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jp0000648

2015/12/05

Germans torpedo Yasaka Maru; Men spending more on booze; Japan, ROK restore ties; South Korea to allow singing in Japanese

100 YEARS AGO Friday, Dec. 24, 1915 Yasaka Maru sunk without warning The head Office of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha yesterday received official confirmation of the sinking of one of the best vessels of its fleet. The message was received from the company’s agents at Port Said. It read: The Yasaka Maru was torpedoed by German U-boats without warning on Tuesday afternoon. The ship sank in 49 minutes. All passengers and crew were, however, saved, and were picked up by a French gunboat at midnight on Tuesday. They landed at Port Said on Wednesday. Accommodation was promptly provided for passengers and crew. All passengers express great admiration for the skill of the Captain and officers and the discipline of the crew. Most perfect order was maintained during disembarkation, which was carried out with the greatest promptitude. By the loss of the Yasaka Maru the mercantile marine of Japan has suffered its first big loss of the war. Shortly before noon yesterday, several reports reached Tokyo of the loss, and something of a sensation was caused by the news, as no details were then available. When, however, the above messages were received there was a great feeling of relief at the news that no lives had been lost as a result of this latest example of Teutonic “frightfulness.” 75 YEARS AGO Friday, Dec. 13, 1940 Young men spending more on alcohol With their pockets filled with money and their hearts joyful over the anticipation of year-end bonuses, Tokyo’s young men are spending more on liquor, if the evidence gathered by a Miyako reporter at Shimbashi and Yurakucho stations can be taken as proof. Late Wednesday night a Miyako reporter saw a young inebriated fellow severely taken to task by a policeman close to Shimbashi Station, apparently on account of his careless conduct caused by his drinking. Then, a few steps away, another intoxicated case, causing some trouble to a station employee, was found by the same reporter. A staff member at Shimbashi Station, when approached by the Miyako representative, is quoted to have said: “About 60 percent of those taking trains here after 11 o’clock at night these few days are more or less intoxicated, I can assure you. Maybe it is because the majority of salaried men’s pockets are now warm with their year-end bonuses. Anyway, we strongly doubt if there are many bars around here where liquor is sold so late at night. After all, the sight of young men feebly walking under the strength of alcohol is not very encouraging when a new national structure (to ready Japan for a protracted war) is being promoted.” One of the clerks at Yurakucho Station, when met by the same reporter, admitted that they also are having many drunken passengers to handle late at night. “Now, we generally have 700 to 800 passengers who take trains after 11 o’clock at night. More than half of them are seen enlightened with alcoholic beverages.” However, the paper continues, the cases of complete drunkenness are rare. Some are happy after imbibing in a few drinks, but not drunk; others wobble a bit while climbing the station steps; and not a few appear to be partially intoxicated; but complete drunkenness is seldom noticed. 50 YEARS AGO Sunday, Dec. 19, 1965 Japan, ROK restore diplomatic relations Japan and the Republic of Korea entered a new era of diplomatic relations with the exchange of the instruments ratifying the Basic Relations Treaty and four related agreements Saturday. The ratification exchange, which terminated 14 years of negotiations, was conducted in a solemn ceremony in the ornate conference room of the Capitol Building, witnessed by South Korean Premier Il Kwon Chung. In the 40-minute ceremony, the documents were exchanged by the Foreign Ministers of the two countries, Etsusaburo Shiina of Japan and Dong Won Lee of the Republic of Korea. The treaty and four agreements were signed in Tokyo on June 22 following 14 years of oft-suspended, rough-sledding negotiations started in 1952. The exchange of ratification papers signaled the coming into effect of the Japan-ROK Basic Relations Treaty and three agreements on fisheries, property claims and economic cooperation, and cultural properties and cultural cooperation between the two countries. The Japan-ROK agreement on legal status and treatment of ROK nationals residing in Japan will take effect 30 days later. 25 YEARS AGO Wednesday, Dec. 5, 1990 South Korea to allow singing in Japanese Popular singer Tokiko Kato will be the first Japanese to be allowed by South Korean authorities to sing in Japanese at a charity show in a Seoul hotel Thursday, show organizers said Tuesday. She will also sing Korean songs in Korean. Since the end of World War II, South Korea has banned concerts of Japanese songs and showing of Japanese movies in view of strong anti-Japanese sentiment. The Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. During that period, Koreans were forced to abandon their culture and use the Japanese language. Records made by Japanese singers have to be re-recorded in English before being allowed into the South Korean market. The concert is expected to give fresh impetus to efforts to promote and deepen cultural exchanges between Japan and South Korea, the organizers said. Deep-rooted antipathy toward Japanese culture still exists among South Koreans, and it is difficult for Seoul to lift all restrictions on Japanese culture, a Foreign Ministry official said.

germany;south korea;alcohol;bonuses;world war i;singing;year-end bonuses

jp0000649

2015/12/02

Canadian smuggler with turtles in pants pleads guilty in U.S.

ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN - A Canadian man caught at a border crossing with 51 turtles taped to his body pleaded guilty Tuesday to smuggling or attempting to smuggle more than 1,000 of the reptiles out of southeastern Michigan. Kai Xu, 27, would order turtles online and travel to the U.S. to pick them up and then ship them to China or return with them to Ontario, Canada. He pleaded guilty to six crimes in federal court in Ann Arbor and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. It’s illegal to export wildlife from the U.S. without a permit from the government. Xu “regularly deals in turtle shipments worth $30,000, $80,000 or $125,000,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Woodward said in a court filing. “In China, the turtles he smuggles are worth two to three times the amount he pays here.” Defense attorney Matt Borgula declined to comment after the guilty plea. Xu has been in custody since his arrest in suburban Detroit in September 2014. He describes himself as an engineering student at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, although the university said he wasn’t enrolled at the time of his arrest. In summer 2014, weeks before his arrest, Xu was under surveillance in Detroit. After picking up a box at a United Parcel Service site, he hid behind trucks and emerged with “irregularly shaped bulges” under his sweat pants, wildlife agent Ken Adams said. Xu returned to Ontario but was stopped by Canadian border authorities who found 51 live turtles taped to his legs, including box turtles and terrapins. Despite the bust, “he did not cease smuggling turtles. He did not even slow down,” Woodward said.

u.s .;smuggling;wildlife;turtles

jp0000650

2015/12/20

Cops in Georgia hand out cash

FORSYTH, GEORGIA - Sheriff’s deputies in a central Georgia county have been surprising motorists, some of whom expect a ticket. Instead, they have gotten $100 bills. The Telegraph reports that Monroe County Sheriff John Cary Bittick gave officers 54 $100 bills to hand out randomly over three days during the past week. The newspaper reports that the money came from an anonymous benefactor. Bittick said the donor had seen the concept somewhere else, and thought it would be a great idea in light of tensions nationwide between police and the public. The Telegraph reports that some of the recipients were so moved they broke into tears. But not everyone. Deputy John Thompson said one motorist cussed him out before learning about the money, and she didn’t get a $100 bill. Information from: The Macon Telegraph, www.macontelegraph.com

u.s .;charity;police

jp0000651

2015/12/20

Dime-nail to be auctioned

NEW YORK - Is it a dime, or is it a nail? In probably one of the oddest items to come to the world of coin collecting, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions has announced the sale of a Roosevelt dime that was accidentally — some say deliberately — struck onto a zinc nail. The dime/nail is estimated to be worth roughly $10,000. In the billions of coins it has made over its history, the U.S. Mint has made more than a few errors. There were Lincoln pennies that were struck onto the material for a dime, Washington quarters struck more than once, wrong dates on coins, etc. Most errors are caught by the Mint, but occasionally a few make it out into circulation. Those error coins have been highly sought by collectors. This error coin coming to auction in January in Tampa, Florida, is one of the more bizarre errors to come to public attention. In a weird linguistic twist, another name for the 2-inch (5-centimeter) nail is a sixpenny nail. “It is certainly the most unusual item I have had to catalog in my career,” said Mark Borckardt, the senior numismatist at Heritage New York-based Auctions. A numismatist is person who studies or collects coins or bank notes. It is not the first coin printed onto a nail, however, said Fred Weinberg, a coin dealer considered one of the top experts in error coins. A few pennies in the late 1970s were struck onto nails. This dime/nail is undated, so there is no way to tell when the item was created. Weinberg said it is possible the dime/nail was made on purpose by a rogue Mint employee. Despite it not being one of a kind, Weinberg says, there are probably only about a half dozen coin/nail examples known and only two dimes. He expects the dime/nail to sell for roughly $10,000, but public interest could raise that amount. A spokesman for the U.S. Mint was unavailable to answer the question of whether the nail/dime is considered valid currency. The Heritage auction that includes the nail/dime also includes several other notable error coins. There will be a 1943 Lincoln penny struck in bronze, which would seem not out of the ordinary except for the fact that the U.S. Mint changed the composition of the penny in 1943 to steel to save copper for the war effort. 1943 bronze pennies typically sell for $200,000 to $300,000. On the flip side, Heritage will also be auctioning a 1944 penny that was struck in steel, not bronze. The auction for the dime/nail will be Jan. 6 as part of a larger Heritage auction. Electronic bidding for the coin has already started, however. The current price for the item is $3,200.

money;auctions;currency

jp0000652

2015/12/20

No dog-eat-dog politics: Siberian city backs cat for mayor

BARNAUL, RUSSIA - Tired of the dog-eat-dog politics in their Russian city, the residents of Barnaul say they want a cat to be their next mayor. The Siberian city of 650,000 people, which lies 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) east of Moscow, is to get a new mayor next week when a commission comprising the city council and the regional governor choose from among six candidates. But none of the six appear to spark much affection among Barnaul’s residents. An informal online poll asking residents to express their preferences among the six and a Siamese cat named Barsik showed the feline nabbing more than 90 percent of the vote. Barsik has attracted much amused attention in the Russian news media. Still, some local politicians understand there’s a more serious message coming from the people of Barnaul, which like many Russian cities has been riddled with alleged corruption. “Through the image of Barsik the cat, our people are sending definite wishes to the future head of Barnaul,” says regional Gov. Alexander Karlin. “The conclusion has been made that there’s absolutely no trust among voters for any of the candidates,” said local Communist Party official, Ivan Karpov.

russia;animals;elections

jp0000653

2015/12/20

German media says document confirms Hitler only had one testicle

BERLIN - A medical document shows that Adolf Hitler only had one testicle, German media said Saturday, suggesting there is some truth after all to a popular British song that says the dictator had “only got one ball.” There has long been speculation that Hitler was missing one testicle, with rumors circulating that he lost the other one during the Battle of the Somme in World War I. But a medical record from the time when Hitler was put in prison after the failed Munich beer hall putsch in 1923 shows he suffered from “right-side cryptorchidism” — a condition where a testicle fails to descend into the scrotum — media reports said. The doctor’s notes were thought to have been missing for years but reappeared at an auction in 2010, at which point they were seized by authorities. “The experienced medical officer immediately recognized the condition!” top-selling newspaper Bild quoted historian Peter Fleischmann, who has studied the record, as saying. Fleischmann could not immediately be reached for comment.

wwii;history;biology;adolf hitler;nazis

jp0000655

2015/12/20

Nuclear power plants feared vulnerable to terrorist groups

Security at France’s 58 nuclear power plants was purportedly raised to its highest level last month as a result of the terrorist attacks in Paris, stoking concern over the safety of Japan’s nuclear facilities. After the triple meltdown in Fukushima in 2011, Japan shut down all 48 of its viable commercial reactors in light of the crisis. But attempts are now being made to bring many back online. And despite opposition from anti-nuclear activists and groups, two reactors in Sendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, were restarted this fall and summer, with applications for 26 more pending Nuclear Regulation Authority approval. “I can understand there are concerns after terrorist attacks like the ones in Paris,” said NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka at a news conference on Nov. 18. “For now, we will tighten security measures by asking (for the) cooperation of related organizations like the police,” he said. But the NRA’s recent decision to revise its requirements to cope with terrorism has fueled fears over potential attacks on Japanese plants. The NRA’s new safety rules, introduced in July 2013 based on lessons learned from the Fukushima crisis, gave nuclear plant operators five years to set up special backup facilities to cope with possible attacks. The rules require the building of emergency backup operation rooms, backup water pumps and multiple water intake channels leading to reactor cores. If terrorists managed to cut power and paralyze the critical functions that keep the fuel rods cool, it could cause a meltdown and release a vast amount of radioactive material — just like when tsunami knocked out the cooling system of the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, triggering meltdowns at three of the six reactors there. But at its Nov. 13 session, the NRA delayed the starting date of the five-year period, giving utilities extra time to make the deadline. The time by which Kyushu Electric Power Co. has to build backup facilities for its two reactors recently reactivated at the Sendai nuclear plant, for example, was extended nearly two years to March 2020. Anti-nuclear activists argue that preparations to counter potential attacks should start immediately, particularly since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration recently enacted a law that allows the Self-Defense Forces to feasibly take part in military operations with the United States. “The terrorist threat to Japan has increased more than ever because of the (legalization of using the) right to collective self-defense,” said Hideyuki Ban, co-representative of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo. Experts on the Middle East say the law makes Japan more visible to terrorists like the Islamic State group, which is believed to be targeting U.S. allies. “The Islamic State has warned the pagan nation of Japan against further endangering lives of Japan’s citizens through Japanese support of the American crusade,” the jihadi extremist group said in the latest issue of its English-language online magazine Dabiq. “Prior to Shinzo Abe’s thoughtless pledge of support for this crusade, Japan was not on the list of priorities to be targeted by the Islamic State,” the group said. Even before the Fukushima crisis, the U.S. expressed serious concern over the apparent lack of security at Japanese nuclear plants. In May 2011, the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks released a number of documents it claimed were cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to Washington in 2006 and 2007. In one cable dated Feb. 26, 2007, the U.S. expressed concerns by reporting “armed national police are present at certain nuclear power plants . . . in Japan, but they do not guard all facilities and contract civilian guards are prevented by law from carrying weapons.” Another cable, dated Nov. 2, 2006, referred to an anti-terrorism drill held at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture. It reported that some Japanese officials “pointed out flaws in the drill, saying it was unrealistic because participants had advance copies of the scenario.” Kevin Maher, who served as the minister-counselor for science and technologies and environmental affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, was among the U.S. officials surprised to learn of the apparent lack of armed security guards at Japanese nuclear plants. In a 2003 meeting in Tokyo, Maher said he and a visiting White House official at the time urged senior officials at Japan’s now-defunct Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to deploy armed guards to tighten security. “We were explaining that you need to be prepared for an armed terrorist attack,” Maher said in a recent interview with The Japan Times. “Literally their answer was, ‘No, because guns are illegal in Japan,’ ” he added. Maher, however, stressed he now believes Japanese security measures at nuclear plants have been greatly strengthened under the NRA’s new safety standards and the more realistic crisis-management approach taken by the Abe administration. Maher asserted that nuclear plants are now more tightly protected and there are many other “softer” targets in Japan that would be easier for terrorists to assault, such as those attacked in Paris last month. “I think there are other targets that terrorists would probably aim for rather than nuclear power plants,” he said. The National Police Agency says it has beefed up security guards at nuclear power plants. According to NPA’s report on security in 2015, special security units armed with submachine guns, rifles and specially reinforced armored vehicles have been deployed to guard nuclear-related facilities 24 hours a day. There are a total of 1,900 such security officers across the country. However, neither the NPA nor the NRA disclosed the exact number assigned to guard the plants, making it difficult to assess the plan. For his part, Hideyuki Ban, with the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, said Japan should not reactivate more reactors, arguing none are designed to withstand suicidal attacks with large planes like the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001. “The steel plate of the primary containment vessel is only about 3 cm, and the outside concrete layer is not very thick,” Ban pointed out. “A large airplane would burst right through a containment vessel if it was directly hit.” The Japan Times asked the NRA and Tokyo Electric Power Co. to comment on Ban’s comments, but both declined.

nuclear regulation authority;nuclear power plants;terrorist attacks

jp0000656

2015/12/27

Arizona hotel's larger-than-life gingerbread house hits sweet spot

MARANA, ARIZONA - Like something out of “Hansel and Gretel,” a larger-than-life gingerbread house made with hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of sugar and spice has been luring in guests at a southern Arizona resort. Much like the fairy tale, they are free to enter and sit down by a roaring fire. But there is no wicked witch. Instead, there’s a server with a three-course menu. A team of pastry chefs at the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain, in Marana decided this Christmas to go make a gingerbread building that was more than a display. The 19-foot-tall (5.8-meter-tall) “house” has been operating for the past month as a private dining room and become valuable real estate in terms of the attention. There’s no cost to walk through. But for $150, you can reserve the whole thing. Up to six people can sit down and order meals and beverages from the hotel kitchen. The fireside fee does not include food. The idea of a life-size gingerbread house where people could go in and out drew skepticism, even from some hotel workers. But head pastry chef Daniel Mangione was confident it could be done. “There’s a lot of gingerbread houses out there but usually it’s just a facade and the inside is forgotten about,” Mangione said. “But this year we really wanted to see if we could make it different.” Up since the Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 26, the house will be coming down after Sunday. But Mangione assured that they will resurrect it in some form next Christmas. “We want to do something a little different. We’re not really too sure what that might be,” Mangione said. “We might do a sushi counter.” Pastry chefs first prepped for construction back in June by making batches of gingerbread daily. They baked them with a reddish hue and cut them into “bricks.” They also pre-ordered massive quantities of ingredients including 200 pounds (90 kg) of ginger powder, 400 pounds (180 kg) of honey, 50 pounds (22.5 kg) of cinnamon and 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of nutmeg. “It’s a much larger project than what we’re working on day-to-day for banquets,” said Marlene Carollo, another pastry chef at the resort. According to Mangione, it took a “baker’s dozen” about four days to tile the exterior. More than 4,000 ginger bricks made of real gingerbread cover the outside walls and the roof. Gumdrops and peppermints adorn each tile in a precise pattern and the windows are framed with candy-cane trim. Mangione said they have had to do a quick check of the house every day to see if anything has gone missing. So far, the only hazards have been children caught licking walls or a few peppermints at a child’s eye-level disappearing. “Parents are very good about controlling their kids,” Mangione said. “We haven’t had any major loss of tile.” The aromatic abode has elicited strong reactions from adults as well. One man asked if he could stay overnight. Another wanted to buy the house for his grandchildren. Anne and Vincent Duffy, who were visiting from Los Angeles, happened upon the house while walking around the lobby. The couple initially thought only the candy was real. “I was really impressed that they made something of this size,” Anne Duffy said. “I love it.”

literature;tourism;hotels

jp0000657

2015/12/27

Hashimoto factor keeps political pundits on edge of their seats

OSAKA - Well, that didn’t take long. Less than 24 hours after finishing as Osaka mayor, Toru Hashimoto met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Dec. 19. The purpose was to exchange views on security and diplomatic issues — areas Hashimoto knows little about but has lots of opinions on — and constitutional revisions, a goal both men share. The question for Abe now is how to best use Hashimoto to help achieve constitutional changes. The question for Hashimoto, though, is what’s next? Local pundits and journalists, as well as various political aids in non-Ishin parties, are predicting four basic scenarios. First, Hashimoto could enter the Abe Cabinet as an unappointed minister. Perhaps as internal affairs chief, the ministry that could help make Hashimoto’s goal of merging Osaka a reality. The advantage for Hashimoto as minister is that he would be on the inside and able to build the connections needed to go on to bigger things. The advantage for Abe is that Osaka Ishin no Kai would become a loyal ally on not only constitutional revision, but also other issues (security, diplomacy, education) that Abe wants to push. Potential drawbacks? A high-profile failure. Hashimoto is widely distrusted by Tokyo bureaucrats. The wily Sir Humphrey Applebys in whatever ministry he goes to could turn Hashimoto into a hapless Jim Hacker. And then there’s the money. Before entering politics, Hashimoto reportedly made ¥300 million annually as a television celebrity. As a Cabinet member, he would be under tough restrictions on taking outside cash, restrictions that might be a deal-breaker for entering the Cabinet. The second option has Hashimoto as an outside Cabinet adviser or chairman of a useless but high-profile politically appointed panel. Advantages? Hashimoto could hobnob with political insiders yet still rake in the yen with outside jobs, especially on TV. Public influence and visibility with fewer restraints on private income might sound good. Disadvantages include how seriously he would be taken by political insiders, and whether being an adviser as opposed to a Cabinet member would insulate him better from his enemies. The third possibility is Hashimoto remains out of politics until next year’s Upper House election, and then runs. He would win and that may boost Osaka Ishin’s election results. But does Hashimoto want to be an opposition party fish in the large pond known as the Diet? And if his friend Abe is replaced as prime minister, will he get eaten by the veteran sharks in the Liberal Democratic Party who don’t like him? Finally, there’s the fourth option: Hashimoto stays out of politics. That seems unlikely. But the only thing predictable about Hashimoto, it seems, is his unpredictability. So nobody will surprised if he chooses a fifth option invisible to pundits in the bars of Osaka.

shinzo abe;toru hashimoto;osaka

jp0000658

2015/12/27

Fukui defies critics of nuclear evacuation plan

OSAKA - Last week’s approval by Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa to restart two Takahama nuclear reactors, followed by the Fukui District Court’s lifting of a provisional injunction, means Japan will soon fire up its third and fourth reactors since 2012. “I made my decision after the safety aspects had been considered and approved by (the) Takahama township and prefectural assembly, and after considering the general policies of the national government and Kepco,” Nishikawa said, referring to Kansai Electric Power Co. The Fukui District Court ruled that, as there was no clear and present danger to local communities from the reactors, there was no reason for the injunction. Both decisions came less than a week after the Cabinet Office released detailed evacuation plans for dealing with a nuclear crisis at Takahama — plans that critics warn may prove unrealistic in an actual emergency. About 179,000 people live within 30 km of the Takahama plant, and 8,800 live within 5 km of it. Of the 179,000 total, about 54,000 reside in four Fukui towns and another 125,000 are from seven cities in neighboring Kyoto Prefecture. All would have to be evacuated in the event of a disaster. The official evacuation plan is based on three different scenarios. In the first scenario, known as Operational Intervention Level 1, more than 500 microsieverts of radiation per hour are detected. In the second scenario, OIL 2, between 20 and 500 microsieverts per hour are detected, with a base level of half a microsievert set for OIL 3. In OIL 1, evacuation procedures would be put into place within hours of confirming the radiation level. For OIL 2, the time frame is within a day. The plans call for sending more than 46,000 Fukui residents within 5 km to 30 km of Takahama northeast, toward the towns of Tsuruga, Sabae, or Echizen. Roughly 125,000 residents in seven Kyoto cities also live between 5 km and 30 km of the plant, and would have to be evacuated. Within the prefecture, the flow would be directed south and southwest to Kyoto, Uji and other cities, as well as to Kobe and 18 other towns and cities in Hyogo, and to Naruto and two towns in Tokushima on Shikoku. Most of the roughly 8,800 residents living within 5 km of Takahama would be evacuated to Tsuruga, as well as to Sanda and Takarazuka in neighboring Hyogo. About 640 people living in areas of Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture, within 5 km of the Takahama plant would be evacuated to Kobe. A key concern local officials have is how the central government will initially respond to the next nuclear disaster. The plan for delivering first responders and relief goods from Tokyo calls for Air Self-Defense Force transport planes at Iruma Air Base in Saitama to fly to Komatsu Air Base in Ishikawa Prefecture (a one hour flight), where their cargo will be transferred to helicopters and ferried to Takahama, 30 minutes away. Yet all the detailed plans are all based on the assumption that the roads leading out of Takahama — which lies in a remote area on the Sea of Japan coast — to the evacuation zones in other parts of Fukui, as well as Kyoto and Hyogo, will not have been damaged; that there will not be mass panic that clogs the roads; and that there will be enough time for residents within 30 km of the plant to get to safety. But what happens if the nuclear incident has been triggered by an earthquake or other natural disaster that has destroyed the roads? Or, what happens if an accident occurs in the midst of a blizzard, where icy roads and hazardous driving conditions can lead to accidents that block them and create long traffic jams? The Cabinet Office’s plans state that, in the event of a natural disaster that makes fleeing by road impossible, residents will be evacuated by ship from the neighboring port city of Maizuru, which has a Maritime Self-Defense Force base. Helicopters will land at about a dozen designated areas along the main roads in Fukui and northern Kyoto that lie within the 30-km evacuation radius. Again, the above assumptions are that the port facilities will be working after a disaster and that residents will be able to get to a dozen locations that have been designated as helicopter landing spots, most of which are in Maizuru. For some local politicians outside Fukui, the evacuation plans represent a challenge and an opportunity. Kyoto Gov. Keiji Yamada met with Vice Minister Yosuke Takagi of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry earlier this month and asked Tokyo to provide funding in next year’s fiscal budget for improving roads. “There are a lot of issues in regards to infrastructure for areas of evacuation and evacuation routes,” Yamada said, pointing out that funding for road improvements had yet to be guaranteed. However, Shiga Prefecture, which could find itself deluged with panicked evacuees, is also the home of Lake Biwa, the main source of water for 14 million people. A disaster at the Takahama plant could contaminate drinking water sources for not only those towns and cities named in the evacuation plans, but also for those as far away as Osaka. “If there’s an accident, there will be a long-term effect over a wide area of Lake Biwa,” said Shiga Gov. Daizo Mikazuki last Tuesday after Fukui Gov. Nishikawa granted approval for reactor restarts.

nuclear power;shiga;kepco;fukui;takahama plant

jp0000659

2015/12/29

Bridgestone considering topping Carl Icahn's increased bid on Pep Boys parts chain

NEW YORK - Bridgestone Corp. will decide by the end of the year whether to top Carl Icahn’s bid for Pep Boys after the billionaire investor raised his offer for the car-parts chain to more than $1 billion. The Japanese tire maker will decide its next move within three business days, spokesman Fusamaro Iijima said Tuesday in an email. Hours earlier, Icahn Enterprises escalated a bidding war with an $18.50-a-share cash proposal, which it said it will be willing to boost even further if Pep Boys does not increase the termination fee in its deal with Bridgestone. The takeover battle for Pep Boys underscores the confidence Icahn and Bridgestone have in the U.S. auto-parts retailing industry, which has benefited from an aging vehicle fleet on American roads. The automotive retailer agreed to a sweetened, $17-a-share takeover offer from Bridgestone last week, following an earlier bid from Icahn. Both Bridgestone and Icahn are seeking to expand their presence in the tire and automotive-repair sector by adding Pep Boys’ 800 locations across more than 30 states. Bridge-stone operates more than 2,200 tire and automotive centers in the country. Icahn, meanwhile, plans to combine Pep Boys with the Auto Plus chain, which he acquired earlier this year. Icahn’s increased offer sent Pep Boys’ stock up as much as 7.1 percent to $18.65 in late trading. Shares of the company, the full name of which is Pep Boys-Manny, Moe & Jack, had already gained 77 percent this year, largely driven by the bidding war. Bridgestone rose 0.5 percent to ¥4,155 as of 2:17 p.m. Pep Boys trades at 64 times forward 12-month earnings, versus the 18 times average for U.S. auto retailers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company, based in Philadelphia, said in a statement that Icahn’s proposal was superior and gave Bridgestone until 5 p.m. New York time on Thursday to make another offer or terminate their agreement. Icahn had previously said he is willing to pay at least $18.10 a share and was puzzled by Pep Boys’ board opting for the Bridgestone offer. “We cannot understand the actions of the directors in that they know we were willing to offer a lot more than $17,” he said last week.

carl icahn;acquisition;bridgestone corp .;pep boys;icahn enterprises

jp0000660

2015/12/29

Bicyclists have field day as smog-hit Milan bans car use

MILAN, ITALY - Bicyclists had free rein of Milan’s streets Monday during a six-hour ban on private cars in a bid to alleviate persistent smog. Pollution levels in Italy’s business capital have exceeded levels considered healthy for more than 30 days straight, prompting officials to ban private cars from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Monday through Wednesday this week. Officials said private motorists, who risked steep fines, widely respected the ban on its first day. Rome, which is also battling smog, has been enforcing alternate day driving based on odd and even numbers on license plates, while Florence has announced limits on automobile access to the historic center through New Year’s Eve. The measures have been criticized as insufficient, with some calling for more incentives to use public transport, shutting off school heating systems during the winter break and urging citizens to turn down the heat at home. Milan’s Mayor Giuliano Pisapia said it was a necessary response to an emergency situation. “The ban under way has been, I would say, well respected,” Milan’s top transport official, Pierfrancesco Maran, said in a Facebook post. “In the meantime, it has to be said that the city has a magical atmosphere experienced on foot, bicycle and with public transport.” The lack of rain and winds has exacerbated pollution levels in Italy, particularly in the mostly land-locked and industrial northern Po River Valley where at least 10 cities have limited auto traffic in some way. Milan’s car ban falls during a holiday week, with many residents out of town and many businesses closed, and is accompanied by a measure that allows passengers to use public transport all day for €1.50 ($1.6) on what is normally a single-ride ticket. Health officials say vehicle emissions account for half of the pollution in Milan and 70 percent in Rome, and that the high pollution levels have increased reports of acute cardiovascular disease in recent days.

italy;smog;rome;environment;milan

jp0000661

2015/12/29

German dies after blowing up condom machine

BERLIN - Police in Germany say a man has died after he and two others blew up a condom machine and he was hit in the head by a flying piece of metal. Officers were alerted to the explosion Friday in Schoeppingen, near the Dutch border, and found cash and condom packets lying on the ground apparently untouched. A local hospital informed police that a 29-year-old had died after being brought in by two other men. They initially said he had fallen down stairs, but police said Monday one of them later admitted the victim’s injuries were related to the explosion. They say the three men apparently got into a car after triggering the explosion, but the 29-year-old didn’t close his door and was hit by debris when the machine exploded.

accidents;crime;germany;theft

jp0000662

2015/12/29

Eiji Kimizuka, former GSDF Chief of Staff, dies at 63

Friends of the Ground Self-Defense Force throughout Japan and the world were saddened to learn about the passing of Eiji Kimizuka, a retired four-star general who served as the Chief of Staff of the GSDF from 2011 to 2013 but perhaps was best known for leading the bilateral response to the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. He was 63. He died Monday of lung cancer after recently being hospitalized. Earlier this month, I received an email from his wife telling me about his hospitalization “since the latter part of November,” but I did not realize it was so serious. I had written to him previously, as part of our long correspondence, this time to ask him some questions about Operation Tomodachi, the massive relief effort led by the U.S. in support of Japan, for a book I am writing. Unusually, it was several days before I got a response, and in this case, from his wife. He had kindly related the answers to her, and she passed them along. I first met then-Maj. Gen. Kimizuka when he was the commanding general of the 1st Combined Brigade (now 15th Brigade) in Okinawa in summer 2004, immediately before I went on a sabbatical from Osaka University to work for the U.S. Marine Corps in Hawaii for one year. After serving as the head of the personnel division in Ichigaya, he moved to the Osaka area in July 2006 to serve as the chief of staff of Middle Army Headquarters and commander of Camp Itami. Our relationship grew during this time thanks to the proximity, but also due to his dedication to community relations. He was promoted to lieutenant general after this and served as the commanding general of the 8th Division, followed by service as the vice president of the National Defense Academy, where my academic adviser, Dr. Iokibe Makoto, had become president. I was able to see him quite often in this connection as well. In July 2009, he became the 34th commanding general of Northeastern Army. Twenty months later, the disaster hit. He had prepared his forces well, and had extraordinary relations with the local community, allowing the response to be comparatively smooth. His close relationship with his U.S. military counterparts was also a key ingredient to the success. When I arrived at Camp Sendai with the U.S. Marines as their political adviser in the forward command element we established within Joint Task Force-Tohoku, or JTF-TH, I felt as if I was rejoining an old friend on the one hand, but also deeply honored to be working under and for him. He, in turn, expressed his relief that I was there. Kimizuka also had a relationship with the head of the U.S. Marine Corps in Japan, Lt. Gen. Kenneth J. Glueck Jr., who had recently arrived for his fourth tour in Japan. His previous time in Japan overlapped with Kimizuka’s in Okinawa; they were counterparts of similar organizations — the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Glueck’s case. Kimizuka was a kind, thoughtful man, although some would say cautious, too. His morning and evening meetings, which often ran two hours each, in the command center ended with his sharing his thoughts or different pieces of information, both to raise morale as well as to instill lessons. He noted one evening about the Emperor’s March 16th message regarding the tragedy to the people of Japan, a message that included praise of the Self Defense Forces’ work. The message, as well as the noting of it, were both especially meaningful at that time when stress and fatigue were setting in among our Japanese colleagues. He was attentive to details. He loved scuba diving, and diving deep. The same could be said of his approach to work — diving deep in the facts, contexts and nuances. He could be stern, but he was never rude. I told him much later that I felt the meetings were almost like a seminar, where the professor summarized things at the end and imparted his or her words of wisdom. As an educator, it was meant as a compliment, although he may not have taken it that way. He was not expected to become the top of the GSDF later that year, but his experience as a commander in the real world was needed and he was chosen. In addition, during Operation Tomodachi he saw firsthand the amphibious capabilities of the U.S. Marines-U.S. Navy team, something Japan desperately needed to develop. He also struggled with getting the SDF to operate jointly and could use tap into that experience to guide the GSDF in the post-3/11 era. Without a doubt, he moved the GSDF forward. I recently arranged for him to give a talk on Nov. 6 at a university in the United States about the disaster. The former president of the Japan-America Society in that city wrote as it finished how “excellent” it was and what a “very impressive gentlemen” Kimizuka was. I could not agree more. Rest in peace, general.

self defense forces;eiji kimizuka

jp0000663

2015/12/16

Plaintiffs express shock at bad precedent set by court's decision on shared surnames

