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jp0010127
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2018/01/08
|
Iran bans English in primary schools after leaders' warning of 'cultural invasion'
|
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Iran has banned the teaching of English in primary schools, a senior education official said, after Islamic leaders warned that early learning of the language opened the way to a Western “cultural invasion.” “Teaching English in government and non-government primary schools in the official curriculum is against laws and regulations,” Mehdi Navid-Adham, head of the High Education Council, told state television late Saturday. “This is because the assumption is that, in primary education, the groundwork for the Iranian culture of the students is laid,” Navid-Adham said, adding that noncurriculum English classes may also be blocked. English lessons usually start in middle school in Iran, around the ages of 12 to 14, but some primary schools also have English classes. Additionally, some children also attend private language institutes after their school day. And many children from more privileged families attending nongovernment schools receive English tuition from day care through high school. Iran’s Islamic leaders have often warned about the dangers of a “cultural invasion,” and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei voiced outrage in 2016 over the “teaching of the English language spreading to nursery schools.” Khamenei, who has the final say in all state matters, said in a speech to teachers: “That does not mean opposition to learning a foreign language, but (this is the) promotion of a foreign culture in the country and among children, young adults and youths.” “Western thinkers have time and again said that instead of colonialist expansionism … the best and the least costly way would have been inculcation of thought and culture to the younger generation of countries,” Khamenei said, according to the text of the speech posted on l eader.ir , a website run by his office. While there was no mention of the announcement being linked to more than a week of protests against the clerical establishment and government, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has said that unrest was also fomented by foreign enemies. Iranian officials said 22 people were killed and more than 1,000 arrested during the protests that spread to more than 80 cities and rural towns, as thousands of young and working-class Iranians expressed their anger at graft, unemployment and a deepening gap between rich and poor. A video of the announcement of the ban was widely circulated on social media on Sunday, with Iranians calling it “The filtering of English,” jokingly likening the ban to the blocking of the popular app “Telegram” by the government during the unrest.
|
protests;iran;education;schools;english;languages
|
jp0010128
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"social-issues-asia-pacific"
] |
2018/01/08
|
BBC editor Carrie Gracie quits China post over pay discrimination against women
|
BEIJING - The BBC’s China editor has resigned her position in Beijing in protest over what she called a failure to sufficiently address a gap in compensation between men and women at the public broadcaster. Carrie Gracie’s departure is the latest aftershock from the BBC’s forced publication last year of pay levels for its top earners that showed two-thirds of those in the top bracket were men. A 30-year veteran of the BBC, Gracie said in a statement on her website addressed to BBC viewers that she could no longer perform her job at a high level while battling with bosses over pay equality. Gracie said she learned that two of the BBC’s four international editors — both men — made at least 50 percent more than their two female counterparts. She said she was not seeking more money for herself but only demanding that the BBC observe British law requiring equal pay for equal work. Gracie said she would stay with the BBC and “return to my former post in the TV newsroom where I expect to be paid equally.” “The BBC must admit the problem, apologize and set in place an equal, fair and transparent pay structure,” Gracie wrote. Rather than waste money on an “unwinnable court fight against female staff, the BBC should immediately agree to independent arbitration to settle individual cases,” she wrote. The BBC on Monday quoted a spokeswoman as reaffirming its commitment to equal pay and saying a separate report on pay for on-air staff would be issued in the “not too distant future,” the statememt said. “A significant number of organizations have now published their gender pay figures showing that we are performing considerably better than many and are well below the national average,” it continued. “Alongside that, we have already conducted an independent judge-led audit of pay for rank and file staff which showed ‘no systemic discrimination against women.’ “ Gracie, who took on the newly created job of China editor four years ago, said women at the BBC are running out of “patience and goodwill” in the face of what she called a “divide and rule” approach and a continuing refusal by the corporation to admit to discriminatory policies. She said those who complain face the threat of retaliation and even dismissal, while others are either bogged down in arbitration talks or offered new pay packages on condition the terms remain secret. “Despite the BBC’s public insistence that my appointment demonstrated its commitment to gender equality, and despite my own insistence that equality was a condition of taking up the post, my managers had yet again judged that women’s work was worth much less than men’s,” she wrote. Gracie’s move received voluble praise online from her colleagues, with veteran BBC journalist Lyse Doucet tweeting, “Brilliant Brave.” The list published last year showed that two-thirds of the BBC’s highest earners were men, with the highest-paid woman earning less than a quarter of the highest-earning male star. Many BBC men were also found to be receiving far higher salaries than women in comparable jobs.
|
china;media;rights;women;jobs;bbc;pay
|
jp0010129
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/01/08
|
Village in Nagano comes up with hunk calendar to help 12 bachelors find mates
|
Women hoping to find Mr. Right in 2018 should check for dates on the Otoko Goyomi (Men’s Calendar) published by the village of Otari in Nagano Prefecture. The calendar showcases a dozen local bachelors who are looking for wives. Otari is promoting the charms of its rustic scenery and hot springs along with the strong men living in the mountainous region. It hopes the calendar will help the 12 men find wives either within or outside the village. The village office will serve as an intermediary if a woman wants to go on a date with one of them. The village of 3,000 near the border with Niigata Prefecture is experiencing population decline. Its population now stands at roughly a third of its mid-1950s figure. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research predicts Otari’s population will drop to 909 by 2060. The village hopes the wall calendar, which features men aged from 20 to 37, will reduce the pace of decline. The village office approached a community development group formed by young people to help find men for the project. The 12 chosen were either self-nominated or recommended by others. Mr. July, whose hobby is mountain climbing, can be seen staring into the distance from a snow-covered peak. Mr. October is pictured grinning into the camera after finishing a day of harvesting rice. November focuses on a man soaking in an outdoor onsen (hot spring), while Mr. January hits the slopes at Otari’s ski resort. The calendar lists the names, professions, hobbies, goals and other data about the men and their dream girls on each page. “I want to enjoy this scenery with someone, just the two of us,” one profile reads. Another teasingly says: “I like to go fast in the snow.” The village printed 1,500 copies of the calendar for sale at its office, ski resort and other places for ¥1,500 each. It is also accepting orders by mail. “Please contact us if you would like to go on a date or get acquainted with one of the men,” said a representative from Otari’s planning and finance section. For inquiries, contact the Otari Village Office at 0261 (82) 2001.
|
relationships;marriage;depopulation;nagano prefecture;otari
|
jp0010130
|
[
"national",
"history"
] |
2018/01/08
|
U.S. launched massive attacks on Japanese mainland after taking Okinawa, documents show
|
NAHA, OKINAWA PREF. - Toward the end of World War II, the United States was able to launch massive attacks on mainland Japan after seizing Okinawa, dropping around 7,000 tons of bombs, a study of U.S. documents shows. The findings are based on an analysis of more than 10,000 pages of declassified military documents conducted by Kanto Gakuin University professor Hirofumi Hayashi. The analysis helps clarify the overall picture of how U.S. forces attacked the mainland from Okinawa, said Masahiko Yamabe, a researcher at the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, in Koto Ward. According to the documents, which were found at the U.S. National Archives, more than 65 locations in 13 prefectures in southwestern and western Japan were targeted from Okinawa, with 7,000 tons of bombs dropped in the last three months of the war. U.S. forces landed on a small group of islands west of Okinawa’s main island in March 1945, starting a fierce three-month ground battle. The documents show that on May 13 the same year, Marine Corps F4U fighters flew from Okinawa’s Yomitan airfield to bomb a small island to the north. Four days later, two U.S. Army P-47 fighters that took off from Okinawa conducted an attack on Kyushu for the first time. Before then, the U.S. had also used the Mariana Islands as a base for launching attacks. The documents analyzed also refer to civilian casualties. For example, an Army document describing an Aug. 10, 1945, attack states, “1 individual strafing pass on a large group of people numbering approximately 150 to 200 in the main street” in what is now Ebino, Miyazaki Prefecture, which resulted “in killing 15 to 20 people.” Professor Hayashi, who specializes in contemporary history, said the documents make clear that “U.S. military bombers and fighters carried out attacks on civilians indiscriminately, hitting small communities, areas where people gather as well as trains.” Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, after the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to World War II.
|
okinawa;history;world war ii;u.s.-japan relations
|
jp0010131
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2018/01/01
|
Likud party calls for de-facto annexation of Israeli West Bank settlements
|
ISRAEL - Reuters Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party unanimously urged legislators in a nonbinding resolution on Sunday to effectively annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, land that Palestinians want for a future state. By enacting civilian law over settlements, the move could streamline procedures for their construction and expansion. That land is currently under military jurisdiction and Israel’s defense minister has a final say on building there. The settlers are subject to Israeli civilian law. “We will now promote the recognition of our sovereignty of the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). … We must begin to enact this sovereignty, we have the moral right and obligation towards our settler brothers,” Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told a meeting of Likud’s Central Committee. Netanyahu is not bound to follow the resolution. He did not attend the meeting, which attracted several hundred delegates, including ministers, legislators and party officials. The Likud Central Committee is the party’s governing body. At least two previous Likud Central Committee decisions have been ignored by party leaders: In 2002, it voted against the creation of a Palestinian state, but then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would act as he saw fit and Netanyahu in 2009 voiced conditional support for the establishment of a Palestinian state in a landmark speech. Political commentators said the decision might bolster right-wing support for Netanyahu, who could seek a public mandate in an early election as he awaits possible criminal indictments against him on corruption suspicions. He denies wrongdoing. Although parliamentary elections are not due until November 2019, the police investigations in two cases of alleged corruption against Netanyahu and tensions among partners in his governing coalition could hasten a poll. Most countries view settlements that Israel has built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war as illegal. Israel disputes that and cites biblical, historical and political links to the West Bank, as well as security interests. About 400,000 settlers and 2.8 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. The Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with east Jerusalem as its capital. In 1981, Israel enacted civilian law on the Golan Heights, territory captured from Syria in 1967, a de-facto annexation of the strategic plateau. The move has not won international recognition. Israeli settlements have been one of the main stumbling blocks in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that have been frozen since 2014. Efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys to restart them have not yet shown any progress. Trump in December recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, reversing decades of U.S. policy.
|
israel;benjamin netanyahu;palestinians;likud;settlements;west bank;donald trump
|
jp0010132
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"social-issues-asia-pacific"
] |
2018/01/01
|
Amid tight security, hundreds of couples ring in new year at mass Jakarta wedding
|
JAKARTA - Hundreds of Indonesian couples celebrated New Year’s Eve on Sunday night by tying the knot in a mass wedding in Jakarta. Nearly 450 couples gathered in a large tent in the city center just hours before midnight to pray with their families before signing marriage certificates. Government officials oversaw each brief ceremony. “We wanted an unforgettable experience and we’re so happy that we decided to participate today,” said Hartiningish, a 38-year-old East Javanese bride, while a live band played a set of traditional and pop music in the background. Her husband, Ricky Rangga, 30, said the couple was grateful to the city administration for making the wedding possible. Many couples wore matching colors and colorful traditional Indonesian outfits, with some brides donning elaborate headdresses and grooms carrying traditional daggers called keris. Jakarta Gov. Anies Baswedan congratulated those taking the plunge and said the city would now host the event every New Year’s Eve. The city government raised donation funds to pay for token gold dowries for the couples to exchange. Grooms in Indonesia traditionally present gold jewelry or money to brides on the wedding day. “We’re planning to do this every year,” Baswedan said, after posing for photographs with some couples. Security was tight around the event’s venue in the heart of the city, which took place just a few meters from the site of a militant attack in January 2016, when Islamic State-linked radicals killed four people using guns and bombs. Tens of thousands of police and military personnel have been deployed in Jakarta and across the country to safeguard holiday celebrations as the country remains on high alert. One young pair from west Jakarta said they were looking forward to their honeymoon in the holiday island of Bali, where an active volcano, Mount Agung, remains on alert status for an imminent eruption. “If we’re together, there’s no need to be afraid of (the volcano), we will just enjoy,” Ruri Nurhayati, 22, said, just minutes after marrying her partner Andrianus, who goes by one name. The couple were accompanied by a wedding party of 20 friends and family members, and joined New Year’s Eve revelers setting off fireworks in the city center, while others left the venue in cars bedecked with flowers.
|
terrorism;indonesia;bali;jakarta;new year 's;islamic state;mass weddings
|
jp0010133
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/01/06
|
Blackface, suicide and celebrity abuse: Welcome to 2018!
|
We’re one week into 2018 and it seems Japan has an image problem. You can thank the country’s New Year’s Eve TV block for the bulk of that. The controversy marathon began with popular comedy special “Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!,” which, hours before 2018 arrived, managed the rare feat of angering viewers both international and domestic. Let’s start with the prior. This year’s “Gaki no Tsukai” boasted the already tightrope-clinging theme of “American Cops,” meaning the five comedians starring in the seven-hour-long laugh jamboree sported law enforcement clothes. Except for Masatoshi Hamada, one half of the comic duo Downtown, who dressed as Eddie Murphy from the film “Beverly Hills Cop” — complete with blackface . This did not go over well with non-Japanese viewers, many of whom took their disgust to social media after Hamada made his entrance. Japan Times columnist Baye McNeil summed up the anger in several posts , while also pointing out the frequency Japanese comedians resort to it for a cheap laugh ( including earlier in the week on another show altogether ). News of the incident spread, and late last week it was picked up by such outlets as the BBC and The New York Times , among others. Japanese netizens (and some non-Japanese ones) responded to Hamada’s gag as they had to the blackface incidents that came before it: They played it down. The Japanese, the argument goes, are unaware of the history behind blackface and many just don’t get why it is offensive. If anything, they say, Hamada was simply “honoring” Murphy with his extreme attention to detail. Yet a large (and growing) chunk of Japanese responses to the incident online — whether expressed via the comments section on McNeil’s interview with Huffington Post Japan or as part of numerous tweets — felt different this time around. Many worried about what message these blackface gags send to the international community, with plenty mentioning the upcoming 2020 Olympics. However, a spokesman for Nippon Television Network Corp. said the scene did not intentionally attempt to discriminate on racial grounds, adding that Hamada was just trying to portray Murphy’s “Beverly Hills Cop” character, Axel Foley. “We are aware of different opinions surrounding this issue and we will refer (to the feedback we received) when producing new shows,” the spokesman said. Hamada’s cosplay wasn’t the primary thing Japanese netizens were upset about, however. Later in “Gaki no Tsukai,” TV personality Becky was the victim of a Muay Thai-style roundhouse kick to her lower half . The “Thai kick” has long been a staple punishment in “Gaki no Tsukai,” and nearly every male comedian experienced one earlier in the show. Becky’s turn, however, outraged viewers, who condemned it as “too violent.” Part of the anger stemmed from the idea that it was partially “punishment” for her much-discussed 2016 affair with musician Enon Kawatani. Some compared it to AKB48 member Minami Minegishi shaving her head after being caught having a boyfriend, noting how behind-the-times such attitudes are. Although the Becky incident hasn’t been picked up internationally, many online felt it sent a similarly ugly image of Japan into the world. Flipping the channel to other New Year’s Eve programming only lead to further controversies. NHK’s “Kohaku Uta Gassen” music extravaganza may have registered its third-lowest ratings ever, but enough people saw idol group Keyakizaka46’s performance to note that three members appeared exhausted during it . Tweets and posts to blogs expressed anger at the performers’ treatment, reigniting debate about overwork in Japan’s idol-pop world. All three of these incidents became big deals online in Japan, but were dwarfed in overseas news coverage by another Japan-based incident. American YouTuber Logan Paul ventured into Aokigahara — an area by Mount Fuji dubbed the “suicide forest” — and found a dead body , which he filmed and seemed to joke about. The video went viral worldwide, prompting social media rants and articles focused on Paul’s disrespect, exoticization and general idiocy. He later apologized on video . While no pop culture story was bigger this week internationally, Japanese reactions were relatively muted. Plenty took to 2chan or the YouTube comments of his videos to note his stupidity, but most were simply left asking, “Who is this?” As far as they were concerned, the New Year’s Eve stories generated more buzz. So is this a case of one demographic serving as an outlier? Japan-based YouTubers of Western origin ( though not all , That Japanese Man Yuta weighed in) switched coverage to Paul’s suicide tourism only a day after Hamada’s blackface scandal. Some made video responses , while others just expressed disbelief at how he acted (or, fitting for “Black Mirror” debut week, complained about video monetization). Paul’s livelihood depends on YouTube, though, which may explain why he has tried to apologize while Hamada, as yet, has not. So welcome to the Year of the Dog! There are only 51 more weeks to go — and it seems U.S. President Donald Trump’s Twitter vacation is now officially over.
|
minami minegishi;aokigahara;becky;kohaku uta gassen;blackface;enon kawatani;logan paul;masatoshi hamada;gaki no tsukai
|
jp0010134
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/01/06
|
Giving former gangsters in Japan a chance can reap rewards
|
Fuji Television screened a popular TV series in 2009 called “Ninkyo Herupa” (“Yakuza Helper”) that focused on the life of a former gangster who landed a job at a nursing facility for the elderly. Over the course of the series, he learned to follow the values that all gangsters claim to hold dear: help the weak and stand up to the powerful. It’s a nice idea, although quite obviously fiction. The reality is naturally much more complicated, and experts say that former gangsters typically have a hard time reintegrating into society once they decide to abandon their ties to organized crime. According to figures from the National Police Agency, around 13 percent of former gangsters are arrested on criminal charges each year, with many detained on suspicion of petty crimes such as shoplifting. It’s a little hard to celebrate any improvement in conditions when gang members are quitting their syndicates to become common criminals. Noboru Hirosue, an expert on organized crime, has published a book titled “Yakuza and Nursing: A Study of Those Who Leave the Yakuza.” Hirosue is not only an expert in his field, he’s also a career counselor who does what he can to help the same people he’s researching. He understands why young men join crime syndicates and why they subsequently find it hard to quit. “I get gangsters because they’re part of life growing up in Kyushu,” Hirosue says. “I noticed at an early age that as my friends went from hanging out with gangsters to joining gangs, that we increasingly referred to them in reverent tones. “For example, a guy called Tanaka starts hanging around the Dojin-kai offices. First we’d be saying, ‘That guy is always hanging around gangsters.’ However, once he appears to be included in the inner circle, the guy becomes ‘Tanaka-kun.’ And when he eventually joins the organization, he becomes ‘Tanaka-san.’ We looked up to gangsters back in the day.” Hirosue’s book is divided into two sections. The first section details the story of “Koyama,” an unnamed juvenile delinquent in Kyushu who joined a violent crime syndicate in the region and worked his way up the ranks. Koyama tells his story from a first-person perspective, offering plenty of humor and insight into how crime syndicates really make their money. What’s more, it’s all detailed in a Fukuoka dialect. The second part of the book is more academic in nature and covers the lives of several other gangsters who have struggled to rejoin society. Hirosue put the book together this way because Koyama’s bitter experiences serves to frame what follows later, making the statistics and studies cited much more convincing. Overall, it’s an excellent read. Koyama doesn’t suggest criminal life is glamorous in any way. It’s a constant state of meeting crazy demands, cleaning toilets, doing menial tasks and scrambling for money. “The organization becomes your family,” Koyama says. “And you have to trust them like family. In the end, however, despite all that talk of loyalty, your fellow gangsters are more likely to betray you than anyone. And sometimes, they even outsource the betrayal. It’s kind of insulting.” However, Koyama finds that life outside of the gang also isn’t easy. He applied for a job at a nursing facility for disabled children but was turned down. “I respect your sincerity,” the operator of the facility told him, “but let’s say, for example, you’re working with a child who falls over and hurts themselves. There’s a strong possibility that someone could accuse you of neglect or even child abuse.” Even after securing a job as a nurse, his tattoos led to prejudice. He encountered bullying in the workplace and while he has often felt like giving up, he has so far stuck it out. One can’t read the book without suspecting that Koyama is still dealing with anger management issues on a regular basis. I asked Koyama how he handled situations where a patient might become violent. “I grow to like them after a while,” he replies. “I know that they can’t always help themselves or stay in control. So, I remember them in their better moments and then it’s OK. We need to remember the good in people and try to nourish that.” These aren’t exactly the words you expect to hear from a former gangster but they do give me hope. Maybe one day we can see the good in all gang members and help integrate them back into society. If you give someone a chance, they may eventually prove their worth. Naturally, society also needs to come to the party and pay a salary that’s fair but perhaps that’s an issue best left for later.
|
yakuza;organized crime;rehabilitation
|
jp0010137
|
[
"world"
] |
2018/01/23
|
Swiss on highest avalanche alert on eve of Davos forum
|
ZURICH - Switzerland went on avalanche alert on Monday as fresh snow smothered much of the Alps a day before the World Economic Forum in Davos gets underway. A bulletin from the SLF Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos showed a broad band of the mountainous country under Level 5 avalanche danger, the highest on a 1-5 scale. “Fresh snow and snow drift accumulations are prone to triggering (avalanches). Until late in the night a large number of natural avalanches are to be expected,” it said. Snow slides could be deep and large, it added, posing danger to exposed settlements and transit routes. The accumulation of snow was the highest since 1999. In Davos, where authorities have evacuated two dozen people from homes most at risk, access roads were still open as crews used controlled explosions to reduce the chance of slides. The sun was due to come back out on Tuesday. Zermatt in southwestern Switzerland remained cut off by road and rail. A helicopter air bridge that had been ferrying people in and out of the popular ski resort was out of action because of bad weather, a town spokeswoman said. A helicopter rescue team had to fly a pregnant woman out of the town on Elm in Glarus canton where snow drifts had cut off roads as she went into labor. At lower elevations steady rain was causing local flooding.
|
davos;flooding;switzerland;avalanches
|
jp0010138
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"science-health-asia-pacific"
] |
2018/01/15
|
Black smoke billows from tanker sinking site as worries grows over Japan EEZ sea damage
|
BEIJING - Black smoke was billowing from the East China Sea site where a burning Iranian oil tanker sank, Japanese authorities said Monday, as worries grow about damage to the marine ecosystem from the worst oil ship disaster in decades. The blazing vessel, which was carrying 136,000 tons — almost 1 million barrels — of condensate, an ultralight, highly flammable crude oil, sank Sunday evening after several explosions weakened the hull. The tanker Sanchi had been adrift and ablaze after crashing into the freighter CF Crystal on Jan. 6. Strong winds had pushed it away from the Chinese coast, where the incident happened, and into Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). China’s State Oceanic Administration said Sunday that because the explosions had ruptured the hull of the ship, a large amount of oil in surrounding waters was on fire. The sinking marks the biggest tanker spill since 1991, when 260,000 tons of oil leaked off the Angolan coast. The Japan Coast Guard has sent two patrol boats and an airplane to the area to search for missing crew members and assess the latest situation, a spokesman said Monday over the phone. Japanese authorities lost track of the tanker Sunday, the spokesman said. The ship’s last confirmed location was about 315 km (195 miles) west of Sokkozaki on the island of Amami Oshima. Amami Oshima is one of the northern islands in the Ryukyu Island chain that includes Okinawa. A Chinese salvage team on Saturday recovered two bodies from the tanker, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. Another body, presumed to be one of the Sanchi’s sailors, was found on Jan. 8 and brought to Shanghai for identification. The salvage team recovered the Sanchi’s voyage data recorder, or “black box” from the bridge of the tanker, Xinhua also said Saturday. But the team was forced to leave the ship after just half an hour because the wind shifted and “thick toxic smoke” had complicated the operation. Iranian officials said Sunday the remaining 29 crew members and passengers of the tanker were presumed dead. The crew consisted of 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis. Experts worry the ship’s sinking is potentially more damaging to the marine ecosystem than letting the condensate oil burn off. The sinking will likely expel the remaining condensate and the tanker’s bunker fuel, or the heavy fuel oil that powers a ship’s engines, contaminating the surrounding waters. Bunker fuel is the dirtiest kind of oil, extremely toxic when spilled, though less explosive. Condensate is poisonous to marine organisms. A harmful plume of condensate would likely be in the water, out of sight of observers on the surface, said Rick Steiner, a U.S. marine scientist based in Anchorage, Alaska, who has experience of oil spills. “As with all major oil spills, time is of the essence. This is particularly so with condensate spills, as the substance is so toxic and volatile,” Steiner said in an emailed statement. The East China Sea is known for its rich, although already polluted, marine ecosystem, with whales, porpoises, seabirds and fish, he said. Fuel oil is relatively easy to contain because volumes are lower and its viscosity means it’s easier to extract from water, but even small volumes can harm marine life. A Suezmax tanker can hold a maximum of 5,000 tons of bunker fuel. The Sanchi may have been carrying about 1,000 tons by the time it hit the grain freighter CF Crystal, according to bunker fuel traders’ estimates.
