NEWSLETTERNO.

38

2014. 12 . 9

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY
THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO
東京大学公共政策大学院

Contents

1 SciREX Summer Camp Report［Miyu Ishiguro］
2 A New Beginning for Healthcare Planning［Kenichi Hanioka］
3 Student Interview, No. 19［ Mr. Yuichi Sakurai］
4 To GraSPP, SIPA, and Beyond［Nana Homma］／ Topical News

SciREX Summer Camp Report

Miyu Ishiguro Legal Policy Division, 1st YearI participated in the SciREX Summer Camp held over three days from
August 31 to September 2. This year's course took place on Awaji Island,with the topic being societies with a falling population. It involved
working in groups to develop likely and ideal scenarios for 30 years in the
future, and producing policy proposals for achieving the ideal outcome.
●Up to the night before departure
Before arriving in person, we introduced ourselves to our groups andundertook preliminary exercises. My group was made up of people froma variety of disciplines, such as agriculture and philosophy of science, andwith diverse backgrounds, ranging from people with employment
experience to someone who already had a master's degree and aimed toreceive another. While I looked forward to the cross-cultural attraction of
having people from diverse backgrounds, I did wonder whether wewould be able to agree on a joint proposal. Given the diﬃculty of
conducting much of a conversation by e-mail, we approached the startdate without being fully prepared and I joined the course with somedoubts still in my mind.
●At the course
The summer camp primarily involved group work. In my group, we ﬁrst
had to make up for our lack of preparation, but once we got to meeteach other face-to-face, our discussion proceeded smoothly. The groupleader kept careful track of time and we all avoided focusing too muchon our own specialties. As part of their preliminary preparations, one ofour group, an expert in public health, had produced a concept diagram
looking 30 years ahead from the perspective of their own ﬁeld. At thecamp, though, his attitude was to contribute his own knowledge when

dealing with medical or public health issues but to pay careful attention
to what everyone else had to say when it came to ﬁelds outside theirarea of expertise, he declared. Having talked this over early on, ourdiscussions proceed with everyone respecting each other's diﬀerences.
What impressed me here was that, whereas we are in the habit oflooking at things like society and policy from within the frame of our own
specialties, this was a chance to gain insights into how these things lookfrom diﬀerent perspectives. Looking at legal matters from theperspective of someone who develops rockets provided a view of thelaw unlike what I get in my usual studies.

NEWSLETTER●After the summer camp
Having received some stern feedback from the teachers at the grouppresentation, the summer camp left me with an awareness of how much
I still have to learn. In regard to putting policy into practice, it waspointed out to me that the impressive outcomes I intended would notnecessarily eventuate straight away, and while this may seem obvious
when written down, it is something you tend to forget when engaged ingroup work at a summer camp. Nevertheless, while the expression may
sound a little clichéd, I found it a valuable experience to be involved in
the group work and other activities, and in the cross-cultural exchangethat resulted from contact with people I would not normally get to meet,including members of our group with diﬀerent specialties and academics
from other universities.
“Why do you always restrict themselves to their own ﬁeld?”
I particularly remember this comment being made by one of theteachers I had a chance to speak to. This has prompted me to adopt an
attitude of opening myself up to other ﬁelds.

1

Public Symposium

A New Beginning for Healthcare Planning〜 Achieving viability in the optimization of regional healthcare 〜
Kenichi Hanioka Project Professor

Approximately 280 people attended over the two days
despite the threat of an imminent typhoon.

In-home Care). Copies of the roughly 300-page guideline document
were circulated.
The aims of the guidelines are to enhance regional planningcapabilities and achieve the best regional healthcare system throughmeasures such as: (1) enabling participation in the planning process bypeople with a diverse range of perspectives, including local patients andresidents as well as administrators, (2) incorporating practical know-how
and policy proposals that are not able to be included in nationalguidelines. A questionnaire was sent out to regional governments (withreplies received from 36 prefectures) and the situations, opinions, andneeds expressed in the responses were considered when preparing theguidelines.
RH-PAC is a group of approximately 100 volunteers with expertise in
the subject, including patients and resident representatives, healthcare
policy-makers, healthcare providers, and media. A large number of
positive responses were received to the question, “Would you participate
in a study group on the topic of healthcare planning?”, which was
included in a questionnaire of attendees at the third public symposium
on “Healthcare Planning and National Fee Schedule for Medical Care in2025” held in September of last year. RH-PAC was subsequently
established in April this year. Many of the participants in RH-PAC are fromthe Health Policy Action Community (H-PAC), a leadership development
course for the public conducted by the HPU, and its predecessor, theHealth Care and Social Policy Leadership Program (HSP) at the Universityof Tokyo. RH-PAC has held 17 meetings since April, with 13 working
groups having been established to look at speciﬁc topics.
The ﬁnal part of the symposium was the panel discussion on the topic,“Road Map to 2018 ‒ What Can We Do Now?”, where panelists
representing a broad range of perspectives, including national andregional governments, patients and residents, insurers, healthcare
providers, and media, engaged in a lively discussion about how they
could work toward a common goal.

