みんなのえほんやさん

「経済格差」についての社説です。（ジャパンタイムズより）

Limiting the economic gaps　　By TAKAMITSU SAWA

Japan is rich because Japanese are poor.　

That, in essence, is the paradoxical hypothesis conceived by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. He wondered whether Japan operated under a different model from "Western-style idealism," which he said requires individual citizens to become rich before their nation can become so.　Baudrillard said it appeared as though Japanese society was based on feudalism, with people acting like cells of an organism and avoiding open dissent.

However, the Japanese-style affluent society, built up in the 60 years after World War II on the basis of a premodern model, is not necessarily a fake.

To Western observers, individual Japanese may seem poor as far as their lifestyles are concerned. But in my opinion, Japan, a late starter in the modernization drive, has elements of affluence that people should be proud of.

Having toured throughout the country, I have yet to find a really poor community. In other Asian countries, there is a stark contrast between rich and poor communities. A good example is China, with its prosperous coast and dirt-poor inland regions.

Western nations, which have spent a long time modernizing themselves, have not developed a glaring regional divide. On the other hand, Japan and other East Asian countries that have had to modernize in a short period of time have become burdened with wide regional gaps.

Although quick modernization has led to efficiency in some ways, it has also caused wide economic gaps between fast-developing industrial areas and old-fashioned rural areas.

In addition, under the policy of promoting economic development as a national goal, governments have poured investments into industrial areas. As a result, a striking regional divide has emerged in social infrastructure such as highway networks.

In the late 1950s, when Japan entered a high-growth era, droves of boys and girls who had just graduated from middle school traveled to the Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe regions by train to start working at shops, factories and small businesses. As a result, outlying communities and rural villages lost population, while big cities became overpopulated.

When the Japanese National Railways was privatized in the 1980s, railways in depopulated areas were abandoned. Nevertheless, people in depopulated areas did not become impoverished.

In postwar Japan, ruling-party lawmakers from rural areas have habitually used pork-barrel spending to increase their political influence. Former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka from Niigata Prefecture, former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita from Shimane Prefecture, and others like them were considered great politicians for bringing large amounts of public works projects to their constituencies.

Thanks to pork-barrel politics, not only urban areas but also depopulated areas have benefited from ample public works spending that has brought modern highway networks and public transport systems to wide areas of the nation.

Pork-barrel politics may be dirty, but government policy of promoting balanced national land development has minimized the nation's regional divides. Japan has become rich in the sense that there is little regional divide in land development. In my opinion, government policy of promoting balanced national land development was not a mistake.

In this context, "balanced" and "equal" are synonymous. Recently, in various contexts, "equality" has come under criticism. "Balanced national land development" is often criticized as an example of bad policy.

To be sure, the goodness or badness of policy depends on the context of the times. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the above-mentioned national land development policy was highly beneficial. Thanks to that policy, national infrastructure that should make the public proud, and has driven away shadows of poverty, has been built.

Nevertheless, now that the basic infrastructure has been completed and the nation faces huge budget deficits and accumulated debts, national land-development policy must be reviewed. In this context, debate on the question often centers on the necessity of promoting regional autonomy.

Few dispute the necessity of shifting from centralized to decentralized power. But there are still wide regional income gaps. If prefectural and municipal governments must use their local revenues -- from resident, corporate, automobile and other taxes -- to finance their operations, regional balance could collapse. Ways must be found to promote local autonomy without widening regional divide.

Takamitsu Sawa is a professor at Ritsumeikan University's Graduate School of Policy Science and a specially appointed professor at Kyoto University's Institute of Economic Research.
The Japan Times: Tuesday, May 2, 2006
(C) All rights reserved

dissent　意見の相違、異議

stark　全くの、ありのままの、正真正銘の、明確な
　　　　荒涼とした、飾り気のない、殺風景な、不毛の
　　　　硬直した、こわばった、厳しい、過酷な、激しい

英英辞典では・・
(BARE)　　　　　　: bare, simple or obvious, especially without decoration or
　　　　　　　　　　　anything which is not necessary; severe or extreme
(COMPLETELY)　: completely or extremely

形容詞は英英辞典で調べてニュアンスをつかむとわかりやすいです。stark では２通りの意味があって、この文章の場合は(COMPLETELY)の方ですね。

glaring　ギラギラ輝く、らんらんたる、まぶしい
　　　　目立つ、目に付く、派手な、紛れもない、明白な
　　　　怒りに燃えた、にらみ付ける（ような）◆表情が

pork-barrel politics　利益誘導型政治、予算のばらまき政治

ポークバレルの語源についてどこかのサイトに載っていました。
「ポーク・バレル」とは、奴隷制の時代に農園主が塩漬けの豚肉（ポーク）を木製の樽（バレル）からつかみ出して奴隷たちに配っていた。同じように新しい法律の制定に当たって、多くの議員たちに何らかの権益を与えるような条件を含ませておいて賛同を得るといった政治手法をいう。これによって議員たちは、自分の選挙区へベーコンを持ち帰って住民たちに配り、次の選挙にそなえて票数を確保するのである。日本の「バラマキ政治」に当たるかもしれない。
regional divide　地域間格差

prefectural　県の、　　municipal　市の