|
china;pollution;oil;iran;shipping;acidents
|
jp0010139
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"science-health-asia-pacific"
] |
2018/01/15
|
China punishes local officials for tampering with smog monitoring
|
SHANGHAI - China has punished officials in the provinces of Jiangxi and Henan for tampering with pollution monitoring equipment in order to reduce smog readings, the environment ministry said. China has been waging a “war on pollution” since 2014 in a bid to reverse the environmental and political damage done by more than three decades of economic growth, but enforcement has been a constant problem. The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said Sunday that officials in the cities of Xinyu in Jiangxi and Xinyang in Henan sought to reduce emissions readings by spraying water on their air quality sensors. Both cities are major producers of polluting and energy-intensive nonferrous metals like aluminium and copper. The two governments said the officials responsible were dismissed or subjected to “administrative” punishments. “Regardless of whether they deny deliberately tampering and whether or not it has an obvious impact on emissions data, spraying water on air quality monitoring sampling points … disrupts the normal operations of air quality monitoring,” the ministry said. The MEP has tried to establish a real-time nationwide emissions monitoring system to help fight against pollution and ensure its rules are being enforced throughout the country. But it has also been forced to crack down on the widespread falsification of data, with local officials accused of trying to evade responsibility by misusing or disabling monitoring equipment. Some firms have also sought to evade monitoring by operating only at night. The ministry has sought to reduce “administrative interference” in its emissions data by bringing all its 1,436 monitoring stations under central government control and denying local authorities access to the equipment. This isn’t the first time Henan has been castigated for failing to maintain the integrity of its air quality data, with the ministry accusing local firms of providing fraudulent emissions figures last March. Local environmental officials in the northwestern city of Xian have also been punished for stuffing sensors with cotton and removing surveillance tapes.
|
china;pollution;climate;corruption;scandals;police
|
jp0010140
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2018/01/15
|
Japanese opposition parties DP and Kibo no To agree to join forces
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Top executives from two opposition parties reached a broad agreement Monday to form a joint parliamentary group, a move that could potentially knock the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan — a staunchly liberal party dead-set against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s bid to revise the Constitution — out of its position as the biggest opposition force in the Lower House. The deal by Kibo no To (Party of Hope) and the Democratic Party, if finalized, would mark a tectonic shift in the Diet since the No. 1 opposition party is usually given a greater say in parliamentary decisions, including how to proceed on constitutional amendments should any be proposed. On Monday, the secretaries-general of the two parties met and agreed to tie up for this year’s regular Diet session, which kicks off on Jan. 22. A group of 14 independents who belonged to the DP before the Lower House election in October are expected to join the parliamentary group, according to the party executives. This would create the largest opposition bloc in both the Upper and Lower houses. Under the deal, Kibo, the DP and the group of independents would maintain their separate organizations and platforms, but all members would be obliged to vote in unity in the Diet. Kibo no To, the key component of the alliance, is considered more flexible on constitutional revision than the CDP, which has 54 seats in the Lower House and six in the Upper House. The new group would have 65 seats in the Lower House and nearly 50 in the Upper House. To be effective, the deal should be approved by the rank-and-file members of each party. Kibo no To leader Yuichiro Tamaki on Friday reiterated his party’s intention to oppose Abe’s proposal to add an explicit reference to the Self-Defense Forces to war-renouncing Article 9. But Kibo no To has several conservative members calling for constitutional revision. Others are known for their strongly nationalist stances, such as Kyoko Nakayama and her husband, Nariaki Nakayama. It has long been the general consensus in the Diet that at least the approval of the biggest opposition force should be secured before making key decisions on constitution-related issues, including whether to initiate a national referendum. Abe has said that Article 9 should be revised to formalize the legal status of the SDF, which he promises would not change the substance of its operations. The CDP, however, opposes Abe’s proposal, saying it’s based on the 2015 security laws, which the party believes violate the pacifist Constitution by partially approving Japan’s use of collective self-defense, or aiding an ally under attack. Use of the right was long considered banned by Article 9. The group of 14 independents includes former DP President Katsuya Okada and other heavyweights. Teruhiko Mashiko, secretary-general of the DP, said Monday he is hopeful the independents will agree to the tie-up but indicated they have yet to explicitly say they will join. Later at a news conference, Mashiko said he will “make a continued effort” to convince the CDP to join the new parliamentary group even after the DP’s deal with Kibo no To is finalized. Yukio Edano, head of the CDP, has consistently rejected the idea of forming an alliance with the DP and Kibo no To lest it be perceived by voters as engaging in what he called a “numbers game” in the Diet. In a document unveiled Monday, the Kibo no To and DP representatives agreed to protect the pacifist elements of the Constitution but offered no stronger commitment regarding Abe’s proposal and Article 9. On Abe’s divisive 2015 security laws, which give the SDF a bigger role overseas, Kibo no To, which has adopted a tolerant stance on them, compromised by agreeing to join the DP’s effort to scrap the parts of the laws deemed unconstitutional. Since winning by a landslide in October’s snap election, an emboldened Abe has missed no opportunity to emphasize his willingness to amend the charter by 2020 — a self-imposed deadline he unveiled in a surprise announcement last May. Speaking in Tokyo in December, Abe said he wants 2020 to mark a “significant rebirth” of Japan with a renewed Constitution. Separately, at a New Year’s news conference, he said he’d like to see the Diet initiate amendments by the end of the year. UPDATE : The original headline and report were amended on Jan. 16 to reflect the fact that party leaders of the Democratic Party and Kibo no To are currently reaching out to the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.
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constitution;democratic party;opposition;kibo no to;constitutional democratic party of japan
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jp0010141
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[
"national"
] |
2018/01/15
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Nobel winner Hiroshi Amano and his team tap gallium nitride technology in bid to transmit power wirelessly from a distance
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Hiroshi Amano, a professor from Nagoya University who was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics, is developing together with other researchers a remote power supply system that sends energy to distant places using electromagnetic waves. If put into practical use the research could greatly benefit all of society, such as through recharging electric vehicles (EV) while they are running or sending solar power generated in space to the earth. “Our first target is to create a wireless system to supply electricity to drones within three years,” Amano said. Currently, wires and cables must be connected to an electrical device to supply energy so that it can run continuously. Some wireless power transmission technology is already available, but it is inefficient and limited to products that can run on low power such as mobile phones. The research team aims to develop a system that can convert electricity into high-frequency electromagnetic waves that are then sent to the target destination, like a laser light from an antenna, and converted back to electricity via a receiving antenna. Theoretically it is possible to send a large amount of electricity to a distant place efficiently, but it is difficult to put the idea to practical use with current technology as a lot of energy is lost in the process. Amano, 57, and his team have utilized the technology of crystallizing gallium nitride (GaN) — which was key to developing the blue light-emitting diodes (LED) that won Amano his Nobel Prize — becoming the first in the world to successfully improve the performance of power semiconductors used to regulate voltage and electric current. They believe this will contribute to resolving issues such as power loss. The team has begun by developing a system for drones. With the cooperation of Japanese electronic manufacturers and drone developers, they are currently building a system with an electric circuit and embedded antenna. The first target is to build within the next three years a system that can transfer energy wirelessly over a short distance — of a few dozen centimeters — in three minutes. After that, they hope to develop it further so the system becomes able to charge a drone that can fly approximately 100 meters high. “Remote power supplies will revolutionize the way goods and people are transported. They can enrich our lives,” said Amano. Since drones can fly across areas regardless of geographical features, they have gained attention as a useful tool in disaster rescue missions and as a next-generation alternative for distributing goods. However, they can only fly for a short period of time and need to be recharged frequently. A standard drone that is carrying an object weighing 20 kg can only fly for about 30 minutes. If drones can be recharged while flying using a remote power supply system, their flight time will become virtually unlimited. Manufacturers around the world are also competing to improve the performance of electric vehicles, where the new technology could again offer benefits. One of the shortcomings of EVs is the long period of time needed for them to recharge. However, if remote power supply systems are installed on the road or intersections vehicles could recharge while running, so drivers would not have to stop at recharging stations. Competition around the world to develop wireless power transmission technology is growing increasingly fierce. The most well-known method is the magnetic coupling method, written in a paper published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007, but this method basically covers only short distances. The system Amano and his team aim to build will enable the supply of power by sending electromagnetic waves to remote islands and other places, as well as transmitting electricity from offshore wind power efficiently to cities. In the future, it may even be possible to build a space solar power plant whereby electricity generated in solar panels that are floating in space would be sent to Earth. The development of the blue LED was a revolution in lighting technology, following the invention of incandescent bulbs and fluorescent lamps. “I believe that (the remote power supply system) will become the technology that can make a greater contribution than the blue LED to the well-being of people all over the world,” said Amano.
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drones;nagoya university;nobel prize;led;hiroshi amano;remote power supply
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jp0010142
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[
"reference"
] |
2018/01/15
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Japan's parcel firms test drop-off lockers, as social change increases the costs and reduces the appeal of face-to-face deliveries
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The timely and secure delivery of packages through face-to-face services has long been a source of pride for Japanese couriers. But times have changed. With more women and seniors working and single-person households increasing, face-to-face deliveries to the home are proving more difficult. The rise of online shopping and the labor shortage have also made it harder for delivery services to handle everything through home deliveries. For these reasons, the logistics industry is trying out a system of drop-off lockers, believing their use could widen pickup options for consumers as well as achieve more efficient parcel handling for the couriers themselves. In today’s ‘FYI’ we look at these new drop-off locker systems in more detail. What is a drop-off locker and how is it used? A drop-off locker is a physical locker used to store items people have purchased online until they are ready to collect the items. Consumers who buy goods from an internet store can ask a courier to put the item in a designated locker. Once it has been dropped off, customers receive a notification via email and can go and pick up the item. Packcity Japan Co., a Tokyo-based drop-off locker operator, started installing PUDO (pick up and drop off) stations in 2016, mainly in Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures. The firm — which is jointly funded by Japan’s top courier, Yamato Transport Co., and France-based Neopost — had set up about 2,000 lockers as of early this month. The lockers can be used not only by Yamato but also its rivals, including Sagawa Express Co. To use the lockers, customers need (in principle) to become registered members of each courier’s online service. Japan Post Co. has also been running a locker service called Hakoposu since April 2015. This service currently only accepts parcels delivered by Japan Post but the firm is considering partnering with others, a Japan Post representative said. The service currently operates 192 lockers in major cities. Where can we find the lockers and what kind of parcels can they hold? Packcity Japan said it mainly installs lockers at train stations, supermarkets and drugstores — places people are likely to frequent in the course of their daily lives. They can pick up packages while commuting or grocery shopping, said Yoichiro Katsu, a Packcity Japan executive overseeing its sales and marketing group. “Supermarkets and drugstores are very cooperative, since they can expect people to shop when they come to get their parcels,” said Katsu. He said Packcity Japan bears the entire cost of installing the lockers and charges parcel delivery providers a fee to use them. The lockers can hold packages for which the sum of their width, height and length is 100 centimeters or less, and their weight is 10 kilograms or less. The operator does not accept parcels containing food. Why is the use of such lockers increasing? Other than the home, parcels in Japan can be picked up at convenience stores and at delivery firms’ branches — both still face-to-face services. Katsu said Yamato learned about NeoPost’s drop-off locker service in France while it was researching potential alternatives for customers. “We thought people might want to receive parcels without having to face anyone,” said Katsu. A Yamato representative said the nonface-to-face service would be helpful for women living alone, for instance, because some may feel uneasy about opening their door to a stranger. The anonymous option may be quite a big change for the country’s logistics industry, since couriers have long valued the importance of face-to-face service. The major providers are competing hard to improve quality, such as handling parcels safely, offering delivery time schedules convenient for users and arriving on time, said Katsu. “In the past, mail orders were used mainly to send gifts, so it was important that those gifts were delivered to homes safely by mailmen,” Katsu said. But thanks to the internet many people now use online shopping services to get even a small item, contributing to a surge in parcels. In fiscal 2016, the number of parcel deliveries were about 4 billion in Japan — an increase of more than a billion from fiscal 2006. What are the other merits of drop-off lockers? Katsu said one of the main reasons for introducing drop-off lockers was to mitigate the labor shortage, which hit Japan’s logistics industry hard last year. Yamato Transport raised its basic shipping rates for individuals by 15 percent on average amid a driver shortage. Japan Post is planning to raise parcel delivery rates by 12 percent starting in March. The increase in working women and working seniors, and single-person households, has also led to more households where no one is home to receive packages during the day. This has resulted in a surge in cases in which delivery services have to repeatedly visit homes to deliver packages when someone is in, resulting in a logistics burden. Katsu said, however, that the lockers have yet to yield a visible impact. Since many people are still not aware of the drop-off lockers, the firm still has to increase their numbers and encourage their use to make them a part of the delivery infrastructure, he said. “Then we’ll start seeing an effect, which I think will still take a while,” said Katsu.
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yamato transport co .;japan post co .;drop-off lockers;delivery firms;packcity japan co .
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jp0010143
|
[
"business"
] |
2018/01/12
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Swiss mountain town Davos relishing in anti-globalist Trump spotlight
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DAVOS, SWITZERLAND - The Swiss Alpine town of Davos is used to celebrities and high-rollers, but even it is relishing new attention being heaped on it with U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to attend the World Economic Forum this month. Trump’s visit to Davos for the annual meet-up of global political and business leaders will be the first for a sitting U.S. president since Bill Clinton came in 2000. Trump’s policies, including his intention to exit the 2015 Paris climate accord and his “America First” tendencies, may not sit well with all of Switzerland, which backs the global climate pact and whose economy relies on global trade. This has prompted some critics to suggest Trump’s polarizing persona could resurrect violent anti-WEF protests from the early 2000s. An online petition is circulating telling Trump he is not welcome. Still, the tenor in Davos this week Thursday was upbeat, with many confident a robust security contingent — up to 5,000 soldiers if necessary alongside about 1,000 police — can handle any furor surrounding Trump’s presence. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” said Ernst Wyrsch, who was director of the hotel where Clinton stayed during his WEF visit and now heads the region’s hotel association. “Davos, for at least a couple of days, will be at the center of the world.” While dignitaries come each year — British Prime Minister Theresa May and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping made the trek to the town last year — they lack the media power of a U.S. president that puts the spotlight on a community that relies on tourism. “I guess there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” said Linard Kinschi, a resident who was heading out to the 1,560 meters above sea level town’s cross-country ski trails. Although U.S. officials are already in Switzerland preparing for Trump’s arrival, details of his trip, including whether he will even spend the night during the Jan. 23-26 event, were under wraps. Trump, expected to be accompanied by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and possibly Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, may rush in for a day, give a speech and then depart. There is something of a contradiction in all this. The WEF is a haven for supporters of globalization who espouse the very free trade pacts that Trump has blasted as unfair to the United States. Heinz Brand, who represents Davos in the Swiss parliament, hopes Trump arrives in the mood for discussion, not a fight. “Even people who were sworn enemies have met in Davos and left on more favorable terms,” Brand said, recalling when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres shared a WEF stage. The Swiss army has begun erecting checkpoints on roads leading into town and armed hillside bivouacs down the valley, scenes on par with every post-Sept. 11 WEF where security has been to the fore. “This is the 48th WEF,” said Reto Branschi, CEO of Davos Klosters Tourism. “Every year, we have 20 presidents from all over the world. We are used to the visits of presidents.” Last year, 4,300 Swiss soldiers deployed, with the airspace open only to aircraft ferrying participants to the forum. Grisons cantonal police, who coordinate WEF security measures and are liaising with U.S. officials, say they are ready. “The closure of the airspace has worked well in recent years, and we don’t believe that any modifications will be necessary this year,” said Andre Kraske, a Grisons spokesman. Still, there are some changes. For decades, helicopters carrying visitors have landed in the meadow of Hans Stiffler, a lifelong Davoser who runs an inn. This year, the landing pad has been moved across the valley, where there is more room. Without choppers at the doorstep this year, it will be a bit quieter, and Stiffler will not have to bring his security badge with him every time he leaves home. But he may also not be able to add to his trove of WEF memorabilia includes letters of appreciation from Clinton, photos of former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, and an intimate shot of then Brazilian president Lula da Silva meeting Israel’s Peres in Stiffler’s hotel for five minutes before each was helicoptered away.
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davos;switzerland;bill clinton;wef;donald trump
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jp0010144
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[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2018/01/12
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Rwanda expects census to show surge in ranks of highly endangered mountain gorillas
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MUSANZE, RWANDA - A census of mountain gorillas due in March will likely show numbers have risen this decade, experts said during a ceremony to mark Rwanda’s expansion of its Volcano National Park. The last global survey in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda in 2010 found just 480 individuals of the critically endangered sub-species. Eugene Mutangana, the head of conservation at the Rwandan Development Board (RDB), said an average of 18 baby mountain gorillas had been born each year in Rwanda since 2005, when the East African nation began naming them in an annual ceremony. “We only had seven families of gorillas seven years ago. Today we have 20,” RDB chief executive Clare Akamanzi said. Mountain gorillas are under threat from poaching, war and habitat loss. Rwanda is keen to encourage tourists to see them, but tour operators and hoteliers say a government decision to double the price of trekking permits from $750 to $1,500 last year slashed visitor numbers. Akamanzi said Rwanda aimed to attract high-end tourists. Philip Mason of Sabyinyo Silverback lodge, a high-end hotel in the town of Musanze, at the foot of volcanoes where gorillas live, said ticket sales were down 30 percent. But budget facilities and tour operators have been harder hit. “I have a 14-room hotel but I don’t have more than five tourists per week,” said Eric Twagirimana, owner of budget Buffalo mountain lodge. “The government shouldn’t have taken this decision without consulting us.” Tour guide Gilles Mugabe said visitors were instead going to Uganda and Congo, where prices were lower. Mountain gorillas, a subspecies of the eastern gorilla, have longer hair, jaws and teeth than most other species. Adult males grow a patch of gray hair on their back and hips, giving them the “silverback” moniker. One such is Gihishamwotsi, a dominant male in the Sabyinyo family, a popular group viewed by trekkers in Rwanda’s national park.
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endangered species;rwanda;census;mountain gorillas
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jp0010146
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[
"national"
] |
2018/01/12
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Japan rewrites tourism record after 28.7 million visited in 2017
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Japan attracted a record 28.69 million tourists in 2017, up 19.3 percent from the previous year and the sixth consecutive yearly increase, the transport minister said Friday. “In 2017, there was a sharp increase in tourists from Asia, and we need to make more efforts to attract tourists from a wide range of countries and regions,” Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister Keiichi Ishii told a news conference. Ishii credited the growth to an increase in discount flights from South Korea and other Asian countries and cruise ships from China, as well as the easing of visa requirements for Chinese and Russian travelers. The government will release a regional breakdown and other details next week. The government has set a goal of 40 million foreign visitors by 2020, when Japan hosts the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. It plans to use revenue from a new ¥1,000 departure tax to be imposed on every person leaving Japan from January 2019 to promote tourism. Japan used to focus on drawing shopaholic tourists to urban areas like Tokyo’s glitzy Ginza district. But in recent years, more visitors have been venturing away from traditional tourist hubs like the capital and the ancient city of Kyoto, and going further afield rather than buying gadgets to take home, industry experts say. However, busloads of tourists from around the world still regularly leave Tokyo for a day trek around Mount Fuji. “In addition to individual Asian visitors and repeat customers, we need to continue raising awareness among potential tourists in Europe, the U.S. and Australia,” Ishii added.
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tax;tourism;keiichi ishii
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jp0010147
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[
"national"
] |
2018/01/12
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Heavy snow in Japan traps over 400 passengers on stranded train in Niigata
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NIIGATA - Around 430 passengers in Niigata Prefecture were forced to spend the night on a packed four-car train after it got stranded Thursday evening by heavy snow along the Sea of Japan coast. According to rescue workers, five passengers — a man in his 40s and four women in their teens and 20s — were found unwell when they arrived, and the man was taken to a hospital. The train, which was bound for Nagaoka from Niigata, resumed service Friday morning about 15 hours after getting stuck. More than half of the passengers on the train on the East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) Shinetsu Line were evacuated earlier in the morning, with families arriving to pick them up by car. While JR East said the train’s interior lights and heating worked properly, it only had one bathroom and the toilet paper ran out, passengers said. Some said they took turns using the seats to relieve passengers who were standing. “I was standing and looking down the entire time,” said a woman who exited the train at around 4:40 a.m. when her family arrived. “I just want to sleep,” a male passenger said. A 50-year-old man who came to pick up his daughter said he was angry because she was preparing for an entrance exam. “Tomorrow, she will sit for the university entrance exams so I want her to rest as soon as possible,” he said. “The operator kept saying the train would start moving, but they were wrong.” The train was stranded at around 6:55 p.m. Thursday at a crossing between Tokoji and Obiori stations in Sanjo, where snowfall reached 77 cm around that time. Due to other delays and cancellations caused by snow, the train ended up being packed, and JR East did not arrange for alternative transport. “We put priority on safety,” a JR East official said. Transport minister Keiichi Ishii said he instructed the railway to investigate why it took so long to help the passengers and resume service. There were no snowplows operating near the site Thursday evening, and the only one deployed arrived at the site at around 9:30 a.m. Friday. Two subsequent trains also came to a halt, temporarily stranding an additional 400 people who were later evacuated by buses. Snow also caused about 300 vehicles to get stuck near two exits of the Ban-etsu Expressway in the Niigata town of Aga Thursday evening, but all were able to leave after about 12 hours of snow-clearing work. In the meantime, another 410 vehicles got stuck on the Hokuriku Expressway in Toyama and Ishikawa prefectures, but there were no reports of injuries or sickness, according to local authorities.
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niigata;transportation;snow;weather;rail
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jp0010148
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[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/01/13
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Debate continues over mothers taking their babies to work
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The hashtag #KozurekaigiOK, which translates roughly as “It’s OK to bring a child to a meeting,” began trending in late November. The trigger was a female politician’s decision to bring her child to a Kumamoto assembly session , which sparked a nationwide debate on child care options for parents juggling work and family responsibilities. While the discourse on adequate child care and work-life policies for parents, particularly mothers, isn’t new to Japan, the politician’s actions caused a stir online. Hiroki Komazaki, founder of NPO Florence, which provides accessible medical and child care solutions, penned an article titled, “ Is it wrong to bring a baby to a meeting? ” and tweeted his support for the hashtag, adding that he hoped the practice of allowing children in professional settings such as meetings, interviews and lectures would spread . In the wake of the politician’s action in November, the Kumamoto Municipal Government received 563 submissions from its citizens, with more than half calling for a change to the existing policy . The local government responded by announcing in December that they would set up a child care facility in the City Hall in 2018. Prefectures such as Fukushima, Miyagi and Tokyo have already introduced nursery facilities in government office buildings. However, the debate over whether working parents should be allowed to bring their children to work appears to be far from over. On Jan. 5, BuzzFeed Japan published an interview with Mariko Oi, a Japanese BBC World reporter, that focused on her experiences as a working mother who brought her two young children to the studio when she covered U.S.President Donald Trump’s visit to Japan . On the day of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Trump’s joint press conference, Oi went into the BBC’s Tokyo bureau with her 3-year-old daughter, 3-month-old son and mother in tow. When she wasn’t live on air, she was holding her son and writing articles on her smartphone. Oi noted that while increasing the number of nursery schools and providing adequate maternity leave and child care options are are vital steps in supporting working mothers, it’s also necessary to acknowledge the unique needs and values of individuals in terms of child care. As such, she says, “a policy system created by the government will not necessarily solve all problems.” Readers applauded Oi for her dedication to her job and family, and the BBC for its support of working parents. Fellow journalist and mother of two Jibu Renge tweeted her support for the article, stating: “ This is article is really good! The article addresses other important aspects, not just ‘policies’ or ‘nursery schools.’ ” In a similar vein, a Jan. 10 Forbes Japan interview with the executives of Campfire and SmartHR, two startup companies championing efforts to allow parents to bring children to work , touched on the #KozurekaigiOK campaign. SmartHR develops a cloud-based personnel and labor management platform, while Campfire manages its namesake crowdfunding platform, Campfire. Campfire CEO Kazuma Ireiri admits there is opposition to bringing children to work but a change in mentality would be helpful. “I think a more effective approach would be to give employees a choice by saying, ‘We can look after the children together and get the work done,’ rather than giving employees no choice but to stay home from work and look after their child,” Ireiri says. “That approach is more likely to alleviate the pressures of child care.” Yoshio Hashimoto of NPO Florence responded positively to the article , saying, “The hashtag supports this idea as well, but instead of saying ‘We may as well bring our kids to the workplace,’ it is better to say, ‘Well, it is good to have the choice to bring our kids to work,’ because it’s important to have the flexibility of choices and a work-life (balance).” Engineering an environment in which parents can bring children into their workplaces is no small feat — it entails changing rigid views on professional etiquette and practices. With increasing global attention on women’s rights and the country’s recent drop in the World Economic Forum’s global gender equality ranking, Japan is probably long overdue for a change.
