Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Re­port­ing from Japan

With Japan and Trinidad and To­ba­go mark­ing 60 years of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions in 2024, it maybe time to "mod­i­fy" the re­la­tion­ship to meet the chal­lenges of the mod­ern world. This was the thought of a high-rank­ing Japan­ese min­istry of­fi­cial who spoke to Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day as the The As­so­ci­a­tion for Pro­mo­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion's (APIC) Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ship pro­gramme got un­der­way in Tokyo on Mon­day.

APIC is en­gaged in var­i­ous de­vel­op­ment co­op­er­a­tion projects with the aim of pro­mot­ing and en­hanc­ing ties to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. It's been bring­ing jour­nal­ists to Japan since 2014.

The of­fi­cial, who opt­ed not to be iden­ti­fied, point­ed to the ties be­tween T&T and Japan in the en­vi­ron­ment, the pan­dem­ic, health, and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. How­ev­er, when asked if the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) and Japan needs to be "re­de­fined", they said, "We can­not con­tin­ue what we have been do­ing so far. We have to mod­i­fy what we've been do­ing al­ways bear­ing in mind the cir­cum­stances of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. I think it's safe to say we are at a very im­por­tant junc­ture fac­ing very com­pli­cat­ed chal­lenges."

The diplo­mat al­so stressed the Caribbean can aid in Japan's age­ing pop­u­la­tion prob­lem. In Sep­tem­ber, the BBC re­port­ed more than one in 10 peo­ple in Japan are now aged 80 or old­er. Na­tion­al da­ta al­so shows 29.1% of the 125 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion is aged 65 or old­er- a record. Japan has one of the low­est birth rates in the world.

With Japan­ese com­pa­nies in­vest­ing in the re­gion, in­clud­ing T&T, the diplo­mat added, "What is hap­pen­ing out there in joint ven­tures or Japan­ese in­vest­ment in the re­gion, the lo­cal peo­ple are learn­ing tech­nol­o­gy from the Japan­ese com­pa­nies so now they are very skil­ful work­ers. So now they have op­por­tu­ni­ties not on­ly to work in their coun­tries but maybe with the pas­sage of time, those peo­ple will work in dif­fer­ent coun­tries in­clud­ing Japan it­self."

The vis­it to the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs fol­lowed an ori­en­ta­tion for this year’s APIC jour­nal­ism fel­lows ear­li­er on Mon­day af­ter­noon. Ad­dress­ing the fel­lows at the ori­en­ta­tion were APIC pres­i­dent, Toshi­nori Shigeie, APIC's sec­re­tary gen­er­al, Megu­mi Ara­ki and act­ing ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Hi­de­nobu Sobashima. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia af­ter, Shigeie tout­ed mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism to face some of the world's biggest chal­lenges, adding that the Caribbean has an im­por­tant role to play in the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion.

Shigeie, the for­mer Ko­rea am­bas­sador said, "In­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion is not easy. It is al­ways slow and frus­trat­ing but that's the way to go. There is no al­ter­na­tive way to go. Every­body has to make their own ef­forts so I think work­ing to­geth­er is very im­por­tant."

Fel­lows will head to Kagoshi­ma in south­ern Japan on Tues­day vis­it­ing a re­cy­cling sys­tem in Os­a­ki Town and a land­fill fi­nal dis­pos­al site.