Families seeking Japanese nationality for children born out of wedlock to Japanese fathers and foreign mothers were overjoyed at the passing of a revision to the Nationality Law on Friday.
The revision will enable a child born out of wedlock whose parents are unmarried to obtain Japanese nationality and take his or her father’s name if the father recognizes the child as his own.
The joy is tempered, however, by fears that false paternity claims by unrelated Japanese men will become commonplace, a matter of particular concern for the Justice Ministry.
Communist leader urges Japan PM to protect part-timers, smaller businesses amid economic slowdown
The Japanese Communist Party (JCP) leader has urged Prime Minister Taro Aso to take emergency measures to protect the employment of non-regular workers and smaller businesses amid the economic slowdown.
It is extremely rare for the JCP leader to meet exclusively with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) head.
In the meeting on Friday, JCP Chairman Kazuo Shii urged the government to exercise its authority to prevent businesses from dismissing temporary and part-time workers.
In a related development, Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Mizuho Fukushima has also proposed emergency employment guarantee measures. The SDP then asked the LDP to hold a meeting between the leaders of the two parties.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20081206p2a00m0na002000c.html
Sour Strawberries Preview
Featuring interviews with Nambu FWC allies Kanagawa City Union, Zentoitsu Workers Union, activist Arudou Debito, and scenes from the March in March 2008 march through Shibuya, Tokyo:
Japanese paternity gives nationality to kids born to unmarried foreign mothers
A revised bill of the Nationality Law that allows children born to unmarried Japanese fathers and foreign mothers to acquire Japanese nationality with only the father’s acknowledgement of paternity was enacted on Friday after passing in the House of Councillors plenary session.
In article three of the current law, children of unmarried parents cannot obtain Japanese nationality. However, the Supreme Court ruled the article that requires the marriage of parents unconstitutional. The new law is slated to come into effect early next year.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20081205p2a00m0na015000c.html
Revised Nationality Law passed
The Diet on Friday passed a bill to revise the Nationality Law, which had been blasted as unconstitutional and discriminatory against children of mixed couples born out of wedlock.
However, the Diet talks did not go as smoothly as planned because of concerns over fake nationality claims and even some xenophobic messages from the public.
Citizens opposed to the bill had inundated high-ranking officials and lawmakers in both the ruling and opposition camps with faxes and e-mail messages.
One Lower House member’s office received enough faxes to create a 20-centimeter-high stack. Although most of the messages called for further revisions to stipulate DNA tests, at least one citizen, apparently concerned about the Japanese identity, said, “Japan will be overrun.”
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200812060058.html
Subsidies offered for giving part-timers full-time jobs
Under the stimulus plan, the government would offer up to ¥1 million to small and midsize businesses and ¥500,000 to larger companies every time they make a part-time employee a full-time worker before their contract is terminated.
It is also considering granting job creation subsidies to firms that hire those who are facing job cancellations or are unable to get a job, including college students.
Aso to urge business leaders to give in to wage demands
If Aso follows through with the request, it will represent the full application of his prime ministerial authority to raising corporate wages across the nation, the sources said.
In addition to higher wages to spur the anemic economy, the government appears ready to implement a long-promised fiscal stimulus policy of handing out cash gifts worth a total of ¥2 trillion to all households across the nation.
In October, the government said that it would ask the business community to comply with the unions’ requests for higher wages as part of the government’s package of additional economic stimulus measures.
The business community is apparently reluctant to comply with such a request in light of Japan’s deteriorating economic conditions.
But Aso’s upcoming bargaining with the business leaders may have the effect of softening or eradicating the business leaders’ expected resistance to union wage demands, the sources added.
Japan’s Aso Will Ask Business Leaders to Boost Wages, Kyodo Says
Prime Minister Taro Aso plans to meet with top Japanese corporate executives next week to seek higher wages for workers, Kyodo News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Aso will meet with Fujio Mitarai, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, and other business leaders Dec. 1 in an effort to bolster the economy, the news service said, citing the people.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=adkY7yAkRaOg&refer=japan
Keidanren Tells Japan’s Salarymen to Work Less, Have More Kids
Keidanren, Japan’s biggest business organization, is worried the nation’s workers aren’t having enough sex.
The group urged its 1,632 member companies to start so- called family weeks that give employees more time for playing with the kids and having more children to reverse a declining birth rate. A survey by Japan’s Family Planning Association of about 3,000 married people under age 49 shows couples are having less sex because long work days leave them with too little energy.
In a country where people over 65 will outnumber children two-to-one in five years, companies say they eventually won’t have enough workers. Japan’s birth rate has been falling since 1972 and threatens to shrink the labor force 16 percent by 2030 from 66.6 million workers in 2006, according to the health ministry.
“You must go home early,” Nippon Oil Corp. President Shinji Nishio told staff in a speech for the company’s two-week family campaign, which ends Nov. 22. “The dwindling birthrate and the aging population, along with the responsibility of educating the next generation — these aren’t just somebody else’s problem. We expect all workers’ active participation.”
