On the day Japan's new security bills passed

This passing of the bills was certainly within my expectation as the majorities of Lower and Upper Houses are taken by the ruling coalition (LDP and New Komei Party); and moreover, this won't alter the fact Japan keeps 'obeying' the US since the WWII from a perspective of foreign affairs (so this is not to scrap the 'regime-after-WWII' but rather to enhance it, which is opposite to what the Prime Minister appealed for his first administration, by the way). However, I put my thoughts here to reflect my judgement later.

First of all, the opposition parties (e.g. especially DPJ, SDP, and CP etc) should seriously understand why they had lost the latest elections, and then propose improved (at least from their perspectives) bills, once they could get back to the administration if allowed by the nation. Of course, their 'improved' bills should carefully take into account existing constraints by the Constitution and geopolitically possible contingencies for Japan.

This is how we develop our own democracy, not by just keeping opposing to everything and never propose a countermeasure.

On the other hand, I am not so sure if it was a right decision that the current Administration has consumed very much of their political capital, which was raised through the General Election December 2014 and local elections in April 2015, into such controversial bills at this timing (even though this year is exact 70 years since the end of WWII, the number is still just a number). Also, it has to be seriously evaluated why they gave up proposing changes in the Constitution and especially its Article 9, which should be addressed if they believe this is fundamentally and structurally important to Japan going forward.

International politics is not an easy game. It consists of continuous games with multiple players who have quite different interests, for which each (at least large) player has to hold realistic options while appealing their ideal vision of the world; consequently it should end up balancing the powers among nations. A hegemony by superpower might stabilise the world in a short period of time, but our knowledge of history tells that any superpower won't last forever.

Of course it should be sincerely noted that conducting a war against any nation is an absolute failure of politics and foreign policy. We should avoid it no matter how much other resources are consumed, simply and crucially because lost lives of people can never be recovered by any means and it will take generations to heal the left traumas among living people and civilisations.

(Slight typos are corrected on 20 July, 2015)

Japan's Lost Decades; there are many radical changes but the inertia from past success prevented some ideal changes.

Examining Japan's Lost Decades (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series) Authors : Yoichi Funabashi, Barak Kushner Published : 2015-04-20

The phrase 'A Lost Decade' got suddenly popular in Japan as it spotted the depressing mood of political and economic standstill after the asset bubble burst in early '90s. Including a first decade of twenty-first century, despite the era of the Koizumi administration with many reforms, that disappointing notion expanded to 'Lost Decades' these days.

However, this book which is the key deliverable out of the 'Japan's Lost Decades' project by Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (RJIF, a globally well-ranked independent thinktank in Tokyo), shows actually dynamic (many) changes in how Japan runs its political, economical, and social systems, in contrast with the static and passive implication of the word 'lost'.

This book, Examining Japan's Lost Decades, was written in plain essays by about 20 experts in population, macro/micro economics, economic policy, labour market, education, energy and nuclear power plant, political system, national security, trade, regional politics, US-Japan coalition, history problems, foreign affairs, and vision/values. The target readers are well-educated but non-experts who are keen to understand Japan from the bubble burst (and mechanisms behind) before recent Abe administration.

Those essays are highly interlinked, and this network of chapters would provide utterly unique perspectives on actual changes (and un-changes) in Japan. In reality, Japan was not standstill at all; rather, it aimed for reforms of systems optimised for the high-growth and cold-war era and realised a lot. For example, changes are explicit in the flexibility Japan's labour market, its political system regarding general election and the power of Cabinet Office, and its foreign policy on national security after the miserable failure in the Gulf war. However, the inertia of great success in the past, especially in corporate management and education, did not allow Japan to escape from the legacy of the success experience, as referred as 'Japan As Number One' by Ezra Vogel.

What's more, the fundamental commonality among those 'lost' areas (to be precise, areas that Japan has lost) is procrastination of addressing issues critical for its systems (e.g. ageing and declining population) in pursuit of interests of inner circle, meaning lack of sound governance and appropriate pressure from external players. In other words, negative 'externality' of economics has been at work in multiple layers of the Japanese society.  

