Nigeria - the Giant of Africa?

I’ve just returned from a short trip to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. It’s an interesting time to visit, given that Nigeria has just been identified as one of the ‘MINT’ countries, (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) hailed as the next ‘powerhouses’ after the BRICs and CIVETs, as economies to watch. Although I was familiar with Nigeria’s south west, around Ibadan, the political capital of Abuja is somewhere I hadn’t previously visited – so it was indeed a treat to see it at last. The hospitality given to us was, as ever, as warm as the west African sunshine and we were treated like VIPs.  Thanks to everyone involved for such a wonderful visit.

That Nigeria is joining a coterie of countries with emerging strong economies was greeted with headlines such as: “Where millionaires live on potholed streets that flood”, in The Guardian.  The article continues by suggesting that Nigeria’s growth has failed to radiate: “Tucked behind high walls, there are more millionaires living in this part of Lagos (Ikoyi) than anywhere in Africa, and most cities of the world. But the potholes are some of the city’s worst and flooding caused by blocked drains quickly turns roads into rivers, where sometimes barefooted fruit-sellers can be seen wading through with baskets on their heads”.  Certainly Nigeria is a country of contrasts and contradictions: although it’s coming to rival South Africa as Africa’s largest economy, two thirds of Nigerians live in what has been described as ‘crushing poverty’.  In the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index of 2014, Nigeria fell nine places to 147^th out of 189 countries due to corruption and lack of transparency and Nigerians themselves say that getting on in the economy is all about ‘knowing someone’.

Ruchir Sharma of the Morgan Stanley Bank, in his  new book “The Breakout Nations” argues that Nigeria has ‘turned a corner’, yet Obadiah Mailafia, an economist writing in the Nigerian newspaper BusinessDay (3/2/14)  says that “Our public institutions remain weak while the political elites remain fractious. Our infrastructures are shambolic. The role of law remains weak”.

Many of our Leeds Met PhD students are wading in bravely to address key issues such as these affecting Nigeria’s economic and social wellbeing. I was invited to Nigeria as the University’s Director of Postgraduate Research Students, along with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, (Prof. Andrew Slade), Dr. Martin Samy, the instigator of the Nigerian PhD programme, and eight other colleagues, to attend Leeds Metropolitan University Faculty of Business and Law’s conference for their Nigerian PhD students. The aim was for these PhD students to present their work to date.  The conference was made possible by the generous support of the Niger Delta Development Commission and we were privileged to have the attendance of the Managing Director of the NDDC, Sir Bassey Dan Abia, as well as Dr. Itotenaan Henry Ogiri, one of its executive directors, who recently completed his PhD at Leeds Met. As well as the PhD students, the conference was attended by their Nigerian supervisors, and a range of other esteemed guests, including Senator Emmanuel Edesiri Aguariawoda, who represents part of the Delta Region.

One of my pleasant though nerve wracking tasks was to judge the best PhD student presentation, along with Professor Bankole Sodipo and Professor Sheriffdean Tella. We all agreed on the winners out of the twenty presenters – though we had to award two prizes rather than one. These were to Heineken Lokpobiri, a Senator in his day job, who was looking at Environmental Rights in the Niger Delta, and Williams Makinde, an executive director with Daar Communications, looking at the supply/demand gap challenge facing small and medium enterprises in agribusiness.

Senator Lokpobiri is taking on one of the most serious issues to affect Nigeria over the last 60 years – the effect on the peoples of the Delta of oil and gas exploration. The government has responded harshly in the past to the protesters. It led to the death of the writer and environmental activist, Ken Saro Wiwa who was hanged by the government in 1995 along with eight other members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. This act led to international outrage, and Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth for three years. The fact that it is now permissible to question the enforceability of environmental rights shows how much Nigeria has changed politically. Indeed, the Niger Delta Development Commission seems determined to further address the social and environmental agenda of the region.  Heineken Lokpobiri spoke in his presentation of the “unimaginable environmental damage” and of the need to reform environmental laws which were “obsolete, inadequate and unenforceable”. His contribution will be to develop a legal framework to guarantee the efficient practice of environmental rights and enforcement.

Williams Makinde’s PhD addresses another key aspect of poverty alleviation - the lack of access to financing for small farmers, which affects the ability of agribusiness SMEs to develop and thus to fill the ‘missing middle’ in Nigeria’s agro-industry value chain.  Small-scale farmers play a vital role in contributing to Nigeria’s GDP yet only 18% have access to financial services such as credit schemes.  This study will look at what kinds of financial products should be designed and how small farmers can qualify for credit schemes, along with redefining farm land titles from a legal point of view so that land can be used as collateral.

