K-SEC

Meeting Summary

April17, 2017

Here is a summary of the materials we read at the K-SEC meeting on April 17, 2017.

  1. Attendees (in ABC order):

Kanzawa, Kotake, Nishimura, Nishiwaki,i,Shirashouji,Tomozawa, Tsurumoto, Umemoto(Total of 8)

  1. Materials read:

1.A growing number of global firms are using English as their main language – even if they are based in Japan or France ― Tsurumoto

By Bryan Borzykowski, March 20, 2017 BBC

The article picks up companies such as ITT Motion Tech, an Italian engineering firm, Sodexo, a French food services firm, Nissan and Honda as cases that have adopted or are about to adopt English as theirofficiallanguage for their internal communications.

The reasons why they are moving into the language unification are their ever rising need for better communication out of the worse language barriers with global employees’ different languages. As companies have been growing their sizes and have had worldwide operations, they have ended up with many local employees in countries where English is not a national language. Employees in Brazil cannot communicate effectively with employees in China unless they use English.

Sodexo is a French company with 500,000 employees in 80 countries. Being French, the management might have adopted French as its official language, but they decided to use English instead. Its vice president said, “We would have had a revolt on our hands” if French was adopted as its main language.

While firms are wanting to improve their communication in the companies, there are drawbacks for this practice. Many non-English speaking employees are not so capable nor fluent in using English so that the quality of communication is often poorer and some of employees may not express their opinions freely in meetings or face-to-face talks.

As this article indicates, there has been a growing need to consolidate communication tools within global firms. I think that the best and the most practical solution in the current world business situations will be to use English with or without corporate decision as to their officiallanguage.

Our K-SEC members talked about our personal experiences on Monday and all used to use English as a communication tool in respective former business deals.

2 More responsive defense policy neededto encounter North Korea’s new threat - Nishimura

This is a translation of a column from the Yomiuri-shinbun.

The threat posed by NorthKorea has entered a newstage. It is time for Japan to hold full-scale discussions on a defense policy that would enable the nation to respond appropriately.

Last week, the Liberal Democratic Party recommended the government make aswift and drasticreinforcementof the country'smissile defense. Thepartyhas urged the government to consider possessing the capability tocounterattack, which is based on Japan's exclusively defense-oriented policy.

But a preemptivestrike on an enemy base that isclearly about to launch a missile attack on our country is recognizedby the government as being withinthe scope of self-defense as definedin the Constitution.

Needless to say, the SDF has no other option but to rely on informationcollected via the reconnaissancesatellites of U.S.forces to locate enemy bases. The hurdle would become even higher when striking amobile launch pad.

It is unrealistic for the SDF tosingle-handedly strike an enemybase.

Cooperating closelywith U.S. forces and sharing rolesappropriately would be a prerequisite to possessing the capabilityto strike an enemy base.

Our discussions were centered on: what can be done to enhancethe joint Japan- U.S. capability to respond to NK’s missile threat.

C. Role assignment for May 1, 2017:

Kanzawa, Shirashouji

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