津波後の風評観光被害 (93)
自粛を自粛します
[2011年03月31日（Thu）]
一番の復興支援は普通に暮らすこと。普通に暮らすことで、経済をはじめ世の中が回る。世の中が普通に回らないと、被災地が復旧も復興もしない。自粛する事により、経済がおかしくなるようなら、そんな自粛は自粛します。
東京あたりでは、発言力が大きい方が自粛するように言ってますが。
海外メディアの一部では、自粛がただでさえ沈滞している経済をさらに悪化させると指摘しています。
ＮＹ紙「日本は自粛という強迫観念にとらわれている」2011.3.29 20:09 産経msn
【ワシントン＝古森義久】米紙ニューヨーク・タイムズは２８日付で「津波後の日本は自粛という新たな強迫観念に襲われた」との見出しの記事を掲載し、日本国民の多くが地震や津波の犠牲者への弔意から日常の活動を縮小するようになり、国民経済への悪影響が懸念されると伝えた。
東京発の同記事は、日本で「地震、津波、原発で何十万という国民が被害を受けたことから、被災地以外でも、少しでもぜいたくにみえる活動はすべて非難されるようになった」とし、日本国民のすべての層が生活面での「自粛」をするようになったと報じた。
自粛はまず電力の節約という形をとり、日本国民が「電灯、エレベーター、暖房、トイレ座席の暖房まで止めるようになった」とし、安売りカメラ店の客案内の音声やカラオケ店への出入り、桜の花見、高校野球応援、東京都知事選の候補の音声までが自粛されていると指摘した。
同記事は自粛が過剰になっていることを示唆し、企業や学校の行事のキャンセルが日本の経済全体の６０％に及ぶ消費支出を大幅に減らし、「もともと停滞していた日本経済に浸食効果をもたらし、倒産を急増させるだろう」と述べている。
また「東京都民にとっての自粛は被災地の人々との連帯を示し、自粛をする側を何か良いことをしているという気分にさせる安易な方法だ。しかし、当人たちは実際にどんな効果をもたらすかはあまり考えていないようだ」とも論評した。
In Deference to Crisis, a New Obsession Sweeps Japan: Self-Restraint
ニューヨークタイムス
By KEN BELSON and NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: March 27, 2011
TOKYO — Even in a country whose people are known for walking in lockstep, a national consensus on the proper code of behavior has emerged with startling speed. Consider post-tsunami Japan as the age of voluntary self-restraint, or jishuku, the antipode of the Japan of the “bubble” era that celebrated excess.
With hundreds of thousands of people displaced up north from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, anything with the barest hint of luxury invites condemnation. There were only general calls for conservation, but within days of the March 11 quake, Japanese of all stripes began turning off lights, elevators, heaters and even toilet seat warmers.
But self-restraint goes beyond the need to compensate for shortages of electricity brought on by the closing of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. At a time of collective mourning, jishuku also demands that self-restraint be practiced elsewhere. Candidates in next month’s local elections are hewing to the ethos by literally campaigning quietly for votes, instead of circling neighborhoods in their usual campaign trucks with blaring loudspeakers.
With aggressive sales tactics suddenly rendered unseemly, the giant Bic Camera electric appliance outlet in central Tokyo has dropped the decibels on its incessant in-store jingle, usually audible half a block away. At the high school baseball tournament in Osaka, bands put away their instruments; instead, cheering sections have been clapping by hitting plastic horns together.
There are also doubts about whether it is proper to partake in the seasonal pleasures that regulate much of Japanese life.
“At this time of the year, we’d usually be talking about going to see cherry blossoms,” Hiroshi Sekiguchi, one of the country’s best-known television personalities, said on his Sunday morning talk show.
In fact, cherry blossom viewing parties and fireworks festivals have been canceled. Graduations and commencements have been put off. Stores and restaurants have reduced their hours or closed. Cosmetics and karaoke are out; bottled water and Geiger counters are in.
It is as if much of a nation’s people have simultaneously hunkered down, all with barely a rule being passed or a penalty being assessed.
“We are not forced or anything,” said Koichi Nakamura, 45, who runs a karaoke shop in Kabukicho, Tokyo’s famed entertainment district, where customers looking to sing their lungs out have all but vanished. “I hope it will somehow contribute to the affected areas.”
