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The story
Following news that a social welfare corporation in Hokkaido can’t account for donations it collected, the government has decided to hold off this year on having cabinet ministers pin red feathers to their chests for publicity as part of the Community Chest charity drive, which kicked off as usual on October 1. The call for public donations itself continues as it does every year. On 5ch, the scandal stirred up distrust toward the donation system as a whole, with many venting about the de facto forced collections run through neighborhood associations, alongside trivia-style chatter about the origins of the red feather and the meaning of its color — so the thread grew from one organization’s scandal into broader doubts about donation culture itself.
Oct 1 (Thu), 18:45 JST
Asahi Shimbun
As the Red Feather Community Chest charity drive kicks off on the 1st as it does every year, the government will refrain from having cabinet ministers across various ministries pin red feathers to their chests to promote it. The decision comes in light of the issue of a large sum of donations going unaccounted for at a social welfare corporation in Hokkaido. The call for public donations continues.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
You shouldn't trust charity donations in the first place — more than half of it ends up in the organizers' pockets.
Why would you want to feed those guys lol
Local students are out there collecting too. If the organization's just blowing the money on staff drinking and partying, that's basically a crime being run legally — using even students to rake in cash for it.
Thought you meant mob protection money for a second lol
That's a cheap trick.
For a second I misread that as 'wanting to put Boy Scout kids inside something' and recoiled.
red is the color of communism, you know.
True, but apparently the original idea was based on Native American feather headdresses.
Ah, I see —
a symbol of a people whose land was stolen by outsiders, who were slaughtered, and who've been exploited ever since.
Pretty dark and ironic thing to hand donors, when you think about it.
They probably have no idea the money collected goes toward lining the executives' pockets. Poor kids.
Disband already, you scam outfit.
That's unconstitutional, honestly.
Could someone put together a legal team for a lawsuit to get the donations refunded?
Seriously, this.
Probably the feathers that get stuffed in your mailbox
are the neighborhood association's doing too.
Plenty of people only walk up to them just to get a dig in, though.
So I just want a clear explanation of what actually went on.
The idiots saying 'I'll never donate because of this!' were never going to donate anyway, so just ignore them.
Isn't the neighborhood association skimming a cut off the top?
That's why they can't stop. You must have a hunch, right?
Most of it gets skimmed off for food and drinks.
Why not just rename it the 'Skimmer's Feather' at this point? (a pun on ピンハネ, meaning 'skimming money off the top')
>'Skimmer's Feather'
That really captures what's actually going on.
Background and Key Points of This Story
The Red Feather Community Chest is a nationwide charity drive that kicks off every October 1, with donations channeled through social welfare councils and similar bodies into local welfare programs. What’s actually being scaled back here is cabinet ministers’ practice of pinning on feathers for publicity — not the donation drive itself, a distinction that’s easy to miss. The thread split over whether to treat the unaccounted-for funds at the one Hokkaido organization as proof of fraud across the whole system, or as an isolated scandal at a single organization; those leaning toward the former also had plenty to say about the de facto forced collections run through neighborhood associations. At the same time, there was no shortage of trivia-style back-and-forth about the feather’s origins and the meaning of its color, so the thread wasn’t uniformly critical.
*This article is an excerpted and summarized compilation based on the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Government Holds Off on ‘Red Feather’ Pins Amid Missing Donations Scandal — Fundraising Calls Continue.”
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