The Foreign Ministry invited ridicule toward the end of 2015 after it advertised job openings for part-time counterterrorism analysts. While the expansion of the exploited precariat of non-regular workers to nearly 40 percent of the workforce is lamentable in itself, who would have thought some of them would be responsible for safeguarding the public from terrorism?!
Although generating lousy jobs is intrinsic to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Abenomics initiative, given the urgency of boosting Japan's counterterrorism capabilities it is bizarre that the government is so tight-fisted when it comes to hiring intelligence analysts, especially since they are required to have excellent language skills and a background in analyzing terrorism. These analysts are tasked with keeping the nation safe from terrorists on a three-day-a-week schedule and are paid a paltry ¥10,000 ($89) a day! Given that a day's wages would come to less than the cost of a bottle of the vintage wines favored by Japanese diplomats, let's hope these analysts can at least get free access to the Foreign Ministry's cafeteria.
Another concern is that these analysts have probably lived and studied overseas, which means that under the controversial state secrets law they are supposedly barred from handling classified dossiers.