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[asa29]

Would be grateful for someone to post the article / link to it here.

[concernedinakita]

Would be grateful for someone to post the article / link to it here.

It's in the Akita section of the Asahi Shimbun, so it's not online.

The article isn't going to raise any eyebrows. Comments from interviews with some students and teachers and then ends with the President's perspective on the situation.

Reading between the lines people should smell something rotten. But, then again, some may not.

The President may even think that everything will be okay now?

Those with no connection to AIU and who don't know the current situation will read it and say, "Nothing new here. Business as usual. Apparently the President didn't like some people and got rid of them."

[outsideadvisor]

Long ago, MaVirgi wrote: “I see your university is claiming a success. Could you explain by what standards?  If that success is the case, why were all faculty and staff recently asked to reapply for their positions as stated in the initial post?”

I might add another related question, in light of this public-funded university president’s recent claim that, by cutting 25% of the current teaching staff based on a rigorous evaluation system, his leadership will produce a higher quality education for the AIU charges, the students:

To what extent were students’ views of their experience in classroom courses with particular teachers a factor in the final decision making process? To what extent did student evaluations play a role in the recent decisions to renew (or not). Not enough, I gather. ...

I am not an AIU faculty member (and seeing all the suffering there, I count myself most fortunate in that regard). But I am a long time member of Akita teaching community. I know by this forum and credible word of mouth much about the recent events, and I have been following these posts to see which way the wind is blowing in our small corner of the world of Japanese higher education.

[concernedinakita]

No news yet on the help that Dr. Nakajima is giving to "those we regrettably could not hire".

Are we to assume that "no news" means no help?

Dr. Nakajima said, "I would like to offer as much assistance as possible in their efforts to seek employment elsewhere." Does the silence mean that no help is as much as he can offer?

 

[concernedinakita]

Gregory Clark Speaks Again:

The Japan Times
Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006

READERS IN COUNCIL
Zealots who attack their critics

By GREGORY CLARK
Vice President, Akita International UniversityAkita
A.E. Lamdon's Dec. 3 letter, "As alike as they are different," which is a response to my criticisms of Japan's rightwingers, would be reasonable if Lamdon himself did not seek to defend a group here in Japan that goes to extreme lengths to criticize those, such as myself, who oppose its self-promoting efforts to harass and file antidiscrimination suits against small Japanese business proprietors in areas where badly behaved foreigners have caused serious business losses.

Like Japan's ultra-rightists, this group will stop at nothing in its blogs and Web sites, including use of actionable material, to blacken the reputations of its critics. Like the ultra-rightists, it also goes for the jugular by attacking organizations that employ those critics. Indeed, it goes even further than the ultra-rightists since it refuses any right of reply to those attacks.

The group has recently sought to blacklist the university that employs me, claiming it discriminates against foreign teachers. Akita International University has the highest ratio of foreign to Japanese teachers of any university in Japan. Unlike any other university in Japan, it employs both foreigners and Japanese teachers on exactly the same contractual conditions leading to possible tenure. In the past the university rescued a large group of foreign teachers from unemployment when their former employer pulled out of Japan. And this is supposed to be antiforeigner discrimination?

It is time someone stood up to zealots who use the banner of antidiscrimination to attack critics and to promote themselves."

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/rc20061217a2.html

[heiwa]

Mr. Clark uses the term “rescue” when he refers to the way that AIU  -- in the guise of him, Mr. Nakajima, Mr. Yoshio, and others who had come to hold the local ken-cho’s cash -- employed the former MSUA faculty. Interesting use of language.

Rescue.

My pals who worked at MSUA and who were finally excluded from AIU’s future see it a little differently, and they tell me that, in fact, AIU was once their dream, too.

I know that they’d worked overtime, for years, to up higher ed in Akita, including lots of hard labor. There were even those days when the dream seemed really dead, and when these “chowderheads”  (isn’t that they way some observer put it?) ponied up their collective resources to make the dream live on ( they would have used their backs as a footbridge just to get one more year of that dream, for themselves, for students, for the community)

…and look, lo and behold things got to where they stand now, today.

“A quality university recognized as one of the quality universities in the world.” 

With all that beautiful building taking place out there in Yuwa. Things got to where they stand today. With each of those bright AIU students being cared for, being mentored, “educated” in the widest sense of the word, and so many of them now excitedly flying off to further enrichment in so many other corners of the globe.


