By Diana Lee
(Published by
Gate.39)| UNIORB: ASIAN TREND: JAPAN |
At the turn of the millennium, fear has gripped Japan, disrupting peace and security in the lives of its citizens. Real fear has seized the nation with unusual tenacity that has dealt a blow to some industries, caused collapses of firms and hastened an economic meltdown.
After watching the horror of hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center towers on September 11 in New York, most Japanese reacted by canceling their overseas trips. Known for preferring overseas tours to domestic sightseeing, the Japanese tourists have left some traveling agencies on the brink of insolvency. Many overseas vacation destinations popular with Japanese visitors tried to lure them back with attractive promotions and inexpensive packaged tours. Even with offers of cheap tickets, many airlines remained stricken with less than half-full flights, facing the threat of bankruptcy. Eight months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Japan Travel Bureau (JTB) reported that the number of Japanese traveling abroad was finally heading back to its normal rate during the Golden Week in May.
Since the discovery of the first of four cows infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the degenerative disease that could be transmitted to humans, the fear of eating beef has reached epidemic proportion. Although the mad cow disease was found in cattle bred only in Hokkaido and Gunma prefectures, many people have refused to consume beef all together — domestic or foreign. The price of beef, especially domestic brands, has plunged to a record low at supermarkets while the sales of pork and chicken have soared. In addition, the “yakiniku” barbecued beef restaurants announced that sales had dropped 34.5 % in February from a year earlier.
After the outbreak of mad cow disease in Europe, the World Health Organization and experts had warned Japan to ban the import of meat-and-bone meal from Europe and to enforce the measure by law. The agriculture ministry dismissed the alarm, instead advised dairy farmers to stay away from imported meat-and-bone meal through “administrative guidance.” It only enacted the law banning the use of meat-and-bone meal after the confirmation of the first case in Japan of mad cow disease. As the investigation revealed the inefficiency and incompetence of the agriculture ministry in handling the BSE issue, people’s distrust of the government has deepened despite its efforts to calm public fear by launching a nationwide testing of all slaughtered cows for mad cow disease before they are headed to the market.
What makes consumers more jittery is that large food producers have acted unethically to fool the public as well as the government with mislabeled meat. The Snow Brand deliberately swindled the Japan Ham & Sausage Processor Cooperative Association out of ¥196 million by falsely labeling beef to obtain state subsidies under a government beef compensation scheme. It admitted repackaging 13.8 tons of Australian beef as domestic beef in October and November last year.
Uncovering the mislabeling meat by the Snow Brand led to findings of other meat producers guilty of the same practice. The Starzen Company, the nation’s largest meat wholesaler, confessed to fabricating labels for beef, pork and chicken products. It deliberately mislabeled 4.5 tons of beef as high-quality meat between April 2000 and January this year. It also passed off ordinary chicken as a higher-grade fowl in the same period. Worse still, Zenno Chicken Foods Corporation acknowledged tagging imported chicken as domestic poultry. Seven tons of chicken from Thailand and China were marked as “chicken spare ribs” from Kagoshima Prefecture. Deceiving the consumers, it sold 233 tons of broiler chicken, claiming that they were raised without chemical substances, including antibiotics.
Ever since the economic bubble burst in the late 1980s, the Japanese have been preparing for their worst fear — the advent of a depression. Thus, many citizens are clinging to their savings — not willing to spend or buy stocks to help the moribund stock market pull out of its mire. The government’s attempt to pry open people’s savings by offering money coupons to families with children proved futile and wasteful of tax payers’ money, as the targeted citizens had used the coupons without ever opening their purses. Although Japan is a consumer-driven nation, it holds the highest personal savings in the world.
Obviously, the fear phenomenon is riding high on people’s emotions due to the existence of many national fears. All these fears are driven by one apparent cause — distrust in authority. The image of authority has been tarnished by the ongoing scandals involving politicians, bureaucrats, police and even educators.
One often sees headline news of political corruption involving politicians and bureaucrats, of police negligence and mishandlings, or of teacher’s improper conduct at all levels of education. The countless political scandals have exposed avaricious politicians and government officials shelving their service to the public for self-enrichment.
In addition, the police have been criticized severely in a spate of cases that resulted in injury or death to victims who had sought help from them earlier. Neglecting their duty, the police ignored the needs of the victims as they played mahjong or soaked in a hot spring. Worse still, they conducted departmental cover-ups for their leniency in dealing with their own police members for breaking the law.
Even in education, the number of delinquent instructors from elementary schools to universities has increased over the years. Hundreds of teachers have been reprimanded for their improper conduct in schools and some were dismissed for causing physical harm to their students. Furthermore, university professors were caught in a cheating scam, leaking dental test problems before the actual examination. Moreover, a few top university officials sold backdoor admissions and collected cash from parents of prospective students before entrance examinations.
Having figures of authority, such as these, behaving in unethical and irresponsible fashion egregiously violates the public’s trust. Who could blame the Japanese citizens for distrusting the authorities?
Fear will continue to persist as long as the Japanese feel insecure with the government’s incompetence to protect them from crime, terrorism, food scares and economic disaster. Of course, the biggest fear is the fear of the unknown. And that, every Japanese has to face everyday.
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