Plaintiffs contesting family laws that require spouses to choose a single surname expressed shock and anger at Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, saying it sets a bad precedent and will force more women to suffer the misery of having to change their name upon marriage. In a vote of 10 to 5, the nation’s top court dismissed claims by five women seeking the right to retain their maiden names after marriage. The court said the century-old Civil Code provision requiring couples to share a surname — they can choose which — is “established in Japanese society,” and that the matter should be taken up in the Diet, not the courts. “I’m sad, I’m in pain,” a weeping plaintiff Kyoko Tsukamoto told a news conference in Tokyo following the ruling. She goes by Tsukamoto, her maiden name, although her husband’s name must be used on legal documents. “My name is something I can’t give up.” Fellow plaintiff Kaori Oguni expressed anger, saying the reasoning for the ruling was “horrible.” “This means that future generations of women will be shouldered with the same suffering we have gone through,” Oguni, a 41-year-old mother of a 6-year-old daughter, said. “I’ve told my daughter of (the injustice of) the Japanese marriage system for years. I’m at a loss for how to explain today’s ruling to her.” Fujiko Sakakibara, a lead lawyer in the case, said the ruling reflects Japan’s poor participation of women in society, including in the judiciary. “The percentage of female judges in the Supreme Court is only 20 percent now, which has resulted in this outcome.” In a separate case, the Supreme Court ruled that a Civil Code provision prohibiting female divorcees from remarrying within six months of their divorce is unconstitutional. Tomoshi Sakka, a lawyer representing the plaintiff, a woman in her 30s, said the Diet should swiftly change the law. In its ruling Wednesday, the court said the period in which a divorcee cannot remarry should be shortened to 100 days from the current six months, citing advances in medical technologies, such as DNA tests, which have made the paternity of children much easier to ascertain. For women wishing to remarry within 100 days after a divorce, Sakka said, the government should allow them to do so as long as they have obtained proof from a medical doctor that they are not pregnant. “We request that the government issue a notice allowing such women to remarry, given that the advances in medical and other scientific technologies (in shortening the ban) are cited in the ruling,” Sakka said.

shinzo abe;ldp;family;civil code;marriage;supreme court;surnames

jp0000664

2015/12/16

Japan's top court upholds same-name rule for married couples, overturns remarriage moratorium for women

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the constitutionality of a controversial Civil Code provision requiring married couples to use the same surname in official matters. The decision was a blow to campaigners who sued the state, asking the nation’s highest court to declare the rule unconstitutional. The matter is contentious in Japan, with opponents calling it an infringement of women’s fundamental rights and conservatives regarding shared names as a central pillar of the family unit. The top court did, however, declare that a law prohibiting female divorcees from remarrying within six months of their divorce is unconstitutional. In response to the ruling on the ban on remarriage, Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki responded Wednesday evening by pledging a swift legal revision. Noting the ruling suggested the ban be shortened to 100 days, the ministry issued a notice to its regional bureaus nationwide that women wishing to remarry 100 days after a divorce should be allowed to do so even before any legal revision takes place, Iwaki said. Both rulings relate to family laws dating from the Meiji Era (1868-1912). Campaigners who brought the pair of lawsuits alleged discrimination against women. One suit, filed in 2011, involved a statute requiring Japanese spouses to choose which single family name — the husband’s or the wife’s — to adopt in legally registering their marriage. The plaintiffs argued this amounts to gender discrimination because being forced to choose a single surname infringes on personal dignity and the freedom to marry. Presiding Justice Itsuro Terada said sharing a single family name is a system “deeply rooted in our society” and is meaningful in that it “enables people to identify themselves as part of a family in the eyes of others.” Although admitting that being pressured to forfeit a maiden name often works to women’s disadvantage professionally — and may even trigger an identity crisis — Terada said such hardships can be mitigated, since women are free to use their maiden names in daily life. However, campaigners cite inconveniences in the workplace as a significant reason for their opposition to the rule. Some say when a woman known professionally by her maiden name has to adopt a new one it creates major complications. Meanwhile, the top court similarly rejected the plaintiffs’ appeal for a combined ¥6 million in compensation. Noting that the law gives couples the freedom to decide which surname to adopt, Terada said it is not discriminatory in itself. However, studies in the past 40 years show more than 96 percent of Japanese couples have opted for the husband’s name. Some of the plaintiffs reported emotional distress in the form of depression and difficulty sleeping. Coming at a time when the global trend is increasingly toward allowing the use of separate names, the ruling is “anachronistic,” said Masayuki Tanamura, a professor of family law at Waseda University. “The ruling will not encourage women to remain in the workforce after marriage and childbirth,” Tanamura said. “As the circumstances surrounding a family and public perceptions of it are evolving, the Civil Code provision, based on an outdated view of the family, must be changed.” He added that the Diet should not take the ruling as an excuse for inaction, but should promptly revise the law. Waseda Law School professor Mutsuko Asakura also lambasted the ruling. Noting only three female judges on the 15-member Grand Bench of the top court that examined the case, she said the ruling underscored the gross lack of understanding by male judges toward inconveniences long imposed on women. It even risks further cementing the international community’s perception of Japan as a country “intolerant of diversity” and “insensitive to human rights,” she said. Meanwhile, in response to a lawsuit filed by a 30-something female divorcee from Okayama Prefecture, the top court recognized the unconstitutionality of a separate statute prohibiting women from remarrying within six months of their divorce. The court, however, rejected the woman’s appeal for ¥1.65 million in compensation for emotional distress. Critics call the measure outdated in an era of early pregnancy detection and of DNA sequencing, which can identify paternity to a degree of accuracy unthinkable a century ago. Terada said the ban represents an “excessive restriction” on women’s freedom of marriage. Yet reducing the ban to 100 days would pose no constitutional problem, he said in reference to a related clause that says a child born within the first 300 days after a divorce is legally a descendant of the former husband, while a child born at least 200 days after the second marriage is deemed to be that of a new partner. Debate over whether to revamp the Civil Code, which dates from the Meiji Era, flared up in the 1990s following Japan’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1985. In response to public calls for change, a legislative panel of the Justice Ministry proposed amendments in 1996 to legalize having separate surnames and to shorten the six-month ban on remarriage. It provoked fierce opposition from conservative lawmakers, and the proposals were shelved, defeating what would have been the biggest postwar overhaul of family laws. Even today, resistance to the idea of spouses retaining separate names remains particularly strong among lawmakers within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Despite Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push for “womenomics,” or the greater inclusion of women in society and economic life, the party opposes allowing separate surnames on the grounds that it would destroy “the sense of family unity.” Public opinion is divided, too. A survey conducted by the Cabinet Office in 2012 showed that respondents were split, with 35.5 percent in favor of allowing separate surnames and 36.4 percent against. A survey conducted by public broadcaster NHK last month also showed that 46 percent of respondents support the idea, while 50 percent oppose it. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has repeatedly urged the government to take “immediate action” to amend the law.

shinzo abe;ldp;family;civil code;marriage;supreme court;surnames

jp0000665

2015/12/28

Olympics to generate up to ¥30 trillion for economy: BOJ

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics are expected to generate from ¥25 trillion ($208 billion) to ¥30 trillion in sales and revenue for the economy from 2014 to 2020, the Bank of Japan said Monday. The estimates reflect an increase in infrastructure investment related to the sporting extravaganza and tourism, the central bank said. Tourism has been surging, and visitors to Japan are expected to reach 33 million in 2020 if the current trend continues, surpassing the government’s goal of 20 million by that year, the BOJ said. “This is a reasonable estimate,” said Koya Miyamae, an economist at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. “There is no doubt that the Olympic Games is good news for the BOJ” as it will boost demand, he said. Preparations are already beginning. Tokyo will spend ¥45.2 billion on fuel-cell vehicle subsidies and hydrogen refueling stations for the Olympics as part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to reduce Japan’s reliance on nuclear power, a city official said in January. The central bank said the sporting events are projected to lift gross domestic product by around 1 percent in 2018, when construction investment will peak, compared with 2014. That corresponds to about ¥5 trillion to ¥6 trillion. The BOJ estimated ¥10 trillion will be spent on the main Olympic stadium and related facilities, as well as infrastructure, by 2020. In addition to those economic effects, further growth can be expected from tweaking the government’s growth strategy to take advantage of the events, the BOJ said. It also said more than 700,000 workers will be needed altogether in sectors from construction to tourism for the event, raising the need to better utilize Japan’s women and elderly. But the BOJ also warned that the figures were subject to change. “These are rough calculations,” a BOJ official said. Tourism is climbing at a dramatic pace. In the first 11 months of the year, there were nearly 18 million visitors, up 47.5 percent from the same period last year and representing all-time high, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. Their spending totaled ¥1 trillion from July to September, up 81.8 percent from the same period last year. Chinese travelers, who account for the bulk of the tourists and whose heavy spending has inspired the slang term bakugai, or explosive buying, also spent the most in the quarter, dropping ¥466 billion in Japan. While economists deny tourism alone is large enough to become a key driver of the economy, they acknowledge it is a positive factor in an economy with few strong engines. “Inbound tourism should contribute to revitalization of local economies,” said Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, referring to one of Abe’s stated priorities. “I think demand from inbound tourists will benefit areas that have popular tourist destinations.”

bank of japan;gdp;2020 tokyo olympics;inbound tourism

jp0000666

2015/12/28

Cow dung patties selling like hot cakes online in India

NEW DELHI - With the holiday season in full swing, Indians are flocking to the online marketplace in droves. But one unusual item is flying off the virtual shelves: Online retailers say cow dung patties are selling like hot cakes. The patties — cow poop mixed with hay and dried in the sun, made mainly by women in rural areas and used to fuel fires — have long been available in India’s villages. But online retailers including Amazon and eBay are now reaching out to the country’s ever-increasing urban population. Some retailers say they are offering discounts for large orders. Some customers are asking for gift wrapping. “Cow dung cakes have been listed by multiple sellers on our platform since October and we have received several customer orders” since then, said Madhavi Kochar, an Amazon India spokeswoman. The orders come mostly from cities where it would be difficult to buy dung cakes, she said. In India, where Hindus have long worshipped cows as sacred, cow dung cakes have been used for centuries for fires, whether for heating, cooking or Hindu rituals. Across rural India, piles of drying cow dung are ubiquitous. Radhika Agarwal of ShopClues, a major online retailer in India, said demand for the cow dung cakes spiked during the recent Diwali season, a time when Hindus conduct prayer ceremonies at their homes, factories and offices. On a recent day, ShopClues’ website showed that the patties had sold out. “Around Diwali, when people do a lot of pujas in their homes and workplaces, there is a lot of demand for cow dung cakes,” said Agarwal, referring to rituals performed during the popular festival. “Increasingly, in the cold weather, people are keeping themselves warm by lighting fires” using them, she said, adding that people who grew up in rural areas find the peaty smell of dung fires pleasant. “It reminds them of the old days,” she said. The cakes are sold in packages that contain two to eight pieces weighing 200 grams each. Prices range from 100 to 400 rupees ($1.50 to $6) per package. Dung cakes are also used as organic manure, and some sellers are marketing them for use in kitchen gardens.

india;food;hinduism

jp0000667

2015/12/28

Eat-in areas on the rise in Japan’s convenience stores and supermarkets

In the quest for next-level service, convenience stores and supermarkets are increasingly keen to experiment with “eat-in” lounge areas. Some are even setting up adjacent cafes where the same clerks who handle convenience store customers also serve coffee and cake. Eat-in areas allow customers to consume their purchases without leaving the premises. Here is a look into the recent boom of eat-in areas and how convenience stores and supermarkets are tapping into their potential: Is the number of eat-in areas on the rise? Yes. Most major convenience store operators — Seven Eleven, Lawson, FamilyMart and Circle K Sunkus — said they have increased their number of eat-in spaces over the years. FamilyMart, for example, said it has “strategically” increased eat-in areas, boosting their number more than fivefold from 580 in February 2013 to the current 3,200, in response to their popularity among customers, spokeswoman Akiko Tsuse said. Circle K said that of the current 300 outlets with eat-in spaces, 100 were established over the past year, according to spokesman Naoto Shinozaki. Seven Eleven and Lawson said they don’t keep a tally, but that they are in line with the current upward trend. Ministop has eat-in space in almost all its outlets, unless local regulations and other conditions preclude their presence. What’s driving the increase? Most convenience stores said the increase reflects a diversification of consumer demand. Circle K spokesman Shinozaki, for one, cited a gradual change in his firm’s customer base. They now see more female and elderly customers, as opposed to middle-aged businessmen, who previously accounted for an overwhelming majority of their patrons. Shinozaki said female customers, for example, would rather sit and eat an onigiri rice ball, as opposed to eating while walking. The eat-in spaces, he said, come in handy for such people. Elderly customers appreciate in-house eating areas because it affords them a place to rest before returning home, he said. What can customers do at eat-in areas? Convenience stores and supermarkets are exploring their potential. The Circle K group, for example, runs 13 K’s Cafe establishments, many of which are located next to their stores nationwide, Shinozaki said. They aim to accommodate customers in a manner fundamentally different from eat-in areas, which cater primarily to customers in need of space for a quick meal. K’s Cafe, he said, offers a more leisurely break. The cafes sport elaborate interior designs featuring “Japanese-style modernity” in a bid to carve out a following among women in their 30s and 40s, he said. Similarly, Ministop customers can use eat-in areas not only to consume what they purchased but to socialize, spokesman Kimikazu Sugawara said. Midsize supermarket chain Inageya Co. said it also wants to stand out from its rivals by creating “a hub of communication” in areas around their shops, according to spokesman Takuya Okuda. Inageya has introduced high-quality sofas, tables and chairs in many of its lounges to make customers feel more at home, while in some FamilyMart outlets customers can recharge their smartphones. Going a step further, FamilyMart announced last month that the eat-in space at its new outlet in the Osaka city of Suita will be open to performances by professional stand-up comedians. The firm said this is part of its collaboration with a local merchants’ association to lure more people to the area and reinvigorate local businesses. Are convenience stores planning to increase eat-in space? FamilyMart said it plans to further increase such spaces from the current 3,200 to 6,000 nationwide by the end of February 2018. Although Circle K has no set target, it too may introduce them into more of its outlets. Seven Eleven, meanwhile, is more cautious, saying it will weigh customer demand and floor space in each outlet before deciding, spokesman Katsuhiko Shimizu said. Lawson has no plans as of yet. Will the consumption tax rise in April 2017 affect eat-in areas? The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner Komeito agreed in the tax reform outline released earlier this month for the next fiscal year to keep “foods in general” levied at the current 8 percent rate, to mitigate the financial blow to households of the overall sales tax hike to 10 percent in 2017. The ruling coalition, however, made an exception: the 8 percent tax rate will not apply to “foods served in eating establishments.” The tax rate for food consumed in eat-in areas will vary depending on packaging, possibly creating confusion among both consumers and retailers. Bento boxed lunches and other packaged foods that can be brought home will continue to be subject to the 8 percent rate. These disposable products will be considered as being merely “sold” by convenience stores, and therefore categorized as “foods in general.” If meals are served on plates that must be returned, they will be levied at 10 percent, based on the premise that they are “provided” by stores and thus regarded as “foods served in eating establishments,” according to the outline.

taxes;convenience stores;consumption tax;eat-in

jp0000668

2015/12/17

U.S. gender experts slam Supreme Court ruling backing same surname for spouses

NEW YORK - U.S. gender equality experts on Wednesday criticized a ruling by Japan’s Supreme Court upholding a law requiring spouses to use the same surname, describing the law as outdated. “Having the same name as her husband is not necessarily against her self-interest, but it should be up to her to choose,” said Marsha Freeman, senior fellow and director of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch. “For many, it is a matter of having begun to establish a business or professional identity prior to marriage; changing it is detrimental to her professional life and well as to personal identity,” she said. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that a provision of the Civil Code requiring married couples to have the same surname is constitutional, noting that using one surname for family members is a practice “well-established in society.” In Japan, it is customary for a wife to take her husband’s surname, although the law does not say which of the partners must give up their surname on marriage. Freeman said the court is mistaken in its conclusion that a woman’s use of their preferred name in all circumstances is a challenge to culture. “Culture is a living thing that changes with time and the influence of information, education, and economics,” she said. Antonia Kirkland, legal adviser of Equality Now, a group working for the protection and promotion of women’s rights, said the ruling symbolized gender inequality in Japan, adding men were often seen as more powerful in the country’s traditional culture, leading many wives to give up their maiden names. CNN reported the ruling, saying that many women, gender equality experts, and even a U.N. committee have said the law was “discriminatory” and “outdated,” with its headline reading “Japanese women lose fight to keep their surnames.”

shinzo abe;ldp;family;civil code;marriage;supreme court;surnames

jp0000669

2015/12/17

Experts say surname verdict reflects top court's gender, age makeup

The Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that upheld the constitutionality of a law that requires spouses to choose a single surname dealt a heavy blow to advocates who want to see change. They worry Japan may have missed a chance to join the global trend of allowing married couples to have separate legal surnames. The ruling also raised the question of whether a better gender balance among the top court’s 15 justices might have resulted in a different outcome. Of the court’s 15 members, only three are women. “If there was a better gender balance of the judges, it may have led to a different ruling,” said Mari Miura, a political professor at Sophia University. Shuhei Ninomiya, a professor of family law at Ritsumeikan University, said opinions may have varied among the judges based on their understanding of the pain of changing one’s surname and the problems that stem from it. In the ruling, all three female justices out of 15 were in favor of the plaintiffs. In their opinions, they cited women who suffered disadvantages and inconveniences from changing their surnames, such as the case of researchers who had already published research papers under their maiden names, and other examples where the building of a career after marriage was made more difficult by the change. “Women shoulder almost all the burdens — the obstacles and loss of self-confidence — that come from (changing surnames),” one of the opinions said. “It is hardly a system that ensures individual dignity and gender equality.” According to a government survey, more people tend to oppose separate surnames as they age. The 15-member justices were all in their 60s. “The fact that more elderly people sympathize with a single surname may have been reflected in the ruling,” said Ninomiya of Ritsumeikan University. The ruling stated that the disadvantages that come with a change of surname could be mitigated by expanding the use of maiden names in some situations. According to a survey by the Institute of Labor Administration, a private research group, 64.5 percent of firms that responded allowed the use of maiden names at work in 2013, up from 17.8 percent in 1995. “I was really excited before the ruling. But now, the debate (over allowing separate surnames) may lose momentum,” said Etsuko Kuzuya, 43, who works in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward. Kuzuya has used her maiden name at work since she was married, but she has to use her husband’s surname for official documents such as rental contracts, elections and other administrative procedures in her municipality. “There is no legal backing for common names,” Kuzuya said. “It seems (the judges) don’t understand the reality.” According to the Justice Ministry, there are no other countries that ban separate surnames.Lawmakers from the Liberal Democratic Party say the top court’s decision must have been well received by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Predominantly conservative lawmakers’ group Sosei Nippon (Japan’s Rebirth), headed by Abe, is essentially opposed to the change, and says it will work to keep the law unchanged in order to preserve the unity of the family. One Cabinet minister said Abe was taking a realistic stance to appeal to a wider audience outside his conservative base. “Abe’s administration is pushing for a greater role in society for women, but upholding laws that force couples to choose a single surname will only hinder achieving the goal,” said Ritsumeikan’s Ninomiya. “Instead of backpedaling the debate, the government should push forward to (change) the legislation.” On Wednesday, Tomomi Inada, policy chief of the ruling LDP, said the ruling was “reasonable.” Inada also said measures were needed to make it easier to use maiden names at work, adding that the party should consider whether a law revision is necessary. Meanwhile, Katsuya Okada, who heads the opposition’s Democratic Party of Japan, said the party planned to submit legislation in the regular Diet session to be convened next month that would allow couples to have separate legal surnames. “Just because the (Supreme Court ruling) said it was constitutional doesn’t mean (lawmakers) don’t have to do anything,” Okada said.

shinzo abe;ldp;family;civil code;marriage;supreme court;surnames

jp0000670

2015/12/10

Toshiba to end TV production, shrink staff, sell assembly plants overseas

Toshiba Corp. is planning to withdraw from TV manufacturing by selling its factories abroad, a source said Wednesday. It recently came to light that the struggling conglomerate is considering consolidating its loss-making PC and white goods businesses with those of other companies, a source said Wednesday. Several hundred job cuts are anticipated as a result of drastic streamlining measures affecting Toshiba’s three loss-making businesses: the assembly of TVs, PCs and white goods such as refrigerators and washing machines. Restructuring efforts are thought to have been impeded by accounting irregularities that surfaced earlier this year, apparently obscuring faltering earnings that had been plaguing these divisions. Toshiba’s retreat from TV manufacturing highlights the company’s growing focus on nuclear power infrastructure and other business-to-business operations and a shift away from its consumer businesses. It also marks the increasing relapse of Japanese manufacturers in the global home electronics market, losing ground to overseas competition. Toshiba in 1959 became the first company in Japan to produce a color television. The TV business has since been a centerpiece of its operations, best known in recent years for the Regza series of liquid crystal displays introduced in 2006. But the division has been bleeding money since 2011 in the face of intensifying competition from South Korean and Chinese manufacturers. In 2012, Toshiba shut down its domestic TV factories. It currently assembles TVs overseas, including in Indonesia and at a jointly owned operation in Egypt. The Tokyo-based company is expected to announce by the end of this month plans to sell these facilities to other companies abroad and to pare back its workforce, the source said. Toshiba controlled 13.4 percent of Japan’s LCD TV market in 2014, the third-biggest after Sharp Corp. and Panasonic Corp., according to research company BCN Inc. Its domestic sales suffered a setback after demand for units geared for terrestrial digital broadcasting ran its course a few years ago. The Regza brand appears to be up for sale to an overseas manufacturer, the source said, leaving the possibility that the brand may survive and continue to be sold in Japan even after Toshiba’s exit. Toshiba is considering a plan to merge its PC business with those of Fujitsu Ltd. and Vaio Corp., a former Sony Corp. unit. Its white goods operation may be sold to Sharp under another plan. In the semiconductor business, Toshiba has already decided to offer early retirement and to transfer jobs to other divisions, affecting around 1,200 workers. Part of the chip operations will be sold to Sony. Toshiba reported ¥90.49 billion in consolidated operating loss for the semiannual period through Sept. 30, suffering a blow particularly in its home electronics divisions such as its TV, PC and white-goods units. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission recommended on Monday that the government’s Financial Services Agency assess a record ¥7.37 billion fine for falsifying earnings reports. Accounts in the TV business and elsewhere were manipulated by dubious practices such as overstating or understating costs. Toshiba and a group of shareholders have filed separate lawsuits against former executives over damages that resulted.

toshiba;tvs;accounting scandal;regza

jp0000671

2015/12/10

Teen tests fire-spitting, turkey-roasting drone

MILFORD, CONNECTICUT - A young Connecticut man has cooked up a flame-throwing drone that roasts turkeys, but his latest foray into unmanned flight has drawn the attention of the law — again. Austin Haughwout, 19, made headlines last year when a young woman attacked him for using a drone to film her, and earlier this year he got into trouble when he modified a drone to fire a handgun. The Clinton, Connecticut, man this week posted a YouTube video showing him using a drone equipped to shoot flames to roast a turkey in a wooded area of his family’s backyard. Police said they were looking into the matter, but the man’s father said the aerial turkey roast was carried out safely. “We had a lot of fun, it was something different to do and there was no danger at all,” said the father, Bret Haughwout. He said he and his son had fire extinguishers, hoses and buckets of water on hand for the flight. “We didn’t break any laws,” the elder Haughwout said. Clinton Deputy Police Chief John Carbone agreed with that assessment on Wednesday, but added, “The laws just haven’t caught up with this kind of technology yet.” In July, the younger Haughwout was charged with two counts of assault on a police officer when he was summoned to the local police station for questioning about a video showing the drone he had modified to fire a handgun. He is still awaiting trial on that charge, which police said resulted from his driving away from officers who were trying to question him. He also made headlines last year when police charged a woman with assault after she confronted him about flying a drone at a state beach and intruding on her privacy. He recorded the encounter with his cellphone camera as the two engaged in a scuffle that resulted in charges against the woman, but not him. The head and founder of the state Drone Pilots Association said that Haughwout risked giving the aircraft, used by hobbyists and professionals, a bad name. “Mr. Haughwout has once again displayed his willingness to use a drone to perform an irresponsible and unsafe act,” said Peter Sachs. “Whatever talent he has in creating these dangerous contraptions is far surpassed by his immaturity and lack of sensibility. The only thing he has truly accomplished has been to fuel the public’s unwarranted fear of drones.”

drones;youtube

jp0000672

2015/12/19

Curtain finally falls on the 'Toru Hashimoto Show'

“Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” — attributed to Mark Twain On Dec. 18, the “Toru Hashimoto Show” concluded its nearly eight-year run in Osaka with applause, tears and calls for an encore performance among its fans, and expressions of relief among its critics. With his tenure as Osaka mayor finished, Hashimoto leaves behind a supporting cast led by his faithful understudy, Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui, who finds himself ringleader of the political circus known as Osaka Ishin no Kai. They love a good show in Osaka, especially if the act contains a good dose of fiery, populist (read: anti-Tokyo) rhetoric. Who in the cheap seats really cares if, behind the curtain, the script is penned by old men in the corporate world who see Osaka not as a municipality of citizens with democratic rights and individual freedoms, but as a business with troublesome employees in need of placating? Over the years, I’ve often been asked by friends and strangers outside Osaka why Hashimoto remains popular despite the fact he is often contradictory and tactless. Given statistics showing Osaka’s overall economy hasn’t greatly improved under Hashimoto, they ask, what on earth keeps him — and his friends — in power? The answers are complex. It’s difficult for outside observers to fathom the anger in Osaka with status quo politics when Hashimoto took office in early 2008. The region’s deep pride was heavily wounded in the two decades of decline Osaka experienced following the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s. The under-40 crowd was particularly angry. Many were undereducated and not economically well-off. They wanted a leader who could find scapegoats in the bureaucracy for their lot in life. Others, especially younger doctors and lawyers, or business consultant types and smaller business owners, were also upset — not at being poor, but at not being super rich compared to friends in Tokyo. Nothing makes ambitious types earning ¥10 million a year in Osaka feel cheated more than hearing about similar types in Tokyo earning ¥20 million annually. Hashimoto, a lawyer who sounded like a street fighter but raked in boatloads of money, appealed to both groups. Yet he was astute enough to understand he needed the support of conservative, right-wing, status-quo oriented old men in order to get what he wanted. And it worked. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was an early Hashimoto enthusiast (and still is) for his views on constitutional revision and patriotic education. Former Tokyo Gov. and right-wing octogenarian Shintaro Ishihara loved Hashimoto so much he got politically married to him for a while, before “irreconcilable differences” with Hashimoto led to a divorce. And what of Hashimoto’s Ishin movement? It would be easy to write off separate efforts outside Osaka to form Ishin parties as doomed to failure. But given how weak local chapters of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party often are, and the fact that younger residents in other parts of Japan are also anxious for reform, Osaka Ishin’s aggressive push for greater local autonomy has more support elsewhere than is commonly understood. Even if those other prefectures don’t want to be controlled by an Osaka-centric party. Thus, the LDP and the established parties could eventually be forced to borrow, or at least improvise, Osaka Ishin’s hymns about local autonomy and deregulation for their own act in order to keep disgruntled younger voters from Hokkaido to Okinawa from booing them off the political stage in favor of local Ishin performers. Hashimoto’s greatest legacy may not be that he created the Ishin movement, but that the movement forced political performers in other parties to change their tunes.

shinzo abe;shintaro ishihara;toru hashimoto;osaka;ichiro matsui

jp0000673

2015/12/19

Cherishing Okinawa's diverse marine life

Diving in Okinawa this summer, I came face to face with my favorite undersea creature: the octopus. I was diving at Maeda Point on the main island when my guide directed my attention to something that was right in front of me. I stared but could only see coral. I made an open-palm gesture, as if to say, “I can’t see anything,” and the movement caused what I had previously thought to be a rock to burst into life. Now on the move, the octopus’ skin started changing color as it swam over the rocks. It soon found a narrow crevice and squeezed itself inside. Upon approach, all I could see was a solitary eye — with its alien-like horizontal pupil — peering out. The color of the octopus’ skin throbbed vibrantly. Octopuses and other cephalopods such as squid and cuttlefish have remarkable eyes. In eyes of vertebrates, the nerve fibers route in front of the retina, blocking some light and creating a blind spot where the fibers pass through the retina. In cephalopods, however, the nerve fibers are wired the other way round, routing behind the retina so that the image appears brighter and there is no blind spot. I’m always glad to see an octopus when diving, but I was particularly pleased to see one on this trip because I was primarily in Japan to visit the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), and it was during my trip that scientists published the octopus’ genome sequence. Arguably, the most impressive thing about these animals is their intelligence. Although octopuses are essentially a mollusk, they have been around for approximately 300 million years — primates are believed to have been around for 65 million years or so — and, perhaps not surprisingly, are extraordinarily smart. As Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner, founding president of OIST, said when the octopus’ genome sequence was published, “They were the first intelligent beings on the planet.” Octopuses have the biggest brains of all invertebrates relative to their body size. Some cephalopods hunt fish, which requires cooperation. The tentacles give octopuses extraordinary dexterity; they are able to manipulate objects and even use tools. Each tentacle, it seems, has its own “brain” — its own dedicated part of the central nervous system. Incidentally, the plural of octopus is not octopi. The English word for octopus comes from a Greek word and, therefore, it’s preferable to refer to more than one animal as octopuses (or even octopodes). Things might be different if the word had Latin origins — but it doesn’t. The octopus genome includes several large gene families that may hold a clue to understanding the animal’s unique central nervous system. Individually, these gene families are known to assist brain development in other animals, but octopuses have more than most. OIST scientists also detected hundreds of genes that are common in cephalopods but haven’t been found in other animals. Some of these genes are believed to assist color change. Cephalopods primarily change color to hide, but also when engaging in courtship or trying to ward off an attack by a predator. Another extraordinary finding relates to a mysterious genetic feature called transposons. Most of the genes in our genome only duplicate when instructed to by the cell that they’re living in, but transposons are mobile genetic elements that have a life of their own. About half of the octopus’ genome — a huge amount — is made up of these rogue transposons, and many of these relate to the brain. OIST and University of Tokyo scientists have now sequenced the genome of another unusual marine animal, a brachiopod called Lingula. This mysterious mollusk-like creature, collected from the Amami islands north of Okinawa, has changed very little in appearance since it evolved more than 400 million years ago. Charles Darwin called them “living fossils,” but the brachiopod’s genome sequence shows that while the marine animal’s appearance hasn’t changed, it has been genetically evolving. Noriyuki Satoh, head of OIST’s Marine Genomics Unit, said the study shows that animals appear to take independent evolutionary paths. “Conserving the natural habitat for animal diversity is important,” he says. “This research illustrates the well-nurtured tradition of zoological studies in Japan.” The waters around Okinawa are scientifically important insofar as coral is concerned but, until recently, the marine ecosystem hasn’t been monitored as well as it could have been. OIST has helped to create a targeted system in order to collect data on such marine information as salinity, temperature and oxygen content. Marine biodiversity is under threat, with a recent study showing that more than 17,000 species around the world have little or no protection. I was surprised by the diversity of life I saw during my dive in Okinawa last summer. Often these days, you see bleached, dead coral and few fish during dives, but Okinawa appears still to be thriving. Long may it continue.

okinawa;marine biodiversity;octopuses;brachiopods;genetic sequencing

jp0000676

2015/12/26

British astronaut Tim Peake calls wrong number from space

LONDON - Anyone can dial a wrong number, but few do so from outer space. British astronaut Tim Peake tweeted an apology on Christmas Day from the International Space Station after calling a wrong number. He wrote “I’d like to apologize to the lady I just called by mistake saying ‘Hello, is this planet Earth?’ — not a prank call — just a wrong number!” The 43-year-old former army helicopter pilot did not say who he was calling. Since he is Britain’s first publicly funded astronaut and the first Briton to visit the space station, millions of Britons have been following his mission closely. Peake has also used Twitter to send Christmas greetings.

space;u.k .;social media

jp0000677

2015/12/21

Tiny Japanese political party takes new name in bid to reverse its fortunes

A small opposition party established last year by conservative lawmakers, including former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, renamed itself Monday in an attempt to change its dismal fortunes ahead of this summer’s Upper House election. Jisedai no To (Party for Future Generations) is now Nihon no Kokoro wo Taisetsu ni suru To (Party for Japanese Kokoro). Kokoro means heart, mind or spirit. The party, with only four members in the Diet, decided to change its name after voters crushed it in last year’s Lower House election and in local races, said Masashi Nakano, its secretary-general. The new name was proposed by party chief Kyoko Nakayama, a former member of the Cabinet Secretariat who advised Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the abduction issue from 2006 to 2007. Set up in August 2014, the conservative party’s main campaign goal was to draft a new Constitution, but it struggled for support. In the Lower House election last December, the party won a mere two seats — compared with 19 before the election — causing supreme adviser Ishihara to end his political career. The party currently has only four Diet members. A monthly NHK survey earlier in December showed its support rate at zero for the second consecutive month.