Yet while my old buddies helped do that for AIU and for each of those students ever since the school first opened its doors, their dream was not to be. (Heard a rumor that even students recently became “confused” about the various versions of the dream swirling about. Is that true?)

Anyway. And then the Big Axe fell. And that was that. That is that.

The rescue.

[concernedinakita]

The Scandal at AIU needs to be exposed

As Gregory Clark, speaking about the "gaijin media in Japan", says: "They share the herd-instinct mentality of Japanese mainstream media that says if a scandal is not put there in front of their eyes, then it did not happen."

"For my pains, (referring to a scandal that he was trying to expose) I got a sharp, official slap over the knuckles from none other than Kiyoi-san, for seeking to highlight such filth and failing to mention that most Japanese were good, law-biding citizens. I replied saying that precisely because the good, law-abiding citizens of Japan, like her, did not want to expose this kind of filth, it would fester on for ever."

For further interesting reading see Clark's whole article at his website:
Rebutting Mikie Kiyoi’s Claims - No1 Shimbun/Opinion - November 30, 1999
http://www.gregoryclark.net/rebkiyoi.html

[concernedinakita]

Although the replies to the ongoing ISSUES at AIU have quiet during the end of the year break, the President and Vice Presidents should not think that everything is okay. Nor should they think that this issue has gone away. Governor Terata may not be able to "get involved" because he is afraid of his political future. (Hopefully, this will not become a political issue. If it does, that could be the demise of the school. Those of us who are concerned do not want that to happen! We want AIU to continue, to prosper.)

National newspapers are said to be still investigating the situation.

Students are still unsettled and upset.

A majority of faculty members and staff are not happy with the situation.

Rumors of a lawsuit continue.

Suggestions of a possible investigation into the financial matters of AIU also continue to circulate.

This forum regarding the major problems at Akita International University now has over 11,750 views.

None of this is good for AIU's worldwide "reputation" or "status" (things the present administration seems most concerned about).

[heiwa]

The fun never ends at AIU, even during the holiday season. This missive just in from a former colleague over "there":


...

Many famous faculty applied to AIU for the recent search, part of the illustrious 400. But some big names dropped from the employment process. What was the impact of the forum I wonder?


Yes, you're correct, students are disturbed, really angry. I heard from a group  that for the president's class last spring, he received from many a negative evaluation. You know the great classroom evaluation system we have at AIU......I'm surprised he even does it, and then his majesty responded to those critics by a blanket e-mail to the whole class. he scolded them for their evaluation! Students also said he's very unfair in assigning them grades in their classes, the grading criteria for evaluation aren't clear, he has favorites who can miss classes or sleep but still getting high grades. Well you know how it goes when you can do as yu please. This is everyone's nightmare not just teachers'!!!

[concerned8]

Concerned8  The noise on this forum over the wrongs of AIU management reminds me of the story about academic pygmies wading into arguments that are beyond their intellectual depth. 

At first they splutter. 

Then they drown.


There were good arguments against the way AIU as a fledgling, pioneering university has gone about organizing itself. For example:

1. It could have prepared its employment contacts with the people it inherited from MSUA with more care.

 But against this is the fact that it had to be established in a hurry by some very busy people.  A major reason for the hurry was the politically-imposed need to make sure that the MSUA people with families and houses in Akita were not left unemployed for any length of time (these are precisely the people who are now using these facts as proof of AIU cruelty in asking them three years later to reorganise their lives, families and houses) .

2. AIU could have been more tolerant in renewing those contracts.  Many of the MSUA teachers were experienced and clearly had good relations both with the community and with their students.

But if these people wanted to keep the employment granted them rather graciously, then surely a first requirement would have been to show some cooperation with their employers. Instead,  they set out with determination to refuse to accept any changes in their MSUA ways of teaching and curricula. They seemed to think that AIU was simply a continuation of MSUA.  In fact, it was a brandnew university with very different students and management.

In particular, few seem to realize the harm they did to themselves by a viciously abusive two hour confrontation with their director when he was seeking a minor curriculum change early in the new regime. 
It was clear then that they had decided that they, not their superiors, should be running things. Can they be surprised if the superiors, after waiting patiently for several years, decide otherwise, particularly since some of the superiors know as much if not more than they do about language teaching and learning?

