Join the new world

Countrymen, I present to you today, in praise of His Majesty the Emperor, the new structure of the Japanese foreign ministry. These changes have been tested and deemed much more successful than the old system (which was hardly a system at all, all things considered). My work with the foreign ministry has been ambitious and truly, I did not accomplish everything I set out to do. My most glaring failure to you, the people, is of course the weekly foreign affairs brief. It is unfortunate that my other efforts, many of which must be kept classified for your security, overshadowed the bulletin. Fortunately, this new structure is much more efficient at providing content for such a brief and in the future it should be much easier to produce.

When I was first appointed, the Japanese foreign ministry was utterly disorganized. Essentially, the foreign minister did everything himself. He contacted dignitaries, arranged negotiations, managed ambassadors, monitored foreign events, prepared treaties and so on. In actuality, he rarely managed a fifth of what he would ideally accomplish. The most effective and important way for the foreign minister to delegate responsibility and increase efficiency is to appoint ambassadors. Most of my predecessors utterly failed at this task, having maybe five active ambassadors to a random handful of countries. It accomplished very little and did basically nothing for our proud nation.


Minister Mitsurugi tolerates a foreigner, offering a state gift provided by the United Lolies of Japan

When I set out to reorganize the ambassador program, I initially tried a regional scheme that I dub the 'American Model,' since I used the structure of the United States Department of State to build a command map. Ultimately, that mode was ineffective. Even after stripping out the many redundant leadership tiers the Americans, thanks to their superior manpower, can enjoy, it was still unsuited to Japan's needs.

Now it bears mentioning that I am, by trade and hobby, a linguist. So naturally my mind gravitates toward questions of language, it is one of the reasons I so enjoy work in the foreign ministry. So I realized that scanning media and monitoring the goings-on in foreign countries is just a matter of clicking some buttons, the only obstacle to overcome is language. It was then that I decided on this new structure, to organize the foreign ministry into language groups or 'theaters' rather than geographic regions.

Ambassadors are placed into a group based on their linguistic talent, under a single hypercompetent commander responsible for monitoring and rewarding their efforts. This delegation of responsibility has already greatly increased information flow within the foreign ministry and is of course available to the Japanese people on our national forum: http://tinyurl.com/ylz8r6m

Now there is of course a challenge to overcome with the language model, there are some languages that are just damned difficult to find outside their home country. Examples include the Baltic States, Greece and perhaps the worst offender, Iran. The fact of the matter is that we can do little but pray for salvation and use Google Translate in the meantime, I can't say the situation would be much different under another ministry structure, though. In any case, here is the current list. You see clearly that there are indeed holes, and we need men to fill those holes. Do your part for the Emperor and join the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs today!


I had intended to post the list here but it keeps clearing the article so instead click this link


-The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Reiji Mitsurugi, NnK
-外務大臣, 禦劍令治, 日本の声