shintaro ishihara;opposition;jisedai no to;kokoro;kyoko nakayama

jp0000678

2015/12/21

Joso disaster prompts ministry rethink of flood control, prediction policies

On Dec. 11, the land ministry released a new policy vision for dealing with floods in response to September’s typhoon-triggered breach of the Kinugawa River, which inundated residential areas of Joso, Ibaraki Prefecture, stranding thousands for hours, and some for days. The policy vision calls for wide-ranging measures to change the way floods are dealt with both at the national and local levels within the next five years. They include expanding existing embankment projects, training municipal leaders on when to issue evacuation warnings, and improving flood hazard maps. Here are basic questions and answers on Japan’s flood management policy: How serious was the Kinugawa flooding? Typhoon Etau, which hit eastern Japan on Sept. 10 and 11, brought unprecedented levels of rain in many areas, including in Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, which saw 551 mm of precipitation over a 24-hour period. Along the Kinugawa River, which runs through Tochigi, Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures, banks overflowed and ruptured, flooding 40 sq. km, a third of the city of Joso, for days. Two people were killed in Joso, thousands of houses and other structures were destroyed and 4,300 residents were rescued by authorities, including hundreds who were airlifted. While floods are seasonal occurrences in Japan, the number of people who were unable to escape in time was unprecedented in recent history, the land ministry report says, adding that it took 51 drainage pump cars working around the clock for 10 days to remove all the water from the flooded residential areas. Is the Kinugawa the only river vulnerable to floods? No. The Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry said in the vision report that climate change has increased the chances of rain overwhelming river banks nationwide. The ministry also concedes that its longtime policy of aiming to prevent floods by containing all rainwater within the rivers is no longer realistic. For decades, the land ministry has taken the “hard” approach to flood control, under which it has tried to prevent floods by building dams upstream, dredging riverbeds and constructing levees. “We need to share the awareness, across the entire society, that we cannot rely on past experiences, that the anti-flood facilities have their limits … and that we need to be proactive in dealing with disasters,” the report said. What are the key points of the new vision? The new vision breaks down into two major issues: “hard” and “soft” measures. The hard measures are a continuation of existing river embankment projects, through which 3,000 km of banks will be fortified within the next five years to improve their ability to withstand downpours. Measures include covering the top layer of the existing levees with asphalt and reinforcing the bottom section of the banks with concrete blocks to make them less prone to ruptures. The soft measures, meanwhile, call for better coordination among officials on evacuation planning and sharing of real-time information with residents to alert them to the possibility of flooding. The ministry said it will establish regional councils made up of representatives from river management agencies, prefectures and lower-level municipalities to coordinate their emergency responses. Kei Yoshimura, a hydrologist at the University of Tokyo’s Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, said the move to create regional councils is commendable, as coordination is key in disaster management. “It’s good that (the ministry) calls for improved awareness of all stakeholders,” he said. Also, in an apparent response to criticism that the city of Joso was late to issue evacuation orders in September, the ministry said municipal heads will be briefed in advance, by the next flooding season, on exactly how to utilize flood alerts provided by river management agencies when they issue evacuation orders. By the end of fiscal 2020, all 730 flood-prone municipalities are to have prepared detailed evacuation plans and carried out drills. Currently only 216 municipalities have such detailed plans in place. The report also said flood hazard maps should be improved. What’s wrong with current hazard maps? Municipalities are mandated by law to draw up flood hazard maps. But most residents are not aware of the maps or not sure how to use them, as they are not detailed enough to point out the exact levels of danger for each household and where and when each resident should evacuate, experts say. The land ministry, in a separate move on Dec. 10, launched a new committee of outside experts to guide municipalities on how to revise such maps to make them more user-friendly. Is the vision good enough? Yoshimura said he thinks it’s significant that the ministry has clearly acknowledged the limits of trying to prevent floods and calls for a range of measures that do not rely on massive public works projects. He added, however, that the report fails to mention the need to improve the accuracy of flood forecasts. Long-term flood forecasts would help people prepare for evacuations, he said. The government currently forecasts basic flood risks, based on past rainfall data and monitoring of water levels in rivers. “Why aren’t there flood forecasts just like weather forecasts, which predict weather conditions days ahead?” he said. “Right now, authorities can predict floods only hours before they occur.”

floods;disaster prevention;kinugawa river

jp0000679

2015/12/07

Japan pushes new policies to reboot startup sector

When asked to name globally recognized Japanese firms founded within the last decade, many people would be hard-pressed to list any. Toyota Motor Corp., Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co. are all more than half a century old, with a lack of new firms reflecting the tough situation for startups. Industry experts say Japan has a long way to go to increase the number of new firms and stimulate investment to ensure their growth. However, positive factors, they say, include a new government strategy and more support from big firms. Following are questions and answers on the situation surrounding fledging startups and related industries in Japan. What is the new government strategy for startups? According to an April 2014 report by a government panel looking at stimulating the growth of startup companies, few new businesses have been launched in Japan due to a lack of interest and lack of support for such firms, and thus not enough money to finance and maintain growth for new companies. Responding to the report, the government looked to create an environment to support new industries, said Yoshiaki Ishii, director for new business policy at the industry ministry. The government had taken steps to support new businesses since the mid-1990s, but it was now focusing on how to also support related startup industries, including venture capital. Moreover, it aimed to change the mindset of young people who tended to avoid taking risks or challenges and instead took jobs at larger firms where they believed it was a more stable career path. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an organization that studies startups, offered a breakdown of the early-stage entrepreneurial activity rate by different countries in a 2014 report. This rate is a percentage of people aged 18 to 64 who are about to found a startup or people who already run companies under 3½ years old. The rate in Japan stood at only 3.8 percent, compared with 10.7 percent in Britain, 13.8 percent in the United States and 15.5 percent in China. How can venture capitalists be increased? Ishii said cultivating human resources was essential. For instance, the government was looking into providing entrepreneurial lessons in the education curricula at some schools. He also said venture capital investment needed to be recognized as an option by a larger number of investors. The government planned to work with the Japan Venture Capital Association to come up with more organized data on new industries, Ishii said. He noted that one good trend was young venture capitalists were trying to energize startup companies. Yoshihiko Kinoshita, who heads Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures, is one such capitalist. Along with venture capital firm East Ventures, Kinoshita, 29, created a collaborative space called HiveShibuya, in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, in July that startups backed by the two firms can use as an office. They also frequently host events for young entrepreneurs to network. Kinoshita said he hoped more young people, especially those under 30 years old, join the venture capital industry, as they have more energy to accomplish their goals. To that end, Kinoshita said venture capitals needed to make efforts to get them interested, such as by offering internships. “I think it’s critical that we provide experiences in which young people can get to know (how venture capital works) and how significant it is,” he said. How much money is going to startups in Japan? According to the Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2015 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, about $1.86 billion was poured into startups in Japan in 2013, which is the latest available data. The U.S. figure was $49.53 billion in 2014. As a percentage of gross domestic product, the figure in Japan is low with the amount of investment standing at about 0.04 percent of GDP. In Israel, which has the highest investment-to-GDP ratio, it is 0.38 percent. The figure is 0.28 percent in the U.S., while it is 0.06 percent in South Korea. What about the role of big firms? Major firms are increasingly investing in and collaborating with startups. Ishii said the industry ministry had hosted matching events involving large firms and new firms in the past few years and pairings were increasing. Some firms, including major mobile phone carrier KDDI Corp., started mentoring programs for startups to accelerate their growth in recent years. Big Japanese firms traditionally tend to do everything on their own, but “I think they have realized that this policy won’t work anymore and they need ideas from outside to be innovative,” said Ishii. What do Japanese startups need to become globally competitive? They need to eye the global market from the beginning, experts said. Because Japan has a relatively large domestic market, companies tend to focus on that market, said Ishii, adding there were also language barriers. However, there are new firms that have been actively expanding overseas, such as Mercari Inc., which makes an app that enables users to sell and buy their possessions, and SmartNews Inc., an app which curates must-read news for users.

startups;investments;venture capital

jp0000680

2015/12/09

Nobel prizes, unlocking universe's mysteries just another day's work at Hamamatsu Photonics

When employees at Hamamatsu Photonics KK found out their high-precision light sensors had helped win this year’s Nobel Prize in physics, they treated it just like any other day at the office. Far from unusual, it was the fourth time Hamamatsu’s sensors had contributed to projects worthy of the most prestigious award in science. The devices — used by Takaaki Kajita in his 2015 prize-winning analysis of subatomic particles called neutrinos — also helped confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle, in research that led to the 2013 award. “The next day was the same as usual” after the prize was announced in October, Akira Hiruma, the president of Hamamatsu, said in an interview at the firm’s headquarters in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture. “There was no special celebration.” For Hamamatsu shareholders, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate. Apart from helping to advance our understanding of the universe, the company’s sensors play important roles in everything from X-ray machines to DNA sequencers and pollution monitors. Hamamatsu has a 90 percent global market share in the devices known as photomultipliers and a stock price that’s jumped more than four-fold since early 2009. Equity analysts, meanwhile, are more bullish on the company than at any other time in four years. With a ¥538 billion ($4.4 billion) market value and a 20-year streak of positive earnings since going public, Hamamatsu is a standout among the hundreds of skilled manufacturers scattered across Asia’s second-largest economy. Like Shimano Inc. for bicycle parts and Minebea Co. for mobile phone backlights, the company’s reputation for high-quality production has helped it dominate a niche global industry, all from a sleepy city known more for its tasty eels than as a manufacturing powerhouse. Hamamatsu’s route to Nobel success started three decades ago in an abandoned zinc mine 315 km west of Tokyo, where scientists set up an underground laboratory to research cosmic rays, pieces of atoms that rain down on Earth from outer space. In a set of experiments they called Kamiokande, a complex detector made with about 1,000 of Hamamatsu’s photomultiplier tubes was placed deep in the mountain and filled with thousands of tons of water. It was able to detect cosmic neutrinos, a particularly difficult particle to observe, for the first time in history. The discovery won University of Tokyo scientist Masatoshi Koshiba the Nobel Prize for physics in 2002. Hamamatsu made more than 11,000 improved sensors for Kajita’s experiments, which began in 1996 and found that neutrinos oscillate and have mass. The 2013 prize was given to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs after the world’s largest particle accelerator used Hamamatsu’s photomultipliers to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, which gives mass to other particles. The fourth Nobel-winning project to use the company’s sensors was awarded in 2008 for work on a part of subatomic physics called broken symmetry. Hamamatsu’s photomultipliers, which look like light bulbs and can detect individual photons by converting light signals into electrical ones, account for about 76 percent of the company’s operating income. With sales to academic researchers comprising just 5 percent of the total, a majority of revenue comes from medical and industrial applications. In X-ray machines, they check the exposure time or dose. Pollution monitors employ them to observe the content of car exhaust fumes. They’re even used in drilling for oil wells to determine the density of the rock. Demand for photomultipliers has helped Hamamatsu turn a profit every year since it listed shares on the Tokyo stock exchange in 1996, including a record ¥16.6 billion in the 12 months that ended in September. The company’s operating profit forecast of ¥23.2 billion for this fiscal year “looks conservative and could yield some upside,” according to SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. Hiruma, for his part, is taking the long view when it comes to boosting his company’s profitability. Unlike some Japan Inc. peers, Hamamatsu is hunting for opportunities to increase returns via more capital spending. Hiruma says he’s interested in research on dark matter, a hitherto invisible part of the universe that he sees as a candidate for future Nobel-winning research. “We have this word in Hamamatsu, yaramaika ,” said Hiruma, 59, a graduate of Rutgers University in the U.S. “It means ‘Let’s do it.’ It’s the spirit of just giving something a go. You can calculate the risk of doing something to some extent. But there’s also the risk of not getting future business opportunities if you don’t.”

science;hamamatsu;nobel;technology

jp0000681

2015/12/09

Japan lawyers' group slams 'inhumane' death penalty, calls for suspension, national debate

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations on Wednesday condemned capital punishment as “inhumane” and called on Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki to set up an panel of experts to review the policy. It said the body should start a national debate about a practice already abandoned in Europe and elsewhere. The lawyers’ group, an influential body representing Japan’s legal profession, said the panel should include people for, against and neutral toward the death penalty. The secrecy surrounding executions in Japan has been criticized at home and abroad, with neither death row inmates nor their lawyers and families given advance notice executions, which take place by hanging. It is also unclear what criteria authorities use in deciding when inmates are to be executed, as some remain on death row for years. Making its case, the group noted that 140 countries have abolished the death penalty by law or in practice as of the end of 2014. It also cited a recommendation by the U.N. Human Rights Committee that urged Japan to “give due consideration to the abolition of the death penalty.” The group said: “The death penalty is one of the most important human rights problems facing Japan.” Moreover, it called for a suspension of executions while the nation debates the policy. “We have called for public debate over the abolition of capital punishment,” the group said. “It is because the death penalty is an inhumane punishment and it eliminates the possibility of rehabilitating those who commit crimes.” It added: “Trials always carry a risk of misjudgment, and if a wrong judgment leads to capital punishment, it cannot be corrected.”

death penalty;lawyers;executions;mitsuhide iwaki

jp0000682

2015/12/31

U.S.: Iran's test-firing of unguided rockets 1,500 yards from carrier in narrow strait 'unsafe, provocative'

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - The U.S. on Wednesday accused Iran of launching a “highly provocative” rocket test last week near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz, exposing how tensions between the two countries could escalate even after a landmark nuclear deal. The strategic Persian Gulf waterway, which sees nearly a third of all oil traded by sea pass through it, has been the scene of past confrontations between America and Iran, including a one-day naval battle in 1988. But Saturday’s incident brought no immediate response from Iranian officials or media, while French authorities downplayed its danger. Military vessels taking part in the war against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria also pass through the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman. On Saturday, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman,destroyer USS Bulkeley and a French frigate, the FS Provence, were passing through it, said Cmdr. Kyle Raines, a U.S. Central Command spokesman. As they passed, Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels, hailing other ships in the strait over maritime radio, announced they’d be carrying out a live-fire exercise, Raines said in a statement. After 23 minutes, the Iranian boats fired “several unguided rockets” about 1,370 meters (1,500 yards) from the warships and commercial traffic, he said. While the rockets weren’t fired in the direction of any ships, Raines said Iran’s “actions were highly provocative.” “Firing weapons so close to passing coalition ships and commercial traffic within an internationally recognized maritime traffic lane is unsafe, unprofessional and inconsistent with international maritime law,” he said. A French military official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to be publicly named, confirmed the rocket fire took place Saturday. However, the official said the French military did not consider it to be a threatening event as the rocket fire clearly wasn’t directed toward the Western fleet. The French frigate is now escorting the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, which is launching airstrikes against the Islamic State group, the official said. NBC News first reported news of the Iranian rocket fire. Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, responded to Saturday’s incident with renewed criticism of the nuclear deal with Iran. “A rush to sanctions relief threatens to embolden an increasingly aggressive Iranian regime that has no intention of normalizing relations with the West or of retreating from a malign policy intended to destabilize the Middle East,” McCain said in a statement released Wednesday. “We need to ensure that U.S. forces are postured to respond to Iranian aggression and finally adopt a comprehensive strategy to counter Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East.” The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the U.S. Treasury Department was preparing sanctions against several individuals and companies in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates related to Iran’s ballistic missile program. Treasury and the White House declined comment on the Journal report, which was attributed to anonymous U.S. officials. The Strait of Hormuz is only about 33 km (21 miles) wide at its narrowest point. Ships traversing the choke-point have even less room to maneuver. The shipping lane in either direction is only 2 miles (3.22 km) wide, with a 2-mile (3.22-km) buffer zone between them. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is based in nearby Bahrain, on the southern coast of the Gulf. It conducts anti-piracy patrols in the greater Gulf and serves as a regional counterbalance to Iran. U.S. and Iranian forces clashed in the Strait of Hormuz in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war. On April 18, 1988, the U.S. attacked two Iranian oil rigs and sank or damaged six Iranian vessels, including two naval frigates, in Operation Praying Mantis. That came after the near-sinking of the missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts by an Iranian mine. A few months later, in July 1988, the USS Vincennes in the strait mistook an Iran Air flight heading to Dubai for an attacking fighter jet, shooting down the plane and killing all 290 passengers and crew onboard. The shoot-down of the jet came shortly after the U.S. vessel reported coming under fire from Iranian speedboats. Tensions have persisted in the strait even into this year. Iran sank a replica of a U.S. aircraft carrier in February near the strait and it earlier tested “suicide drones” it said could crash into naval vessels. Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship and later released it in May after its forces had earlier surrounded a U.S.-flagged cargo ship transiting the strait. That caused the 5th Fleet to escort commercial ships traveling in the Gulf for a short time. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the U.S. Treasury Department was preparing sanctions against several individuals and companies in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates related to Iran’s ballistic missile program. Treasury and the White House declined to comment on the Journal report, which was attributed to anonymous U.S. officials. Iran and world powers led by the U.S. agreed to a landmark nuclear deal earlier this year to limit Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear arms. The deal reached with moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s administration has been panned by Iranian hard-liners, and in the months since, Iran has conducted missile tests criticized by the U.S., as well as aired footage on state television of an underground missile base. Saturday’s rocket fire should be seen as part of a pattern by Iran since its naval loss in 1988, said Eugene Gholz, an associate professor at the University of Texas who is an expert on the use of military power in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran wants to portray itself as the region’s major power, but doesn’t want to directly battle U.S. naval forces again, he said. “Theater is a good word for it,” Gholz said. “You build a set, you carry out activity on the set, you send actors — in this case (Iranian Revolutionary Guard) special forces — and you hope people are watching and really paying the price of admission.”

iran;rockets;strait of hormuz;uss harry truman;republican guards

jp0000683

2015/12/31

Woman beats drunk-driving charges with claim that her body is a brewery

ALBANY, NEW YORK - Drunken-driving charges against an upstate New York woman have been dismissed based on an unusual defense: Her body is a brewery. The woman was arrested while driving with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. She then discovered she has a rare condition called “auto-brewery syndrome,” in which her digestive system converts ordinary food into alcohol, her lawyer Joseph Marusak said in interviews this week. A town judge in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg dismissed the drunken-driving charges this month after Marusak presented a doctor’s research showing the woman had the previously undiagnosed condition in which high levels of yeast in her intestines fermented high-carbohydrate foods into alcohol. The rare condition, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, was first documented in the 1970s in Japan, and both medical and legal experts in the U.S. say it is being raised more frequently in drunken-driving cases as it becomes better known. “At first glance, it seems like a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. “But it’s not that easy. Courts tend to be skeptical of such claims. You have to be able to document the syndrome through recognized testing.” The condition was first documented in the U.S. by Barbara Cordell of Panola College in Texas, who published a case study in 2013 of a 61-year-old man who had been experiencing episodes of debilitating drunkenness without drinking liquor. Marusak contacted Cordell for help with his client who insisted she hadn’t had more than three drinks in the six hours before she was pulled over for erratic driving on Oct. 11, 2014. The woman was charged with driving while intoxicated when a Breathalyzer test showed her blood-alcohol content to be 0.33 percent. Cordell referred Marusak to Dr. Anup Kanodia of Columbus, Ohio, who eventually diagnosed the woman with auto-brewery syndrome and prescribed a low-carbohydrate diet that brought the situation under control. She is currently free to drive without restrictions. During the long wait for an appointment, Marusak arranged to have two nurses and a physician’s assistant monitor his client for a day to document that she drank no alcohol, and to take several blood samples for testing. “At the end of the day, she had a blood-alcohol content of .36 without drinking any alcoholic beverages,” Marusak said. He said the woman also bought a Breathalyzer and blew into it every night for 18 days, registering around .20 every time. The legal threshold for drunkenness in New York is 0.08. While people in cases described by Cordell sought help because they felt drunk and didn’t know why, Marusak said his client had a different reaction. “She had no idea she had this condition. Never felt tipsy. Nothing,” he said. Marusak submitted medical evidence of his client’s condition to the judge, who dismissed the drunk-driving charges Dec. 9. Assistant Erie County District Attorney Christopher Belling said the matter is being reviewed and his office doesn’t comment on open cases. Marusak declined to name the woman, citing medical confidentiality laws. He said the case has been sealed since the charges were dropped. The Buffalo News described her as a 35-year-old school teacher, and quoted the arresting officer as saying she had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and failed several field sobriety tests.

psychology;biology;alcohol;drinking

jp0000684

2015/12/30

Bridgestone backs out of bidding war over auto parts retailer Pep Boys

NEW YORK - Bridgestone Corp. said Tuesday it will not increase its offer price for the acquisition of U.S. auto parts retailer Pep Boys-Manny, Moe & Jack, after U.S. activist investor Carl Icahn sweetened his proposal. While Bridgestone awaits a final decision from the Pep Boys board of directors, the announcement indicates that the Japanese tire maker has effectively backed out of the bidding war with Icahn Enterprises LP. On Monday, Icahn raised his offer to $18.50 per share, topping Bridgestone’s bid of $17.00 a share offered last Thursday. In October, Bridgestone, one of the world’s largest automobile tire makers, said it will buy Pep Boys for $835 million through a takeover bid to bolster its U.S. sales network. The bidding war between Icahn and the tire company began after the investor, who has a 12 percent stake in Pep Boys, jumped in this month, ultimately raising share prices more than $3.00 from Bridgestone’s initial offer of $15.00 per share. Based in Philadelphia, Pep Boys has more than 800 shops — mainly in the United States.

carl icahn;acquisition;bridgestone corp .;pep boys;icahn enterprises

jp0000685

2015/12/01

Little Myanmar thrives in Tokyo as more residents arrive

In the hustle and bustle of Tokyo’s Takadanobaba district there exists what might be termed Little Yangon, with a number of restaurants and shops catering to the growing community of residents from Myanmar. Although not as big or as well-known as Chinatown in Yokohama and Koreatown in Shin-Okubo, Little Yangon is becoming recognized thanks in part to increased coverage of Myanmar-related news around that nation’s recent, historic general election. On the north side of JR Takadanobaba Station, scattered among the eateries, bars and entertainment venues are shops and restaurants with signs written in the script used in Myanmar. One outlet is Bagan Myanmar Store, located on the eighth floor of Tak 11 building, a three-minute walk from the station. “Please come in,” a shopkeeper says in Japanese. Inside the narrow, dimly lit store, a range of food items are for sale. Shinjuku Ward resident registration figures show that 1,663 people from Myanmar lived in the ward as of Nov. 1, up from 1,042 three years ago. These residents are the store’s regular customers, seeking out tastes from back home. The most popular item is a packet of dried shrimp, beans and tea leaves — ingredients for salads. It sells for ¥350. Along the crowded Sakae-dori street, the Swe Myanmar restaurant stands out, with a young Japanese man selling ethnic bento boxed lunches outside. “This place is the best around here,” said Tomoaki Inui, a student helping out at the restaurant. Inside, a painting and a calendar showing pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi hang on the wall, making the restaurant’s national origins unmistakable. The most popular dish is dan pouk , a type of chicken rice, according to Than Than Kyaing, who runs the restaurant with her husband. Stewed chicken on steamed rice is not hot to taste. It is a typical home cuisine beloved of people from Myanmar, Kyaing said. She smiled gently as she spoke, using fluent Japanese. “The Japanese people are very kind, and streets are clean,” she said of her first impression of Japan when she came 25 years ago. She said the differences between Japan and Myanmar include the lack of a health insurance system in Myanmar, so it is hard for poor people when they get sick. “I want to go back to Myanmar some day, but I want my son to stay in Japan and work,” she said, referring to 11-year-old Thet Lin Swe. “And I want to come and go freely between Myanmar and Japan,” she said, adding that the meaning of the restaurant’s name, Swe, is “friends.”

myanmar;at a glance;takadanobaba;little yangon

jp0000687

2015/12/23

Four opposition parties pick first common candidate for summer election

KUMAMOTO - Japan’s four opposition parties, ranging from advocates of small government to the Communists, said Wednesday they have selected their first common candidate to challenge the ruling party incumbent in the House of Councilors election next summer. Running nominally as an independent, lawyer Hiromi Abe, 49, will pit herself against Yoshifumi Matsumura, 51, of the Liberal Democratic Party in the Kumamoto prefectural constituency, where one seat will be up for grabs in the triennial contest, they said. She is the first candidate jointly chosen by the main opposition coalition — made up of the Democratic Party of Japan, the Japanese Communist Party, the Japan Innovation Party, which seeks a smaller government, and the Social Democratic Party — as they strategize to avoid cannibalizing each other’s vote in the coming national poll. The joint effort is aimed at constituencies where candidates will fight for a single seat now held by a ruling party member of either Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s LDP or its coalition partner, Komeito. Similar moves are afoot in other constituencies, including in Ishikawa Prefecture. In Kumamoto, the JCP has withdrawn its candidate, announced in July, to be part of the joint attempt to defeat Matsumura, who has said he will seek his third six-year term. Abe was picked for her efforts against the security legislation, pushed by the prime minister and passed in September. The laws, which cleared the Diet despite massive public protests nationwide, have made it possible for the Self-Defense Forces to come to the aid of allies under attack. “The politics of today will make disadvantaged people suffer even more,” Hiromi Abe told a news conference in the city of Kumamoto. “The security legislation is about to put citizens to the sword.” “We would like to elect Ms. Abe so we can force the government to withdraw its decision to let Japan exercise its right to collective defense, as well as abolish the security legislation,” said Satoru Kamata, Kumamoto prefectural chief of the DPJ. LDP Secretary-general Sadakazu Tanigaki, however, voiced criticism of such moves by the opposition. “They are united only in a sense that they are anti-LDP,” Tanigaki told reporters Tuesday.

elections;upper house;opposition

jp0000688

2015/12/15

Studio Ghibli on a roll with licenses for new toys

If you’re still wound up about Studio Ghibli more-or-less leaving the animation industry , there are some new toys that may help ease the pain. Toy company Nibariki has a new “pullback collection” of figurines that will race forward when wound up. Certain items are downright adorable while others are just creepy crawlers. On the cute side, Nibariki has three “My Neighbor Totoro” vehicles, including the blue vehicle that Mei and Satsuki cling to during moving day, and the city bus their father takes to work. (Sorry, no Catbus though.) There is also a wooden buggy made from a tree that’s driven by a Totoro. On the gross side, there are the huge worm monsters from “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” that roll with such realistic movements that it may bug you out. And just like in the movie, the red-eyed beasts will dart forward while blue-eyed ones go at a much slower speed. All items are available on Ensky Shop’s website and cost ¥2,300, making the perfect stocking stuffer this season for your anime-loving friends.

anime;studio ghibli;my neighbor totoro;japan pulse;nausicaa of the valley of the wind

jp0000689

2015/12/15

Spouses await court ruling on retaining maiden name in marriage

Tears welled up in Kaori Oguni’s eyes as she recalled the heartache she felt at what was supposed to be one of the happiest moments of her life — that is, when she and her husband registered their marriage at a Tokyo ward office in 2006. “As I was completing my paperwork, all I could think of was, ‘OK, that’s it then. This is officially goodbye to my family name,’ ” Oguni, a 41-year-old mother of one, said in a recent interview. “A family name is an important part of my identity. Losing it was painful.” Oguni is one of five people suing the government over what they call a “sexist” civil code that has traditionally resulted in Japanese women changing their surnames upon marriage. It requires Japanese couples to register their marriage under a single surname. The plaintiffs are now awaiting the Supreme Court’s first-ever judgment on the matter, slated for Wednesday, in which a judge will rule on the constitutionality of the law. Should the top court declare it unconstitutional, it would put strong pressure on the government to pursue a swift legal revision, ending a century-old tradition that has at times disadvantaged women at the workplace. It would also be a slap in the face for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration, which has pushed for gender equality but opposes the idea of allowing married couples to retain separate names — on the grounds that doing so would hurt the family bond. Oguni and other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in 2011 after being fed up with years of inaction by the Diet. Being forced to choose one surname upon marriage, they say, infringes on their right to individual dignity and freedom of marriage. Oguni also deems the law sexist. Although the law technically does not specify which surname couples should adopt, studies in the past 40 years show that more than 95 percent of newlyweds have opted for the husband’s name. Critics say this amounts to discrimination against women. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has repeatedly called on the government to “take immediate action” to amend the law. Ahead of the Supreme Court ruling, Oguni was upbeat. “My hopes are high,” she said, although both district and high courts have ruled against the plaintiffs. “For years, our government has upheld a law that has cemented the conservative notion in our society that women are supposed to change their names if they want to get married. The revision of the law would change that and empower women like us.” Oguni, who uses her maiden name, plans to reinstate the name to her family registration document if the law is amended. She asked that her current legal surname — that of her husband’s family — be withheld for privacy. Now a mother, Oguni remembers being shocked when, as a teenager, she first detected society’s male-chauvinist traditions. As a junior high school student, she overheard a remark her mother made while scanning a list of names of female friends she was going to meet at a reunion of university alumni. “Oh my. I don’t recognize any of them because they’ve all changed their family names after marriage,” her mother said. It was nearly two decades later, when Oguni decided to get married at age 32, that her childhood dismay revisited her: It was now her turn, she thought, to relinquish her family name. Despondent, Oguni asked her fiance which surname he wanted to adopt. He thought about it for days, and answered that he didn’t want to lose his name, either. At one point, it almost looked like the two had to do what couples with the same dilemma usually do: live together, but remain legally unmarried. That option, known as jijitsukon (de facto marriage), ultimately did not suit her, and Oguni begrudgingly decided to register her marriage under her husband’s surname. “Leaving your marriage unregistered means you will find yourself at a significant disadvantage in emergency situations, such as when your partner is hurt in an accident and needs surgery. I was scared that I wouldn’t be treated as a family member at times like that,” Oguni said. Today, Oguni, an administrative scrivener in Tokyo, continues to introduce herself to clients using her maiden name, Kaori Oguni. Using her maiden name at the workplace, she said, poses little inconvenience except on the occasions when she needs to sign notary documents using her legal name. “Being able to go by my maiden name at work has truly been helpful to maintain my sanity. I’m sure I would’ve lost it if I was with one of those Japanese companies where your boss uses your married name against your will, or forces you to use it, once you’re married.” A mother of a 6-year-old daughter, Oguni dismisses as “improbable” the possibility that children whose parents have different surnames would become a target of bullying at school or get “confused” — as long as, she said, children adopt either of their father or mother’s surname and no inconsistency exists in the names of siblings.

civil code;marriage;supreme court;surnames;constitutionality

jp0000690

2015/12/12

Investors see big returns as Airbnb takes off in Japan

Last month, the manager of Airbnb Japan told Bloomberg News that Japan is the accommodation service’s fastest-growing market, and that he hoped to work with local governments to make regulations more amenable to Airbnb’s concept of property owners renting out residences to visitors. Although the number of travelers using the service in Japan increased in the past year by more than 500 percent, and the number of listings by more than 370 percent, Japan is still behind other countries where Airbnb is available, with only 21,000 rooms listed. Consequently the service, which allows members to connect directly with people who want to let rooms on a short-term basis, is seen as being a possible solution to two ongoing problems in Japan: the shortage of hotel rooms in the face of a startling rise in foreign tourist numbers, and the steady increase in vacant houses and apartments. The trouble is that the shortage of accommodations is mainly in large cities where vacant housing isn’t as prevalent as it is elsewhere in Japan. If you look up some of those 21,000 Japanese properties currently listed on Airbnb, many are in places that few tourists visit. Technically Airbnb is illegal, since the Hotel Business Act ( ryokan gyōhō ) sets conditions for commercial activities related to overnight stays, and most Airbnb properties don’t follow these conditions. For instance, commercial accommodations are supposed to have front desks. However, that obviously hasn’t stopped people from renting out their rooms to strangers, and for the most part the authorities have looked the other way. It’s not just that they see it as a convenient, perhaps temporary solution to the above-mentioned problems; it also offers investment possibilities. A recent feature in Harbor Business Online described a 36-year-old man called, pseudonymously, Mr. Tanaka, who owns five condominium units in Tokyo. One is a 38-year-old, 30-sq.-meter one-room apartment in Shinjuku that he purchased for ¥10 million. The market rate for the unit as a rental is ¥80,000 a month, but he rents it out to Airbnb members and makes an average of ¥410,000 a month. After subtracting expenses and loan payments, he enjoys a return on investment of 25 percent a year. As with many businesses, success is all about location. Hotels in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto are regularly operating now at 90 percent occupancy rates, and since they charge premium prices, Airbnb units are becoming extremely popular, especially among Asian visitors who aren’t necessarily into amenities. All they care about is a room that is centrally located so that they can shop and sightsee at their leisure. Tanaka told the website that the nearest hotel to the aforementioned apartment charges ¥18,000 a night per person. He charges ¥10,000 for the first person and ¥2,500 for each additional guest, so five people could theoretically stay there for the price of one person in the city hotel, though obviously it would be pretty cramped. Tanaka is in it for the investment, and understands that there is an inherent risk in sinking all his money into Japanese properties. Though the central government seems to be leaning toward more liberalized regulations regarding minpaku (private residences that take lodgers) by allowing them to operate within “special districts,” such as Ota Ward near Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, local governments may be under pressure from residents and conventional commercial lodgings. In Kyoto, for instance, travel agents who offer minpaku services have been put on notice by the authorities, who say they are in danger of being cited and penalized. Tanaka is reducing his risk by investing in properties in Thailand, where the occupancy rates are even higher than those in central Tokyo. He has bought several apartments in Bangkok. In one building, in fact, he isn’t the only Japanese landlord. The return on investment is less than it is for the Shinjuku apartment — between 3 and 8 percent — but it’s more guaranteed for the long term. As a tourist destination, Thailand has always been reliable. Tokyo is only a sure thing up until the Olympics in 2020. After that, it may be time to sell — if, in fact, he can find a buyer. Moreover, there are no property taxes in Thailand and property values are steadily rising, at about 3 percent a year. So even if revenues fall, he can always sell the apartment for a profit. And just as Tanaka is expanding his business to Thailand, there are many non-Japanese investing in Japanese properties to take advantage of the popularity of Airbnb. An article in the weekly magazine Aera describes another apartment building in Shinjuku with about a dozen units, several of which are rented by a Chinese man who told the real-estate agent that he was going to use them as company housing for employees from Hong Kong on temporary transfer to Tokyo. However, the owner of the building increasingly noticed a variety of foreigners on the premises and once ran into a non-Japanese person who had come to clean some rooms. Eventually, the owner discovered that the Chinese gentleman, or the person he represented, was renting out the rooms to travelers via Airbnb. The other tenants were alarmed and threatened to move, and it took the owner and the real estate company months to have the rental agreements changed. This sort of money-making scheme is increasingly common. Consequently, condominium owners associations are now incorporating rules in their charters that specifically prohibit Airbnb-style sublets. There are even real-estate firms that specialize in finding such rental properties for investors. Some tack on a surcharge for rental properties where owners allows sublets — the lessee pays 10 percent extra for the rental and can list it on Airbnb, and the landlord thus makes a little more. But if other condo owners or residents in the building object, it can still cause problems. More ambitious realtors, like Best One, which specializes in selling Japanese properties to Asian investors, are steering customers with means toward the purchase of entire apartment buildings or even single-family homes. Though Japanese people may think Tokyo properties are overpriced, with the low yen factored in they’re cheaper for foreign buyers than similar-size properties in Hong Kong, Taipei or Shanghai. Some are buying luxury condo units on the Tokyo waterfront to use as high-end Airbnb rentals in the short term. For the long-term they plan on selling the units at a substantial profit — before the Olympics, that is. After the Olympics, all bets are off.

housing;tourism;hotels;real estate;investments;airbnb

jp0000691

2015/12/12

Body left for science slips out of van on Texas road

DALLAS - An elderly woman’s body donated to a medical research lab was discovered on the side of a north Texas road after falling through the back window of a transport van, police said on Friday. The mortuary van carrying the body of Nell Joseph, 79, was headed to a Science Care facility in Colorado on Tuesday when a rear window broke and the cadaver slid out onto the highway without the driver noticing, said police in Denton, north of Dallas. An officer found the black body bag with Joseph’s remains packed in medical-grade ice during a routine patrol. The van’s cargo and passenger areas are separated by a metal barrier, which could have prevented the driver from noticing that the cadaver fell out, police said in a statement. Joseph died from a lung disease in a Fort Worth hospital on Thanksgiving Day. Her remains were donated for the study of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, her family told local broadcaster WFAA-TV. Melinda Ellsworth, a spokeswoman for Science Care, said the van was carrying multiple donors but only Joseph’s body fell off the vehicle. The company has suspended services with the transportation provider. “The family still wants to go forward with the donation,” she said.