 After more than ten years in Japan and alleged love for Akita not one of the MSUA English-teaching group has bothered to learn Japanese.   This says volumes about their self-contented, we-know-it-all,  stick-in-the-mud conservatism. Quite apart from whether or not knowing Japanese helps in teaching English to Japanese, how can anyone who takes any pride in his qualifications as a language teaching professional manage to spend ten years in a country without even trying to learn its language. 

3. AIU could have eased up on the PhD requirement for continued employment. 

However, it faces the weird Education Ministry demand for more teaching staff, even PE instructors, to have higher degrees.  As well, it will want to be using many of these new hires in its planned graduate school, where PhDs will be needed for Ministry approval.

And so on.

But instead of reasoned debate over these points, all with some validity, all we have heard is spluttering, and much of it very abusive.  The second vice-president, Yoshio, in charge mainly of administration, is a particular victim. This is a man seconded from the Education Ministry to help set up the university and whose bilingualism and ability to produce the reams of documents in both Japanese and English (rare in any senior bureaucrat) is crucial to keeping this experimental bilingual university turning over.  Yet he is being criticized by a bunch of people whose inadequacy in Japanese is so pathetic they have to beg him and others on the long-suffering Japanese staff to translate even their tax documents and medical certificates for them. A little bit of humility, please.

The other vice-president, Clark, is another victim of the scattershot attacks, despite the fact that most of the complainers know, or should know, that he had pushed hard for an approach that would have eased the contract termination problem, and at a late stage had even succeeded to some extent.  Not enough to save the day, perhaps, but he did try.

His is accused of only having a MA (Oxon, 1956). Fortunately someone has pointed out that it was rare for anyone of that generation to want to waste time on the PhD game (Ronald Dore, one of the most prominent UK scholars working on Japan, has only a BA).

But that is not all. Just read his website and you will see how when he was on the point of completing a very difficult four year PhD on the Japanese economy (including a year of advanced economics and year’s field work in Japan) he ran into intense political pressure determined to keep him out of Australian academia because of his opposition to the Vietnam War.  Of course, if the critics think that pressure was justified they should say so and we might then understand where they are coming from today.

There is more.  AIU has been careful to say it seeks people with PhDs OR EQUIVALENT QUALIFICATIONS.  This is usually taken to imply publications of PhD standard (most of today’s PhDs would have trouble getting anything published, of any standard).  Clark’s 1968 book on Chinese foreign policies included two pieces of research (the origins of Sino-Indian border war and the origins of the Sino-Soviet dispute) that were path-breaking, and to this day have not been refuted. Does that qualify as an equivalent qualification?

He has also written extensively on Japan and its policies, including a unique theory to explain the Japanese value system and its similarities with some other systems.  But since most of the pygmies cannot read Japanese we cannot expect them to know anything about that. One of them was even so ignorant as to assume that from the translated title of one of Clark’s books – Gokai sareru Nihonjin (the Misunderstood Japanese) – that the book was somehow an attempt to flatter the Japanese.  If said pygmy could even open the cover to read the chapter headings he would have discovered that much of the book is a blistering criticism of Japan’s bubble mentality and its foreign policy, its territorial dispute with the USSR especially.


We note that the ultimate in pygmies – the crowd who try to promote themselves as warriors against anti-foreign discrimination in Japan by persecuting small enterprises which try to protect themselves from theft and physical damage by badly-behaved foreigners – have also bought into the debate with anti-Clark material.   Their revelation?  That he was in fact a crony of the president because on his website he mentions how back in 1970 the president had complimented him on his research into the origins of the Sino-Soviet dispute and that he (Clark) thinks that this, plus a subsequent occasional 5-6 meetings at various conferences (both have a background in China research), was a reason he was asked to be vice-president. 

Wow!  Some cronyism! Particularly since Clark’s views on China are diametrically opposed to those of the president. That is bound to make them firm buddies. But then you cannot expect intellectual pygmies to know that academics might respect each other even when their views are different.

Nor can you expect them to realize that the facts that Clark has thirty years experience in Japanese university education, including six years as university president, and is fluent in several of the languages AIU plans teach,  might also have been more relevant than alleged cronyism as reasons why he might have been asked to be vice-president.

