DIJNEWSLETTER

ISSN 1433-6685

Information from the German Institute for Japanese Studies

DIJ Newsletter OCTOBER 2005 1

26

October 2005

oth Japan and Germany are ex-periencing a demographic devel-opment that is posing challenges

for all areas of society. In the next fewyears Japan’s population will rapidlyage beyond proportion: while in theyear 2005 the number of people agedover 65 years made up approximately20% of the population, this figure willincrease to 26.3% in the year 2015 andto approximately 39% in the year 2050(IPSS 2000). Germany is facing a simi-lar fate: the number of over sixty-yearolds will increase from 28% in the year2001 to an estimated figure of approxi-mately 49% in the year 2050 (FederalStatistical Office Wiesbaden 2003: 31).

Both countries are traditionally“car countries”, with the automobileindustry making a decisive contribu-tion to gross domestic product. Theadded value created by the automobileindustry in Japan in the year 2004 wasabout 40.4 billion Yen or approximate-ly 14% of the entire manufacturing in-dustry; in the same year in Germany18% of turnover in the industrial sectorwas from the automobile industry. Ja-pan, with its production of 10.3 millioncars, is the second largest producer inthe world, followed by Germany with5.5 million units (JAMA 2004; VDA2004). Thus, the automobile industry isfaced with similar challenges in bothcountries – but how is each countryresponding to these challenges?

The point of departure is the same:aging hinders driving capability andreduces physical capacity. Decreases indriving capability include the morecommon symptoms of restricted visionand hearing as well as a slowing downin the ability to respond. One indica-tion for a lower physical capacity isbecoming tired quicker, but medical re-ports also point to a higher rate of acci-dents due to decreasing bone densityand bone mass. Car manufacturers andsuppliers around the world are now

beginning to respond. They are payingmore attention to a clear layout of thecar’s interior and creating more en-hanced and contrasting indicators,they are improving the ergonomics ofseating and developing new technolo-gies. These include:– Driver’s assistance systems such as

“Blind Spot Detection” (to detectvehicles on the blind side);

– Lane assistance;– Headlights that follow steering di-

rection;– Night viewing instruments such as

“Head-up Displays” (systems thatproject information such as speedlimits or directions on to the wind-screen);

– Seat-belt strength restrictor and ac-tive head protection for passive se-curity.

Manufacturers are, however, not onlyinterested in integrating these techni-cal systems, rather they are seeking tointegrate them in a way that does notmake it too obvious that the driver maybe of advanced years. Thus, although –in particular older – customers are de-manding greater comfort, user-friend-liness and security, they do not want tobe wooed as “old”. One solution to thedilemma is “universal design”, whichis understood as more user-friendlydesign without direct reference to anyage group. Japan is most active in thisarea. It has an “International Associa-tion for Universal Design” and ofcourse all Japanese automobile pro-ducers are members of this associationeither directly or through a subsidiarycompany. The orientation toward olderdrivers can also be seen in the produc-tion: all manufacturers are producingvehicles with higher seats to make iteasier to get in and out of vehicles andprovide better circumferential visionor with wide-opening or sliding doors– a trend that the German manufactur-ers are also implementing. In other

words: wagon-type vehicles such asthe A and B Class from Mercedes-Benz,the Agila and Meriva models from Opelor the Golf-Plus from VW in Germanyare, insofar as they relate to older driv-ers, very similar to Japanese modelssuch as, for example, Daihatsu Moveand Boon, Honda Stepwagon and That’s,Mazda AZ Wagon and Verisa, Mitsu-bishi Dion and eK Classy, Nissan Cubicand Otti, Subaru Pleo and Subaru R2,Suzuki Wagon R or Toyota Isis, Porteand Raum.