It’s not possible here to mention all the other PhD projects, but they address essential aspects of Nigeria’s continuing development, such as citizen participation in constitution making, land rights, entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, environmental accounting, reform of the banking sector, the role of privatization, urban growth, and the socio-political determinants of terrorism. What they have in common is making Nigeria a more secure, prosperous country, and as we know, this is what builds the social determinants of health.

I had the opportunity to give a conference address and as so many PhD students had shared their experience, I started by briefly sharing mine. My PhD work was on the delivery of the universal primary education policy in Botswana, where I was living in the 1970s. PhD study has changed greatly  in the intervening years: then it was very much about individual interests, there wasn’t much emphasis on dissemination and it was a rather academic exercise.  Doing a PhD belonged to an exclusive club. Now, I argued, PhDs need to be positioned at “the points where education, training, research, work and career development intersect.” (Cumming, 2010). There’s much more focus on application and on meeting policy objectives, of feeding in recommendations made by in the dissertation to enable action to be taken. It’s no longer merely an academic exercise and no longer available only to the few. It was great to see so many Nigerian senior employees undertaking their studies, people with many years of experience, as well as those at relatively junior stages of their career.

It's important to stress that, as the former ‘colonial masters’ of  Nigeria and many other African countries,  that we were coming as equal partners. The writer Binyavanga Wainana, says in ‘How not to write about Africa in 2012—a guide’, says that Africa will engage with those who address Africans as equals. Clearly there are power and privilege differentials, much of it attached to ‘whiteness’ but we hope that Leeds Met’s involvement is in the spirit of support rather than of being neo-colonialist. We are responding to the clear needs of Nigeria and of Africa generally, which bears the majority of the world’s disease burden and has not made the developmental gains expected by the Millennium Development Goals. To quote Archbishop Desmond Tutu: ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you are on the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.’ Nigeria is not a mouse, but I hope you get the point.

As a University with strong moral concerns, we cannot be neutral, and with our existing links to many African countries, it seems a natural continent on which to support the development of PhD scholars who can address their country’s concerns. This development is necessary to challenge the Eurocentricity of much theory and philosophy; Bryceson (2012:300) speaking of ‘development’ generally, argues that, “the most effective way of challenging external donors agencies’ misguided influence, Western or indeed also eastern in the near future, is for theoretical agency to be grounded in Africa”. It was good to see our PhD scholars questioning the applicability of western theories to the African situation. Thus Dr. Henry Ogiri, who was recently awarded his PhD by Leeds Met, talked about rejecting stakeholder theory in his examination of corporate social responsibility formulation and implementation, and developing legitimacy theory instead. His work is concerned, essentially, with the ethical behavior of Nigerians firms, and argues that these should conform to international standards. Indeed, it is only in this way that Nigeria will be taken seriously by the international community, thus attracting the investment that Nigeria needs to increase the economic and social health and wellbeing of its people.  Henry is following in the line of other Nigerians and Africans who have questioned the value of western theory and instead are developing ‘theoretical agency grounded in Africa’. One Nigerian who massively affected my thinking on this issue is the Nigerian feminist and social anthropologist Ifi Amadiume, who said that it was for Nigerians to write about and analyze Nigerian culture, not outsiders who possibly would never understand that culture. She continues to write and discuss and I’d recommend her work if you haven’t come across it yet.

Having theoretical agency and keeping Nigerian talent at home means that Nigeria stands more chance of developing in the way that it wants rather than mimicking development in the global North or neglecting its people in the emphasis on economic development. The great Ghanaian leader, the first President of the first African country to break free from British colonialism, said “We shall measure our progress by the improvement in the health of our people. The welfare of our people is our chief pride, and it is by this that we ask to be judged.”

Another great Ghanaian, Kofi Annan, when he was UN Secretary General, said something similar: “A healthy and prosperous society is not just about attainment of numerical benchmarks, but it also requires investment in people - their health, their education and their security. It takes care of all and allows all of its members to participate in decision making.”

Thus perhaps in the way that our PhD students are questioning how to bring about ‘development’, there is room for discussion of ‘development’ actually means.

