fraction of the country's total number municipalities

Now it may be the case that these municipalities are hard cases--chronically incapable of providing a sufficient number of open spaces at facilities that meet the minimum national day care center standards. Perhaps these hard-pressed municipalities need flexibility in terms of the minimal facilities so that they help their young parents.

But is the problem facilities? Some 70% of the children on waiting lists are under three years of age. The size of the facilities are usually not the issue for such children--the limiting factor is almost always is the number of caregivers that must be employed to watch over them. Under national guidelines, one caregiver can watch over 3 infants under 1 year of age or 6 toddlers of either 1 or 2 years of age.

When children turn 3 years of age and ratio of children to caregivers drops from 6:1 to 20:1--the number of kids on the waiting list falls.

The waiting list problem seems more likely an employment issue than a facilities issue.

So what is this about, this handing off of standard setting on childcare facilities to the local municipalities, having the municipalities set their own lower minimum standards for facilities, replacing the minimal standards first established in 1948 when the country was dirt poor?

Could it have anything to do with local officials possibly noticing that

a) young adults in the childbearing years vote too infrequently

b) children cannot vote at all

c) the number of children is falling

d) the number of the elderly is rising

e) young working parents (for the children to be eligible for the day care centers both parents must be working) are grateful for whatever childcare they can afford

f) the elderly, who also put heavy demands on government services, vote at the highest rate of all

g) in an era of limited resources something, somewhere has to give, doesn't it?

Of course, this is an exceptional case. One almost certainly could not find another example of decentralization encouraging the possible rationing of services out to special interest groups within the electorate.