Summary: JARL has been a financially and morally corrupt organization since the 1980s. I no longer support any of their activities.
I was a Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL) member during the following periods: 1976-1992 and 2002-2010. However, I terminated my Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL) membership in November 2010 due to the league's persistent corruption and lack of financial governance.
JARL has had continuing problems since the beginning of the 21st Century. I will list a few significant issues JARL has failed to address.
JARL still cannot transition from the paper-based QSLing. JARL's primary service is acting as a paper QSL bureau, which has already become obsolete after the emergence of electronic QSL and award systems such as ARRL's LoTW and eQSL.cc. The management executives of JARL have been failing to convert their existing award and QSL systems to electronic-based ones. I suspect many executives are implicitly refusing to establish such electronic QSLing standards, fearing the loss of revenue caused by the conversion.
JARL has serious financial issues, including declining revenue, loss of internal cash savings, and inability to cut expenditures for marketing and event activities. I suspect the cronyism of the management has already become too grave to be fixed by themselves. Historical evidence shows that former director Shozo Hara, JA1AN, started incorporating a lack of financial control and continuous refusal to accept emerging technologies and movements in amateur radio, such as the packet radio and electronic QSLs.
JARL also has a problem of being unable to influence Japan's communication ministry (MIC, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). For example, JARL had virtually no influence on Japan's recent expansion of the 160m and 80m band spectrums in 2020. The low band enthusiasts represented by http://low-band.com/ mainly lobbied for increasing the assigned subbands. I have to declare that JARL's negligence against the spectrum defense and other government affairs has already become the level of losing its position as the principal society representing the amateur radio communities in Japan.
The abovementioned issues have convinced me that JARL has been a financially and morally corrupt organization since the 1980s. I no longer support any of their activities.