Policy

Japan’s Reforms by Japanese Cultural Sprits

1. Abolish Japan’s notoriously horrid working circumstances by assigning work counsellors to each company

Many employees overwork without any compensation from their company. Japan’s strict hierarchical relationship between the boss and subordinate brings a lot of pressure for some workers regularly. Some even committed suicide since they could not handle their pressure from work. Japan’s inflexible work environment also causes ineffective work processes which bring less productivity in many companies. Their competitiveness gradually goes behind that of foreign businesses. Japanese people have traditionally liked to help one another. Let’s send a work counsellor to each company to help their work condition then. All workers have a right to access their own work counsellor who can give advice and even have power to negotiate with the company’s executive on the matter. To facilitate purchasing power and satisfaction level of each employee, employers should revive Japan’s good old premium Friday which allows employees to leave their company by 3 p.m. on every Friday for shopping and traveling over the weekend. Enriching Japanese workforce is important. ICT should be used more broadly for work. People in local places have the chance to work for companies whose headquarters is located in big cities. It can stop young people heading to the city for work and invigorate local industry.

2. Abolish discrimination against foreigners

Japanese call foreigners gaijin. Some Japanese people think that gaijin are scary simply because they look different from Japanese people. In fact, many Japanese people still hesitate to approach those outsiders even though they have a lot of opportunities to receive so-called international education by their schools. Japanese people’s coldness to foreigners should be changed properly by giving them more opportunities to be introduced to how the world views Japan. Recently, there are numerous Japanese TV programmes that show Japan’s excellencies by ‘using’ foreigners, but those picked-up foreigners are already interested in Japan and have lens of their positive experience over Japan. Local governments should prepare to introduce more diverse views from local foreign residents by opening intercultural seminars and workshops.

3. Education reforms

In the Japanese classroom, a Japanese teacher has complete authority over his or her student. The teacher controls the class and does not allow the student to challenge their teacher with their own ideas. Moreover, the teacher judges the student by which school he or she belongs to, not by their performance in class. Some of the main problems that Japanese people face these days come from the deficiency of Japanese assessment for students. Japanese entrance examinations start from kindergarten when kids have not reached 3 years old of age. It is parent’s ego that lets kids take the exam for a so-called prestigious kindergarten. This will continue until kids become junior high school students. At the higher education, Japanese kids spend too much time on passing exams to their preferred university. Social ranks are virtually determined by where they entered, not what they studied at their school. Japanese are inclined to passionate about applying their knowledge that they learned from their childhood. Moreover, Japanese society used to teach kids how to self-regulate and learn morality judgement throughout education. Let’s bring back these positive aspects of Japanese education. Both the central and local governments should exert more personality and practical based examinations. To develop the student’s personality, the teacher should create a more friendly classroom atmosphere for the student. The teacher should also facilitate more communication between the teacher and student. To do this measure, the following three supports should be devised.

A. General Support: actions by the regular classroom teacher in terms of differentiation as well as efforts by the school to cope with student diversity

B. Intensified Support: remedial support by the teacher, co-teaching with the special education teacher, and individual or small-group learning with a part-time special education teacher

C. Special Support: students are assigned an individual learning plan that takes into account the characteristics of each learner and thereby personalizes learning to meet each learner’s abilities.

4. Energy solutions

Japanese word mottainai (shame to throw away things) should be promoted all over the world. One of the greatest Japanese assets is the knowledge of recycling products. Japan’s giant industrious cities such as Kawasaki, Ichihara, and Kitakyushu have duties to tell other developing countries about advanced sustainable development by introducing their new technology and policy. Moreover, our neighbour, China is struggling to tackle on its serious air pollution. Let its government aware the spirit of gamansuru (be patient). Returnees and people who have stayed overseas should be encouraged to use their language skills to create effective dialogues with oversea firms.

5. Diplomacy

Historically, Japan is a country of learning. We did not hesitate to learn some of the excellencies from Asia, Europe, and America throughout our history. We have a keen sense of learning foreign culture and make our own value on it. In both private and public sectors, multicultural interactions are encouraged all over Japan. Locate unofficial embassies of various countries in local municipals in order to provide more opportunities for local residents to contact the world. Let the local residents report their findings to various media from local to international newspapers, the internet, and academic journals.

6. Politics

Japanese people should be engaged in politics. To allow citizens to have active involvement in politics, the society should allow them to do political activities in public and business more freely. Schools, companies, and public organisations should not limit their students and employees’ strong desire for political activities.