The easing of the credit crisis is giving way for a new generation of sovereign wealth funds.

Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Bolivia, Nigeria, Canada are just some of the places where a public debate has begun on establishing some form of sovereign wealth fund. And even Scotland is now looking at establishing such a fund to manage oil wealth.

China is also close to launching an agency to restructure and consolidate state-owned enterprises -- dubbed by Chinese media as CIC 2.0 in reference to the country's $200 bln SWF China Investment Corp.

Ashby Monk, expert on SWFs and research fellow at Oxford University, says the crisis may have highlighted the importance of having SWFs and having extra cash to deal with the emergency.

"There is this appetite for governments to set up new SWFs. Certain countries have taken considerable utility from having SWFs and a pool of cash during the crisis," he says.

"Coming out of this crisis, we are going to see SWFs increase in the same way central bank reserves increased coming out of the 1997 crisis. All these new funds may be the conduits for a real dramatic ramp-up of sovereign wealth funds."

And the projected growth of the SWF industry is eyebrow raising. The industry is set to double its size to $7 trillion in the next 10 years, according to Deutsche Bank estimates. And there's no doubt that SWF2.0 will help the growth.

I admit there was some personal interest when I volunteered to cover the praying/speed-dating event at a shrine in Tokyo recently. I wanted to see what a matchmaking event at a shrine involves and who would attend.

I did not expect, though, that I would actually get involved.

A group of 14 women and 14 men gathered at Imado shrine in Tokyo, which honours Japan’s indigenous Shinto gods of marriage. The participants varied in age and occupation, but had one common goal — finding a good marriage partner.

“We said it’s up to the gods now. If we go on as we have, we probably won’t ever meet anyone,” Rie Suzuki, a 40-year-old attending with her friend told me.

The event, which combines praying with speed-dating, is aimed at marriage and the economic stability it could provide, as singles actively seek a partner through “konkatsu,” or spouse-hunting.

Such activities range from dating websites to participating in events like “grass-mowing for singles”. Imado Shrine’s two-hour, $65 event, is also on the list of some marriage-hunters.

“This is a shrine known for marriage and many men and women seeking a good match come here,” said Tomoe Ichino, a 32-year-old priest at the shrine.

She and her sister Kana run the matchmaking event for which over 1,000 registered.

“I would see a woman buying a good luck charm, then a man doing the same thing 10 minutes later. Then I started to think that maybe they could have ended up together if they had met. So, we’re trying to coordinate a time when they can meet.”

At the event, participants, mainly in their 30s and 40s, solemnly pray to the gods by clapping their hands and bowing their heads. They then move to a room where men and women sit across from each other, chatting as priests watch with stopwatches to make sure they switch partners every four minutes.

Women tend to be more interested in “konkatsu”, but some men are also keen to take part in matchmaking activities.

“I am just going back and forth between my office and house, and there is no chance to meet anyone,” said Shinichi Kanno, a 37-year-old working for a medical equipment company.

“Guys are also doing “konkatsu” these days. I have many unmarried friends and I want to tell them about this event.”

Increased economic clout of women and changing social attitudes toward marriage, no longer seen as de rigeur for either gender, have kept an increasing number of Japanese in their 20s and 30s single. Government statistics show nearly two-thirds of women under 34 are unmarried, while some 3,800 firms in Japan offer match-making services.

Priests at Imado Shrine don’t know of any couples tieing the knot after meeting at their 18 match-making sessions so far, but say at least eight couples began dating and even more became friends.

And me? I ended up getting asked to dinner by one wife-hunter, although I declined as I went there for work. Still, I hope the gods answer his prayers and bring him a very good match.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Kiyoshi Ota

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, a member of Japan's tiny Roman Catholic minority, had a chance toenjoy some time away from political trouble at home when he met with Pope Benedict on Tuesday.

As his first stop during a trip to attend July 8-10 summit of G8 leaders in Italy, Aso went to the Vatican, gave the pope a Sony digital video camera and discussed the global economic crisis with him.

(Photo: Prime Minister Aso presents video camera to Pope Benedict, 7 July 2009/Danilo Schiavella)

His visit was timely in that respect -- Benedict published an encyclical on economic and social issues today, calling for a bold reform of the world economic order to overcome the financial crisis and redirect the focus of business to the welfare of all people.