u.s .;accidents;offbeat

jp0000692

2015/12/25

Choking on smog, Rome and Milan issue no-car day edicts

ROME - Rome and Milan have ordered no-car days next week to combat pollution, which has hit unhealthy levels for weeks mainly because no rain has fallen to wash away the smog. A six-hour ban on cars this Monday and Tuesday was announced by Rome on Thursday, while Milan’s antipollution measure sees six-hour bans daily from Monday to Wednesday. In Rome, home heating is blamed along with heavy traffic for the eye-stinging, throat-irritating air. Until air quality improves, thermostat settings in Rome’s homes and offices cannot exceed 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit.) The total daily hours that furnaces can run is being reduced from 12 to eight, except for schools and hospitals. But many Romans ignore the rules and leave the heat on all day. Warm, dry weather is worsening pollution.

pollution;italy;health;rome;milan

jp0000695

2012/01/27

Companies connect with free mobile apps

Enticing smartphone users with high-tech functions and original content, Japanese businesses have begun engaging customers by releasing custom mobile apps for free download. In the process, they’re managing to slip in a strong marketing messages into the pockets of loyal fans and potential customers. On Jan. 24, Doutor, a national chain of coffee shops. launched their Doutor AR app. Made to be used in conjunction with the free magazine It’s My Times, the app displays animation and text on the user’s smartphone via augmented-reality technology. Users simply hover their phone’s camera over special points on the magazine to view these extra features. The magazine, available only in Doutor shops, is designed to be read while customers relax with a cup of coffee. This app, available only until the end of February, is a clever way to attract more readers while also boosting brand profile. One of the attractions of downloading the app for readers of the magazine is the opportunity to watch and listen to a song performed by cover star Lisa Ono. Another brand that is creatively engaging with smartphone app technology, is Wego. On Jan. 10 the second-hand clothes chain launched its own branded app, which offers free wallpaper, a GPS-aware store locator, staff blogs and photos of staff with information on how they coordinated their look. The app also seems to be yet another mutation of the charismatic shop assistant cult (shop assistants gaining near celebrity status). Of course not everyone desires style tips from super trendy shop assistants. Dechau Pachinko parlor is targeting a slightly different user (predominantly male perhaps?) with its Dechau Girls Calendar 2012 , a free Android app that utilizes the ever-popular beach babe. In case you didn’t know, the Dechau Girls, who have been touring pachinko parlors since 2007, cheer on players and hand out candies and hot towels. While they’re usually dressed in bright skintight outfits, this free calendar app gives fans a chance to see the girls relaxing at the beach in itsy bitsy bikinis. The final app on our list also has a straightforward, unsophisticated appeal. Chiyoda , a company that owns over 1,100 shoe stores nationwide, has launched an app that provides users with discount coupons. Once users enter their personal info (date of birth, sex, location of the store they’re visiting), they can then receive coupons tailored to their needs. Nothing fancy — you scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours — but for a country that’s obsessed with customer point cards and coupons, this is an app that’s bound to stick.

apps;augmented reality;japan pulse;iphone app;mobile apps;android app;dechau;doutor

jp0000696

2012/12/04

Mismatch: Universities on rise but students in decline

Education minister Makiko Tanaka drew immediate flak in early November when she outright refused her advisory panel’s recommendation to approve three new universities. The outspoken Tanaka justified her decision by asserting that higher education is in decline because there are too many universities. As the criticism increased, however, she reversed herself and approved the three schools a week later. Experts praised Tanaka’s initial decision to reject the schools and confirmed that while universities are indeed growing in number, the quality of education appeared to be deteriorating. Following are questions and answers about the nation’s universities: How many universities are there? As of May 1, there were 783 universities nationwide, compared with 523 in 1992. Of the total, 86 are state-run, 92 are public and the remaining 605 are private. While the total has climbed, the number of state-run universities has been in decline, falling to 86 from 100 in 2003. The increase in universities ultimately pushed up the percentage of people going on to higher education, from 26 percent in 1992 to 51 percent in 2010, according to ministry data. What is the college-age population? The nation’s low birthrate has dented the population of young people. The number of 18-year-olds peaked in 1992 at about 2.05 million, according to the education ministry. By 2010, however, they had dwindled to 1.22 million, down 40 percent. Do all universities have full enrollment? No. Out of 577 private universities, 264, or 46 percent, were underenrolled as of May 1, according to The Promotion and Mutual Aid Corporation for Private Schools of Japan, including 18 that were below 50 percent capacity. Aya Yoshida, a professor of education at Waseda University, said most of the underenrolled universities are small, newly established schools in rural areas. Some struggling universities, to fill their classrooms, will accept anyone regardless of academic ability. Some accept foreign students, mostly from China, as “fillers,” according to writer Taiji Yamauchi, who visited every university in Japan in 2009 and has penned several books on higher education. But in the future this may not be an option because universities are on the rise in China and elsewhere in Asia, and their quality is improving, Yamauchi said. Today anyone can effectively enter a four-year university if they aren’t too choosy, he said. “There are university students who don’t know how to multiply. People need to know this reality,” Yamauchi said. Why are universities proliferating if youth is in decline? Experts say this mismatch is rooted in the relaxed standards for establishing universities. The government began trying to curb the opening of new private universities in the latter half of the 1970s, according to the education ministry. But things changed in 2003, when then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi relaxed the rules to make them easier to set up, experts say. For example, the government abolished a regulation that made foreign language study and physical education compulsory subjects. Experts also point out that local-level governments, which are striving to retain their young people, are providing financial support to private organizations to build new universities. “Elite high school students in rural areas leave their hometowns and go to top universities in the cities. To stop that, municipalities sometimes persuade local top private high schools into establishing universities,” Yamauchi said. “But in reality, no top-notch students go to newly established schools because most such institutions have low educational rankings.” In addition, the waning popularity of junior colleges, or “tanki daigaku,” are forcing such institutions to transform into four-year universities to attract students, experts say. Most junior college students used to be women who were not career-oriented. However, as more women seek real careers, they tend to favor universities, experts say. “Nowadays, they go to four-year universities, leaving the two-year college no option but to convert into a university in order to survive,” Yoshida of Waseda University said. According to education ministry data, while the number of universities rose to 783 in 2012 from 523 in 1992, junior colleges slid to 591 from 372 in the same period. Of the 32 new universities opened since fiscal 2009 — including the three Tanaka ultimately approved in November — 15, or 47 percent, were former two-year colleges, the ministry said. “I believe the biggest reason behind the growing number of universities is jobs,” Yamauchi said. “When you think of your future and getting a job, it’s better to show you’ve been to a four-year university.” How does the approval process work? The final decision is in the hands of the education minister. But before that, an applicant school must be examined by two advisory panels under the ministry. The advisory panels check an applicant’s documents, conduct interviews and carry out on-site assessments to gauge whether the wannabe schools meet government standards for curriculum, faculty, financial status and physical requirements. The entire process takes about eight months, the ministry said. The panels consist of 29 members, including 21 university officials. Yamauchi said that the criteria are quite easy to meet, and that if an applicant satisfies them, the panels cannot say no. According to ministry data, no request to establish a new university has been rejected in the past 15 years. Has the ministry taken any new steps since November? Yes. The ministry set up a study group in November to discuss the addition of new criteria to the approval process. The group plans to reach a conclusion by the end of the year, with enforcement to begin as early as next year. However, Yoshida of Waseda University said the mere addition of new criteria won’t improve the quality of higher education, because there are fewer applications to establish new universities and this trend is expected to continue. “This year, there were only three applications. So the important thing is to have a system to thoroughly check quality of the existing universities,” Yoshida said. In fiscal 2004, following the relaxation of standards for establishing universities, the education ministry instituted an accreditation system to check the quality of education at existing universities once every seven years. Yoshida said the system is now, at least part of it, just a show. “There are more than 700 universities and their quality varies. So there should be a decent system to check (their quality) as long as those schools exist as universities,” he said.

fyi : cultural/society;university exceeding needs i

jp0000697

2012/12/29

Club crowd uses salsa to slam archaic law

Earlier this month, several people were seen salsa dancing in frigid weather outside bustling Shibuya Station. They weren’t there to show off, but to protest what they say is an outdated law that is being used to indiscriminately crack down on their favorite dancing spots. “I feel my joy for life is being threatened by this obsolete law,” said Risa Suzuki, a senior at Waseda University who is part of a group calling for the 64-year-old Entertainment Business Control and Improvement Law to be revised so nightclubs can operate unhampered. While the government recently made dance part of the public education curriculum, the dance halls and nightclubs responsible for making it popular are being told to close by 1 a.m. or add more floor space under a code that was originally drafted to regulate Japan’s bustling sex and entertainment industries. This has had the effect of curtailing their business or forcing closure. Because the dance scene is now a completely different animal from what it was in 1948, a Kyoto-based group called Let’s Dance began a petition drive in May to revise the so-called “fueiho” law with the aim of collecting at least 100,000 signatures by the end of the month. They reached the target on Dec. 27 and plan to pressure lawmakers to revise the law to exclude dance venues when the Diet convenes in January. “I think Japanese authorities are two-faced. While they introduce dance in the school curriculum, they regulate salsa dancing with an obsolete law by saying it’s lascivious,” said Saiko Nakatani, 32, who came to sign the petition in Shibuya because she loves the club music. Fueiho is an abbreviation of “fuzoku eigyo-to no kisei oyobi gyomu no tekiseika-to ni kansuru horitsu,” as the law is known in Japanese. It is used to broadly regulate a wide range of business. Although the word fuzoku is often used to refer to the sex industry, the 1948 law covers everything from love hotels, strip clubs and brothels to restaurants, mah-jongg parlors and dance halls. This is because the postwar authorities believed dance clubs posed a danger to public morals and fostered prostitution. Thus any establishment that allows customers to dance must obtain a license — even if it’s a dance school. The license imposes several requirements on dance establishments. The main room must have at least 66 sq. meters of unobstructed floor space and the venue must close by midnight if situated in a residential area or by 1 a.m. if in a commercial district. Although the law has been revised dozens of times, the restrictions on dance clubs have only grown over the years. The most recent revision, which added the operating hours and size requirements, was made in 1984 to keep youths out of discos and video arcades after teenagers were victimized in the 1982 Kabukicho Disco murder. The high-profile case involved two 14-year-old junior high school girls who went for a drive with a man they met at a disco in Shinjuku. One ended up being murdered and the other wounded, supposedly by the same man, who escaped arrest. Following the crackdown on discos in the 1980s, police eased off and focused on noise complaints and drug-linked crimes at clubs. This all changed in 2010 with the massive raid on America Mura, a popular commercial district in Osaka where several dance and nightclub owners were arrested for not having licenses. Takahiro Saito, a lawyer who supports the Let’s Dance petition campaign, says the problem lies in the fact that the law was drafted with a built-in assumption that all styles of dance, from ballroom to hip-hop, are excessively hedonistic activities that can harm public morals and corrupt youth. Even formal dancing competitions or parties can be targeted with indecency or other allegations unless certified instructors are present. “Even the police officers I’ve talked with said it would make their jobs easier if they had a clear definition of ‘dance’ to regulate,” Saito said. Salsa clubs are one of the latest victims. Last July, Salsa Sudada, the capital’s oldest salsa club, closed after manager Katsuhiko Ikeda was arrested for operating without a license. Salsa Sudada was a pioneer in Tokyo’s salsa scene, offering both lessons and dancing time. But it had been operating without a license since it opened in 1992 because it couldn’t afford to be as large as the law requires it to be. Salsa Sudada’s closure galvanized salsa lovers and club owners in Tokyo, who view the fueiho law as an anachronistic ordinance that’s doing more harm than good. “It’s the 21st century and salsa is an art form,” said Oscar Arias, 33, who regularly hosts dancing events that attract crowds of more than 100 people. “Local politicians should know that salsa is good for the economy, as well.” Critics of the law argue that nightclubs are doing their part to boost the stagnant economy and estimate the industry generates about ¥1 billion a night. They have also invigorated the music industry with their own brand of music and influenced pop music as well, they say. But the public’s general image of clubs, especially their association with yakuza and other underworld elements, has sullied the image of law-abiding establishments. “Club owners also have to make efforts to convey to society that clubs are problem-free and win their trust if they want to revise the law,” Saito said.

adult entertainment laws;let 's dance

jp0000698

2008/03/24

Man goes on stabbing rampage outside mall in Ibaraki Prefecture, killing one and injuring seven

MITO, Ibaraki Pref. - A man wanted by police for murder went on a stabbing spree outside a shopping mall in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Sunday, killing one man and injuring seven other people, police said. Ibaraki Prefectural Police arrested Masahiro Kanagawa, 24, near the scene shortly after the attack. Kanagawa had been placed on the wanted list Friday on suspicion of fatally stabbing 72-year-old Tsuchiura resident Yoshikazu Miura on Wednesday. Kanagawa was initially arrested on suspicion of murdering Miura. The police said they will pursue charges of murder and attempted murder in connection with the eight stabbings, which took place in the area around JR Arakawaoki Station on the Joban Line. Among the victims of Sunday’s rampage was 27-year-old Takahiro Yamakami of Ami, who died after being taken to a hospital. The other seven include a 62-year-old woman and an 18-year-old male student who were seriously wounded, and three other men and a woman between 16 and 60, including a 29-year-old police officer from Tsuchiura police station, whose wounds are not life-threatening. The police received a call about the stabbing spree at around 11 a.m. and another one from Kanagawa himself, who was calling from an unmanned police box. “I did it,” he told them. Officers overpowered Kanagawa in front of the police box, which is about 200 meters from the train station. He was armed with a kitchen knife and a survival knife. The suspect told investigators after his arrest that he “wanted to kill people,” and that he didn’t care who they were. The rampage took place even though eight police officers had been posted around the station following Wednesday’s murder, the police said, expressing regret for failing to prevent the attack. According to police and witnesses, Kanagawa stabbed five people near the station’s ticket gate while walking from the west exit to the east exit, which leads to a narrow corridor to the mall. He then attacked two more on the path before fatally stabbing Yamakami just outside the entrance. “I saw a young man collapsed, with a pool of blood around his head,” said the manager of a nearby cell phone shop “I can’t believe this is happening in such a quiet town,” he said. A female employee at a nearby beauty salon said: “Four or five ambulances were here. I don’t know what’s going on here.” In Wednesday’s slaying, Miura was allegedly stabbed once in the neck in front his house and died later in a hospital, the police said. The police put Kanagawa on the wanted list Friday after discovering his bicycle at the crime scene and traces of Miura’s blood on clothes seized from his home. Police described Kanagawa as an lonely, unemployed man who likes games and is not good at communicating with others. The day after he was put on the wanted list, Kanagawa made a trip to Tokyo’s electronics and game mecca of Akihabara, police said. He lives with his parents, two sisters and a brother in Tsuchiura, they said. One of his schoolmates said Kanagawa didn’t have many friends and did not go out very often and would suddenly get angry after losing games. He worked at a local convenience store sometimes, but didn’t have many other jobs, he said.

murder;ibaraki;stabbings;masahiro kanagawa;tsuchiura

jp0000699

2008/04/30

Witness to War: War trauma leads to efforts to reconcile

Free-falling from approximately 27,000 feet after his B-29 was critically damaged while flying over the Kanto region, Raymond “Hap” Halloran was all but certain his fate had been sealed. The navigator-bombardier was parachuting down behind enemy lines, more than 2,400 km from his base on Saipan. It was January 1945. “It was a quiet fall,” Halloran, 86, said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo earlier this month. After hitting the ground, “I put my hands in the air and surrendered,” he said. Although the then 22-year-old Ohio native survived the fall, he was roughed up by locals in Chiba Prefecture before being taken to a POW camp. He endured degrading torture, including being displayed naked inside a cage in a zoo, and lived through the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 10, 1945. Halloran suffered for seven months, leaving him with trauma that continued well after the war. But Halloran has returned to Japan 11 times since 1984. “Maybe if I go back and see these people and judge them for who they really are, they are entitled to my judgment rather than hatred and misjudgment,” Halloran said as he explained his reasons for revisiting his former enemies. “So I said, ‘I’ve got to go back.’ “ Born in Cincinnati in February 1922, Halloran volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps after learning of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Following the completion of his training, his team was dispatched to Saipan, where the 73rd Wing Base staged missions targeting mainland Japan. “The brand-new B-29 was a thing of beauty,” he said, recalling the day he saw his plane. Beginning in December 1944, Halloran boarded the bomber with 10 other crewmen on assignments to attack Iwo Jima, Nagoya and the Kobe area. The missions were successful, but that “doesn’t mean you get delighted,” the veteran said, because the war “could have gone on for years” had the United States taken a less aggressive approach. On his fourth mission, which targeted the Nakajima aircraft factory in western Tokyo, his plane was shot down by Japanese twin-engine fighters. During that mission on Jan. 27, 1945, three of the plane’s engines caught fire and the Ohioan evacuated through the front bomb bay. His hands grew numb as he was exposed to the freezing outside temperature, but he managed to control the parachute during the descent. “Only five of the crewmen evacuated the plane. That’s all I want to say” about the crash, Halloran said. Held by the military police at a prison in Tokyo for 67 days in solitary confinement, Halloran was given small rice balls for meals and quickly lost more than 30 kg. His skin had rashes from lice and flea bites. No medical care was provided. Then, in April 1945, he was told to leave his cell and follow the guards while they put a blindfold and tied his hands with rope. “They told me to take my shoes, which meant it was my final day,” Halloran said of his fears of being executed. But instead of being sent to the gallows, he was taken to Ueno Zoo in Taito Ward and put on display, naked, in a tiger cage. Despite the attempt by the Japanese military to humiliate him, Halloran remembers observing different reactions from the crowd. “I thought I saw compassion (in the eyes of onlookers.) It was maybe because I wanted to see it,” he recalled. “I needed somebody on my side” to give a little hope. Halloran, who spent more than two months in a military torture prison near the Imperial Palace, also survived the massive air raids on Tokyo by his countrymen. On March 10, 1945, during what later came to be known as the Great Tokyo Air Raid, he witnessed the spreading fires and heard the screaming children outside his cell. “It was a terrible night. Terrible,” he said, recalling the incident in which 100,000 people were killed overnight. Although Halloran was released from prison after Japan’s surrender in August 1945, he was physically unfit to immediately return home. It took him about a year to be released from a hospital in West Virginia and leave the service. But the traumatic experiences lingered for nearly four decades, taking hold of his life. Although he attempted to bury his past, he endured nightmares for years afterward. In 1984, the veteran finally felt that instead of avoiding his former enemy, he had to face his demons and attempt some kind of reconciliation with his past. Since 1984, Halloran has visited Japan for tours in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to meet his former enemies, including the pilot who took down his B-29. In 1998 he published a book — “Hap’s War” — in which he chronicled his wartime experiences. Today, Halloran donates annual checks to the Center of the Tokyo Raid and War Damages in Koto Ward. He has given so many speeches on his wartime experiences that he can even joke about his confinement in Japan. “One guard would come up to (his cell) and tell me ‘ohayo’ (good morning),” during the imprisonment, Halloran said. “I thought he was trying to make me homesick for Cincinnati, Ohio,” he chuckled. But asked what it would take for peace to prevail for future generations, Halloran thought for a moment and replied in a low tone. “I do not have the answer to that,” he said, adding only that there are no winners in war.

world war ii;pows

jp0000701

2008/06/05

Donald Richie offers history lesson

18th in a serie s On Dec. 7, 1941, a 17-year-old high school student named Donald Richie was fixing the fence at his house in Lima, Ohio, when his mother ran out on the porch to tell him and his father that she just heard over the radio that Japanese forces had attacked Pearl Harbor. That afternoon, Richie’s relatives came over. His uncles, aunts, mother and father started talking about the attack. He could see their anger grow, particularly when they learned how many Americans were killed. They started looking at the back of their tableware. When they found anything that had “Made in Japan” on it, they smashed it. “I don’t remember doing it. But I must have done it, too,” Richie said in an interview last month in Tokyo. Now 84, Richie went on to live more than 60 years in Japan and become one of the most noted American authors on Japanese culture. But he knew nothing about the country back then. As a writer, film critic, historian and author, whose books include “The Films of Akira Kurosawa,” “One Hundred Years of Japanese Film” and “The Japan Journals: 1947-2004,” Richie was named by Time magazine during the early 1990s as “the dean of Japan’s art critics.” In 1942, Richie joined the merchant marine. He served aboard Liberty Ships that carried anything ranging from high explosives to toilet paper and chocolates across the Atlantic to supply the U.S. Army and Navy. As purser, Richie handled the payrolls and official papers. As medical officer, he was responsible for the health of some 70 fellow crew members. Richie voyaged mainly to Europe, and a number of the ships on which he served were lost. In Bari, Italy, a German bombing raid not only destroyed his ship, but the whole convoy as well as the city. Richie was not onboard his vessel and wasn’t hurt. In 1945, Richie was sent to China with forces transporting explosives and other materials to the Allied forces. The Japanese were fleeing Shanghai as the war drew to a close. En route back to America, Richie heard about the Japanese surrender on the ship’s radio. He wasn’t surprised. After the war, the U.S. government sought people to work in Germany and Japan. Wishing to go to Germany, since he had visited Europe and was familiar with it, Richie took and passed the test in 1946. He instead was sent to Japan, where his typewriting skills were in high demand. On New Year’s Day 1947, Richie’s boat docked at Yokohama and he boarded a bus to Tokyo. Although 1 1/2 years had passed since the surrender, the destruction of war was everywhere to be seen, Richie recalled. Yokohama and Tokyo were in rubble. Between the two cities was just a charred plain, he said. There may have been rich people, but Richie doesn’t recall seeing any. Men still wore their military uniforms, and children were in school uniforms. But he also saw enormous energy in the people. Even though they lived in poverty, they were out working and trying hard to make a new and better life. They were spontaneous, honest and admirable. “I would have thought the Japanese people at their best, in their present poverty, and yet to find them so resilient, so optimistic, so looking forward into the future.” The people’s optimism was surprising and inspiring. Richie initially worked as a typist for the Occupation forces in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district. But wishing to switch professions, he became a staff writer for the U.S. forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes. Richie has been interested in culture since his childhood. He likes literature, painting, music and films. When he came to Japan, it was just a natural outcome that he became immersed in learning and reporting on the local culture. And because there were so few articles about Japanese culture in Stars and Stripes, he began writing about anything he could think of: ikebana, Japanese gardens, kabuki and noh. Every day was a discovery for Richie. “I knew nothing about Japan. But by reading a lot, talking a lot and seeing people a lot, I stayed about a week ahead of my readers.” The more Richie learned about the culture of “ma” (space) and “mu” (emptiness), minimalism, or respect for old things and people, the more he became determined to stay on in Japan and find out more about it. Until around 1948, however, Richie did not know much about the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “When I came here to work, we were told nothing about the bomb. . . . We were not allowed to go to Hiroshima . . . right until the end of the Occupation,” he said. Richie read the New Yorker magazine’s publication of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima.” “I still could not believe how horrible it had been,” Richie recalled. “We realized not only that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary, also that it was barbaric.” Richie believes people all over the world will continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over again if they learn nothing about history. The new generation never pays attention to the older generation. Richie believes this is human nature — impossible to change. He said his perspective is not pessimistic or optimistic, just realistic. And in Japan, students read government-censored textbooks, so they are not taught about what the war did to everyone and what happened to Japan and other countries, he says. Despite his realism, Richie urges younger generations to learn history to avoid repeating the war. “They should be more careful about themselves, more careful about their politicians.”

wwii;donald richie;pearl harbor

jp0000702

2008/06/09

Seven killed and 10 injured in Akihabara stabbing spree

Seven people died and 10 others were injured after a man hit pedestrians with a truck and then stabbed passersby Sunday in broad daylight on a street in Tokyo’s busy Akihabara district. Police arrested the man, Tomohiro Kato from Susono, Shizuoka Prefecture, on the street and seized a survival knife he was carrying. The 25-year-old temp staffer at an auto component factory in the prefecture admitted to stabbing people with the knife, which had a 13-cm blade, from around 12:30 p.m., the police said. “I came to Akihabara to kill people,” investigative sources quoted Kato as telling the police. “I am tired of the world. Anyone was OK. I came alone.” According to the police and hospital officials, six of the seven who died were males and aged from 19 to 74. The other was a 21-year-old female. In addition to the seven, 11 people were taken to hospital after the stabbing rampage. Of these, eight were male, including a 53-year-old traffic police officer who was stabbed in the back while helping people hit by the truck, and two women. The remaining male had sustained no injuries but had blood on his clothing. Of the seven, at least six had been stabbed and two had been hit by the truck, which was rented in Shizuoka Prefecture. According to eyewitnesses, a police officer at a nearby police box who noticed the incident hurried to the scene and found Kato wielding the knife. The officer initially failed to get hold of the suspect after hitting him with a baton a few times. But Kato put the knife down after the officer drew a handgun and issued a warning, leading to his arrest, the eyewitnesses said. The Akihabara area was crowded with shoppers as Chuo-dori was vehicle-free for pedestrians. The scene was near the intersection of Chuo-dori and Kanda Myojin-dori streets, only a stone’s throw from JR Akihabara Station. A 19-year-old man from Tokyo’s Ota Ward said, “The man (Kato) jumped on top of a man he had hit with his vehicle and stabbed him with a knife many times. Walking toward Akihabara Station, he slashed nearby people at random.” Shunichi Jingu, a 26-year-old self-employed man from Gunma Prefecture, who witnessed the incident, said, “It seemed that a traffic accident had happened. Then a man got out of a vehicle and began to brandish a knife.” Akihabara is a district of Tokyo known for its electronics shops and as a center of modern culture, including manga and animations, and attracts many visitors from both Japan and abroad. There were similar street stabbing rampages earlier this year. In January, a 16-year-old boy attacked five people and injured two of them with kitchen knives on a shopping street in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward. A man wanted by police on suspicion of murder stabbed passersby with a knife at an entrance to a shopping mall in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, in March, leaving eight people injured, one of whom died later in hospital. The Akihabara rampage also occurred on the seventh anniversary of a stabbing spree by a man at Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka Prefecture on June 8, 2001. The attacker, Mamoru Takuma, was executed for killing eight children and injuring 15 others in that case.

tokyo;murder;akihabara;stabbings;mass murder;chiyoda ward;tomohiro kato;akihabara attack

jp0000705

2017/03/04

Japan's magazines get misty-eyed over Showa Era brothels

Commencing with the death of Emperor Taisho on Christmas Day, 1926, the Showa Era ran for 62 years and two weeks, ending with the death of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Showa) at the age of 87 on Jan. 7, 1989. Thanks to the latter monarch’s longevity, roughly 3 out of every 4 Japanese living today — more than 90 million people — call themselves Showa -umare (Showa-born). The oldest are now in their 90s; the youngest, approaching 30. It’s a huge demographic, and one that’s been displaying an enormous appetite for reading matter that reflects on the era in which they were born. To cater to that appetite, the media have been serving up a variety of materials that touch upon people, places and events of the Showa years. One of the most conspicuous forms this nostalgia has taken recently has been a spate of books and articles idolizing the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. Although Tanaka was convicted in court of receiving bribes from Lockheed Aircraft Corp., most of the books recall him as a man of the people and a practical, no-nonsense politician who got things done. Even Showa-era crimes are by no means immune to nostalgia. In mid-February, Shukan Jitsuwa’s publisher came out with a special edition titled “Hanko Seimei” (meaning a letter admitting responsibility for a crime), which cataloged the previous era’s most infamous crimes and criminals. This surge in interest about the recent past has also extended to the world’s oldest profession, which was openly practiced until outlawed by the Anti- Prostitution Law. Prior to April 1, 1958, contemporary versions of the pre-modern yūkaku (licensed brothel quarters) operated throughout the country. To give some idea of the scale with which the sex industry contributed to the nation’s gross domestic product, a guidebook titled “Zenkoku Yukaku Annai” (“Nationwide Guide to Yukaku”) published in 1930 listed over 500 such comfort zones, or an average of more than 10 in each of Japan’s 47 prefectures. The book included those in Japan’s prewar overseas possessions such as Karafuto (Sakhalin), Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan. In the tabloid press, a series in Shukan Jitsuwa magazine titled “The golden age of the sex trade” features rare old photos. A reporter for Aera (Feb. 20) visited the city of Hanno in Saitama Prefecture, about 50 minutes from central Tokyo via the Seibu Ikebukuro Line express. In pre-modern times, the town was a shukuba (post station) where travelers to and from Edo spent the night. Social critic Atsushi Miura, serving as guide, points out vestiges of the town’s past, including a building that was used as a brothel. How does he know? Because, he explains, the front entrance, rather than being parallel with the street, is set back from the facade and angled diagonally, so as to keep outsiders from peering in. Another dead giveaway is the circular windows on its second floor. Another aspect of the curiosity toward the past is the fascination with visiting and photographing so-called haikyo , abandoned derelicts of old military bases, factories, hospitals and mines, such as Nagasaki’s Hashima Island, more popularly known as Gunkanjima due to its resemblance to a battleship. Its undersea coal mine was in operation from 1886 to 1974, spanning the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras. Named a World Heritage site in 2015, it even served as a location for scenes from the 2012 James Bond film “Skyfall.” In a recently published “mook” (magazine-book) from Million Shuppan titled “101 strange things about the Showa Era,” a two-page article introduces the three brothels on Gunkanjima that no doubt kept the island’s miners from going stir crazy. Two years from now, Tokyo’s famous Yoshiwara Yukaku will observe its 400th anniversary. Located in Senzoku Yon-chome in Taito Ward, the district is today, somewhat remarkably, being utilized for its original purpose. What were formerly brothels are now erotic bathhouses, referred to since 1984 as “soaplands.” The Hanamachi@Yoshiwara website ( www.hanamachi.co/data/index ) lists 140 erotic bathhouses in the district playing host to 6,870 sex workers, with an average 30 percent of that number on duty on any given day or 66 percent during any given week. At least two “respectable” businesses currently cater to the revival of interest in Yoshiwara. One is a mail-order gift shop named Shin-Yoshiwara, which sells tasteful wall decorations and a variety of other “Yoshiwara goods” ( shin-yoshiwara.stores.jp ). Since last September, Yoshiwara also became home to a bookstore specializing in its history. Kasutori Shobo (www. kastoribookstore.blogspot.jp ), just off a main thoroughfare, is open seven days a week. Proprietor Go Watanabe, 40, has obtained the rights to re-issue an assortment of out-of print books — the aforementioned “Nationwide Guide to Yukaku” being one example — which he sells from a tiny shop close to the Yoshiwara Omon, the former gateway to the district. He’s also keen on publishing new manuscripts on similarly near and dear topics. Watanabe told me he was delighted by the coverage he’s been receiving since his opening, in Asahi Geino, Nikkan Gendai and other publications. Having established himself as an authority on Yoshiwara history, he also serves as a useful source of local information. When I asked him if any buildings in Yoshiwara still remained from the bad old days prior to 1958, he pointed down the street and said, “That one on the right, just across the street from the massage clinic, used to be one.” An enthusiastic photographer, Watanabe has also published his own book titled “Yukaku: Koto no Gaiku” (“Yukaku: Red-light Districts”), which contains 386 pages of color photographs of ornate old former brothels from all over Japan. The full-size, limited-edition version is priced at ¥100,000. A smaller version, with pages about the size of postcards, can be purchased for ¥25,000. A great — and legal — gift for the man who has everything.

prostitution;brothels;showa era;yoshiwara

jp0000706

2017/03/04

No free ride for U.S. auto manufacturers

Anyone who was around in the 1980s will remember the turmoil caused by the U.S.-Japan trade imbalance, especially in the automotive field. In order to maintain their growing position in the American market, Japanese car manufacturers knew they would have to move some of their operations to the United States. So they did, and they’ve never looked back. The turmoil eventually subsided. Americans have come to accept the dominance of Japanese automobiles. But now there’s U.S. President Donald Trump and, as many have pointed out, he seems to think it’s still 1986 and that Japan unfairly protects its own market from imports — otherwise why aren’t any American cars sold in Japan ? It’s not an opinion that’s widely circulated anymore, though it actually isn’t really off the mark. The standard Japanese media reply to Trump’s accusation is that there are no tariffs on American cars sold in Japan, a position that freelance journalist Tetsuo Jimbo refers to as the “Japan innocence theory.” More to the point, American carmakers have demonstrated they can’t be bothered to design vehicles in accordance with Japanese needs. During a recent interview on videonews.com, the web channel Jimbo hosts, motor journalist Mitsuhiro Kunisawa told him that the media is simply following the government’s lead, but if they were doing their jobs they would explain the interrelationship between the automobile markets in Japan and the U.S. He thinks that Japan is protectionist, and while the foreign media takes that notion for granted, the Japanese public doesn’t believe it; which isn’t to say the situation as it stands is inherently unfair, only that the world is a complicated place. “No one can complain about lack of fairness in (automobile) trade,” Kunisawa says. Japan suffered those accusations a long time ago, “but now it knows how to play the game perfectly.” Japan won the car wars. What’s missing from this triumphal story is that the vehicles Japan sells in the U.S. aren’t really Japanese anymore. For all intents and purposes, they’re American, since most are manufactured and sold in North America by subsidiaries of Japanese companies. It’s just that some of the profits come back to Japan. “Everyone in Japan thinks we make these cars here and then send them overseas,” Kunisawa says. “But that’s not the case.” In that regard, Japan has done what the U.S. demanded it do 30 years ago — or, at least, partly. The other part of the demand, which was to make Japanese people somehow buy American cars, has mostly been ignored because, as Kunisawa points out, “There has never been any serious intention to sell American cars in Japan.” The contours of this trade dynamic have been shaped by national preferences over the years. Up until the mid-1970s, American cars were valued in Japan and better made than Japanese cars. Only well-off Japanese could buy American cars and because there was no realistic competition they were imported without much alteration. They were large and had big engines. Japanese automobiles were made to appeal to everyone else. They were small and cheap, and the engine displacement was never more than 2 liters. One way the government protected domestic automakers was to peg car taxes to engine size and claim it was an emissions standard. Larger engines meant more emissions and higher taxes. As time went on, Japanese makers started selling a lot of small cars in the United States. Domestic consumers, including wealthier Japanese, also ignored American imports, and American makers complained about the taxes. Their most protectionist aspect, according to the U.S., was the very low levy on Japanese minicars ( kei jidōsha ), whose engine displacement is only 660 cubic centimeters, a size American companies don’t make. Several years ago, the government finally raised the tax on minicars in order to placate foreign car manufacturers, but it made no difference. Japanese companies have become so good at manufacturing compact cars for the American market that Detroit stopped trying to compete. In their hearts, the American manufacturers want to sell large cars and pickup trucks, since those provide higher profit margins and, as long as they can afford the gasoline, Americans prefer them. The top three selling models in America are pickups . Though Japanese automakers do make pickups for the U.S. market, sales are much lower than they are for American models. With their larger bodies, pickups don’t make sense in cramped Japan, but in any case the engine displacement would render them more expensive than a high-end Mercedes. The annual tax on a vehicle with a 4-liter engine — normal for an American pickup — is ¥76,500. Japan is the only developed country in the world with such a tax, so over a 10-year period it would add up to the equivalent of a 12 percent import tariff. As for luxury cars, Japanese drivers prefer German vehicles , which, Kunisawa insists, are of better quality than either American or Japanese equivalents. American makers know that they themselves doesn’t make superior small cars for their own consumers, so what’s the point in trying to make them for such a resistant market like Japan’s? Just to be safe, however, the Japanese government maintains inspection rules that make it difficult for American cars to enter the country despite the fact that even the Japanese media concedes that American safety and environmental standards are stricter than Japan’s. In addition, the car tax is the same for used cars, so people who normally buy used cars would be put off by the high tax on American vehicles, which means they have no trade-in value. Trump has said he prefers bilateral trade deals to multilateral free trade agreements like TPP, and in such a situation Kunisawa thinks the U.S. would do better to concentrate on getting rid of Japan’s engine-based car tax, but that still wouldn’t solve the image problem. As Kunisawa sees it, “There’s a premise that American cars are not sellable in Japan,” and no amount of negotiation is going to turn that opinion around.

manufacturing;economics;automobiles;donald trump;tetsuo jimbo;mitsuhiro kunisawa

jp0000707

2017/03/04

How much time does it take to save a life?