Differences are more obvious inother market segments: Japan is clearlymore active than Germany in develop-ing mobility assistance vehicles for thedisabled sector (fukushi sharyō). Ac-cording to the Japan Automobile Man-ufacturers’ Association approximately37,000 vehicles for the disabled sectorwere sold just in the past year. Thisfigure may appear to be incrediblysmall in comparison to the 4.77 millionpassengers cars sold in 2004, but inview of demographic developments itis obvious that this market will contin-ue to grow. As a consequence, no Japa-nese car manufacturers want to missout on this market segment, and thus atthe Tokyo Motor Show 2004 almost a

B

Table of Contents

Title Story 1

DIJ Events 2

Conference Reports 5

DIJ Publications 5

Working papers 6

Book Review 6

Exhibition 6

Other Matters / Outlook 7

German Institute for Japanese StudiesManaging editor: Junko Ando3-3-6 Kudan-Minami Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0074, JapanTel.: +81-3-3222-5077Fax: +81-3-3222-5420E-mail: dijtokyo@dijtokyo.orgHomepage: http:�www.dijtokyo.org

Cars for Gran and Grandpa = Cars for everybody?The automobile industry’s responses to the aging populations of Japan andGermany

By Andreas Moerke and Simon Kamann

2 DIJ Newsletter OCTOBER 2005

quarter of the vehicles on display wereso called “barrier-free vehicles”. Com-mon to all of these vehicles is how theyare decisively aimed at older or physi-cally challenged individuals. Basically,they all incorporate fundamental tech-nology:

– Sliding doors or doors that openwider;

– Pivotal and adjustable automotiveseating; or

– Equipment to enable wheelchairusers to get in and out more easily(ramps, track equipment, automat-ic storage of folded-down wheel-chairs within vehicle).

While German manufacturers, at leaston their homepages and in their bro-chures, offer only a bit of informationon these special groups of automobiles,Japanese manufacturers have beguntheir own advertising campaigns andshows aimed at this market. The carsare called:

– Welcab (a fusion of “Welfare/Well(being)/ Welcome” and “Cab-in”) at Toyota;

– Life Care Vehicle at Nissan;– Hearty Run at Mitsubishi Motors.

They have their own homepages, theirown newsletters and at Toyota andMitsubishi they have their own show-rooms for these models. Once again theindustry leader Toyota has “a nose outfront”: in addition to already existinguniversal design showrooms Toyotahas established presentation rooms forWelcabs in eight cities across Japan thatare called “Toyota Heartful Plaza”. Intwo other showrooms Welcabs are dis-played with other conventional vehi-cles. At Mitsubishi these models arecalled Hearty Run, borrowing from theslogan of their “Heartbeat Motors” ad-vertisement. And although these mod-els are sold at all dealers, Mitsubishihas only established two designatedshowrooms: one in Tokyo and the oth-er in Osaka. Nissan does not have anyspecial showrooms for the Life Care Ve-hicles, but the company has developeda “Life Care Vehicle Qualified Shop Sys-tem” where the showrooms are barri-er-free designed. Sales personnel havebeen sensitized to the limitations thatold age brings by having to wear “ag-ing costumes” and are trained to speakabout the solutions offered by the LifeCare Vehicle-Program.

In sum, the view toward Japan andmore specifically its car industrymakes us realize that it is respondingwith creativity to the demands of anincreasingly aging society and thatcompanies are using these opportuni-ties to win over new market segments– from which the German automobileindustry could learn a thing or two.

InternationalConference

Demographic Challenges for Hu-man Resource Management and La-bor Market Policies – A German-Jap-anese Comparison

(Tokyo, October 5–6, 2005)

Among industrialized countries, Ger-many and Japan have especially rapid-ly aging populations. By the year 2025the ratio of the population aged over 65is expected to reach 24% in Germanyand 29% in Japan. This demographicdevelopment will have huge conse-quences for the private and public sec-tors. Since the labor population isshrinking in both countries, the effi-cient utilization of human labor will

become a particularly important chal-lenge.

How have labor market policiesand human resource management inGermany and Japan reacted to thischallenge? This question was the focusof an international conference orga-nized by Harald Conrad (DIJ), ViktoriaHeindorf (Japan Center at the LudwigMaximilian’s University Munich) andShin’ichi Warizawa (School of Engi-neering, The University of Tokyo), to-gether with Germany’s Friedrich EbertFoundation. The conference was sup-ported by the German Federal Minis-try of Education and Research, the Jap-anese Ministry of Health, Labour andWelfare, the Embassy of the FederalRepublic of Germany and the JapanFoundation. Over two days, scientistsfrom various disciplines and companyrepresentatives discussed the implica-tions of demographic changes on labormarkets and human resource manage-ment from a comparative perspective.

