No-Go Yubari

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]Mainichi: Local government to file for financial reconstruction after going bankrupt
YUBARI, Hokkaido -- The municipal government here is set to file an application with the central government to be designated as an organization for financial reconstruction, effectively going bankrupt, the mayor said Tuesday...Yubari will become the first local government in 14 years to be designated as an organization for financial rehabilitation under the special law aimed at rehabilitating the finances of local governments...The municipal government has deemed it extremely difficult to rehabilitate its finances on its own, as its outstanding debts have surpassed 50 billion yen, more than 10 times its 4.5 billion yen annual budget. The Yubari Municipal Government's financial situation worsened after all of the 20-odd coal mines in the city had closed down by 1990. The population has declined to some 13,000, about 10 percent of the population when its coal mines had flourished.

Read Captain Japan on Yubari: Japan's Melon Kingdom

[Mulboyne]

Mainichi: Cash-strapped local government cans international film festival

The mayor of Yubari announced Friday that the Hokkaido city would stop holding a popular international film festival because the municipal government was strapped for cash. The Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival has been held in February since 1990, showing dozens of movies from Japan and across the world. But Yubari Mayor Kenji Goto and officials have decided to stop holding the festival, saying the city should concentrate on economic reconstruction. Major figures from the film industry such as Yoji Yamada, who directed "Shiawase no Kiiroi Hankachi," a movie set in Yubari, and actress Sayuri Yoshinaga have taken part in the event. "I'm worried. Why didn't the city ask for money to continue the film festival? It's a shame," Yamada said. "It's not about money. A community event like this should not have been abandoned"...more...

The longer-running Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival has also been cancelled.. More on the town is in this Crisscross translation of a Shukan Post feature: Yubari Has Lost Its Melons.

[Mulboyne]

Mainichi: Assembly members in bankrupt city used tax money for golf prizes

YUBARI, Hokkaido -- Four assembly members in this Hokkaido city that had fallen into financial crisis used taxpayers' money to buy prizes for a golf competition with public servants from three neighboring cities, it emerged Thursday. Mitsuo Okazaki, 65, speaker of the Yubari Municipal Assembly, admitted that taxpayers' money should not have been used for the competition. "We participated in the competition because I thought it'd be necessary to exchange opinions with members of assemblies in the neighboring cities. It was a customary practice (to use public funds set aside to cover the speaker's entertainment expenses), but I think it was careless because of the timing," he said...more...

[Captain Japan]

EDITORIAL/ The sad lesson of Yubari
Asahi

The Japanese film "Hula Girls" is doing well at the box office. Set in a mining town in decline in the mid-1960s, it traces the efforts of a group of local women who train to become hula dancers at a resort facility built as a new workplace to replace the coal mining site. There's a scene in the movie where out-of-work coal miners journey to the Hokkaido city of Yubari, then the "capital" of the nation's coal mining industry, to find employment.

Yubari city is now bankrupt. It faces a tedious and tough battle to regain its fiscal health under central government supervision that is due to start in the spring. The city, dealt a major blow when the government shifted the focus of its energy policy, gambled that its future lay with developing a viable tourist industry. This is what is so strikingly similar about the plot of "Hula Girls" and the Yubari city's efforts: But the ending is quite different.

Yubari has announced a 20-year fiscal recovery plan to eliminate its 36-billion-yen deficit. Never in the history of local government has a city had to take so long to regain fiscal health. In the meantime, city residents will have to cope with the bare minimum of public services while shouldering the highest local tax burden in the entire nation. The annual fee for public daycare service will be raised by some 120,000 yen per child, while the charge to treat sewage will surge by 70 percent. A total of 11 elementary and junior high schools will be integrated into one elementary and one junior high school. A wide range of financial aid programs, including support to patients using bus services for outpatient visits and subsidies for welfare, education and tourism, will be scrapped....more...

[Captain Japan]

85% of municipal employees in Yubari ready to jump ship
The Gomiuri Shimbun

A poll conducted by a municipal employees union in the financially troubled city of Yubari, Hokkaido, showed that over 85 percent of municipal employees are considering leaving their jobs, it was learned Tuesday.

This comes in the wake of plans by the city to transform its government from the next financial year into an entity whose reconstruction will be supervised by the central government.