The attacks on the president himself show the same immaturity. He has more academic qualifications than all the pygmies combined.  True,  his management style is somewhat top-down and unconventional.  But that could have something to do with the fact that he had spent many years fighting the old, and clearly bankrupt, style of anti-topdown Japanese university management. As well, he has had to create a university single-handed in less than three years. People with that experience tend to remain single-handed, at least for a while. Students are said not to evaluate highly his lectures.  How many university presidents even deign to give lectures.  And so on.

I suggest the pygmies try to get back to dry ground before it is too late. They are unlikely to sink the AIU.  But they seem determined to do everything to sink themselves.   Their abusive posts seem only to have hardened the determination of the authorities to seek their replacements.

True, any idiot is free to abuse blog freedom by putting up an abusive posts.  If it makes him feel good,  so be it. But one wonders what other and more balanced AIU people who may lose careers as a result feel about it all.










 

[taikibansei]

Concerned8 returns from an extended hiatus with another spirited defense of Gregory Clark (oh, and 2-3 sentences about that other vice president guy...).  A number of gems distributed along the way:

A major reason for the hurry was the politically-imposed need to make sure that the MSUA people with families and houses in Akita were not left unemployed for any length of time (these are precisely the people who are now using these facts as proof of AIU cruelty in asking them three years later to reorganise their lives, families and houses) .

So you're saying you employed the MSUA people as some form of goodwill gesture...and not because they were needed to serve as your EFL department for the first three years of AIU's history?  I guess your decision to retain the MSUA-designed EFL curriculum (as delineated in your application for "special university status" submitted to Japan's Education Ministry) is an act of kindness as well...? 

In particular, few seem to realize the harm they did to themselves by a viciously abusive two hour confrontation with their director when he was seeking a minor curriculum change early in the new regime.  It was clear then that they had decided that they, not their superiors, should be running things. Can they be surprised if the superiors, after waiting patiently for several years, decide otherwise, particularly since some of the superiors know as much if not more than they do about language teaching and learning?

Yes, as a former administrator myself, I always hated it when "the staff" had the audacity to respond.  How dare they have opinions of their own!? 

By the way, on the first page of this long, sad thread, Wordsmith100 mentions such a meeting...and others like it.  People accepting positions at AIU have now been warned....

After more than ten years in Japan and alleged love for Akita not one of the MSUA English-teaching group has bothered to learn Japanese.   

I agree--no excuse for this failure to learn the language!  Of course, your solution--i.e., hiring 30+ non-Japanese speakers from outside Japan--seems a bit, well, contradictory, to say the least.

3. AIU could have eased up on the PhD requirement for continued employment. 

However, it faces the weird Education Ministry demand for more teaching staff, even PE instructors, to have higher degrees.

Right, they all need to have the MA/MS.  Unless I'm mistaken--I'm a Japanese reader (and PhD holder) myself, please direct me to this Monkasho directive demanding PhDs for everyone.

Finally, a repeat of my (unanswered) questions for Concerned8 from page 1:

In addition to Mavirgi's excellent questions, I'd also be concerned about the wording in their job ad.  For example:

"Subject to the results of the Education Ministry’s credential assessment, the job grade and/or the courses to teach might be changed. "

Potential applicants need to be aware that the Education Ministry (Monkasho) does not normally conduct "credential assessments" of faculty.  On the contrary, most Japanese universities simply inform Monkasho of new hires--this information is not evaluated, nor does Monkasho decide (or even advise) on faculty job grades and courses taught.  (In the heavily unionized environment of most Japanese universities, the very idea of such an attempt is laughable.) 

AIU, as a university under probation, is a special case.  Still, by itself, this is not necessarily a red flag.  However, we also have this:

"The contract includes a four-month probation period. AIU conducts an annual performance evaluation of its faculty and staff members, the results of which will be reflected in an annual salary adjustment and in consideration of any contract renewal." 

Unlike some countries overseas, contracts in Japan are inviolate, enforced fully even in the case of foreigners.  This, of course, makes the above conditions both unusual and more than a bit problematic. First, probation periods (when you can be fired immediately and for any reason) are almost unheard of in Japan for university faculty positions.  Second, what's the point of agreeing to a contract that allows your salary to be altered (lowered) at the whim of the administration, that (depending on the results of the after-the-fact "credential assessment") can leave you with a completely different faculty rank and course subject area than you agreed to originally?  I know of only one other university in Japan which offers such a combination of conditions--and I wouldn't work there either.

