Social responsibility:
the buzz word nobody gets
(This article, which first appeared in the
Japan Times of June 25, 2007,
is reproduced in Eyes on Japan by kind permission of the
author.)
Spas are for healing, nursing homes are for
caring, language schools are for communicating, amusement parks are for
amusing and pensions are for carefree retirement. This is how things ought
to be. It is not how things are in modern-day Japan.
Spas kill people. Last week there was a
devastating explosion at Shiespa, the popular women-only luxury spa in the
fashionable Shibuya district. Three people died in the blast. The
operators of the facility are under investigation for suspected negligent
practices. The facility is said to have been lacking devices needed to
detect flammable methane gas.
Shiespa is typical of the many multiservice
bathhouses cropping up in and around the Tokyo area. These are places
where business-savvy but care-worn people, especially women, go to relax
and refresh. Chic eateries and watering holes are available on-site. You
can stay overnight if you wish. If a quick siesta is more your style, that
is also an option. Shiespa seems to have been equipped with everything.
Except safety devices.
Nursing homes cheat. Comsn Inc., the nationwide
nursing care services operator, was discovered to have given false
information when applying for permits to open new facilities. Elderly
people who expected to be given professional and thoughtful care met with
under- staffing and poorly maintained premises instead.
Revelations of this wrongdoing led to the
termination of operating licenses for the facilities in question.
Goodwill Group Inc., the grotesquely misnamed
parent company of Comsn, is in talks with a host of potential buyers
willing to takeover Comsn's services. Meanwhile, it is Comsn's patrons who
are feeling the heat. Where and how they can hope to receive continuity of
service, if at all, remains very much up in the air.
Language schools lie. Nova, the largest chain of English-language
schools in Japan, has been ordered to partially suspend business due
to deceptive practices. What Nova said in its flyers and brochures seems
to have had very little in common with what actually happened once you
signed on the dotted line. You were supposed to be able to book classes at
the times and locations of your choice. The reality was that both time and
place were restricted by staff shortages.
And its refund policies were not at all as
generous as their advertisements claimed.
[Editor: The
aforementioned partial business suspension eventually forced Nova to
file
for bankruptcy on October 26, 2007]
It is not just spas that kill. So do amusement
parks.
Expoland located in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, has a
roller coaster that kills. A young woman became its casualty back in May.
The cause of the derailing that led to her death was a broken wheel axle,
which evaded detection because of a lax inspection decision.
The inspections that were supposed to have taken
place earlier in the year were put off to accommodate the big Golden Week
holiday season — a season that turned into a nightmare of grief for the
victim's family.
Pensions disappear. 50 million records on past
pension payments have gone missing due to slipshod practices at the Social
Insurance Agency. Inputting errors and confusion over a newly introduced
record-keeping system resulted in persistent slippage in the tracking of
who paid how much and at what point in time.
For the people affected by the errors, all those
grim years of paying into the public pension system may account for
nothing. Outrage would not even begin to portray what the general public
is feeling at this moment.
Something is wrong. At a time when corporate
social responsibility is so much the buzz word, nobody seems to have the
faintest idea what social responsibility actually means anymore in this
country. What frightening times we live in.
©Noriko Hama for the Japan Times 2007 All rights
reserved
Related Japan Times stories:
About the author:
NORIKO HAMA is
currently professor at the Doshisha University Business School. She
studied international economics at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo.
Having graduated from the university in 1975, she joined the Mitsubishi
Research Institute where she has addressed a variety of macroeconomic
issues, including the United States economy, European integration and
financial deregulation in Japan.
In
1990 Ms Hama was appointed to the post of the Institute’s first resident
economist and chief representative in London. She returned to Japan in
1998, and served as research director in the Research Center for Policy
and Economy in Mitsubishi Research Institute’s Tokyo headquarters. In
2002, she moved to Doshisha University Business School to take up a
professorship in international economics there.
Ms
Hama writes regularly on current issues in newspapers and economic
journals including the Mainichi Shimbun, Japan Times, Les Echos and the
Financial Times. She is a frequent commentator for the BBC’s World
Service Radio and Television broadcasts, Japan’s NHK Television, CNN and
other current affairs media.
Ms
Hama also serves on a variety of committees advising the major central
government ministries as well as local authorities in Japan.
Publications
include: Can the Dollar Recover? (Nihon-Hyoronsha Japan,
co-authored 1992);
Visions for the 21st Century (Adamantine Press UK & Praeger
Publishers USA, contribution, 1992); Disintegrating
Europe (Adamantine Press UK & Praeger Publishers USA, 1996); Pirates
Wearing Neckties (Nikkei Shinbun Japan, 1998); The Economics of
Euroland: new currency, old politics (PHP Books Japan, 2001)); How
the Global Economy Goes Round (Chikuma Shobo Japan, 2001); How Can
the Japanese Economy Recover? (Chikuma Shobo Japan, contribution,
2003); Common Sense and Beyond (Jitsugyo-no-Nihon Sha Japan, 2003);
and The Japanese Economy in Synopsis (contribution, 2005).
This page last updated 2008-06-16
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