Strengthening Sakai’s Higashi Ward through Local Identity

English translation

AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

Originally published: 2021-05-05

This material was published on the Japanese website. Dates and notices in the text reflect the original publication.

Strengthening Sakai’s Higashi Ward through Local Identity

Symposium material: Hatsushiba Gymnasium, 9 May 2021

Seishu Hamano, a locally born writer of cautionary works

How Sakai, the government-designated city launched under the “Yatsugatake concept,” can make great strides

Author’s brief biography: Member of the fourth graduating class of Tomioka Junior High School. Graduated from Keio University, specializing in American literature. Researcher at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of American Studies. After serving as an associate professor at Tohoku University, became a visiting professor at the State University of New York. Professor in the graduate school of Japan Women’s University; lecturer at Waseda, Aoyama Gakuin and Hitotsubashi universities; professor in the graduate school of Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. Commentary on television and in newspapers as a writer sounding warnings. Thirty authored and edited books. Principal books include 『日朝、もし戦えば』 (Chuokoronsha), 『日本の、次の戦争』 (Goma Books; Kindle e-book), 『ユダヤ系アメリカ文学の出発』 (Kenkyusha), 『愚劣少年法』 (Chuko), 『ビーライフ！白亜館物語』 (Chuko), the short-story collection 『別れる季節』, five other volumes of literary selections, and many academic books. Currently directs the searchable online “Online Manyoshu,” sharing “Japan’s spirit of harmony” with the world. Alumni representative at the fiftieth-anniversary ceremony of Tomioka Junior High School.

Purpose of the event: Fifteen years ago, in April 2006, Sakai became a government-designated city. At that time, the shopping district in Kitanoda, Tomioka, the centre of Higashi Ward, had become a street of shuttered shops and was utterly exhausted. Together with the federation of neighbourhood associations, we proposed large-scale redevelopment that took residents’ wishes seriously. With the city administration cooperating, we were able to build four high-rise buildings and introduce many facilities, including a cultural centre. Fifteen years have already passed. Is revitalization still continuing, or has there been marked stagnation? What lies behind it?

I. Use the cultural centre to create a strong power of attraction

Overview of the background: Let us look back over the last fifteen years, dividing them into the first period, driven by citizens’ activities (2007–2015), and the second, under management by retired public administrators (2016–2021).

(1) The cultural-industry concept of fifteen years ago: 池崎守 and I invited 早乙女貢 and 越智道夫 of the PEN Club, among others, to a symposium in Sakai Ward. The mayor of Sakai responded enthusiastically, moving city policy from a “Mount Fuji concept” to a “Yatsugatake concept.” Higashi Ward was positioned as the core of a cultural village. This would be comparable to Bunkamura the Museum in Shibuya, Tokyo. Sending culture outward means drawing people inward: “centrifugal force” → “centripetal force.”

(2) Although the old neighbourhood disappeared, residents remained united: Kitanoda’s shuttered shopping street gave way to four high-rise buildings. There was sorrow at the disappearance of the neighbourhood, including its Jizō figure. But facilities supporting residents’ lives saved the whole town from collapse. As it was transformed through modernization, citizens’ energetic activity revived.

(3) The opening of Higashi Ward’s cultural centre and library: In the first period, citizens’ independent management and planning produced one success after another. 和泉元彌, head of a traditional kyōgen school and then starring in an NHK historical drama, took part in the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of Tomioka Junior High School. After the cultural centre opened, an FM station began broadcasting. The café was noticeably lively. But in the second period, management passed from a citizens’ NPO to former city-hall employees. It became a stage and hall for hire, and the building seemed to have gone dark.

Recommendation: Let local residents plan and manage activities, supported by the city’s budget, continually presenting new work through an operation that is not made impossible by questions of profitability and break-even points. Build Higashi Ward’s power of attraction. And, as the outstanding achievements of Tomioka Junior High and Tomioka High School show, let the remarkable work of their wind ensembles and dance clubs become treasures of Sakai’s cultural village, nurturing the people who will carry cultural activity into the future.