At Nippon Oil, Japan’s largest refiner, staffers have been forbidden to work on weekends and must get permission to stay past 7 p.m. Textile maker Toray Industries Inc. and All Nippon Airways Co. also hold family weeks this month.
Each evening at 8 p.m. at Nippon Oil’s Tokyo headquarters, the tune ‘When You Wish Upon a Star” blares from loudspeakers. The theme song from Walt Disney Co.’s 1940 movie “Pinocchio,” about a puppet that wanted to be human, is meant to pull at workers’ heartstrings and remind them they should be home with the people they love, said Takefumi Koga, group manager of labor relations.
Drinking Sessions
Colleagues took advantage of the extra time off to arrange after-work drinking sessions, but Koga, 45, the father of two girls, said he managed to rebuff the invitations and go home to his family in the suburbs of Tokyo. When he unexpectedly turned up for dinner, his daughter asked him if he was unwell.
“My family and myself felt awkward at first, but it’s nice to spend the time together,” Koga said. “But I can’t go home earlier every day.”
Spending more time at home may make some white-collar workers, known as salarymen, uneasy in a country where long days and short holidays are the norm. Japan’s average work week in 2006 was the third-longest among industrialized countries after South Korea and the U.S., according to the International Labor Organization, the United Nations agency based in Geneva.
Workers opted to take less than half of their paid vacation last year, averaging just 8.3 days, according to the labor ministry. The word ‘karoshi’ has entered the vocabulary to describe the phenomenon of death from overwork.
Tired and Bored
“It’s a tough challenge for workers, especially the middle-aged ones who have been taught industriousness is the most important virtue,” said Dr. Kunio Kitamura, chairman of the Family Planning Association, who gave details of the survey on married couples at a conference last week. “Going home earlier, if they can put it into action, is a way to fix the declining birthrate.”
Japanese couples are giving up on sex, according to the report, which will be submitted to the Ministry of Health and Welfare next year.
Of the married couples surveyed in 2008, 36.5 percent hadn’t had sex in the previous month, up from 34.6 percent in 2006 and 31.9 percent in 2004, Kitamura said. The couples complained they were too tired from their jobs, or that sex is “boring.”
“The advice for sexless couples is to spend more time together,” Kitamura said. “Just being around, even watching TV in the same room, would be a good start.”
Labor Pains
The country’s birth rate, the average number of children a woman has during her lifetime, started falling in 1972, and stood at 1.34 in 2007, well below the 2.07 required for a stable population, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
“People are the country’s resource,” said Rie Sako, deputy manager of the Tokyo-based National Quality of Life Group that promotes the family weeks at the Keidanren business lobby. “To sustain our standard of living it’s important to stem the contraction in population.”
Family weeks are only a first step, Sako said. Leaders of Japanese companies need to get behind efforts to reduce hours throughout the year.
At Nippon Oil, family weeks are just one of the measures the company has introduced to try to reduce overtime, in part to decrease costs and improve efficiency. In October last year the company started a “Sayonara Overwork” campaign, and posted signs in offices listing eight ways to go home earlier.
Like his colleague Koga, Risuke Shimizu, 37, a Nippon Oil spokesman, has had to resist the temptation to drop by a bar instead of going straight home during family weeks, he said. Normally he gets back so late his two young children are already asleep.
“They came to the front door to welcome me home when I came back earlier during the weeks,” he said. “It’s quite good.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a6qq53CVLzUg&refer=home
Prejudice among obstacles facing non-Japanese tenants
With a falling population, a shrinking tax base and a shortage of carers for its increasing number of elderly, calls are growing for Japan to allow in a large influx of foreign workers to plug the gap. The question is: When they come, will they be able to find a place to stay?
With its “shikikin” (deposit) and “reikin” (key money) which mean forking out several months’ rent upfront and tracking down a guarantor willing to take on the payments in case of default Japan’s real estate system is notorious for the high demands it makes of potential tenants. Even if an individual is able to pay all the fees and find a guarantor, foreigners often hit a brick wall when looking for a place to live simply because they are not native-born Japanese.
“You often hear about racial prejudice in the U.S., but it seems the Japanese aren’t really ones to talk,” Morii said with a sad smile. “We Japanese have been going abroad for the past 100 years, and maybe experienced some discrimination there, but we’ve still been able to establish ourselves. . . . I feel bad for foreigners who studied hard to come here, and who are treated like this.”
Discrimination is an issue that will need to be tackled if Japan is serious about creating a more international society. Tourism minister Nariaki Nakayama alluded to this problem days after his appointment in September, when he bemoaned the fact that Japanese “do not like nor desire foreigners” and called for Japanese to “open their hearts” to diverse cultures. Nakayama was sacked days later.
Calls to allow in more foreign workers to Japan have grown louder as the implications of a rapidly graying society on Japan’s global clout and industrial might have sunk in. The Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) last month urgently called for an influx of “medium-skilled” immigrant labor. In June, former Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa presented a proposal on behalf of some 80 lawmakers calling for the government to raise the ratio of foreign residents in Japan to 10 percent of the population within 50 years.