15^th Plenary Session of the Congress, 27-29 May 2008

Wednesday 28 May – h. 10.00

Speech by Mr Shogo ARAI, governor of Nara (Japan), Chamber of the Regions

Globalization and independency of local authorities

1. Nara ancient capital of Japan

Mr. chairman, distinguished delegation, ladies and gentlemen,

it’s my great honor to participate in this meeting of Council of Europe and make a speech introducing what is going on in the local cities and towns of Japan, almost opposite side of the earth.

I’m the governor of Nara prefecture. Japan has 47 prefectures and about 1,800 municipalities. Nara is one of 47 prefectures and contains 1.5 million people out of about 127 million total Japanese population. Nara is oldest capital in Japan and is going to celebrate the 1,300^th anniversary of location of Capital, called Heijyo-kyo, in the year of 2010.

About 1,300 years ago, Japan has vital diplomatic and cultural　communications with Big Tang Dynasty in Mainland of China.

Between 7^th and 8^th centuries, Japan established the Emperor system, the legal system and other main structures of a nation. In addition, Japanese accepted the Buddhism based thought and philosophy, and the Chinese character for written literature.

At that time, Japan certainly installed a basic software of a　nation with certain influence of big neighbour country, China. We continue to maintain them as a base of the nation for more than 1,000 years.

On 10^th May of this year, two weeks ago, the China’s National　Chairman, Fu-jien-Tao visited Nara and had a meeting and a lunch with me. Why did the Nation’s leader of China visit Nara? It is because Nara was then the Capital of Japan and a partner of China’s global system. Chairman Fu-jien-Tao wanted to meet with the statue of Chinese high Buddhism priest named Gwan-jin-wajoh. He decided to come to Nara for missions of Buddhism at the age of 55. He failed 5times and finally succeeded landing Japan at the age of 66, with the loss of his eyesight. And now, Gwan-jin is the symbol of ancient cultural communications between China and Japan. His engraved sitting statue has been maintained in Nara for more 1,000 years as one of the national treasures.

With Fu-jin-tao, I had a good opportunity to talk about various subjects during lunch time. It seemed to me the chairman is very sincere, serious and frank. We mainly exchanged the views of the needs of the development of domestic economic demand and inland economy.

Two days later after he left, a big earthquake in Sichuan occurred. I am very sorry about the tragedy.

During Big Tang Dynasty in the East of the world, in the West part, Saracen Empire was very vital. In 732 Charles Martel defeated the army of Saracen Empire in the battle of Poitier, in 751 Saracen Empire defeated the army of Tang Dynasty in the battle of Talas and then paper production method was introduced to the Western world. In 762, new capital Baghdad began to be constructed.

With Chinese Dynasties as a communication center, through Silk Road, many western cultures reached Nara. The world-oldest wooden temples Houryu-ji, the first World Heritage in Japan, has many classical columns that bulge slightly in the middle, called “Entasis”, which are influenced by Greek architectures, for example the Parthenon. The faces of Many Buddha Statues in Nara have also certain influence of Greek statue because Alexander the Great created Hellenistic Civilization and it came up with catalyst of Gandharan arts where Buddha Statues were created for the first time and these statues cultures transferred to Japan through Silk Road very quickly. Nara is proud of maintaining those transferred cultural products which are not seen now at the original birth places.

2. Facing Challenges of current Japan

Let me now briefly touch upon the current facing challenges of Japan. I should like to mention, namely, the reduction of the population, the aging of people, the medical care and pension scheme and financial difficulties of nation and local governments.

Japan’s population reached the highest in its history in the year of 2006, 127 million, and now is declining. The Japanese life expectancy is the highest in the world; the male one is 79.1 years old and female one is 86.3 years old in 2007, and still continues to increase year by year even slowly. Accordingly, the population over 65 years is now one out of 5 persons and will be one out of 2.5 persons in the year of 2055.

Every Japanese belongs to the system of social insurance and the private expenditure on medical services is relatively cheap. But medical doctor are very busy at their work and are escaping from big hospital work to small clinics. As a result, in many local towns, doctors and nurses are seriously lacking. We have so far almost no immigrants or imported labor forces in medical field.

Due to rapid aging speed, the pension system needs to be changed. Consumption tax rate is currently 5%, and a controversial discussion is going, that is, consumption tax rate should be greatly increased for the inflated financial need of pension system.

National and local governments’ debts are now about 800 trillion yen, equal to about 5 trillion Euros. In front of these serious political issues, politicians are stagnated with a strong fear that challenging advocates must be defeated at the coming election.

3. Issues of local governments

May I now put forward a few issues of Japanese local governments. Our local governments consist of two tiers, that is, 47 prefectures and about 1,800 municipalities. Prefectures and municipalities are now considered independent each other. All prefectures have the same legal rights and responsibilities. Municipalities are also under the same responsibilities. The allocation or distribution of powers among nation, prefectures and municipalities are rather complicated. National government wants to keep their financial and regulatory powers for its own, on the other hand, local authorities insist strongly upon redistribution of national powers to local ones.

This political battle is continuing and has found no way-out or clear direction for solution so far.

Efforts of merging small cities and towns have been made until recently. Over 3,200 municipalities in the year of 2000 have reduced about 1,800 in the year of 2007.

An idea of creating about new 10 states over prefectures is at political stake.

I am not sure these efforts may help reduce existing difficulties of local governments.

4. Globalization and independency of local authorities

Finally, may I express my anxiety about development of globalization? I have certain concerns of independency of local authorities in the on-going situation of severer competition among regions.

With flows of goods and capitals more opened across the boarder, many firms and enterprises have been flown to far away places.

Japan is still strongly stuck to export-oriented economy style. Then, regions where many strong export companies exist are becoming richer and other regions are left behind. Economic and financial differences become much wider after globalization develops.

The way to make good balance between globalization and local independency is our crucial problem. Allocation of responsibilities of nation and local governments must be done with this changing situation in mind. National authorities must regulate bad manner of capitals and must prevent inflows of infectious disease, drugs, illegal immigrations.

Local authorities ,on the other hand, are asked to be more competitive in more globalized market.

In spite of these anxieties, I have a strong hope that is: direct communications and flows of persons between regions are really productive and useful.

There is no tourist destination like France or Japan. There is no flight destination to France or Japan. Destinations must be clearly called something like ‘for Strasbourg or for Nara’.

Local by local communications help discover diversities of life, cultures, history and people’s mind in each country. It surely creates more stable countries’ relations and erases small minds or dangerous nationalism.

I appreciate very much having this opportunity of speaking my humble thoughts in front of you. I wish you all of your success and congratulate the successful meeting here. May I also wish you come to Nara two years later from now on the occasion of 1,300^th anniversary of capital transfer, through Silk Road!

Thank you for your attention and patience.