How much time does it take to save a life? Five hours? Five minutes? Five seconds? According to a government white paper on karōshi (death from overwork) in October 2016, more than 20 percent of companies said monthly overtime per employee exceeded 80 hours, a threshold believed to increase the risk of death. Working more than 100 hours of overtime a month significantly raises that risk. Matsuri Takahashi, a 24-year-old employee at advertising agency Dentsu Inc., worked 105 hours in a one-month period before jumping to her death from a company dormitory. According to media reports, a labor standards inspection office in Tokyo’s Minato Ward determined that overwork pushed Takahashi to take her own life after she suffered a mental breakdown. In December, the labor ministry referred Dentsu and one of its executives to prosecutors on suspicion of forcing Takahashi to work illegally long hours. Japan’s Labor Standards Law stipulates that working hours must, in principle, not exceed 40 hours per week, or eight hours per day. For employees to work longer, a labor-management agreement must be concluded beforehand. In an attempt put an end to excessive overtime, a government panel is now proposing to cap overtime at 100 hours per month — just five hours less than the overtime Takahashi clocked before her death. It’s clear, however, that this does little to solve the problem — just ask anyone who has ever held down a regular job. It’s easy to see why there’s such a disconnect between appearance and reality. For a start, there’s only one labor expert on the government panel that has been tasked with labor reform. What’s more, constitutional scholar Setsu Kobayashi believes the Liberal Democratic Party’s proposed package of reforms will also remove paid overtime in some occupations altogether. Hiroshi Kawahito, an expert on death from overwork who has represented the families of victims against Dentsu on two occasions, says about 200 cases are recognized every year. “The Dentsu case is just the tip of the iceberg,” Kawahito says, adding that it’s likely that another 10,000 cases go unreported. In order to prevent such cases in future, Kawahito believes employers need to recognize that working long hours is both inefficient and deadly. Kawahito also believes the government has to put a realistic cap on labor hours and enforce them, and urges employees to understand their labor rights. Haruki Kono, a representative of POSSE, a nonprofit organization that provides advice and support to workers facing unethical or illegal treatment at the hands of employers, has little faith in patchwork solutions changing much. “Companies aren’t severely punished for overworking their employees. In fact, almost any written contract between an employee and employer can nullify the legal eight-hour working day,” Kono says. “There aren’t enough labor inspectors. There are no penalties for faking the work logs or forcing the employees to fake them. It makes proving a case of death from overwork extremely difficult.” I couldn’t have said that better myself. Recently, however, labor inspectors have been stepping up to the plate. They raided the headquarters of Dentsu in Tokyo as well as branch offices nationwide in November last year, suspecting the company of committing other labor violations. It was a slap in the face to a company that has long thought of itself as untouchable. Labor inspectors have the power to make arrests. According to a report in the Asahi Shimbun in March 2012, a labor standards inspection office in Ishikawa Prefecture arrested the former chief executive officer of a transportation company for failing to pay minimum wages worth ¥370,000 to three employees. The CEO had initially refused to discuss the matter with the labor inspectors. The arrest certainly got his attention. Maybe it’s time for labor inspectors to use their powers of investigation and arrest more often. The humiliation of an arrest and punishment for labor violations might make other companies think twice about working their employees to death. It’s time for Japan to take action to end death from overwork. It’s certainly going to need more than the introduction of Premium Friday, a new campaign in which employees are encouraged to clock out a few hours early on the last Friday of the month. It’s time to identify and punish companies that run their employees into the ground. The clock is ticking.

overwork;overtime;dentsu;karoshi

jp0000708

2017/03/04

Japan Times 1942: 'Abolish or continue study of English?'

100 YEARS AGO Saturday, March 31 1917 Hundreds of snakes found in Tokyo park | THE JAPAN TIMES About 300 snakes and adders of various descriptions and color which were, as previously reported, captured by coolies near the sluice-gate at Inokashira, a suburb, some time ago have been set free in the hills near by. The coolies intended to kill them, but superstitious inhabitants in the neighborhood have strongly agitated against this, crying in sober earnest that these snakes are messengers from kannon , or the goddess of fortune, and that woes would befall them should the snakes be dispatched. The coolies, it is said, have been thus obliged to give the snakes freedom in the hills. 75 YEARS AGO Wednesday, March 4, 1942 Abolish or continue study of English? | THE JAPAN TIMES Because it is spoken by Japan’s enemy nations, the English language has fallen into discredit in this country, and there is even an outcry for its abolition. At the recent Conference of the Presidents of the High Schools throughout the country, the question of reducing the hours devoted to the study of foreign languages at these educational institutions was taken up and the decision was reached in favor of reduction. While regarding this decision as inevitable in view of Japan’s present position, Sanki Ichikawa, a professor of Tokyo Imperial University, denounces as superficial the view which is finding vigorous expression in some Japanese quarters in support of the abolition of foreign languages. As quoted by the Nichi Nichi, Ichikawa says that as the English language is spoken in China, Thailand, French Indo-China and the southern islands, the need for its study will rather increase as the work of constructing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere progresses. From the point of view of cultural war also, the professor says, he cannot endorse the abolition of the study of foreign languages. To study a foreign language is one thing, and to become “foreignized” is quite another, he stresses. Some people urge that the Government should establish a Translation Bureau and that the translation of foreign books and the publication of such translations should be undertaken by this bureau. This idea may be practicable insofar as the translation of popular or standard books is concerned, but it will be well-nigh impossible to expect such a Government bureau to translate foreign books in specialized or technical lines. For such circumstances the need for the study of foreign languages will remain. 50 YEARS AGO Thursday, March 9, 1967 The future of nuclear energy looking bright | THE JAPAN TIMES Japan is steadily entering an age of full-scale commercial development of nuclear energy for electric power generation, expecting a total supply of 5,240,000 kilowatts of power from 11 power reactors in the next eight years. However, there is one big problem — the adequate supply of fuel, according to informed circles. As far as nuclear energy facilities for power generation are concerned, the nation already has a record of a decade of research and experimentation. Japan’s delay behind Western nations in this respect has been inevitable due to its postwar circumstances, it was reported Monday. Japan’s first commercial nuclear electric power plant of 166,000 kilowatts in capacity was put into operation May 4, 1965 at Tokai-mura, Ibaraki Prefecture, by Japan Atomic Power Co. of Tokyo, a joint venture of Japanese electric power companies and various electrical machinery makers concerned. Its Calder Hall-type reactor imported from Britain, has so far proved to be far from economical, they added. But, in the past few years, there has been remarkable progress in Japan’s development of commercial nuclear power plants, with at least three new stations scheduled to be completed in the next three years, these circles said. Citing a recent long-range electric power supply and demand program of the electric power industry’s central electric power council in Tokyo, informants said by 1975, Japan will have at least 11 nuclear power houses with a combined output of 5,240,000 kilowatts. They attributed the remarkable progress in Japan’s efforts to supply itself with nuclear energy-generated electricity to the steadily improving performance of the first commercial reactor at Tokai-mura. Although not yet effective enough, the reactor has testified to the certainty that the next power plant of the kind to be built will pay off in the long run. 25 YEARS AGO Saturday, March 28, 1992 Government acts to cut public workers’ hours | THE JAPAN TIMES The government has begun revisiting the shift system for its employees following the Diet’s passage Friday of four bills guaranteeing public servants a five-day workweek, officials said. The new system is expected to begin June 1 following Cabinet approval, officials said. Under the new regulations, public servants will be required to work 40 hours a week, or two hours less than at present. In principle, the nation’s public offices will close on Saturdays because national government employees will no longer be required to work Saturdays. An estimate by the Management and Coordination Agency shows that public servants will work 100 hours less than the current official annual 2,060 hours. Shift workers at post offices patronized on weekends, state-run hospitals that are part of the national health system, customs offices and immigration offices, as well as museums and art galleries, will continue to work on Saturdays using a rotating shift system, but will work just 40 hours a week. The exceptions to the new regulations include workers in the postal service, printing facilities, the Mint and forestry offices. The government has been trying to cut overtime in recent months after a young woman committed suicide due to overwork at Dentsu in December 2015.

nuclear energy;inokashira park;overtime;snakes

jp0000709

2017/03/05

Entrepreneur taps theatrical skills to coach Japanese leaders in the art of the speech

From John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961 to Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech in 2008, history has been colored by powerful rhetoric that is never forgotten. But behind the epoch-making speeches have been strategists who construct memorable phrases, coach the speakers’ stage actions and dream up scenarios that motivate people to take action. Yosuke Kageyama, 36, makes his living as a speechwriter — a profession that, although widely known in the West, has only recently drawn attention in Japan. “The demand for the skills to deliver a good speech has increased steeply in the past two or three years, especially among people in high-ranking positions,” said Kageyama, a lecturer and public speaking instructor who runs a Tokyo-based consultancy called Communis Co. Kageyama has written hundreds of speeches for executives, politicians and other leaders to deliver at shareholder meetings, inaugural ceremonies and even wedding receptions, though he doesn’t reveal their names out of respect for their privacy. Japanese companies traditionally use in-house staff to write their executives’ speeches, he said, while those given by politicians are largely prepared by bureaucrats, with journalists, playwrights and copywriters sometimes getting a shot. But when it comes to the professional speechwriter, a specialist paid to take charge of a client’s speech as an outsourcing business, Kageyama said there is “ less than 10″ nationwide because there is no clear career path to the profession. His job is not just to write a script, he said. “The most important thing for a professional speechwriter is whether you can be a good communicator yourself,” he said, adding that the key to writing a good script is to understand what your clients want to say — even though they sometimes can’t express their ideas in words — while not hewing too closely to their orders. “Anyone can write a good speech if trained properly. But if you are deemed incompetent by first-class clients, then the game is over,” he said. “You need to stand on even ground with them, otherwise your script will be boring.” For Kageyama, what led him to embark on one of the most underrepresented careers in Japan was his immersion in theater at a young age. Born in June 1980 in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, Kageyama described himself as a “cheerful and pleasant” kid who, under the influence of his older brother, became fascinated by the world of performing arts. “My brother graduated from university and became a theater director. So I, too, wanted to pursue the same profession,” he said. So Kageyama joined a theater club in high school in which he had the chance to both act and direct. His love of theater continued after he entered Kanazawa Institute of Technology, where he studied robotics among other disciplines like psychology and brain science. “I think people who have been involved in any kind of artistic work have all sought answers to the question, ‘What is humanity?’ I thought these disciplines would help me get closer to the answer,” he said. While enrolled in a master’s course in Kanazawa, Kageyama used the school’s exchange program in 2003 to enter the University of Illinois, where he studied acting methodology, theater history and speech science — a field involving the anatomic, physiological analyses of how utterances are made and perceived. But while continuing a career as a professional stage writer, he said he wasn’t sure his knowledge of theater would translate into a viable livelihood. After returning from a year of study in the U.S., Kageyama decided to start his own business teaching people how to deliver speeches, using his knowledge of theater and acting methodology. In 2004, he drafted a business plan for entry into the Campus Venture Grand Prix, a business competition for college entrepreneurs hosted by business daily Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun with backing from major Japanese companies. After clearing the regional selection process, his submission won the Most Valuable Plan prize in the competition in 2005. Brimming with confidence, he established his public speaking consultancy Communis Co. in 2006. But everything didn’t go according to plan. “I started it by targeting young businesspeople. But I realized young people had few opportunities to express their opinion in front of people,” he said. “So I changed my strategy and shifted the target to company executives and the business gradually began to bear fruit.” Kageyama began to call himself a speechwriter in 2009 after U.S. speechwriter Jonathan E. Favreau — famed for writing Obama’s speeches in 2008 at the age of 27 — began making headlines in Japan. “It was groundbreaking in the sense that the personality of a speechwriter, including his age, was brought under the spotlight in Japan,” especially given that Japan had usually paid little attention to the importance of speeches, Kageyama said. “This is because Japan has long valued tight, vertical relationships among people — similar to the one between a parent and a child,” he said. In such a society, many people didn’t need to express their own opinion because, unlike in the United States, where speech is considered an essential skill that directly affects one’s success, people in Japan can earn a decent living simply by quietly obeying their bosses, he said. But Kageyama says that close-knit relationship collapsed after Japan’s bubble economy imploded in 1991. He now sees society moving toward an “age of individualism,” where people need to polish their own skills to succeed rather than depend on the traditional system of lifetime employment. “The change going on in our society today is irreversible, and I believe speeches will be an indispensable skill to live in this ever more volatile society,” he said. “People can no longer survive without expressing their opinions.” Key events in Kageyama’s life 1980 — Born in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture 1996 — Joins a high school theater club 1999 — Enters Kanazawa Institute of Technology 2003 — Goes to the University of Illinois as an exchange student 2005 — Wins a “Most Valuable Plan” award at the Campus Venture Grand Prix 2006 — Launches public speaking consultancy Communis Co.

speechwriter;public speaking;yosuke kageyama

jp0000710

2017/03/02

How much urine is in a swimming pool? Canadian study finds the answer

CALGARY, ALBERTA - Canadian researchers studying urine levels in swimming pools have discovered just how high the levels are, and the results are not pretty, according to an article published on Wednesday. Researchers at the University of Alberta developed a test to measure the amount of urine and took more than 250 samples from 31 pools and hot tubs in two Canadian cities. The results showed one 830,000-liter (220,000-gallon) pool, which is about one-third of an Olympic-sized pool, had 75 liters of urine while another smaller pool had 30 liters. Humans introduce “a variety of chemicals” into recreational waters through bodily fluids, and the separate news of an overnight water color change in the 2016 Rio Olympic pools highlight the need to monitor water quality, according to the study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters. Although urine itself is sterile, its presence in swimming pools is a public health concern because urine can mix with pool chemicals to harm swimmers’ health, according to the study. When asked about the study, the Alberta Health provincial ministry said it will be taking a “close look” at it. “Under the Public Health Act, the ministry has a regulation that provides standards,” spokesman Tim Kulak said in an email. “Pools that don’t meet the standards may be closed for remediation.” According to the study, researchers measured for the substance acesulfame-K (ACE), an artificial sweetener that passes through the body completely and is “an ideal urinary marker.” It found concentrations of ACE in the pools and tubs, which were not named, that were up to 570-fold greater than in normal tap water. Researchers then used the ACE concentration of the two pools over three weeks to estimate their levels of urine, according to the study.

health;swimming

jp0000712

2017/03/18

Darwin specimens showcase evolution for first time in Tokyo exhibition

Charles Darwin certainly did not consider it a sin to kill a mockingbird. The 19th-century English biologist killed many of the birds whilst on board the HMS Beagle survey ship as he traveled around the world. The specimens are more important than you might think and you can see a number of them at “Treasures of the Natural World,” a new exhibition at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo. Before he became a world-renowned scientist, Darwin was in training to join the clergy before accepting a position on the Beagle at the age of 22. Darwin collected thousands of specimens of plants and animals during his voyage, including mockingbirds. When he started examining mockingbird specimens from the islands of the Galapagos, he noticed that the birds were different, depending on which island they’d come from. It’s easy to take evolution for granted these days but, back in the 19th century, most people in the West believed that the Earth was 6,000 years old and that all life on the planet had been created by God. As such, it was sacrilege to imagine that species could change over time. However, Darwin’s observations of mockingbirds — and not so much the finches that later became associated with his theory of natural selection — furnished him with some of the earliest evidence that evolution occurred. He developed his theory of natural selection and, in doing so, built one of the most influential scientific theories of all time. It therefore goes without saying that Darwin’s mockingbirds are arguably some of the most important scientific specimens ever collected. The exhibition in Tokyo gives visitors a chance to view the actual birds Darwin studied. On display through June 11, the exhibits are part of a trove of some 300 historically important specimens on loan from the Natural History Museum in London. Other specimens on display include a tortoise Darwin once owned himself and a pigeon skeleton from one of the many pigeons he bred. Darwin bred pigeons to test his ideas about selection, although in this case he was actually studying artificial selection — when traits and characteristics of a species are chosen by a human breeder — rather than natural selection, which can only be found in the wild. There are also some wonderful Ceroglossus beetles that were collected by Darwin when he was still a young man during a stopover in Chile. Darwin became famous for his observations on birds, which are credited with inspiring his theory of evolution by natural selection, but his first passion was one common in certain kinds of young British gentlemen of his time: beetling, or the collection of beetles. Yoshihiro Hayashi, director of the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, was pleased to announce the collaboration with the Natural History Museum. “Many Japanese people know the museum’s collection has excellent stories in scientific, cultural and historical aspects,” he says, “and hope to visit and to see these treasures in our museum as soon as possible.” As well as the Darwin-related items, the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo is borrowing dozens of other treasures, including one of the most famous fossils of all time — the Archaeopteryx. I remember seeing this for the first time and being surprised at its size. I think I expected such a famous fossil to be bigger, but Archaeopteryx, which lived 147 million years ago, is only the size of a crow. It has an incredible mix of features common in both dinosaurs and birds, including teeth and fingers ending in claws, but also wings and feathers. The fossil, which demonstrates that birds descended from meat-eating dinosaurs, is an absolute must-see. Another specimen from the Natural History Museum on display in Japan tells a darker story, but one arguably more relevant to today. The museum is sending a specimen of the Japanese sea lion (called nihon ashika in Japanese), which was hunted to extinction in the 1970s. This species was hunted not only for food (sea lion doesn’t taste so good), but also for blubber to make oil for lamps. Parts were also used in traditional medicine. Thousands of animals were slaughtered, and the destruction of many parts of its habitat due to submarine warfare in World War II didn’t help. The animal is a reminder that human-driven extinction has been ramping up over the past few decades. We are now driving such widespread habitat destruction that species are going extinct at 1,000 times the natural background rate. Darwin never visited Japan, nor even, as far as I’ve heard, had much correspondence with scientists in Japan. This is slightly odd, as Darwin was famous for his voluminous correspondence with scientists from around the world. However, given the cultural gap between feudal Japan and Victorian England, it is perhaps not that surprising. Yet he would have been fascinated by these islands. As the exhibits at the the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo demonstrate, the Japanese archipelago has an extraordinary richness of geology, topography and ecology. The isolation of the islands from the Asian continent has meant that an extraordinary variety of different species have evolved in Japan — it’s one of the reasons that first brought me to Japan as a biologist. Darwin would have been fascinated by Japan (and he would have appreciated how popular beetle-collecting is here, too). He didn’t quite make it, but many of the items from his collection — including a first edition copy of his book that changed the world, “On the Origin of Species” — are now in Japan.

evolution;charles darwin

jp0000713

2017/03/18

Moritomo scandal delivers an education in Japanese politics

“Our subjects ever united in loyalty and filial piety have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of the fundamental character of Our Empire, and herein also lies the source of Our education.” — The Meiji Imperial Rescript on Education If news were to break that political loudmouths with a record of extreme right-wing views that outsiders consider racist and xenophobic were suddenly found to have been involved in an Osaka land deal gone bad, cynical wags might offer a weary smile at the poetic justice or shrug their shoulders and ask “So what else is new?” But when the deal involves children, what they are being taught, and features politicians and educators who come across on TV as excessively arrogant, petulant and untrustworthy, we have — despite the best efforts of the ruling parties to put a lid on the stink — an unprecedented scandal that presents Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with his most serious political challenge yet. Nearly a month has passed since local media revealed Osaka-based Moritomo Gakuen, a private educational firm with a nationalist bent, secured a huge — and suspicious — discount on land for a new elementary school. While local journalists long suspected there was something rotten at Moritomo besides garbage buried on the site, a letter from the school’s vice-principal to one child’s parents expressing hatred of Chinese and Koreans, combined with the realization the prime minister’s wife, Akie, was involved, turned a complex local story of alleged fraud into a national scandal involving the highest levels of government, revisionist history and educational theories. In fact, it was the shocking letter, which led to allegations of hate speech on the part of angry parents and human rights groups, that arguably first turned the Osaka media against Moritomo Gakuen and its heads, Yasunori and Junko Kagoike. Osaka, with its large and vocal Korean and Chinese communities and proud of its historical reputation of good relations with Asia, has traditionally had a low tolerance for such attacks compared to certain other major cities that shall not be named. How and when the scandal will end is unclear. But Akie, promoted by foreign and Japanese commentators as a “progressive,” has seen her judgment questioned and her reputation sullied, especially after a video of her praising the school surfaced, and despite the fact she resigned as honorary principal when the scandal broke. A long-overdue debate is now beginning as to what, exactly, should be the legal status and the political duties of a prime minister’s spouse. Then there is Defense Minister Tomomi Inada. As I write this, the pressure on her to resign is immense. An extreme and unapologetic nationalist and staunch Abe loyalist, Inada was a controversial figure well before the Moritomo scandal. Foreign diplomats have described her as polite but seemingly ill-prepared in meetings, yet never failing to spout her personal beliefs in a strident voice. Revelations Inada and her Osaka-based lawyer husband once represented Moritomo Gakuen forced her to apologize for mistaken Diet testimony, creating widespread doubt she should remain in her post. And finally, the prime minister. On Thursday, Kagoike is expected to explain to the Diet his claim that Abe donated to his school. This story is far from over. However, what is most disturbing about this whole sordid affair is what angers many people, especially parents, in Osaka: the moral vacuity or embrace on the part of Japan’s leaders of an educational philosophy that encourages children to hate outsiders and bully those who don’t share the views of the nationalists. In an ideal world, Moritomo Gakuen would have been shut down long ago. In the real world, decent Osakans will settle for seeing it replaced with a school that teaches pupils to respect, tolerate and empathize with others and to think for themselves. One real goal of a good education, they understand, should be to raise children to become compassionate citizens of a great country, and of the world, not thuggish, obedient subjects of an arrogant state.

shinzo abe;osaka;tomomi inada;akie abe;moritomo gakuen

jp0000714

2017/03/18

Asking the tough questions on Fukushima

In January, regional newspaper Fukushima Minpo interviewed Yosuke Takagi , state minister of economy, trade and industry. While talking about reconstruction plans for areas near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Takagi mentioned resurrecting Dash-mura (Dash Village), a farm created from scratch by boy band Tokio for its Nippon TV series “The Tetsuwan Dash.” The location of Dash-mura was always secret, lest Tokio’s fans descend on the project and destroy its rustic purity. But following the reactor accident caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, it was revealed that the farm was in an area declared off-limits due to its proximity to the plant. It was promptly abandoned. A different news outlet, Fukushima Minyu , clarified that the revival of Dash-mura is “nothing more than a personal idea of Takagi’s,” but that he intends to discuss it with related parties. An 80-year-old farmer who once worked with Tokio on the project told Minyu that bringing back the farm would be a great PR boost for the area’s agriculture, which is obviously Takagi’s aim. The show’s producer, however, after hearing of Takagi’s comment, tweeted that he knew nothing about the news, adding cryptically that “Dash-mura is no one’s thing.” The Huffington Post called the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to ask if it had any intention of reviving Dash-mura. A representative only “confirmed” that Takagi had “made such a comment” and said METI had no “definite plan” to that end but might “study it.” Nevertheless, the idea fits in with the government’s goal of getting former residents to move back to the area. Last week, authorities announced they would further reduce the evacuation zone at the end of the month, which means it will have shrunk by 70 percent since April 2014. The concern is that few people want to return. Some have already made lives for themselves elsewhere and see a lack of opportunity in their old communities. Many also remain suspicious of the government’s assurances that radioactivity has dropped to a safe level. There is still debate among experts as to whether or not the radiation in the area is dangerous. The government says that the problems caused by the accident are now “under control,” and affected residents can soon go back to their old lives. One media outlet who has challenged this assumption is TV Asahi’s “Hodo Station.” On March 9, the nightly news show sent its main announcer, Yuta Tomikawa, to Iitate, a village located about 40 km from the crippled nuclear facility. All 6,000 residents were eventually evacuated after the accident. Standing in front of rows of black plastic bags, Tomikawa reported that, according to the government, decontamination efforts have been a success. A safe annual radiation level is 1 millisievert, but a local dairy farmer told Tomikawa that his own readings showed five times that level, adding that 70 percent of Iitate is wooded and forest land had not been decontaminated yet. Moreover, the government is lifting the evacuation order for any areas where annual radiation levels are “no more than” 20 mSv. The International Commission on Radiological Protection told the government that once the situation had stabilized in the affected areas, people could return if radiation dropped to between 1 and 20 mSv, but the lower the better. Exposure to 20 mSv for a short period may not be a problem, but it could have harmful effects in the long run. Tomikawa did not say that people who returned to Iitate would be in danger, but he did imply that the government is manipulating numbers in an attempt to persuade evacuees to return to their homes. The web magazine Litera wrote that TV Asahi is the only mainstream media outlet to question the government line in this regard. Actually, Nippon TV did something similar, albeit indirectly. Last month, it rebroadcasted an episode of its “ NNN Document ” series about the married manzai (stand-up comedy) duo Oshidori Mako-Ken’s efforts to come to terms with the Fukushima meltdowns and their aftermath. The couple belongs to the large Osaka-based entertainment company Yoshimoto Kogyo, but ever since the disaster Mako has attended about 500 related news conferences, making a nuisance of herself by plying Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings employees and government officials with questions the mainstream media don’t usually ask. In order to gain access to the news conferences, she offered stories to the weekly magazine Spa! Her editor there told Nippon TV that Mako is now respected or resented by a lot of full-time journalists, partly because she’s a geinojin (entertainer) who has proved her mettle as a reporter, but mainly because of her hard-line queries , which put her interlocutors on the spot. Following the disaster, Mako became suspicious when she saw people fleeing Tokyo in large numbers but heard nothing about it on the news. In order to make sense of the situation she’d watch unfiltered news conferences about the disaster on the internet. She realized only independent reporters asked tough questions, so she started attending them herself as a proxy for average people who didn’t understand what was going on. The more officials obfuscated, the more she studied. She’s now recognized by some foreign press as one of the most informed persons on the subject — she even received a letter of encouragement from Pope Francis — and yet she’s shunned by the Japanese press. Nevertheless, she has dedicated followers, including workers cleaning up the reactor who often feed her questions to ask of officials. She’s won awards for her work, but from citizens groups, not media groups. Nowadays, Mako and Ken do more free lectures on Fukushima No. 1 than they do comedy shows. One of their main themes is that media reports tend to confuse the public rather than inform them, but that’s really the fault of the government, which would like nothing better than for people to feel as if nothing ever happened.

fukushima;dash-mura;dash village;oshidori mako-ken

jp0000715

2017/03/18

The Japan tabloid guide to health and happiness

Aside from political scandals and rumors of celebrity dalliances — which are pretty much tabloid fare wherever there are tabloids — an alien first encountering Japan’s weekly tabloid magazines might conclude he has come to Earth in a nation of inquisitive hypochondriacs. With a blizzard of feature stories, advice and exposes covering everything from the temperature of water in your bath to dealing with toe fungus, it is no exaggeration to say that stories on health and prevention are a major magazine standby, and the appetite for such fare shows no sign of abating. While the topics covered are kaleidoscopic, in a nutshell, the most basic articles adhere to a standard formula: either “Eating/drinking/taking X is good for you” or “Eating/drinking/taking X is bad for you.” These can then be further divided into various categories depending on the season and so on. This time of year, for example, a proliferation of articles for those who suffer from hay fever — an estimated 25 percent of the population — can be found. And we’ll soon be seeing sage advice on how to pace yourself when drinking at the inevitable company cherry blossom-viewing gatherings, along with the most effective treatments for nursing a post-party hangover. Leading the pack on the medical front is Shukan Gendai, which this spring is celebrating its 58th anniversary. Since last year, it has been running a potpourri of health advice, with a series of articles chanting the mantra “__ _-tte wa ikenai ” (“___ is of no use”/”You shouldn’t ___”). This includes advice not only for humans but their pets as well. One such article lists 50 drugs people are advised not to take. (No. 21 is Viagra, use of which, Shukan Gendai warns, may add to strain on the heart.) That was followed by 30 surgical procedures, including eight for types of cancers, that are best avoided. The worst is surgery for gastric fistula; third is prostate cancer (reduces quality of life). Also discouraged were elective procedures such as Lasik treatment to correct myopia, dental implants and bunion surgery. Shukan Gendai’s March 18 issue introduced the gluten-free diet and then went on to address problems of incontinence: “Here is how to resolve urination and elimination troubles.” The lead sub-headline — “Concerns for which there is nobody to consult with” — pretty much tells it all. “Many middle-aged and elderly men have difficulties with urination,” it reports. “But because their numbers are fewer than females, many are reluctant to discuss this with someone. Or, as the head of their family, their reluctance to reveal an embarrassing episode of incontinence is understandable.” Shukan Gendai’s March 25-April 1 issue noted that some 70 million people in Japan at some time in their lives suffer from discomfort or pain in their neck and shoulders: “ Momu no wa iryō de wa nai!” (“Massaging is not medical treatment!”), it warns. Last week, Shukan Bunshun (March 16) accused NHK’s venerable Wednesday evening program “Gatten” (formerly “Tameshite Gatten”) of playing loose with the facts on health. Over the past year, it alleged, at least four programs related misinformation. One was that skin condition improved following a colonoscopy; another was that sleep medication had favorable effects on diabetes; and yet another suggested that consumption of collagen promoted healing of bedsores. A fourth, broadcast on May 11 of last year, was really off the wall: It suggested that getting a scare while visiting a spook house at a theme park could cause blood clots to form. The same issue of Shukan Bunshun devotes three pages to extolling the health benefits of nattō . For the uninitiated, nattō is soybeans that have been boiled and sprayed with a bacteria naturally present in rice straw that causes fermentation, endowing them with more protein and other beneficial properties. Consumed mostly in eastern Japan, the primary reason why nattō has not become popular in other parts of the country, or overseas, is due to its slimy consistency and strong ammonia-like odor. The article cites a study involving 30,000 adult men and women that started in the city of Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, in 1992. Sixteen years later, 677 had died as a result of stroke. According to professor Chisato Nagata of Gifu University School of Medicine, the test subjects were divided into four groups related to their consumption of nattō. People who ate the gooey beans regularly had a 32 percent lower incidence of stroke than those who seldom or never ate them. The former group also had a 25 percent lower incidence of mortality from circulatory-related ailments. Nattō is also said to be effective against certain types of cancer, including those of the breast and prostate. Noting that strokes most commonly occur during the morning hours, professor Takafumi Hamaoka, sports medicine specialist at Tokyo Medical University, advises, “Since the benefits of the nattokinase bacteria last about eight hours, you should eat it in the evening.” Shukan Post (March 24-31) devoted eight pages to the subject of erectile dysfunction (E.D.). The latter section of the article warns against habits that can affect men’s performance. One is sitting down to urinate. Others include drinking beer and sweetened coffee beverages and engaging in prolonged bicycle rides. (Cyclists are said to suffer 1.7 times more than those who don’t ride.) Good dental hygiene (brushing one’s teeth regularly) also has benefits in this area. And since briefs help the groin maintain a higher temperature, they’re preferred over boxer shorts. Also, gents, don’t sit with your legs crossed. And, oh yes, nicotine causes blood vessels to constrict, so smoking is to be avoided. Another means of prevention — try not to laugh — is laughing. Physicians at Osaka’s Moriguchi Keijinkai Hospital tested 36 male volunteers. After dividing them into two groups, one was shown Charlie Chaplin and “Mr. Bean” comedies, while the other watched weather reports. The testosterone generated by the former appears to not only have helped migitate their E.D. problem, but the reduction in stress is also believed to have beneficial effects on those with cases of atopic dermatitis. Substituting one type of itch for another, one might say….