The PhD programme, I suggested, means that brain gain doesn’t lead to brain drain, which is an accompanying risk of  higher education undertaken overseas. Although students can be exposed to all sorts useful ideas abroad, many do not return.  (The diaspora can and does, play an important role. See for example, http://www.meetup.com/Nigerianthinkers/). I raised the question of whether the same outcomes can be achieved by studying locally, and I think they can. (See Dixey 2012).  Moreover, having groups of students working on related areas can lead to the critical mass needed to tackle these ‘wicked’ problems. Examples could be women’s roles in business, trading and access to credit; the skills-gap that is fuelling unemployment, especially among young people; the digital divide and how poorer communities can access new technologies; examining household expenditure at different income levels to understand how poorer households budget; monitoring the effect of electrification and “Light-Up Nigeria”; the list is endless. But if say, ten to twenty PhD students were all working on different aspects of the same problem, real advances could be made.

One example of a serious problem affecting Nigeria is that of road safety. It’s an issue that no one seems to be addressing, and the way that new roads are being built might only be adding to the carnage. Nigeria has the third highest rate of road fatalities in the world. In 2012, there were 4,260 road deaths, and with the number of cars set to rise from 8 million (most of them seem to be in Abuja!) to 40 million by 2020, the situation will only get worse. I did a very small piece of research around Ibadan between 1992 and 1994, where I was intrigued by seeing so many motorcyclists not bothering to wear cycle helmets. My line of enquiry led me to interview babalawo (Ifa priests) and a whole range of other people, and led to an fascinating (at least to me) exploration of cultural beliefs, fatalism and religion, leading to a single paper (Dixey 1999). How much powerful it would be to have up to a dozen PhD students all working on Nigeria’s road safety problem, with road engineers, urban designers, psychologists, education specialists, safety experts, car designers, sociologists, policy analysts, all taking their separate aspects but coming together to add to a holistic analysis and solution-finding. We saw incidents even in the few days that we spent in Abuja of near-collisions and one actual one with a four wheeled drive vehicle in the storm ditch and two cars parked nearby on the highway. These incidents can be more off-putting to foreign investors risking the lives of their staff on Nigeria’s roads than the activities of the Boko Haram Islamists in the northeast.

Nigeria is viewed by many Africans as the “Giant of Africa”, the senior brother. It has given the world an impressive list of Nigerian writers, thinkers, social scientists, and artists – see for example http://www.ranker.com/list/famous-authors-from-nigeria/reference

Nigeria is the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of population (170 million). It has the seventh (some people say sixth) largest population in the world. It deserves to have the highest number of PhD holders in Africa.

References

Bryceson, D.F. (2012) Discovery and denial: Social science theory and interdisciplinarity in African Studies. African Affairs, 111, 443, April, 281-302

Cumming, J. (2010) Doctoral enterprise: A holistic conception of evolving practices and arrangements. Studies in Higher Education, 35, 25-39

Dixey, R. (1999) Fatalism, accident causation and prevention: Lessons for health promotion from a study in a Yoruba town, Nigeria. Health Education Research, 14,2, 197-208

Dixey, R. (2012) Delivering Creative Education for Health Promoters in Africa—Towards Critical Mass by “Going Global and Staying Local”. Creative Education 2012. Vol.3, Special Issue, 749-754

Modern Slavery and health promotion values

Freedom, control, choice and empowerment are all part of the modern discourse or rhetoric of health promotion.  Every idea that starts with radical intent becomes diluted as it becomes adopted and incorporated into the mainstream, and the radicalism of the WHO’s original definition of health promotion being about people taking control of the determinants of their health has inevitably not occurred, as that way revolution lies! At the least however, social movements have attempted to address the worst excesses of loss of freedom, dignity and lack of control.

The film being shown at the moment, 12 Years a Slave, is perhaps part of the retrospective imperative in our different political age that has enabled women feeling able to speak out against their historical sexual abuse, and people of African heritage pointing out the evils of slavery and its legacy.  Much of the rediscovery of history has taken place in the USA and is being told through popular media. The Butler for example, tells the story of a black butler who served in the White House under eight different Presidents. It charts the shameful treatment of black Americans in the twentieth century and provides a backdrop to explore the civil rights movement.  This film is based on the true-life story of Eugene Allen; when he started to work at the White House, he had to use the back door reserved for black people.  He lived long enough to see a black man appointed as president.  In 1792 when the White House was built, 400 of the 600 labourers were slaves. Even in the early 1960s, John F Kennedy is reputed to have ordered his aides not to allow Sammy Davis Junior, the black singer and musician, to be photographed with his white wife at a party at the White House, it not being that long since inter-racial marriages were illegal.  The legacy of slavery thus runs deep in the US, yet of the 10 million Africans forced to the new world as slaves, only 350,000 went to what is now the USA.  Over a million went to the British colony of Jamaica and British colonies took a total of about 25% of all slaves from the Atlantic trade. Given that slavery was lawful in the USA from 1620 to 1865, much of that too would have been under British jurisdiction.