This 'externality' problem is certainly not unique only to this era of Japan; but it keep recurring for the very long history of humankind. Therefore it is too naive to say that we find 'one-fits-for-all' solutions to this. Instead, well-educated people in twenty-first century have to learn from this dynamic modern history of Japan through 17 chapters of this book, and must obtain each own takeaway from those mistakes and failures Japan has made.

Reference:

Japan as No.1 Author : Ezra F Vogel  Published: 1980-09

My (yet) personal suspicion on Big Data

Some Cambridge scientists say, Big Data should have 5 Big Vs (Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity, and Value) of Big Data, including:

• its Volume in terms of size, or the number of variables needed to describe it,

• its Velocity, in how it’s collected and processed in real-time,

• the Variety of its diverse, linked and unstructured datasets,

• its Veracity in terms of where it originates from and how complete it is,

• and finally its Value, and especially how the use, linkage and re-use of data can provide crucial new insights that may have been unforeseen at the time the data was collected.

I've recently begun learning basics of data science to feel refreshed, yet based on my personal experience with Google (still receiving a handful spam emails unfiltered by Gmail) and Amazon (rarely alert me when a new book of series/authors I've been following, even I've bought tonnes of Kindle books), I am still not sure why those super intelligent data scientist cannot solve such appear-to-be-simple problems, which I'd love to know anyway:-)

Cambridge MBA非公式日本向けサイトを、FC2からWordpress.comブログへ移行

（久しぶりの日本語更新です）
Cambridge MBAの日本人学生有志による、主にMBA留学を志す受験生のためのサイトを、昨今のスマートフォンの隆盛に伴うモバイル対応させるためにコンテンツを維持しつつFC2ブログからWordpress.comブログへフル移行しました。移行理由については永江一石さんの以下のエントリを参考にしました。

店舗や会社のブログをアメブロやFC2でやってはいけない３つの理由

いつくかのテンプレートを試行錯誤の上、Oxygenという無料テンプレートでどうにか意図しているサイトになるよう頑張りました。。。

新しいTHE CAMBRIDGE MBA 非公式サイト

大まかなステップをまとめておくと、以下のようになりました。

1. FC2からのブログ移行について、Google検索して情報収取
2. FC2から既存記事と画像をダウンロードしてローカルに保存
3. Wordpress.com用に記事テキストの日時表記や投稿者名を修正
4. Wordpress.comに記事画像をアップロード（プライベート状態を維持）
5. 記事の体裁及び画像のリンク先を修正
6. 主要記事にアイキャッチ画像を追加して見栄えを向上（使用テンプレートの仕様上の要請）
7. 旧ブログのプロパティをGoogle Webmasterに登録（未了だったため；これを最初に行っておくべき）
8. 旧ブログのURLにつき、インデックスからの削除依頼を送信
9. 旧ブログのHTMLテンプレート内に検索拒否のコードを追記
10. 削除が受理され（リクエストから数時間後）、旧ブログがGoogleで引っかからなくなったことを確認
11. 新ブログをWordpress.comの管理画面から一般公開し、Webmasterのプロパティを新規登録
12. WebmasterでTarget countryを「日本」に設定
13. Fetch as Googleで主な記事のインデックスを個別URLごとにリクエスト
14. 「ケンブリッジMBA　非公式」等で検索ヒットする（インデックス依頼から数時間）ようになったことを確認
15. Wordpress.com上で自動生成されるhttps://cambridgembajapan.wordpress.com/sitemap.xmlをGoogle Webmasterから送信
16. 他のCambridge MBAブログに、サイト移行記事を書いてもらうよう依頼（←イマココ）
17. （あとは地味に役に立つ記事を投稿して「ケンブリッジMBA」等での検索結果ランキングが早期回復するように祈る）

上記のステップについては、FC2からのダウンロードや記事の修正方法をはじめ、Google Webmasterの使い方など、以下のサイトがとても役に立ちました。
FC2からWordPressへ移転・引っ越しする手順を冷静に考えた

7/10追記）
インデックス登録がされてからまだ数日ですが、とりえず平均検索順位は順調に回復しているようです。