As a result of the increase in population, the world would encounter several problems. Two of which would be the shortage of food and massive consumption of energy. It is expected that developing countries would need more energy to develop their economy. The massive consumption of energy would be accompanied by increased pollution of the environment. This would not only affect human’s health, but also the Earth’s ecology. For example, burning of fossil fuels generates carbon dioxide, thus causing global warming. The usage of energy is necessary in the development of a countries’ economy, but the consequence of such massive consumption of energy would be pollution, which would in turn affect the increasing population.

     China, which is currently developing rapidly, is facing serious environmental problems at present. One of the most serious problem would be air pollution. In the 1980s, acid rain was seen only in part of south eastern China, however, nearly 30% of the country is suffering from acid rain nowadays. The economical losses which resulted from acid rain and dust in 1995 reached 2% of the entire GDP. (USD 13 billion) Besides, in recent years, 7.4 million people die in China annually caused by air pollution. The major source of air pollutants is considered to be massive consumption of inferior coal. China depends 80% of their power generation on coal. Superior coals are found mainly in the north- west region of China hence additional transportation cost will be incurred to bring them to other regions. Although there are several high technological powerhouses in China, most of the old powerhouses can not afford the installation cost. The prospect for spreading is not so good due to the high cost of construction.

     The Chinese government has set the target to expand their economics of scale 4 times larger than that of 2000 by 2020. As for the demand of energy in 2020, it is expect to increase by 3 times of that in 2004, which will be equivalent to the total amount of energy that America and Japan consumed in 2000. Along with the consumption of energy, the generation of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide is said to be doubled. As for population, it is expected to exceed 14 billion by 2020. Due to the forecasted boom in the 2020, Chinese economy and population, the demand of energy, and thus the generation of toxic substances will increase dramatically.

     Most of developing countries are facing the similar problem as China. Development of economy brings increase of population and consumption of energy, and these result in serious environmental problems such as pollution and global warming. Currently, the major source of energy is fossil fuels in which oil occupies a huge proportion. It is expected that the demand of fossil fuels would increase continuously worldwide. Also, it is said that world fossil fuel resources would be used up by the 22nd century. To establish efficient energy system and to develop new energy sources to replace fossil fuels are the future tasks of human.

     In Japan, the creation of ubiquitous network society is a national project that government and companies which engage in IT industries are implementing. Both of them put their effort to achieve it by 2010. Speaking of the movement of government, they announced 3 policies regarding to UNS. Firstly, maintenance of ubiquitous network society. It aims to achieve 100% of broadband coverage rate by 2010. The broadband coverage rate in 2008 is nearly 90%, so it would be achieved soon. Secondly, to put IC tag into the circulation. As the first step of it, it is expected that distribution industries would introduce IC tag to manage products instead of bar cord system. Thirdly, secure safe network society. What people are worried the most would be “The security of network.” In Japan, so many accidents, such as leakage of information, are happened by computer virus or hacking. Ubiquitous network society points the situation that everything is connected through network, therefore the damage will be great if some information are leaked on network.

Speaking of companies, major household manufactures have already invented some digital appliances which can connect to network. Although these products are very expensive for now, it is expected that no-digitalized products would be manufactured in the future. As a way of measuring the degree how much ubiquitous network society has developed for now, we can do it from analyzing coverage rate of internet, digital appliance, and mobile phone. In 2008, the coverage of internet is nearly 90%, digital appliance is 8-10%, mobile phone is 84%. It was in 1990s that the target of achieving UNS by 2010 was announced for the first time in Japan, the present degree is less enough that we have expected. Japanese government and companies would need to appeal people of some advantages by ubiquitous network society more and more.

     What are the main advantages? It would be creating more convenient lifestyle and economical benefits. As for the lifestyle, it is said that technologies, such as computer, network, and robot would cover most of human’s tasks. More developed IT would make it possible to communicate with someone who lives far more smoothly. As for the economical benefits, it is expected that the IT market in 2010 will be 3 times larger than that of 2003. The potential economical benefits which would be affected by UNS in the Japanese economy is said to be more than 1.5 trillion Singapore dollars. In the developed ubiquitous network society, small and middle- class companies have equal chances to search for new markets on network as big companies. Therefore, the growth of small, middle class of companies is expected.