The almost overnight transformation is likely to continue for months, if not years. The hot summer ahead is expected to further strain the nation’s electrical network, leading to more disruptive blackouts that make it hard for business to be conducted the Japanese way, face to face and often into the night. The vast entertainment industry that greases corporate Japan, including sushi bars and cabarets, is likely to be deeply hurt.
As effective as the self-restraint has been — conservation measures have allowed Tokyo Electric Power to cancel some planned blackouts — the continued scaling back is likely to have a corrosive effect on Japan’s sagging economy. While the government will spend heavily to rebuild the shattered prefectures to the northeast, consumer spending, which makes up about 60 percent of the economy, will probably sink; bankruptcies are expected to soar.
Had the disasters hit a more distant corner of the country, things might have been different. But because Tokyo has been directly affected by the blackouts and the nuclear crisis, the impact has been greater. The capital and surrounding prefectures, where so many companies, government agencies and news media outlets are located, account for about one-third of the country’s gross domestic product.
Japan has gone through spasms of self-control before, including after the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989. This time, though, self-restraint may be a way of coping with the traumatizing scale of the loss of life as well as the spreading fears of radioactive fallout, according to Kensuke Suzuki, an associate professor of sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University in western Japan.
“With the extensive coverage of the disaster zone, jishuku has become a way for people in Tokyo to express solidarity at a time of crisis,” Professor Suzuki said in an e-mail. “Jishuku is the easiest way to feel like you’re doing something, though perhaps there isn’t much thought put into how much these actions make a difference over all.”
It is not surprising then that the national obsession with self-restraint has bled into political circles. In several prefectures, like Gifu, Aomori and Akita, candidates have agreed not to campaign too aggressively, by limiting their appearances and not calling voters at home.
In Tokyo’s luxury shopping district, Ginza, on Sunday, Hideo Higashikokubaru, 53, a politician and former comedian, practiced jishuku-style campaigning by riding a bicycle and eschewing a bullhorn. “I’m trying my best in my own voice,” Mr. Higashikokubaru said, surrounded by voters on an intersection overlooked by Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Bulgari.
Political analysts have said that such campaign constraints will favor incumbents like Shintaro Ishihara, the three-term Tokyo governor Mr. Higashikokubaru is trying to unseat.
“That’s right,” Mr. Higashikokubaru said in a short interview. “That’s why I have to try even harder.”
But outliers, like Japan’s Communist Party, have explicitly rejected a calmer tenor to their campaigning, saying that it would rob voters of valuable information about candidates.
Another objector was Yoshiro Nakamatsu, 82, who despite a past draw of only a few thousand votes was running for Tokyo governor for a fifth time. Mr. Nakamatsu — an inventor who claims credit for hundreds of gadgets — campaigned in front of his truck in Ginza on Sunday, standing on top of what he described as a stretching machine that would prevent deep vein thrombosis.
As a loudspeaker played a recorded speech, he described campaigning by walking or riding a bicycle as something from “another era.”
There were other opponents of self-restraint. While the ethos has been strongest in northern Japan and in the Tokyo area, western Japan appeared split. Kobe, the site of a 1995 earthquake, was firmly in favor.
But Toru Hashimoto, the governor of Osaka, Japan’s second-biggest city, said too much holding back would hurt the economy. Echoing President Bush after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Hashimoto urged people to spend even more, so as to support the economy; some businesses are helping by donating part of their proceeds to affected areas.
In Tokyo, though, there was no debate.
At Hair ZA/ZA, a salon in the Shin Koenji neighborhood, appointments have dried up because so many school and corporate ceremonies have been canceled. The rolling blackouts could also make it hard for customers to keep reservations, according to Takayuki Yamamoto, the salon’s chief hair stylist.
This has upended Ayaka Kanzaki’s plans to pass the salon’s tests for new stylists. The exam includes three components: cutting, blow-drying and hair coloring. Ms. Kanzaki, 21, passed the cutting section, but to qualify for the hair coloring test, she must recruit 20 models. So far, she has managed just seven and is worried about getting 13 more.
The salon’s efforts to reduce electricity use have made it difficult to practice after hours, too. In addition to turning off the lights, training with blow dryers has been stopped. Ms. Kanzaki, however, keeps any frustration to herself.