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kumamoto;bbc;parenting
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jp0010150
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[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/01/13
|
Press failing to question the legal process
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To ring in the new year, TBS Radio’s “Session 22 ” asked several notable people on Jan. 4 about their predictions for 2018. Michiko Kameishi, a human rights lawyer, commented that she is looking forward to three criminal trials that turn on confessions extracted from suspects. Two of the cases are retrials of persons who have already been convicted and served their times in prison. In both, lawyers convinced courts to retry their clients because the convictions were based solely on confessions they later recanted and which they say were coerced under questionable circumstances. Police and prosecutors rely so heavily on confessions in criminal cases that they don’t feel the need to go out and gather evidence, says Kameishi, an insight that led to a discussion of the Moritomo Gakuen elementary school scandal that embroiled Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last year. Yasunori Kagoike and his wife, Junko, were arrested in July on allegations of fraud in their dealings with government entities as they went through the process of building their new school in Osaka . They’ve been in jail ever since and denied contact with anyone except their lawyers. Kameishi explained that the reason they are still being detained is that they refuse to talk, which is actually their right. The lawyer thinks that prosecutors have been trying to force confessions out of the couple and haven’t succeeded. The ostensible reason for denying them bail is that a judge has deemed they could tamper with evidence or witnesses while outside, so until the trial begins they are being kept away from anyone, including family members and each other. The real purpose of the bail denial, Kameishi says, is to put more pressure on the suspects to confess. If they do, then the trial can proceed right away, but as long as they don’t, their detention periods can be continually extended until it begins, and that could be months. It’s not unusual for suspects to spend a year or so under wraps. According to Kameishi, lawyers call this practice “hostage justice” ( hitojichi shiho ). “The suspects’ lives are destroyed even before they go to trial,” she says. “The idea is to break their silence.” Such tactics often result in enzai (false convictions), and what makes the Kagoikes’ situation special is that the media was covering the case closely last year because the prime minister and his wife were associated with the couple in the past. The judge’s stated reasons for not granting bail to the couple did not make sense to Kameishi because the police spent more than three months collecting all available evidence prior to their arrest. And since the Kagoikes are well-known, it would be almost impossible for them to flee bail and disappear, even it they wanted to. Even a former judge said he found these circumstances strange. Interviewed about the case last November on a TBS-BS news show, Tomoyuki Mizuno, now a professor at Hosei University, said he thought the Kagoikes’ detention was “too long,” but also said that if he were still a judge he might think differently because when prosecutors came to him saying a suspect could destroy evidence if he granted them bail, it made his job easier. In trying to explain such a mind-set, he said people in the criminal justice system believe it is due to their “hard work” that Japan is such a safe country, there is no reason to change their ways. The TBS reporter didn’t bring up civil rights, maybe because it didn’t occur to him. Hiroshi Seki, who has written extensively on Japanese courts, blames this ignorance for Japan’s “medieval” trial system . According to a review of Seki’s 2014 book “Japan’s Courts” that appeared in the online magazine Litera in February 2015 , the media has abandoned their essential mission, which is to “check those in power.” Seki says the press practices self-restraint, thus placing them at the beck-and-call of those in power. Reporters are not required to know anything about the things they cover. When it comes to criminal trials, for instance, they can’t produce a story “without lectures from the courts and the police.” Reporters covering court cases usually attend sessions by police and prosecutors who explain the development of a case. These are not news conferences. The prosecution gives its version of the case and the journalists base their reporting on that version. In most instances, they do not go out and dig deeper into the case. They simply repeat what they’ve been told, since they don’t understand enough about the legal process to draw any conclusions other than the ones already drawn for them by the authorities. Veteran journalist Shoko Egawa, who came to the public’s attention with her in-depth coverage of the Aum Shinrikyo cult in the ’90s, has been a strong critic of this failure of the press. Last year, she appeared on “Session 22” with Atsuko Muraki , who as a welfare ministry official was wrongly indicted for forging documents in 2009 by the special investigator (tokusobu), an organ that seems to specialize in bringing down high-level bureaucrats and politicians. Egawa helped Muraki write her book about the case, and during the discussion expressed astonishment at how gullible the media was. Any reporter with an elementary understanding of ministry procedure should have been suspicious of the special prosecutor’s accusation, but they all accepted it without question. The third case Kameishi is looking forward to this year is the second trial of Takuya Katsumata, who was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a 7-year-old girl in 2005 . No physical evidence was produced during the first trial. The conviction was based solely on a confession his lawyers say was coerced under duress. When Fuji TV covered the trial, it produced a dramatization of what went on in court, and analyzed every gesture and facial expression for what they indicated about the defendant’s guilt, which was taken for granted because of the confession. It was as if Fuji TV was saying, “The police already did this work, why should we?”
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shinzo abe;takuya katsumata;criminal trials;moritomo gakuen;yasunori kagoike;junko kagoike
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jp0010151
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[
"business"
] |
2018/01/22
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Organizer still counting on Trump to speak at Davos despite U.S. shutdown
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DAVOS, SWITZERLAND - The World Economic Forum (WEF) still expects U.S. President Donald Trump to attend its annual meeting in the Swiss Alps this week, the forum’s chairman, Klaus Schwab, said on Sunday. Schwab made the comments in an interview with Reuters a day after White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said the trip was up in the air because of the federal government shutdown in the United States. Trump is due to speak at the gathering of politicians, business chiefs and bankers on Friday, the final day of the four-day event. Asked if he had any indication that Trump’s trip was in flux, Schwab said: “No, we haven’t. Until now we hope that the trip will be maintained … we’ll see what the final outcome is.” Heavy snow in the Alps has made travel difficult in many regions, given the heightened danger of avalanches. The main road leading to Davos was covered with snow. The town’s website for avalanche information advised people in nearly 30 residences to seek more secure dwellings for Sunday evening. Schwab said he wasn’t worried that weather would prevent attendees from coming to the event, which officially starts on Tuesday. “No, I’m happy because it provides Davos with what it should be — the aspect of a global village, but a village where you know nature plays still a very important role and, in our discussion, the whole environmental issue will also be at the forefront of what we do here,” he said.
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davos;wef;donald trump
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jp0010152
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/01/22
|
Rare prehistoric shell mound in Aichi, Japan, suggests possible mid-Jomon shell trade
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An ancient heap of shells at Sakatsuji Shell Midden in the city of Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, most likely served as a clam processing site in the latter half of the mid-Jomon Period, approximately 4,500 years ago, an investigation conducted by the city’s board of education has revealed. While there are ruins in eastern Japan that indicate organized production during the mid-Jomon Period — including the Nakazato shell midden, or mound, which is a national historic site in Tokyo’s Kita Ward — it is extremely rare to find one in the Chubu region or further west. This latest discovery will provide important clues about the culinary lifestyle and economic activities conducted in the Jomon Period. The Sakatsuji shell mound is one of the Muro cluster of seven shell middens in Aichi Prefecture. An excavation conducted in the 1970s showed a rough scale of activities there, but details had remained unknown. The mound is located approximately 3.5 km inland of what is now Mikawa Bay. But prior to the bay being filled in to create rice fields in the Edo Period the shell mound had faced the sea, along a stretch of coastland where the shores are shallow. As a land consolidation project is scheduled to start in the area that includes the mound, the board of education had been excavating approximately 1,000 square meters of land since May. The mound, made almost entirely of clamshells, measures roughly 1.6 meters high, about 6 meters wide and more than 24 meters long. At least four layers have been identified, sandwiched between soil streaked with charcoal. The team also discovered around 55 objects that looked like furnaces assembled from stones, and the members expect to find more as they continue excavating. “We believe that the clams were boiled in the furnaces, and their meat stripped from the shells. Afterward the shells were piled up, then the ground was leveled and made into a processing site again,” said a member of the excavation team. “That kind of process must have been repeated again and again.” The excavation team was not able to find any evidence of residences nearby, so it was likely the workers who dug and processed the clams lived in another area. The volume of shells discovered was so huge it is hard to believe that they were consumed within the region, and the excavation team has said there is a possibility people dried the clams after they were boiled so that they would last longer and could be used for trading. The shells are of various sizes. “We found many large shells similar to those seen in high-class Japanese restaurants. The clams must have become quite salty when boiled in sea water, so maybe they were used to make soup stock,” a member of the excavation team said. Several hundred furnaces have been found in the other six shell mounds in Muro. They share the same features as the Sakatsuji midden, which indicates the whole area was bustling with clam processing at the time. However, the other six shell middens were from the late Jomon Period — approximately 2,300 to 3,800 years ago — which means the clam processing site of Sakatsuji was much older. Most of the furnaces found in the other shell middens were also without stone structures, and were constructed in such a way that earthenware was placed directly on the floor. “Perhaps they changed to a simpler furnace in order to meet the growing demand for clams,” said one of the team members. The excavation will continue until the end of March and an on-site briefing is expected to be held in mid-February. According to Tomonari Osada, a part-time lecturer specializing in archaeology at Chubu University, the Tokai region during the mid-Jomon Period is believed to have been less socially developed compared to the period immediately before the beginning of the Yayoi Period. “I would be surprised if the production conducted at the Sakatsuji shell midden was for the sake of trading and distribution to other regions. We need to focus on this site and conduct further analysis to determine whether the objects made of stones were indeed furnaces for boiling (clams).”
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jomon period;aichi;toyohashi;shell middens;sakatsuji
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jp0010153
|
[
"national",
"history"
] |
2018/01/22
|
Filipino and Japanese youngsters urged to remember infamous 1942 Bataan Death March
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MANILA - Philippine officials and executives involved in caring for the country’s war veterans have urged younger generations of Filipinos to carry forward the memory of the 1942 Death March, and those in Japan to learn about it. “We commemorate the Bataan Death March every year so that we will not forget, and so that the following generations — who may be in danger of forgetting the Bataan Death March and who may think that war is (just) a video game — will remember that this is not a video game,” said Roberto de Ocampo, chairman of the Philippine Veterans Bank, on Thursday at the launch of this year’s activities to commemorate what is considered to have been a war crime by Japan 76 years ago. Speaking at the same event, Ernesto Carolina, administrator of the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office, spoke in particular to the “millennials” or “the young people” of Japan, whom, he suspects, “do not know what happened” in the Philippines during the 1941-1945 Japanese occupation. “I think it is important that the young children of Japan will continue to know what happened — not for them to condemn, but so that it will never happen again,” Carolina said. Carolina recalled that during last year’s commemoration of the World War II Battle of Manila, a group of young Japanese in attendance confessed to hearing about the wartime atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers for the first time. “She said candidly that they never knew what their forefathers did,” Carolina said, referring to the leader of the Japanese group who spoke at the commemorative event. “It occurred to us that maybe in Japan the children do not know what happened. And we hear about this revising of history and slowly covering it up so that one day, nobody would know in Japan about what happened at the Death March.” The Death March refers to the forced movement by the Imperial Japanese Army of more than 70,000 Filipino and American soldiers from their point of capture in Bataan Province to prison camps in Tarlac Province, both north of Manila. The forcible transfer, mainly on foot, began on April 9, 1942, and lasted six days. They were forced to march “day and night, under blistering sun or cold night sky,” and were only given “brief rest and some water,” according to markers put up by government on the Death March route. “Many were ill, most were feverish, but none might rest, for the enemy was brutal with those who lagged behind. Thousands fell along the way.” In the town of San Fernando more than halfway through the ordeal, “the Death March became a Death Ride by cargo train when the prisoners were packed so densely into boxcars that many of them perished from suffocation,” the markers said. When the evacuation ended at what would later be the concentration camp in Tarlac on April 15, 1942, it is estimated that only 54,000 arrived alive. Carolina said that only a small number of Death March survivors are among some 7,000 living Filipino war veterans. Japan has apologized for its wartime atrocities and offered reparations to the Philippines. The two countries currently regard each other as “strategic partners.” “When images of the Death March are brought back, we see the cruelty and the suffering. But beyond that, we would like to highlight the ideals that those who survived, those who participated in the infamous Death March represent — love of country, selfless sacrifice,” Carolina said. “I was fortunate to meet a lot of them, and many of them had a chance to escape during the Death March. But they did not. They could not leave behind their buddies, their comrades who were sick and who would be killed and bayoneted by the Japanese,” he added. Carolina said images of captured soldiers sharing what they had, as well as of civilians taking the risk of giving food to the POWs, are the “ideals that we would like to stay and be imbibed by our citizens, especially the young people.” Noting that “the relationship (of the Philippines) with Japan over the years has improved to the extent that there is no need really for us to emphasize in any way the Japanese part of the occupation,” de Ocampo expressed confidence that “the friendship” between the two countries “will not be dented by the fact that we are honoring an event that really highlights Philippine heroism.” A multievent race called Freedom Trail will be held on March 24 and 25 as part of the commemoration. As in the inaugural edition held last year, participants will trace the entire route in three categories: a 160-km ultramarathon relay, a motorcycle tour, and a road bike ride. In addition, the fifth annual “Bataan Freedom Run” is scheduled for April 8, and also follows a portion of the Death March route. “The Bataan Death March was of course a horrific experience. The Freedom March is the joyful one. But nevertheless, it is a commemorative one,” de Ocampo said of the upcoming events. Carolina said that while static reminders of the Death March are already in place, “it is not enough that you see; it is important that you feel (it), you go through it, and you experience it.” Mike Villa-Real, vice president for communication and corporate affairs of the Philippine Veterans Bank, said the fees that will be collected from participants who will register will be used for maintenance of the Death March markers.
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philippines;world war ii;bataan death march
|
jp0010154
|
[
"business"
] |
2018/01/25
|
Experts at Davos open debate on redefining GDP
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DAVOS, SWITZERLAND - It can topple governments, confer international bragging rights and pretty much obsessed the government of China once the country began its long march back to economic prowess. But is gross domestic product outliving its usefulness as a metric of economic size, and is it stoking social and environmental crises by encouraging growth at any cost? Debate about whether it is time to adopt a more nuanced calculator has been growing in recent years, and featured anew during discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. “There’s emerging agreement that the kind of statistics we’ve used in the past just aren’t working any more,” British economist Diane Coyle from the University of Manchester said in Davos. Coyle is one of several experts who have written books on the subject. Others have detailed proposals such as a “Human Development Index,” and a new addition to the literature comes this week from Financial Times journalist David Pilling, entitled “The Growth Delusion.” In Davos, Coyle outlined new thinking that will supplement brute economic data with measurements covering human capital (skills and education), physical infrastructure and “intangible capital” such as computerized data and patents. They will also cover environmental quality, and “social capital” looking at how united or divided a country is. Ascribing a value to data is particularly pressing as companies and customers increasingly transact their lives “in the cloud.” To take one example, a globally accessible and hugely useful resource like Wikipedia is worth precisely zero in traditional GDP accounting models. Nor does GDP encompass the black market, omitting a huge source of activity and income in many developing countries, including in Africa and Latin America. Notably, GDP cannot measure the distribution of wealth within a country. So while its total value can go up, gains are all too often skewed to top earners. Those lower down the ladder can fall further behind in relative terms. That is exactly what has been playing out in the United States, powering a populist backlash that elected Donald Trump, and influencing the British people’s decision to quit the European Union. After the Brexit referendum campaign, pro-EU campaigner Anand Menon wrote that he was trying to explain at one event about the hit to GDP that he felt would come if Britons voted to leave the bloc. He said that one woman in the audience in Newcastle, northeastern England, shouted back “that’s your bloody GDP, not ours.” Developed in 1934 by economist Simon Kuznets to help the United States chart an escape from the Great Depression, GDP measures the total value of a country’s goods and services over quarters and years. Woe betide a government that heads into an election on the back of a recession — usually defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in its GDP. But even where there is growth, disenchantment with how it is shared out can be seen vividly in Brexit-bound Britain, according to Inga Beale, chief executive of Lloyd’s of London, the insurance market. “We’ve got to find another mechanism to include much bigger parts of the population, and use different metrics to measure success of a country,” she told CNBC television. GDP is widely seen as a blunt instrument to measure growth, and has attracted criticism from Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, among others. But countries that do execute sustained rises in GDP can use the accreted wealth to transform their standing. Exhibit A is China, which after decades of pell-mell growth is now the world’s second-biggest economy as measured by GDP, awarding it the kind of international prestige and influence that it has not enjoyed for centuries. But even in China the GDP debate is intensifying as President Xi Jinping vies to prioritize quality over quantity in the economy’s expansion. So what are the alternatives to GDP? Dissident thinkers are calling for a holistic approach that calibrates not just economic inputs but human capital along with quality-of-life issues. With the planet warming and some resources already exploited nearly to exhaustion, including many fisheries, the WEF this week proposed a broader measure of growth called the Inclusive Development Index that accounts for such factors. On that basis, Norway is the world’s richest country and the rest of the top 10 is compossed of small European countries and Australia. Germany is in 12th position, the United States is 23rd and China 26th. In any case, Coyle said, countries do not drastically have to overhaul their national accounting to take stock of environmental degradation caused by the rush for growth. “You just need to breathe the air in Beijing to feel the cost,” she said.
|
china;world economic forum;davos;gdp;wef
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jp0010155
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2018/01/25
|
Activist widowed by Aum yet to find peace decades after deadly '95 sarin attack
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The March 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo’s subway system perpetrated by the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo changed Shizue Takahashi forever. Had it not been for the attack, she would have continued on as an ordinary housewife who enjoyed making sweets. The Japanese terrorist attack, which killed her husband and 12 other people and left more than 6,000 others injured, drove her to establish a support group for the victims and to speak publicly about her experience. The 70-year-old representative has even moved the central government to act. She is often asked how she can be so tough. “For my husband,” she replies, noting that she is spending a day living that Kazumasa Takahashi could not. On the morning of March 20, 1995, her husband, who was then the 50-year-old deputy stationmaster at Kasumigaseki Station, passed out after cleaning up plastic bags on a train that, unbeknownst to him, were used to release the deadly nerve agent sarin. He never woke up. Takahashi kept asking herself, “Why did my husband have to die?” She attended the Tokyo district and high court trials of the Aum defendants, including that of Aum founder Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto. In December 2011, when the trials of the cult’s major members concluded with the finalization of the life sentence of Seiichi Endo, 57, Takahashi sold her condo in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward, filled with memories of her husband, and discarded his belongings. She also said she would step down as representative of the victims and their families. Takahashi, however, was stirred to action again in 2012 when three Aum fugitives were arrested, starting with 52-year-old senior member Makoto Hirata. Takahashi attended both the first and second trials of Hirata and Katsuya Takahashi, 59. In a courtroom at the Tokyo District Court on March in 2015, when it was her turn to ask defendant Takahashi a direct question for the first time, she said in a calm tone of voice: “You’re a Takahashi too.” The accused just kept looking down on the witness stand. Crime victims became able to participate in trials in 2008 in response to calls from people including Shizue Takahashi. Takahashi also pushed for a law mandating that compensation be paid to crime victims and their families by the central government, arguing that the cult balked on its promise to pay redress to its victims. When Takahashi was questioning Aum defendant Takahashi, she asked him whether there was anything he regrets. He only said: “I have regrets coming and going in my mind.” Takahashi said after the court session that she wished the defendant had had a sense of remorse. Having participated in the trials of Takahashi and Hirata as a victim, she plans to pass on her experience to younger generations. She plans to hold a discussion in March to give college students an opportunity to exchange opinions about the attack. “I have the feelings of the Aum victims and their families on my shoulders,” Takahashi said at a news conference Friday. “I have not found a sense of peace yet.”
|
aum shinrikyo;shoko asahara;shizue takahashi
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jp0010157
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2018/06/04
|
Pope urges in Mafia-infested Rome suburb to break away from 'moorings of fear'
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ROME - Pope Francis on Sunday visited a once-tranquil seaside community outside Rome that has become a power center of Mafia violence and political corruption and urged residents to break away from the “moorings of fear. For decades popes have held the traditional Corpus Christi feast Mass and subsequent procession in the center of Rome, walking between two magnificent basilicas. This year Francis chose to move the event to two working-class parishes in Ostia, a district about 30 km (17 miles) from the center with a population of about 230,000 people, to show solidarity with anguished and frightened residents. In his homily during a Mass from the steps of the first church, he used the word “omerta,” which refers to the code of silence organized crime groups impose on their members and the fear they use as a tool to keep others from talking to police. “Jesus wants the walls of indifference and ‘omerta’ to be breached, iron bars of oppression and arrogance torn asunder, and paths cleared for justice, civility and legality,” he said. Using nautical language and speaking near the seaport of ancient Rome, he encouraged residents to break free from “the moorings of fear and depression,” telling them “you have experienced painful situations. Last January, police arrested dozens of alleged members of the Spada family, the clan authorities say runs extortion rackets controlling lucrative beach concessions, restaurants and gaming arcades as well as drug trafficking. Ostia was put under control of a government commissioner for more than two years because of alleged mafia infiltration of the local administration as part of a wide-ranging investigation dubbed “Mafia Capital” in 2014. The spotlight returned to Ostia in last year when Roberto Spada, gym owner and brother of a convicted mobster, was filmed headbutting an investigative journalist ahead of the March 4 national elections. Roberto Spada and his older brother Carmine were among those arrested in January. Police said at the time the brothers had ordered the murder in 2011 of Francesco “Little Moustache” Antonini and Giovanni “Black Rat” Galleoni, who were gunned down in front of bars and restaurants on a busy street just metres from the beach.
|
crime;rome;pope francis;mafia
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jp0010158
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/04
|
Now in a wheelchair, Japanese ex-motorcycle racer still passionate about bikes at Aichi shop
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Motorcycle shop owner Ko Sawada, 38, gave up his racing career after incurring a spinal cord injury in a 1999 race. But his love of motorcycles continues, and he hopes to revive the popularity of the vehicles. Sawada runs Motocyclette Sawada with his younger brother, Seiya, 29, selling classic motorcycles. The shop looks almost like a museum, with vintage bikes from Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki to BMW, Ducati and MV Agusta on display. Most were produced between the 1970s and 1990s. His father, who opened the shop in Shinshiro, Aichi Prefecture, in 1982, inspired him to enter a racing school at the Suzuka Circuit in Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, when he was in junior high school. His elder brother, Rei, who was two years older, joined the school with him and became a professional racer, competing in the All Japan Road Race Championship, the nation’s top racing series. Ko supported him as a mechanic. In 1998, however, his brother died after falling during a race at the Tsukuba Circuit in Shimotsuma, Ibaraki Prefecture. Sawada succeeded him and became a racer himself, but was involved in an accident at the Suzuka Circuit the following year that put him in a wheelchair for life. Sawada said the accident never made him dislike motorcycles. “Although I can’t ride them anymore, riding is not the only good thing about bikes,” he said. “It’s fun to watch races, and bikes are beautiful as machines.” The shop buys classic motorcycles and components through its own channels in Europe and other places. After they arrive, his brother Seiya and the other mechanics take them apart for maintenance and tune them up. When restoring them, they try to retain the original look and feel of the vehicles as much as possible. Sawada mainly manages the sales and accounting operations but performs some of the repair work, too. The shop buys between 60 and 100 motorcycles a year, and sells them to customers nationwide from Hokkaido to Miyako Island in Okinawa. Many of his bikes sell for around ¥2 million. The shop also takes requests to fix bikes that other shops can’t. Sawada, who has worked at the shop for 20 years, said he hopes to promote the attractiveness of motorcycles further. “I feel happy when my customers get excited to see the bikes we repaired,” he said. “I hope more people will learn about the beauty and joy of motorbikes.” The popularity of motorcycles has been declining in recent years. According to Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association statistics, shipments including minibikes stood at more than 1.21 million between March 1995 and February 1996, but dropped to about 510,000 between March 2008 and February 2009, and then to about 360,000 from March 2015 to February 2016 — a plunge of more than 70 percent in two decades. Experts attribute the change to an increase in car owners, a decline in motorcycle use for daily transport, and the falling birthrate. “Demand for motorbikes is dropping, but the number of motorbike shops hasn’t declined much,” said Ko Oguchi, 68, of Toyoyama, who runs two bike shops in Aichi. “Times are tough for motorbike shops.”
|
racing;motorbikes;ko sawada;motocyclette sawada
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jp0010159
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2018/06/04
|
Panel balks at proposing the killing of Japan's political fairness clause
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A government deregulation council on Monday dropped a key proposal — reportedly favored by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — to eliminate the political fairness clause from the Broadcast Law. The proposal drew criticism for potentially opening up the nation’s airwaves to a deluge of politically charged programs and internet-driven “fake news.” The Regulatory Reform Promotion Council submitted to Abe a final set of recommendations meant to foster deregulation in areas including agriculture, employment, medicine and investment. The recommendations include a series of measures aimed at helping students from overseas land jobs in Japan as the nation struggles to meet a goal adopted by the government’s 2016 growth strategy to boost the foreign student employment rate in Japan to 50 percent. The final report skirts any mention of the Broadcast Law’s Article 4, which requires broadcasters to keep their programming politically neutral, despite an initial plan within the government to repeal it. Instead, the council listed measures designed to, among other things, facilitate live-streaming of TV content and better promote Japan’s TV content, such as anime, overseas. “I want the internal affairs ministry and other related entities to comprehensively study how to make our broadcast business more future-oriented — in particular from the perspective of how to make it more innovative, global and user-friendly,” Abe said upon receiving the report. Media reports emerged in mid-March that the Abe government was eyeing a drastic overhaul of the nation’s broadcast businesses by stripping away a batch of regulations imposed by the Broadcast Law — including the principle of political fairness — on TV and radio stations. Article 4 has often drawn comparisons with the now-defunct Fairness Doctrine in the U.S., which required political balance in broadcasting. The deregulation could have paved the way for internet-based, video-on-demand platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu to make greater forays into the world of TV and thus encourage competition with conventional broadcasters. But the notion of scrapping Article 4 at the same time spurred worries that it may lead to the advent of politically marketed programs that could polarize the public, possibly even underscoring, as some experts noted, Abe’s desire to see the birth of TV programs that advertise his views. Momentum for revising the Broadcast Law, however, appeared to fizzle out after TV station representatives and some members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, including internal affairs minister Seiko Noda, publicly denounced the reported plan. With Article 4 also urging broadcasters to keep their programming factually correct, Noda, for one, said its annulment could “lead to an increase in reportage that is not based on facts.” Monday’s report by the council instead proposes establishing a “common platform” shared by broadcasters for livestreaming their content, and improving the business infrastructure of local TV stations. To make Japan’s broadcast industry more globally competitive, it suggests “fundamentally strengthening” international broadcasting by NHK and further investing in efforts to clamp down on “illegal content” that undermines the profits of Japanese anime, including measures against pirate websites. The recommendations also include a series of measures aimed at helping overseas students land jobs in Japan. The council, for one thing, proposed streamlining the red tape that small and midsize companies currently must go through to hire foreign students. The council took issue with the dearth of Japanese universities whose foreign graduates are designated by the Justice Minister as eligible to receive extra points under the government-backed “highly skilled foreign professionals” program. The report says the number of such institutions, which currently stands at 13, should be increased so that more students will qualify for a variety of visa perks granted by the program and feel encouraged to keep working in Japan. In another suggestion, the council said not only local municipalities but universities should be declared eligible to help aspiring foreign entrepreneurs prepare capital of ¥5 million — the amount they need to amass to switch their visa status from students to business managers. Currently, local governments are allowed to finance up to ¥2 million on behalf of students.
