Government Goes Online
A Look at Selected Web Pages of Japan's Government Ministries
Looking for up-to-date, accurate information about Japan? From MITI to the Prime Minister's Official Residence, Japanese government Web sites offer a diverse array of useful links and information, in English.
by Wm. Auckerman
The recent proliferation of World Wide Web (WWW) home pages has given over 20 million Internet users around the world quick and easy access to an amazingly wide variety of information. Corporations are not the only ones to recognize this growth, and to capitalize on the potential PR opportunities presented by the growing popularity of the WWW. Slowly, over the course of the past year, Japan's national government ministries have been coming online with their own home pages. Some are heavy on graphics but lack content, some are packed with information but short on aesthetics, and others seem mere "me-too" pages that (while they may develop over time) as of yet have little to recommend them.
Japanese government ministries frequently have been faulted by both foreign and domestic critics for their insular mentality and lack of concern about what the outside world thinks of Japan. A plaintive "our intentions were misunderstood" has long been the typical response to foreign criticism of Japanese actions (or, nearly as often, nonactions) on the world stage.
The traditional bureaucratic mentality recently has been changing, however. Due in part to the Internet-mania being fueled by the public media, Japan's national ministries have recognized that the Internet, and the World-Wide Web in particular, represents an economical and simple vehicle for disseminating information about Japan and its government. Several ministries have developed a significant Web presence, offering information about their structure and workings as well as online sources of reports, documents, and information about ministry activities and Japan in general.
Significantly, many of the government ministry and agency Web pages have as much information in English as in Japanese (and some, even more). This is both an acknowledgment of the reality that English has become the de facto "standard" language of the Web, and a reflection that the primary purpose of most of the ministry Web pages is to act as an international PR medium.
Here, then, selected from the potpourri of government servers, are brief descriptions of some of the Web sites that I have found most useful or interesting.
The Prime Minister's
Official Residence
http://www.kantei.go.jp/
One of the earlier Japanese government sites to go up on the Web was that termed "the Prime Minister's official residence." True to the name, the home page features a photograph of the PM's residence plus some hard-to-read text (small letters on a colored background) and four links to other pages.
Most useful on this page (in terms of the focus of this article) is the link to a page listing -- and linking to -- other Japanese government WWW servers (http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/server-e
.html). For general topics, the "Japanese information" link (http://www.ntt.jp
/japan/index.html) goes to a page that presents a diverse miscellany of useful (and some less-than-useful) links to several non-government Japanese Web sites. From here, for example, you can download "Kimigayo" (the Japanese national anthem) or read a translation of the Japanese constitution. Unless you especially want to see where Mr. Murayama lives, rather than wait for the 115K image-map on the home page to load, you may want to point your browser directly to these two useful links.
Economic Planning Agency
http://www.epa.go.jp/
Structurally, the EPA is under the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister's office. The EPA Web site offers a good guide to the agency and a listing of documents it publishes. For those curious about Japan's economy, this site has links to economics-related WWW servers in Japan (http://www.epa.go.jp/html/depts
.html), as well as others worldwide.
Some items of particular interest on this site are several charts of the Japanese economy (http://entrance.epa.go.jp:70
/1/e-e/chart); an English translation of the Product Liability Law (http://en
trance.epa.go.jp:70/0h/pl/pleng-s.html); a section on foreign "Complaints on Japanese Market Access Issues through Internet," courtesy of the Office of Trade and Investment Ombudsman (http://en
trance.epa.go.jp:70/1/e-e/oto); and the "Yearbook of the Japan Investment Council" (http://entrance.epa.go.jp:70/
0h/doc/tainichi-e-e.html), with extensive information on deregulation, distribution, intellectual property, and other business topics.
Science and Technology Agency
http://www.sta.go.jp/welcome-en.html
The STA server carries information about the role, organization, and budget of the agency, as well as a publication list with links to other STA servers. One interesting publication that can be downloaded from this site is the "White Paper on Science and Technology -- 1995" (subtitled "Fifty Years of Postwar Science and Technology in Japan").
