By Nobuhiro Suzuki, Professor of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
In today’s Japan, the society is in danger of becoming extremely biased in every aspect, as those with overwhelming power shrewdly crush countervailing powers.
A proper balance of power is being lost in various cases: the prime minister’s office versus bureaucracy; the ministries of foreign affairs, finance and economy, trade and industry versus the agriculture ministry; the prime minister’s office versus the ruling Liberal Democratic Party; the prime minister’s office versus the media; the ruling bloc versus the opposition; company management versus labor unions; retailers versus manufacturers versus farmers.
Globally, we are seeing a big shift away from excessive concentration of wealth and efforts to reduce income inequality. In the United States, the overconcentration of wealth in the hands of the superrich company management fueled the anger of people of low-income groups, leading to an unexpected movement in selecting candidates for the presidential election. Calls for reducing inequality and reviewing the free trade framework seem to have turned the tide, boosting supports for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
In Europe, voices calling to leave the European Union, which has been regarded as the most successful free trade agreement, are rising not only in Great Britain but also in other countries, as more people have begun to think the framework resulted in expanding economic inequality. The focus here is also reducing inequality and reviewing free trade.
Japan is the only country where opposition to and the shift away from the expanding economic inequality and overconcentration of wealth have not surfaced.
The current administration led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is skilled at suppressing opposition. Especially, the prime minister’s office has managed to gain control over bureaucracy by taking the lead in the promotion and transfer of high-ranking officials. This has made the officials think they might be excluded from the list of candidates for key positions if they continue to resist. At the same time, it made them think they could be promoted if they comply with the wishes of the prime minister’s office. And once they are promoted, they will make efforts to complete the “reform” process for the sake of the prime minister’s office, the U.S. and business circles. Here, reform means dismantling of the cooperative sector, namely the rules and organization of mutual help.
Recently, the prime minister’s office announced an appointment which clearly indicates it has favored a person who worked to meet its intentions and removed a capable but resistant person from a key position. It is very much likely that it will strengthen moves to force family farmers out of business, encourage big distributors to enter farming and dismantle agricultural cooperatives and designated raw milk producers’ groups.
It is wrong to think that agricultural cooperatives can survive if they present good self-reform plans in line with the administration’s intentions, because the whole idea of agricultural cooperatives “reform” is to disband farm coops, which have protected food, agriculture and lives of the regional community as a cooperative sector, under the goal of “tackling vested interests and bedrock regulations” and take away all the businesses and money from regions which have been supported by farm coops.
We must not forget that what the administration means by “reform” is actually a “breakup.” We can’t achieve sustainable regional development which extends throughout the country without maintaining a balance between coexistence and competition. Unless we fight head on by asserting the need for a cooperative sector to support regions as a whole, the sector will definitely be destroyed.