     From these things, we can see our society will be transforming as the IT develops. Our lifestyle would be changing as well, we could not imagine how our society, lifestyle is in 50 years. It is sure that the development of IT brings us not only benefits, but also some bad things. As you know, the coverage of mobile phone and PC for young children caused failure of eyesight, a drop of scholastic ability, and serious situation of bullying in school. The development of society always has potential to cause social problem. Hence, we need to be awake to good aspects and bad aspects which would be brought by developments.

reference video

It is future Japanese house by Panasonic, which is able to controll with network.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IXLXuhXUVI

     According to the report from World Health Organization (WHO), the number of dengue cases in 2007 has increased especially in Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand as compared to 2006. As of July 2007, Indonesia has reported 102,556 dengue cases as compared to 87,470 cases over the same period 2006; an increase of 17%. With 9,578 cases, Myanmar has reported an increase of 10%, and with 27,852 cases, Thailand has reported an increase of 6%.  Many other countries in Asia and the Pacific are also facing an increase in dengue. As for Singapore, more than 1300 of Dengue cases have reported within January to June in 2007.

     Why has the number of dengue cases increased so sharply? Some experts pointed out a linear relationship between diseases and global warming. It is predicted that global temperature will rise 3.5 degrees by 2100, and as it develops, abnormal climate will occur in the world, such as flooding and long periods of drought. How does the abnormal climate connect with the spread of diseases? A few effects would be considered. Firstly, it will spread some diseases from the tropical regions to temperate regions. Some of the Japanese experts are concerned that with Japan, being a temperate climate, dengue fever will spread due to global warming. It means dengue virus which only exists in Okinawa for now might spread around the main island of Japan. Secondly, there will be an increase in the number of living things which brings virus, like mosquito, rat, and vermin. For mosquitoes, the increase of amount of water, not only sea water, but fresh water will provide mosquitoes with the place they need to breed.

     As we can see, it is sure that there is a big consequence between global warming and spreading of disease. For example, in Singapore, annual temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees between 1978 and 1998, while the number of dengue fever cases also has jumped ten times during the same period. Therefore we can say that the more global warming develops, the more diseases spread in the world. Of course, we can not say all of the diseases spread as global warming develops. Some diseases like SARS, which has no dependency on global warming. Decreasing the effects of global warming might not necessarily reduce the rate of these type of diseases.

     How can we prevent the spread of dengue fever? Since the effective vaccine has not been discovered yet, the only way we can do is to kill mosquitoes, or to remove mosquito’s breeding site from our inhabitancy. In Singapore, the city-state is spending S$200,000 a day in a massive effort to look out and destroy potential mosquito breeding ground. The Singapore government appeals people to its people to be careful of mosquitoes through the media. In Philippines, a measure called “4 O’clock Habit” was conducted in 2007. The “4 O‘clock Habit” is an initiative of the Philippines government that requests residents to practice the cleaning of their surroundings and draining water containers to prevent mosquitoes from breeding. Other examples include replacing water in flower vases once a week, cleaning gutters, puncturing or cutting old tires used as roof support, and collecting and disposing containers that can hold water. These measures are effective so far, hence countries which suffered from dengue fever should continue these measures until the effects of global warming subsided.

     Mainly, two issues have been reported frequently in Japan. The first issue being reported is devastating damage caused by disasters. The disaster that Japanese are most concerned with will be the earthquakes. It is said that the damage caused by earthquake in urban area would be far more serious than that in countryside. I would cite two instances of earthquake that happened in Japan; namely the Hanshin earthquake in 1995 and the Iwate earthquake in 2008. The great Hanshin earthquake, happened at one of the biggest cities in Japan, claimed the lives of nearly 6500 people. The total amount of the damage is said to be around 20 trillion yen. (equals to 200 billion USD) On the other hand, the Iwate earthquake claimed the lives of 13 people, and the total amount of damage is said to be around 1500 billion yen. (equals to 1.5 billion USD) Despite of the almost same strength of shaking, experienced in Hanshin and Iwate, Iwate did not suffer from great damage. The main reason would be density. Comparing the density of population between Hanshin and Iwate, Hanshin is 7.5 times bigger than Iwate. In addition, Iwate is not as well developed as Hanshin (Iwate is known as “Tibet” in Japan), this also reduced the damage of the earthquake. The density of population and building in Tokyo is far larger than Hanshin, therefore many specialists are concerned about the great damage that will be caused by earthquake in the near future.