health;journalism;magazines;weeklies

jp0000716

2017/03/18

The evolution of the Japanese ego: the discovery of themselves

‘There was no room for mercy in view of their crime.” None asked, none given. “They met their end … with … a touching acquiescence in their fate.” The world we are entering is that of Osaka novelist Ihara Saikaku (1642-93). It was, first of all, a world of peace — the gated, barred, frozen peace imposed by Japan’s new Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) after 400 years of on-and-off, mostly on, mind-numbingly meaningless civil carnage in which one’s self , one’s “ I ,” was good for one thing only: sacrifice to one’s feudal lord. Peace stirred commerce, commerce enriched merchants at the expense of the very samurai who so loftily despised them, and merchants, newly empowered by money if not respect, made a momentous discovery, what a later age would call “the pursuit of happiness.” It was a revolution, an egotistical revolution. Never before (or arguably since) had individual Japanese been more “themselves” — not members of a caste, class, hierarchy or family, lost in a whole that subsumed and consumed them, but each in effect affirming with delight, with rapture, with defiance, “I am, first and above all, myself, my own free, indomitable self, and if they kill me for it, that at least is a death worth dying!” “Five Women Who Loved Love” (“Koshoku gonin onna”) is the name Saikaku gives a collection of five tales, each consecrated to a love so fierce it makes the weak strong and the ordinary extraordinary. Love confers the dazzling gift of selfhood — only to snatch it brutally away from them. In Saikaku’s love stories, the public executioner is the overshadowing presence. Realism required it. Only one of the tales ends happily. Would that space permitted discussion of all five of these pulsing narratives! It doesn’t; we make do with two. Note, incidentally, since the underlying theme is selfhood, the frequent recurrence of disguise. The first thing a self needs, it seems, is a mask. “What the Seasons Brought” — a suggestive title. Of Osan, the heroine, suffice it to say that “her figure suggested the cherry buds, not yet blossoms, of Kiyomizu”; of Moemon, the anti-hero, that he was “honest and extremely frugal, so much so that he completely neglected his personal appearance … and slept with an abacus under his head, the better perhaps to reckon how great a fortune he could amass in a night spent dreaming of money-making.” Osan was the wife of the Kyoto almanac maker for whom Moemon worked. Had they never met, or met under different circumstances, their lives would have unfolded unremarkably enough. The circumstances under which they did meet were as follows: Rin, a servant girl in the house, falls in love with Moemon, unprepossessing though he is. Moemon couldn’t care less. His sights are set higher — on money. When at last, with insulting haughtiness, he condescends to meet the girl, Osan decides to teach him a lesson; she’ll disguise herself as Rin and, when Moemon comes to her, raise an alarm. She falls asleep, however, and all the feverish intensity of Moemon’s passion fails to wake her. Next morning, mortified, she plunges headlong: “From now on I may as well abandon myself to this affair, risk my life, ruin my reputation and take Moemon as my companion on a journey to death.” “Journey to death” is what it is. The lovers flee the capital. Death awaits them, biding its time. Tokugawa law is inexorable: “Illicit intercourse” was a capital crime — not because it’s immoral but because it’s ungovernable. Not even Tokugawa absolutism could tame it. All it could do was execute lovers, and that it did with gusto. The nearness of death fuels the fugitives’ passion; their passion fuels their selfhood. They stagger on, over mountains, through forests, deeper and deeper into a hostile countryside, Osan passing as Moemon’s sister, until Moemon hatches a plan to fake their deaths. That would throw pursuers off the track! Then they could really be themselves — dead and alive simultaneously, dead to the world, alive to each other! And so it might have been, for the ruse was artfully contrived, had not Moemon, once so prudent but now wholly in the grip of anarchic, reckless feeling, suddenly “lost himself in a nostalgic desire to see the capital again.” He returns in disguise, is recognized and apprehended; it’s over. “There was no room for mercy in view of their crime.” At the execution ground, “they died like dewdrops falling from a blade of grass.” Imagine now a girl, still a child, who conceives a passion for a man whose own passions are consumed and fueled by the love of boys: “Not once in his life had he amused himself with the fragile, long-haired sex.” Her name is Oman, his is Gengobei. Against all odds, “Gengobei, Mountain of Love” — such is the title — ends happily. The successive deaths of several lovers (“even the dew outlasts men’s lives”) have driven Gengobei to priestly asceticism. Poor Oman! Never has she been more “herself” than when, disguised as a boy, she pursues him deep into the mountains, determined to brave all, risk all, even life itself —what is life anyway in a world even the unenlightened know is fleeting and illusory? — for love of an avowed homosexual unaware of her existence and indifferent to her sex? Cold at first, Gengobei soon warms: “What difference does it make — the love of men or the love of women?” Love is love. Poverty pinches but not forever — Oman’s parents find the young people and bless them with their wealth. The executioner holds his peace — no class barriers having been breached, no law has been broken; the intercourse is not “illicit.” The lovers live happily ever after. It’s the only story in the “Five Women” not closely modeled on a real-life episode.

ihara saikaku;ego

jp0000717

2017/03/27

Japan's coveted cherry blossoms and other ecosystems threatened by alien species

Spring has come — the season when cherry blossoms bloom nationwide. But ecologists warn that Japan’s most popular sites for hanami ( cherry blossom-viewing) might disappear in the next couple of decades. This is because red-necked longhorn beetles, a species foreign to the country, are eating the blossoms and damaging the trees. Red-necked longhorn beetles are one of many alien species disrupting the environment, prompting the government to take action. Below are questions and answers on what kinds of species are posing a threat, how they came to Japan and what measures the government is taking: How many alien species are there in Japan and what can be done to control them? Of all animals, insects and plants in Japan, about 2,000 are estimated to be alien species — in most cases introduced as pets. The Invasive Alien Species Law, which took effect in 2005, bans 132 “specific alien species” deemed harmful to people, the environment and other domestic species. Listed under three categories, the first includes species that disrupt biodiversity by eating and depopulating other species. Red swamp crayfish are among them. The second category includes poisonous species that are life-threatening to people, such as the redback spider. The third covers alien species that harm agriculture, forestry and fisheries, including raccoons that eat crops. The law bans the rearing, keeping, transporting or importing of such species, except in special cases such as for research. Releasing banned alien species into the wild is also prohibited. Those who violate the law face three years in prison or a fine of up to ¥3 million. Corporate entities face a fine of up to ¥100 million. The Environment Ministry has three basic principles regarding banned species: Don’t let them into the country, don’t release them into the wild, and don’t let them spread. Are red-necked longhorn beetles designated as a banned alien species? Not yet, but the government is moving to give them this status. First spotted in Aichi Prefecture in 2012, the insect rapidly spread nationwide. As of March, it was reported as inhabiting seven prefectures, including Tokyo, Osaka and Gunma. In Gunma, cherry blossom trees at Akagi Nanmen Senbonzakura, a well-known area in Maebashi for cherry blossom-viewing, were damaged by the insect. To combat the situation, the Environment Ministry announced this month that it is considering introducing 14 organisms, including the red-necked longhorn beetle, to its list of specific banned alien species. Other species under consideration include 10 types of stag beetles from the Neolucanus family, which are originally from Taiwan and India and now seen in Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures. And a butterfly species called the red ring skirt that is reportedly inhabiting the Kanto region. The ministry plans to add the 14 species to the list as early as this summer. What are some of the most well-known alien species? The most notable would be the giant snapping turtle, which can bite off a man’s finger. Typically found in North America, they were brought to Japan as pets in the 1960s. After irresponsible owners released them into the wild, they are now found nationwide, including in Tokyo, with some even living in Ueno Park’s Shinobazu Pond and Hikarigaoka Park in Nerima Ward. The turtle overpopulated the Inba Swamp in Chiba Prefecture, forcing the prefecture to hire — for the first time ever — a hunter to clear them. It is believed some 16,000 giant snapping turtles live in the swamp, and Chiba Prefecture says it will have to exterminate at least 1,200 by the end of the year. What extermination programs are conducted by the central government? One long-term extermination program conducted since 2006 by the Environment Ministry is on mongoose, which are widespread throughout Okinawa and Kagoshima prefectures. Mongoose were first brought to Japan in 1910 from India, ironically to exterminate the deadly habu snake that was threatening people’s lives in Okinawa. However, rather than eating snakes, mongoose went after other rare animals, including the Amami rabbit and Amami tip-nosed frog, threatening them with extinction. The damage from mongoose was especially serious on the island of Amami in Kagoshima. After about 100 mongoose were initially released into the wild on the island in 1979 to eradicate habu, the number grew to over 10,000 at its peak in 2000. To combat the situation, prefecture officials, dubbed “Amami Mongoose Busters,” placed over 30,000 traps throughout the island, while using monitoring tools such as cameras and handling dogs trained to detect the mongoose scent. The Environment Ministry program ended in 2015, but the prefecture said it will continue to hunt mongoose. Over 32,000 mongoose have been eradicated so far, but the goal is to wipe out the entire population by 2022. Are there harmful species not yet designated under the law? Yes. Among them are the red-eared slider turtle, which has become overpopulated, causing significant stress on the environment. A study has shown there are about 8 million red-eared sliders, eight times the total number of domestic turtle species. It is believed that about 90 percent of all turtles in Japan are red-eared sliders. But the Environment Ministry has been hesitant to put them on the list of specific alien species, fearing many people who keep them as pets may release them into the wild to avoid being fined or imprisoned. Originally from the United States, red-eared sliders, known as midorigame in Japan, are believed to have been brought to the country in the 1970s and popularly sold at festivals and pet shops. Koichi Goka of the National Institute for Environmental Studies previously told The Japan Times that the turtles live about 60 years, and are often dumped in ponds and rivers when they grow too big. The ministry said red-eared slider turtles have mainly colonized waterways in the Kanto, Chubu and Inland Sea regions, harming the ecosystems there. They are estimated to consume up to 320 tons of water weeds a week. The ministry plans to restrict imports, increase culls and crack down on people who abandon them as pets.

environment ministry;mongoose;insects;specific alien species

jp0000719

2017/03/11

Sea turtle flaps flippers in first rehab swim after coin-removal surgery

BANGKOK - Bank the green sea turtle flapped her flippers with vigor in her first swim after a life-saving operation to remove a heavy mass of swallowed coins from her stomach. Veterinarians in Bangkok put the turtle in water Friday for the first time since her surgery four days ago to see how well she could move. The turtle was gently lowered into a large plastic tank and very quickly began swimming as best as she could in the restricted space. “It’s fantastic! She is responding very well,” said Dr. Nantarika Chansue, who led the team from Chulalongkorn University’s Veterinary Faculty. “Now she is very happy and looks like normal turtle.” The 25-year-old turtle was rescued from a pool in the seaside town of Sri Racha by the Thai Navy. The cause of her ill health was revealed by 3-D scans that showed she had been eating the coins thrown into her pool by passers-by who believed doing so would bring them luck or longevity. Over the years, the loose change got stuck in the turtle’s digestive tract, cracking her ventral shell and causing a life-threatening infection. The surgeons needed four hours to remove 5 kg (11 pounds) of money, counting 915 coins of various currencies. Some are still inside. Veterinarians hope Bank will pass them naturally. Her rehabilitation has involved manipulating her limbs to make sure the muscles don’t stiffen up after being out of water for a prolonged period, and checking that the surgical scar does not get infected. But there are lingering concerns. “The wound healing seems to be OK and there is no secondary infection because we are using sterile seawater,” said Nantarika, “but we have checked her blood and her nickel concentration is very high so we have to work on that.”

nature;animals;thailand

jp0000722

2017/03/29

Putrid, pungent, heave-inducing: U.S. contest crowns the smelliest sneakers

NEW YORK - Seven young contestants from around the United States put their smelliest shoe forward at the 42nd National Rotten Sneaker Contest in New York City on Tuesday. Twelve-year-old Connor Slocombe claimed first place for having the worst-smelling sneaker after losing three past attempts to win the contest. The four judges of the contest, which was held at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Times Square, all cringed at the smell of Slocombe’s beat-up shoe. George Aldrich, a chemical specialist at NASA, said Slocombe managed to create all the smells he sniffs for in a shoe. “One is the very putrid, and then the pungent — that kind of gets up your nose and makes your eyes water,” Aldrich said. “And then the heave part, which is just an involuntary reaction. He had all three of them.” Techniques for developing putrid odors included never wearing socks and walking through mud, according to the contestants, some of whom traveled from Alaska, Colorado, Illinois and New Mexico to participate in the event. “Well, my aunt owns a farm, and sometimes I help out, so when I see animal poop I’ll step in it to get in the shoes to get dirty,” Slocombe said proudly. “And then when we go fishing, I’ll step in fish guts.” Slocombe walked away with $2,500 and Broadway show tickets. He will also be inducted into the Odor Eaters Hall of Fumes. A Vermont sporting goods store owner started the competition in 1974 as a way to promote a new line of sneakers. The foot care company Odor-Eaters became the official sponsor of the contest in 1988.

u.s .;contests;offbeat

jp0000723

2017/03/29

Lower House panel warns against overuse of state secrecy law

A Lower House panel has voiced concern about the classification procedures of state secrets, warning that the nation’s controversial secrecy law was being overused. In a report released on Wednesday, the intelligence surveillance panel stopped short of issuing official recommendations, saying its comments were simply opinions. The panel has been tasked with curbing the arbitrary use of the secrecy law, which has been in force since December 2014. It submitted its second annual report to House of Representatives Speaker Tadamori Oshima on Wednesday. Among its concerns was the growing practice of classifying too much information — in some cases marking nonspecific information as state secrets “in advance.” Secrecy designations were removed from five files last year for this reason, according to the report. “The law, intended to prevent the boundless expansion of what can be designated secret, is being used in ways that diverge from its basic principles,” the panel said. The panel also pushed for further inquiries regarding discussions within the National Security Council, the minutes of which the government has refused to release. “The government will examine the report and consider the necessary actions based on what it says,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Wednesday. The report is based on questions to Cabinet ministers and expert witnesses from May last year about 443 files designated as state secrets up to the end of 2015. An Upper House panel is expected to submit its own report to Upper House Speaker Chuichi Date in the coming months.

diet;lower house;secrecy law

jp0000724

2017/03/16

Cameroon says regional forces have freed 5,000 from Boko Haram-held villages

YAOUNDE - West African forces have freed 5,000 people being held in villages by Boko Haram in an operation that killed more than 60 fighters and destroyed the Islamist group’s hideout along the Nigeria-Cameroon border, Cameroon said on Wednesday. “(The) hostages freed consisted mostly of women, children and elderly people,” Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary told a news conference. He later clarified that “the 5,000 people were saved after a sweep at the border within Cameroonian territory … who were hostages that could not leave the villages,” adding that “more than 60 terrorists were … neutralized.” In addition, 21 Boko Haram suspects had been arrested in the raid in the Mandara Mountains between Feb. 26 and March 7, which destroyed a fuel depot and recovered weapons, motorcycles, around 50 bicycles, flags and “various propaganda objects.” Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has been fighting since 2009 to try to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Lake Chad region, where Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad join. A coordinated push by the militaries of the four nations has dismantled much of the territory Boko Haram once held, but the group remains capable of launching lethal attacks, often targeting the civilian population. In 2014 Boko Haram gunmen abducted 276 schoolgirls from the Nigerian village of Chibok, to worldwide horror, and some 200 of them are thought to still be in captivity. The Lake Chad region has witnessed an increase in attacks bearing the hallmarks of Boko Haram in markets and refugee camps since late 2016, and the United Nations says more than 7 million people risk starvation owing to insecurity there. As its fighters have been increasingly been killed or locked up, the militants have sometimes resorted to using female captives as suicide bombers. Four female teenage suicide bombers killed two people and injured 16 others on Wednesday in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri, where the uprising first began. Bakary said no Cameroonian soldiers had been killed in the raid, although one had been wounded.

religion;terrorism;boko haram;nigeria;cameroon

jp0000725

2017/03/17

Teacher reaches settlement allowing use of maiden names at western Tokyo school

A female teacher in her 40s and the Tokyo school she is employed at have reached a settlement that allows teachers to continue using their maiden names after marriage, the woman’s lawyers said Friday. Nihon University’s Third Junior and Senior High School, based in the city of Machida in western Tokyo, had prohibited teachers from using their maiden names, saying the use of the name registered in family registries made it easier to manage and specify individuals. But the terms of the deal, which was mediated by the Tokyo High Court and reached Thursday, will allow the female teacher and her colleagues to use their maiden names in school documents upon request. In October, the Tokyo District Court dismissed the teacher’s request that she be able to use her maiden name. That ruling said that asking the teacher to use her married name made sense as a practical issue, prompting the plaintiff to appeal to a higher court. The teacher began working at the school in 2003 and married in 2013, taking her husband’s surname and entering his family’s registry. In December 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that a law requiring spouses to choose a single surname was constitutional and that disadvantages of having to choose a single surname had been eased because the use of maiden names at work had become prevalent. The October ruling, however, stoked anger among proponents of using maiden names, saying that their usage remained an uncommon occurrence — an apparent step back from the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling. “I’m really happy that I could use the name I want,” the teacher said in a statement through her lawyer. The school, meanwhile, said in a statement that it accepted the settlement, adding that an extended court battle would not benefit anyone.

marriage;tokyo high court;surnames

jp0000727

2017/03/19

Toshiba turnaround hopes, planned sale of Westinghouse find skeptics

Toshiba Corp. has been forced to sell off a number of its businesses as it continues to lose money since its accounting scandal broke in 2015, and is now burdened with its troubled U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse Electric Co. Last year, the 142-year-old conglomerate sold its white goods and medical units. It is now looking to let go of its flash memory business and Westinghouse. Those businesses were its main profit drivers and helped establish Toshiba’s corporate identity. Now that those businesses have been deprived from Toshiba, it has left many with a big question: Can Toshiba really get out of its nuclear debacle and rebuild with its remaining businesses? The overseas nuclear business is likely to probably continue to pose major risks, so shedding Westinghouse is probably an obvious step to take, though it might be easier said than done due to the political and security hurdles, experts say. Toshiba has said it can bounce back with its remaining businesses by focusing on social infrastructure and electronics devices, but experts say restructuring will be critical if it really wants to achieve its goal of a 5 percent operating profit margin in three years. “Westinghouse has become such a burden . . . I think Toshiba is desperate” to eliminate the risks of the overseas nuclear business, said Tomoko Murakami, manager of the nuclear energy group at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, a Tokyo-based think tank. Indeed, Toshiba President Satoshi Tsunakawa said in a news conference last week that the sale of the majority stake in Westinghouse is the key to turning the firm around. That remark is a major shift for Toshiba, which has repeatedly plugged nuclear power since its ¥600 billion acquisition of Westinghouse in 2006 ahead of what was expected to be a nuclear renaissance at the time. But Toshiba announced last month that it would post a ¥700 billion impairment loss tied to Westinghouse due to cost overruns derived from construction delays for AP1000 reactors in Georgia and South Carolina. In a stroke of bad luck, the landscape for the nuclear power industry changed drastically after the nuclear crisis erupted at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant in 2011. This damaged the domestic market and resulted in the nationalization of Tokyo Electric Power Co. Yet Murakami said the nuclear power industry still has growth potential. Westinghouse provides, for instance, plant maintenance as well as fuel-related and consulting services used by existing plants around the world. Also, more reactors are expected to be built in China and other emerging economies, including India. But it is doubtful whether Westinghouse can really compete in that business while managing its risks properly, Murakami said. Because it failed to handle the cost overruns from the AP1000 reactors under construction in the U.S., “Westinghouse’s other businesses, such as maintenance, fuel and other solution services, might have problems” in the future due to management problems, Murakami said. In that case, Toshiba may be on the right track with its plan to sell Westinghouse. But whether Toshiba can really sell the troubled unit is a different matter. “Buyers won’t purchase Westinghouse at the same price (¥600 billion) that Toshiba paid. That would be the biggest issue for Toshiba,” Murakami said. She said there are companies, especially in China, looking to acquire Westinghouse’s nuclear know-how. China is developing its own reactors, but “it knows that the technologies have not been as high compared with the makers in the U.S. and Europe,” so it might want to turn to Westinghouse. However, it won’t be easy to sell Westinghouse to the Chinese because the U.S. government is likely to be reluctant to let its nuclear technology drop into China’s hands, experts said. Shedding the risk presented by Westinghouse is the top issue for Toshiba, but another matter is how to revive itself after selling off its flash memory business. Last week, Toshiba unveiled a three-year business plan aiming for sales of ¥4.2 trillion and an operating profit of ¥210 billion in fiscal 2019. The sales figure is down from the estimated ¥5.5 trillion logged in fiscal 2016 to account for the presumed shedding of Westinghouse and the flash memory unit, but the margin for operating profit was hiked to 5 percent from about 3 percent. Toshiba’s new core area will be the social infrastructure business, including elevators, air conditioners and train systems. It will also continue to focus on electronics devices including semiconductors and hard-disk drives. But experts said things won’t go that smoothly. “It almost seems like a pie in the sky now,” said Toshiro Sato, director at Kyokuto Securities Research Institute, adding that Toshiba has not provided details of how it will meet its goals. The 5 percent operating profit margin is a tough goal because it’s not an easy figure for other Japanese electronics makers to attain either, he said. Other than the flash memory unit, Toshiba’s businesses aren’t that profitable, which means restructuring steps including job cuts will likely be needed, Sato said. Atsushi Osanai, a professor at Waseda Business School, also questioned Toshiba’s strategy. “Toshiba has lost two core businesses (flash memory and nuclear power). It is saying that it will focus on social infrastructure, but that’s just what’s left in the company. Toshiba may have top-notch technologies in social infrastructure businesses,” but its sales and profit levels are not at the top in those industries, he said in an email interview. Excluding flash memory, Toshiba said it still sees its digital storage business as a growth area, but Osanai pointed out that HDDs will soon be replaced by solid state drives based on flash memory, so the firm can’t expect much growth. Meanwhile, “in the past, Toshiba depended too much on its flash memory unit,” so if it really gets serious about improving the profitability of other businesses, there is a chance, Sato said. While social infrastructure businesses may not have huge growth potential, their sales are quite stable, so by restructuring costs, Toshiba can probably increase their profitability, he said. In addition, Osanai emphasized that Toshiba needs to strengthen its management team. “I think it’s critical for Toshiba to bring a leader who can set a long-term strategy and firmly implement it,” he said.

nuclear power;toshiba;restructuring;westinghouse

jp0000728

2017/03/26

Over 200 couples take part in Thailand's annual 'Running of the Brides' event

BANGKOK - Some 250 couples in wedding dresses and suits raced through a Bangkok park on Saturday in the annual “Running of the Brides” to compete for $28,000 in wedding prizes. Sirada Thamwanna, 29, said she was exhausted after winning the 4 km (2.5 miles) foot race with her soon-to-be groom Sittichai Prasongsin, 27. “Just now, I told the groom that I was going to give up, I can’t do it anymore,” Sirada said after crossing the finish line in a white wedding dress and black running shoes. “He supported me and said that we only had a little more to go,” she added. The free wedding package includes a gown for the bride and suit for the groom, wedding bands, a honeymoon on the Thai resort island of Phuket and a trip to the Maldives.

thailand;bangkok;bride race

jp0000729

2017/03/26

Timing, like finances, everything for Osaka's new rail links

OSAKA - Like Chicago, the American city it is most often compared to, Osaka is a major train junction connecting eastern and western Japan. With the last bit of a new shinkansen route now decided and plans moving forward for a new municipal line that will zip visitors from Osaka’s bullet train station to Kansai airport much quicker than before, the city hopes it will become ever-more convenient for tourists to stay in town for a while before heading off to Kyoto, Ishikawa, Hiroshima or Tokyo. Earlier this month, the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito ruling coalition finalized plans for the last section of the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line from Kyoto to Shin-Osaka Station. The line, expected to be completed midcentury, will link the Sea of Japan coast city of Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, with Shin-Osaka Station in less than 1½ hours. The leg from Kanazawa to Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, is expected to open around 2022. Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who represents a Fukui district it will stop in, and her supporters hope the route between Kanazawa and the city of Fukui will open before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 to allow residents to hop on the Hokuriku bullet train to Kanazawa and then board the Nagano bullet train for Tokyo, a trip that would take hours less than is currently the case with regular express trains. The Kyoto-Shin-Osaka Station route was the last piece of the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line to be decided, following the setting of the route between Tsuruga and Kyoto. The Hokuriku bullet train will be able to take passengers from Kanazawa to Shin-Osaka Station in about 80 minutes at a cost of around ¥8,700. Currently, a Japan Railway express train makes the run in about 2½ hours at a cost of around ¥7,000. The next step is to conduct an environmental impact assessment and finalize where the new stations will be built. Both projects begin next month and are expected to be completed by around 2022. Assuming there are no problems and that financing is available, construction of the Tsuruga-Shin-Osaka route would then begin around 2031 after about a decade of preparation, with the line opening by around 2046. “Routing the last leg of the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line through the southern part of Kyoto Prefecture will bring economic benefits to the region,” said Kyoto Gov. Keiji Yamada earlier this month. He strongly backed the final choice. News that the Hokuriku bullet train line to Shin-Osaka was decided came at about the same time the city of Osaka announced plans for the Naniwasuji Line, which will run from a new station on the north side of JR Osaka Station to Kansai airport. The trip currently takes just over an hour on the fastest JR train. From the new station to the airport via the Naniwasuji Line, it will take 40 minutes. Planning for the Naniwasuji Line began almost three decades ago. When it will open depends on how quickly financing is secured. With construction costs estimated at ¥400 billion, how much of the financial burden should fall to city taxpayers, and how much to JR and other railways that will benefit from the line is expected to be the subject of contentious debate. “The number of visitors to Osaka is increasing and businesses are becoming more interested in the city. The Naniwasuji Line is critical for the north-south flow of traffic,” said Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura last month.

ldp;kansai;shinkansen;hokuriku shinkansen

jp0000730

2017/03/07

Mizuho plans fund to build dorms for foreign students in Japan

Mizuho Bank Ltd. said Tuesday it plans to launch a ¥10 billion fund with a real estate developer and a trading company to build dormitories for international students studying in Japan. The number of international students is expected to increase, with the government aiming to boost the figure to 300,000 from the current 200,000 by 2020. The projected increase makes dorms a stable investment, said Mizuho spokesman Ken Kobayashi. Along with Mizuho, Tokyo Tatemono Co. and Marubeni Corp. will invest in the fund. Kobayashi said the window is open for parties interested in joining the project, adding that the fund will be launched around June. While details are still to come, seven to eight dorms will likely be built. The monthly rent will be in the tens of thousands of yen. Locations are also undecided, but Kobayashi said the group hopes to build the first complex in fiscal 2018. While Japan hopes to attract more foreign students, there are apparently not enough dormitories to accommodate them. An education ministry official said the ministry has heard from some colleges that their international students want to live in dorms, but the schools don’t have them. Thus, the new fund will be a meaningful project, Kobayashi said. The plan will also be promising from a business perspective because the vacancy rate is expected to be low, he said. The fund will look to sell the properties to other real estate investment funds after running them for roughly five years. According to a survey by the Japan Student Services Organization, a Tokyo-based semi-public body, 19.4 percent of international students were living in dorms provided by schools or public entities and 75.4 percent were staying in apartments or condos. The average monthly rent was ¥31,000, while 68.6 percent said the space was less than 15 sq. meters. The survey was taken in January 2016, collecting data from 7,000 international students, including those studying at colleges, vocational and Japanese-language schools.

international students;study abroad;mizuho bank

jp0000731

2017/03/07

Harsher penalty for rape, sweeping revisions in bill approved by Cabinet

The Cabinet approved a sweeping bill Tuesday that would impose harsher penalties for rape and other sex offenses, including the recognition of male rape victims for the first time. The measure, if passed by the Diet, will raise the minimum sentence for rape to five years from the current three years, expand the scope of victims, including males, and no longer require a victim to file a complaint in order to prosecute an assailant in a rape or sexual molestation case. Despite the enduring impact on survivors of sexual assault, the three-year minimum sentence for rape was shorter than the mandatory five-year minimum penalty for robbery under the current criminal code, which was enacted a century ago. Currently, a victim must first file a complaint to enable criminal prosecution. Removing this precondition is expected to ease the burden on rape survivors, since many are reluctant to go public. The bill will be submitted during the current Diet session and was compiled after a legal advisory panel to the justice minister issued a report in September calling for changes to the law. Among other proposed revisions is a clause covering domestic sexual abuse, which punishes parents or guardians who engage in sex with children in their care, even where force or threats are not involved. The current law requires use of force or threats in establishing rape cases. The bill also calls for raising the minimum sentence for rape resulting in death or injury to six years imprisonment from five years. Under current statutes, a person who robs a victim after raping them faces a shorter sentence than if the assailant had committed a single act of robbery. While the latest move marks a significant step forward for victims, some say tougher penalties alone will not prevent sex crimes and that enhanced correctional programs for offenders will be needed as well. The government has for years been looking toward strengthening penalties for sex offenses. In October 2014, the then-Justice Minister Midori Matsushima set up an expert panel to review the laws.

sex;rape;legislation

jp0000732

2017/03/31

Foreign students surge nearly 15% thanks to lift from Vietnam

The number of foreign students in Japan was 14.8 percent higher than last year as of May 2016, thanks to a boost from Vietnam, a public tally showed Friday. According to the Japan Student Services Organization, an independent administrative entity affiliated with the education ministry, 239,287 foreigners were studying across Japan as of May 1 last year. By country, Chinese accounted for the largest number at 98,483, up 4,372 from a year earlier. Vietnamese came second at 53,807, up 14,925, with nearly half enrolled at Japanese-language schools rather than universities. An education ministry official attributed the rise to a growing interest in Japan stemming from the increasing number of Japanese companies making inroads into Vietnam, as well as a rise in local agents assisting with studying in Japan. Nepalese ranked third at 19,471, up 3,221. By contrast, the number of Japanese studying abroad at universities and other institutions fell 3.9 percent in 2014 from the previous year, according to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry. According to ministry data, a total of 53,197 Japanese were studying abroad in 2014. The United States was the most popular destination, down slightly at 19,064 from the previous year, followed by China with 15,057 and Taiwan with 5,816.

china;vietnam;foreign students

jp0000733

2017/03/30

Thinning Arctic sea ice lets in light, prompts algae bloom: study

OSLO - Climate change is stirring life in the Arctic Ocean as thinning sea ice lets in more sunlight, allowing microscopic algae to bloom in the inhospitable region around the North Pole, scientists said on Wednesday. The micro-algae may now be able to grow under the ice across almost 30 percent of the Arctic Ocean at the peak of the brief summer in July, up from about 5 percent 30 years ago, they wrote. Blooms may become even more widespread. “Recent climate change may have markedly altered the ecology of the Arctic Ocean,” wrote scientists in the United States and Britain led by Christopher Horvat of Harvard University. The first massive under-ice bloom of algae was seen in 2011 in the Chukchi Sea north of the Bering Strait separating Alaska and Russia, a region until then thought too dark for photosynthesis. The scientists, writing in the open-access journal Science Advances, based their estimates on mathematical models of the thinning ice and ponds of melt water on the ice surface that help ever more sunlight penetrate into the frigid waters below. The average thickness of Arctic sea ice fell to 1.89 meters (6.2 ft) in 2008 from 3.64 meters in 1980, according to another study. Sub-ice algae seem to become dormant in winter, when the sun disappears for months, and are revived in spring. Horvat said it was unclear how the growth might have knock-on effects on the Arctic food chain, perhaps drawing more fish northwards. “Very few of these blooms have been observed,” he wrote in an email. The new light adds to uncertainties about the economic future of the region that is warming at about double the average rate for the Earth as a whole. Almost all governments blame this trend mainly on a build-up of man-made greenhouse gases. U.S. President Donald Trump, however, has sometimes called man-made warming a hoax and signed an order on Tuesday to undo climate change regulations issued by former President Barack Obama. Governments of nations around the Arctic Ocean, including the United States, have been working on rules for managing potential future fish stocks in the central Arctic Ocean as the ice shrinks and thins. They last met in mid-March in Iceland.

climate;oceans;climate change;arctic;environment

jp0000734

2017/03/08

China to launch lunar probe this year, testing capability for 'march towards deep space'

BEIJING - China on Tuesday announced plans to launch a probe to bring back samples from the moon before the end of the year, which state media cast as competition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambitions to revitalize U.S. space exploration. The Chang’e-5 lunar probe is undergoing a final round of tests and is expected to be on standby for launch from August, the People’s Daily said, citing the China National Space Administration. The launch will involve new challenges for China in sample collection, taking off from the moon and high-speed re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, making it “one of China’s most complicated and difficult space missions,” an official from China’s Lunar Exploration Program, Hu Hao, told the paper. President Xi Jinping has called for China to become a global power in space exploration. “Not long ago, the United States’ Trump administration revealed an ambition to return to the moon. Our country also announced a series of deep space exploration plans,” said the official Science and Technology Daily. “The moon is the first stop for humanity’s march towards deep space.” In February, the Trump administration asked the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to look into the possibility of manning a heavy-lift rocket mission, expected to be launched in 2018, perhaps setting the stage for a human return to the moon. China’s new probe is the latest step in its lunar exploration program. In 2013, it completed its first lunar “soft landing” since 1976 with the Chang’e-3 craft and its Jade Rabbit rover. China is aiming to send a probe to the far side of the moon by 2018, the first such trip ever, and hopes to put astronauts on the moon by 2036.

china;space;astronomy

jp0000736

2017/03/23

Kanagawa man who tweeted 'lion scare' after 2016 Kumamoto quakes avoids charges

KUMAMOTO - A man who fanned a “lion scare” with false tweets following the deadly earthquakes that hit Kumamoto last April has managed to avoid indictment. The Kumamoto District Public Prosecutor’s Office said Wednesday the act of the 21-year-old man from Kanagawa Prefecture did not merit criminal charges and he has shown remorse for his tweets. The man spread false tweets right after the first of several major quakes hit Kumamoto and its vicinity on April 14 last year, including one saying, “The earthquake has released a lion from the zoo — Kumamoto.” He also posted an image showing a lion walking on a street, which later turned out to be an unrelated image he had taken from the internet, according to police. On April 14 and 15, Kumamoto City Zoological and Botanical Gardens received more than 100 inquiries about an escaped lion. The man was arrested three months later for allegedly obstructing the zoo’s operations.