Following keynote speeches byFranz Waldenberger (Ludwig Maxi-milian’s University Munich) andYoshio Higuchi (Keio University), thefirst panel discussed recent changes inlabor market policies for older work-ers. It became clear that both countriesare currently working hard to improvetheir institutional frameworks to fosterthe employability of older workers.Until the 1990s, Germany pursued anearly retirement strategy which put im-mense financial pressure on public so-cial security systems and did not – con-trary to a widely held belief – result inan increase of employment of youngerworkers. This approach has recentlybeen replaced by active labor marketpolicies which aim to extend individu-al working careers with training pro-grams, part-time arrangements andpartial public wage subsidies for elder-ly workers. In Japan, raising or abolish-ing the mandatory company retire-ment age (teinen) is widely regarded tobe a conditio sine qua non to foster em-ployment among aging workers. Fol-lowing recent legislative amendments,companies are now being pressured toraise their mandatory retirement agesin the coming years.

The second panel of the conferencedealt with the challenges of demo-graphic change for production and in-novation systems and the implicationsfor a successful human resource devel-opment. The presentations of this pan-el focused on the necessity and strate-gies to adapt production systems to theneeds of an aging workforce (for exam-ple through ergonomic adjustments)and on the question of how the agingsociety influences innovation process-es. Although there is no scientifically

DIJ EVENTS

Pivotal, adjustable seating at Mitsubishi,Mitsubishi “Hearty Run”-Showroom

Vehicle for a Wheelchair user to drive, Toyota Showroom

DIJ Newsletter OCTOBER 2005 3

proven correlation between aging andthe ability for innovation, some indus-tries like semiconductor and softwareseem to be affected. However, in theseindustries it is not so much individualcognitive abilities of the aging work-force, but rather the increasing com-plexity of the innovation systems andthe seniority-oriented structure ofcompany hierarchies that seem to havea negative impact on innovation abilityand national competitiveness.

The implications of demographicchange on companies’ human resourcemanagement were the focus of thethird panel. Here, two questions werediscussed in detail: How can seniority-oriented remuneration systems be re-formed? And, secondly, how can com-panies ensure the transfer of know-how and technical abilities to theiryounger workforces?

Following this panel, the fourthpart of the conference discussed howthe systems of industrial relations havereacted to the aging of company work-forces. In this respect, one differencebetween Japan and Germany is espe-cially noteworthy: whereas Japaneselabor unions have, since the 1970s, con-tinuously demanded an increase in themandatory retirement age, German la-bor unions have until recently favoredan early withdrawal from the labormarket. However, after a paradigmaticchange in perceptions, German laborunions are now acknowledging theneed for longer individual working ca-reers.

The conference closed with a panelof German and Japanese company rep-resentatives, who commented and dis-cussed some of the theoretical insightsfrom a more practical point of view. Intheir presentations company managersfocused on the most immediate prob-lems in their respective companies andthe strategies of how to overcomethem. However, during subsequentdiscussions, speakers from both coun-tries stressed that these strategies areby no means sufficient to deal withproblems of the future. Consequently,companies will have to rethink theirpolicies in the near future to be betterable to cope with their aging workforc-es. For a detailed list of speakers andtopics of presentations, please see ourwebsite at: http://www.dijtokyo.org/?page=event_detail.php&p_id=423.

A publication of the conference pa-pers is planned for 2006.

InternationalSymposia

“Changes and Challenges in theJapanese Automobile Industry”(Berlin, September 5–6, 2005)

This international symposium with itsfocus on the Japanese automobile in-dustry was co-organized by the DIJ,the Japanese-German Center Berlin,and INPRO, a joint company of theState of Berlin and the German auto-mobile industry.

The symposium was opened at theJapanese-German Center Berlin withpresentations of the latest changes inthe Japanese economy (Werner Pascha,Duisburg-Essen University) and poli-tics (Verena Blechinger, Free UniversityBerlin) on the evening of September 5,2005. The entire second day was dedi-cated to the automobile industry: An-dreas Moerke (DIJ) gave an introduc-tion to the recent performance of theindustry, while Matsuhima Shigeru(Hosei University) presented an em-pirical study on the Toyota suppliernetwork. In the next session on “Strate-gic Challenges”, René Haak (DIJ) gavean overview on the “Toyota Way”,while Roman Ditzer (Judit Consulting)elaborated on lessons from the practi-cal implication of the Toyota Produc-tion System. Thorsten Teichert (Uni-versity of Hamburg) explained patentstrategies of Japanese and Western carmakers, while John Benson (Universityof Tsukuba) spoke on Human ResourceManagement Strategies.