     The second issue being reported is heat island effect. Within 20^th century, the temperature in the center of Tokyo has risen by 3 degrees, while global average temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees. Mainly, two causes are considered; the increase of energy burned by resident, and due to the fact that there is no green field environment. It is natural that overpopulated place burns much more energy, therefore systems which could modify calorific value effectively would be essential in such a big city. However, there are no such effective systems in Tokyo, besides, crowded buildings and asphalted land make the circulation of handling calorific value more difficult. In addition, there do not have enough green fields, pound, marshes to absorb calorific value, therefore constant rise of temperature was caused. We should not under estimate this problem. The heat island has potential to influence the health of urban residents directly. Several surveys have shown the relationship between extreme temperature and mortality. According to the surveys, the mortality rate of urban residents, who are suffering from extreme heat, are higher than that of rural residents. If the heat island effect keep increases at this speed, more people will be risked their lives by external factor.

     I want to ask you again, do you want to live in Tokyo? I would say “no thank you”. In addition to these issues, there are other problems such as high crime rate, environment pollution, high cost, and so on. However, I do recognize the fact that Tokyo has the best economy status and great opportunities for both Japanese and worldwide people to work in. Therefore those of who want to do world-wide business would end up living in Tokyo regardless of their will. Some measures are needed to take to improve urban life immediately. I think the only effective measure we can take now is to control the population.  

This website will help you to understand the urban environmental damage by earthquake.

It is made by UNCRD Hyogo Japan office.

http://gec.jp/gec/en/Activities/DE/03UNCRD.pdf

     What is the root of the conflict between them in India? One of the factors would be the policy of colonization which is called “Divide and Rule” by British. In the early 20 century, British admitted Muslims to organize the “All-India Muslim League”, and gave them political rights and interests to divide the people in India by religious point. Another factor could be found in campaign for independence. When they campaigned for independence, they used the propaganda that appealed to people of Hindu identity. Although it has succeed to widen number of people joining the political activities, it has also brought about some estrangement with the Muslims minor. After that, many people united for independence, the campaign developed in a good direction, but the conflict between Muslim and Hindi deteriorated more seriously.  As a result, the two countries, India and Pakistan, came into existence in 1947. After the independence, they contain each other by nuclear test or warfare.

     Their conflicts are still ongoing nowadays, and it is true that religious extremist cause terrorism attack aiming at the other party. However, I think, the cause of conflict would not only be in religious area, but also be in the widening gap between rich and poor. As you know, it is said that there the background of terrorism is poverty.

      India is developing rapidly nowadays, especially in IT. However, there are still so many people suffering from poverty. A portion of Muslims who were converted from Hindi are poor, because they were in the lower social class in the caste system. Since the middle-class Muslims have left for Pakistan when the separate independence in 1947, the most of Muslims in India have been suffering from poverty. In addition, there have been no strong Muslim political leader in India, therefore they have been under political inequality. For example, some of policies for the correction of the gap between rich and poor in India, like the chance of employment as officer or applying to university, these policies do not apply to Muslim. Although India states the separation of religion and politics, these policies seem to be inconsistent.

     If the social system does not work equally, what would the persecuted people do? Terrorism would be one of the means to demonstrate their anger or complaint. At the present world, it would be very hard to realize non-economical gap society in the world. However, I think we could arrange some ways for poor people to emerge from poverty. For exception, some terrorism attacks, like 9.11, have not so much of connection with poverty. However, as for other countries in which exist unequal systems, trying to adjust the gap should be effective to remove terrorist attack or ethical conflict from the society.

     Compared to the past China during the culture revolution, China has more admitted the freedom of expression and the relaxation of mass-communication rules. Their economic policies also have been  shifting from socialism to capitalism. However, people in China can not choose their government by election. It mean, sometimes the requests or wishes which people have would not influence society directly. Can we say that China is democratic country? Does someone who is not the Communist party have chance to join politics? In my opinion, China has no enough system to achieve democracy. Is there any chance to realize the democracy in China in the future?

     It is said that the development of economy help society to bring democracy. In addition, it is fact that a lot of developed countries take democratic policy, and many of developing countries take despotic policy. However, these are not enough to prove the relationship between economic and democracy. One of the socialist in USA, called Robert Daul defined the condition of approving democracy in the society; (1) reading and writing, education, and communication are spread. (2) well-ordered pluralistic society are exist. (3) inhibit from extreme inequality. How about the China? Applying these conditions to the situation in modern China, we can see only first condition is cleared. In addition, even the first condition is not enough. According to the survey in 1995, the reading and writing rate in China is 81.5%. It shows, more than 1.5 million of people have still no skill of reading and writing.

     From the point of the economic growth, it seems that democratic society would be realized soon. On the other hand, from the point of the low reading and writing rate, it seems so difficult to change the one-party rule society.

