Japan to open door further to skilled foreign workers

Japan to open door further to skilled foreign workers

Politics Jan. 21, 2014 - 07:00AM JST ( 16 )

From Japan Today

TOKYO —

The Japanese government agreed on Monday to make it easier for firms to hire foreign workers for highly-skilled positions and as trainees to offset a declining workforce and accelerate economic growth.

The government will also take steps to increase female workers in management positions and strengthen the child care system to increase the number of working women, a top advisory panel said on Monday.

Japan has the most rapidly aging society in the world, with a quarter of the population already over 65 years of age. The workforce is also shrinking, which could become a considerable drag on growth.

Policies that increase foreign workers and female employees are important steps needed to stop the decline in the workforce, ease labor shortages, increase tax revenue and raise the potential growth rate.

The government will flesh out the policies, which are part of a second installment of its economic growth strategy, by mid-year, the Industrial Competitiveness Council said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made ending 15 years of deflation and economic malaise one of his top priorities since taking office more than a year ago.

Abe won initial success with stimulus spending and expanded quantitative easing from the Bank of Japan, but many economists warn that the government needs to rely more on deregulation and structural reforms to increase growth in the long term.

Some industries, such as construction, child care and nursing have faced labor shortages, so policies allowing firms to retain more foreign workers could give these industries a boost.

The government will also consider lowering the effective corporate tax rate and expanding the tax base to make Japanese firms more competitive, the panel said on Monday.

Japan’s corporate tax rate, which is set at 38% for a large Tokyo-based firm, is among the highest in the world and companies often lobby to lower the tax burden.

The Divine Wind Vault

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(C)2006-14

Last Samurai- Japan WWII soldier who hid in jungle until 1974 dies

By Hiroshi Hiyama

I'm sure that we have all heard of or seen the Ken Watanabe and Tom Cruise movie, "Last Samurai". One of my oldest memories of Japan was when the Japanese soldier hid in a jungle in Philippines for 30 years still thinking that the war was going on. To me, this is the last samurai since the spirit of the samurai still goes on. While South Africa is a country rich in natural resources, Japan's resource are it's people and their mindset (aka their culture). This is a reason why you see Japanese business men working 12 hours days, 6 days a week and their wives standing by their sides in most cases. More on this at a later time.

Tokyo (AFP) - A Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungle for three decades, refusing to believe World War II was over until his former commander returned and ordered him to surrender, has died in Tokyo aged 91.

Hiroo Onoda waged a guerilla campaign in Lubang Island near Luzon until he was finally persuaded in 1974 that peace had broken out, ignoring leaflet drops and successive attempts to convince him the Imperial Army had been defeated.

He died in a Tokyo hospital on Thursday of heart failure.

Onoda was the last of several dozen so-called holdouts scattered around Asia, men who symbolized the astonishingly dogged perseverance of those called upon to fight for their emperor.

Their number included a soldier arrested in the jungles of Guam in 1972.

Trained as an information officer and guerrilla tactics coach, Onoda was dispatched to Lubang in 1944 and ordered never to surrender, never to resort to suicidal attacks and to hold firm until reinforcements arrived.

He and three other soldiers continued to obey that order long after Japan's 1945 defeat.

Their existence became widely known in 1950, when one of their number emerged and returned to Japan.

The others continued to survey military facilities in the area, attacking local residents and occasionally fighting with Philippine forces, although one of them died soon afterwards.

Tokyo declared them dead after nine years of fruitless search.

However, in 1972, Onoda and the other surviving soldier got involved in a shoot-out with Philippine troops. His comrade died, but Onoda managed to escape.

The incident caused a sensation in Japan, which took his family members to Lubang in the hope of persuading him that hostilities were over.

Onoda later explained he had believed attempts to coax him out were the work of a puppet regime installed in Tokyo by the United States.

He read about his home country in newspapers that searchers deliberately scattered in the jungle for him to find, but dismissed their content as propaganda.

The regular overflight by US planes during the long years of the Vietnam war also convinced him that the battle he had joined was still being played out across Asia.

It was not until 1974, when his old commanding officer visited him in his jungle hideout to rescind the original order, that Onoda's war eventually ended.

Asked at a press conference in Japan after his return what he had been thinking about for the last 30 years, he told reporters: "Carrying out my orders."

But the Japan that Onoda returned to was much changed. The country he had left, and the one he had believed he was still fighting for, was in the grip of a militarist government, bent on realizing what it thought was its divine right to dominate the region.

Crippled by years of increasingly unsuccessful war, its economy was in ruins and its people were hungry.

But the Japan of 1974 was in the throes of a decades-long economic boom and in thrall to Western culture. It was also avowedly pacifist.

Onoda had difficultly adapting to the new reality and, in 1975, emigrated to Brazil to start a cattle ranch, although he continued to travel back and forth.

In 1984, still very much a celebrity, he established a youth camp, where he taught young Japanese some of the survival techniques he had used during his 30 years in hiding, when he lived on wild cows and bananas.

He returned to Lubang in 1996 on a visit, reportedly at the invitation of the local government, despite his having been involved in the killing of dozens of Filipinos during his three-decade battle.

He made a donation to the local community, which was reportedly used to set up a scholarship.

Late into his life, he enjoyed good health and boasted of a fine memory, honed by the need to remember the intelligence he had gathered.

Until recently, Onoda had been active in speaking engagements across Japan and in 2013 appeared on national broadcaster NHK.

"I lived through an era called a war. What people say varies from era to era," he told NHK last May.

"I think we should not be swayed by the climate of the time, but think calmly," he said.

The Divine Wind Vault

http://divinewindvault.blogspot.com

(C)2006-14