“I’m not the only one in this condition,” she said, in a remark that typified Japanese selflessness. “Others are, too.”
東京あたりでは、発言力が大きい方が自粛するように言ってますが。
海外メディアの一部では、自粛がただでさえ沈滞している経済をさらに悪化させると指摘しています。
ＮＹ紙「日本は自粛という強迫観念にとらわれている」2011.3.29 20:09 産経msn
【ワシントン＝古森義久】米紙ニューヨーク・タイムズは２８日付で「津波後の日本は自粛という新たな強迫観念に襲われた」との見出しの記事を掲載し、日本国民の多くが地震や津波の犠牲者への弔意から日常の活動を縮小するようになり、国民経済への悪影響が懸念されると伝えた。
東京発の同記事は、日本で「地震、津波、原発で何十万という国民が被害を受けたことから、被災地以外でも、少しでもぜいたくにみえる活動はすべて非難されるようになった」とし、日本国民のすべての層が生活面での「自粛」をするようになったと報じた。
自粛はまず電力の節約という形をとり、日本国民が「電灯、エレベーター、暖房、トイレ座席の暖房まで止めるようになった」とし、安売りカメラ店の客案内の音声やカラオケ店への出入り、桜の花見、高校野球応援、東京都知事選の候補の音声までが自粛されていると指摘した。
同記事は自粛が過剰になっていることを示唆し、企業や学校の行事のキャンセルが日本の経済全体の６０％に及ぶ消費支出を大幅に減らし、「もともと停滞していた日本経済に浸食効果をもたらし、倒産を急増させるだろう」と述べている。
また「東京都民にとっての自粛は被災地の人々との連帯を示し、自粛をする側を何か良いことをしているという気分にさせる安易な方法だ。しかし、当人たちは実際にどんな効果をもたらすかはあまり考えていないようだ」とも論評した。
In Deference to Crisis, a New Obsession Sweeps Japan: Self-Restraint
ニューヨークタイムス
By KEN BELSON and NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: March 27, 2011
TOKYO — Even in a country whose people are known for walking in lockstep, a national consensus on the proper code of behavior has emerged with startling speed. Consider post-tsunami Japan as the age of voluntary self-restraint, or jishuku, the antipode of the Japan of the “bubble” era that celebrated excess.
With hundreds of thousands of people displaced up north from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, anything with the barest hint of luxury invites condemnation. There were only general calls for conservation, but within days of the March 11 quake, Japanese of all stripes began turning off lights, elevators, heaters and even toilet seat warmers.
But self-restraint goes beyond the need to compensate for shortages of electricity brought on by the closing of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. At a time of collective mourning, jishuku also demands that self-restraint be practiced elsewhere. Candidates in next month’s local elections are hewing to the ethos by literally campaigning quietly for votes, instead of circling neighborhoods in their usual campaign trucks with blaring loudspeakers.
With aggressive sales tactics suddenly rendered unseemly, the giant Bic Camera electric appliance outlet in central Tokyo has dropped the decibels on its incessant in-store jingle, usually audible half a block away. At the high school baseball tournament in Osaka, bands put away their instruments; instead, cheering sections have been clapping by hitting plastic horns together.
There are also doubts about whether it is proper to partake in the seasonal pleasures that regulate much of Japanese life.
“At this time of the year, we’d usually be talking about going to see cherry blossoms,” Hiroshi Sekiguchi, one of the country’s best-known television personalities, said on his Sunday morning talk show.
In fact, cherry blossom viewing parties and fireworks festivals have been canceled. Graduations and commencements have been put off. Stores and restaurants have reduced their hours or closed. Cosmetics and karaoke are out; bottled water and Geiger counters are in.
It is as if much of a nation’s people have simultaneously hunkered down, all with barely a rule being passed or a penalty being assessed.
“We are not forced or anything,” said Koichi Nakamura, 45, who runs a karaoke shop in Kabukicho, Tokyo’s famed entertainment district, where customers looking to sing their lungs out have all but vanished. “I hope it will somehow contribute to the affected areas.”
