Few answers for language market

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Japan’s language-related business sales have been on the decline, falling for the fourth straight in year in fiscal 2008, according to a market research firm.

English-language schools, the largest segment of the language market, admit they are hurting from a decline in adult classes and blame the sluggish economy and the fallout from the Nova Corp. bankruptcy.

Susumu Ikegami [a corporate spokesman for Geos] said the market’s downward trend began about five years ago, although the reason is hard to pinpoint. However, he pointed out that the bankruptcy of Nova Corp. in October 2007 had some impact.

“Nova, which was the largest language school, caused distrust among the public about English-language schools,” he said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090916f1.html

Liberation In Iwate

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In 2007, I recieved an email from an Interac employee that was interested in being directly hired by his BOE. He had tried in earnest to improve his working conditions through Interac, but they were uninterested in signing him up for Shakai Hoken, unemployment insurance, giving him a raise, etcetera. At the time I was in Osaka, and Iwate (the prefecture north of Tokyo, not the city in Osaka) is quite a long way away from the normal base of operations of Tokyo Nambu, much less Osaka’s General Union Interac Branch. I was not able to meet with him face to face, but I was able to provide him with a lot of information and advice that he was able to use to convince his BOE (Board of Education) that taking the plunge to hire him directly would be in everyone’s best interest. He has now been directly employed since spring of 2008 with no middle-man dispatch company to impede his rights as a worker under Japanese law.

This is his story, in his own words. Enjoy and be inspired. Any other ALTs in Iwate prefecture that want to liberate their BOE from their dispatch company can contact me and I will put you in contact with our friend, “The Abolitionist”.

In solidarity

(NOTE: His experiences and his claims may not match yours exactly. Contracts can have different variables in different parts of the country. They can even be different in the same part of the country, but with different BOEs. If his experience does not match yours exactly, don’t forget to take the possible variations into account.)

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From “The Abolitionist” in Iwate Prefecture:

It would be very sad for you, a great ALT, to resign to quitting your job and even leaving Japan, a country you love, because of Interac. Giving that much power to an amoral, impersonal business would indeed be a shame. That’s why I’m writing this. It’s not hopeless. A few years ago I was in this situation but my BOE cut out the middleman and gave me a direct contract. I would like to give you some tips on how to make this happen.

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Stop Illegal Dispatching in Tokyo/Kanto!

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Recently in the news, an NihonTerebi (Channel 4 in the Tokyo area) story focused on trials that a lot of ALTs face, focusing on the fact that not only are these creating a less than optimal working enviornment for foreign teachers but also that many of the contracts are Illegal.

The reporters that researched the story surveyed the greater Tokyo/Kanto area to see which Boards of Education (BOEs) were using dispatch contracts that are considered legal, and which BOEs were using illegal contracts. A graphic supplied during the report showed that a large swath of the Tokyo area was highlighted in red, the color used to indicate a BOE that is currently using an illegal contract.

Continue reading to see the videos:

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Nova ruling puts spotlight on Japan’s consumer affairs

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Nozomu Sahashi, the former president of collapsed English language school operator Nova, was recently handed a three-year six month prison sentence in a ruling at the Osaka District Court.

Sahashi was convicted of embezzlement in the conduct of business, by misappropriating money from an employees’ fund to cover payments for cancelled contracts. Nova had collected some 56 billion yen in advance from around 300,000 students, in one of the biggest cases of consumer damage in Japan’s postwar history.

The former president has no assets, and even if bankruptcy proceeding are undertaken, there appears to be no prospect of students having their lesson fees returned. The fact that relief from the damage cannot be obtained by pursuing the criminal responsibility of the company’s operator is a consumer problem — and a governmental lapse.

If Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which has jurisdiction over the industry, had taken a more serious view of the problem of canceled contracts and had quickly issued an administrative order against Nova, it is possible the damage could have been reduced. However, the ministry, the government body responsible for nurturing industry, was not greatly concerned with the damage caused to consumers and left the problem unaddressed.

The imminent formation of a consumer agency is based on reflection on this kind of problem. The agency is designed to be a kind of consumer administration control tower, intended to aggregate information on consumer problems like fraudulent sales methods and accidents involving common products — such as the carbon monoxide poisonings caused by water heaters produced by Paloma — and solve these issues.

