March 6, 2012

Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru is creating a dictatorship in Osaka by scrutinizing public workers’ political beliefs and intimidating public school teachers into silence. He is even attempting to destroy Osaka’s cultural assets.

Akahata on March 6 ran an interview with Kizugawa Kei, publisher of “Kamigata Geino,” a quarterly magazine transmitting cultural information related to the Kansai area (areas around Osaka).

The following is an excerpt of the interview:

What Mayor Hashimoto has been doing since the time when he became the governor of Osaka is destroying our cultural assets. He closed down the Osaka prefectural International Institute for Children’s Literature, the world’s leading collection of 700,000 books and other materials, terminated the subsidies to the Century Symphony Orchestra, which was used to be managed by Osaka Prefecture, and cut the budget for the Osaka Prefectural Kamigata Performance Resource Center, effectively reducing its operations.

Now that he is the Osaka mayor, he is planning to slash subsidies to the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra and to the Bunraku Kyokai (association of traditional puppet theater), which is mainly operated by Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City. He had already reduced the subsidies to both the 65-year-old orchestra and the association supporting the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Bunraku, when he was the Osaka Prefecture governor.

His logic is this: something that is not economically viable without the use of public funds is not “culture” and Osaka does not need unprofitable “cultures”.

The unprofitable “cultures”, however, are of intrinsically high artistic quality. In that regard, some of them involve high costs to maintain and protect. In the case of Bunraku, it is vital to have the required equipment, props, and staff such as puppet craftsmen, costumers, and wig dressers plus performers such as tayu masters (song and storytelling), shamisen (3-tringed banjo) artists, and puppeteers. To train Bunraku successors takes many years for them to master the art. The same applies to orchestras. These arts do not fit in with profit-first market fundamentals.

Why is public support needed for arts and cultures? It is because they are the foundation of fostering culturally-rich citizens. A nation makes investments in education and learning in order to maintain a civilized society. In the same manner, appropriate public support is necessary to foster culturally-enriched people who play productive roles in society. These are not something that we can judge based on economic efficiency.

Together with all the people who love Osaka “cultures”, I want to stop Hashimoto from going further on his rampage.