12 Years a Slave is unusual in that the man whose true story the film is based on, Solomon Northup, was firstly a free man who was kidnapped and made a slave, and secondly, that he was literate and wrote a book about his experiences.  Once enslaved, Northup had no means to free himself; he was 33 and lived in upstate New York with his wife and children before he was duped. He was only freed by the white former owner of his father. Few first hand accounts of slavery exist, although scholars have turned up about 100 written between 1750 and 1865, and they serve as powerful testimonies to challenge the mainstream histories usually written by white men. The autobiography of the runaway slave Harriet Jacobs, is one example. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the white abolitionist, made a huge contribution with her series of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which appealed directly to the emotions of Americans about slavery. But there is nothing more powerful than people’s own testimonies, highlighting, if it were needed, the importance of literacy and of the written word being such a commanding medium for those who are silenced, to use Paolo Freire’s terminology. The film has been made by the young black British director Steve McQueen.

Whilst it’s instructive to learn about the slavery of the past, what should concern health promoters today is the current day slavery that we know exists. Modern slavery is clearly illegal and is covered by a number of conventions such as the Slavery Convention of 1926, and the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, The Slave Trade, and the Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery of 1956, plus the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, and the Convention on Forced Labour of 1930. Slavery is where people are forced to work through mental or physical threat; being owned by an employer; being dehumanized, treated as a commodity, bought and sold; being physically constrained with restrictions on freedom of movement. By these definitions, there are groups of people who are clearly modern slaves, including those doing forced or bonded labour, child slaves, people who are trafficked, slaves by descent, and people in forced or early marriage.  In 2002, the ILO estimated that over 8 million children were slaves, 21 million adults were forced labourers, 55% of them women, and the majority, 56% were in Asia and the Pacific. The organization Anti-Slavery has more facts and figures: 

http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/default.aspx

The group No More Slavery instructs how to take action, or as it says, ‘Empowering you to act’. (Yes that E word again!)

http://nomoreslavery.com/what-is-modern-day-slavery/

Like Solomon Northup, many modern day slaves are tricked into their status as slaves. They are promised jobs or a better life in some way. Desperate people are likely to take desperate measures, but they can end up in a number of forced positions, whether that is as brides, organ donors, servants, sex workers, or factory workers. The high profiles cases, such as that in Lambeth, London in November 2013 where three women were kept for 30 years and then made a dramatic escape, suggest that modern slavery is rare, whereas if we go beyond these headlines, we can see that slavery affects millions of people today, and some politicians and social commentators claim that it will only get worse. Moreover, it’s close to home, occurring in Europe, North America and other supposedly ‘developed countries’ with laws against it.

Though much of its work has been on organ trafficking, The World Health Organization has taken a cursory look at initiatives concerned with the health of people who have been trafficked, noting that much of the literature focuses on those who have been sexually exploited. In this regard, this WHO’s report is useful: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/77394/1/WHO_RHR_12.42_eng.pdf?ua=1

It has also looked at child labour, itself a contentious area, given the different social constructions of childhood and the economic importance of children. The WHO distinguishes hazardous child labour from other forms of child labour, and suggests that of the 250 million children globally child labourers, 111 million are engaged in hazardous labour:

http://www.who.int/ceh/risks/labour/en/

Is the epistemic health promotion community fully engaged with the modern slavery issue? It’s surely one of the most important health inequalities of our age and so obviously contravenes the values embedded in health promotion of empowerment, choice and control.

Japan - a healthy society?

Japan has long fascinated health promoters given its health statistics, principally life expectancy. Japan consistently tops the league table, with life expectancy at birth standing at 82.73 (for both sexes combined), ahead of the next three countries, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Australia. The UK comes 23^rd, with a life expectancy of 79.53 years.  An article in The Lancet in 2011 suggested some causes of the rapid increase in life expectancy in Japan. See: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)61055-6/fulltext

Among the reasons put forward are good educational opportunities and good health care, with equal access to them, and a variety of public health measures that tackled the particular problems facing Japan, such as strokes.

