Kamei Continues to Speak Out of Turn

I’ve been meaning to do a post about Financial and Postal Affairs Minister Kamei Shizuka ever since the election, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it until now. Kamei, and the leader of the DPJ’s other coalition partner, Fukushima Mizuho, pose something of a problem for the Hatoyama administration. He needed to find somewhere to put them in his cabinet, because the votes of their parties are invaluable in the House of Councillors. But they were always going to stick out like a sore thumb, and Kamei has done it again.

I still intend to write more at a later date about Kamei’s absurd plans to give loan holidays to small and medium sized businesses (as if the economy can be broken up into different discrete pieces for the purpose of policy…)…, but today I was struck by an outlandish comment that he has made in regard to an apparent rise in family-suicide cases in Japan.

The Associated Press have the story, in which Kamei is reported as saying in a speech that:

“Family murder has increased in Japan because companies have stopped treating humans the way they should be treated”.

Apparently he told this to the chairman of the Japan Business Federation (the Keidandren), Mitarai Fujio, and further explained in a speech where he described the meeting that “I told him that Nippon Keidanren should feel responsible for that”.

Later in the same speech, Kamei also said that:

“Managers of big companies used to distribute to small companies part of the profits their companies earned when the economy was in good condition… But now, they are accumulating such profits as internal revenues so that they can be used for business restructuring”.

 

The comments show that Kamei is not only attempting to live in the past, but is ignoring or simply doesn’t understand basic principles of economics and good business, not to mention common sense… For a government Minister, and a leader of a party to be telling a national organization that they are responsible for family murders is outrageous. For a start, the idea that families are killing themselves simply because businesses are too cruel is utterly ridiculous on its face. There have to be a myriad of social, economic, familial, personal and other issues at play, or else every employee that got sacked would be going home and knifing their loved ones…

Secondly, to blame an outside party for the problem, as if it is all their fault, is the kind of thinking that gets us all into trouble, because it avoids the simple fact that we are all responsible for ourselves, and need to take responsibility for our own actions. Could an argument be made that there are instances of businesses that have been negligent or that have treated employees poorly? Of course. Are there people that have been unfairly damaged by the actions of their boss or company? Yes. But to make the accusation that Kamei has made here is the same as telling every boss in Japan that they are an accessory to murder. Such a concept is outlandish and disgusting.

What Kamei willfully ignores is the fact that if many of these companies didn’t restructure, and didn’t reorder the way they do business (including firing employees that are no longer necessary), many of them would simply cease to exist altogether, thus creating even more ‘family murder’, according to the Minister… For a man that is supposed to develop plans to reinvigorate the economy and the postal system, he has a terrible lack of understanding of how business works. I’m counting down the days until he is forced to resign, or is ‘re-assigned’. The man is a walking, talking liability. It can’t come soon enough for me, or for Japan… But then, where would you put him…..??