Language Regimes in Transforma-tion. The Future Roles of Germanand Japanese in Science, Economyand Politics(Tokyo, September 13–14, 2005)

Both Japanese and German belong tothe select group of the world’s lan-guages that are suitable for scientificcommunication and, more generally,can be used in all communication do-mains. Whether or not it is desirable touse a single all-purpose language forthe complex multiplicity of functionaland symbolic communication needs isa question seldom asked, because it istaken for granted in many advancedcountries. This is certainly true of Ja-pan and the German-speaking coun-tries. However, it is not clear that Ger-man and Japanese can sustain their fullfunctional potential if their own speak-ers use these languages in certain do-mains with decreasing frequency. Theadvantages of borderless communica-tion in a single language, on one hand,and maintaining highly cultivated all-purposes languages, on the other, areobvious. The question of whether andhow they can be reconciled in the ageof globalization is not. It was the leit-motiv of this symposium where it wasaddressed from various points of viewby sociolinguists, anthropologists, po-litical scientists and educationalists.

The symposium began with a pre-sentation by Ulrich Ammon (UniversityDuisburg-Essen) who raised the ques-tion whether, in the face of global En-glish, the promotion abroad of languag-es such as Japanese and German is stillappropriate. The cut-back of fundingfor foreign language education affectingboth German and Japanese in one of themajor English-speaking countries, the

Participants at the conference in Tokyo, October 5–6, 2005

4 DIJ Newsletter OCTOBER 2005

UK, was discussed by Tessa Carroll(University of Stirling, Scotland). Theneed of reformulating language policyin an era of globalization was the topicof the paper by Nanette Gottlieb (Uni-versity of Queensland). How ideologi-cally charged language policies are be-came apparent in Patrick Heinrich’spaper (University Duisburg-Essen)who discussed the controversy aboutEnglish as a second official language forJapan, while Takao Katsuragi (Gaku-shuin University) tackled the complexinterrelationship of language policyand democratic governance. As becameapparent in the comments offered byAndrew Horvat, (Tokyo Keizai Univer-sity) and Goro Kimura (Keio Universi-ty), globalization and the global spreadof English was a sub-theme of all ofthese papers.

A number of specific consequencesof globalization on functional domainallocations of languages and nationaland international language regimeswere addressed in subsequent papers.Both John Maher (International Chris-tian University, Tokyo) and FlorianCoulmas (DIJ) presented data-drivenanalyses of academic publishing in Ja-pan, while Kiyoshi Hara (Joshibi Uni-versity of Art and Design) consideredthe impact of the EU expansion on therelationship between national and mi-nority languages in the EU. ElmarHolenstein (emeritus, Swiss FederalInstitute of Technology Zurich) dealtwith the seemingly minute, but politi-cally highly sensitive problem of placenames and their written representationon maps. From two different anglesKonrad Ehlich (Ludwig Maximilian’sUniversity, Munich) and Fumio Inoue(Meikai University, Urawa/Chiba-ken) discussed the value of languages,the former emphasizing the impor-tance of linguistic diversity as a humanresource, the latter proposing a modelfor assessing the weight and competi-tiveness of individual languages in theinternational market place. Joseph Lo-Bianco (University of Melbourne)drew a wide canvas, calling for a newtheoretical foundation of language pol-icy that takes into account the forcesacting on national language regimesfrom the outside.

Finally, Daniel Long (Tokyo Metro-politan University) highlighted the in-creasing significance of sub-nationaland trans-national factors that havesome bearing on strictly national lan-guage regimes. While he agreed withmost other participants that, due to theunchecked and often government-pro-moted spread of English, the nationstate is weakening in areas that are cru-cial for redefining language regimes, italso became clear in the course of the

discussion that states continue to bearmuch responsibility for the communi-cation competence of future genera-tions as well as for the cultivation ofindividual languages and the linguisticheritage of the human species. The fact,examined in several papers at the con-ference, that Japanese and German areunder pressure especially in scienceand economy, illustrates by way of ex-ample that economic globalization hasprofound consequences for the world’slanguages and for national and inter-national institutions charged with thedesign and maintenance of languageregimes.