Having just spent a month in Japan, I’ve thought about these statistics and also developed some of my own ideas about them, and about the health of Japanese society. Of course, it’s never possible to understand another culture fully or even partially, and a month is no time at all, but certain things were striking. Although I could begin to see why Japan’s people might live long lives, the experience also made me query the difference between health and wellbeing and caused me to delve into some issues and statistics that might indicate the state of wellbeing of Japanese society.

There are noticeably fewer overweight and obese people in Japan, and the diet struck me as far healthier than that in Europe of North America. The statistics bear this out – in the USA 30% of people are classed as obese, compared with 3.5% in Japan. Portion size is a factor and Japanese people consume 25% fewer calories than Americans. I seemed to eat a lot and enjoyed many wonderful Japanese meals – but in fact I lost weight during my month there. Returning to Europe, the diet struck me immediately as being much more calorific and somehow unhealthier. If Japanese employees’ waistlines go over a certain specified amount, they have to receive counseling by the health insurance system.

The statistics also tell us that Japanese people live illness- and disease-free for more years – it’s not only quantity of years but there is quality in those extra years too, and Japan is well known for having a higher ratio of centenarians than anywhere else in the world. There are now 54,397 Japanese centenarians, compared with only 153 in 1963. However, there is an emerging concern that younger Japanese people are not having children, and the population has been declining for the last ten years. Fewer babies were born in 2012 than in any other year on record. Media commentators talk about a ‘flight from intimacy’ and it does appear that Japan is going through a major social transition. A study carried out by the Japan Family Planning Association in 2103 showed that 45% of women aged 16-24 were “not interested in or despised sexual contact”. Another survey two years earlier showed that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of unmarried women aged 18-34 were not in a romantic relationship, a rise of 10% from five years earlier.

Speculating on the reasons behind these figures is tempting. One possible explanation is that in a society where traditional gender roles are strong, and where, as a Japanese saying goes, ‘marriage is a woman’s grave’, younger women are choosing to prioritize their careers. Indeed, I both met and heard of women who would have been expected to give up their careers upon marriage, even women who were in highflying academic jobs. The Gender Equality Index just published, puts Japan as 101^st out of 137 countries, indicating that it is not within the top 100 countries as far as equality between men and women is concerned. Although prime minster Abe has revived plans to improve workplace conditions for working mothers and women in general, these lag far behind what is expected in other developed countries. 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs on the birth of their first child.

Another explanation put forward for younger Japanese to eschew intimacy lies in the preoccupation with digital technology, which provides surrogate relationships and enables people to live in a virtual world. In a society that values ‘deep reserve’ there is already a strong cultural tendency towards isolation and introversion. Linked with the high costs of living, the expectations facing married men and women and the fact that Japanese society seems well geared up to solo living all drive the trend to staying single. In contrast to the expectations of women’s participation in the workforce, those on men are huge. The stereotype of salary men working all hours is not far from the truth. The commuter trains in Tokyo are still crammed at 9 o’clock in the evening and it’s not unusual for men to socialize with their colleagues after work too. Japanese people are known to apologise to their co-workers for taking their holidays, and taking leave can be interpreted as a sign of lack of commitment. A survey by the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry in November 2013 showed that full time Japanese employees only take 47.1% of their paid leave. Although entitled to an average of 18.3 days, they took only 8.6 days; men took 44.2% and women 53.4% of the holidays they were entitled to. These figures were confirmed through my anecdotal discussion with Japanese colleagues, and rendered redundant a typical topic of conversation among co-workers – that is, where are you going for your holidays?

My limited exposure to health promotion in Japan indicated that a medical model predominates; one example is the lecture I gave to 65 young women training to become school health specialists, where there was incomprehension, not only due to the language, but because of the concepts, where a health inequalities discourse, a social model of health and the idea of wellbeing seemed completely foreign. The idea of focusing on minorities, a common preoccupation within health promotion, seems an embarrassment within a society that emphasizes the importance of homogeneity. One proverb perhaps illustrates something happening culturally - “if you see a nail sticking up, hammer it down”, which relates to the idea of not sticking out, but conforming. What is it like to be ‘different’ in Japanese society or to question it? The Ainu people of Hokkaido are a minority that are rendered invisible and have had to fight, and are still fighting, for their rights. The Ainu have been systematically discriminated against and successive governments have been reluctant to recognize their status for fear of preferring rights over and above those given to anyone else. See: http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/21976/v1i1_02okada.pdf

The Burakumin are a group that are still seen as the ‘untouchables’ within mainstream Japanese society yet are genetically, linguistically and culturally the same as other Japanese people. Prejudice and discrimination against buraka, as a hidden lower caste, continues: http://www.hurights.or.jp/archives/focus/section2/2008/06/present-day-buraku-discrimination.html

Japanese society seems ‘tolerant’ of sexual minorities yet the government has been criticized for spending very little on meeting the needs of gay people for information. HIV infection rates for gay men in Japan are higher than anywhere else in the developed world.