animals;earthquakes;kumamoto;zoo;lion

jp0000737

2017/03/12

Sleepy Colorado town comes alive for Frozen Dead Guy Days

NEDERLAND, COLORADO - Every March the cryogenically frozen corpse of a Norwegian man breathes fresh life into sleepy Nederland, Colorado, where throngs of fun-lovers fill the streets for Frozen Dead Guy Days, a festival in honor of the town’s most famous resident. The annual three-day festival is the brainchild of a local businesswoman who came up with the whimsical idea 16 years ago as a way to attract visitors to Nederland, where the man’s body has lain in repose in a shed since 1993. The event topped her wildest expectations: From a modest crowd of about 1,000 the first year, the festival now draws about 20,000 visitors. Many of them dress in Halloween costumes as they revel in such quirky events as a polar plunge, a frozen salmon toss, musical acts and a costume ball. “We never imagined it would be so well-received and grow so large — you could say I created a monster,” said Teresa Crush-Warren, credited with hatching the idea when she was president of the local chamber of commerce. This year’s festivities began with a parade of a dozen hearses, followed by a “coffin race” through the streets of the Rocky Mountain town, where temperatures hovered just above the freezing mark. Sam Baggall, 20, a student at the University of Colorado, stood next to the makeshift coffin she and her five teammates fashioned out of cardboard. “Our plan is to get out quick and be agile,” she said. The annual bash honors Bredo Morstoel, who died and was cryogenically frozen in his native Norway in 1989 with the hope that low temperatures will allow him to be resuscitated sometime in the future. After a four-year stint at a California facility, his grandson moved him in 1993 to his property outside of Nederland, 17 miles (27 km) west of Boulder. Six years ago, the chamber sold the festival to Amanda MacDonald, an event planner for the chamber. The festival itself is a break-even endeavor, MacDonald said by telephone, but it is a boon for local businesses in the hamlet of about 1,500 full-time residents. Morstoel’s grandson no longer lives in Nederland and the family has no connection to the celebrations other than paying for his upkeep. Once the festival ends, 59-year-old Brad Wickham will resume his job as Morstoel’s caretaker, every two weeks hauling 1,000 pounds (454 kg) of dry ice — carbon dioxide in solid form — to the sarcophagus and packing it around the corpse. “There are a lot of scientists studying cryogenics, but I’m just a guy with a truck and a strong back,” he said.

colorado;festivals;humor;stunts

jp0000738

2017/03/13

Japan's decluttering guru Kondo now has an app for tidying up

AUSTIN, TEXAS - The newest tool for internationally acclaimed organizing guru Marie Kondo in her global battle against messy rooms is an app. “My goal is to have as many people as possible who can get the job done in tidying up,” she said in an interview after speaking at the South by Southwest technology conference in Austin, Texas, over the weekend. “To achieve that, I’m implementing various measures, one of which is the app to support decluttering,” said the woman whose name has been turned into a verb by followers who clean out clutter at home and say that have “Kondoed” their closets. Kondo is known to global audiences for her best-selling books, including “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” which has been translated from Japanese to more than 40 languages, with more than 7 million copies sold worldwide. The app called KonMari was launched a few months ago and gives out organizing tips, allows people to share before and after pictures, and provides a platform for her followers to socialize. The followers of the woman who earned a spot on Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list in 2015 call themselves “Konverts.” But her critics see her as an irritating presence with a cult-like following, harping on the glaringly obvious need to be better organized. Kondo has made an art of folding clothes into optimal shapes for storage and her KonMari disciples see her words as a philosophy about seeking a happier life by putting their homes in order. Kondo spends 80 percent of her time outside of Japan, but with the help of technology, she wants to knock on the doors of more homes around the world. “Tidying up is a broad theme that is relevant to anyone in any country,” said Kondo, who has a knack for decluttering her quotes.

apps;marie kondo;cleaning;decluttering

jp0000739

2017/03/13

Pressure continues to mount on Moritomo Gakuen chief

OSAKA - Pressure on Yasunori Kagoike, head of scandal-plagued Moritomo Gakuen, in the Diet and in Osaka Prefecture showed no sign of abating Monday even though he withdrew his application to open a new elementary school and indicated last week he would resign. With questions about why Moritomo Gakuen was able to purchase land from the government at a substantial discount and who in the political world might have helped him with the deal not going away, Kagoike turned down an invitation Monday by the Liberal Democratic Party’s members in the Osaka Prefectural Assembly to give unsworn testimony, saying this isn’t the right time. It wasn’t clear whether Kagoike will agree to appear at the assembly at a later date. Also Monday, a lawsuit against Moritomo Gakuen and Kagoike was filed in the Osaka District Court. Parents of a former child at a Moritomo-run kindergarten are seeking damages of about ¥1.65 million, claiming their child was expelled after they refused to join the Parent Teacher Association because it failed to provide itemized accounts for its expenditures. Other lawsuits are possible from Osaka parents who enrolled their children in the new elementary school originally scheduled to open April 1 but is now postponed indefinitely, forcing them to find other schools. In an Upper House committee Monday, Democratic Party member Toshio Ogawa, a former prosecutor, grilled Defense Minister Tomomi Inada on her relationship with Moritomo Gakuen. He revealed she had been listed as a legal representative for Moritomo in documents related to a civil court trial in 2005. Inada denied any involvement. “My husband and I had a law office and perhaps we had joint power of attorney. But I’ve never represented Moritomo or Kagoike, never been to court for them and have never given them legal consultation,” Inada said. The ruling and opposition parties in the Diet are expected Tuesday to discuss inviting Kagoike to provide unsworn testimony about what happened, and who was involved in the decision to sell the government-owned land valued at ¥956 million to Moritomo Gakuen for only ¥134 million. Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui, who is also the leader of the national Nippon Ishin no Kai party, has said he supports Kagoike testifying.

osaka;education;elementary schools;moritomo gakuen;yasunori kagoike

jp0000740

2017/03/13

Abe stands his ground as Moritomo Gakuen scandal drags on

More than a month has passed since nationalistic school operator Moritomo Gakuen first made headlines over a controversial land deal for its next school. With fresh revelations piling up daily against the Osaka-based company, the scandal has also engulfed the Diet, particularly the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, its leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as well as his wife, Akie. But what is the central issue and why is the scandal impacting the political world, and Abe’s administration? Following are questions and answers on the saga: How did the scandal start? The scandal broke when the daily Asahi Shimbun reported Feb. 9 that Moritomo Gakuen had bought from the central government an 8,770-sq.-meter lot in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, last June for an estimated ¥134 million — about one-tenth of the price of comparable nearby land. The suspicious land deal initially drew attention because Akie Abe was to serve as the honorary principal of Mizuho no Kuni, a private elementary school Moritomo Gakuen planned to build on the land. Moritomo Gakuen runs an Osaka kindergarten known for an ultranationalist education style based on Shintoism, and the Toyonaka school was expected to operate in a similar manner. During Diet sessions, opposition lawmakers argued that some lawmakers may have pressured the Finance Ministry to provide a discount on the land and offer other favorable conditions to Moritomo Gakuen because Akie Abe had accepted the honorary post. Prime Minister Abe denied that he, his wife or his office were involved in the land deal, vowing he would resign as prime minister and as a Diet member should his comments prove false. Later in February, Akie Abe stepped down as honorary principal amid rising criticism of her decision to accept the position. The media storm, meanwhile, raged on as reports alleged the Finance Ministry offered other unusually favorable conditions to Moritomo Gakuen during the land negotiations. Moritomo Gakuen President Yasunori Kagoike, who announced Friday his plans to resign, is a “management member” of the Osaka branch of the Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), Japan’s largest nationalist lobby group, one reason the land deal caught the attention of overseas media. On Feb. 21, Nippon Kaigi released a statement claiming it had nothing to do with the land deal between Moritomo Gakuen and the Finance Ministry. Can the Finance Ministry defend the transaction? It has defended the deal in terms of it including unforeseen costs. In May 2015, the Finance Ministry concluded a land-lease contract with Moritomo Gakuen on the condition that the school operator purchase the land within 10 years. Later, industrial waste, including concrete, wood and plastic, was reportedly found in the soil. A third-party real estate appraiser estimated the value of the land plot at ¥956 million, but the Finance Ministry estimated it would cost ¥819 million to remove the industrial waste. The ministry said it discounted that amount from the appraised value and sold the land for ¥134 million in June 2016. What’s suspicious about the land deal? A major issue is whether the 86 percent discount was justified. How the waste removal cost was calculated has not been made clear. The Osaka Aviation Bureau of the infrastructure ministry calculated the cost, but during an Upper House session on March 1, the ministry admitted the bureau had no previous experience in estimating waste disposal costs. The government separately paid more than ¥131.76 million to Moritomo Gakuen to help decontaminate the land before it was sold. This means the net income from the land sale for the central government was only about ¥2 million. By contrast, the government sold an adjacent 9,492-sq.-meter lot for ¥1.423 billion to the Toyonaka Municipal Government in 2010. “The government gave up the national property for almost nothing,” Democratic Party lawmaker Nobuhiko Isaka said at a Lower House plenary session on Feb. 27. Has anything illegal been reported? No evidence has surfaced that laws were violated during the land deal, somewhat nullifying some of the opposition camp’s arguments against the LDP. The opposition suspects that ruling bloc lawmakers pressured the Finance Ministry to give Moritomo Gakuen favorable conditions on the land purchase. Ministry officials claimed they followed internal rules and had already discarded documents recording the details of the negotiations with Moritomo Gakuen, raising concerns that a further investigation would be difficult. LDP lawmakers maintain that because there appears to be no evidence the law was broken, no one should be summoned to testify before the Diet and no full-fledged investigation should be launched. A nationwide telephone survey conducted by Kyodo News over the weekend, meanwhile, found that 86.5 percent of respondents viewed the purchase of the heavily discounted land as inappropriate. The poll also showed 74.6 percent of respondents want Kagoike summoned to the Diet so lawmakers can get to the bottom of the land deal. Why did Moritomo Gakuen withdraw its request to open the Mizuho no Kuni Elementary School? The withdrawal on Friday was because the Osaka Prefectural Government had already indicated it would reject the request. Through Diet sessions and media reports, it was revealed that Moritomo Gakuen made a number of serious false statements — if not lies — about its elementary school plan. For example, it was revealed that Moritomo Gakuen had submitted three vastly different construction cost estimates — the figure it sent to the central government amounted to ¥2.18 billion, the one sent to the Osaka Prefectural Government was ¥756 million and the quote given to the operator of Osaka international airport was ¥1.5 billion. This has led many to suspect Moritomo Gakuen submitted different figures to maximize public subsidies for the project, according to media reports. Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui said it would be “practically impossible” to allow the school to open because the prefecture now must re-examine the application papers submitted by Moritomo Gakuen. How have voters and LDP lawmakers reacted? According to a poll conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun on March 11 and 12, 75 percent of 1,012 respondents said they are not satisfied with the government’s explanation of the land deal. But the same poll also showed the support rate of Prime Minister Abe’s Cabinet was still high, at 50 percent, though 5 points down from the previous poll last month. This high voter support for Abe’s government has apparently encouraged the LDP-led ruling camp to stand its ground and continue to reject calls from the opposition to summon witnesses and launch a parliamentary investigation into the suspicious land sale. Inside the LDP, no rival politician appears powerful enough to challenge Abe over the Moritomo Gakuen scandal, and so far, Abe’s political power has yet to be seriously dented.

shinzo abe;osaka;education;scandals;moritomo gakuen

jp0000741

2017/03/14

Cockroach longevity linked to female cohabitation

Female cockroaches living in groups with other females are more likely to have their unfertilized eggs hatch, a research team at Hokkaido University has found, providing a possible explanation for the reason the insect has managed to survive for hundreds of millions of years. When three female American cockroaches — a species widely found throughout the world — were placed together in a study, ootheca, or the egg case of the cockroaches, formed more quickly than when a single female was observed, the team said. “It explains well the fact that several female cockroaches will be able to maintain a colony in a more stable manner than a single female cockroach,” which can be regarded as a sign of cooperative behavior that is optimized for reproduction seen in other insects like white ants, the research team said in a news release Monday. A group of more than 15 female cockroaches was able to maintain a colony for more than three years, indicating that ootheca form faster the more cockroaches there are, it said. “We found that ootheca formation is facilitated when a female cockroach recognizes another female by touching it with their antennae, which are also used for smelling and tasting,” said Ko Kato, a graduate student who took part in the study. Backing the findings, ootheca formation in a group of female cockroaches with severed antennae was slower than those with the sensory appendages, the team said. In a case in which a female cockroach and a male cockroach incapable of copulating were placed together, the formation of ootheca took longer than the female-only group, the team said. To exterminate cockroaches, “It will be essential to prevent the spread of the females, as there are cockroaches that can expand their habitat range through parthenogenesis,” or asexual reproduction, the team said. The findings will be published on the zoology journal website Zoological Letters.

research;hokkaido university;cockroach

jp0000742

2017/03/14

Akie Abe's connection with Moritomo Gakuen scandal puts role of Japan's first lady under spotlight

OSAKA - Is the wife of a prime minister a public official who should be subject to legislative rules and bureaucratic regulations on her activities, or a private citizen who shouldn’t be held accountable over the political impact of her activities? As the land deal scandal involving Osaka-based Moritomo Gakuen, a nationalist private educational entity, drags on, debate continues in the Diet after speeches at the controversial school were given by Akie Abe, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wife, during visits in 2014 and 2015. She came under fire not only for giving two speeches in which she praised the school’s educational philosophy, known for its nationalist ideology, but also for allowing her name to be used as honorary principal of a new elementary school that is now at the center of the scandal. She resigned the position after the scandal broke, when it was revealed last month that Moritomo Gakuen paid ¥134 million for land the government had valued at ¥956 million. Asked whether his wife is a public official, Shinzo Abe told the Diet earlier this month that she is not. “I’m a public official, but my wife is a private citizen,” he said. “As the wife of the prime minister, she accompanies me on overseas trips where her role entails the nature of a public figure. But my wife has a separate personality. For example, on nuclear policies, where she’s anti-nuclear, she goes to rallies that wouldn’t be appropriate for me to attend. So she’s definitely not a public official.” However, five bureaucrats are assigned to provide Akie Abe with support as Japan’s first lady. During her husband’s first stint as prime minster in 2006, she had only one such assistant. “The activities of a prime minister’s wife have expanded (over the years). A variety of people have asked me to do a variety of things, and I’ve become extremely busy,” she said last week. In response to Diet questions, the government said that when she spoke at Moritomo Gakuen, government officials accompanied her. But there were no legal problems, it claimed, because she paid for the officials’ travel fare. In September 2015, Akie Abe spoke at a Moritomo-run kindergarten where she was introduced as the honorary principal. Her visit came a day after her husband traveled to Osaka. It was also a day after discussions between government officials and a Moritomo contractor over construction costs were held at the new elementary school. The Finance Ministry admitted in the Diet that it disposed of records of those talks. The concept of an American-style Japanese first lady is a relatively recent one. Traditionally, prime ministers’ wives have acted as behind-the-scenes supporters and have shunned the limelight. Thus, legally, their status was vague. “The traditionally expected role of a prime minister’s wife has been nothing more than a hostess. In this regard, Akie can be called exceptional,” said Yu Uchiyama, a professor of comparative politics at the University of Tokyo. In the U.S., the role of first lady is both one of tradition and one fixed in current legislative policy and law. Over the centuries, it evolved into a combination of written and unwritten rules, precedents and expectations on the part of the public that are sometimes vague and contradictory. But in modern times, three laws heavily influence the first lady’s role in the U.S. and her limits. These include the Post Revenue and Federal Salary Act of 1967, the Anti-Deficiency Act of 1884 and the White House Personnel Authorization Act of 1978. The postal act prohibited nepotism in executive branch employment, appointments and promotions within the government. In practice, this meant a president’s wife couldn’t be appointed to or employed in an executive branch posting. The Anti-Deficiency Act, on the other hand, banned all voluntary governmental service, unless given to save a life in an emergency. These two laws seemingly created a Catch-22 — relatives of the president could not be paid to serve in the government and volunteers were not allowed to perform government service. To get around this, the Justice Department eventually decided that the first lady is a “legal volunteer” within the executive branch. Though working for free, she performs various duties on behalf of the president, traveling the world as a presidential representative, delivering speeches, hosting organizations at the White House and conducting substantive policy meetings. The most recent ruling on the role of a U.S. first lady came in 1993, after then-President Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary, was appointed to chair a presidential task force on health care reform. Medical lobby groups filed suit against the appointment, and the question arose over whether Hillary Clinton, as the first lady, was also a federal official. The District Court for the District of Columbia concluded the first lady failed to conform to the legal definition of a federal official. On appeal, however, the D.C. Circuit Court reversed that judgment. The first lady was identified as a de facto federal official, in a narrow sense, and therefore subject to some federal regulations. “In this case, for the first time, the first lady is formally identified as a political actor in her own right. No longer can the political activism of the president’s wife be dismissed as the expression of one woman’s opinion,” Connecticut College professor MaryAnne Borrelli wrote in a 2002 article. Uchiyama said the Moritomo Gakuen scandal will lead to legal, or maybe less-binding, changes in Japan that could make the role of a prime minister’s wife more or less like that of the U.S. first lady. “In my opinion, the problems lies in the ambiguous dichotomy between ‘public official’ and ‘private citizen.’ Akie acts somewhat like a public figure and has influence over Japanese society. But she is just a private citizen,” Uchiyama said. “Currently, there is no law or government order that prescribes the role of the prime minister’s wife. But many, especially in the opposition parties, will demand public rules for the role.”

scandals;akie abe;moritomo gakuen

jp0000743

2017/03/14

Japan defense chief Inada in crosshairs after Moritomo scandal flip-flop

A court record linking Defense Minister Tomomi Inada and a scandal-tainted nationalist Osaka-based school operator emerged Tuesday, prompting Inada to withdraw an earlier denial of the link, as opposition lawmakers trained their fire on her for making a false statement before the Diet. The court document, a copy of which was first posted by freelance journalist Tamotsu Sugano to his Twitter account Monday, showed that Inada and her husband, Ryuji Inada, both lawyers, had served as court attorneys in October 2005 for Moritomo Gakuen, the scandal-hit school operator headed by Yasunori Kagoike. During an Upper House Budget Committee session Monday, Inada had vehemently denied ever serving as a court attorney or legal adviser to either Kagoike or Moritomo Gakuen. But on Tuesday, Kyodo News, which apparently obtained court records from the same lawsuit, reported that Inada had attended a trial hearing as an attorney for Moritomo Gakuen. During a Lower House plenary session later Tuesday, Inada admitted that she had attended a trial session in her husband’s place as an attorney for the embattled school operator. Inada claimed she had erroneously made the denial because she had forgotten the incident. “I’d like to correct this and apologize for it,” Inada said, adding that she hoped to continue to “sincerely perform” her duties. Opposition forces are now ready to further grill Inada and prolong Diet deliberations in a bid to force her resignation. However, the effectiveness of such tactics remains unclear, as the Abe Cabinet has appeared to weather the scandal so far, enjoying strong voter support in recent media polls. During Tuesday’s session, Inada also admitted that the law office she jointly ran with her husband offered legal advice to Moritomo Gakuen from 2004 through 2009. In the Diet, Inada has been repeatedly questioned by opposition lawmakers about her ties to Moritomo Gakuen, known for advocating ultranationalist, prewar values at its Tsukamoto Kindergarten in Osaka’s Yodoawa Ward. Inada, too, has been known for her nationalistic views when it comes to Japan’s wartime history. Facing reporters earlier Tuesday, Inada emphasized that she has nothing to do with the controversial land deal that has plagued the school operator. Moritomo Gakuen has been in the public spotlight in recent weeks after the Asahi Shimbun reported last month that it bought an 8,770-sq.-meter lot in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, from the central government at a heavily discounted price. The operator bought the parcel for an unusually low price of just ¥134 million from the Finance Ministry in June 2016. This was about one-tenth of the price of comparable nearby land. Opposition lawmakers have expressed suspicion that some powerful, conservative lawmakers may have put pressure on the Finance Ministry to offer the massive discount. Akie Abe, wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, had served as the honorary principal of an elementary school that was scheduled to be built on the land — a fact that has fanned public uproar over the scandal, prompting her to quit the post late last month. Also Tuesday, land minister Keiichi Ishii said the government will move forward with procedures to have Moritomo Gakuen repay about ¥56 million in subsidies. The subsidies were awarded after the school operator submitted to the central government a contract with a quote for construction costs far greater than in documents presented to other entities. In addition, the Osaka Prefectural Government is considering filing a criminal complaint against Moritomo Gakuen over inconsistencies in the documents, according to the prefectural board of education. A senior member of the school board said Moritomo Gakuen appears to have underreported the cost of construction to the prefecture to make its financial state look more solid. Information from Kyodo added

scandals;tomomi inada;moritomo gakuen;yasunori kagoike

jp0000744

2017/03/22

In Japan first, woman gives birth using egg from anonymous donor

A woman suffering from fertility problems due to an ovarian defect successfully gave birth using an egg from an anonymous donor in the first such case using in vitro fertilization in Japan, a nonprofit organization supporting the treatment said Wednesday. Although there have been earlier cases of children conceived using a husband’s sperm and eggs donated by sisters or friends, this is the only known case in the country involving eggs from an anonymous female donor with no ties to the recipient, according to the Kobe-based NPO Oocyte Donation Network (OD-NET). Both the mother, who is in her early 40s, and the baby girl born in January have been doing well and are free of health problems, the group said. The birth once again throws a spotlight on the country’s lack of laws on using eggs from third-party donors or stipulating parental rights to the child born through this medical treatment. A Supreme Court ruling in 2007 stated that a woman who gives birth is the legal mother of the child. But the current Civil Code does not specify the woman’s legal status if the child is born from a donated egg. A policy body of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party drafted a bill in March last year, stipulating that where a child is conceived from a third-party donated egg, the woman who gives birth to the baby is legally the mother. But the bill has not been submitted to the Diet. “We need more donors to cater to the needs of many. But for that, we definitely need legal regulations,” Sachiko Kishimoto, the head of OD-NET, said during a news conference in Tokyo. “If we have laws, those couples who wish to undergo the treatment can choose to do so with ease. The government should work on the issue seriously.” Two other women are currently pregnant after undergoing the same medical treatment with the support of the organization, according to Kishimoto. The woman who gave birth through IVF using the donated egg and her husband’s sperm said she recovered her will to live after she became pregnant. “I’ve gained hope to live by going through pregnancy, giving birth and raising the child,” the mother said in a statement issued Wednesday. “There still are so many people who ardently wish to have a child but are unable to do so because of their illness. I hope my case will give hope to such people.” OD-Net was launched in October 2012 and started soliciting volunteers to donate their eggs anonymously to help women who have fertility problems such as Turner’s syndrome or early menopause. The group limits eligible donors to those under 35 years of age who have previously given birth. Egg donors must also agree to disclose their personal information, such as their name and address, if a child born from one of their eggs should request the information after turning 15 years old.

children;women;fertility;ivf;donors

jp0000749

2017/04/04

University of Tokyo leads new Japan ranking of higher education institutions

The University of Tokyo was crowned the nation’s top university for teaching and learning environments in a first-ever Japan ranking by the Times Higher Education (THE) magazine , with Tohoku University in Miyagi Prefecture coming in second and Kyoto University placing third. In THE Japan University Ranking 2017, produced in cooperation with educational services company Benesse Holdings Inc., national universities dominated the first nine spots. Seven were former Imperial universities founded between 1886 and 1939, including Nagoya University and Osaka University, which are considered to be on par with Ivy League schools in the United States. Renowned private institutions Waseda University and Keio University came in at No. 10 and No. 11, respectively. Unlike its annual global ranking that places greater focus on research performance, the Japan ranking emphasized what the institutions offer students. They were graded on four categories: educational resources, educational satisfaction, outcomes, and international environment, according to THE. By category, municipal public institution Akita International University topped the educational satisfaction ranking, while Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, which boasts students from 87 countries, led the international environment category. The University of Tokyo, commonly known as Todai, took first or second place in three of the four categories. But when it came to the internationalization of its campus, Todai lagged behind many, coming in at No. 54. Phil Baty, editor of the magazine’s rankings, said the list of the top 150 universities provides a “much richer, much deeper perspective of Japanese universities against the much wider range of criteria that is relevant to families and students.” In a recent news conference in Tokyo, he added that there is often “a lack of international outlook” at universities, “which haven’t been successful in recruiting international talents and international faculties.” Indeed, Japan is infamous for its poor internationalization of higher education. According to data released by the Japan Student Services Organization, as of May last year, the number of international students in Japan stood at 239,287, about 15 percent higher than a year earlier. But nearly 30 percent were students at Japanese language schools. In the annual THE world ranking released in September, the University of Tokyo was ranked at No. 39 and Kyoto University at No. 91. The two were the only Japanese universities that made it into the top 200. A total of 406 universities cooperated with the Japan assessment. The ranking was the second national ranking by THE following U.S. college rankings released last year.

university of tokyo;college;university rankings;times higher education

jp0000750

2017/04/05

60% of sexual minorities bullied at school, survey finds

Despite growing support nationally for added LGBT protection in recent years, nearly 60 percent of sexual minorities have been bullied at school, according to a recent online survey that also found teachers did not help end the intimidation. The internet survey, conducted by Yasuharu Hidaka, a professor of social epidemiology at Takarazuka University School of Nursing in Osaka, found that 58.2 percent of respondents faced bullying in elementary, junior high or high school, and most of them endured verbal abuse and anti-gay slurs. Only 13.6 percent said teachers had helped resolve the issue. The findings shed light on the lack of support for LGBT students at classrooms. Commissioned by Lifenet Insurance Co. and conducted between July and October last year, the study polled 15,064 subjects from teenagers to nonagenarians. Hidaka said the poll of sexual minorities is the largest survey of its kind to date in Japan. Nearly 70 percent of those surveyed did not learn anything about homosexuality at school. The percentage was lower for those in their teens and 20s, compared with those aged 40 or older. More than 20 percent said that homosexuality was taught in schools as “abnormal” or received negative information about sexual minorities. The ratio was higher for younger people than for older generations. In April 2015, the education ministry distributed a notice to education boards, urging them to protect sexual minorities. It also created a brochure on the topic the following year to be used by teachers. Despite these efforts, teachers’ general understanding of LGBT issues hasn’t improved much, said Hidaka. Hidaka conducted a separate study between 2011 and 2013 surveying 6,000 teachers from kindergarten through high school. Based on the survey, nearly 40 percent believed sexual orientation was determined by choice. In the same survey, only 13.7 percent said they had any experience educating students on LGBT issues. Over 40 percent of those who never taught the subject said they did not feel the need to do so. “Many don’t have the knowledge. They never imagine that there could be a sexual minority student in their classrooms,” Hidaka told The Japan Times on Wednesday. “The important thing is to conduct full-fledged training for teachers, as they can’t teach the subject without having a correct understanding of the issue.” The latest survey also found that about 70 percent of respondents faced discriminatory verbal attacks at school or in the workplace. Only 30 percent said these environments were LGBT friendly. “More companies are starting to turn their eyes to (issues faced by LGBT people). But such moves have been made mainly in Tokyo, or large-scale organizations, especially foreign companies,” Hidaka said. Japan still has a long way to go, he said, urging both private and public sectors to be more proactive in deepening understanding and respect for the LGBT community. Around 8 percent of the country — or 1 in every 13 people — belong to a sexual minority group, according to estimates by Japan LGBT Research Institute, a think tank launched by advertising giant Hakuhodo DY Holdings Inc.

lgbt;sexuality;discrimination

jp0000751

2017/04/05

1 in 4 men, 1 in 7 women in Japan still unmarried at age 50: report

Nearly 1 in 4 men and 1 in 7 women in Japan were yet to be married at age 50 in 2015 in a clear sign that Japanese are increasingly shying away from tying the knot, a government report has showed. The new report, obtained ahead of its release by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, showed the proportion of people who have never married by age 50 hit a record 23.37 percent for men, up 3.23 percentage points from the previous survey in 2010, and a record 14.06 percent for women, up 3.45 points. The figures were in sharp contrast with a 1970 survey that showed 1.70 percent of men and 3.33 percent of women had never married by that age. The data, which excludes people who were divorced or separated by the death of a spouse by age 50, is released every five years based on a national census. Experts attributed the growing trend to less social pressure to marry and financial worries among workers as more people hold nonpermanent jobs. It also comes amid a nationwide low birthrate that shows no signs of abating and growing concerns that more people will resort to nursing and health care services when they get older in the absence of a spouse or child that can provide such care. “Being single for a lifetime is no longer a rare course of life,” said Akiko Kitamura, a senior researcher at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute who specializes in issues of marriage and childbirth. “There is less social pressure to marry than before, and more people are choosing to stay single of their own will. “At the same time, more young people cannot get married even if they wanted to because they cannot picture having a family, particularly a child, because of a lack of opportunity to meet people and of financial success.” Kitamura said the country needed policies for “stabilizing employment and arranging an environment in which both men and women can work while raising children.” Roughly 40 percent of Japan’s labor force comprises temporary workers, making unstable employment conditions more common than decades ago. The report showed that by area, Okinawa had the largest percentage of unmarried men, at 26.2 percent, while Tokyo had the largest percentage of unmarried women, at 19.2 percent. Another survey released by the governmental institute last year showed most unmarried people wanted to get married, but many cited a lack of finances as an obstacle. In that survey, which targeted people aged 18 to 34, 86 percent of male respondents and 89 percent of female respondents said they hoped to eventually get married, while more than 40 percent said ensuring they had money for marriage was a hurdle they needed to overcome.

population;survey;marriage

jp0000752

2017/04/02

60% of new utilities object to helping pay Fukushima compensation

More than 60 percent of major new entrants to the electric power industry object to the government’s plan for them to shoulder some of the compensation costs stemming from the Fukushima nuclear crisis, a recent Kyodo News survey showed. Of the 44 utilities surveyed, 29 said the plan by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry could have a negative impact on their businesses or prevent liberalization of the retail electricity market. Last April, Japan freed up the retail electricity market, ending the decades-long monopoly of Japanese regional power companies. The new entrants are those that joined the industry after the liberalization of the market and are expected to promote competition, paving the way for lower electricity bills and new services. But the ministry decided in November last year on a plan to let the utilities share the burden of the aftermath of the nuclear crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, devastated by meltdowns triggered by the 2011 earthquake-tsunami disaster. Meanwhile, 70 percent of the new entrants said they were able to win customers as planned or even more. The survey shows that while the liberalization of the market has proceeded relatively smoothly, systematic problems remain. A total of 266 companies were registered as new electricity retailers as of March last year. The newcomers include gas suppliers such as Tokyo Gas Co. and Osaka Gas Co., major oil refiner JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp., telecommunications service provider KDDI Corp. and railway company Tokyu Corp. Kyodo News sent questionnaires to 50 major new retailers of which 44 responded. About the ministry’s plan, 13 retailers said that it will have negative effects on their business, while 16 said the plan will have certain effect on the business. Only one company said that it did not expect any effects. The ministry has deemed users should shoulder their share of the burden as they have widely benefitted from nuclear power before the crisis but 18 companies said they did not agree with the ministry. A total of 30 companies said that the number of customers they have acquired so far reached or topped initial goals while 11 said that they were not able to win customers as expected. The survey found that 41 companies were satisfied that they had entered the electricity retail market because they were able to connect well with customers which contributed not only in boosting profitability but also in enhancing the recognition of the companies. No company said it regretted entering the market. On future management, 18 said they will expand their business operations while 8 companies said they will maintain the status quo. No companies said they will pull out of the market or consider scaling down operations. Meanwhile, Japan’s energy sector saw more deregulation with the city gas market freed up Saturday, allowing major utilities to enter the market and enhance competition with gas company rivals in the industry. Utilities including Chubu Electric Power Co. and Kansai Electric Power Co. have launched special websites introducing their lower gas price plans. But compared with the liberalization of the retail electricity market, the gas retail market has attracted fewer entrants.

fukushima no . 1;tepco;survey;nuclear crisis;power utilities

jp0000753

2017/04/27

Investment funds target firms focusing on job, work environment reform

With the government’s drive to create more flexible and effective working environments, investment companies have been setting up funds to invest in companies focusing on job market reforms, including the promotion of women in the workplace. Fund managers believe that business performance will improve at companies dedicated to labor reforms in response to changes in society, and therefore their stock prices will rise. The success of such funds could give a boost to government initiatives advocated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as part of his economic policies that are aimed at balancing people’s lifestyles and ways of working. Last October, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Asset Management Co. set up one such investment fund, called “Minna no Chikara” (“power of everyone”), to solicit investors through online brokers. Managers at the firm invest in shares from various companies, including some Nadeshiko stocks, which are companies designated by the economy ministry and the Tokyo Stock Exchange as providing sufficient opportunities for women. The fund also invests in companies that actively promote better employee health and diversify their workforce by hiring more foreign staff and people with disabilities. Managers use their own criteria to determine the stability and growth potential of the companies. “We invest in corporations that can respond to social concerns. We also seek long-term investment gains,” a manager of the fund said. “We want investors to maintain their holdings for a long time.” Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co. set up a similar fund in July 2015, soliciting investors through three online brokers. At present, the fund invests in about 70 companies that its managers have determined are financially healthy, in addition to some of the Nadeshiko stocks. Analysts for the fund visit companies and ask how they promote or provide good working environments for women. Daiwa Asset Management Co.’s “Tsubaki” fund debuted in March 2015, which was touted as a “fund to help women’s success.” As of this April, the fund has been sold through 23 regional and credit banks. It invests in about 80 companies recognized as providing a good environment for women to continue working or companies selling products and services targeted mostly at female consumers. The fund has far outperformed the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Topix index, a manager at the firm said.

funds;investment trust;work-life-balanace

jp0000754

2017/04/29

Yamato raises delivery prices by ¥140 to ¥180

In a move prompted by a serious staff shortage and a boom in online shopping, Yamato Holdings Co. has announced it will raise its basic shipping fee for door-to-door parcel deliveries by ¥140 to ¥180, depending on size. The rate hikes — Yamato’s first in 27 years — are expected to take place by September. Yamato President Masaki Yamauchi told a news conference that the extra revenue will be used to improve working conditions at the nation’s leading delivery firm. Yamato is responding to pressure from revelations last year that many of its delivery drivers were forced to work overtime without pay, prompting it to retroactively pay ¥19 billion in unpaid wages to drivers and other workers by July. The company’s problems reflect Japan’s demographic woes, including a chronic manpower shortage caused by a birth rate that’s been low for decades, and by a rapidly graying population. Restaurants, supermarkets and other firms in the service sector have been forced to change their business cultures and shorten operating hours. Yamato needs to raise prices to keep remain viable as part of Japan’s “social infrastructure,” Yamauchi said in announcing the reform plans. Base shipping rates vary by parcel size, place of dispatch and destination. For example, it costs ¥756 to send a package weighing up to 2 kg and measuring a combined 60 cm in length, width and height within one region. Yamato Transport Co., the holding company’s primary unit, said the hike will raise delivery prices by 6 percent on average in fiscal 2017, which began this month, from ¥559 per parcel last year. That could improve profitability. On Friday, Yamato Holdings posted a consolidated net profit of ¥18 billion for the past year through March, down 54.2 percent from a year earlier, due partly to payment of the unpaid wages. Revenue rise 3.6 percent to ¥1.47 trillion on rising deliveries driven by the boom in online shopping. Yamato Transport plans to begin offering a ¥50 per parcel discount to customers who collect them at its sales locations rather than at home. The change is an attempt to reduce the number of redeliveries slowing down its delivery drivers. It will also ask major corporate clients like Amazon.com to cooperate in adjusting shipping orders during busy periods. Large customers account for 90 percent of its deliveries. The company handled a record 1.87 billion packages over the past year through March. Yamato expects to reduce that volume by 80 million items in the current business year. Yamato Holdings will cut salaries for Yamauchi and five other executives for six months as a result of the unpaid overtime problem.

