In the Midst of Deregulation

Yoshifumi Tsuji Vice Chairman, Keidanren Chairman, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.

To revitalize the nation's economy, the Big Bang financial deregulation is under way and many other proposals for deregulation have been put forth in line with the trend toward internationalization. As a result, many rules and regulations have been abolished or relaxed. All this made me recently ponder on two practices that still exist in Japan, but not in foreign countries.

In Japan, one encounters a complex set of clerical procedures when one becomes an officer of an industrial organization. As many of you may have experienced, once you become an officer of such an organization, you are more often than not automatically obligated to concurrently assume the positions of other related organizations. If the organization is a public interest corporation, your registered seal and a seal certificate are required when submitting necessary documents to the organization. (Incidentally, the existence of numerous public interest corporations itself is a big problem.) I was stunned when at one time I was asked by an organization to submit three documents on the grounds that the organization is under the jurisdiction of three competent government ministries. When I went to a ward office to get a seal certificate to do this, I observed that the staff in the office was devoting a lot of their time to issuing resident's cards, copies of family register, and other certificates that seemed to be required by all sorts of regulations. In the past I brought along my own seal and it took me about ten minutes to go through these procedures. Now the time has been cut to five minutes or so since the imprints of seals have become registered on computer. Granted this is an improvement, but if you only had to sign the documents, all these procedures could be eliminated and would not take up your time. So, why seals, not signatures?

The other matter I would like to comment on is about whether we should adopt a taxpayer's number system. It is quite strange that opinions calling for the introduction of this system at times gain momentum and then somehow die down. Judging from what I have heard from scholars, industrialists, or journalists, I think that many of them are in support of the system. Despite the fact that there are many advocates, I wonder why it has not been put into practice. Since we already have several publicly issued numbers, including those for health insurance certificates, drivers' licenses, and pension certificates, I do not think that Japanese having a single number is likely to create any problem. If anything, I believe that this number system would be effective in heightening people's awareness about our taxation system. To argue for the number system but against its application to the taxation system misses the point. It would not only simplify administrative work associated with tax collection, but also helps catch up with tax dodgers. It seems to me that the introduction of this uniform number system would also have an effect on people's mindset like the effect of introducing daylight savings time. Daylight savings time is considered to contribute more to helping cultivate people's environmental awareness than it is to actually saving energy.