     In my opinion, I think it is not a good way to set forward democracy in China nowadays. If the one-the communist party rule collapsed, and some new party appeared in Chinese political, some of them would insist on the right of property. As you know, China is one of the countries in which exists a gap between rich and poor in its society. In China, 8million of the 13million of entire population are living in countryside or province, and they have not got the influence of recent economic growth so much. Despite of it, some of inshore cities have been developing since the opening of economy. If the Communist political system collapsed now, the gap between rich and poor would become more widely, the poor people would be faced more serious economic problems. The priority thing is to remove the gap, in other words, use the profit which they got with economic growth for the development of countryside, and I think the communist government is easier to achieve it than democratic government.

      What kind of things would be operated by government to stop terrorism? If the governments of all countries could indemnify all of their people for subsistence level, the terrorism which has economical reason would be disappeared. In some cases, the state and power which terrorists have are inferior to the other people, therefore they appeal to arms. However, I think there is not so close a connection between terrorism and poverty. Modern terrorism seems to be quite connected with political sense, religious issue, or ethnic identity. Here is an example.

The terrorism attack on 11^th of Sep in 2001 in the USA is well known as Islamic terrorism. Osama bin Laden, who is regarded as ringleader of the attack, was one of the wealthiest capitalist in the Middle East. Besides, almost all of the other criminals who participate in the attack are from middle-class, so they had no worry about money.

     From this example, we could see that poverty is not the crux of terrorism. Of course, poverty should be one of the causes of that, but it does not apply to all of the cases.

     Here is another cause of terrorism.

Some countries have got the racial problems like Chechnya in Russia, Tibet in China, Kurd in Middle East. Each of them has so many activists for the independence, and some of them commit terrorism attack. There is a similarity among these people that they had been persecuted for their culture before, therefore they have united for their racial identity.

     For this issue, inequality between races in a country and historical problem is related closely. If it realized that the equality for all of the people in a country, the terrorism would reduce. However, some activists would think of the possibility that the government change their policy. The best way for them is independence from belonged countries.

     Here is one more another example in Japan.

The Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway on 20^th of Mar in 1995 is the most serious attack to occur in Japan since the end of WW2. 12 of people are killed by one of the Japanese religious organization called “Aum.” The cause of this incident is; back then, Aum was chased by police for the other murder case and abduction case, then the leader of Aum planned this gas attack so that they could disturb investigation by police.

     The different point from the above two example is, the criminal have no special grudge to government. They acted the terrorism just for deleting the obstacles. I think this type of terrorism is very hard to manage.

     I do not know how to vanish terrorism, but I think it is possible to prevent terrorism attack. First, do not let terrorist get weapons. Government should watch carefully the distribution of weapon. Second, do not let terrorist get the way to work on people with mass-communication. The aim of terrorist is to arouse fear of people and change the public opinion to the direction they aimed.

     From the view of employment, why they are prefer male employee to female employee? I think, because female employees have much more possibility of quitting job than male employees. Here are 2 reasons. First, it was common that women’s early retirement for ages. It mean, “Marriage and giving birth” was the time for quitting job for the most of women. About 10 years ago in Shimane prefecture in Japan, a survey that “The reason why they quit their job; event for the women who quitted her job when she got married or gave birth to their baby” was operated. According to the survey, 32.6% of them answered: “Because I want to devote to do housework”, 23.9% of them answered:”Because it seemed to be difficult to work taking care of family”, 13.7% of them answered: “Family required me to be house work”, and 9.8% of them answered: ”The company promoted me to quit my job.” Because women’s early retirement was a common sense for both men and women in the old Japanese society. To train those of who may leave company in a few years is waste of time and money. Therefore, employment would not want to entrust the important job to women, and it result to be form male dominated company.  This kind of sense would be deep-rooted in the modern Japanese society.

     Second, there is no enough system for women to continue their job after giving birth to their baby. Actually, to work taking care of their baby is too tough. Without the cooperation with husband and company, it is too difficult for women who became mother to continue her job. In some countries, “child-care leave” is provided for women. However, less than half of female workers use this holiday in Japan. The main reason for it is, “worrying about whether I can return-to-work”, “no place to leave my child”, etc. Therefore, a number of women quit her job when they get pregnant, and a few years later their child turned 5,6 years, they start to look for job. In a lot of case, they only can find part-time job. The income of part-timer is far less than full time worker.

