Slow Progress for Habitation

A large number of people in the Pacific coast of Tohoku area, who lost their houses taken by tsunami three years ago, still live in temporary houses being unable to find the alternatives. There are mismatches between demand and supply for permanent houses, called reconstruction residences, as a result of too slow progress of the efforts by bureaucrats. They do not realize the saying, “Timing is everything.”

Temporary houses are too small to live for years. Average of floor space is 300 square feet, for two rooms, one for kitchen and dining and another for bedroom. Ministry of Reconstruction has been preparing for permanent houses for them in each devastated cities and towns in Tohoku. Its effort was very slow for some reasons.

Basic problem is scarcity of lands. After tsunami washed the land for residence, there remain a few spaces to build new houses. Reconstruction efforts needed to develop plain lands by scraping top of the hills. If some lands owned by individual were found, public offices need to get approval from those owners to buy them. The problem was that those owners had been missed, because they had died, moved to somewhere else or even unidentified.

Although local governments wanted to buy the lands out without approval of the missed owners and with possible compensation for them after appearance, bureaucrats never tried to allow it. They argued that property rights, even with no identified owner, were the supreme determined in the constitution, while ignoring human rights to live in peace. The true reason, however, is that they do not want to complicate the legislative structure by adding new exception. Moreover, bureaucrats are highly reluctant to vest new authority on local governments, because they believe that the central government must control local governments.

Consequently, local governments spent months for looking for landowners, other months for making plans and other months for paperwork to submit documents to the central government. While governments were busy for chores inside bureaucracy, needs of people shifted eventually. Some found other place to build their own houses, and others decided to move to their home of sons and daughters. Some passed away.

Mismatch was created by those time factors, stemmed from narrow-minded works of bureaucrats. After permanent houses were built, ten to twenty percent of rooms are still vacant. In spite of those failure, bureaucrats keep on building new reconstruction residences everywhere in Tohoku. For them, it will be a success, if those rooms will be filled in next century. Above are the reasons why bureaucrats lost their credibility, which sealed their fate as losers.