Another proverb relates to “The fire across the river”, meaning that the problem is over there, not here. There has been a great deal of speculation over why, in 2011 following the tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear plant was allowed to get to a state where there was the most serious incident since the Chernobyl disaster, given the huge stress on health and safety in Japan. It appeared that no-one was prepared to speak out to criticize what was happening, plus it was seen as a problem that was ‘over there’. This makes the secrecy bill currently going through the Japanese Parliament at the moment all the more worrying. The government is being criticized for not saying how they government will guarantee the public’s right to know what is going on, how the freedom of the press will be protected, and how the government will decide what is a state secret. Professor Noriko Hama, writing in The Japan Times notes that what’s happening is worthy of ‘Yes Minister’ where a government ‘keeps secret what secrets it deems especially secret’: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/30/business/the-secret-of-keeping-official-secrets-secret/#.UsElgyjKkRk

Certainly Abe’s premiership seems deeply worrying to anyone with leftish politics, and the stress on nuclear energy and rearmament are major discussion points in a country with its particular history. It was moving to see survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb turning up each day to sit in the peace park to talk to the many school groups and other tourists about the reality of what happened. The clock in the peace museum records how many days it has been since the last nuclear test – when I was there is was 49 days ago. See: http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/top_e.html

In the years since 2001 when the peace clock was put in place, it has been re-set 14 times after nuclear testing, serving as a powerful indicator that nuclear testing and nuclear bombs are very much in evidence globally despite the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was a deeply moving and very strange experience to be standing in the place where the bomb detonated, an event so much a part of our collective history.

Japan is often described as a country of deep contradictions and as being inexplicable to a foreigner. For me, one major contradiction was between the intense beauty of gardens and temples and the stunning attention to the creation of simple pleasing vistas, and the enormous ugliness of urban landscapes and urban sprawl that characterizes so much of the scarce land that has been built on to house the population of 126 million. The visibility of electricity cables in an earthquake prone country, rendering burying cables unfeasible, doesn’t help the visual clutter. It’s not a country to visit for wilderness experiences, even in Hokkaido, where I went to watch the red-crowned cranes in their wintering grounds. But there is a huge amount to visit Japan for; under the reserve, Japanese people are massively helpful and kind. The courtesy and consideration for others are remarkable; the younger people I met everywhere were great fun and once in a situation where they can let off steam, such as in a bowling alley, they certainly know how to have a good time. 

A glimpse at Japanese society perhaps highlights the difference between health and wellbeing. Health statistics might show a picture of ‘progress’ yet there are ways in which Japanese society could be seen as deeply ‘unhealthy’. From a professional interest point of view, I’m left with a series of questions about health and wellbeing. What explains the very low rates of crime and the high rates of personal security? What lies behind Japan’s supposedly high suicide rates? These rates have been questioned, with a suspicion that some suicides are actually murders: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/02/03/national/japans-suicide-statistics-dont-tell-the-real-story/#.UsEqMijKkRk

However, Japan is described as a ‘suicide tolerant’ society and doesn’t have the religious taboos against it that can predominate elsewhere. Suicide rates are three times those in the UK, and 30,000 Japanese people have taken their own lives every year for the past 14 years. See: http://thediplomat.com/2013/01/searching-for-answers-japans-suicide-epidemic/

The Tokyo underground runs efficiently and smoothly yet I wonder about the stress caused by using it every day; as a feminist, the geisha culture caused us endless hours of discussion – women, it’s claimed, can earn huge amounts, empowering them to set up their own businesses after they leave that profession, yet to me it was all about a male gaze and an idealized form of femininity, and seemed to sum up something about gender roles more generally; the lack of green spaces within the big cities feels like an alienation from nature; how can we explain the obsession (of some) with slot games like pachinko and the with the lottery?; I’m not sure what to make of the preoccupation with ‘Japanese-ness’ and traditional culture, and the aversion to immigration.  All personal views and thoughts – if you have any other views, please post them to me!