II. Let us establish Japan’s first “World Anti-disaster Center” in Sakai’s Higashi Ward

An underdeveloped legal framework: WHO has come into the spotlight during the coronavirus pandemic, but Japan faces many kinds of problem beyond biological threats, including natural disasters and pollution from nuclear power plants. Even measures for heavy snow on highways remain insufficiently organized. Coronavirus measures and vaccine development have progressed painfully slowly, leaving us dependent on foreign-made vaccines and makeshift facilities. A particularly conspicuous delay is the lack of an organization that enables the collaboration of industry, government and academia that is commonplace in advanced countries. There is no adequate legislative framework; even in the Diet, appropriate legislation has yet to be put forward by members. The proposed centre could present the government with countermeasures based on the latest information worldwide, including approaches to legislation.

My experience of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake: When the earthquake struck, I went to help rescue a friend’s household in Shukugawa. After consulting the governor’s office, I met the then Minister of Home Affairs, 野中広務, in his ministerial office in Nagatachō and secured ¥680 billion in emergency assistance. That succeeded. We also pursued the creation of a ¥1 trillion fund with the cooperation of the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Japanese Red Cross headquarters, addressing problems including double mortgage obligations. But overlap with the non-life insurance business caused difficulties within the ministry. A fund scheme alone proved unable to check the effects of natural disasters. The proposed centre could also offer practicable ways to overcome disaster-related financial problems.

The NBCR Countermeasures Promotion Organization: I subsequently became a special adviser to this organization and spent many years working steadily alongside senior members of the Japan Medical Association and the Self-Defense Forces. With the Association’s support and the understanding and cooperation of fire services, the Self-Defense Forces and local authorities, we achieved results in educating doctors nationwide in treatment methods. The lessons of this work convinced me that Japan needed a disaster-prevention centre. Now, on the eve of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, public health centres, the police, Self-Defense Forces, medical teams and fire services are each fighting the coronavirus in their own fields. Yet we are going into the Games without having achieved coordinated work across those fields.

Proposal (1): Higashi Ward should establish a “World Anti-disaster Center” as a crisis-management organization recognized by the national government.

Establish this centre in Higashi Ward to: (1) connect directly with national disaster-prevention organizations, gather information and educate disaster-prevention specialists; (2) provide instruction in the latest responses to bio-, chemi-, nuc-, radio- threats, including up-to-date training for doctors and nurses; and (3) connect with WHO, unicef (the Japan Committee for UNICEF, a public-interest incorporated foundation), and the United Nations Security Council. Naturally, channels would also be built to the ward and city assemblies, the Diet, the United Nations, embassies and research institutions. Alongside my NBCR work, I have long been involved in continuing education for personnel from public offices and official missions at Aoyama Gakuin University. With national funding, the centre would organize this into a curriculum and make the credits earned broadly transferable.

Proposal (2): Civilian Control cannot bear fruit without the cooperation of political and administrative bodies in providing financial support. Let us achieve results through a residents-led organization that receives an appropriate budget, uses it, and operates for the public good.

In democratic countries, civilian control developed in earnest with the industrialization that arose in the United States in the late nineteenth century. It gave the greatest possible scope to discretion, yet without defining a discretionary zone, the limits of that authority. Nevertheless, industrialism prospered more than state-controlled nationalism because citizens’ ideas led to prosperity and enabled it to surpass Europe’s economy. In Japanese public institutions, either management tends to become the overriding priority, or matters are entrusted wholesale to bodies such as special public corporations, leaving financial management beyond control. A sound method of control would be to incorporate an organization, establish its discretionary zone, examine the break-even points of the projects it continually proposes, then expand its zoning, or scope of authority, and reflect that in its budget. Set the personnel ratio of citizens to administrators at seven to three, and use this “Higashi Ward approach” to strengthen Sakai. (End)