Held on the premises of GakushuinUniversity, the symposium was sup-ported by the Japan Foundation. Theproceedings will be published in duecourse.

“The Economic Impact of Nanotech-nology in the EU and Japan”

(Tokyo, September 30, 2005)

Nanotechnology is one of those fieldsthat interact with a number of indus-tries and other technologies – be it biol-ogy, biotechnology, material science,and others. The final economic impactof nanotechnology can scarcely bejudged at the moment since the devel-opment has only started to take-off.

This symposium, the first in a rowof DIJ symposia on Japan’s future in-dustries, was organized in cooperationwith the EU-Japan Center for Industri-al Cooperation and the consultingcompany AAIPX. About 100 peoplefrom science and industry came to theKeidanren Kaikan to listen to lecturesdealing with questions as to how nano-technology can be defined, where itspotentials lie, and how knowledgefrom research is transferred to busi-ness.

The speakers were designated spe-cialists from the field: Tim Harper isthe founder and Executive Director ofEuropean NanoBusiness Association;Teruyuki Nakazawa is a Corporate Ex-ecutive Technical Advisor for the Inno-vation Center of Mitsubishi Corpora-tion (MC), Jens Greiser is StrategicMarketing Manager of FEI Company, amaker of Nanotech tools and sponsorof the event. Herve Andre Durandserves as Managing Director of AAIPXLtd. and was Investment Associate ofthe Technology Team of UBS Capital.Billy Harkin is CEO of ‘Science Ven-tures’ and the author of the “Commer-cializing IP Commercialization” sec-tion of the UK Patent Office’s “AHandbook of Intellectual PropertyManagement 2004”.

The presentations can be down-loaded from the DIJ homepage(www.dijtoky.org). For further ques-tions, please contact Andreas Moerke(moerke@dijtokyo.org).

“Management: Japan and Germany”

(Tokyo, September 30 – October 1,2005/Osaka, October 5–6, 2005)

This year, more than 800 events aretaking place all over Japan as part ofthe year “Germany in Japan 2005/06”.Our international symposium was oneof these. It focused on the economy,corporate management and society,and renowned researchers in these ar-eas were invited to attend the sympo-sium. We questioned today’s businessmanagement and looked at the solu-tions required for current problemswithin this context. To do so, the Ger-man and the Japanese side had agreedon two main topics: “Business Strate-gies and Corporate Governance” and“Competition between Companieswithin the EU: Mergers and Acquisi-tions”, which were presented by sever-al researchers from Germany and Ja-pan.

This ambitious event – repeatingthe program in Tokyo and in Osaka –was realized as a cooperation projectbetween a number of organizations:foremost the Japanese Association forManagement Science, the Japanese Re-search Association for German Man-agement Science, the German Associa-tion of University Professors ofManagement, the German Chamber ofIndustry and Commerce in Japan and,of course, the German Institute for Jap-anese Studies.

The publication of the lectures willappear soon. Further information canbe obtained from Andreas Moerke(moerke@dijtokyo.org).

Panel on Japanese Economy

(Mainz, August 29, 2005)

The event – jointly organized by theGerman Institute for Japanese Studies,the Johannes Gutenberg UniversityMainz, the local Chamber of Industryand Commerce and DJW – aimed tointroduce the latest developments ofthe Japanese economy. Speakers fromacademe (including Werner Pascha,Duisburg-Essen University, AndreasMoerke and René Haak, both from theGerman Institute for Japanese Studies),consulting/supporting organizations(Kerstin Teicher, DJW, Wilhelm Wil-

DIJ Newsletter OCTOBER 2005 5

helm Meemken, Ecos) and the businessworld (Elisabeth Stich, Reh-Kender-mann) shed light on aspects of invest-ment, consumer goods, and even thelabor market in Japan.

4th International Convention of Asia

Scholars (ICAS)

(Shanghai, August 20–24, 2005)

According to the organizers, morethan 1200 participants, half of themfrom Asia, had registered to take partin one of the 250 scheduled panels. TheDIJ was represented by Isa Ducke, whogave a presentation on “Online andOffline Activism in Social MovementNetworks in Japan and Korea” as partof a panel on “Modernization and NewSocial Movements in Asia.” The orga-nizers, Iris Wieczorek and ThomasKern from the Institute of Asian Affairs(IFA, Hamburg) had not only preparedan introduction into the topic but alsocreated a set of key questions that allparticipants addressed. A lively dis-cussion of these questions was possiblebecause all presenters kept to a stricttime schedule.