The almost overnight transformation is likely to continue for months, if not years. The hot summer ahead is expected to further strain the nation’s electrical network, leading to more disruptive blackouts that make it hard for business to be conducted the Japanese way, face to face and often into the night. The vast entertainment industry that greases corporate Japan, including sushi bars and cabarets, is likely to be deeply hurt.
As effective as the self-restraint has been — conservation measures have allowed Tokyo Electric Power to cancel some planned blackouts — the continued scaling back is likely to have a corrosive effect on Japan’s sagging economy. While the government will spend heavily to rebuild the shattered prefectures to the northeast, consumer spending, which makes up about 60 percent of the economy, will probably sink; bankruptcies are expected to soar.
Had the disasters hit a more distant corner of the country, things might have been different. But because Tokyo has been directly affected by the blackouts and the nuclear crisis, the impact has been greater. The capital and surrounding prefectures, where so many companies, government agencies and news media outlets are located, account for about one-third of the country’s gross domestic product.
Japan has gone through spasms of self-control before, including after the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989. This time, though, self-restraint may be a way of coping with the traumatizing scale of the loss of life as well as the spreading fears of radioactive fallout, according to Kensuke Suzuki, an associate professor of sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University in western Japan.
“With the extensive coverage of the disaster zone, jishuku has become a way for people in Tokyo to express solidarity at a time of crisis,” Professor Suzuki said in an e-mail. “Jishuku is the easiest way to feel like you’re doing something, though perhaps there isn’t much thought put into how much these actions make a difference over all.”
It is not surprising then that the national obsession with self-restraint has bled into political circles. In several prefectures, like Gifu, Aomori and Akita, candidates have agreed not to campaign too aggressively, by limiting their appearances and not calling voters at home.
In Tokyo’s luxury shopping district, Ginza, on Sunday, Hideo Higashikokubaru, 53, a politician and former comedian, practiced jishuku-style campaigning by riding a bicycle and eschewing a bullhorn. “I’m trying my best in my own voice,” Mr. Higashikokubaru said, surrounded by voters on an intersection overlooked by Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Bulgari.
Political analysts have said that such campaign constraints will favor incumbents like Shintaro Ishihara, the three-term Tokyo governor Mr. Higashikokubaru is trying to unseat.
“That’s right,” Mr. Higashikokubaru said in a short interview. “That’s why I have to try even harder.”
But outliers, like Japan’s Communist Party, have explicitly rejected a calmer tenor to their campaigning, saying that it would rob voters of valuable information about candidates.
Another objector was Yoshiro Nakamatsu, 82, who despite a past draw of only a few thousand votes was running for Tokyo governor for a fifth time. Mr. Nakamatsu — an inventor who claims credit for hundreds of gadgets — campaigned in front of his truck in Ginza on Sunday, standing on top of what he described as a stretching machine that would prevent deep vein thrombosis.
As a loudspeaker played a recorded speech, he described campaigning by walking or riding a bicycle as something from “another era.”
There were other opponents of self-restraint. While the ethos has been strongest in northern Japan and in the Tokyo area, western Japan appeared split. Kobe, the site of a 1995 earthquake, was firmly in favor.
But Toru Hashimoto, the governor of Osaka, Japan’s second-biggest city, said too much holding back would hurt the economy. Echoing President Bush after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Hashimoto urged people to spend even more, so as to support the economy; some businesses are helping by donating part of their proceeds to affected areas.
In Tokyo, though, there was no debate.
At Hair ZA/ZA, a salon in the Shin Koenji neighborhood, appointments have dried up because so many school and corporate ceremonies have been canceled. The rolling blackouts could also make it hard for customers to keep reservations, according to Takayuki Yamamoto, the salon’s chief hair stylist.
This has upended Ayaka Kanzaki’s plans to pass the salon’s tests for new stylists. The exam includes three components: cutting, blow-drying and hair coloring. Ms. Kanzaki, 21, passed the cutting section, but to qualify for the hair coloring test, she must recruit 20 models. So far, she has managed just seven and is worried about getting 13 more.
The salon’s efforts to reduce electricity use have made it difficult to practice after hours, too. In addition to turning off the lights, training with blow dryers has been stopped. Ms. Kanzaki, however, keeps any frustration to herself.
“I’m not the only one in this condition,” she said, in a remark that typified Japanese selflessness. “Others are, too.”