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shinzo abe;jobs;foreign students;broadcast law;broadcasters;regulatory reforms
|
jp0010162
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/05
|
In tattoo-taboo Japan, new website offers helping hand for those with ink
|
In tattoo-taboo Japan, those who are inked-up have received a helping hand — in both English and Japanese — with the launch of a new website that offers information about tattoo-friendly hot springs and other locations nationwide. Launched last week, the Tattoo Friendly website lists more than 600 hotels, ryokan (inns), onsen (hot springs), sentō (public baths), gyms, pools and beaches across the country, rating them by how open they are to those sporting tattoos. Users can use a map and filters on the site to view details about each spot, with their tattoo policies ranging from lenient — “unrestricted” and “covered tattoos accepted” — to those that are a little more strict, with only smaller tattoos or tattoos with “special conditions” allowed. The website also has columns on topics such as bathing manners and the history of tattoos in Japan — which has long shunned them due to their association with yakuza. Miho Kawasaki, the website’s administrator and a former editor of the now-defunct Japanese magazine Tattoo Burst, said she was motivated to establish a universal platform for tattooed tourists after being contacted by a number of visitors asking about hot springs that accept them. Because some spots do not clearly indicate their no-tattoo policies online, some visitors told her they were told not to enter the facilities only after checking in. Prohibitions on tattooed visitors to public bathhouses in the country were originally put in place to deny the entry of yakuza members, many of whom are tattooed. However, Kawasaki said tattoos, which have gained popularity globally, have increasingly been recognized as legitimate forms of fashion — a shift that is expected to become even more clear with an increase in foreign tourists in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The view of tattoos has also undergone a change in the Japanese travel and leisure industry, Kawasaki said, amid a shift in focus from group tours to more personalized, individual tourism, with each facility vying to attract visitors by offering a variety of special options. As this trend grows, the rigid, negative reaction to those with tattoos no longer makes sense, Kawasaki suggested. “Tattoo-friendliness should be one of the various individual preferences for amenities, just like pet-friendliness or wheelchair-accessibility,” she said.
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onsen;tattoo;website;spa !
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jp0010163
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2018/06/02
|
Endangered mountain gorilla population recovers to over 1,000
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GOMA, CONGO - The population of mountain gorillas, one of the world’s most endangered species, which survives on the forest-cloaked volcanoes of central Africa, has increased by a quarter to over 1,000 individuals since 2010, wildlife authorities said. That is despite the threat posed by poachers and armed groups in the Virunga Massif, a spine of volcanic mountains in the western Rift Valley straddling eastern Congo, Uganda and Rwanda, where most of them reside. The latest census put them at 1,004 individuals: 604 in Virunga, and 400 in Uganda’s nearby Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Joel Wenga Malembe, spokesman for the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, told Reuters. The last survey, in 2010, found just 786 of this critically endangered eastern gorilla sub-species, of which 480 were in Virunga. “These numbers are truly remarkable, far exceeding our expectations, and are the result of a collaborative, three-country effort with governments and partners all playing an important role,” Mike Cranfield, of charity Gorilla Doctors, said in a statement. Partly because they are so rare, the mountain gorillas are a major source of tourist revenue for the three nations, and their habitat supports other rare species found nowhere else such as golden monkeys. But they are under constant threat of encroachment by farmers in one of Africa’s most densely populated rural regions, and hunting for bush meat or bizarre trophies sold abroad. Congo has also invited oil companies to start drilling in Virunga, Africa’s largest tropical rainforest reserve, which conservationists worry will put the environment in greater danger. Adding to Virunga’s woes, rangers banned tourists this month from entering the park during investigations into the kidnapping of two Britons by an armed militia.
|
nature;animals;endangered;uganda;congo;rwanda;gorillas
|
jp0010164
|
[
"national",
"science-health"
] |
2018/06/02
|
Memory athletes could be on the right track to a longer life
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Akira Haraguchi, of Kisarazu, Chiba Prefecture, is a world-class athlete, and in his particular sport he is the best in the world. You might be puzzled if you saw him: He’s 72, a retired engineer and doesn’t look like a reigning world champion. But his sport is played in the mind, and Haraguchi’s mind is trained to the very highest level. He is a memory athlete. In 2006, Haraguchi recited the mathematical constant pi to 100,000 digits, in a feat that lasted more than 16 hours. Pi, of course, is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and is an infinite and irrational number. That means it goes on forever, with no repeating patterns of numbers. To Haraguchi, pi represents a religious quest for meaning. “Reciting pi’s digits has the same meaning as chanting the Buddhist mantra and meditating,” he says. “Everything that circles around carries the spirit of the Buddha. I think pi is the ultimate example of that.” He spends an hour a day reciting the numbers. He is the world champion, although Guinness World Records has not recognized his recitation. Since the 2006 breakthrough, he has posted videos of himself reciting yet more of pi. His current record is 111,700. The official Guinness record holder is 23-year-old Rajveer Meena from Sawai Madhopur district in Rajasthan, India. On March 21, 2015, at the Vellore Institute of Technology in Tamil Nadu, Meena recited pi to 70,000 decimal places. He was blindfolded. The feat took him nine hours and seven minutes. One of the factors motivating him, he told me, was his upbringing. He wanted to show that despite his humble background, he could win the world’s toughest memory challenge. These memory wizards have different motivations, and use different techniques, but they all essentially convert the numbers into a story. When they tell the story in their heads,they translate it back into digits and recite the numbers. It’s a technique anyone can learn, should you want to become a memory athlete. Haraguchi’s system is based on the Japanese kana alphabet. The first fifty digits of his system read (translated into English): “Well, I, that fragile being who left my hometown to find peace of mind, am going to die in the dark corners; it’s easy to die, but I stay positive.” One hopes that in the rest of the 100,000 digits the story picks up a bit. For the memory chapter in my book “Superhuman,” I wanted to understand the people, like Haraguchi, who memorize pi, and I felt like I ought to get to know the number a bit better than the first few digits that I know, 3.14159. So I spent some time scrolling through a web page listing pi to 1 billion digits. It’s a mesmerizing experience. I scrolled down steadily for some time, and the scroll marker in the margin was still only about 5 percent of the way down the page. I felt my mind could unravel if I did this for too long. The tumbling numbers recalled “The Matrix,” but obviously I couldn’t see anything in them, because there isn’t anything in them. Pi is infinite, and so far has been calculated to 22 trillion digits. No one has (yet?) posted this number online. Haraguchi finds spiritual value in his endeavors. But he has another motivation: to improve human cognition. There’s another chapter in my book that’s on longevity, and as I write, a few weeks ago the then-oldest person in the world died. On April 21, Nabi Tajima died in Kikai, Kagoshima, at the age of 117 years and 260 days. She was the third-oldest person in human history. As always happens when a person attains great age, they are asked the secret of their longevity. Tajima said it was sleeping soundly and eating delicious food. Nice. But for most of us it will take more than that. We need to work to keep our minds active. This is now thought to protect against dementia, and it points to another of Haraguchi’s motivations: He wants to develop a method to help people recover from dementia. There are 47 million people in the world suffering from dementia. In one 10-year study of people over 65, scientists found that a kind of brain training that exercises the memory helped protect against subsequent dementia. Haraguchi might be on to something. Some people have a natural resistance to the ravages of time. Nabi Tajima was one. She escaped having serious illness her entire life. Scientists have classed people like Tajima, over 90 but with well-functioning memories, as superagers. When they eventually die and their brains are examined, researchers found that some do indeed display the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, but they hadn’t shown the usual loss of memory. By studying these people we can start to understand how we can all live to a great age, and do it with our memories, and our minds, intact.
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alzheimer 's;pi;superhuman;nabi tajima;memory athlete;akira haraguchi;rajveer meen;superager
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jp0010165
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/02
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Top Iwate brewery turns to AI for high-tech assist with sake
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MORIOKA, IWATE PREF. - An award-winning sake brewery in the Tohoku region is eyeing a new approach to sake production that uses artificial intelligence to assist skilled workers. Nanbu Bijin Co. in Ninohe, Iwate Prefecture, is developing an AI tool to find the best time to drain water in the steeping process for rice before it gets steamed. The company aims to see AI put in practical use in several years. “We would like to develop AI to partner with our workers to help resolve the manpower shortage (at breweries in Japan),” said Nanbu Bijin President Kosuke Kuji, 46. The company, whose origins date back to the early 1900s, won the top sake title in the junmai category for its Nanbu Bijin Tokubetsu Junmai at the International Wine Challenge 2017. Junmai sake is made of only rice, kōji (mold) and water. The brewery also received a kosher certification for sake and sugar-free plum sake in 2013, among other achievements. To figure out how long to steep the rice, Nanbu Bijin’s head brewer and others use stopwatches while accounting for the variety of rice and the water temperature after pouring both into a 5-ton tank. The person in charge of the brewing is the tōji and oversees the other workers. “If water absorption rates change, even by 1 percent, the taste of sake will change. It is the most crucial process, relying on artisans’ experience and intuition,” Kuji said. The idea for using AI to improve the process was proposed by Ima Inc. in Tokyo, which has been supporting traditional Japanese industries through the use of information technology. Images of the water absorption process will be captured every few seconds and the data can be accumulated for analysis. “I would like to raise the standard of Japan’s brewing industry through cutting-edge technology,” said Ami Miura, the 32-year-old president of Ima. Kuji’s family has run Nanbu Bijin for five generations since its founding in 1902. Master brewer Junji Matsumori and Kuji inherited their brewing techniques from the late Hajime Yamaguchi, who, according to the company, was known as one of the top sake brewers in Japan. Both Kuji and Matsumori are certified as skilled brewers by the Iwate Prefectural Government. Along with the growing washoku (Japanese cuisine) boom, Nanbu Bijin has experienced a similar expansion in its exports, which now reach 28 countries including Russia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as cities like New York and London. According to the Nanbu tōji guild in Hanamaki in the prefecture, 241 master brewers were registered as of 2007, a number that dropped to 182 in 2017 after many skilled brewers retired. “It takes a long time to foster skillful workers. If we complete this AI tool, we can engage in making even better sake because the tool will be applicable at any brewery,” Kuji said.
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sake;iwate prefecture;artificial intelligence;breweries;nanbu bijin
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jp0010166
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[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/02
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Can Hirokazu Kore-eda's success with 'Shoplifters' shed some light on poverty in Japan?
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Director Hirokazu Kore-eda recently won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for “Shoplifters,” a critically acclaimed family drama that was partially inspired by real-life events. It attempts to depict a slice of life in which people are struggling to make ends meet, a set of circumstances that can be easily forgotten about unless you’re unfortunate enough to be facing the same financial hardship. According to the Mainichi Shimbun, shoplifting nationwide is estimated to set the country back about ¥400 billion ($3.6 billion) each year. Studies by the National Police Agency and other organizations indicate that the majority of shoplifters are motivated by economic strife, especially the elderly. According to the National Police Agency, 72 percent of all cases involving a person aged 80 or older who are arrested for shoplifting involve food. Eighty-three percent of all such arrests involve theft committed at a supermarket. These figures speak for themselves. “Shoplifters” depicts an impoverished family that, while living on a grandmother’s meager — and fraudulent — pension, sends their children to steal from stores. The family lives in a house owned by the grandmother (Kirin Kiki), who keeps her ex-husband’s photo on a Buddhist altar and draws out his pension every month to supplement her own. It’s the family’s only steady source of income. The parents — mother Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) and father (Lily Franky) — earn minimum wages doing part-time work. Nobuyo’s younger sister, Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), works at a “JK”-themed sex shop. JK stands for joshi kosei (female high school students). The family supplements its low income by shoplifting. Kore-eda, who also wrote the screenplay, said in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun that the film is first and foremost a universal look at the definition of a family. However, he also wanted to draw attention to the invisible people in society and the social problems that are being overlooked. He said he was inspired by media reports about people fraudulently claiming pensions when he was writing the script for the movie. It turns out that several families in recent years might fit this description. In February 2015, police in Kagawa Prefecture arrested a 25-year-old part-time worker and his 26-year-old wife on charges of theft for making their 6-year-old son steal toys from a mall. The boy was instructed to steal several figurines worth ¥89,000, which he in turn handed to his mother waiting outside. The father then sold them at a recycling shop. The family lived together with a 2-year-old daughter. In March 2015, police in Osaka arrested a 36-year-old father and 33-year-old mother on theft charges for making their three children: two boys aged 12 and 14, and their 9-year-old daughter, repeatedly engage in theft. On Oct. 25, 2014, the parents are believed to have ordered the children to steal three sets of fishing equipment worth ¥17,000 from a retail store. Upon being confronted about the theft, the parents denied the charges and claimed the children acted on their own volition. However, security camera footage and telephone emails back and forth between the parents provided evidence that was conclusive enough for the police to press charges. The Yomiuri Shimbun reports that the family often went fishing together and that they had carried out the crime in several other fishing shops before finally being caught. The younger children were taken into protective custody, while the 14-year-old son was tried as a juvenile and sent to reform school. In March 2017, a mother and an adopted son were arrested and charged by police in Saitama Prefecture with theft. The pair were accused of ordering another son and 6-year-old daughter to steal toy robots and other merchandise worth roughly ¥130,000. The pair then sold off the toys for cash. The mother reportedly told police that the family was having a hard time getting by. One can imagine that the above cases are a mere drop in the ocean when you consider the billions of yen that are lost each year to shoplifting. Government figures show that as many as 1 in 6 children live in poverty, which suggests that the problem is perhaps more widespread than you might think. A veteran detective in the Metropolitan Police Department who has handled cases of theft for 20 years believes shoplifting is a microcosm of all social ills. “There have always been people of all ages doing it for a kick: kids, housewives, retiree,” he says, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Nowadays, however, we are catching people stealing sashimi, bread, daily essentials, etc. The children and elderly we catch are often motivated by simple hunger. They’ve fallen through the invisible safety net and end up in custody.” Those who live on the fringes of society are often extremely visible to the police. If Kore-eda’s film is able to shine a spotlight on those among us who are struggling with poverty, then that could ultimately lead to something of a happy ending. For the time being, however, those who find themselves living on the fringes of society and feel they have to resort to shoplifting in order to get by can find themselves in the country’s final “safety net” — a jail cell.
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theft;shoplifters;shoplifting;hirokazu kore-eda
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jp0010168
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[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/02
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Smartphones leading charge to shame troublemakers online
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Everyone in Tokyo has a commuting horror story, but sometimes you need to see an example of some really rough behavior on the trains with your own eyes to understand just how bad some people have it. An act of violence recorded on a smartphone in Shinjuku Station attracted plenty of attention online recently. Viewers were shocked to see a man specifically targeting women — although it didn’t take long before some commenters spoke up to say that such behavior wasn’t altogether out of the ordinary. On the evening of May 25, Twitter user @____s__7_ uploaded a video that showed footage of a man from behind as he walked through Shinjuku Station wearing a backpack. Within the first 10 seconds of the video, the man appears to change tack and head toward a pair of women walking in the opposite direction, putting his shoulder into the woman closest to him as he passes by. He appears to repeat this action on another woman in similar circumstances seconds later. The user who shared the video said he’d seen him do the same thing to 10 other women before filming. From there, the man brushes the shoulders of a few other women as he walks through the station. He appears to avoid other male commuters during his walk and, as several commentators have noted, women who were accompanied by men. The 44-second clip spread quickly online. The original Twitter upload was viewed several million times before being taken down by the uploader, while a YouTube version has attracted more than 250,000 views. Websites aggregated both the video and its reaction before the issue was eventually picked up by more trusted online-focused outlets . A TV program even tried reaching out to the person who originally shared it for additional information . Initially, netizens responded with anger and disgust . Online viewers quickly picked up on the fact the person in the video was targeting women, an action that fueled the initial discussion and helped it spread across the platform. According to J-Cast , a number of Twitter users argued that his actions could be especially dangerous to commuters who are pregnant. Internet discourse in 2018 can often be contentious, but this issue found the majority of people united in outrage over the man’s apparent intentions. The discussion also encouraged other women to share similar experiences. This, they argued, wasn’t an isolated incident, but something they put up with frequently. A report on TV Asahi’s May 29 episode of “Morning Show” that focused on the footage found that 21 of the 50 women interviewed for the show had experienced something similar. In the week after the clip went viral, more articles emerged that echoed those findings. Yet a similar airing of grievances happened at the start of last month, too. Twitter user @ohnuki_tsuyoshi wrote on May 7 that female relatives and friends had told him about the increased number of incidents in which men had intentionally crashed into them. That post also went viral and yet it didn’t quite create the same outcry as the Shinjuku Station incident, which took it to the next level. It’s safe to say that the latter incident garnered more attention because it was accompanied by a video that had been shot on a smartphone. This, it seems, is where the real power lies online in Japan these days. Almost everyone agreed that it was wrong to shoulder-barge women, but some responders to the original tweet noted that filming people in public was also questionable . It’s a longstanding issue that pops up frequently — remember the conveyor belt sushi video ? — and which attorney Kyoko Hijikata summed up in a 2015 Japan Times contribution as being “acceptable, but only if it can be justified in the circumstances.” However, recent times have seen an uptick in videos on social media that have been uploaded explicitly to shame disgusting and dangerous behavior. Specific examples include a clip of a bus driver playing “Pokemon Go” on his smartphone while operating the vehicle and an older gentlemen throwing liquid on another man aboard a train before dashing away. Footage of fights between gang members have circulated in the past, but an increasing number of videos capture bad behavior on trains and in stations (including popular compilations resembling “what not to do on public transit” tutorials). While these uploads sometimes feel like comedy ripped from everyday life, they’re increasingly showing how common bad behavior can be and serving as a way to warn others from doing the same, lest they get captured on camera and shamed online. This is particularly true for actions aimed at women. Around the same time as the Shinjuku Station video went viral, another clip of a man touching women inappropriately on the street emerged on Twitter as well. More importantly, sharing such videos is having real-world consequences. JR East, for example, says it plans to increase security at its stations in the wake of the video. It’s a nice reminder that people can indeed bring about change in society by supporting various grass-roots campaigns on social media, or using their own footage to steer people away from copying their questionable behavior.
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transportation;violence;social media
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jp0010169
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[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/02
|
Market forces in Japan failing to tackle growing plastics problem
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Last month, news outlets all over the world reported on the discovery of a plastic shopping bag at the bottom of the Mariana Trench near the Philippines , the deepest point in the Earth’s oceans. The discovery was made by a group of Japanese researchers studying images from deep-sea exploration projects, and what’s chilling about the finding is that it was from footage recorded in 1998, which likely means even more plastic has accumulated at the bottom of the sea in the meantime. In spite of the Japanese angle, the story wasn’t picked up domestically with the same measure of alarm as it was overseas. That’s especially odd because Japan is surrounded by ocean, and the problem of plastics in the sea has become a topic of intense concern. One significant wake-up call was China’s announcement that it would no longer accept imports of waste plastic for recycling . In response, the European Union has proposed much stricter standards for one-use plastic packaging and paraphernalia , including a possible ban on plastic straws and stirrers. Japan has announced no similar countermeasures even though China’s move affects Japan more directly. Japan exported 72 percent of its waste plastic to China in 2017, according to the May 9 installment of the NHK in-depth news program “ Close-up Gendai ,” and will now either have to find a new destination for this refuse or handle it on its own. “Close-up Gendai” starts by citing a BBC report that states how China’s announcement has sent shock waves throughout the world. The NHK announcer says that so far there has been no appreciable effect on Japan, but storage for plastic waste has reached saturation levels in many places. China’s standard of living has improved greatly in recent decades and the damaging effects of plastic consumption on the environment have gained more weight than the “demand” for waste plastic as a “resource.” China means to clean up its act, and thus will no longer be the dumping ground for the world’s plastic. Despite the dire implications, NHK sounded hopeful about the future. The term “ shigen gomi ” (“recyclable garbage”) was used commonly throughout the program when referring to waste plastic in Japan, with the twin countermeasures being commerce and technology. With regard to the former, Thailand was mentioned as a candidate for some of Japan’s plastic waste, and the show spotlighted a Chinese-Japanese entrepreneur who is looking for business opportunities in Thailand for accepting plastic. A Thai bureaucrat mentions, however, that at the moment they can take this waste, but that soon they will be overloaded, implying that, like China, Thailand aims to move away from its status as a developing country. There is a temporal limitation to any strategy that involves shipping waste to other countries, and as Tohoku University professor Yu Jeong-soo , who studies the matter, tells the announcer in the studio, shipping costs will become prohibitive when Southeast Asia no longer accepts such shipments. That leaves technology as a likely way out, or so NHK contends, which means more effective recycling efforts and, in turn, a larger range of products that can be made from waste plastic. Mention is made of recycled plastic as fuel for paper mills but, with more domestic businesses going paperless, that solution has no future. The local government of Miyagi Prefecture subsidizes enterprises that convert plastic waste into something else. Monetary gain is the incentive, and some companies have created household and industrial products from recycled plastic waste, though no one notes that since these items are plastic themselves, they will someday be waste that once again has to be processed. The elephant in the room is finally addressed by Yu, who states that society has become too dependent on recycling. If this statement sounds counterintuitive — recycling has always been a fundamental activity of the environmental movement — it’s because the show ended before there was any discussion of the statement’s ramification, which is that the banning of plastic packaging and paraphernalia may be the only solution in the long run. The gist of NHK’s presentation was that Japan has good plastic recycling programs and yet no capacity to store and process any more, especially now that the Chinese are out of the picture. What will become of the accumulating surplus? The mantra for responsible waste handling has always been “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and recycle is third in line for a reason. In Japan, it’s portrayed as a noble civic undertaking. On many local government homepages you will find a video explaining the locality’s recycling activities , with PET bottles and plastic bags being turned into consumer items or even reduced to their constituent elements. Some local governments do discourage the use of plastics , usually in the area of reji-bukuro (plastic bags given out at stores), but outright bans are extremely rare. The recycling movement does have its detractors, the most controversial being professor Kunihiko Takeda of Chubu University, a media pundit known for his iconoclastic stances on everything from marijuana decriminalization (for) to recycling ( against ). Takeda’s arguments are often based on economic efficacy. Plastic is made from by-products of petroleum refining that would otherwise go to waste. Recycling plastic costs much more than making plastic from scratch and requires lots of energy, water and manpower. Takeda thinks it’s better to bury or burn plastic waste, and some governments agree with him , though obviously the only real solution is reduction. Just as we have to wean ourselves from fossil fuels to achieve a future that’s energy sustainable, we need to move away from polyethylene and polypropylene to restore our environment to a state that’s survivable. You can’t rely on market forces to solve the plastics problem — only rigorous public policy can do that.
