National Museum of Nature and Science Unusual CRAFAN due to Lack of Funds Serious situation without sufficient support from the government, even though the amount exceeded 100 million yen in 9 hours.
The new coronavirus and the war in Ukraine have had a direct impact on the museum.
For example, looking at the FY19 budget, of the approximately 3.3 billion yen in revenues, the museum expected to receive approximately 2.7 billion yen in subsidies from the government, and approximately 600 million yen in admission fees and other revenues including outside funds. If the number of visitors exceeds expectations and the admission fee income rises, the museum will be able to use the income to implement new projects, such as large-scale exhibitions and the maintenance of storage facilities.
For 20 years, the Museum had operated under this scheme, but then a pandemic of a new type of coronavirus broke out.
Suddenly, the museum’s admission fee income dropped sharply, while utility costs, which the museum had to spend, rose sharply. We were unable to respond immediately to the combination of these factors, and we ran out of funds.
The museum continued to be closed as a measure against infectious diseases, and admission fee income, which was approximately 750 million yen in the FY19 accounts, dropped to 150 million yen in FY20. Although it recovered to 650 million yen in the FY 2010 financial results, energy prices soared due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February ’22. Utilities expenses, which are the sum of operational and administrative expenses, rose from 180 million yen in the FY19 accounts to 310 million yen in the FY22 accounts. Thus, the Expo faced a situation of declining revenues and rapidly rising utility costs.
The COVID-19 crisis occurred after the budget had been set, so in FY ’20, we cut back on internal funds, and in FY ’21, we got through it with austerity measures. We thought that we would operate with reduced overall operations in FY 2010, but then utility costs started to rise due to the invasion of Ukraine, and when we did the calculations around April, we were told that we would run out of operating funds in November or December. This was a situation in which the entire library was asked to return the unexecuted funds, including research funds, from the reduced budget. This was tantamount to asking researchers to stop their research, a situation that should have been avoided at all costs.
We had planned to operate with a much reduced budget for FY’2011, but it turned out that the cost of utilities would continue to rise further. Prices for storage containers and preservation liquids such as ethanol continued to rise due to the high cost of living, and the prices of materials and equipment needed to build new storage facilities and labor costs were also soaring, making it obvious that the museum would not be able to continue operations at this rate.
Director Shinoda said, “In the past 20 years, the price of goods in Japan has hardly risen at all. That is why we have been able to operate even with a gradual decrease in subsidies from the government for operating expenses.” Looking back, he added, “Prices and labor costs have risen all at once here, and we can see that utility costs will remain high in the next fiscal year as well. We also asked for external funding from companies, but it did not amount to a large sum. So we concluded that crowdfunding was the only way to get this done now,” he explains.
The question, however, is why the government is leaving the KAKENHI in such dire straits. The subsidy for operating expenses has remained the same, and no measures have been taken to cover the entire portion of the increase in prices and utility costs. The government is apparently taking the stance that it will not take individual measures because it is subsidizing oil wholesalers as part of its drastic change mitigation program to cope with soaring oil prices, but national facilities are actually in a pinch.
I think everyone was surprised to hear that the National Museum of Nature and Science, which is the only one of its kind in Japan, is actually in trouble. I think the biggest reason for the success of this cloud is that many people realized that the management crisis was here to stay and that the National Museum of Nature and Science would not be able to stand on its own feet.
