Public acts of contrition don't get any more dramatic than comedian Junichi Komoto's May 25 press conference, where he apologized for allowing his mother to collect government welfare payments even though he's made good money himself as a TV personality. Josei Seven, the women's weekly that broke the story in April without revealing Komoto's name at the time, claimed he makes about ¥50 million a year. Fifty million buys a lot of schadenfreude, and the media were at the press conference in full force, getting their cameras as close as possible to Komoto's tear-stained face as he struggled to say exactly the right thing. It's too soon to declare his career finished, but we won't be seeing him on TV for a while; or, at least, we won't see him on TV making jokes.
So let's hope he's saved a lot of that money. If he didn't, he'll be back in the bottom income bracket he occupied when his mother first applied for and received welfare after she was forced to quit her job due to illness. Given the short half-life of comedians even under normal circumstances, he might end up qualifying for welfare himself, but you can bet he won't apply for it. The message conveyed by the scandal coverage was loud and clear: Whether or not someone is deserving of public assistance, asking for government money is inherently a shameful act.
Making that message felt is exactly the authorities' intention. In a recent blog post, essayist Karin Amamiya describes a lawyers group specializing in welfare issues. The group says that only 1.6 percent of the Japanese population receives public assistance, and 18 percent of the people who qualify for welfare actually apply for it. In Sweden, the portion is 82 percent, Germany 64 percent. Even in the United States, where collecting any form of welfare is also deemed a moral hazard, 59 percent of those who can receive it do.