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recycling;waste;plastic;plastic waste
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jp0010170
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[
"national",
"history"
] |
2018/06/02
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Japan Times 1918: Teacher's house stoned after racial epithet
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100 YEARS AGO Sunday, June 9 1918 Teacher’s house stoned after racial epithet | THE JAPAN TIMES Twenty-three students of the Odate Middle School in Akita Prefecture in northwestern Japan attacked the house of Mr. Kishida, instructor of natural history in the school, twice on the night of June 2, throwing stones and destroying the windows and paper slides of the house. The teacher and his family, terrified at the sudden assault, ran outdoors and took refuge in a neighbor’s house. The students have been punished by suspension from school indefinitely. A few days before this incident, the school was going to hold an athletic meet, but owing to rainfall in the facility postponed it. The students of the higher class objected and insisted on holding the meet notwithstanding the inclement weather. The instructor reprimanded the students and went to the length of calling them the descendants of the Ainus, perhaps from theories he entertained as a scholar of natural history. This unenviable epithet was enough to call forth the indignation of the students, who resorted to an assault in force to avenge the insult. 75 YEARS AGO Thursday, June 10, 1943 POWs’ mutual hatred sparks fight in camp | THE JAPAN TIMES The Tokyo War Prisoners Camp No. 2 was the scene of a fist fight between an American private and a Dutch infantry sergeant when the supercilious contempt of the Americans for the Dutch on the one hand, and the brooding resentment of the latter against the former on the other, came to a clash which might have caused a major disturbance but for the quick interference of a Japanese sentry, it was learned yesterday. The fight took place in the dining room and a free-for-all was barely averted by a Japanese sentry who, being drawn by the clamor, rushed into the room and separated the belligerents, John Edward Rich, an American private of the 131st Field Artillery, and Cornelis Bertsch, sergeant of the 1st Battalion Infantry, Bandoeng. For some time past, it was disclosed, there has been a bad feeling between the American and British prisoners of war on the one hand, and the Dutch on the other. The Americans and British had a tendency to look down on the Dutch. On March 4, as the afternoon meal was being distributed, John Rich, who was in charge of serving the Americans, approached Bertsch, and calling him a “greedy pig,” said that he was eating too much — like all Dutchmen. On the table assigned to the Dutch prisoners were some plates of plump-looking sardines. As Bertsch glowered at the American private, Rich stretched out a hand and, remarking that Dutchmen didn’t have to eat sardines, tried to take away one of the plates to the American side. Bertsch endeavored to prevent Rich but, failing to do so, he lashed out with his fist. Rich retaliated in like fashion. The room was thrown into confusion and, had not the Japanese sentry rushed in instantly, a free-for-all battle might have broken out. 50 YEARS AGO Monday, June 17, 1968 Terrorist incident on Yokosuka Line kills 1 | THE JAPAN TIMES One person was killed and 26 others were injured in an explosion of what was believed to be a time-bomb on a moving Tokyo-bound train of the Yokosuka Line near Ofuna Station, 18 kilometers south of Yokohama. Isamu Hiroshima, 30, from the Tokyo suburbs of Musashino died late Sunday night from brain damage. Six other persons were in serious condition. The blast, apparently from a time-bomb left on a baggage rack, occurred as the train was pulling into Ofuna Station. Police believed an explosive device could have been planted in the Japanese National Railways train by the same person who set off a time-bomb on the same day one year ago on a train of the private Sanyo Electric Railways in Kobe, killing two passengers and injuring 29 others. Both incidents occurred on Father’s Day, the third Sunday in June. Fragments of a clock, a piece of steel pipe and four dry batteries were found by the police in the Yokosuka Line train’s sixth coach in which the blast was set off at 3:28 p.m. Most of the window panes in the sixth coach were broken and several holes were made in the ceiling by the impact of the explosion. Eyewitnesses said white smoke billowed from a baggage rack, and some passengers, with blood oozing from their faces and heads, fell to the floor. The Tokyo-bound train was only about 300 meters away from Ofuna Station when the explosion occurred. The motorman brought the train to the station and asked for ambulances. The train was knocked off schedule. 25 YEARS AGO Wednesday, June 9, 1993 Overuse of foreign words criticized | THE JAPAN TIMES The Japanese language faces several problems, including the excessive use of words of foreign origin, an advisory panel to the Education Ministry reported. The issues raised in the report, written by the Council on the National Language, will be discussed in the fall. The council said that even in written Japanese, people are using words of foreign origin — including “identity,” “restructuring,” “global” and “needs” — although the Japanese language has its own counterpart words. It also called on government agencies to be prudent in using such terms as ODA (official development assistance) and PKO (peacekeeping operations). They should use words that are simple and easily understood, the council added. In this feature, we delve into The Japan Times’ 120-year archive to present a selection of stories from the past. The Japan Times’ entire archive is now available to purchase in digital format. For more details, see jtimes.jp/de .
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wwii;terrorism;ainu;world war ii;akita;oda;pko;prisoners of war;yokosuka line;ofuna
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jp0010171
|
[
"national",
"history"
] |
2018/06/20
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How early 20th-century Japanese rice breeders shaped the future of the staple food in Taiwan
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TAIPEI - Rice has been grown in Taiwan for centuries, but many modern varieties of the island’s staple food have their origins in Japan. While the earliest written record of rice being cultivated on the subtropical island dates back to 1602, archaeologists have found evidence that aboriginal groups collected wild varieties as early as 5,000 B.C. Today, however, Taiwan’s rice producers are feeling more than a little anxious about their prospects. Per capita rice consumption has plunged from 132 kg to just 45 kg in the last 40 years, as rising affluence has led to an increase in the consumption of imported staples such as wheat, along with meat and other animal-based proteins. Concerns have been muted until recently. With Taiwan now showing a 10 to 15 percent surplus in supply, officials in government, industry and researchers are looking for ways to reverse the trend. This is not the first time Taiwan’s rice growers have faced problems. When Chinese migrants came to the island in the 16th century, they brought a long-grain species of rice called indica that easily adapted to the new climate, which was much like its native habitat in South and Southeast Asia. However, when Japanese arrived in 1895, they brought a different variety called japonica, which is short-grained and starchy and widely consumed in Japan, the Koreas and northern China. Their intention back then was to grow rice for their home market as part of an official policy meant to offset a decrease in rice production due to industrialization. Their motivation to find new agricultural opportunities increased a decade later because of price hikes resulting from the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Unfortunately, japonica did not respond well to Taiwan’s subtropical climate and abundance of sunlight. Crop after crop of japonica failed, as did efforts to develop indica varieties acceptable to Japanese consumers. After 25 years of frustration, two discoveries were made that resolved the problem, while altering the Taiwanese diet forever. The first occurred in 1921 when it was found that a variety of japonica from Kyushu, known as Nakamura rice, could be grown near Bamboo Lake in the mountains north of Taipei. This led to the cultivation of other Japanese cultivars at higher altitudes, although efforts to move these to flat lowlands favorable to production farming in Taiwan continued to fail. Then in 1923, a Japanese rice breeder named Megumu Suenaga discovered a new cropping scheme for growing the rice at a lower altitude. Suenaga, who later headed a rice experiment laboratory in central Taiwan now called the Taichung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, found that Nakamura rice reached the highest yield potential if seedlings were transplanted from their seedbeds into the flooded fields earlier than native varieties and at a shallower depth. In 1925, Japanese administrators abandoned the indica breeding program and doubled down on japonica, adopting the name Ponlai for Nakamura rice grown in Taiwan a year later. Suenaga’s supervisor, Eikichi Iso, also played an important role in developing new strains of japonica in Taiwan. Iso published an article in 1928 that led to the successful breeding of a new Ponlai variety that became the parent of a major staple of the Taiwanese diet. Crossing the japonica varieties of Kameji and Sinliki, the new hybrid, Taichung No. 65, combined the characteristics needed to grow rice in Taiwan for the Japanese market: short round grains, sticky texture, high production yields and the ability to withstand local pests, heat and sunlight. Since 1929, researchers at the Taichung station have planted and harvested Taichung No. 65 as a recurrent parent for the station’s ongoing rice breeding program. To commemorate his contribution to Taiwan, the station has a bronze statue of Suenaga, who is fondly remembered as “the mother of Taiwanese japonica rice.” For his part, Iso has been dubbed the “father,” and his laboratory, a row of wooden Japanese-style bungalows at Taihoku Imperial University, the predecessor of today’s National Taiwan University, was designated a historic site by the city of Taipei in 2009. “Without Japanese rice breeders, the rice we grow today in Taiwan would not exist,” said Lin Hsueh-shih, head of the Taichung district research station. Putting it more bluntly, Chen Jen-ping, director general of Taiwan’s Agriculture and Food Agency, said, “The DNA of Taiwanese rice originated in Japan.” Taiwan’s experiment stations continue to breed new strains of rice. While the focus remains on japonica, some farmers continue to grow indica, mainly for use in processed foods. The most recent indica rice variety is Taichung No. 197, which was bred specifically for products such as rice noodles, rice cakes and various products used in baking. Apart from the decades it took to grow japonica in Taiwan, other problems have challenged researchers over the years. Issues are likely to continue to arise, especially in areas such as drought and pest control as climate change begins to affect agriculture. However, consumption has never been a problem until now, and breeders are once again being called upon to meet the needs of government and industry as they seek solutions to dietary change. Taiwan is not alone in dealing with waning rice consumption. Affluence has also affected other countries in a similar way in the region, such as Japan, where recent figures show that per capita annual consumption is now 54.4 kg, less than half the amount consumed 50 years ago. Similarly, per capita rice consumption in South Korea dropped to a record low last year, and has experienced a more than 50 percent drop since 1970. Unlike South Korea, Taiwan has not reduced the amount of land allocated to growing rice. Nor does it encourage farmers to grow more rice to feed livestock, as in Japan. Instead, Taiwanese farmers have been encouraged to sustain production, while researchers in government and industry seek a solution to oversupply by way of marketing and development. In addition to new product lines, the Agriculture and Food Agency established an online platform in April that allows consumers to purchase rice-based foods. Apart from the domestic market, the agency is eyeing the more than 10 million foreign tourists who visit Taiwan annually, especially those who come from japonica-growing countries like Japan.
|
history;taiwan;rice;eikichi iso
|
jp0010172
|
[
"national",
"history"
] |
2018/06/20
|
U.S. sailors honor Pearl Harbor survivor during one last visit
|
PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII - Ray Emory survived the early morning surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that killed nearly 2,400 servicemen nearly 80 years ago. The 97-year-old never forgot those who died that day, spending the past few decades doggedly pushing for the remains of those buried as unknowns to be identified and returned to their families. Clutching a walker and stepping tentatively, Emory returned to Pearl Harbor for one last visit before he leaves his Hawaii home to live in Boise, Idaho, with his son. He expected to stop at the pier where his ship, the USS Honolulu, was moored on Dec. 7, 1941, and stay for three or four minutes and then go home. Instead more than 500 sailors stood side-by-side on ships and piers to surprise him. They greeted him with salutes as he arrived on a golf cart and shouted cheers of “Hip, Hip, Hooray!” Lt. Ryan Donohue, chief engineer on USS O’Kane, said it was important for sailors to remember those who sacrificed on Dec. 7. “I think it’s important that we know where we come from — the different events that transpired, about how we have our freedom today,” he said. Emory took the microphone during a ceremony in his honor and recited the names of dozens of ships that were in Pearl Harbor the day of the attack. “I’m glad I came and I’ll never forget it,” Emory told reporters afterward. Emory is leaving Hawaii because his wife died about a month ago and he doesn’t have family in the islands. He plans to go fishing in Idaho. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, Emory managed to fire a few rounds at the airplanes that dropped the torpedoes. He still has an empty bullet casing that fell to his ship deck. In 2012, the Navy and National Park Service recognized Emory for his work with the military and Department of Veterans Affairs to honor and remember Pearl Harbor’s dead. Bureaucrats didn’t welcome his efforts, at least not initially. Emory says they politely told him to “‘go you-know-where.’ ” It didn’t deter him. First, thanks to legislation sponsored by the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii, he managed to get gravestones for unknowns from the USS Arizona marked with name of their battleship. In 2003, the military agreed to dig up a casket that Emory was convinced, after meticulously studying records, included the remains of multiple USS Oklahoma servicemen. Emory was right, and five sailors were identified. It helped lay the foundation for the Pentagon’s decision more than a decade later to exhume and attempt to identify all 388 sailors and Marines from the Oklahoma who had been buried as unknowns in a national cemetery in Honolulu. Since those 2015 exhumations, 138 sailors from the Oklahoma have been identified. About 77 have been reburied, many in their hometowns, bringing closure to families across the country. “Ray, you’re the man that did it. There’s nobody else. If it wasn’t for you, it would have never been done,” Jim Taylor, the Navy’s liaison to Pearl Harbor survivors, told Emory during the brief ceremony earlier this month at the USS Honolulu’s old pier. Taylor predicted Emory would return to his research on unknowns once he’s in Idaho. “He’ll do this until the day he joins his wife in heaven,” Taylor said. Some of the remains, especially those burned to ash, will never be identified. But the military aims to put names with 80 percent of the Oklahoma servicemen who were dug up in 2015. Altogether, the Pearl Harbor attack killed nearly 2,400 U.S. servicemen. The Oklahoma lost 429 men after being hit by at least nine torpedoes. It was the second-largest number of dead from one vessel. The USS Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines. Most of those killed on the Arizona remain entombed in the sunken hull of the battleship. The Pentagon has also exhumed the remains of 35 servicemen from the USS West Virginia from Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. None have been identified so far.
|
conflict;wwii;history;pearl harbor;japan-u.s. relations
|
jp0010173
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/18
|
Rail car mover, used to carry bricks in Gifu, to be restored 40 years after retirement
|
Efforts are underway to restore an abandoned freight car mover that was used until some 40 years ago to carry firebricks at a brick factory in the major ceramics production town of Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture. Kobei Kato, 72, the seventh-generation master of local pottery Kobei-gama and a rail fan who had kept the car mover, has been working since spring with Masahiro Sasada, 46, a dermatologist and a railway writer from Koka, Shiga Prefecture, to restore the machine so it can be put on display as an artefact of industrial heritage. The car mover is a C2-type vehicle that had been used on a siding at a factory run by TYK Corp., a refractory manufacturer in Tajimi. From 1949, the then Japanese National Railways manufactured 140 car movers, each weighing 5 tons and measuring 3.5 meters in length and 2 meters in width, during the postwar period when resources were scarce. They were built with secondhand 40 horsepower gasoline engines used for buses, and equipped with accelerator and brake pedals like cars. The vehicles were said to have been able to move only at a speed of about 10 kilometers per hour. The car mover came to the TYK factory after being used by Japanese National Railways. It pulled freight cars carrying firebricks to the nearby Ichinokuraguchi Station of Tohnoh Tetsudou Co.’s now-defunct Kasahara Line. The firebricks were then distributed nationwide via the Kasahara Line and the JNR. After the Kasahara Line was closed, in 1978, the car mover was retired, and had long been abandoned on the factory grounds. About 15 years ago, Kato passed by the factory and noticed the vehicle. He told then-TYK President Susumu Ushigome he would like to adopt the car mover and keep it on the grounds of Kobei-gama. Sasada learned about the car mover from a readers’ column in a railway magazine. He said he was excited to find out that the vehicle still existed, believing that it is the only remaining car mover of its type. He visited Kato last fall and requested that the vehicle be restored, and the collaboration started. Until this spring leaving the vehicle outdoors had been unavoidable, and it had become quite weather-beaten. The iron plating was rusty and had holes in it, and the wood floor was rotted. They filled the holes with an aluminum sheet and replaced the floor. They also painted the vehicle yellow, based on earlier photographs, but they have said it is difficult to repair the engine. The car mover is currently on a 10-meter-long railway track in the pottery grounds, but Kato plans to extend the track by about 10 meters and build a roofed garage as well. “When the restoration work is done, I want to see the vehicle towed by manpower,” Kato said. “I want to give it a name.” “I’m glad to feel like the vehicle has been brought back to life,” Sasada said. They plan to hold an event this summer to show the restored vehicle to the public.
|
railways;gifu;pottery;car movers;tajimi
|
jp0010174
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/18
|
Osaka earthquake: Useful links and resources
|
Here is a collection of links in English and Japanese that might prove useful in dealing with the earthquake that struck the Osaka region Monday morning: Government agencies Japan Meteorological Agency Disaster preparedness Railways and subways JR West Osaka Metro Power and gas companies Kansai Electric Tourist emergencies Osaka Convention and Tourism Bureau NTT East, disaster emergency information Earthquake-related resources Getting a handle on earthquakes Shindo: Japan’s earthquake intensity scale Links in Japanese Cabinet Office Japan Meteorological Agency Osaka Metro JR West
|
osaka;earthquake;kepco;meteorological agency;fukui nuclear plants
|
jp0010175
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/18
|
At least four killed, more than 300 injured after strong earthquake rattles Osaka
|
OSAKA - One of the most powerful earthquakes to rock the Kansai region in decades struck Osaka and neighboring prefectures Monday morning, leaving at least four people dead and more than 300 injured. The earthquake, which had a magnitude of 6.1 and registered lower 6 on the Japanese intensity scale to 7, hit at 7:58 a.m. at a depth of about 13 km under northern Osaka, the Meteorological Agency said. No tsunami warning was issued. The quake literally woke the Kansai region and underscored the fact that the region remains just as vulnerable as other parts of Japan that have been more seismically active since the magnitude 7.3 Great Hanshin Earthquake killed 6,434 people and left Kobe devastated in 1995. Osaka officials were still assessing the damage as of Monday evening. Rina Miyake, a 9-year-old girl in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, was confirmed dead after a wall surrounding a swimming pool fell on her as she walked past. Also in the prefecture, Motochika Goto, a man in his 80s from Ibaraki, died after he was crushed by a bookshelf at his home, according to the Osaka Prefectural Government. In Higashiyodogawa Ward in the city of Osaka, 80-year-old Minoru Yasui died after being hit by a falling wall. Later in the day, a fourth death was reported in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, where an 81-year-old woman was confirmed dead after she was crushed under a dislodged chest of drawers in her house, city officials said. Dozens of fires were reported in Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto and Mie prefectures, according to police and municipal authorities. In Takatsuki and Ibaraki, gas supplies to 108,000 locations were interrupted, Osaka Gas Co. said, while a water pipe under a road in Takatsuki burst and flooded the area, according to the police. Kansai Electric Power Co., meanwhile, said its nuclear plants in Fukui Prefecture were operating normally. No abnormalities were reported at the Takahama, Mihama and Oi plants in the prefecture. In the city of Osaka, initial fears of widespread panic and chaos had receded by midday after subway services to parts of the city center were gradually restored. Life on the streets in the Umeda and Namba districts had largely returned to normal, although the major shopping centers around Osaka Station were closed and the crowds were smaller than normal. Some posted notices in both Japanese and English announcing they were closed for the day because of the quake. By late Monday afternoon, worries about aftershocks were growing. A few convenience stores appeared to be running low on certain items. “We’ve done a brisk business these past few hours, especially in bottled water,” said Tetsunari Nigawa, who works at a convenience store near central Osaka’s Umeda Station. At Namba Station, groups of foreign and Japanese tourists found transportation to Kansai International Airport greatly curtailed, with the fastest trains suspended and only one, a non-reserved train, in operation. Bus services from the airport to parts of Kansai including Wakayama and Nara prefectures had partially resumed by mid-afternoon. Up to 70 people were seen standing calmly in line at taxi stands in Umeda Station. By Monday night, most of the main north-south Midosuji Subway Line and other city subway lines that run through central Osaka had reopened. “It was a strong quake and reminded me of the 1995 earthquake. It was quite a surprise,” said Yoko Inoue, 38, who was waiting for a taxi near Umeda Station. Kepco said late Monday afternoon that there were still some power outages in their service areas. With rain forecast, the Meteorological Agency warned against landslides, adding that people should be wary that aftershocks might hit in the next few days. Soon after the morning quake, the government set up an emergency task force in Tokyo to gather information about the situation. The central government vowed to “do its utmost” with disaster-relief efforts and to help with reconstruction, as well as provide the public with more information. Learning of Miyake’s death, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, speaking in Tokyo, said the government instructed the education ministry to re-evaluate nationwide safety standards for cinder block walls along school commuting routes. As of Monday afternoon, more than 1,100 residents were taking refuge in 462 evacuation centers in Osaka Prefecture, prefectural officials added. The top government spokesman also urged residents in the hardest-hit areas to stay calm and be vigilant against aftershocks, which he said could be as strong as a lower 6, over the next week or so. A senior government official expressed guarded optimism about the damage, citing what appeared to be the quake’s “localized” nature. More than 60 bullet trains were canceled in the morning and some expressways were closed. Both Kansai International and Kobe airport temporarily closed but resumed operations after confirming there was no structural damage. In Osaka Prefecture, power was restored after the quake left about 170,800 homes and buildings without electricity for several hours. The quake left many commuters stranded at stations or on streets during the morning rush hour after disrupting shinkansen and other rail operations in western and central Japan. In a quake with an intensity of lower 6, it is difficult to remain standing, and unsecured furniture may move or topple over, according to the Meteorological Agency. Although the magnitude was relatively weak, the quake is believed to have triggered high-intensity tremors because it struck at a shallow depth. It was the latest in a string of quakes over the past few days, including a magnitude 4.6 quake that hit southern Gunma Prefecture on Sunday and a magnitude 4.5 temblor that struck Chiba Prefecture on Saturday.
|
osaka;earthquake;kepco;meteorological agency;fukui nuclear plants
|
jp0010176
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/18
|
Residents voice fear amid chaos of Osaka quake
|
Sushi chef Soshu Yoshiyama got a rude awakening at 7:58 a.m. Monday when his home in the town of Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, was buffeted by strong, vertical jolts the likes of which he had never experienced before. He said he thought the earthquake lasted about 10 to 15 seconds. “It was vertical thrusts and I heard a big ‘bang’ sound. I’ve lived here for about 10 years, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” Yoshiyama, 68, said in a phone interview with The Japan Times on Monday morning, shortly after the magnitude 6.1 quake rocked the Osaka area. His house, including his sushi bar on the first floor, is just a few blocks away from Juei Elementary School, where a 9-year-old girl was killed when the wall around a swimming pool collapsed on her as she was walking by. The quake in Takatsuki registered as a lower 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale to 7. Yoshiyama, however, said he doesn’t know much about what happened in his neighborhood, including the girl’s death, because he was preoccupied with the damage to his sushi bar. “Many bottles and all of the dishes were broken. They are all useless now,” he said. According to the Meteorological Agency, the quake’s impact was felt in much of the Kansai region, including northern Osaka, southern Kyoto, southern Shiga, and southeastern Hyogo and Nara prefectures. Polish fashion designer Daria Miura, 45, a 20-year resident of Japan, was on a Hankyu Line train headed for Kobe when the temblor hit. “It felt as if the train was running on square wheels,” Miura said in a message in Polish. “I saw paramedics take a pair of injured passengers away,” she wrote. The train stopped at Shukugawa Station in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, stranding Miura, who was on her way to meet a client, until 3 p.m. While waiting, she began worrying about her son, who was going to Kyoto University, and her husband, who was at home with their cats in Higashi-Osaka. “I couldn’t reach my husband for about 30 minutes. Neither of my private au cellphone or the company-owned SoftBank phone worked,” she wrote, referring to the two Japanese cellular brands. “I was really worried when I saw the quake was a lower 6.” After eventually making contact, she said “it was depressing” to see the post-quake photos of her apartment from her husband, which showed their fallen TV on the floor, knocked over plants and damaged furniture. “I asked my husband to stock water just in case of any aftershocks,” she wrote. The quake struck at the height of the morning rush hour. At Ikoma Station in Nara, hundreds of commuters were milling about, waiting for word on when the trains to Osaka and Nara would resume. “Our house shook hard, but thankfully there was no damage,” said 43-year-old Hiroshi Nakatani, an Ikoma resident who was on his way to work in Osaka. Eduardo, a Spanish resident of Osaka who wished to be identified only by his first name, was just about to leave for work when the quake hit. He said he could “feel how the whole building was moving” and described the earthquake as having a “slow, rocking kind of motion.” The shaking felt like it only lasted for five seconds or so, he added, but the experience was frightening because he had never been through such a strong quake. His company arranged for a car to take him to his office in the city as all the trains had stopped running. However, soon after midday, several hours after the quake, many of the roads were still congested. Many foreign residents used social media to express their experience with the quake. “Woke up screaming cuz of this damn earth quake. Legit felt like a nightmare and that the building was gonna crash down on me,” New Yorker Ayana Wyse, 31, who lives near Osaka Dome, posted on Twitter. Wyse, who produces English videos for Japanese cram schools, said she “was pretty scared” but calmed down after getting messages from her friends. “Biggest shake I have ever experienced,” she wrote. Some Twitter users shared photos and videos of the damage, such as a leaking water pipe on a road in the town of Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, which was heavily damaged by the temblor. Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura warned residents of aftershocks. “In Kumamoto, there were two strong earthquakes. Please stay alert and stay safe,” he wrote on Twitter. Kumamoto Mayor Kazufumi Onishi, who has been dealing with the aftermath of the fatal 2016 quakes that hit central Kyushu, warned on Twitter to verify information shared on social media to prevent panic.
|
damage;residents;osaka earthquake;voices
|
jp0010177
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/18
|
M6.1 quake in Osaka as seen on Twitter
|
Scenes from social media of the powerful earthquake that struck the Osaka area at 7:58 a.m. Monday morning. M6.1 Osaka earthquake June 18, 2018
|
osaka;earthquake
|
jp0010178
|
[
"reference"
] |
2018/06/18
|
Japan's criminal justice reforms aim to enhance transparency of interrogations — are they working?