NEWSLETTER

This symposium was held over two days on October 12 and 13, 2014.
Now in its fourth year, the symposium is a public event staged annuallyby the Health Policy Unit (HPU). This year's event was organized incooperation with the Regional Health Plan Action Community (RH-PAC),
a voluntary organization looking into the best practices for regional
healthcare planning. Despite the uninviting weather, with a typhoon
imminent, it was attended by about 280 people (160 on day 1, 120 on
day 2), including policy makers, patients and residents, healthcare
providers, and media. It is also worthy of note that the attendees
included 21 healthcare planning administrators from 14 prefectures.
Much attention is currently being directed at regional healthcare
planning. A variety of system funding was introduced in August 2013
under the Report of the National Council on Social Security System
Reform. The Hospital Bed Function Reporting System was launched toprovide the basis for deciding on the reallocation of beds. Eachprefecture will in the next ﬁscal year produce a Regional Health Care
Vision that will serve as a blueprint for the restructuring of regional
systems for healthcare provision. Guidelines for this are currently underpreparation at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). There
will also be a “consolidated fund for regional healthcare and nursing” (90billion yen approx.) funded by consumption tax. The establishment ofthese arrangements has led to growing hopes that healthcare plans,
which have traditionally been thought of as “pie in the sky,” will now
have the viability to reform regional healthcare.
The symposium was divided into three parts, consisting respectively of
lectures, an announcement of healthcare planning guidelines by
RH-PAC, and a panel discussion.
The ﬁrst of the lectures, given by Manabu Yoshida, Councilor for
healthcare and nursing coordination of MHLW, was entitled “Overview ofStrategy for 2025” and presented a “grand design” for a society with ahigh degree of population aging. Next, Takashi Kitaba, Manager of theRegional Healthcare Planning Section at the Health Policy Bureau of
MHLW, gave a presentation entitled “Trends in Regional Healthcare
Planning” that described various speciﬁc policies. Nikkei Healthcare
editor, Yasuko Shoji, then presented “Why Is Regional Health Care Plan
Essential Now?” in which she identiﬁed matters that deserve attention.
The three lectures all made the point that healthcare planning is the key
to restructuring the systems for healthcare provision in Japan.
Next, the Regional Healthcare Vision/Regional Healthcare Planning
Guidelines (provisional) produced by the RH-PAC were presented inseparate parts. These consisted of 16 separate guidelines: three coreguidelines (Basic Planning Guidelines, Planning Process Guidelines, andParticipant Training Guidelines), two guidelines on speciﬁc topics (PDCA
Cycle and Indices, and Division of Functions and Coordination), andeleven disease- or activity-speciﬁc guidelines (Cancer, Stroke, Acute
Myocardial Infarction, Diabetes, Mental Illness, Emergency Medicine,
Disaster Medicine, Rural Medicine, Perinatal Medicine, Pediatrics, and2

The lively panel discussion included engaging
with members of the audience.

Student Interview

Yuichi
Sakurai

Economic Policy Division,
2nd Year- Tell us about your background that led you to study at GraSPPIt is a long story. I grew up in Adachi-ku. In junior high school I found myself ina disruptive class that left me feeling frustrated that the students around me
prevented me from learning even though I had wanted to. What made it worse
was that I grew up with only my mother. We were not ﬁnancially well oﬀ,
meaning I could not go to a "jyuku" cram school, and therefore the school was
the only place I could learn. While I was aware of the problem, I wasn't braveenough to tell the other students to stop. That I was stubborn enough not to be
carried along with them was a stroke of luck amid the misfortune.
My high school was just a local city-run school, not one of those that prepares
you for further study, so this too was something of a problem. Because the only
way to get ahead was through study, I set my heart on getting into university. I
wanted to go somewhere where there were lots of people of the same mind.
While I had set my sights on the University of Tokyo entrance examination up
until my second year at high school, because my high school didn't provide theright preparation. Since I couldn't aﬀord cram school, I changed plan and went
instead to do economics at Sophia University.
Knowing how much my mother was struggling, I couldn't ask her to pay formy tuition fees. Instead I got a bursary from Yomiuri newspaper up until the ﬁrst
semester of my third year. While all of the newspapers oﬀered bursaries, I chose
Yomiuri because they and Nikkei were the ones oﬀering the largest grant andhighest monthly allowance. My territory was the Ueno neighborhood and I
would deliver the morning and afternoon editions as far as Yushima. This meantgetting up at one-thirty or two in the morning and going to bed at eight or ninein the evening. I would stay up studying to ten or eleven at exam times, but it
was very tiring. I once fell oﬀ my bike in wet weather and spilt all of thenewspapers over the ground. After that my mother paid for my tuition, and I
graduated from being a newspaper bursary student. My experience from thattime left me with a philosophy of being “keeping faith with myself and with thepeople who helped me”.
These circumstances made it diﬃcult to study as much as I wanted of theﬁelds that interested me during my undergraduate days. This left me with adesire to go on to graduate school and delve more deeply into economics andthe ways in which it is used.
- Have you found a job?
I have a job at Benesse Corporation. It was my ﬁrst choice, so I am absolutely
delighted. I feel an aﬃnity for their stance of putting into practice theircompany motto of achieving "well-being" through education. I want to make acontribution through education so that children from all sorts of backgrounds
can have hopes for the future. Given the sort of work I want to do, I expect myinitial posting will be a provincial one somewhere outside Tokyo. If thecompany tells me to, I'm happy to go anywhere, whether it be the backblocks ofthe mountains or overseas.
(Interview and text by editor)

