With no veterinary school in Shikoku, Japan lacked a regional hub for disease control. The Kake issue reveals how resistance forces, aided by politicians and media, undermined legitimate policy reform.

Policy was twisted not by evidence, but by resistance to reform.

2017-07-13

The following continues from the previous chapter.

Among the conditions to be satisfied, the most important was that the establishment of a veterinary school be permitted only in regions that lacked veterinary training institutions on a broad, regional basis.

At present, Shikoku has not a single veterinary school.

If avian influenza or a similar disease were to break out in Shikoku, there would be no intellectual hub for investigation or countermeasures.

For this very reason, even Democratic Party legislators from Shikoku (now the Democratic Party) had requested the establishment of a veterinary school in the region.

If resistance forces made it unavoidable to limit approval to a single school, then locating it in Shikoku was both reasonable and inevitable.

Only Kake Gakuen presented a concrete plan to establish a veterinary school in Shikoku.

Through this process, the advisory council for the special zone calmly and without a single doubt decided to establish a veterinary school in the Imabari special zone.

Most members of the advisory council were largely unaware of what kind of personal relationship, if any, the project operator had with the Prime Minister.

At the very least, I myself did not know, nor did I have any interest in such matters.

This was not an issue of personal friendship but a matter of national policy decision-making.

In this case, the response of the Ministry of Education was the major problem.

Regarding the establishment of a new veterinary school, the 2015 growth strategy had already stipulated that a conclusion be reached by March 2016.

However, the ministry failed to take any action in response to that decision.

The Cabinet Office regarded this as a serious issue and continued negotiations persistently.

The decision was postponed for approximately six months.

Even so, the ministry did not respond, and on September 16, at a meeting between the ministry and the special zone working group, its position was ultimately refuted.

In other words, it became clear that there was no rational reason to deny approval for a new school.

Despite requests for a new supply-and-demand outlook reflecting advances in life sciences, the responsible ministry was unable to present any such analysis.

The essence of the Kake issue lies in the reckless resistance of forces opposed to reform, which was reinforced by certain opposition parties and media through rule-breaking practices such as ignoring evidence-based principles and reversing the burden of proof.

Anyone who reads the cabinet-approved documents and the minutes of the advisory council and working group in an ordinary manner can see that the criticism was utterly untenable.

What is troubling is that if such behavior continues, the entire Kasumigaseki bureaucracy will lose its motivation to pursue reform.

If reforms are attacked based on documents of unknown origin and the burden of proof is reversed, no one will willingly undertake difficult reforms in the face of powerful resistance forces.

Those who criticized the government over the Kake issue ultimately called for the abolition of the special zones themselves.

This truly reveals the nature of the resistance forces.

What is now required is a return to orthodox policy debate on how to break through further entrenched regulations.

Omitted.