Opinion

To be or not to be a number

By Tony Laszlo

What did 4 million Japanese living in Yokohama and five other municipalities have in common with Japan's 1.7 million foreign residents on Aug. 5? Out of the 127 million documented inhabitants of Japan, they — and they alone — did not have a new 11-digit "residents identification number." Everyone else got bar-coded on that day when Japan's new ID system kicked in.

Although the new scheme is called the "resident registry network system," it will not keep tabs on foreign residents. Rather, the government will continue to record them separately via the alien identification number that it has issued to them for decades.

That so many Japanese were able to escape the branding iron is a more amazing story. Some municipalities have refused to participate in the network because they don't feel confident that their residents' information will be stored securely. The Diet's recent failure to pass a privacy protection bill fuels their argument.

I am surprised that there was not an even greater outcry regarding the security and integrity issues. Have people forgotten what happened in April when Mizuho Holdings, the world's largest bank in terms of assets, went online for the first time? Thousands of ATMs went down and stayed down for days, more than 2.5 million transactions failed and the flow of billions of yen was disrupted.

If a network system in the competitive private sector was that faulty, it's a good bet that those in the public sector will be as bad or worse. And around the same time, a Defense Agency official admitted to having secretly filed away private information on people who had requested documents under Japan's Freedom of Information Act. Have people forgotten already?

Some people are against the network because of the principles involved. Indeed, there is something dehumanizing about attaching a number to a person, especially at birth. When asked why his town would disobey the government's directions, one mayor replied, "Look, a baby is not born into this world with an identification card clamped between its teeth." Now, there is a down-to-earth mayor. No wonder his town has been flooded with inquiries from people wanting to take up residency there.

Personally, I can see the benefits that a more sophisticated system would bring. For too many years, people have had to spend good time and money diving through, into and around Japan's infamous red tape. If the official records of residents could be accessed quickly and easily throughout the country, certain procedures would likely run more smoothly.

To be or not to be a number. The heads of the six "unhooked" municipalities weren't confident that the physical and human errors would be minimal, that adequate responses would be taken to offset malicious acts and that the system would be generally run in the best interests of the people. By all accounts, these decisions have been well-received by the better part of the people living there. For perhaps the first time in its history, Japan has a very significant number of unhammered nails bravely sticking their heads up. How long before they get hammered down? And for the 123 million of you who are sporting shiny, new numbers, I do hope yours is a lucky one.

Shukan ST: Aug. 23, 2002

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