Aso, the first Japanese prime minister to meet a pope in 10 years, told Benedict that Japan wanted to cooperate with the Vatican, according to his aides. According to the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano, the two men had a cordial discussion that "touched on current international issues such as the economic crisis and the commitment of Japan and the Holy See to Africa. On the bilateral level, the good relations between Japan and the Holy See were noted."

(Photo: Aso and Benedict in the papal private library, 7 July 2009/Osservatore Romano)

For the unpopular prime minister, who looks set to lose a general election due by October, meeting Pope Benedict was probably a personal highlight of his trip, even though voters would not care much.

Aso is having a tough time at home with his support falling on doubts about his leadership abilities and the main opposition party has a good shot at ending more than a half-century of almost unbroken rule by Aso's business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party.

Pope Benedict told Aso that he was happy to meet a Japanese prime minister who is Catholic and to know that Japan's society is open to various religions.

Aso himself has little difficulty with mixing and matching various faiths. As we've mentioned here in an earlier post, he regularly pays respect and offers gifts to Shinto shrines, such as Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine dedicated to Japan's war dead. Japan's indigenous religion of Shinto is polytheistic and combining that with Christian monotherism may sound like a contradiction, but it is something many Japanese Catholics take in their stride.

Whether visits to Yasukuni shrine overstep the boundaries of Catholic doctrine is a difficult question, but Aso and the pope did not touch the issue at the 25-minute meeting, according to a statements released after the talk.

(Image: Aso meeting at bottom of front page of L'Osservatore Romano edition of 8 July 2009)

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Pope Benedict has been criticised for his handling of relationships with the world's other religions. On Monday Tuesday, he is due to receive at the Vatican Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso, who has little difficulty with mixing and matching various faiths.

Though an avowed member of Japan's tiny Roman Catholic minority, Aso regularly pays respects and offers gifts at Shinto shrines. Japan's indigenous religion of Shinto is polytheistic -- its doctrine says the world is crowded with divinities, mostly in natural phenomena such as the sun, moon, wind and mountains. Combining this with Christianity's monotheism may sound like a contradiction, but it is something many Japanese Catholics take in their stride.

(Photo: Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, 31 May 2007/Kim Kyung-Hoon)

Aso's visits have in the past included trips to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, which is dedicated to war dead and to 14 people judged by an Allied tribunal to be Class A war criminals. Many in Asia see it as a symbol of Japan's past militarism. But Aso has stayed away since becoming prime minister last year, probably more to avoid offending China than for religious reasons. For more on Aso and his faith, see our post about him when he took office.

Whether visits to Yasukuni overstep the boundaries of Catholic doctrine is a difficult question, according to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan. "This a very delicate problem," a spokesman for the conference told me. "There is the issue of how far the Vatican understands the real nature of Yasukuni."

In the 1930s, when visits to Shinto shrines were made compulsory by the military government, Japanese Catholics asked the Vatican for advice on whether this was acceptable. The reply was that the visits were an expression of patriotism and loyalty, and therefore permitted, the spokesman for the conference said, adding that this may have been an attempt to avert a repeat of the persecution that all but wiped out Christianity in Japan in the 16^th century. A second request for instructions from the Vatican after Japan's World War II defeat and the official separation of religion and state got the same answer in 1951.

"But the problem is that Yasukuni shrine treats those who died in the war as gods. The Catholic teaching is that people cannot be gods," the spokesman said. "So worshipping is not allowed. It is not forbidden to go there to think of those who died, but worshipping is not allowed."

(Photo: Taro Aso visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on 14 Aug 2007, when he was Japan's foreign minister/Ronen Zvulun)

"It is the same for other Shinto shrines. As far as we are concerned, there is no god other than the Holy Trinity," he added.

Visits by ordinary members of the public to Shinto shrines do not usually require the recitation of any prayers, which would be beyond the pale for a Catholic because they would be prayers to gods that Christians do not believe in. Visitors usually conduct a ritual purification by washing their mouths at a well outside the shrine entrance, then clap their hands and bow at the entrance to an inner courtyard, often throwing offerings of money into a box, or buying good luck charms at shops within the compound.

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