While about 40% of the panels weresubmitted as a set, many individualpapers were grouped in full-day mega-panels. Some participants only mettheir fellow panelists half-way throughtheir presentation – perhaps becausethe wonderful Shanghai Museum wasonly two stations away.

The next ICAS conference will beheld in Kuala Lumpur in 2007.

11th International Conference of

the European Association for Japa-

nese Studies (EAJS)

(Vienna, August 31 – September 03,2005)

This year members of the EAJS gath-ered for their 11th International Confer-ence in Vienna. The meeting’s regulartriennial rhythm had deliberately beencut short to ensure that the meetingcoincided with the 2005 Japan-EU Yearof People to People Exchanges. Expect-ed synergetic effects could mainly beseen in the conference’s social programwith the city of Vienna being a cultur-ally attractive meeting spot for Ja-panologists this late summer: the Mu-seum of Applied Arts (MAK), forexample, opened its inspiring exhibi-

tion on “UAAAA!!!! MANGA” to coin-cide with the conference’s start.

The EAJS conference’s academicprogram consisted of eight sections,touching upon geography, linguistics,literature, arts, sociology, economics,history and religion in some 140 pan-els. DIJ staff actively attended two ofthese sections: Andreas Moerke pre-sented his paper on “Usability of Japa-nese Corporate Data for Marketing” inthe section on economics and economichistory. The main focus was on thequestion of how to use company data,released in annual reports and data-bases, in order to analyze structures ofmarket development and companystrategies. The section on history, poli-tics, and international relations sawtwo panels organized by DIJ research-ers. With her panel on “Nationalismand Gender in Japanese and GermanWomen’s Magazines during WWII”,Andrea Germer initiated a lively ex-change of views on how women weredepicted in times of war. She presentedher own research on this topic in a pa-per titled “Nippon Fujin and NSFrauenwarte: The Logic of Female Col-laboration in WWII”. Gabriele Vogt’spanel on “Romantic Ryūkyū in Oki-nawan Politics” aimed at sheddinglight on the interdependence structureof history, identity and politics from anexplicitly interdisciplinary point ofview. She contributed to the panel witha paper on “Political Affairs and theContemporary Use of the Myth ofRyūkyūan Pacifism”.

More details on the EAJS confer-ence program can be found online athttp://www.eajs.org. The EAJS 12th In-ternational Conference will be held inLecce / Italy in 2008.

Edgar Franz: Philipp Franz von Sie-bold and Russian Policy and Actionon Opening Japan to the West inthe Middle of the Nineteenth Cen-tury (Japan and Europe. HistoricalRelations and Comparative Stud-ies), Munich: Iudicium, 2005, 235 p.,ISBN 3-89129-871-4, € 28.30

Edgar Franz deserves credit for havingbeen the first to use Siebold’s privatepapers and manuscripts to provide adetailed analysis of his influence onRussia’s policy on opening up Japan.Franz proves that Siebold’s intimateknowledge of Japan and his sensitiveattitude to the Japanese mentality werecrucial to Russian negotiations. Subse-quently Russia was the first foreign na-

tion to succeed in concluding a treatywith Japan that included establishingtrade relations between the two nations.It has been possible to verify Siebold’ssignificance for the modernization of Ja-pan, the political dimension of Japan’sactivities and Siebold’s great influenceon the opening of Japan for trade andnavigation.

Constantin von Brandenstein-Zeppelin(President of the Siebold-Gesellschaft

Würzburg e.V.)

Florian Coulmas: Hiroshima. Ge-schichte und Nachgeschichte (Hiro-shima, History and Aftermath).München: C.H. Beck, 2005. 138 p.,ISBN 3-406-52797-3, € 9.90.

Hiroshima – the name of the city be-came a symbol of pending destructionof humankind. Why were the nuclearbombs dropped? Who suffered? Who

CONFERENCE REPORTS

DIJ PUBLICATIONS

6 DIJ Newsletter OCTOBER 2005

benefited? And what happened to thesurvivors? In the face of the threat tothe survival of the species these ques-tions were pushed into the back-ground. They are the subject of thisbook.

