September 12, 2003
When I joined RIETI, just shy of three years ago, it was a department housed in MITI's main building in a dingy office on the second floor. We labored on clunky laptops atop desks that looked like specimens of the Bauhaus school, and we sat in chairs that creaked with every movement. The Institute was called MITI RI, which meant its employees were civil servants. Just like real Japanese bureaucrats, we shivered during the winter and sweated in summer heat that reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit--inside the office.
This letter is to let you know I will be leaving RIETI this month to work at a newspaper in Tokyo. But I recall the Institute's idiosyncrasies fondly. For those who have been to Japan, these quirks may be familiar. Take for example, "The Automatic Gargle Machine." On every floor of our building are two machines that look like ordinary drinking fountains, but above them are signs that instruct, "Please gargle: when you have a cold, when the air conditioning is turned on, and when you have been in a crowded area." Step on the pedal, and a spout dispenses lukewarm saltwater to sooth what ails you. Most gargle loudly and with gusto.
Workers' welfare is of the utmost concern, and smokers' needs are not forgotten. In our building, there are special rooms equipped with rattling contraptions whose purpose I am uncertain. Some believe that these machines are meant to filter the cigarette smoke. As one step in the smoking room will send a waft of smoke in your eyes, the filter seems about as effective as Maxwell Smart's Cone of Silence from the 1960s TV series "Get Smart."
Announcements are made throughout the day in the METI buildings to encourage people to go to lunch, come back from lunch, and even go home. At 8pm, while Japan's lonely bureaucrats soldier on at the office, a musical selection is played over the public address system. The tune: a Muzak version of Bobby Vinton's 1964 hit "Mr. Lonely," whose original lyrics sing:
Now I'm a soldier, a lonely soldier
Away from home through no wish of my own
That's why I'm lonely, I'm Mr. Lonely
I wish that I could go back home
On April 1, 2001, when RIETI became independent, we moved from METI's main building into METI's annex, which is actually the older building of the two but gets its name because it is farther from the Minister. Our office now resembles the think tanks that dot Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC, with new desks, flat screen monitors, and a feature that is rare in Japanese offices--the private cubicle. Our staff has grown to 230 and we are therefore expanding to the top floor of a brand new office building that opened this month across the street. I hear that one incentive to move to the new building is that its air conditioning is not regulated by government misers.
The past three years have also been good to this newsletter. Articles in Miyakdayori have been reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, The Straits Times, and the Japan Times. And we have set up a Web site (http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/miyakodayori/index.html) that has archived every issue, and includes the contributions of eminent scholars including Gerald Curtis, Ronald Dore, and Dale Jorgenson, as well as a section for feedback from our readers. I am also happy to announce that earlier this month, Miyakodayori began appearing in the network of newsletters published by Japan Inc. magazine under the banner Policy Watch.
Miyakodayori will continue to bring you the analyses of writers living in Japan or affiliated with RIETI. Our thought was that while many of the articles in English on the Japanese economy are published in Washington, DC, people living in Japan have valid opinions about Japan too. I am pleased to say that my colleague at RIETI Masahiro Katsuno will take the wheel as managing editor. After studying economics at Yale University, Mr. Katsuno was a correspondent at the Asahi Shimbun in Switzerland, a consultant at the World Bank in Washington, and an economist at the OECD in Paris; he speaks Japanese, French, Chinese, and English.
I look forward to seeing you at future brown bag lunches and on the pages of Miyakodayori. I think I hear the first bars of "Mr. Lonely" coming on, so farewell.
Devin Stewart
Managing Editor, Miyakodayori
Editor-in-Chief, Masato Hisatake
Director of Research
Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)
e-mail: hisatake-masato@rieti.go.jp
tel: 03-3501-8248 fax: 03-3501-8416
RIETI invites you to visit its English website
[http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/index.html].
The opinions expressed or implied in this paper are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), or of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