|
The National Police Agency said in early June that interrogations of crime suspects were fully recorded in 81.9 percent of all the 3,197 cases tried by lay judges in fiscal 2017, up from 72.8 percent the year before. The data were released ahead of June 2019 — the deadline for implementing full recording of the entire interrogation process in cases subject to lay judge trials. The reform is being implemented as part of a major overhaul of Japan’s criminal justice system. What are the changes and why are the reforms being put into place? Let’s examine the revisions to the criminal justice system in more detail: How is the criminal justice system changing with regard to interrogations? By next June, all questioning conducted in cases that will be tried by lay judges, including murder or kidnapping, as well as special investigations by prosecutors will have to be audio recorded or videotaped. There are some exceptions to the rule, such as when suspects refuse to be recorded, or investigators believe that putting them on record is deterring them from confessing. However, the mandatory recording under the 2016 revision of the Criminal Procedure Law, which specifies how criminal trials should take place, will only affect some 2 to 3 percent of all cases taken to court. Critics say there is still a long way to go before the criminal justice system can achieve the level of transparency they seek. What is the importance of recording interrogations? Japan’s justice system is notorious for its reliance on confessions and testimony when building cases. This has at times resulted in miscarriages of justice, such as a 1967 murder-robbery case that involved Takao Sugiyama and Shoji Sakurai. The two were sentenced to life in prison in 1970 but found not guilty in 2011 after a retrial, since the judges ruled that there was a lack of hard evidence to support the prosecutors’ case and the confessions of the accused were unreliable. In a case often referred to as the “Fukawa Incident” the two men were arrested based on their own confessions and witness testimony, despite a lack of physical evidence to support their claims. Sugiyama and Sakurai, who were released on parole in 1996, have both said that their confessions were coerced by investigators. Experts claim that audio and video recording of the entire interrogation will help detect forced confessions, because suspects’ testimony would change over the course of the questioning to suit the scenario investigators have in mind. What triggered the overhaul of the criminal justice system? A string of court cases where the accused was eventually found innocent shed light on some of the questionable practices used by prosecutors during their investigations. One of the most notorious cases, often referred to as the Postal Fraud Case, involved Atsuko Muraki — at the time a senior bureaucrat at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. Muraki was accused of forging a governmental certification so that an organization could get postal discounts. She was charged with document forgery in 2009, with prosecutors suspecting that she had instructed a junior official to issue the bogus certification. However, the junior official, who was charged with conspiring with Muraki, later accused prosecutors of coercing false confessions from him and fabricating the involvement of his boss in the case. Muraki was acquitted in 2010. The high-profile case met with public anger and threw into question what goes on behind the closed doors of the interrogation room. The Justice Ministry pledged to make the criminal investigation process more transparent and break away from the justice system’s reliance on confessions and testimony. The newly revised law is a result of that overhaul. How was the criminal justice system changed? The initial purpose of the law revision was to make the investigation process more transparent. The first meetings to draft the legislation focused on recording the investigation process, as well as reducing the prosecutor’s dependency on confessions and testimony. However, as the draft law was hashed out, prosecutors expressed concern that the recording could deter suspects from confessing. The discussion shifted to “diversifying” the investigation process, and methods to aid investigators such as the Japanese-style plea-bargaining system and expansion of cases subject to wiretapping were added in the reform. Although experts have welcomed some of the revisions, such as an increase in criminal cases that allow for state-appointed lawyers, many are wary of the trade-offs that were made in return. What changes have already been made to the criminal justice system? Some changes have already taken effect, such as the introduction of a bargaining system that allows criminal suspects to negotiate deals with prosecutors in exchange for information on other criminals. Judges also now have the authority to provide those who testify at court with immunity from prosecution. An expansion of the scope of criminal cases subject to wiretapping by investigators has also already taken effect. Most of the changes to the criminal justice system were brought about through an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law. Those revisions are being implemented incrementally over the course of a three year period through 2019.
|
recording;criminal justice system;criminal procedure law
|
jp0010179
|
[
"business"
] |
2018/06/27
|
Household assets in Japan hit record-high ¥1.83 quadrillion at end of 2017 fiscal year
|
Financial assets held by households stood at a record ¥1.83 quadrillion ($17 trillion) at the end of March, climbing 2.5 percent from a year earlier thanks to a rise in share prices, the Bank of Japan said Wednesday. The figure marked a record-high on a fiscal year-end basis for the sixth year in a row. By asset type, cash and deposits increased 2.3 percent to ¥961 trillion, and equities rose 11.7 percent to ¥199 trillion. Investment trusts gained 1.4 percent to ¥73 trillion while debt securities fell 5.5 percent to ¥23 trillion. Assets held by companies excluding financial institutions rose 8.5 percent, to ¥1.18 quadrillion. Meanwhile, the outstanding balance of domestic government bonds increased 1.2 percent to ¥1.1 quadrillion, of which the Bank of Japan held ¥459 trillion, or 41.8 percent. The BOJ’s holdings rose 7.4 percent but the pace of year-on-year growth slowed from last March’s 17.3 percent as the central bank has been scaling down its government debt purchases, having shifted the focus of its ultra-easy policy from monetary base expansion to interest rates in 2016. Government bonds held by foreign investors rose 2.5 percent to ¥120 trillion, or 10.9 percent of the total.
|
stocks;bonds;assets
|
jp0010181
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2018/06/27
|
Helsinki emerges as possible location for Trump-Putin summit: U.S. official
|
WASHINGTON - The Finnish capital of Helsinki is being considered as a location for a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said over the weekend it was likely Trump would meet his Russian counterpart “in the not too distant future” following White House national security adviser John Bolton’s visit to Moscow this week. The senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said while Helsinki was the likeliest choice, the final decision depended on the outcome of talks Bolton is having with the Russians. Vienna had been also discussed as a potential site for the meeting, but officials said that idea has been abandoned. The highly anticipated Trump-Putin meeting is likely to take place after a July 11-12 NATO summit in Brussels that Trump is expected to attend. Trump is also expected to visit London for talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May on the trip. Trump, who has said he wants better relations with Russia, last met Putin in November in Vietnam on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit. A probe of Russia’s alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. election has hung over Trump’s presidency. U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia. Moscow denies meddling in the U.S. election and Trump denies any collusion took place.
|
vladimir putin;russia;nato;donald trump;helsinki;mike pompeo;john bolton
|
jp0010182
|
[
"world"
] |
2018/06/27
|
Swede jailed for life over Rwanda genocide
|
STOCKHOLM - A Stockholm court on Wednesday sentenced a Swedish man of Rwandan origin to life in prison for participating in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Theodore Tabaro, 49, was sentenced by the Stockholm district court for “genocide” after he was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and kidnappings of the Tutsi minority. He was acquitted of rape due to lack of evidence. The incidents occurred between April-May 1994 in Rwanda’s southwestern sectors of Winteko, Nyakanyinya and Mibirizi, according to the verdict. Tabaro participated in an attack against a Nyakanyinya school in which hundreds of people, including women and children, had been ordered to seek refuge. The court said he, along with other culprits, “threw hand grenades at the building” and “shot and stabbed” civilians. Eight hundred people, many of them children, were killed or seriously injured. He also participated a few days later in an attack against a monastery in Mibirizi. Investigators and prosecutors in the case interviewed dozens of witnesses and survivors in Rwanda, Europe and North America. At least 36 deaths and seven rape victims were identified during the investigation. Sixteen of the 30 survivors and relatives of victims who lodged the case against Tabaro, will be compensated, the court said. Tabaro was arrested in October 2016 at his home in Orebro, 160 kilometers (100 miles) west of Stockholm. He arrived in Sweden in 1998 and was naturalized in 2006. In 2014 and 2016, Sweden sentenced two other naturalized Rwandan Swedes, Stanislas Mbanenande and Claver Berinkidi, to life in prison for participating in the Rwandan genocide. Triggered after the assassination of Rwandan President Hutu Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994, the genocide claimed 800,000 lives in three months, mainly among the Tutsi minority, according to U.N. figures.
|
sweden;rape;crime;court;genocide;rwanda;theodore tabaro
|
jp0010183
|
[
"national",
"social-issues"
] |
2018/06/27
|
Tokyo-raised American Chessy Prout fights for rights of sexual assault victims
|
Chessy Prout, an American teenager who spent most of her childhood in Japan, initially felt a sense of powerlessness as the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault gained steam last year. About four years before the movement evolved into a global force, Prout, now 19, was sexually assaulted by one of the most popular senior students at an elite boarding school in New Hampshire. Fast forward to late 2017, and she began to see she was not alone in her experience. But she also felt overwhelmed by the scale of sexual violence. There were “millions of other people who were going through and feeling the same thing as I was feeling and I could do nothing to help them,” Prout said in recalling her first reaction to the movement during her recent visit to Tokyo to promote her memoir, which details the assault and subsequent trials. “So for a while I felt really helpless and depressed that I couldn’t do anything.” Prout said she was in a particularly somber mood around November, as it coincided with the time her memoir was in the final phase of editing, and her story had not yet been told. To write the book detailing her life before and after the assault at St. Paul’s School in May 2014, she had to intensively recall her hardships. After months of writing, she was weary. But then she became encouraged and inspired by the countless messages of support on social media for sexual assault survivors, while mainstream media outlets also finally started to give sexual assault some of the attention it deserved. Joining hands with other women who had stayed silent for decades, she has become much more active in telling her personal story inside and outside the United States since the publication in March of her 405-page memoir, “I Have the Right To: A High School Survivor’s Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope”. During her visit to Japan, she promoted her memoir and spoke about sexual violence at a gathering at the International School of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo, where she used to study. “I was the nameless, faceless victim,” she said. “Nobody cared about who I was or what I was going through. “I wanted to reclaim my story” through writing the book, she said. “I wanted to reclaim my voice and I wanted to use my voice.” The assault took place in a secluded mechanical room on campus as part of a ritualized competition among some upperclassmen called the “Senior Salute,” in which the boys are said to have tried to have sex with as many younger girls as possible before graduation. Prout and her family, who relocated to the United States from Japan following the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake, did everything they could to address the attack. And yet they faced an unforeseen backlash from a wide section of the community at a school they had once trusted. The book, which she wrote with Boston Globe investigative reporter Jenn Abelson, recounts how the school and her perpetrator denied responsibility by disclosing a number of messages exchanged between the parties following the attack. In the course of a subsequent criminal trial that made headlines across the United States, in which Prout appeared as an anonymous victim, she continued to suffer in silence and isolation. She said the 162-year-old institution, where her father and older sister had also studied, devoted its collective energy to protect the school’s prestige. “They wanted to ignore the problem, ignore me and stay away from me as I was challenging the status quo,” she said of school administrators. The school settled in January a civil lawsuit filed by her parents. The perpetrator, Owen Labrie, was convicted in 2015 of three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault, a felony charge of using a computer to lure a minor, and child endangerment, but was acquitted of felony rape. He is appealing his conviction. To tell her side of the story, Prout first shed her anonymity on NBC’s Today show in 2016. The teenager felt she was psychologically hurt the most by the betrayal she experienced from friends and St. Paul officials. Despite the trauma, Prout is aware she is “lucky,” as her family was supportive of her throughout and she was able to leave the community behind. When asked if she has any advice for others, Prout said, “Knowing that what somebody did to you is not your fault and you have the right to heal in any way you want to and … being able to talk to somebody who one can trust (are essential).” Before coping with the difficulties of the assault, Prout, however, said she was angry for a long time at her parents for making her leave Tokyo in the wake of the 2011 disaster. She said that “Tokyo was the only home I really knew” after living in the capital for 11 years, since she was a 6-month-old baby, adding it was “a big culture shock” and took a while for her to adapt to an American lifestyle. Because of the struggle Prout’s family had to go through after the earthquake, with her father having had to stay in Tokyo for work and the rest fleeing to Florida, she thinks they grew stronger together as a family. Years have gone by since the family’s move to the United States. But Prout, who will be starting college in New York this fall, said she still misses Japan’s culture of politeness and “mutual respect.” In addition to making efforts to amplify the #MeToo movement, she is now leading a social media campaign, #IHaveTheRightTo, to help empower other sexual assault survivors to seek justice, as well as teaching children about consent and how to respect other people’s boundaries. Teaching these ideas in school, she said, is paramount because “it’s a fact of life” that everyone needs to deal with sexuality at some point even if it is not talked about in a classroom setting. “I truly believe in the power of conversation and human connections,” Prout said.
|
sex crimes;schools;new hampshire;chessy prout
|
jp0010184
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2018/06/27
|
Japan to reinforce police gun holsters to prevent firearm theft
|
The National Police Agency is accelerating plans to reinforce police officers’ gun holsters and safety straps so their firearms cannot be stolen, agency officials said Wednesday. The move comes in the wake of an incident in the city of Toyama the previous day where a 21-year-old man stabbed an officer, stole his gun and shot a school security guard nearby, killing both. The agency had intended to make improvements to the standard-issue firearm holder by around 2020, but will move up the plan in response to the Toyama incident, the officials said. The plan involves redesigning the holster and attachments to make it difficult for those other than the officer wearing it to take out the gun, they said. On Tuesday, Keita Shimazu, a former member of the Self-Defense Forces, stabbed the 46-year-old officer at a police box, took his gun before moving on to an elementary school in the neighborhood and gunning down a 68-year-old security guard. Shimazu was arrested after being shot by another police officer who arrived at the elementary school in response to the incident. According to agency statistics, before the Toyama incident there had been six cases since 2013 in which local police officers were robbed of their pistols. Of those, the gun was fired in three of the cases. In the past, police have made improvements to officers’ gun holsters by reinforcing the elastic cords that attach the revolvers to belts. That change was made following a 2005 incident in Gifu Prefecture where two Japanese-Brazilian brothers robbed a policeman of a loaded gun by cutting the cord with a knife, and fled in a vehicle. They were arrested three weeks later.
|
national police agency;toyama;police
|
jp0010185
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/27
|
Uzbek envoy eager to deepen relationship with Japan
|
Uzbekistan Ambassador Gayrat Fazilov wants to strengthen the strategic partnership with Japan. “We see Japan as a very close partner in the Asia Pacific region,” Ambassador Fazilov said during a courtesy visit to The Japan Times on Wednesday. “My task as ambassador is to open a new page” and increase the level of cooperation. The bilateral cooperation has become stronger, with the two countries entering into a strategic partnership in 2002. In October 2015, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Uzbekistan and agreed with then-President Islam Karimov to further deepen ties through people-to-people exchanges and technical cooperation, among other measures. The embassy is planning to organize a special symposium on bilateral cooperation in collaboration with the Diet, he said. The Central Asian country is ready to accept direct investment from Japan, the envoy added. Uzbekistan has set up seven free economic zones that offer tax and other benefits to foreign companies. The ambassador mentioned other benefits for investing in Uzbekistan, located at the heart of the Central Asia, which includes a highly educated labor force. Uzbekistan is “one of the fastest developing countries,” said Fazilov. Its economy grew 5.3 percent in 2017 from the previous year. Tourism is booming in Uzbekistan, with the country allowing Japanese visitors since February to stay up to 30 days without a visa. Last year, the number of Japanese tourists to Uzbekistan grew 30 percent and the first five months of this year saw a 43 percent surge from the same period in the previous year, according to the envoy.
|
diplomacy;uzbekistan-japan relations;gayrat fazilov
|
jp0010186
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/11
|
Panasonic employee drives innovation by connecting young, enterprising new entrants to Japan's workforce
|
It’s often difficult for people to maintain the enterprising spirit they had when they first entered the workplace, fresh out of university. Especially in a large company it is difficult for people’s voices are heard, and often they feel isolated as there are not many opportunities to get to know others who share their passions. Many eventually give up asking questions and coming up with new ideas, and start to just go with the flow. In the hope of changing this sense of stagnation and lifting the spirits of young employees at major companies, Makoto Hamamatsu, 35, an employee at electronics giant Panasonic Corp., co-launched a group in September 2016 that would allow people in their 20s and 30s to connect, share ideas and create innovation. Named One Japan, the community has grown in less than two years from some 120 members in 26 firms to roughly 1,200 people in 50 large companies, including Toyota Motor Corp., Canon Inc., NTT group, Japan Post Holdings Co. and Fuji Xerox Co. “We call it a community where the wisdom and passion of young people who work for major companies come together,” said Hamamatsu, who currently works at Panasonic’s consumer electronics business development section. By connecting people within and outside companies, he hopes to create innovation and revitalize the firms where they work, he said. “I don’t want to see people giving up trying. … Big companies tend to have rigid organization structures or monoculture, and that’s not good for revitalizing the corporations,” he said. “I want people to create an enterprising atmosphere, rather than sensing the existing corporate culture and going along with it. I want to see more people take a step forward.” The idea for One Japan stemmed from a gathering Hamamatsu launched in 2012 with young employees at Panasonic Corp. After he joined Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (now Panasonic) in 2006, Hamamatsu began asking his colleagues to go for a drink after work or participate in study sessions about their career paths. After hosting similar events attended by hundreds of young employees for six years, Hamamatsu decided to create a group and called it One Panasonic. In a giant organization like Panasonic that has more than 200,000 employees, it is hard to meet people from other departments who also have an enterprising spirit, and people tend to feel powerless to propose new business ideas alone, Hamamatsu said. But by creating One Panasonic, people started to connect with peers with whom they had never spoken before, and to exchange ideas, he said. “The biggest result we’ve achieved through the activities is elevating members’ motivation, and more people have started to take initiative,” he said. “And that is really huge. … Some people told me that they were thinking about quitting the company, but decided to remain in the end because of One Panasonic.” Hoping to extend their network beyond the company, One Panasonic got together with similar groups of young workers at Fuji Xerox Co. and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. to launch One Japan. Members from different companies within the community hold small gatherings to discuss their shared interests such as health care, marketing or accounting. Just a little over a year since its launch the group is still in its early stages, but attempts to break down the walls between the corporations are already starting to blossom into actual products and services. One such product under development is an artificial intelligence robot that guides people in “mindfulness meditation,” a method considered to improve people’s concentration. The project was launched after Fuji Xerox asked One Japan to provide ideas for a new service using robots. There are several other services and products currently under development — some of which could be announced in a few months, he added. The group also holds an all-member gathering about twice a year to discuss topics like open innovation or work style. They also invite management-level officials from their companies to exchange ideas, because it is crucial to gain their understanding and support if they want to change corporate culture or start new projects, Hamamatsu said. Around 800 people attended last September’s gathering in Tokyo, including the vice president of Japan Tobacco Inc. and the senior managing director of Panasonic. At the venue, more than 40 companies also showcased products or services they are working on to get feedback from various people with different professional backgrounds. In a bid to change working styles for the better, the group also conducted surveys on more than 1,000 members to find out their views on juggling work and child rearing or on having side jobs. Hamamatsu hopes to use the results as evidence to show what young workers want and to change their working environment. It’s tough for Hamamatsu to continue juggling his time between work for Panasonic and efforts to foster his One Japan and One Panasonic initiatives. But, he said, a sense of mission has driven him to continue to lead the groups for years. “This kind of activity usually fades out after a few years. But I want to change such stereotypical things,” Hamamatsu said. “I eventually want to expand what we are doing to overseas.”
|
panasonic;network;one japan;makoto hamamatsu
|
jp0010187
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2018/06/11
|
If Niigata gubernatorial race was a litmus test, Abe and Nikai passed
|
NIIGATA - Sunday’s gubernatorial race in Niigata Prefecture was seen as a political litmus test for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito ruling coalition after months of cronyism scandals related to school operators Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen. If so, it was a test that Abe and his closest LDP allies, especially LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai, appear to have passed as they look toward their final political exam in September — the LDP presidential election. But in Niigata, local issues trumped whatever worries voters might have had about the scandal-ridden Abe administration. The first question that decided the election was which candidate would be most effective in working with Tokyo to ensure it would receive financial assistance for local economic development and social welfare projects. Especially at a time when the population is rapidly aging and declining. The second question was how voters felt about the way candidates would handle the issue of reactor restarts at the giant Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. Thus Hideyo Hanazumi, 60, a former secretary to powerful LDP secretary-general Toshihiro Nikai, won by playing up his Tokyo experience and promising he had the right connections there to ensure Niigata would receive money for all manner of public works projects, especially transportation infrastructure projects that he said would create new jobs. Hanazumi won with 546,670 votes, about 37,000 more than his main rival Chikako Ikeda, who focused on opposing the nuclear power issue while supporters blasted Abe and the ruling coalition over the various scandals. Voter turnout was 58.25 percent, or 5.2 points higher than the last election. “I promise to make Niigata strong and an easy place to live,” Hanazumi said following his victory Sunday night. But after being initially reluctant to address the nuclear power issue, Hanazumi may have caught Ikeda’s supporters off guard by switching tactics in the last days of the campaign and suggesting he would not be a pushover when it came to approving the reboots of the No. 6 and 7 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. The move appeared to pay dividends, as NHK and local media polls showed he picked up a few votes from those who opposed the restarts. A poll by the local daily Niigata Nippo before the election showed that 65 percent of respondents remain opposed to restarting the reactors. “As long as the people of Niigata remain unconvinced, (the reactors) won’t be restarted,” Hanazumi told supporters following his Sunday night victory. But Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace Germany, who was in Niigata to observe the election, said that regardless of political statements, there were no prospects for restarts in the coming few years. “The new governor needs to maintain Niigata’s existing policy which is to conclude investigations into the Fukushima nuclear disaster, as well establish a credible evacuation plan. Tepco also needs to fully disclose how it was that the risks of liquefaction at unit Kashiwazaki Kariwa 6 & 7 reactors were not notified to Japan’s nuclear regulator before safety approval last year,” said Burnie. In Tokyo, top LDP officials did not comment on Hanazumi’s attitude toward nuclear power, but saw his victory as public vindication of the ruling parties. “The people of Niigata trusted the LDP and Komeito and voted for the candidate the two parties supported,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday morning. Hanazumi’s win was also a victory for his old boss Nikai, who heads an LDP faction of 44 members. Those votes will be crucial when the party elects a new president in September. Despite the scandals and low popularity ratings, Abe is seeking a third term as LDP president and counting on the Nikai faction to help him get it. Hanazumi’s win could now make it difficult for Abe’s rivals to peel off votes from the Nikai faction.
|
shinzo abe;niigata prefecture;ldp;tepco;nuclear energy;toshihiro nikai;hideyo hanazumi
|
jp0010188
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/11
|
Car crashes into Gunma supermarket, injuring 14; driver held
|
SHIBUKAWA, GUNMA PREF. - A car crashed into a supermarket in Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, on Sunday afternoon, injuring 14 people. None of the 14 is in a life-threatening condition but five were seriously injured, including one whose hip got broken, according to the Gunma Prefectural Police department’s Shibukawa station. Around 3:55 p.m., the fire department received an emergency call reporting that a car had plowed into Torisen, a supermarket in the Miyukida district. Katsuto Yajima, the 55-year-old driver, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of negligent driving resulting in injuries. Yajima told the police that he hit the gas pedal hard after feeling numbness on the right side of his body. According to police and other sources, Yajima’s car sailed through its glass entrance and came to halt about 15 meters inside after hitting a shelf. Yajima was on his way home from shopping when the accident occured. The police will investigate whether Yajima is ill and whether that led to the accident, investigative sources said. An eyewitness said the car was moving at a high speed when it smashed into the store. Takeshi Jin, 44, the manager, said the car appeared to crash into the store without stopping. “I rushed to the scene after hearing a bang,” said a 22-year-old Shibukawa woman who was inside. “I saw a boy lying bleeding on the floor, so I took him to a safe place,” said the woman, who was studying to be a nurse. Torisen Co., based in Tatebayashi, operates supermarkets mainly in Gunma and neighboring Tochigi.
|
gunma;vehicle accidents;shibukawa;torisen
|
jp0010189
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/11
|
Mie University ties up with local cake shop to reproduce stress-relieving ninja snacks
|
Mie University in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, and Mon Pactole, a cake shop in Nabari in the prefecture, have jointly developed cookies inspired by preserved snacks that ninja are believed to have eaten to relieve stress. “We hope people will enjoy the deliciously revived modern-day ninja food,” said Makoto Hisamatsu, a professor emeritus at Mie University who led the endeavor to bring the ninja know-how to modern-day palates. In an effort to promote the region, which is known as the home of the Iga ninja tradition, Mie University has been actively involved in researching ninja customs since fiscal 2014. Hisamatsu, who specializes in food chemistry, focused on hyōrōgan portable rations thought to have been carried by ninja, and looked into related documents from the Edo Period. He found out through research that hyōrōgan was a spherical food made from sugar and a few kinds of herbal medicine, including dried Japanese yam, lotus fruit and adlay seeds, which had an effect of releasing stress and improving blood circulation. Judging from the ingredients it is believed that ninja might have consumed the treats not so much for their nutritional value as their calming effect, when they were under heavy stress while on duty. Hisamatsu became set on reviving the food together with Mon Pactole in November 2016. They added cinnamon and lotus seeds to popular cookies made by the shop for an event held in Milan in 2015, to coincide with the food-themed world exposition in the Italian city, to make them more similar to hyōrōgan. They surveyed some 200 people including students and foreigners to create a product that is acceptable to markets at home and abroad, and came up with disk-shaped crispy cookies with a diameter of around 2 centimeters. “It was difficult to balance the flavor of the cookies with the taste of herbal medicine,” recalled Mon Pactole President Shigeko Oishi. The cookies have been available for purchase at the university’s Co-op shop since late March, and by early May some 100 bags had been sold. The cookies, priced at ¥540 for a 55-gram bag, are also available at the Mon Pactole shop and major supermarkets in the prefecture, as well as at the Yahoo Shopping online retail website.