Coulmas examines the history ofthis human catastrophe and the mythsspun around it. Expounding the moraldilemma of the deployment of the nu-clear bombs, he demonstrates how U.S.censorship during the occupation afterthe war resulted in a one-sided remem-brance of the history of Hiroshima tothis very day. For reviews see www.dij-tokyo.org.

05/1 Harald Dolles/ Sten Söderman:Globalization of Sports – The Caseof Professional Football and its In-ternational Management Challeng-es.

05/2 Isa Ducke/Andreas Moerke: Ag-ing Population, Knowledge Spill-over and Civil Society.

05/3 Harald Conrad/Viktoria Hein-dorf: Farewell to the Seniority Prin-ciple? Aging Workforces and theRestructuring of Japanese Compen-sation Practices

05/4 Andreas Moerke/Simon Ka-mann: Herausforderungen des de-mographischen Wandels: Fall-beispiel Automobilindustrie [Chal-lenges of Demographic Change:The Automobile Industry – A CaseStudy]

Takashi Nakanishi: 60 sai kara nobo1 han techo1 [Crime preventionpocketbook for the 60 plus]. Tokyo:Shueisha shinsho, 2004. ISBN 4-08-720236-4 C0236, 203 p. 660 Yen.

中西崇、『60 歳からの防犯手帳』、集英

社新書 , 2004

Can things get much worse? Parasites,otaku (freaky loners), nīto, and far toofew babies: a society in shambles. Nextyear, Japan’s population will peak be-fore going on the decline. And in 2007,an unprecedented three million work-ers will retire; the erstwhile baby-boomers. The ranks of the elderly areswelling rapidly, posing any number ofproblems ranging from healthcare to

pensions and infrastructure require-ments. And now this: Japan’s last assetis under threat, its legendary safety.

Reduced to a legend, it is pessi-mists up and down the country howlwith trepidation. The tip of the icebergis called rifōmu sagi or home renovationscam, a new line of business that tar-gets senior citizens who are taken in byfraudulent salesmen to sign contractsfor unnecessary and overpriced re-pairs. In a country where old age stillenjoys a measure of respect the wick-edness of such crimes is keenly felt andmeets with predictable indignation.

While the picture painted by somecommentators who see Japan slidingdown into an abyss of crime, disorderand moral decay seems a bit over-drawn, there is no denying that thedrawn-out recession is taking its usualtoll, a rise in crime rates of all kinds.Some observers are cashing in on thedoomsday boom, Takashi Nakanishi, acrime prevention consultant of IzumiKeibihoshō Co., being one of them.

His book under review here sellsquite well. It is directed at the elderlytelling them what they must do if theywant to avoid the many risks of fallingvictim to one of the thugs lurking be-hind every corner. Pick pocketing, bag-snatching and plain theft are just whathe calls ‘classical crimes,’ and certainlynot the most ominous. Robbery andbodily injury have increased as havevarious forms of fraud. Gullible oldpeople get swindled out of large sumsof money, are sold unnecessary and un-wanted merchandise by hawkers, andtalked into signing immoral contractsby unscrupulous businessmen. Theyfall prey to loan sharks and are milkedby financial tricksters. Many of themdon’t know how to defend themselves.

The leitmotiv of Nakanishi’s admo-nition is that people above 65 are themost rapidly growing group of crimevictims because their mindset belongsto a Japan that no longer exists, if itever did. While his recommendationsoften read as if they were directed atinfantile simpletons, the problem headdresses is real. The number of elder-ly people who lose to various degreesthe ability to judge everyday affairsgrows steadily, and so does that ofthose who are ready to take advantageof them. Nakanishi also notes thatthere has been a sharp increase not justof the elderly crime victims but of eld-erly delinquents, too.

All told, this is a social problem ag-gravated by economically hard times.Many elderly people are lonely, out oftouch, and no longer well integratedinto society. Although his main con-cern is to counsel, Nakanishi is wellaware of this fact. While some of the

precautions he advocates seem exces-sive, he emphasizes more than once theimportance of social networks as themost effective means of crime preven-tion. Clearly, he has a point. Its practi-cal value aside, Nakanishi’s book callsattention to the social challenge not tolet the growing number of single-per-son households undermine social co-hesion.