These plans include reducing expenditures by 850 million yen through large-scale reductions in personnel costs.

To achieve this, the city is proposing to cut its staff by half from April's figure of 309 over the next two years, reduce the average salary of officials by 30 percent, and gradually decrease severance payments over the next four years to a maximum of a quarter of their present level.

The poll of 224 people, 189 union members (excluding fire and medical workers) and 35 managers, was conducted between Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, with a response rate of 85.5 percent.

Results show that 191 people, or 85.3 percent of respondents, were considering leaving their jobs, 138 of these were thinking about quitting immediately, and 53 planned to do so in the next few years. About 20 people have already tendered their resignations.

Up to 40 employees in the 56-to-60 age bracket were considering quitting immediately, the main reason for this is believed to be the planned gradual reduction in severance pay.

[Captain Japan]

[Captain Japan]

Mainichi: Cash-strapped local government cans international film festival

Yubari fest triumphs over cancellation
Variety

TOKYO -- Once threatened with cancellation because its city government sponsor went bankrupt, the Yubari Intl. Fantastic Film Festival will be held from Feb. 22 to 25 under a different name, organizers announced in Tokyo on Thursday.

Now called the Yubari Support Film Festival (literal translation), the fest will be held in the troubled Hokkaido town that has been its home since its start in 1990. The main sponsor is the Yubari Tourist Assn.

The complete program has not been announced but will feature 20 new films by 14 young directors. One highlight will be a screening of "Babel," which opens in Japan in April.

Local students are also planning to hold the first Yubari Intl. Student Film Festival in the same period.

The Yubari fest was one of the first in Japan with a fantasy and sci-fi theme. Under programming director Tokitoshi Shiota, it became known for promoting and discovering talent, as well as becoming a favorite spot on the fest circuit for foreign guests.

One of those guests, Quentin Tarantino, named the girl assassin in "Kill Bill" GoGo Yubari for the festival.

A former coal mining town on Japan's northernmost main island, Yubari tried to reinvent itself as a tourist mecca but went bankrupt in June, owing $52.6 million, when the city government overspent for projects that never panned out.

[Captain Japan]

EDITORIAL/ Revitalizing Yubari
Asahi

The bankrupt city of Yubari in Hokkaido is about to take its first step toward reviving itself. This coming Wednesday, the city council will finalize its plan to revamp its fiscal situation. Once the central government agrees, the city will implement the plan in March.

According to the revival plan, the city must pay off more than 35.3 billion yen in accumulated debts about 18 years. This will be achieved by having residents "accept one of the heaviest municipal tax burdens in the country, even though the municipal services they will receive in return will be among the lowest levels," the plan says.

First, labor costs will be cut. In fiscal 2007, which starts April 1, the city aims to reduce expenditures by almost 2.4 billion yen, of which 1.7 billion yen will come from labor cuts. Yubari had twice as many civil servants as most other municipalities of similar size, so there is plenty of room to cut jobs...more...

[Captain Japan]

This story is a bit late but...
Tarantino, Tourism Fail to Save Japan Town From Financial Ruin
Bloomberg

June 5 (Bloomberg) -- Yubari, a former coal-mining town in northern Japan, once attracted movie director Quentin Tarantino to its annual film festival. Now it's more famous for going bust.

The community of 13,000 people accumulated debts of 63 billion yen ($523 million) partly to build hotels, a ski slope and a coal-mining theme park after the last pit closed in 1990. In March, the central government rescheduled Yubari's debts after the city agreed to slash spending and sell assets.

Yubari's plight offers a test case for overhauling the finances of municipalities that are being forced to balance their budgets after the national government cut subsidies to rein in its own debt. Across Japan, cities have about 200 trillion yen of debt, out of a total 775 trillion yen owed by public bodies.

``It's considered an embarrassment and lots of local governments will try to avoid it, but there may be more cases'' like Yubari, says Akane Enatsu, a credit analyst at Nikko Citigroup Ltd. in Tokyo....more...

[Mulboyne]

Tarantino, Japan...ah (NSFW)

[Samurai_Jerk]

Tarantino, Japan...ah (NSFW)

Holy shitty breast implants, Batman!!

[Mulboyne]

New Yubari characters: "Yubari married couple". The slogan is "We've got no money but we've got each other".