|
ninja;cookies;mie university;mon pactole
|
jp0010190
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2018/06/29
|
Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki to follow NATO gathering at tense moment
|
WASHINGTON - Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will hold their long-awaited first summit next month in the Finnish capital of Helsinki at what could prove a historic turning point in international relations. The July 16 head-to-head between the U.S. and Russian leaders will follow a NATO summit in Brussels that Washington’s European partners fear will serve as another stage for Trump to berate them and scorn the Western alliance. Trump has long called for warmer ties with Moscow, but the talks come as Russia’s relations with the West languish at levels not seen since the Cold War. Asked about the upcoming summit, Trump told reporters accompanying him on a trip to Wisconsin: “We’re looking forward to it. If we could all get along, it would be great. The world has to start getting along.” The meeting will likely provoke criticism for the U.S. leader at home, where investigators are probing possible collusion between his presidential campaign team and Moscow. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s backing of Bashar Assad’s regime in the Syrian conflict will also loom large. Next month’s dialogue in Finland will see the two leaders discuss “the current state and prospects for development of Russian-U.S. relations,” said the Kremlin. A statement from the White House said the presidents will also broach various “national security issues.” Trump earlier said he expected discussions to be wide-ranging. “I think we’ll be talking about Syria. I think we’ll be talking about Ukraine. I think we’ll be talking about many other subjects. And we’ll see what happens. You never know about meetings what happens, right?” the U.S. president said. “I think a lot of good things can come with meetings with people.” The announcement came a day after Trump’s hawkish national security adviser John Bolton met Putin in Moscow, where he was given a warm welcome. “Your visit to Moscow gives us hope that we can at least take the first step to reviving full-blown ties between our states,” Putin told Bolton at the Kremlin after the two smiled and shook hands for the cameras. Bolton said there were areas for cooperation, but added that the lifting of U.S. sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 would not be on the table. Both sides have played down expectations of what the talks can hope to produce, saying the fact Trump and Putin are meeting at all is an achievement in itself. Also on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told U.S. lawmakers he was sure that Trump would confront Putin about allegations that Russian agents interfered in Western elections — including Trump’s own 2016 campaign. But one day later, Trump himself returned to Twitter to undercut his chief diplomat and declare: “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Since coming to power last year, Trump has sought to improve relations with Putin amid tensions between Moscow and the West. Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said he welcomed the planned dialogue. “The agenda of the meeting of Presidents Trump and Putin will be decided during the next two weeks, but they will certainly discuss the overall international situation and hopefully also arms control and disarmament issues,” he said in a statement. “Even small steps in reducing tensions would be in everybody’s interest.” Trump said this month that Russia should be re-admitted to the G7 group of industrialized democracies from which it was suspended after annexing Crimea. That comment came at a summit which ended in sharp disagreement between Trump and his G7 allies. According to remarks first published Thursday by news site Axios, and confirmed by a European diplomat, Trump shocked his G7 counterparts by declaring “NATO is as bad as NAFTA” — the free trade agreement that he has threatened to tear up. Nevertheless, and despite Western diplomats warning against the message sent by the Russian meeting coming straight after the tense NATO talks, alliance Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the summit. “Dialogue is not a sign of weakness, dialogue is a sign of strength. As long as we are strong, as long as we are united we can talk to Russia,” he said. The last — brief — meeting between Putin and Trump took place in November 2017 in Vietnam during an APEC summit. Putin and Trump discussed holding a summit during a phone call in March, when the U.S. leader reportedly ignored advice from his staff and congratulated the Russian president for his victory in elections that were criticized by observers as unfair. Moscow said Trump had invited Putin for a summit at the White House but the focus has shifted to a meeting on neutral ground. The U.S. president is due to attend the July 11 and 12 NATO summit in Brussels before heading to Britain to meet with Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II on July 13. Trump’s summit with Putin will come about a month after his historic meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which produced a vaguely worded statement on “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
|
vladimir putin;nato;g7;donald trump;helsinki;russia probe
|
jp0010191
|
[
"national",
"social-issues"
] |
2018/06/29
|
Maizuru mayor, saved by nurse after stroke, says ban on women and girls entering sumo ring is outdated
|
A mayor who suffered a stroke at a sumo event and was given first aid by a female nurse who entered the male-only ring has said the sport’s ancient ban on women is outdated. Ryozo Tatami, the mayor of Maizuru, in northern Kyoto Prefecture, resumed work Thursday after recovering from the stroke he suffered in April while making a speech in the ring, or dohyō . Sumo officials repeatedly demanded that the nurse leave the ring, triggering public criticism of the gender ban. Tatami said the ban is outdated, especially in life-threatening situations. “Even though sumo has a long history and traditions, its policy banning women and girls is irrelevant today,” Tatami told a news conference on his first day back at work. He was earlier presented with a bouquet as city employees welcomed his return. “At least in situations requiring first aid, whether you’re male or female should not matter. Anyone should be allowed to help out,” he said. When Tatami, 67, collapsed on the dohyō, two women in the audience, including one later identified as a nurse, rushed in and started performing first aid as sumo officials looked on helplessly. When two more women entered the dohyō trying to join the effort, a sumo official repeatedly made an announcement demanding that the women get out of the ring. In male-only sumo, women are considered ritually unclean and are banned from the dohyō — which is considered sacred. Tatami’s case has prompted sumo officials to review the policy. Some female mayors have also demanded that the sumo association treat them the same way as their male counterparts at sumo events. Japan Sumo Association Chairman Hakkaku has acknowledged that the announcement at the Maizuru event was inappropriate, but has also said that women can only enter the dohyō in an “emergency.”
|
gender discrimination;ryozo tatami;sumo
|
jp0010192
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2018/06/29
|
Diet enacts key labor reform that opposition slams as 'karōshi promotion' bill
|
The Diet enacted a bill Friday that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says represents the biggest shake-up of the nation’s labor laws in decades, ushering in a legally binding overtime cap and exempting skilled white-collar employees from work-time regulations. The government has also claimed the reform, which includes an “equal work, equal pay” measure, will increase wages for non-regular workers — such as part-timers and temporary workers — while enabling more flexible work styles. Ostensibly an attempt to slash overwork, the comprehensive legal package has, however, drawn fierce criticism from opposition lawmakers that it will do the exact opposite, by exacerbating Japan’s deeply ingrained problem of karōshi (death from overwork). “This is the first major reform in 70 years,” a proud Abe told reporters after a plenary session of the Upper House, referring to the 1947 enactment of the Labor Standards Act. “It will rectify the culture of working long hours, eradicate the term ‘non-regular workers’ and create diversity in the way people work, so that their careers will become more compatible with their child-rearing and nursing-care duties,” he said. The passage is a much-needed legislative win for Abe, who at the onset of this ongoing Diet session declared enacting the labor reform bill his top priority. Failing to achieve that stated goal would have cast doubt on his leadership within his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and marred his chances of winning re-election in the party’s critical leadership election. The vote, slated for September, is a race in which he needs to triumph in order to pursue his longtime ambition of revising the post-war Constitution. It remains to be seen, however, how much of a boost the reform’s enactment will prove for Abe’s popularity as it recovers from two favoritism scandals. A Jiji Press opinion poll conducted earlier this month found that 38.7 percent of respondents disapproved of the reform, with those who approved — at 29.5 percent — outnumbered. The bill was passed by a majority vote, receiving the backing of the LDP-Komeito coalition and conservative opposition Nippon Ishin no Kai. Now the government’s primary legislative focus shifts to a controversial casino bill that in all likelihood will provide the biggest source of political wrangling this session, as the Diet heads to a close in late July. The labor reform package, which comprehensively revises eight related laws, will for the first time ever put in place a legally binding cap on overtime at 360 hours annually, although it can be extended to 720 hours as an exception. Noncomplying employers will be penalized. Among the most controversial reforms on the horizon is the adoption of what is known as a white-collar exemption system, which will spare those described as “specialist” personnel with an annual income of more than ¥10.75 million — such as financial dealers and analysts — from work-hour regulations. The “high-level professional system,” as it is officially called, has long been pushed by the nation’s business community including the Keidanren, Japan’s largest business lobby group. It will allow employees to be paid based on their performance rather than the hours they work, paving the way for more flexible working styles and boosting overall productivity, the government claims. Noting that the system effectively dispenses with the concept of overtime pay, however, the opposition has argued it instead risks endorsing unpaid overwork. As a result they have dubbed the reform the “Karōshi Promotion Bill.” “Under the pretext of boosting productivity, the reform is first and foremost designed to cater to the needs of employers. Its fundamental purpose, it appears, is to help them cut back on the cost of overtime pay,” lawmaker Makoto Hamaguchi, of the Democratic Party for the People, told the Upper House session. Under the system, kin of karōshi victims will be hard-pressed to prove a correlation between overwork and the death of their loved ones because an “accurate” and “objective” grasp of the hours worked by employees will become “extremely difficult,” he added. “What this means is that even if there is karōshi it may no longer be recognized as such, which could result in the number of karōshi cases decreasing only on paper,” Hamaguchi said. Among other highlights of the bill is a so-called equal work, equal pay measure meant to curb what is seen as discriminatory treatment by firms against nonregular employees, including part-timers and temporary staff, who have long been at a disadvantage by being paid salaries lower than their full-time counterparts irrespective of their performance and abilities. The work-style reform has also been controversial because of revelations of sloppy preparation of evidence in support of the policy. In a major compromise, Abe in February removed the expansion of a so-called discretionary labor system — which was initially touted as a key component of the reform — from the bill after it emerged that key government data used to emphasize its benefits contained a number of statistical errors. The discretionary labor system allows employers to pay workers according to a predetermined number of hours instead of actual working hours, meaning workers are not paid for overtime work that is not agreed upon beforehand.
|
shinzo abe;labor;overtime;karoshi
|
jp0010193
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2018/06/29
|
Two bullets found in school building after attack that killed two in Toyama
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TOYAMA - Two bullets were discovered inside an elementary school building in Toyama following an incident involving the killing of two people in the city on Tuesday, it has been learned. A former Self-Defense Forces member stole a gun loaded with five bullets from a police officer Tuesday after killing the officer at a nearby police box, and then gunned down a security guard. The attacker, Keita Shimazu, 21, is believed to have fired three shots near the school’s main gate, with one of them killing the security guard, Shinichi Nakamura, 68, police sources said. Bullets were found in a corridor, at the end farthest from the gate, and in the ceiling of a former sick room. Another, as well as the gun, were recovered near where Nakamura was lying after he was shot, according to the sources. Classes were being conducted at the school when Shimazu opened fire with the gun, which he took from the assistant inspector, Kenichi Inaizumi, 46, after stabbing him more than 30 times. Shimazu is also believed to have fired two shots near the police box. Inaizumi, who died of the stab wounds, had also been shot in his left hand, the sources said. Although the attacker has been in a critical condition since he was shot by a different police officer before his arrest, he has regained consciousness and now responds to communication, according to the sources.
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national police agency;toyama;police
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jp0010194
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/16
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Osaka floats out-of-box thinking for ties with North
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OSAKA - Though it remains to be seen how history will judge the June 12 summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, present Japanese and Western views across the political spectrum are generally either skeptical of North Korea’s sincerity in honoring any agreement or of America’s ability to sincerely negotiate an effective one. But no matter how one views the summit, it has set a precedent and created expectations worldwide that leaders in not only the U.S., but also Japan will now work harder to improve relations with North Korea. For Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in particular, that is a problem. Between the unresolved abduction issue and political allies who are wary of, if not hostile toward, friendly relations with Pyongyang, Abe and his allies lack the deep expertise and informal back-door channels to North Korea that his less ideologically rigid predecessors in the Liberal Democratic Party once enjoyed. This reality is felt especially in the Kansai region. While few Koreans or Japanese in Kansai have much faith in Abe’s ability to do more than follow Trump’s lead on North Korea, the days prior to the summit saw some out-of-the-box thinking whispered in the halls of Osaka’s political and media establishments as to how Tokyo might improve relations with Pyongyang. Perhaps the craziest idea floated by some media pundits was for Japan to extend Kim Jong Un an invitation to next year’s Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Osaka. The G20 host country typically invites a few non-G20 countries to attend as observers. These are countries that have some special connection to the host country, are impacted by the G20 agenda for that year, or are invited for other political reasons. What would a Kim visit to Osaka and Kansai look like? For starters, it might be a family reunion. Kim’s mother is said to be Ko Yong Hui, a Korean-Japanese born in Osaka who was Kim Jong Il’s third wife. A Kim visit would certainly put the spotlight on the history of Korean residents in Japan in a way nothing else would or could. At the summit itself, Kim could engage with not only world leaders but also Japanese businesses who see North Korea as the last great untapped market and are worried about losing out to Japan’s Asian neighbors and the U.S. if North Korea does open up. Yes, yes. Crazy. Unthinkable. Impractical. An Osaka joke. Stupid and dangerous, even, the thought of Kim being feted in Osaka (and possibly by neighboring Kyoto and Nara) by 20 world leaders next year, I can hear you saying. But seven months ago, the idea of a summit between a U.S. president and the leader of North Korea was considered impossible as well. Obviously, for a Kim visit to the G20 Osaka summit to become even remotely possible, a whole lot of things must happen first. Denuclearization talks must show rapid progress and Kim has to address the abduction issue in ways that convince Japan’s conservative leadership to risk making a political move as bold and controversial as offering him an invite to Osaka. To get to a point where the trust is there will require unprecedented amounts of formal and informal diplomatic efforts — and a lot of compromise from both sides — between now and next June, when the G20 takes place. Still, Osaka’s merchants have long prided themselves on risk-taking when it comes to new business ventures. Even if it doesn’t happen, publicly supporting the idea of Japan inviting Kim to the G20 Osaka summit would at least show that they are also unafraid of taking risks when it comes to new political ventures.
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osaka;kim jong un;north korea-japan relations;donald trump
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jp0010195
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/16
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Online Japanese releases under fire after missing the mark
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Even the most innocuous upload can carry political baggage online in 2018. It’s a truth Western users have become used to, where a pancake restaurant’s idiotic rebranding strategy can become a discussion about the appropriation of gang culture . Recent examples show that Japanese netizens are just as interested in dissecting content that in years past would have just been expected. The story actually starts in the United States with actor Donald Glover’s musical project Childish Gambino and his newest song “This Is America.” That release — and the video accompanying it — are pointedly political. It inspired no shortage of praise and analysis that was both insightful and internet-y in equal measures. It also ushered in memes , parodies and re-imaginings. Attempts at riffing on it were sometimes met positively, but mostly generated controversy, whether it was via “ This Is Nigeria ” or a “women’s edit” of the clip accused of stripping away the meaning from Glover’s creation. Unfortunately, Japanese dance crew Alaventa don’t appear to monitor U.S. online controversies closely. The trio typically performs routines to pop songs but, instead, it went and created a video called “This Is Japan” that riffed on Gambino’s release. Collaborating with production team Creators , they posted a short video to Instagram of them dancing in the streets while singing retrofitted lyrics about omotenashi , Instagram poses and youth slang . If the reaction to the clip resembled a “This Is America” text meme, Glover would be labelled “netizens” and the guy with the gun to the back of his head would be “This Is Japan.” Users ridiculed it, so much so that it snuck into the country’s top trending bar (to the confusion of some ). Many targeted Alaventa for missing the meaning of the original, swapping out serious social issues in favor of youth trends and tourism buzzwords. People wrote in-depth articles about why the trio missed the mark, while others argued a real “This Is Japan” would focus on overwork and concealment of information. Alaventa quickly deleted all traces of their take from the web and issued an apology . The only winners out of this ended up being a band named This Is Japan, which got some free PR. Online users in Japan have long loved to rip into goofy internet ephemera, but “This Is Japan” felt different. The anger stemmed from Alaventa missing the political message of “This Is America,” and being angry at how simplistic their representation of Japan was. Part of it stems from embarrassment that this represents the country’s online culture, but so much of the criticism came from how it wasn’t serious enough. That’s a significant shift in a country often alright letting entertainment and politics stay far apart from one another. The band Radwimps, best known for their soundtrack to the hit film “Your Name.”, learned about the intersection of pop culture and politics soon after “This Is Japan” stopped trending. They released a new single on June 6, featuring a song called “Hinomaru.” “In this world, it feels like people in Japan don’t sing about their country in song,” the group’s vocalist Yojiro Noda wrote on Instagram , adding that he wanted to sing about his nation with no ideological bias. “I hope it will be received that way.” It was not. The song, which features lyrics with a nostalgic bend and lots of flags-fluttering-in-the-wind imagery, was accused of being nationalistic and pro-military . Summaries and reaction videos emerged, along with no shortage of netizens commenting on it. Noda himself tweeted out two clarifications , which only enraged more people . From there, a familiar discourse emerged — fans defended it, while everyone else took sides, including a call for protests outside of an upcoming Radwimps’ concert . Other bands and people rolled their eyes. It’s messy and often defined by people bunkered into one view or the other, but it did spark discussion about whether a song can really be free of ideology. Similar cases have cropped up — the last soccer World Cup saw something kinda like this happen around Sheena Ringo’s “ Nippon ” — but they’re beginning to feel constant in 2018, maybe reflecting a faster newscycle on social media. Besides Radwimps and “This Is Japan,” conversations have happened around comedy group Woman Rush Hour and the duo Yuzu’s “ Gaikokujin Tomodachi .” Even the New Year’s Eve blackface scandal spurred more talk among online types than before, a signal that issues once brushed aside are becoming central on social media. However, not all pop culture has experienced such self-analysis just yet. During both these social flair ups, the most discussed song online was a chipper and cheesy Eurobeat throwback called “U.S.A.” by Da Pump. It’s attracted many not as a result of any deep analysis or controversy, but because the whole package is so corny it has charmed the internet. It seems that escapism still has a place, after all.
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radwimps;donald glover;this is america;alaventa;this is japan
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jp0010197
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/16
|
Should the elderly be stopped from driving?
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On June 10, a car crashed into a supermarket in Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, injuring 14 people. At first the incident sounded like yet another elderly person losing control of a vehicle and causing destruction, but then it transpires that the driver was a 55-year-old man. Does that count as elderly? Police arrested the man on suspicion of negligent driving resulting in injuries. Reports say he bore down on the accelerator after he felt the right side of his body go numb, a condition that could be age-related. When it comes to traffic accidents, 55 may be the new 75. The conspicuous rise in auto accidents caused by older drivers, a development the media follows closely, has resulted in a nationwide movement to convince seniors to surrender their driving licenses. Although it’s hardly a problem limited to Japan, the rapidly aging society combined with other factors peculiar to Japan make it one that calls for specific action. One contributing factor is the lack of alternative transportation for the elderly, especially in rural and suburban areas. Without cars, many would be stranded at home, isolated from the community and thus more likely to fall into a state of indolence and depression, which can accelerate the onset of dementia and other cognitive disabilities. Many seniors not only want to drive, but feel it’s vital to their well-being. A less frequently mentioned issue but by no means a less relevant one is Japan’s road infrastructure . Elderly drivers would not be as much of a hazard if roadways were sufficiently wide and separated safely from sidewalks. Since this is a common situation throughout the country, most Japanese, including those in the media, don’t always acknowledge it as a contributing factor, but every time an older person plows into a bunch of kids walking to or from school, it’s as much to blame as is the driver’s loss of control. While the onus of responsibility falls on the vehicle operator, there is still a reluctance to deprive older people of their precious right to drive. In May, a 90-year-old woman killed a 57-year-old pedestrian and injured 3 others in Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture , when she ran a red light. No one is going to argue that 90 does not qualify as “elderly,” but as pointed out during a heated discussion of the story on Nippon TV’s afternoon information show, News Every , the woman had renewed her license in March after passing a cognitive evaluation last December with flying colors. In fact, she was rewarded with a “gold” license, which is given to people with excellent driving records. What the reporters found perplexing about the case was that the woman, while “showing no signs of cognitive impairment,” told police that she knew the signal was red, but drove through it anyway because she didn’t think any pedestrians were crossing at the time. The police arrested her but later let her go after concluding that the accident was caused by a diminishment of faculties. Does that mean the cognitive evaluation test she took was flawed? Shouldn’t her admission that she knowingly drove through a red light require some kind of penalty? In the end, the only thing that happened is that her license was revoked, obviously too late. In March 2017, a revised Road Traffic Law went into effect that is meant to address the problem of elderly drivers, but it still makes it easy for them, especially those who have clean driving records, to retain the right to drive. Persons over 75 years old who violate any of 18 given traffic rules must undergo an evaluation. Individuals who are not cleared are required to go to a physician for further evaluation, and if the doctor thinks they have reduced cognitive functions, their licenses will either be suspended or revoked. But according to a June 2 article in the Sankei Shimbun , of the 46,900 drivers or so who have been referred to doctors for further cognitive evaluation since the law went into effect, about 7,100 of those diagnosed with cognitive dysfunctions were still allowed to renew their licenses under the condition that they undergo another doctor’s evaluation within six months. One of the reasons for this potentially lethal leniency is that dementia, probably the most commonly understood manifestation of cognitive diminishment in older people, does not always mean the person can’t drive properly. As Katsuya Urakami, head of a national group that addresses dementia in Japan, told the Sankei Shimbun, even Alzheimer’s patients are not necessarily a danger behind the wheel, because Alzheimer’s does not primarily affect motor functions. Some U.S, states and Germany, drivers diagnosed with some form of dementia do not automatically lose their licenses but may be restricted from driving in certain areas or at certain times of the day. In many localities, however, there is still no safety net in place for people who do give up driving. The government announced June 8 that 8.25 million Japanese over the age of 65 “have difficulty shopping for food and daily supplies without a car” because stores are far away from where they live and they don’t have ready access to transportation. That figure represents a 21.6 percent increase over the past decade. Local governments may deem it more economical to allow older people to keep driving than to set up programs that help them get by without cars. Unsurprisingly, the prefectures where seniors are more likely to give up their licenses are Tokyo and Osaka, which have fully developed transportation systems. The problem may just fade away as the baby boomer generation, the first in Japan to uniformly take up driving as a civic right and modern privilege, dies out. According to a survey cited on a recent MBS radio program , the portion of the population interested in buying an automobile has now dropped below half. To many Japanese, owning a car just isn’t worth the expense or the trouble, which is another reason young people are moving to cities. Unlike their grandparents, they don’t equate driving with being alive.
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driving;dementia
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jp0010198
|
[
"national",
"history"
] |
2018/06/16
|
Japan's gods: More benevolent than fearsome
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“Much that is kindly and gracious in the life of the Japanese today,” wrote the eminent historian George Bailey Sansom in 1931, “can be traced to those sentiments which caused their remote ancestors to ascribe divinity not only to the powerful and awe-inspiring … but also to the lovely and pleasant.” Gods come in many shapes and forms, endowed with myriad attributes. There are powerful gods and powerless gods, friendly and malicious gods, life-giving and life-destroying gods, gods who demand animal and human sacrifice and gods who wouldn’t dream of such a thing. The untamed primitive imagination is sensitive to its environment as ours can never be again. The founding environments of Western civilization — the deserts of Mesopotamia, the stony soil and craggy mountains of Greece — were harsh and unforgiving. They bred harsh and unforgiving gods. The contrast to Japan is stark. Japan’s gentle climate and yielding landscape bred “kindly and gracious” gods, whose people, if Sansom is correct, take after them. Pre-modern Japanese history is striking in its relative lack of cruelty. The word “relative” is important. Any 2,000-year span will contain horrific episodes. Three that stand out, under rulers who might well be described as psychopathic in their relish of other people’s suffering, are a brief reign of terror under Shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori (ruled 1429-1441), which ended with his murder; the brutal unification of the fractured nation begun in the mid-16th century by warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), who was also murdered; and the anti-Christian genocide of the early 17th century, whose tortures ran the gamut from crucifixion to burning, boiling and burying alive. It may or may not be significant — but probably is — that the latter two instances occurred after Japan had come under Western influence. This is not to say that Japanese history is otherwise pacific. But at times, and sometimes for very extended times, it is: the peace of the Heian Period (794-1185) lasted four centuries; that of the Edo Period (1603-1868) more than two; and if we broaden our scope to include prehistory, the Jomon Period (circa 14,000 BC-circa 300 BC) may well represent the longest peace ever, anywhere. War and slaughter made their inroads all the same, glorified with such poetic and martial fervor as to leave even Western bellicosity in the shade. But cruelty and violence are not synonymous. Violence there was, in abundance. Cruelty, though, in the sense of sadism, so conspicuous in history and myth elsewhere, tarnishes Japan’s history and mythology relatively little. Japan’s gods and goddesses are powerful but not power-mad, capricious but not vindictive; to be worshipped more in joy than in fear. They are not monstrous, awesome, omnipotent or terrifying, as are other gods we know: Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Biblical. Japan’s birth is a love story. Two young deities — a boy-god and a girl-god — discover each other as human adolescents do, shyly and awkwardly at first, then with growing confidence. It’s a beautiful story, very different from the Biblical creation or the Greek poet Hesiod’s Theogony, circa 9th century BC: “And Night bore hateful Doom and black Fate, and Death, and Sleep and the brood of Dreams … .” Japan’s myriad gods wage no wars, launch no mass slaughters, drink no blood, are mild even in their anger, and laugh. Imagine the Biblical God laughing — or Greece’s pre-Olympian Titans — “strong, hulking creatures,” says Hesiod, “that beggar description. … A hundred hands stuck out of their shoulders, grotesque, and 50 heads grew on each stumpy neck.” What in Japanese mythology compares to the castration of a monstrous Titan by his scarcely less monstrous son; or the wrathful Biblical God’s mankind-destroying flood, or His destruction of whole cities by “brimstone and fire”? The most violent episode in Japanese mythology is the rampage through the Sun Goddess’ rice fields by her unruly brother Susano’o, the Storm God. Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, hides in a cave, from which she is lured out by — of all things! — a rollicking erotic dance staged by the other deities. Drawn by their laughter, she pokes her head out to see what’s happening. Light returns to the world, never to vanish again. The Christian religion enjoins us to love our enemies. It’s an injunction much preached and little heeded. If we loved our enemies they’d be our friends, not our enemies. Japanese morality has no comparable ethic, and Japanese conduct down the ages is refreshingly free of the hypocrisy that inevitably arises from religious requirements beyond the reach of all but the saintly few. Japanese warriors didn’t love their enemies. The remarkable thing is how little they hated them. They killed them and were killed by them, but the attitude toward death was such that, generally speaking, the infliction of it was not in the spirit of hatred, more in that of human beings engaged in the highest human activity there is, so that what looks like wanton slaughter from a pacifist point of view is to the combatants a manifestation of life at its highest peak of intensity. You didn’t hate your enemy, or impute evil to him. An enemy was a kind of relative, a brother-in-arms, and the way you expressed the relationship was by killing him or being killed by him. The customary collection of and gloating over enemy heads seems to belie the civilized rituality that that implies. An old woman named O-An, looking back in 17th-century peace on 16th-century wars she’d experienced as a child — her recollections, written down by unknown scribes, enjoyed great popularity throughout the Edo Period — tells awestruck children who love to listen to her: “The severed heads taken by our side were collected in the castle keep. We attached name tags to all of them, to keep track of whose they were. … We weren’t frightened of the heads. We would lie down and sleep with blood-stinking heads all around us.” Horrible enough — but the mutilation of dead bodies has this to be said for it: It is better than the mutilation of live ones.
|
oda nobunaga;amaterasu;ashikaga yoshinori;mythology;susano ' o;o-an
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jp0010199
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2018/06/28
|
Foreign mega-deals challenged by Fujifilm and Takeda shareholders
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Fujifilm Holdings Corp. President Kenji Sukeno told shareholders on Thursday that the company will continue to pursue a merger with Xerox Corp. despite the U.S. printer and copier-maker’s decision to terminate the deal. “It is the best option for Fuji Xerox and Xerox. I will continue to seek (the merger),” Sukeno told an annual shareholders meeting in Tokyo at a time when the two companies have diverged over their merger deal announced in January. Under the deal, Fujifilm would acquire a 50.1 percent stake in Xerox and merge it with joint venture Fuji Xerox Co. The Japanese company holds a 75 percent stake in Fuji Xerox, with Xerox owning the rest. But Xerox shareholders Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason have objected, claiming Xerox has been undervalued. In May, Xerox said it had decided to terminate the merger after settling with shareholders. Under the agreement, Xerox also reshuffled its management, replacing CEO Jeff Jacobson, who worked with Fujifilm on the planned merger, with John Visentin, a former information technology service firm adviser added to the board by Icahn. At the annual meeting, shareholders raised concerns about the outlook for the merger. When asked about the impact that the termination of the merger contract would have on Fujifilm, Sukeno dismissed any ramifications for the company, saying, “It is Xerox that would be negatively affected.” He said Fujifilm intends to continue fighting a New York court injunction on April 27 blocking the deal. Deason filed for the injunction in February. “We will first explain our position to the appeals court,” Sukeno said. In a separate legal action, Fujifilm sued Xerox earlier this month for damages expected to top $1 billion (¥110 billion) for canceling the merger contract. Meanwhile, a group of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. shareholders trying to stop its £46 billion ($62 billion) buyout of Irish drugmaker Shire Plc failed on Thursday to pass a proposal at its annual meeting. At Takeda’s general shareholders meeting in Osaka, the group had sought to secure the passage of a proposal aimed at changing a company rule to require shareholder approval in advance for large acquisitions. The group, comprising former Takeda employees and ordinary shareholders, had described the deal, announced in May, as too risky. The deal would be the biggest Japanese acquisition of a foreign company. Some Takeda shareholders have also raised concerns that its plan to finance about 50 percent of the Shire takeover with newly issued shares could significantly dilute the value of each share.