(Florian Coulmas)

Opening of the “Virtual Exhibitionof the DIJ’s Bando1 1 Collection” –from October 26, 2005, athttp://bando.dijtokyo.org

As part of the initiative “Germany inJapan 2005/2006” the “Virtual Exhibi-tion of the DIJ’s Bandō Collection”opened on October 26, 2005. The open-ing celebration was held jointly withthe opening of the exhibition “All menwill be brothers… German prisoners-of-war in Japan 1914–1920” (26. 10.05–08.11.05 at the German Culture Center,Tokyo). Welcoming addresses were giv-en by Gerhard Thiedemann, head ofCultural Affairs of the German Embas-sy, Professor Schepers, chairman of theOAG and Professor Coulmas, directorof the DIJ. Mr. van der Laan, son of aformer POW, presented an introductionto the OAG’s exhibition. The DIJ’s elec-tronic exhibition was presented by Ur-sula Flache and Claus Harmer. Invidedguests had the opportunity to viewboth exhibitions. The “Virtual Exhibi-tion of the DIJ’s Bandō Collection” isaccessible on the Internet.

On http://bando.dijtokyo.org youwill find:

• a virtual tour of the Bandō POWcamp with its barracks, restaurantsand the shopping quarter “Tapau-tau”;

• information about the theatre activ-ities: “a stage without actresses”;

• how music and gymnastics becamea bridge to the Japanese popula-tion;

• who won the “camp prize” duringthe “Exhibition of Graphic Art andHandicraft” in March 1918; and

• a database to browse or search thewhole Bandô collection.

The database and the virtual exhibitionwill be available in German and Japa-nese. The Bandō Collection held by theDIJ Library is thus made accessible tothe public. We are looking forward toyour visit at http://bando.dijtokyo.org!

WORKING PAPERS

BOOK REVIEW

EXHIBITON

DIJ Newsletter OCTOBER 2005 7

Personnel News

Barbara Altmiks, M.A., joined the ed-itorial team of the “ComprehensiveJapanese-German Dictionary” in Au-gust 2005. After finishing her studies ofJapanese History, Language and Liter-ature, and German Studies at the Ruhr-University in Bochum in 1994, Ms. Alt-miks first worked as a freelance trans-lator. Previously she was employed asa librarian at the Japonicum, a depart-ment of the North-Rhine WestphaliaInstitute of Languages, in Bochum.

Peter Backhaus joined the DIJ Hu-manities Section as a research fellow inSeptember 2005. After finishing hisM.A. at the Department of ModernJapanese Studies of Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf in March 2002,he was a postgraduate student and re-search fellow at Duisburg-Essen Uni-versity, Department of Modern Japa-nese Studies where he completed hisdoctorial thesis on Tokyo’s multilin-gual landscape in March 2005. FromAugust 2004 to February 2005 he was apostgraduate grant recipient at theGerman Institute for Japanese Studies.Contributing to the institute’s researchproject “Challenges of DemographicChange” Backhaus will deal with theimpacts of this phenomenon on lan-guage and communication practices inJapan.

Dr. Gabriele Vogt was elected as DIJstaff council representative on July 25,2005.

Ms. Meike Döscher-Mehrtens, whoworked at the DIJ since February 2002,left the institute at the end of September2005.

Dr. René Haak, Head of the economicsection and Deputy Director of DIJsince August 2002 left the institute inOctober 2005 to join the Federal Minis-try of Education and Research.

Dissertation Fellows

Thomas Büttner, Japanese Studies,History, History of East Asian Art,Ph.D. candidate at Heidelberg Univer-sity: “Elite Competition in Authoritari-an Regimes: Political Influence in the

OTHER MATTERS /OUTLOOK

Coffee break in the Bandô POW camp (picture from the DIJ Bandô Collection)

Main street in the Bandô POW camp (picture from the DIJ Bandô Collection)

8 DIJ Newsletter OCTOBER 2005

Imperial Rule Assistance Association”(October 2005−March 2006).

Klaus-Jochem Kecker, East Asian Econ-omy, Business Administration, Japa-nese History, Ph.D. candidate at theRuhr University, Bochum: “EconomicRegionalization in East Asia with Spe-cial Reference to Japan” (October 2005 –January 2006).

DIJ-Forum

Glenda Roberts (December 15, 2005)

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