Furthermore, Concerned8 adds this singular statement:

"AIU hires all staff, Japanese AND foreign, on a three year contract basis, with the possibility of tenure to follow."

However, the actual job ad says something quite different: "Appointments will be made on an initial three-year (maximum) fixed-term contract basis (with possibility of renewal), beginning on April 1, 2007."

I.e., no mention of tenure (the Japanese version is even clearer on this), and indeed it is my understanding that President Nakajima is firmly against the institution of tenure.  Has there been a change of heart since your most recent ads were posted (on September 8)?  Do tell.

[sonkei]

Concerned8  The noise on this forum over the wrongs of AIU management reminds me of the story about academic pygmies wading into arguments that are beyond their intellectual depth. 
<snip>
But since most of the pygmies cannot read Japanese we cannot expect them to know anything about that. 
<snip>
If said pygmy could even open the cover to read the chapter headings
<snip>
We note that the ultimate in pygmies –
<snip>
But then you cannot expect intellectual pygmies to know that academics might respect each other even when their views are different.
<snip>
The attacks on the president himself show the same immaturity. He has more academic qualifications than all the pygmies combined.
<snip>
I suggest the pygmies try to get back to dry ground before it is too late. They are unlikely to sink the AIU.  But they seem determined to do everything to sink themselves.   Their abusive posts seem only to have hardened the determination of the authorities to seek their replacements.

True, any idiot is free to abuse blog freedom by putting up an abusive posts.  If it makes him feel good,  so be it. But one wonders what other and more balanced AIU people who may lose careers as a result feel about it all.

As a long term resident of Akita (and not connected to AIU) I'd like to express my dismay upon reading the recent posting by Concerned8. I find it so incredibly SAD that a vice president of the university has stooped this low. Amidst all the politics and bickering it seems he has completely forgotten that he is dealing with fellow human beings.  The "pygmies" are real people. They have real families, real lives, real struggles, they are flesh and blood. And without them--faculty members who  have various opinions and philosophies--a university cannot exist and flourish.

As a parent I am also sad. I used to dream of sending my own kids to the international university in akita. That dream is long gone.

What ever happened to the idea that institutions of higher learning ought to be run by people who are positive role models for the students?

When the top leaders of a school treat those working below them as less than human, I believe something has gone VERY very wrong.

Is this really the model we want to give our students for human relationships?

Is this the way we want to teach our young people to deal with others?

Personally, I find it almost unbelievable that a person writing the kind of article posted recently is in a leadership position at a place where young lives are being trained for the future. As a parent I could never in a million years think of sending my child to a university where this is the example they are to observe and follow.

There is so much more to education than degrees, titles and a list of accomplishments that makes one look good on paper. Universities need leaders who have high ethical and moral standards and are able to model them.

[hfeige]

Indeed, this is all quite sad. One can only lament for the students who are caught in the middle.  For the families of those who have spent the last ten years establishing this school, who now find their lives in turmoil.  And for the great land of Japan.

[disappointed]

I would like to respond to Concerned8. I am undoubtedly one of the persons who this “concerned” 8 person has lumped under two banners, one for former MSUA faculty members now teaching at AIU whom he blames as being the source of all of AIU’s current woes, and one for that group he terms as “pygmy” for not having learned enough Japanese to satisfy his intellectual and social demands.

As a person who is admittedly uncomfortable working quietly within an evolving university environment where the state and structure of management-staff relations was repeatedly “dictated” to us, I routinely have expressed opinions. (After over 25 years in university education, it did surprise me that “superiors” could act with so little apparent regard for the opinions of the majority of their highly paid coworkers.) I did occasionally cry foul when I sensed that the “innovative” top-down approach was one in which academic bullying and power harassment and no or little effort at mutual respect seemed to become the norm.

Like AIU colleagues, I have also been vocal on other more obvious work-focused matters, from policy to governance issues and to what concerned8 may see as minor but which I consider paramount: the curriculum structure of the course program that I am teaching in. For expressing my opinion on virtually any topic it now seems I shpuld be labeled a “pygmy.”