How can it realize that equality of work between men and women? I think it would be a task for Japanese society that to make good environment for women to continue their job after giving birth to children. If this problem is solved, the quitting job rate for women would decrease, and more companies take a positive attitude for women’s career. Only women can give birth to children, so it is not easy for men to imagine how tough to give birth and raise them up. I think men should make effort to understand it. Women should have the right to work in the same condition as men, and it could not realize without the corporation with husband, company, and government.

     First of all, I will make the feature of the 2 types of employee clear. Local hire; (1) Basically, it is the same system as the local. (2) The local labor law should be applied. (3) Income tax, housing etc are would be paid by oneself. (4) No possibility of transferring to other countries, continue to stay in one country. Oversea representative; (1) Be employed in Japan, and be send to overseas. (2) The Japanese labor law should be applied. (3) Income tax, housing, moving and the cost for going back to Japan a few times a year etc would be paid by the company. (4) Possibility of transferring to other countries. From these things, it is obvious that the Oversea representative type has much more better condition than the Local hire. The second type of employ is better for Japanese unless any special reason; like developing oneself, or carrier up as global business person.

     We are the same nationality and there would be no so much difference of capacity between them, but why there exists so big gap? I think it would be because of globalization of work. The main reason why Japanese company hire local people in oversea would be the personal cost cut. Japan is one of the most costly countries, the average income is 314600 Yen( about $S4070) for 1 month. This date is about 2.4 times that of Singapore. In other word, Japanese companies would not have to pay more than S$1700 for local Singaporean employees.

     It would be too difficult that poor countries get rich, because there already exist the economic system that the rich countries are easy to make money. I think globalization of work would mean the circulation; the rich counties employ those of who come from poor countries, and the poor countries employ the more poor countries. The cut of person cost make profits, therefore profits would be received from rich countries to poor countries. I have compared local hire and oversea representative of Japanese in Singapore, and I concluded that Japan employ locals to personal cost cut. It means Japan is richer than Singapore. However, Singapore is also included rich countries. Actually, there is a number of migrant worker from Philippine, Malaysia or other Asian countries in Singapore. In addition, it may not link with this problem, I think the rich people in poor countries are eager to products from developed countries. For young women in the world, fashion in NY, Paris, Tokyo would be fascinating. The sense of seeking western in poor countries would be the part of the circulation of making rich countries richer.

     There is a social system so-called “caste” which existed until about 150 years ago in Japan. And now, the similar phenomenon has been happening in recent Japanese society, and I think it is the cause of inequality. When is the turning point of being divided rich or poor? Normally it is the time that he or she get their job, and whether they could have a good job is depends on their academic background, in short, which university have they graduated from. Besides, it should need high quality education, which must be costly, to enter such as university. According to the recent research, it showed that parents’ income and academic background is closely linked with the children’s education.

 Let me mention the Tokyo University which is the most famous university for the difficulty to enter in Japan for instance. First, almost half of the students in the university are from private high school, and some students are educated in the private school from kindergarten to high school. Second, the 70% of the parents whose son or daughter attend Tokyo university take high-ranked job such as doctor, lawyer, professor, high managerial post of some big company or government official. Besides, the people who graduated from the university would take the high post in their working place in the future. It is a circle of Japanese society nowadays, and the trend that rich parents spent too much money on their children’s education is increasing.

If the parents are rich, the children would be able to accept high quality education and result to get well-paid job in their future. In other words, children’s futures depend on which class of family they will be born. There would be any other causes that bring “rich and poor” problem in the Japanese society, like very little chance to be employed for non-new graduate, or movement of aging society, however, I think the main root which causes rich and poor is inequality of education. This would be able to apply to the any other countries. Someone who have good academic background, or who have got enough knowledge could have the power to manage economic, controlling the other people.

     When Japan was facing serious recession a few years ago, the Japanese government operated some economic policies which were based on the thought that “firstly, produce some rich, after that, safe the rest of poor with the money that the rich have gained.” To be sure, the entire of Japanese economy might improve with that way. However, this way would make the gap between rich and poor much more deeply, so I think the policies that Japanese government did does not the genuine solution. As a result, quite a number of people under the middle class are puzzled in their livelihood.

     In conclude, Japanese society is about to separate into two group, rich and poor. It is so serious problem. However, from total view, Japan has a great economic power enough to help other poor countries. If Japanese have this kind of thought like “firstly, make our country richer, after that, safe the other poor country with our great economy power”, a worldwide inequality would not change. Other developed countries might have the similar thinking as them. I hope globalized society works for mutual improvement.