The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan had received complaints from students about Nova’s handling of cancelled contracts, such as its lowering of the amount of lesson fees returned, for more than a decade. In 2002, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government issued an administrative order to the company, but the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry sided with Nova’s claim that cancellation of contracts was made at the convenience of consumers. This effectively gave Nova an official stamp of approval and the company expanded its business while receiving lesson fees in advance without taking profit into consideration.

Later, the company was hit with a succession of lawsuits from students who demanded the return of their lesson fees. In April 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that provisions demanding heavy compensation for terminated contracts are invalid.

Just before the ruling, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry had finally carried out a spot inspection at Nova on suspicion that the company was violating the Specified Commercial Transaction Law. In June 2007, the ministry judged that Nova had violated 18 provisions of the law, which pertain to procedures for cancelled contracts, and issued a business suspension order against the company. The move was an echo of the judicial decision.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20090828p2a00m0na017000c.html

Court reverses ruling on housing renewal fees

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The Osaka High Court has ordered the landlord of an apartment building in Kyoto to return lease renewal fees paid by a former tenant, reversing a lower court decision.

In the lawsuit, the 54-year-old male company employee of Kyoto had asked the landlord to return about 550,000 yen, claiming he had paid the money according to a clause in his rental contract that he now believed violated the consumer contract law.

In Thursday’s ruling, presiding Judge Kitaru Narita stated that the clause unilaterally undermines the interests of consumers and therefore is void under the consumer contract law.

The judge ordered the landlord to return about 450,000 yen to the man.

The ruling reversed a Kyoto District Court decision given in January last year dismissing the man’s request that the money be returned.

The landlord plans to appeal.

Four similar rulings over renewal fees have so far been handed down at district courts in Tokyo, Kyoto and other places.

While tenants lost in three of the four rulings, the Kyoto District Court in July became the first district court to rule in favor of a tenant in the cases.

Thursday’s ruling was the first of its kind given by a high court.

According to the ruling, the man signed a contract in 2000 to pay 45,000 yen in monthly rent and an annual renewal fee of 100,000 yen.

He paid the renewal fees five times until August 2005, and he moved out in November 2006. He filed the lawsuit in 2007.

The first ruling regarded the fees as advance rental payments. However, the judge at the high court said the amount was unreasonably high for an advance payment.

The judge also said the Land and House Lease Law stipulates that landlords cannot refuse to renew a contract without sufficient cause, but that the landlord had demanded the tenant pay the contract renewal fees without any explanation.

The judge further said it could be presumed the landlord had given the tenant the impression that his monthly payment was low by collecting renewal fees, leading him to renew the contracts.

The judge then ordered the landlord to reimburse the total amount of the renewal fees the tenant had paid since the revised consumer contract law was put into effect in 2001, as well as a deposit he paid when he first entered the apartment after deducting his unpaid rent from it.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090829TDY02305.htm

Court negates renewal fees

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The high court here Thursday ordered a landlord to return money to a tenant who paid a fee when renewing his apartment contract, overturning a lower court decision.

The ruling was the first by a high court and follows a landmark ruling in July by the Kyoto District Court which also invalidated the contract renewal fee.

The plaintiff in the latest case had sought the return of about 550,000 yen in contract renewal and other fees.

The Kyoto District Court in January 2008 ruled against the man, but the Osaka High Court overturned the decision and ordered the landlord to return 450,000 yen.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200908280075.html

Ex-Nova boss gets 3 1/2 yrs for embezzlement

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The former president of failed language school chain Nova Corp. was sentenced Wednesday to 3-1/2 years in prison for professional embezzlement involving misuse of the reserve funds of an employees mutual aid organization.

In the ruling given at the Osaka District Court, presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi said Nozomu Sahashi, 57, decided management strategies as the founder of Nova and that there was no room for leniency concerning his use of the reserve funds, which were not operational funds, to improve the firm’s financial situation.

The firm is now undergoing bankruptcy proceedings.

The judge also said, “He had no prospects of repaying the money, and he bore grave criminal responsibility.”

Prosecutors had demanded five years’ imprisonment for Sahashi.

According to the ruling, in July 2007, Sahashi, acting in conspiracy with a 50-year-old Nova executive in charge of finance, had about 320 million yen transferred from the funds to a bank account of a Nova affiliate to be used to refund prepaid tuitions to former students.

In the ruling, the judge said: “The executive [in charge of finance] confirmed in advance with Sahashi that the funds were not operational funds. Sahashi misused the funds knowing that the employees wouldn’t approve.”

He also said: “It’s not unreasonable that he wanted to help Nova survive. He also apologized. But he used the employees’ funds to help the firm out of its management problems. There’s no room for leniency.”