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

Human pyramid of colleagues for a farewell video letter to a cram school employee

19

No.

NEWSLETTER

Barbeque with colleagues at his part-time cram school job

3

To GraSPP, SIPA, and Beyond
Nana Homma MPP/IP, Class of 2014
It has been almost two months since I graduated from GraSPP and became a working woman
once again. Looking back, the two years at GraSPP were indeed a luxury.
I entered GraSPP's Master of Public Policy International Program class of 2014, and for my second
year I studied at Columbia University's School of International and Public Aﬀairs (SIPA). The twoschools have diﬀerent strengths that make them unique. At SIPA, the mega-school which has 500
students with diverse backgrounds from all over the world, discussion was always stimulating. In
contrast, at much cozier GraSPP you can ﬁnd true friendship. Through working on term-longprojects and tough problem sets together, I made some life-time best friends.
However, if you want to pursue something in depth, your school won't be the only place for alearning opportunity. One thing I learned from my two years was to keep looking outside, while
getting the most out of the current environment. For instance, I studied at Komaba Campus among
engineering students in addition to economics and management classes at GraSPP's Hongo
Campus. Similarly, I chose to study abroad at SIPA in order to further concentrate on my research
topic from the beginning: the harmonization between development and disaster risk management
policies and mainstreaming disaster management in developing countries. At SIPA, an importantpart of my study involved interviews and ﬁeldworks outside of the classroom. I have to admit that I
struggled with the language barrier, but the ﬁrst-hand accounts and local interactions weredeﬁnitely something I would not have been able to obtain from lectures and textbooks.
I stated earlier that the two years were a luxury. To put it another way, as a student you are free totake any kind of approach towards your topic. I suggest all of you to continuously seek for learning
opportunities, not just at GraSPP, but also elsewhere at the University of Tokyo, and beyond.
Currently, I am working at the international division of a Japanese company which specializes in
geospatial information. Our work assists developing countriesʼ development, urban planning anddisaster risk management; in basic terms, an accurate understanding of their lands. Though I face
many new (and diﬃcult) things to learn every day, so far it has been very rewarding and exciting.

TopicalNews
At an Asia tournament for impromptu English debating inwhich 76 teams from around Asia participated in early October,
GraSPP students Akira Kato and Kazushige Yoshimaru became
the ﬁrst Japanese to make it into the top 16. The impromptu
English debates are a lively form of competition around theworld, with contestants being given a proposition and 15
minutes to prepare a case in English that will impress theindependent judges. The contestants are automaticallyassigned to argue either for or against the proposition, which
they need to consider and argue from a variety of perspectives.
Propositions at the tournament covered such issues as“competitors at international sporting events making politicalor religious statements,” “the Hong Kong student
demonstrations," and “whether Fatah should cooperate with
the USA and Israel.”
Akira Kato and Kazushige Yoshimaru

NEWSLETTER

International Public Policy Division, 2nd Year

4

Yuichi Sakurai, the subject of this newsletter's student interview,is a “kugakusei (self-supporting student),” a term that is indanger of dying out. Listening to his story about how he used
his struggle to overcome adverse circumstances as springboard
to study at GraSPP gave me pause to wonder about where thediﬀerence lies between those people who overcome adversity and those
who do not. While the individual's motivation is likely part of it, I believe thatpeople and other background factors can also act as the source of that
motivation. There is an expression, “nature versus nurture"; it is nurture that
we can change. (Editor)

Editorʼs
Postscript

NEWSLETTERNo.

38［Editor+publisher］GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY

THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

東京大学公共政策大学院［date of publication］2014. 12. 9［design］Masahiro ABiCo

7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan tel 03-5841-1710 fax 03-5841-7877
E-mail grasppnl@pp.u- tokyo.ac. jp

http://www.pp.u-tokyo.ac.jp