03/30 Mitsubishi Logging ELAINE KURTENBACH TOKYO (AP) A comic
book intended to polish the image of trading giant Mitsubishi
Corp. has had quite the opposite effect -- provoking scrutiny of
its logging operations in Southeast Asian tropical forests.
Officials at Mitsubishi said they had welcomed a proposal to
publish a comic book to explain their firm's business to high
school students throughout Japan.
But conservationists objected to Mitsubishi's description of
its logging operations in Southeast Asia. And Education Ministry
officials said Monday they have asked high schools to remove the
books from their libraries.
"We're not specialists, so we can't evaluate the contents of
the comic," said ministry official Takeyo Fukushima. "But we asked
that it be withdrawn because it is public relations material for
just one company."
The dispute over the 216-page comic book highlights the
difficulties Japan's huge corporations face in trying to convey an
image of social responsibility after decades of single-minded
pursuit of expanded business.
The Science and Technology Educational Association, a
foundation affiliated with the Education Ministry, proposed a
series of comic books to introduce Japanese corporations like
Mitsubishi to high school students.
Mitsubishi agreed to be first in the series, thinking that it
"would be a good way to introduce the business world to students
who have no clue as to what we do," said Kyosuke Mori, general
manager of Mitsubishi's environmental affairs department.
The educational association now has abandoned its plan for a
whole series of comic books. "It was a mistake," said spokeswoman
Hisako Kiuchi.
One chapter of the Mitsubishi comic depicts a man named Hino,
modeled after a real-life employee, who is told to find a way to
demonstrate that Mitsubishi is doing its part to help solve global
environmental problems.
In aerial surveys of the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia,
Hino finds green forests where he expects to find hills left bald
by logging. In other areas, Hino finds bare hills and scrub forest
supposedly left by local tribes that cut and burn patches of
forest to clear land for crops.
Citing statistics from the United Nations' Food and
Agricultural Organization, the comic says the greatest damage is
caused by clearing of tropical rain forests for farming.
But groups representing local tribes in the region say that as
the world's largest importer of tropical timber, Japan is a major
factor behind deforestation in Southeast Asia.
"The local people are the ones suffering because of logging. To
tell them it's their fault is embarrassing," said Kazuko Matsue,
spokeswoman for the Japan-based Sarawak Campaign Committee.
Experts of the International Tropical Timber Organization, a
group representing the timber industry worldwide, warned last year
that all virgin timber in Malaysia's Sarawak state would be gone
in 10 years if the current rate of cutting persisted.
Mitsubishi officials argue that the logging operations of their
subsidiary Daiya Malaysia in Sarawak, on the island of Borneo,
have caused no major damage to rain forests.
"Unlike coal and gas, timber is a renewable resource," Mori
said. "We have been practicing very selective logging for over 20
years. We have no intention of criticizing local farmers, but we
are not causing damage ourselves."
The Mitsubishi comic ends on a hopeful note, explaining the
company's support for a $1.5 million project to recreate a forest
ecosystem in Sarawak with trees native to the region instead of
the eucalyptus trees usually used for reforestation because they
grow quickly.