Category Archives: Cooperatives

Japan’s JA group plays critical export role: agriculture minister

TOKYO, March 20 — Japanese Agriculture Minister Ken Saito has said the nation’s largest farmers’ group has a critical role in leading exports of agricultural products as Japan faces a declining population. “We need to take a big push to expand our food exports, but it is difficult for farmers themselves to sell their products globally,” Saito told foreign media at a March 19 meeting. “So, the JA group should take a leading role when it comes to peddling their wares to the world,” he stressed. “That is how the group should reinvent itself now.” The JA group has been a prime target of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s structural changes … Continue reading

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JA group, Keidanren to deepen cooperation on Japan farming

TOKYO, March 17 — Japan’s largest farmers’ group and its powerful business lobby group, the Keidanren, have agreed to deepen cooperation in the agriculture sector. Toru Nakaya, the chairman of the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, known as JA-ZENCHU, met his counterpart of Keidanren, Sadayuki Sakakibara, on March 16 in Tokyo. The move comes as Japan faces shrinking food demand posed by a rapidly ageing and declining population with low birth rates. Japan has set a target of 1 trillion yen in agricultural exports by 2020. In 2013, the two groups set up a working group to strengthen cooperation in areas of improving agriculture production by using information technology and … Continue reading

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【Booklet】Beginning of JA insurance<Headwaters of health insurance >(June 4, 2016)

Jorei based on mutual aid spirit The site is used as “jorei (fixed remuneration) park” (in Fukutsu city, Fukuoka prefecture) It is former Munakata county of Fukuoka prefecture facing the Genkainada Sea. This region, which is sandwiched between two government-designated cities, Fukuoka city and Kitakyushu city, is said to be “hometown of the health insurance system”. To solve the question, Inoue surveyed and listed the result in Munakata County Doctor Journal from September 1976 to April 1978. And then he published “The headwaters of the health insurance, jorei of Chikuzen Munakata” (the Nishinippon Shimbun newspaper) . To the strange questions such as “How did you pay the cost of treatment?”, … Continue reading

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【Booklet】Beginning of JA insurance <Sangyokumiai (cooperatives) and insurance ①> (June 11, 2016)

Looming wall of law Owing to efforts of Yajiro Shinagawa (1843-1900, later the Interior Minister) and Tosuke Hirata (1849-1929, later the president of sangyokumiaichuokai (general association of cooperatives)), who had met in Germany studying abroad, sangyokumiai (cooperatives) law was enacted in 1900. In the year, it has also been enacted the Insurance Business Law. Keijiro Okano (1865-1925, Doctor of Laws, later cabinet legislation bureau director), who was a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, played central role in drafting both of laws. Insurance Business Law allowed only company organization (stock company, mutual company) to operate insurance business. The cooperatives organizations had not been allowed insurance business. On the … Continue reading

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【Booklet】Beginning of JA insurance <Sangyokumiai (cooperatives) and insurance ②>(June 18, 2016)

Leaders of sangyokumiai (cooperatives) interested in insuranceIn Germany, Raiffeisen (1818-1888), whose cooperatives model was adopted by Japanese sangyokumiai (cooperatives), envisioned the cooperatives insurance in 1872. He tried to carry out it in the rural credit cooperatives, but the German government refused it. Then he withdrew it and later carried out it based on modified plan. In Japan, executives of sangyokumiai (cooperatives) also seemed to have been interested in insurance from early times. Yoshio Udo (1876-1937), who became vice president of sangyokumiaichuokai (general association of cooperatives) later, published a paper titled “Insurance business and Cooperatives” in the magazine “sangyokumiai, No. 14” issued in December 1906. He also cited the name of … Continue reading

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