28 Asia The EconomistJune 27th 2020
21T
o work outif a male calf will make a
good fighting bull, you have to study its
face. A promising one will have a glint in its
eye, a hint of the courage and resolve need-
ed to face down another bull in the ring.
“It’s difficult to define, but you can just tell
if they have that spirit,” says Lee Eul-boo,
who heads the bullfighting association in
Jinju, a city in the far south of South Korea.
Mr Lee should know: besides breeding the
animals for other trainers, he keeps ten
fighting bulls of his own.
In South Korea bulls are pitted against
one another in the ring rather than against
human opponents, so the animal’s appe-
tite for confrontation is essential to the
drama. If both bulls are in the mood, they
will lock horns and wrestle until one re-
treats. Frequently, however, an intimidat-
ed bull will slink away without a fight.
Despite the risk of such an anticlimax,
bull-on-bull fights have been popular en-
tertainment in South Korean villages for
hundreds of years. The practice declined as
people moved from the countryside to the
city, but in recent years it has enjoyed a re-
vival as a tourist attraction. Jinju, which
claims to have conducted bullfights for
centuries, built a new stadium for them 15
years ago. Other towns encourage visitors
to bet on the outcome of fights. In a normal
year, says Mr Lee, he would spend mostJINJU
An old form of entertainment is
threatened by the pandemicBullfighting in South KoreaLocking horns
sawalmost$1bnspiritedoutofthecountry.
Inmid-Junea parliamentarycommission,
setuptoinvestigatea murderatthecentre
ofthescandal,finallyreleaseditsfindings.
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bouringUzbekistanandsowas“notrelated
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retortedtheoutletinquestion,RadioFree
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ingtoprotecttheirwealthandpower”. 7B
right youngfaces gaze out from a re-
cruitment poster on the thick grey walls
of the Defence Ministry in central Tokyo.
But in greying Japan, finding enough
youngsters to fill the ranks has become, by
the ministry’s own admission, “an immi-
nent challenge”. The number of Japanese
between 18 and 26 years old, long the prime
recruiting pool, peaked at 17m in 1994. It
has since fallen to 11m. By 2050 it will sink
below 8m. “Young blood is what all militar-
ies need, and it’s exactly what we’re lack-
ing,” says Yamaguchi Noboru, a retired
lieutenant-general in the Self-Defence
Forces (sdf), as the country calls its army,
in deference to its pacifist constitution.
The sdfhas missed its recruiting tar-
gets every year since 2014, reaching just
72% of its goal in 2018. It fields only 227,000
of the 247,000 troops it budgets for, a short-
fall of 8%. Among the lowest ranks, the gap
is over 25%. Low pay, harsh conditions and
the limited prestige of soldiering in a
peacenik nation with little unemployment
always made recruiting hard, but demogra-
phy compounds the difficulties. The in-
verted population pyramid ought to worry
Japan as much as Chinese expansionism or
North Korean missiles, argues Robert El-
dridge, an American former military offi-
cial and the author of a book in Japanese on
demography and the armed forces: “Demo-graphic change is not just an economic is-
sue, it’s a national-defence issue.”
The army is using many of the same
strategies as private companies to cope
with an ageing workforce. “Just like the rest
of Japan, the sdfis trying to see what aiand
robotics can do for them,” says Sheila
Smith of the Council on Foreign Relations,
an American think-tank. The government
has announced plans to acquire and devel-
op new unmanned aircraft and sub-
marines. While these will be for surveil-
lance, “the next step is strike capability”,
says Nagashima Akihisa, a government mp
and former deputy defence minister.
But persuading politicians to fund the
development and deployment of offensive
weapons is hard in a country whose consti-
tution states, “The Japanese people forever
renounce war.” Nor is technology a panacea
for personnel shortfalls, notes Koda Yoji, a
retired vice-admiral. Drones and robots re-
quire operators and skilled engineers—the
sort of people the sdfalready has trouble
attracting. A cyberdefence unit set up in
2014 has only 220 members.
An alternative is to expand the pool of
potential personnel. Female troops used to
be confined to non-combat roles such as
nursing and administration, but in recent
years the high command has allowed them
to fly fighter jets and drive tanks, among
other things; soon they will be allowed to
sail on submarines. At the defence minis-
try, officers speak of “work-life balance”
and stress family-friendly perks such as an
on-site day-care centre. Yet progress has
been slow: women made up just 7% of Ja-
pan’s armed forces in 2018, compared with
an average of 11% among nato countries.
And the government’s goals are modest: to
increase the share to 9% by 2030. The Na-
tional Defence Academy caps the number
of women it admits at 15%. Sexist attitudes
about roles in the army still prevail, says
Sato Fumika of Hitotsubashi University. In
the sdf’s recruiting pamphlets, the pages
that focus on women are printed on pink
backgrounds.
Another way to keep up the numbers is
simply to tolerate older soldiers. In 2018 the
sdfraised the maximum age for new re-
cruits from 26 to 32, the first increase since- This year the retirement age for se-
nior officers will start rising gradually. Old-
er soldiers can focus on maintenance, lo-
gistics and training, thus freeing younger
troops to concentrate on more muscular
missions. Experienced soldiers may even
bring advantages in “new domains and
new frontiers” of warfare, where physical
prowess matters less, says Colonel Kago-
shima Hiroshi, who works in recruitment.
Those past retirement age are encouraged
to continue working for reduced pay. As
Nagaiwa Toshimichi, a retired lieutenant-
general, laughs, “I’m 71 years old, but I’m
ready to fight.” He is only half-joking. 7
TOKYO
Japan’s army is greying. It may have to
draft more robotsAgeing in JapanReady, cane, fire