The Japan Information Center of Science and Technology
http://www.jicst.go.jp/
The JICST offers searchable Japan Industry Technical Reports (82,000 citations from over 330 sources) as well as public reports. There is an FTP guide to several interesting information sources (http://www.jicst.go.jp/www/ftp_guide/
ftp_index.html), including the EU-Japan Center's "Directory of Sources of Japanese Information on Trade and Technology." One especially intriguing item here is a document entitled "On Future Ideal Way to Research Information Resources," (http://www.jicst.go.jp/
www/ftp_guide/ftp01.html); this lengthy document is online in two translated versions: one prepared by a human translator, and one done by a machine translation system. A comparison of the two versions provides a gauge of the state of computerized translation..
Japan National Tourist Organization
http://www.ntt.jp/japan/JNTO/
JNTO is apparently the only Ministry of Transportation organ now online. At present, there is little here other than a brief description of the organization with addresses and phone numbers for JNTO offices, some dated Hanshin earthquake information, and three online English-language tourist brochures (http://www.ntt.jp/japan/JNTO/brochure.html).
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
http://www.nttls.co.jp/infomofa/
The MFA site lists worldwide Japanese embassy and consulate addresses (http://www.nttls.co.jp/infomofa/head_
emb.html) and covers policies and major international issues (http://www.nttls
.co.jp/infomofa/policy.html). There is also an information bulletin area (http://
www.nttls.co.jp/infomofa/bull/index.html; it has sections on science and technology, business trends, economy, and more, but the content in most of the sections is sparse.
Ministry of International
Trade and Industry
http://www.miti.go.jp/index-e.html
This site has an extensive listing of MITI English publications (http://www.miti
.go.jp/g2list-b.html), but no online versions are available. In good bureaucratic "run-around" style, though, if you go to the Japan Economic Foundation home page (from the MITI "What's New" icon; http://www.jef.or.jp/index.html), you will find translations of some MITI documents.
Agency of Industrial
Science and Technology
http://www.aist.go.jp/
The AIST is an agency under the jurisdiction of MITI. Some English documents from AIST and MITI, as well as documents on standards (including JIS and ISO), are available online (http://
www.aist.go.jp:80/Htmls/Doclib.html).
Here, too, are some interesting research links, including to Tsukuba and several regional research centers (http://www.aist
.go.jp:80/Htmls/Research.html). Some sections of this site, like the "What's New" area, have not been updated for several months.
Japan External Trade Organization
http://www.jetro.go.jp/
The JETRO site features several useful online business documents, including "First Steps in Exporting to Japan," "Doing Business in Japan," and "The Japanese Consumer" (http://www.jetro
.go.jp/japan/index.html). Also useful are the two documents "Handy Facts on US-Japan/EU-Japan Economic Relations" (http://www.jetro.go.jp/world/
index.html).
There is a section with a monthly business newsletter, press releases, trade statistics, and more (http://www
.jetro.go.jp/3what/index.html). Major JETRO publications in English are listed (only) in http://www.jetro.go.jp
/what/jet11.html.
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
http://ss.cc.affrc.go.jp/ric/maffsrv.html
This site has a lot of information about Japan's environmental and agricultural issues, but so far almost nothing is in English (making this one of a very few government sites without at least basic English materials).
Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications
http://www.mpt.go.jp/
The MPT server carries extensive information about the ministry's organization and pilot projects, plus news, reports, and white papers and areas devoted to telecommunications, broadcasting, and procurements.
Regional/local government sites
It's not just the national government ministries that are putting up Web pages. Several city and prefectural governments now have online sites as well. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, for example, has its Tokyo-Teleport site (http://www.tokyo-teleport.co.jp/), and Yokohama has a Web site (http://www
.city.yokohama.jp/). Both of these have online material in English. Osaka prefecture also has a Web site (http://
www.cs.osakafu/u.ac.jp/misc/onet24/
oosakafu/oosakafu.html), with an extensive selection of documents, but none of them have yet been translated into English.ç
For linkable listings of Japanese government Web sites, point your browser to http://www.ntt.jp/SQUARE
/Town/EN/gov.html (very good) or http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign
/server-e.html (good).
By the time this issue is published, all of the sites mentioned in this article should be easily linkable via the "Japan Resources" area of Computing Japan's Web site (http://
www.gol.com/cj/).