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090827TDY01303.htm

Political shift gives hope to gays

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The likelihood that the Democratic Party of Japan, the last party to submit [an antidiscrimination law] bill, will dominate the powerful House of Representatives in an alliance with the Social Democratic Party, which speaks out for homosexual rights, has raised hopes that the inertia may at last be overcome.

This was echoed by Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender program at Human Rights Watch, who visited Japan last month. He met with key opposition party figures to discuss Japan’s future on issues of sexual orientation.

“There is no law in Japan that protects people who are being discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation,” Dittrich told reporters on July 22.

“So for instance, a landlord would evict somebody because he is gay or she is lesbian and there is no law that you can refer to for protection,” he added. Dittrich himself was a publicly gay politician in his home country, the Netherlands, where he was a pioneer in securing homosexual rights.

In Japan, a government-sponsored antidiscrimination bill submitted to the Diet in 2002, but later abandoned, would have protected the rights of homosexuals along with other groups, including “burakumin,” or descendants of former outcast communities such as tanners, according to Kanae Doi, Tokyo director of Human Rights Watch. The 2002 bill and another one proposed by the DPJ were both scrapped because the lower chamber was dissolved before they could be fully deliberated and voted on.

SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima, who also met with Dittrich during his trip, agreed human rights is a sensitive topic in the Diet, and the subject of sexual orientation faces a particularly tough time as people do not necessarily feel it is relevant to them.

If the DPJ wins Sunday, Fukushima predicts a slow but steady improvement in homosexual rights.

“It won’t be, for example, that same-sex marriages will be recognized immediately. But for now we must educate people, eradicate bullying and make people understand that these problems exist in society,” she said

According to Human Rights Watch’s [Tokyo director Kanae] Doi, Japan is falling behind global standards by not having an antidiscrimination law other than that protecting gender equality.

“An antidiscrimination law exists almost everywhere else in the world. But in Japan, since there is no law protecting sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity or race, it is difficult for such people to prosecute,” she said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090827f2.html

Ex-Nova chief gets prison term

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Nozomu Sahashi, founder of bankrupt English language school chain Nova Corp., was sentenced Wednesday to three years and six months in prison for embezzlement.

Presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi of the Osaka District Court said there was no room for leniency because Sahashi, 57, diverted money pooled for employee benefits to deal with his company’s crisis.

Sahashi had pleaded innocent.

According to the ruling, Sahashi embezzled 320 million yen from a Nova employee mutual-aid association in July 2007 and used the money in part to refund tuition fees for about students who had terminated contracts.

The company’s board of directors ousted Sahashi as president at an extraordinary meeting in October 2007 over Nova’s deteriorated business performance.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200908270058.html

Nova boss handed 3 1/2 years

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Former Nova President Nozomu Sahashi was sentenced Wednesday to 3 1/2 years in prison by the Osaka District Court for his role in skimming off employee funds in 2007, just before the foreign language school giant’s bankruptcy that October.

Presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi’s severe sentence took some in the courtroom by surprise. Prosecutors had sought five years for the former president of what was once the country’s largest foreign language school chain and employer of foreign nationals. Sahashi is expected to appeal the sentence.

“While it’s undeniable that if Nova couldn’t refund canceled student contracts, this would have invited doubts about the firm’s trustworthiness. The defendant, as founder of the company, played a central role in this incident . . . ¥320 million is a large amount and, at the moment, it has not been returned,” Higuchi said in handing down the sentence.

Sahashi was charged with funneling nearly ¥320 million from employee benefit funds to a bank account belonging to a Nova affiliate in July 2007. He denied embezzling the funds, telling the court he used the money on behalf of his employees.

He tried to portray himself as only one of a group of senior Nova executives responsible for the decision. But the judge said that given the amount of money and his authority, Sahashi bore a heavy responsibility for the crime.

October 2007, Nova filed for bankruptcy with debts of roughly ¥43.9 billion, failing to pay about 2,000 Japanese and 4,000 non-Japanese employees.

Katsuji Yamahara, chairman of [Tokyo Nambu’s sister union] the Osaka-based General Union, welcomed the decision, but said the case itself was not the main problem with what happened at Nova.

“Many ex-Nova employees have yet to receive their unpaid wages. We’ve been working through the Osaka Central Labor Standards Supervision Office to try to get those wages, but it’s been slow-going,” Yamahara said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090827a1.html