At the same time, and without a shred of concrete evidence, we “pygmies” have also been accused of abuse as slanderers on this forum of the good name and intentions of various AIU “superiors.” (Of that some teachers may be guilty, having been essentially fired from their current jobs and shuttled out of a community where they have very deep roots, based on what they see as a breach of contract and dubious justification.)

But let me remind Concerned8 that there are many critics of his AIU “superiors,” people who include embittered former AIU employees, current AIU faculty and staff members of various AIU programs beyond EAP, and many CONCERNED others from the Akita community and the Japanese university world at large, especially those who bring well developed views to this discussion on the way that the AIU model may do a disservice to student education or how it may be applied to their own work situations.

I might also add that there are quite a few people left in the world (not just we pygmies) who are simply disgusted by any injustice, no matter what good excuses are given for that. What is clear to many, especially to those not in the admin’s good graces, is that a hard-working group of teachers at AIU were (mis)led by the whole bunch of our “superiors” to believe that work in and for the Akita community, dedication to AIU students via an “education-focused philosophy” and a demonstrated interest toward scholarship in our respective fields would be viewed positively and rewarded with a renewal of contracts. In the end, and contrary to our expectations, each of us was either not given a contract offer, or given a purely symbolic offer with much reduced compensation (& to work outside the very program that we had worked hard to set up).

To add insult to injury, we were told that we were NOT QUALIFIED to do the jobs that we were hired three years ago to do, and that newcomers had been chosen because of superior qualifications, our previous – & current -- hands on experience, and seemingly significant student, peer and the administrations’ evaluations notwithstanding.  But maybe I do not understand. After all, I am an “intellectual pygmy.” (Thanks again, Concerned8, for all your effort to recognize the part played by the AIU vice presidents to ameliorate the sad situation.)


A final note, on Japanese language study and its obvious importance to Concerned8:  Since I have been accused, with others, of “pygmy” Japanese language development, I should mention that, in the EAP program at least, the two teachers most fluent in Japanese were not offered contracts to teach again in EAP. In the Basic Education program, two of the non-Japanese teachers with the highest Japanese language proficiency and most comprehensive experience in Japan were also let go.
Although Concerned8 has used this thread and other venues to castigate many of us teachers about our developing Japanese language skills, it is clear that the AIU administration is conflicted in this area. If being fluent in Japanese is seen as crucial, why not just hire all Japanese for Akita International University? If being fluent is crucial, why not advertise it as such? If crucial, why not provide intensive Japanese lessons for all non-Japanese faculty members?

One aspect of this whole discussion about the importance of fluency in Japanese (overly emphasized at a supposed international university where all courses are advertised as being in English?) that Concerned8 seems unconcerned about is the fact that, while the teachers like me who dedicated themselves to their students’ lives and to other scholarly projects admittedly haven’t become fluent in Japanese, many of them (us) are perfectly functional, meaning that we are able to communicate. But from Concerned8’s diatribe, it would seem that communication is secondary to a sort of intellectual rite of passage. If communication were the primary interest, then Concerned8 might have taken more time to investigate the social connections that we “pygmies” have developed in the Akita community, for all of our linguistic shortcomings. He might also have an interest in the fact that while we teachers may not be as conversant as he would like, our family members most definitely are. And it has often been our wives and children who have interacted most often with local community members while we teachers have busy at the university, both working with our students and helping to enhance the English-language environment of AIU. (Those family members have essentially been fired from AIU and the Akita community as well. So much for their language fluency and social connections!)

As I mentioned earlier, since I am -- to the superior minded Concerned8, anyway -- a pygmy, there is probably much in what I have written (or not written) that still justifies my being treated with utter contempt by the institution that I have served with so much heart.  If there is anything that I have learned in this recent debacle, it is that “superiors” like the ones that Concerned8 mentions with such respect certainly live by rules that the rest of us -- "pygmies" -- will always have a hard time emulating. God save us from his river!

[11113567]

Replying here just keeps this topic at the top of the list, letting more people read about AIU and further damaging its remaining reputation.

Meanwhile, Gregory Clark is holding forth at the Japan Times about English language education in Japan, apparently trying to make himself appear qualified to dismiss the ESL faculty at AIU, but actually just advertising his own lack of expertise in the field. If you don't believe me check out http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20061230gc.html or search the Japan Times opinion page http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion.html for his article of December 30th.