delivery;yamato transport;yamato holdings

jp0000755

2017/04/29

In Virginia, the bizarre mystery of abducted and shaved cats

NEW YORK - Police and townsfolk in Waynesboro, Virginia, are trying to figure out why someone is abducting and shaving pet cats. Since December, at least seven cats have suddenly shown up at their homes with shaved belly, groin and leg areas, Waynesboro Police Captain Kelly Walker said on Friday. “The shaving appears to be almost surgical,” Walker said. No harm was done to the animals, but they “seemed a little skittish” after the curious incidents, he said. The occurrences came to the attention of police when an owner asked about posting flyers to encourage the public to report suspicious activity to authorities. “Shaving Cats!!??” says the poster in Waynesboro, a city of 21,000 about 140 miles (225 km) southwest of Washington. “Several neighborhood cats have been ABDUCTED and had their lower abdomens and groin areas SHAVED. This is very upsetting to the cats and their owners.” Walker said the cats were collar-wearing, well-groomed pets, not strays or feral cats, although some were outdoor cats. All of them had been either neutered or spayed. The investigation focuses on five cats — some of which were shaved twice — from one household and two cats from another, which came home partially hairless three weeks ago. “Probably the best solution is for whoever is doing this to just stop,” Walker said.

animals;abuse

jp0000756

2017/04/29

Voter apathy can threaten democracy

On April 17 the Asahi Shimbun reviewed the results of various local elections that had taken place the day before. The main story was not who got voted in or out, but whether or not anyone cared. The mayor of Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, was returned for a fourth term with a turnout of 58 percent, the lowest ever; Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture had a turnout of only 38 percent, also a new low, while Hino’s 37 percent in Tokyo set a new record as well. The rare “high” turnouts — 72 percent in Itoigawa, Niigata Prefecture, and 77 percent in Bungo Ono, Oita Prefecture, were still the lowest in their respective histories. There were more than a few races that weren’t races at all, since they consisted of only one candidate. In many instances, the municipalities in question didn’t even bother to hold elections. Why waste taxpayers’ money? Voter apathy is not exclusive to Japan — Donald Trump essentially became the U.S. president because of it — but the reasons for lack of interest in the political process in Japan may be different than they are in other countries. In a post about low voting rates, President magazine columnist Toshihiko Maita cited on his personal blog a survey that found 86 percent of young people in Japan “don’t trust the government,” while only 55 percent of older people said the same thing. Conventional wisdom holds that people who don’t like the government in a democracy will do what they can to change it by replacing those in power with someone else via elections. In Japan, young people don’t vote as much as older people do. According to Maita’s blog, the voting rate for the cohort that was able to vote right after World War II has remained more or less constant over the years, while that for subsequent generations has dropped steadily. According to an expert in an April 2 Tokyo Shimbun feature , the experience of living under de facto military rule made people appreciate the idea of an elected government. As older generations die out, overall voting rates decline because younger generations don’t see the point. A lack of confidence in the government doesn’t lead them to do something about it because cynicism about the political process is built into their world view. That’s why the same politicians win over and over again. Only people who think they have something at stake vote. The most closely watched poll on April 16 was Toyama’s, in which the entire city assembly as well as the mayor’s seat was up for grabs. Last fall, a number of assembly members from various parties — mostly from the majority Liberal Democratic Party — admitted to forging expense receipts and pocketing reimbursements for personal use. Fourteen resigned and a by-election was held Nov. 16 to fill those seats. Seven others who also misused funds, all LDP members, did not resign. The turnout for the by-election was 27 percent. The Asahi Shimbun thought that LDP supporters, disappointed by the scandal, didn’t bother to show up. Those who won were either from non-LDP parties or independents, five of whom were endorsed by the LDP. Despite no dedicated LDP candidates, the party retained majority control of the 38-seat assembly. Then on April 16, the LDP strengthened its majority, despite the fact that the turnout was 48 percent, 5 percentage points lower than the last city election in 2013. More interestingly, the LDP members who won — all incumbents, including a few caught up in the expenses scandal — polled fewer votes than they had in the past. Asahi’s Toyama edition reported that the candidate who received the most votes, incumbent Yukari Akaboshi of the Japan Communist Party, benefited from the scandal backlash, but her popularity hurt other JCP candidates. Only one garnered enough votes to get a seat. The system in Toyama is such that voters choose one candidate, and the top vote-getters win. According to Asahi’s analysis, Akaboshi’s higher name recognition meant that people inclined to vote for someone from the JCP (which prosecuted the LDP scandal in the assembly) overwhelmingly voted for her. As a result, the JCP, which used to hold four seats in the assembly, lost two, meaning they no longer have enough to ask questions during debates. By contrast, all three candidates from the Social Democratic Party won because the party, endorsed by local labor unions, made sure supporters spread their votes among the three. Nevertheless, it was the LDP that benefited the most, despite the general population’s disillusionment with the party. Media coverage focused on LDP candidate Kiyonori Yoshizaki, one of the politicians disgraced in the scandal. He campaigned by, in his own words, concentrating “on the issues as a real assemblyperson,” but lost anyway. Another tainted LDP member also lost, but four others who admitted to wrongdoing were re-elected. More to the point, two dozen independents endorsed by the LDP won seats, despite the fact that the 27 LDP-endorsed candidates received 34,000 fewer votes than the 28 LDP-endorsed candidates received in 2013. So despite the fact that a large number of LDP assemblypersons were caught abusing their positions and the party garnered fewer votes than they ever have, the LDP in Toyama is now more powerful than ever. Is this situation solely due to voter apathy? Does it prove that political cynicism is deeper than the media admits? Is the opposition just hopelessly, irreversibly clueless? The only thing we can say is that voter turnout will get worse before it gets better. Tokyo Shimbun reported that an estimated 2.4 million eligible voters were unable to cast ballots in the last general election due to age. These people are over 80 and because of infirmities they were unable to go to polling places to vote, though they wanted to. When this cohort was in their 60s and 70s their turnout rate was around 80 percent, but it was only 47 percent in the Upper House election of 2016. Some local governments are trying to pass laws that allow shut-ins to vote at home or in care facilities, which will only help until that layer of citizens is gone. Until younger people see a reason for showing up at the voting booth, nothing much is going to change.

ldp;liberal democratic party;asahi shimbun;jcp;tokyo shimbun;toshihiko maita;japan communist party;yukari akaboshi;voter apathy

jp0000760

2017/04/17

Japan's private schools fill a niche but at a cost

OSAKA - The saga of scandal-plagued, Osaka-based Moritomo Gakuen, which advocated a nationalist education, has thrown the spotlight on private educational institutions in Japan and how they are operated. While Japan’s public elementary, junior high and high schools are often praised internationally for their quality, especially in math and sciences, many parents in Japan have long complained about a decline in standards and look to private schools to provide the type of education they feel their children need. How many private elementary, junior high and high schools are there in Japan? Education ministry statistics show there were 20,601 elementary schools in Japan as of fiscal 2015. Of these, only 227 were private. That same year, out of a total of 10,484 junior high schools, 774 were private. But among Japan’s 4,939 high schools, 1,320, or 26.7 percent, were private. The trend over the past two decades shows that the number of private elementary and junior high schools has increased, while the number of private high schools has remained virtually unchanged. Education experts attribute this to a number of factors, including an increased demand among parents for better education at a younger age. Does Japan have a long tradition of private schools? Yes, very long. In a 2016 book on education and private schools, Masahiko Suruga traces the first private school in the country back to about 828, when the monk Kukai established Shugei Shuchi-in in Kyoto to teach Confucianism and Buddhism to ordinary people. A millennia later, during the 19th century, private education for a select few was offered to a closed Japan by the Dutch, who taught Western medicine and science. At the end of the Tokugawa Period, in 1858, the Shoka Sonjuku private school, run by famed intellectual Shoin Yoshida, was established in Yamaguchi Prefecture to teach young men military tactics and politics. Many of those who attended his school would go on to become leaders of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. In the post-World War II era, legal changes allowed for the rapid development of private schools. The Association of Private Universities of Japan notes there were three reasons for the spread of so-called incorporated educational institutions ( gakko hojin ) that manage private schools. First: to emphasize the value of diversity, in recognition of the narrow value system that brought Japan to war. Second: to help educate workers in the postwar period when the central government could not provide the necessary investment. The third reason is that while national universities trained the nation’s top government and business leaders, private universities could educate a broad range of specialties to create a large middle-management sector. Do those who set up educational institutions need to have an educational or academic background? No special training or advanced degrees are necessary. A private school operating as a business can be established by entrepreneurs regardless of their academic pedigree. However, what is required is a solid business plan and assurances that there will be a certain number of students and a certain teacher-to-student ratio. The education ministry is responsible for evaluating applications to start a private university or technical school. Prefectures are responsible for applications from entities wishing to establish private kindergartens, elementary, and junior high and high schools. So, legally, these incorporated educational institutions are similar to other incorporated businesses? There are many similarities. The Private Schools Act of 1949 is the fundamental legal instrument that establishes and regulates private schools in Japan. Prefectural governments have private schools councils that set out the frameworks for K-12 private schools. Council members are chosen by the governor for their relevant knowledge and experience in education. The law says the council should comprise between 10 and 20 members. What is the key barrier to gaining approval to set up a private school? In a word, money. Article 25, Section 1 of the Private Schools Act says that “an incorporated educational institution shall possess the facilities and equipment necessary for the private school that it establishes or the funds required therefor, as well as the property necessary for the management of the private school that it establishes.” The requirement to show that one has the necessary property, in particular, is one of the origins of the current problems with Osaka’s Moritomo Gakuen. The school has claimed that if it only rented, rather than purchased, land, its application to run a new elementary school might have been frowned upon by Osaka Prefecture. The land was later drastically, and suspiciously, reduced in price. In addition, ensuring prefectural officials that the necessary funds to operate have been secured is believed to be a reason why Moritomo submitted a low-cost construction estimate to the prefecture, one of three different estimates that the prefecture is now investigating. What does the future of private schools in Japan look like? With the number of children under the age of 14 expected to decline from about 15.5 million at present to about 13.2 million by 2030, the number of potential applicants for private kindergarten, elementary and junior high schools is clearly shrinking. While that will spur competition and force struggling private schools to close or merge, educational experts warn a balance needs to be struck between private education, which is profit-oriented and often emphasizes specific training and advocates specific philosophies, and the broader concept of a public education to create well-rounded citizens in a diverse society. Some worry over-privatization of schools will imperil the right to equal education opportunities, which are supposed to be free of charge under Article 26 of the Constitution.

education;schools;moritomo gakuen

jp0000761

2017/04/10

One of the healthiest parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef damaged by Cyclone Debbie

SYDNEY - A cyclone that left a trail of destruction in northeast Australia and New Zealand has also damaged one of the few healthy sections of the Great Barrier Reef to have escaped large-scale bleaching, scientists said Monday. The natural devastation adds to the human and economic toll of Cyclone Debbie, which killed at least six people in recent weeks and severed rail transport lines in one of the world’s biggest coal precincts. The damage caused when the intense, slow-moving cyclone system struck a healthier section of the reef outweighed any potential beneficial cooling effect, scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies said. “Any cooling effects related to the cyclone are likely to be negligible in relation to the damage it caused, which unfortunately struck a section of the reef that had largely escaped the worst of the bleaching,” ARC said in a statement. The World Heritage site has suffered a second bleaching event in 12 months, triggered by unseasonably warm waters, ARC added. Higher temperatures force coral to expel living algae and turn white as it calcifies. Mildly bleached coral can recover if the temperature drops, and an ARC survey found this happened in southern parts of the reef, where coral mortality was much lower, though scientists said much of the Great Barrier Reef is unlikely to recover. “It takes at least a decade for a full recovery of even the fastest-growing corals, so mass bleaching events 12 months apart offers zero prospect of recovery for reefs damaged in 2016,” said James Kerry, a senior research officer at the ARC. Repeated damage could prompt UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to reconsider a 2015 decision not to put the Great Barrier Reef on its “in danger” list. Tourists drawn to the unique attraction spend 5.2 billion Australian dollars ($3.9 billion) each year, a 2013 Deloitte Access Economics report estimated.

oceans;australia;weather;storms;biology;climate change;great barrier reef

jp0000763

2017/04/19

Amazon launches same-day delivery service for food and medicine

As delivery firms struggle to manage overwhelming numbers of parcels, e-commerce giant Amazon Japan G.K. is expanding its same-day Prime Now delivery service to include cooked meals and other items. Amazon Japan said Tuesday it teamed up with Mitsukoshi’s flagship store in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district to deliver foods such as deli fare and Japanese wagashi confections sold at the store. The online retailer also announced it has teamed up with pharmacy chains Cocokara Fine Inc. and Matsumotokiyoshi Holdings Co. to deliver cosmetics and other daily supplies within one hour after an order is placed. The Prime Now service, launched in November 2015, has been available to Amazon Prime members who pay an annual fee of ¥3,900. Customers may choose items via a smartphone app with a minimum purchase of at least ¥2,500. The service is currently available to customers in parts of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Osaka and Hyogo prefectures. The food delivery is only available for customers in eight Tokyo wards and the city of Urayasu in Chiba Prefecture. Meanwhile, Amazon.co.jp also started selling category No. 1 drugs, which require consultation with a pharmacist before purchase, at its website from Monday. Before placing orders, customers need to report their symptoms and medical history via a form on Amazon’s site. Items will only be delivered after approval by a pharmacist. Amazon is also reportedly considering a rollout of same-day delivery service of fresh food including fish and vegetables, although a spokeswoman for Amazon Japan on Wednesday declined to comment on the service. Similar options already exist in other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Competition over same-day delivery of groceries via online shopping is heating up in Japan. Retailers such as Ito-Yokado Co., Aeon Co., and Seiyu GK. are competing for market share. Foreign services such as UberEats are also vying for customers in the food-delivery fray. While same-day delivery options may expand the way people shop online, the home delivery industry is seeking ways to mitigate the burden caused the recent huge spike in the number of parcels being transported by understaffed fleets of drivers. According to transport ministry, a record 3.87 billion parcels were delivered in 2016, up about 32 percent from a decade ago. This is mostly due to the increased popularity of online shopping, a market that expanded about 1.8 times from 2010 to 2015. To alleviate work overloads on drivers, parcel delivery firm Yamato Transport Corp., the leading deliverer for Amazon, has negotiated with the e-commerce giant on measures to improve the situation, including pulling out of same-day delivery. For Prime Now service, Amazon has established a delivery channel separate from Yamato that is dedicated to same-day delivery, the Amazon spokeswoman said. She also said that parcels ordered through the service rarely requires the extra burden of re-delivery.

delivery;amazon;e-commerce;amazon.com;foods;yamato transport;prime

jp0000764

2017/04/19

Zuckerberg says augmented reality strategy to start with smartphones

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg laid out his strategy for augmented reality, saying the social network will use smartphone cameras to overlay virtual items on the real world rather than waiting for AR glasses to be technically possible. People will be able to use their phones to play games virtually on coffee tables, overlay statistics on a video of their daily run, leave a virtual note on the fridge, and more, Zuckerberg said Tuesday on stage at F8, the company’s developer conference in San Jose, California. It’s an evolution of the kind of technology that Snap Inc. pioneered, allowing people to change their faces into fun characters like puppies and vomiting rainbows. Facebook has spent the last few months adding Snapchat-like cameras to all of its apps. “Even if we were a little slow to add cameras to all our apps, I’m confident we’re going to push this augmented reality platform forward,” Zuckerberg said. “As silly as these effects might seem, they’re actually really important and meaningful because they allow us to share what’s important to us on a daily basis.” Zuckerberg sees virtual and augmented reality as the next phase of technological communication — and he’s not alone. Virtual reality completely immerses users in an artificial world and is being pushed most actively for gaming. Some analysts view it as a niche rather than a potential mainstream technology. Facebook in 2014 paid $2 billion for Oculus, a company that makes virtual reality headsets, taking an early step into the area. Now the field is crowded with others such as Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc., which have more hardware experience. Augmented reality is a less-intrusive technology that places virtual elements into a user’s everyday experience. Apple CEO Tim Cook is said to be focusing on this area. Some rivals are building new AR devices, including glasses that project images in front of a user’s eyes. The global market for augmented reality products is estimated to surge 80 percent to $165 billion by 2024, according to researcher Global Market Insights. With the camera-filter moves announced Tuesday, Facebook is diversifying its bet and focusing on an area where it’s already dominant: communications software. Zuckerberg said he’s going to open a platform for developers to make AR camera effects for Facebook’s apps, “so we can just be sitting here and we want to play chess, snap, here’s a chessboard and we can play together,” he said. “Or a digital TV on the wall, instead of a piece of hardware it’s a $1 app.” Snap announced earlier that it will also make it possible to overlay three-dimensional effects on a person’s surroundings.

facebook;mark zuckerberg;augmented reality;vr

jp0000765

2017/04/26

Yamato preparing 20% delivery rate hike in September, its first rise in 27 years

Yamato Transport Co., Japan’s leading door-to-door parcel delivery service provider, is making final arrangements to raise its base shipping fees by up to 20 percent in September, sources familiar with the matter said Tuesday. The rate hike would be the first in 27 years, except for increases made in line with consumption tax hikes, and will affect both individual customers and corporate clients. The move coincides with Yamato’s efforts to curtail some of its services, such as by shortening the hours during which same-day delivery can be rearranged, amid a serious shortage of truck drivers and long hours worked by employees due to a surge in online shopping. Yamato will use proceeds from the rate hike to improve its workers’ conditions and services for its clients. With rival parcel delivery providers similarly facing labor shortages, they may follow Yamato’s lead once the company goes ahead with the rate hike. Currently base shipping rates vary by parcel size, as well as place of dispatch and destination. For example, it costs ¥756 ($7) to send within the same region a parcel that weighs up to 2 kg and measures up to a combined 60 cm in length, width and height. Yamato will raise the rates by between 5 and 20 percent, depending on parcel size, according to the sources. Under the plan, the rate for a package that now costs ¥756 to send is likely to be around ¥900. Along with the shipping rate change, the company will review its contracts with major corporate clients to limit the volume of parcels it must handle. It has already begun talks with major clients, including Amazon.com Inc.’s Japan unit, and it may terminate contracts with clients that do not accept higher shipping rates. The company delivered a record 1.87 billion parcels in the year ended in March.

delivery;amazon.com;yamato transport

jp0000766

2017/04/21

China uncovers environmental breaches at two-thirds of firms

BEIJING - More than two-thirds of the companies investigated by China in its latest campaign against pollution have violated environmental rules, a environment ministry official told a briefing on Friday. China launched a campaign earlier this month aimed at “normalizing compliance” in 28 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, a major pollution hot spot. Tian Weiyong, head of the monitoring department at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said 4,077 firms had already been investigated as part of the campaign, and 2,808 firms were found to have violated environmental rules, 69 percent of the total. China is in the fourth year of its “war on pollution,” but the environment ministry has traditionally struggled to impose its will on powerful industrial enterprises and growth-obsessed local governments. It has drawn up new laws and standards, increased the range of punishments and boosted its monitoring and enforcement capabilities in order to tackle noncompliance. China imposed total fines of 6.63 billion yuan ($963.30 million) for environmental violations in 2016, up 56 percent compared to the previous year, the ministry said in a statement ahead of the Friday briefing. It said it punished a total of 137,800 environmental violations in 2016, up 34 percent from 2015, in its efforts to boost environmental law enforcement and compliance. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is under pressure to cut 2012 levels of breathable particulate matter known as PM2.5 by a quarter by the end of this year. While the region has made progress over the past five years, average PM2.5 concentrations in the region rose 48 percent year-on-year in the first two months of 2017. Friday’s statement said China now had a workforce of more than 70,000 responsible for enforcing environmental laws and regulations, and noted the MEP was also encouraging ordinary citizens to report pollution. In a separate statement on Friday, the Beijing environmental protection bureau issued new guidelines, saying it would pay rewards up to 50,000 yuan ($7,300) to residents who reported serious environmental violations, including the dumping of hazardous waste or radioactive materials. Individuals who report firms for improperly using or tampering with environmental monitoring equipment could get a 3,000 yuan ($440) reward, the environmental protection bureau said.

china;pollution;environment

jp0000767

2017/04/07

Overwhelmed Yamato mulls exit from Amazon's same-day delivery service

Yamato Transport Co., Japan’s leading door-to-door courier firm, is considering withdrawing from its same-day delivery service for Amazon.com Inc. to reduce the heavy workload on its drivers, sources close to the matter said Friday. The online retail giant offers the service to customers who pay a ¥3,900 annual fee, using Yamato to deliver parcels on the same day orders are placed. But the service is taking an increasing toll on Yamato’s drivers because of the high volume of nighttime deliveries. Yamato will gradually reduce the volume of parcels accepted for the service and eventually withdraw from it completely — a move that could force online retailers to review their services, the sources said. Last month, the group firm of Yamato Holdings Co. said it will review contracts with major corporate clients, including online retailers, to reduce the amount of parcels handled. The company had been considering partly terminating contracts with major clients who refused to accept raised shipping fees or deferring delivery days during peak periods. Yamato plans to raise its base shipping fees by the end of September for the first time in 27 years to maintain service quality amid a manpower shortage and an increase in online shopping, while struggling with growing costs for outsourcing its deliveries. With 90 percent of its parcels coming from corporate clients, including online retailers, Yamato had been offering them discounts based on delivery volume. But Yamato has already begun talks with major clients, including Amazon’s Japan unit, over the envisioned fee hike. According to Yamato, the company delivered roughly 1.8 billion parcels in fiscal 2016 amid a surge in online shopping. But the number is likely to drop, with Yamato pulling out of the same-day service and Japan Post Co., the mail unit of state-owned behemoth Japan Post Holdings Co., expected to pick up some of it.

delivery;amazon;yamato transport;yamato holdings

jp0000768

2017/04/07

Kinki finance staff met with Osaka officials five times to hash out Moritomo's school application

OSAKA - The Osaka Prefectural Government announced Thursday that staff from the Finance Ministry’s Kinki Local Finance Bureau met with its officials five times over 16 months to discuss scandal-plagued Moritomo Gakuen’s application to open a new elementary school, placing pressure on officials in the final meeting to settle things quickly. The announcement came after a weeks-long investigation by the prefecture into whether Moritomo Gakuen received preferential treatment. The opening of the school has been indefinitely postponed by a scandal in which the private school operator, which advocates a nationalistic education, received a suspiciously large discount on a piece of government property. Yasunori Kagoike, who was head of Moritomo Gakuen at the time of the land purchase, is also under investigation for submitting different construction cost estimates to the prefecture, the central government and the original owner of the parcel purchased for the new school in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture. According to the prefecture, the first of the five meetings between the prefectural and Kinki Local Finance Bureau officials took place on Sept. 12, 2013, at a time when the school’s operator had been told by the central government that the property and what Moritomo wanted to build on it could be rented first, as long as it was purchased at a later date. At that point in time, Kagoike could not afford the ¥956 million the land was valued at and decided renting was the best option. He later purchased the land after approval to open the school had been granted and the price had been slashed to ¥134 million for reasons yet to be determined. The prefecture says that, during the second meeting in November 2013, its officials were shown a proposal for financing by the regional bureau. The prefecture replied that since approval for the school had yet to be granted, it was difficult to reply to the proposal. Things remained static until late July 2014, when the regional bureau asked Osaka if any progress had been made on the issue. They asked the same question again just over two months later, in early October. At this point, Moritomo had not officially applied to open the school but did so at the end of that month. With the application still under review in January 2015, the Kinki finance bureau met with Osaka officials for a fifth time and asked when approval would be handed down, reportedly suggesting to the prefecture that it could control the schedule of the review process. The prefecture replied that, even if a reply was given, it didn’t mean it would be a nod of approval. However, about three weeks later, the prefecture gave conditional approval for the elementary school, despite concerns about whether it would attract enough students to meet local regulations for operating a private school and doubts about whether its financing plan was sound. The central government has denied it pressured Osaka Prefecture to grant approval. The prefecture’s investigation was based largely on individual memories of the events and interviews with officials, who said they did not take official notes of the meeting. Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui has called on the Finance Ministry and the Kinki Local Finance Bureau to release their own records of the five meetings. In Diet testimony last month, the Finance Ministry said records of individual meetings were only stored for one year and that the computer data had been automatically destroyed.

osaka;land;moritomo gakuen;kagoike

jp0000771

2017/04/08

Higher education keeps overreaching

Since the mid-2000s, the number of Japanese people who turn 18 in a given year has remained constant at about 1.2 million. That will change with the high school graduating class of 2018, which will be smaller than the class of 2017. This eventuality, though predicted some time ago, is making the government and the education industry nervous. For two decades the authorities have grappled with the declining birthrate and its effect on demographics, and during that same period there has been an increase in the number of universities in Japan. In 2015, there were 604 privately run four-year institutions of higher learning, or about twice as many as there were in the 1980s. In 2012, then-education minister Makiko Tanaka refused to approve three new private universities , saying there were too many already, but she later bowed to bureaucratic pressure and allowed them to open. The current amakudari (descent from heaven) scandal involving education ministry bureaucrats securing post-retirement employment in the field they administer before retiring — a practice that is illegal — shows that the relationship between the ministry and universities remains codependent. It’s all about money or, at this point, economic survival. This is one reason for the media’s obsession with Japan’s rankings in the latest survey of Asia’s best universities as carried out by the magazine Times Higher Education. The University of Tokyo, ranked seventh, is the only Japanese school in the top 10. Japan still has more schools on the list than any other Asian country, but that’s because it has so many schools in the first place. Only 12 of the 69 Japanese universities mentioned are in the top 100, two fewer than last year. In terms of worldwide rankings, only two Japanese schools are in the top 200 . Education researcher Yo Ogawa studies Japanese universities vis-a-vis their counterparts in other countries. In his latest book, “ Kieyuku ‘Genkai Daigaku’: Shiritsu Daigaku Teiinware no Kozo ” (“Vanishing ‘Universities on the Brink’: The Framework of Insufficient Enrollment at Private Universities”), he shows how declining academic standards are the result of schools’ efforts to stay in business. Years ago these institutions recognized the difficulties that lie ahead and have been trying to prepare themselves. During a recent discussion of his book on the TBS radio show Session 22 , Ogawa kept circling back to the number 80. Every year, private universities set enrollment targets, and as long as they reach at least 80 percent of their targets, they can get by. Anything less and they fall into the red. Right now, says Ogawa, about 130 private universities, or one-fifth of the total number in Japan, are already below 80 percent, which means if they don’t get their numbers up they will probably go bankrupt. The curtain on this Darwinian scenario rose in the ’80s, when two-year junior colleges saw enrollment drop because their main customer base — female high school graduates — decided to pursue university degrees as clerical jobs were becoming automated. Many of these schools, with the permission of the education ministry, restructured as private universities. The timing was good. The children of the baby boom generation started graduating from high school in 1986, so there was greater demand for higher education. Ogawa calls this period the “bonus stage.” Private universities charged whatever they wanted. Juku (cram schools) practically printed money. Universities received another boost when the bubble era ended in the early ’90s. As growth slowed, fewer companies hired high school graduates, so more young people felt they needed a university diploma to get a good job. Though the government already knew enrollment would drop by the end of the decade, they allowed more new universities to open. Compared to other developed countries, Japan’s matriculation rate to four-year universities was low at 50 percent, so there was room to work with. The trick was to get high school graduates who would normally go on to vocational schools to switch to universities, so the government relaxed regulations to allow universities to adopt departments and curricula that were more transparently job-oriented. In the ’80s, the only private university with a nursing program was St. Luke’s. Now, one out of four has one. Private universities also developed “katakana courses” — programs with English language names like “communications” and “global education” that had a fashionable ring to them. With their own enrollments dropping, many vocational schools restructured as universities. Last year, news site Post Seven reported that the number of private universities facing insolvency was around 250, higher than Ogawa’s number. Private institutions derive 80-90 percent of their operating budgets from tuition, and since 2009 some have restructured as public schools, which receive funds from local governments and thus can charge lower tuition fees. Local governments like the idea because they think young people in their areas will take advantage of the lower cost rather than move away for college. But as one researcher told Post Seven, such public schools become a net burden on the finances of the local governments and in the long run siphon students away from private schools with sounder management and better academic standards. The effort to increase and maintain enrollment results in a deceleration of scholastic progress — less world-class research, fewer academic papers — and a glut of veterinarians and dentists. The hallowed national university system isn’t completely free from these concerns, either. In 2004, each was incorporated and put in charge of its own finances, but the employees had no experience in running corporations. According to the Mainichi Shimbun , soon-to-retire education ministry officials were “transferred” to these schools to help them with budgets and the like — basically amakudari through a loophole. By that token, it doesn’t take a leap of logic to believe that the purpose of deregulating private universities was to keep them in business so they could provide bureaucrats with new fields to graze after being sent out to pasture.

university;higher education;rankings;makiko tanaka;the university of tokyo;amakudari;yo ogawa

jp0000775

2017/04/01

Japan Times 1967: 'Wife no longer hesitant in taking a bath first'

100 YEARS AGO Friday, April 13 1917 Wife no longer hesitant in taking a bath first It has been discovered that cherry trees at Yoshino-yama, the most celebrated cherry flower resort in Japan, have been attacked by white ants. This has given no small surprise to the caretakers of the resort and on Monday last Dr. Nawa, prominent entomologist, and several members of the Nawa Institute for Entomological Research visited Yoshino-yama and instituted investigations as to the damage wrought by the white ants. A vigorous crusade against invaders has been launched and is reported to be still in progress. It is regrettable to learn that a number of ancient cherry trees have already fallen victims. 75 YEARS AGO Tuesday, April 14, 1942 Bataan Peninsula falls after MacArthur flees The complete occupation of the Bataan Peninsula was announced in a communique issued by the Imperial Headquarters at 4:20 p.m. on Monday. The announcement reads: “The Imperial Army Units in the Philippine area crushed the main body of the American-Philippine forces falling back on strong fortresses, and on April 11, eight days since the commencement of the general attack, completed the occupation of the Bataan Peninsula.” Another communique was issued by the Imperial Headquarters at 4:25 p.m. the same day. It stated: “The Supreme Commander of the Army Forces in the Philippine area is Lt.-Gen. Masaharu Homma.” Domei has the following to say in comment on the reduction of the Bataan Peninsula: “Following the capture of Manila on Jan. 3, the remnants of the defeated American-Philippine forces, thrown into consternation by the lightning speed with which the Imperial Forces advanced, betook themselves to fortresses in the Bataan Peninsula. There the enemy troops, in geographically advantageous positions, made frantic efforts to check the further advance of the Japanese. “Gen. MacArthur, commander-in-chief of American-Philippine forces, escaped to Australia, leaving the men under him to their fate when he saw that he was in danger. Without a leader, the American-Philippine forces which had by this time been reduced to a strength of 70,000 men, had, until they surrendered, been putting up ineffectual resistance against the Japanese. The general attack on the enemy troops in the Bataan Peninsula was commenced on April 3, on the occasion of Jimmu Tenno-Sai, anniversary of the demise of the Emperor Jimmu. The bombardment of the fortresses upon which the enemy troops were falling back was so violent that it almost changed the shape of spear-like mountains on which they were located. 50 YEARS AGO Wednesday, April 5, 1967 Wife no longer hesitant in taking a bath first The Japanese wife no longer hesitates to take a bath ahead of her husband. This was reported last week by the Life Science Research Society after it had polled some 1,000 persons of both sexes. There was a time when the husband was the first to take a bath while other members of the household had to wait their turns. This is no longer true, the pollsters said. On the status of women, 17.3 percent believed Japanese women had grown “strong.” But 34 percent believed men still enjoyed the extra privileges. Most of those who believed women are enjoying equal rights were in their 20s, the pollsters said. Asked if equal rights were desirable, 18.6 percent replied in the affirmative while 15.7 percent said women tended to be too assertive. About 30 percent believed “things are just right.” About 56 percent said there exist equal rights in their homes, but 13 percent believed the husband “tended to lord it over.” Twenty-six percent said men asserted their authority too much but that was “all right.” Only 4.1 percent believed women were domineering. About 18 percent said men and women were “inferior in ability.” 25 YEARS AGO Saturday, April 18, 1992 Fingerprint revision passes amid outcry The Lower House passed a bill Friday to limit the fingerprinting requirement for alien registration to nonpermanent foreign residents. But some foreign residents have criticized the bill for failing to abolish the fingerprinting system altogether and for treating any violator of any section of the law as a criminal. If the bill, a revision of the Alien Registration Law, is passed by the Upper House during the current Diet session, it is expected to take effect by next Jan. 10. The Justice Ministry will abolish the fingerprinting system for permanent residents and introduce a family registration system, which will use the resident’s picture and signature and will contain information on parents and spouses living in Japan. The current law requires all foreign residents who are 16 years or older and who stay in Japan for over one year to give a print of their left index finger when applying for alien registration certificates. Under the new law, permanent foreign residents who will become 16 between the date of the bill’s passage and the date when it takes effect will not be required to give their prints. The bill also contains a rider that says it will be revised thoroughly in 1998 so its basic purpose will be changed from the control of foreign residents to provision of government services for them. But even under the new law, about 320,000 nonpermanent residents, including 40,000 Koreans, will have to give their fingerprints. It will be impossible to erase the prints already on government files because they are on microfilm along with other information. Both permanent and nonpermanent foreign residents will also be required to carry alien registration certificates at all times, as under the current law. “The revision shows the government still treats foreigners as a potential national security threat and tries to control them,” said Robert Ricketts, an American who is teaching English at Wako University.

wwii;world war ii;sexism;cherry trees;fingerprinting;bataan peninsula