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shareholders;fujifilm;takeda
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jp0010200
|
[
"world"
] |
2018/06/28
|
North and South Korea hold talks on connecting roads and railways across their border
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SEOUL - North and South Korea held talks Thursday on establishing roadways to run across their border — part of the initiatives agreed between their leaders to forge closer ties. South Korea’s Moon Jae-in and the North’s Kim Jong Un agreed in a landmark summit held in April to a broader plan to re-connect or newly establish railways and roadways between the two countries. Linking the transport systems of the two Koreas will require the modernization of the impoverished North’s aging and crumbling roadway infrastructure. Officials who met at the border Thursday to hammer out details chose two routes along the peninsula’s western and eastern coasts for the first-phase of modernization works, according to a joint statement released by the South’s government. One will connect the South’s eastern border county of Goseong with the North’s major eastern port of Wonsan, and the other will run between the North’s western city of Kaesong and the capital Pyongyang, said the statement. Joint “field research” on the routes will begin in early August, it added. The agreement came two days after the two Koreas held similar talks on connecting the railways running across the border. The two sides then agreed to conduct a joint-study “at an early date” on modernizing the railways — originally built by Japan in the early 20th century but left to crumble for decades after the 1950-53 Korean War resulted in the division of the peninsula. Linking the transport infrastructure of the two countries would give trade-dependent South Korea — the world’s 11th-largest economy — a land route to the markets of China, Russia and on to Europe. But doing so would be a huge upheaval to the status quo on the peninsula: There has been no direct civilian communication between the countries since their division was sealed by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War — not even by post. Despite the diplomatic thaw, with summits between the North’s leader Kim Jong Un and both the South’s President Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump of the U.S., Pyongyang remains the target of heavy sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs. Pyongyang and Seoul are scheduled to hold forestry-related talks on July 4.
|
north korea;pyongyang;south korea;kaesong;panmunjom;wonsan;goseong
|
jp0010201
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2018/06/28
|
Unions face fewer funds to back Democrats as Supreme Court hands Illinois GOP governor win over public worker fees
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CHICAGO - The Supreme Court’s ruling in an Illinois labor case gave Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner a rare victory in his campaign to weaken public-worker unions and something to tout in a tough re-election battle. It also has fired up unions and their Democratic allies who are looking to stop him. The court on Wednesday said public employees can’t be forced to pay fees to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining. The decision is expected to financially weaken unions and affect millions of government workers. Rauner, who faces billionaire businessman J.B. Pritzker in November, filed the initial lawsuit challenging the fees shortly after taking office in 2015. He traveled to Washington D.C. in anticipation of the decision, which he called a “historic victory.” “This ruling is pro-worker and pro-taxpayer,” Rauner said. “State employees — union and nonunion — do tremendous work for the people of Illinois. This ruling is a great victory for our democracy, our public employees, and the taxpayers who count on us to bargain on their behalf.” Rauner was joined on the court steps after the decision was issued by Mark Janus, a child support specialist for the state who took over as plaintiff, and members of the Liberty Justice Center, the legal affiliate of the conservative Illinois Policy Institute. The organization represented Janus along with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Pritzker said he was “appalled” by the decision, and called it “another example of Rauner partnering with anti-worker special interest groups” like the Illinois Policy Institute “to pursue his own agenda over the best interests of working families.” “The fight is far from over,” said Pritzker, who has received early, strong support from Illinois unions. Some union members stood with him in Springfield Wednesday, where Pritzker said that while the decision will win Rauner some backing “the vast majority of people in Illinois know this decision is bad for them.” Labor has historically wielded significant political might in Illinois. But despite spending more than $10 million in 2014, the unions were unable to stop Rauner — a wealthy former private equity investor — from becoming the first GOP Illinois governor in more than a decade. The lawsuit against the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 31 was one of the first attacks Rauner launched against organized labor after railing throughout the campaign about public-employee unions and their “union bosses.” That same day, Rauner issued an executive order directing that the state put the “fair share fees,” collected from about 6,500 state employees’ paychecks, into an escrow account rather than forwarding them to unions. His office said it could keep an estimated $3.75 million from being deposited into the unions’ bank accounts. He later relented on the order after objections from unions and the Democratic attorney general. He was replaced as plaintiff in the case after a judge ruled he didn’t have standing to sue. The fees, which are lower than members’ dues, are intended to cover the cost of nonpolitical union activity such as collective bargaining. Unions argued they guard against “free riders,” or workers who benefit from union representation but don’t contribute to the cost of providing it. Rauner argues all public-worker union activity is inherently political, because unions negotiate contracts and other issues with the same office holders they either help elect or fight to defeat. He saw the case as a fundamental piece of his strategy to transform Illinois government by making public-worker unions less powerful — a mission that’s been largely thwarted by a Democratic-controlled Legislature. Rauner’s office said the state would notify employees of the decision Wednesday and workers would be given the opportunity to leave the union. Illinois also will stop withholding the fees from non-union members’ paychecks. “The worker now has the ability to make his own decision or her decision, and that’s why I brought this case,” Janus said from the Supreme Court steps Wednesday. Unions, expecting the ruling, have stepped up recruiting and education efforts in recent months and been holding pro-labor rallies in Chicago and other cities. They pledged Wednesday that their efforts will not let up. “We are more resolved than ever to fight like hell to win for our members and the communities they care so much about,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said.
|
gop;unions;u.s. supreme court;democrats;illinois;public-sector workers
|
jp0010202
|
[
"world"
] |
2018/06/28
|
Trump to meet Putin in Helsinki on July 16 for first bilateral summit between U.S. and Russia leaders
|
MOSCOW - Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16 for their first bilateral summit as the leaders seek to reverse a downward spiral in relations that has been exacerbated by findings that Russia meddled in U.S. elections. The Kremlin and the White House announced the meeting in simultaneous statements issued Thursday, a day after Putin hosted U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton for talks in Moscow. Their unusually warm discussions at the Kremlin Wednesday came amid the worst tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals since the Cold War. Trump has pushed for improving the relationship — inviting Putin to the White House in a March phone call after the Russian leader’s re-election to a fourth term as president. The summit itself is likely to boost Kremlin efforts to ease its international isolation, though officials had played down hopes of any breakthrough. ‘First steps’ “Your visit to Moscow gives us hope that we can make at least the first steps toward restoring full-scale relations between our countries,” Putin told Bolton at the opening of their meeting Wednesday. Trump had startled other Western leaders earlier this month when he said the Group of Seven should re-admit Russia on the eve of its annual summit in Quebec. The group of industrialized democracies suspended Russia’s participation after its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The announcement that U.S. and Russian leaders will meet comes as Trump faces relentless pressure over the U.S. probe into Russia meddling and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it. Putin has said there was no meddling, and Trump has called the continuing investigation a “witch hunt.” Russia “continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump tweeted on Thursday. Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that he expects Trump to discuss Russian interference in U.S. elections and the Kremlin’s military incursions into Ukraine and Syria, along with other potentially touchy subjects, when he meets with Putin. ‘Broad range’ “There are a broad range of issues the president’s going to talk about that need to be addressed,” Pence said in an interview with Bloomberg News aboard Air Force Two on Wednesday. They include the “economic relationship with the United States and Russia and countries of the world.” Trump has said he’s confronted Putin about Russia’s involvement in the election in previous meetings. He has enacted new sanctions Congress ordered against Russia to punish the country for its election activities and hasn’t lifted sanctions put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama. The summit “is of huge significance,” Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Wednesday. “It will be the main international event of the summer.” Bolton said it’s “not unusual” for Trump and Putin to meet because other world leaders have also had such talks with Putin. Bolton, though, added that “the summit itself is a deliverable.” “I don’t think that we expect necessarily any specific outcomes or decisions” from the meeting, Bolton said. “It’s important after the length of time that has gone by without a bilateral summit like this to allow them to cover all the issues they choose.” The summit is, above all, a symbolic achievement for Putin as he seeks to put ties with the U.S. back on track with Trump in the White House, said Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research group set up by the Kremlin. “It means he can reverse the trend in our relations, ensure they have hit the bottom and legitimize them once again,” Kortunov said in an interview in Moscow.
|
u.s .;vladimir putin;russia;finland;donald trump;helsinki;john bolton
|
jp0010203
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"social-issues-asia-pacific"
] |
2018/06/28
|
Teenager's suicide, after sexual harassment by teacher goes unpunished, sparks soul-searching across China
|
BEIJING - The suicide of a teenager in China whose sexual harassment case was dismissed has triggered nationwide soul-searching over her treatment, and anger at onlookers who encouraged her to jump off a building. Li Yiyi, 19, died last week after throwing herself from the eighth floor of a department store in Qingyang, a city in northwest Gansu province, following previous suicide attempts, police told reporters. A public outcry erupted after videos of the scene circulated online and reports that some bystanders had jeered her and urged the young woman to “jump quickly” while firefighters tried to save her. The police said Monday they had detained two people who had booed, and started investigations into six others for verbally abusive online posts about Li. “The world is getting more and more indifferent. I’m scared. Just how mentally defective are those people who jeered for her to jump?” questioned one user on Twitter-like Weibo. The case has put a new spotlight on the struggle among Chinese women to get legal help in sexual abuse allegations. The teenager had been upset because prosecutors cleared a high school teacher whom she had accused of forcibly kissing her and trying take her clothes off in September 2016. Li and her father had repeatedly sought charges against him but local prosecutors decided not to try him, declaring that his behavior was a “slight” offense that did not constitute a crime. She appealed to a higher prosecutor, who also rejected her case. The teacher was briefly detained but kept his job. “She fought for two years. Except for her father, no one — including teachers, the school, the court and the prosecutor — cared about her pain. Only those firefighters kept trying to save her,” a Weibo user wrote. Sexual harassment cases have rocked Chinese university campuses in recent months, fueling a #MeToo movement that nonetheless has been more low-key than in other countries due to censorship by the authorities. There is no legal definition of sexual harassment in China, and there are no national regulations on how to handle sexual assault cases in schools or workplaces. Guo Jianmei, a women’s rights lawyer in Beijing, said very few sexual assault cases are prosecuted due to lack of evidence, and a lack of respect for women has contributed to such cases not being taken seriously in China. “Her case follows a typical pattern where her helplessness and loneliness after long-term pressure sent her toward a path to death,” Guo said. “It happens a lot. And it is hidden harassment, which is hard to get convicted as there is no obvious violence in the action,” she said. “She was actually very brave as she went to the police and talked about it. Most girls just cry in private and then become depressed. They wouldn’t even dare to tell their parents.” A 26-year-old Chinese graduate student drew social media praise last month after she tried to sue police for dismissing her rape report, in what is was believed to have been the first such attempt to challenge authorities on a sexual assault allegation. The burden of proof is high for alleged victims, according to lawyers. In a 2017 survey of more than 6,500 Chinese students, conducted by the Guangzhou Gender and Sexuality Education Centre, 70 percent reported having been sexually harassed and over 40 percent said the cases took place in public areas on campus. But only 4 percent of women and even fewer men had reported campus sexual abuse cases to police, according to a 2015 Sina.com survey. Li had attempted to kill herself four other times before succeeding in taking her own life, police said Monday. Police said the teacher was detained for 10 days on a minor offense. The officers said they were investigating if the suicide was linked to the sexual harassment case. “The thing my daughter could not let go was that the person was only lightly punished. The school didn’t even admit they did wrong… They think she made too big of a deal out of a small matter,” Li’s father told The Beijing News. In a complaint to prosecutors, Li said the school had “deceived” her, and had chosen not to punish the teacher because he was “hard to replace.” The captain of the rescue team at the local fire department, Xu Jiwei, who had intervened in Li’s previous suicide attempts, told reporters the young woman had begged him to let her die. Xu said in a rare emotional account that the whole firefighting squad cried after Li fell and they were “deeply sorry” for her death.
|
china;women;sex crimes
|
jp0010204
|
[
"national",
"social-issues"
] |
2018/06/28
|
Number of consultations with Japan labor bureaus over 'power harassment' up 1.6 percent in fiscal 2017
|
The number of consultations by workers with local labor bureaus over job-related bullying and harassment, including so-called power harassment, grew 1.6 percent in fiscal 2017 from the previous year to a record 72,067, a labor ministry report revealed Wednesday. Power harassment, mainly bullying by superiors, includes verbal insults or being intentionally ignored. “Amid a rise in interest in harassment in society, employees are calling on employers to take measures” to improve the working environment, a ministry official said. Overall work-related consultations on disputes totaled 253,005, down 1 percent. Of them, consultations over bullying and harassment topped the list for the sixth consecutive year, followed by voluntary resignation and dismissal. Consultations concerning the nonrenewal of employment contracts jumped 15.8 percent to 14,442. This figure reflects the high number of companies that ended contracts with nonregular workers before a system that allows fixed-term employees to switch to indefinite-term contracts was fully implemented April 1, an observer said.
|
harassment;survey
|
jp0010205
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"offbeat-asia-pacific"
] |
2018/06/17
|
Australian artist emerges alive after being buried under road for three days
|
HOBART, AUSTRALIA - An Australian performance artist who was buried in a steel container under a busy road for 72 hours as part of a so-called dark arts festival was released from his self-imposed prison Sunday. Mike Parr, a 73-year-old performance artist whose creative endeavors typically explore physical limits, was entombed in the mini-shipping container late Thursday and the road was resealed above him. Oxygen was pumped into the container where Parr had access to water, reading and writing material, a heater and a distress button in case anything went wrong — but no food. He was equipped with a bucket for sanitary use. The burial act was part of the Dark Mofo Festival on the island state of Tasmania. It was designed to highlight violence perpetrated by colonialists against Aboriginal communities, the festival said on its website. Dark arts festivals showcase artwork and performances that often celebrate ancient rituals. The festival has attracted controversy for placing inverted red crosses across Hobart, the Tasmanian capital, prompting some Christian groups to denounce the installations as satanic. Parr’s previous performance art included wrapping himself up in fuse wire, then setting it alight, and sewing up his face.
|
australia;artist;tasmania;dark arts . festival;aboriginal
|
jp0010206
|
[
"national",
"social-issues"
] |
2018/06/17
|
Travelers without insurance cause headaches for Japan's hospitals
|
NARITA, CHIBA PREF. - Are you insured? As Japan sees a record-breaking number of foreign visitors, a major hospital near Narita airport is struggling to deal with an increasing number of uninsured patients who can’t pay for the medical treatment they’ve received. “Most of the foreign visitors we treat are emergency patients, coming directly from the airport. . . . In many cases, they are not covered with by insurance,” said Tomomi Asaka, a surgeon who is also chief of the International Medical Center at Japanese Red Cross Narita Hospital. Emergency treatment can cost several million yen. When patients can’t pay, the hospital tries several ways to collect, such as by contacting their relatives to ask them to shoulder the cost, proposing installment plans or calling embassies for help. But when all these attempts fail, the hospital has no choice but to absorb the cost. Although the Narita hospital declined to disclose how many unpaid medical bills it has, Asaka said it is “a lot.” “When we have such troubled foreign patients, it’s really, really tough for us to deal with,” Asaka said. Sometimes patients decline to receive necessary treatment after learning how much it will cost, she said. “I believe many of these problems would have been solved if they had purchased travel insurance,” she said. Asaka said the patients should have purchased travel insurance. But she also said they are not the only ones to blame. “Many, in my understanding, do not have the knowledge or custom of buying a policy when traveling. And that is partly the responsibility of their countries as well as Japan, which is campaigning hard to draw foreign visitors,” Asaka said. According to records, the hospital treated 409 foreign visitors who could not speak Japanese in 2017. Although it does not have any previous data for comparison, the number definitely has increased in recent years, Asaka said. To better cater to complex cases presented by foreign patients, the hospital set up the International Medical Center in April last year with three fully bilingual staffers — Asaka and two medical clerks. The center gets a phone call when a foreign patient who doesn’t have insurance or Japanese ability seeks help at the hospital. Many of the cases are complicated by linguistic, visa and cultural differences that can take days to sort. The center recently dealt with a man in his 70s who was suffering from arrhythmia and was brought to the hospital from the airport. The patient, whose name and nationality were not disclosed for privacy reasons, had a temporary pacemaker inserted. That cost ¥600,000. He also needed to undergo another operation to replace the pacemaker with a permanent one, a procedure that would set him back another ¥7 million. The man, transiting through Narita on his way home, had no travel insurance. “He was old and was living on a pension. He did not have any savings and he was single, and his siblings also couldn’t pay the cost,” she said. He insisted on flying back to his country where he said he could get free treatment at a veterans’ hospital. But the man’s condition was too unstable to let him return by himself. After mulling several options, Asaka and a nurse decided to fly back with him to his country. If a private company was asked to dispatch doctors to accompany a patient on an international flight, it would cost several million yen, Asaka said. But by doing it themselves, they were able to spare the patient the cost, she said. “In the past year alone, there were three such cases where we had no option but to accompany patients ourselves and take them back to their home countries,” Asaka said. Japan’s legal obligation to provide medical treatment to anyone on request also places a heavy psychological burden on doctors. “We are trained to focus on treating patients without thinking of the bills. . . . So it’s very stressful for doctors to discharge or provide minimum treatment to patients with financial troubles. It’s ethically hard to swallow,” Asaka said. “The government is trying to further increase the number of foreign visitors. But when they fall ill and can’t pay medical bills we are the ones left to shoulder the cost because we have the legal obligation to provide treatment. That’s unreasonable,” Asaka said. “I hope the government creates a legal system that matches today’s environment.”
|
tourism;insurance;national health care;foreign patients
|
jp0010208
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/17
|
Medical institutions offering treatment in multiple languages make Japan a haven for foreign patients
|
YAMATO, KANAGAWA PREF. - For foreign residents and tourists who don’t understand Japanese, seeking medical attention can be stressful because few doctors are proficient in English. But some clinics and hospitals , including Kobayashi International Clinic in Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture, are making efforts to help those who can’t speak the local tongue feel at home. And demand for such institutions is likely to rise as Japan looks to attract more foreign visitors in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Games. Yoneyuki Kobayashi, head of the clinic, first noticed the needs of foreign patients while working part-time as a doctor in the mid-1980s at a resettlement promotion center for Indo-Chinese refugees in Yamato. “That was really the first time I saw a great many foreign people,” Kobayashi said. The facility was one of three created in the late 1970s and early 1980s to accept about 10,000 refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. An interpreter from the center would accompany the refugees during hospital visits, Kobayashi said. “But once they left the center, they were on their own. Of course, they couldn’t suddenly speak Japanese fluently, and medical terms are different from everyday conversation, so they had trouble communicating. In some cases, the hospitals weren’t willing to examine them unless they were accompanied by an interpreter,” he said. Kobayashi then noticed that whenever foreign patients came to Yamato Municipal Hospital, they were directed to him. “I was a surgeon but not particularly exceptional at it,” he said. “It may seem like an exaggeration, but I thought I might be the only person who can do something to improve the situation of foreigners undergoing medical treatment.” In 1990 he opened his clinic in Yamato, welcoming all members of the community regardless of nationality. It now has over a dozen staffers covering languages including English, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai and Spanish. Andile Maqhuzu, a 30-year-old Zimbabwean studying in Japan, found it last year while searching online for a medical clinic with English-speaking staff after his 2-year-old son came down with a cold. “Here it’s great because the doctor speaks English and has English-speaking staff,” said Maqhuzu, who was visiting for a follow-up test that emerged after a medical checkup at his university. Asked if he had encountered any issues with medical institutions in Japan, he said, “The only problem I have is the language. But it’s my fault for not being able to speak Japanese. I think health care in Japan is one of the best.” Kobayashi hopes more medical institutions will become willing to accept foreign patients but noted that simply getting doctors, nurses and other staff members linguistically prepared will not solve everything. “Problems could arise from differences in culture, social norms and the way people think, so they also need to be trained in those aspects so that they can be aware of the differences,” he said. As more tourists explore Japan’s countryside, hospitals in remote regions are coming up with ways to treat them as well. In Gifu Prefecture, the Japanese Red Cross Takayama Hospital is dealing with an influx of tourists seeking a combination of nature and traditional culture in the mountainous Hida Takayama area. The prefecture is also home to a UNESCO World Heritage site featuring traditional “ gassho -style” (thatched roof) homes. In a telephone interview, Deputy Director Katsunobu Takenaka said visits from foreign patients ballooned from just 15 in fiscal 2011 to 363 in 2017, with patients trickling in from over 30 countries and territories including China, Australia, Taiwan and the United States. The institution set up a task force in 2014 to consider ways to welcome foreign patients, and the move caught the eye of a publisher who asked the group to put together a manual on how to treat them. Takenaka said many foreign patients suffer from illnesses triggered by travel fatigue, skiing injuries or playing around in onsen (hot springs). The hospital has some English-speaking staffers and uses a 24-hour medical interpretation telephone service that provides help in 17 languages. It also uses a tablet translation app to communicate with patients. To date, it has not received any complaints and has not encountered cases where patients could not pay their bill, he said. “People may feel lonely and insecure going to a hospital in a foreign land where a foreign language is spoken, but we will continue to stand by our patients and provide medical care with sincerity, smiles and sympathy,” Takenaka said. While most medical institutions operate based on the national health insurance system, there are some that offer services outside it. Karl Che, director of National Medical Clinic in central Tokyo, said he deals primarily with the expat community, allocating ample time to each patient. Many who come to him have private health insurance, but there are a few who are covered by the national insurance program and pay out of their own pocket. “We try to offer them whatever they’re very comfortable with,” said Che, who is fluent in Japanese, English and Korean and speaks some French, adding that he takes his time with each patient and offers a familial atmosphere. In the same posh Minami-Azabu neighborhood, Isao Tsutsumi said he drew on his experience working at hospitals and clinics in the U.S. for 15 years to open Hiroo International Clinic in 2007. Tsutsumi said patients come all the way from places like Fukushima and Yamanashi prefectures to see him. “I think it’s ideal to have someone who can speak (English) actually examine the patients,” he said. “There are international clinics that use interpreters, but some patients want to communicate directly with the doctor.”
|
tourism;language;hospitals;gifu;kanagawa
|
jp0010209
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2018/06/19
|
Fujifilm sues Xerox for $1 billion over failed takeover bid
|
NEW YORK - Fujifilm Holdings Corp. accused Xerox Corp. of caving to the whims of Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason in backing out of a $6.1 billion takeover deal as it initiated legal action over the unsuccessful transaction. Fujifilm sued Xerox on Monday in Manhattan federal court over the failed takeover, seeking more than $1 billion in damages. Xerox walked away from the deal on May 13. “This change of heart is undoubtedly due to external pressures,” Fujifilm said in the complaint. “Xerox has recently been subject to the whims of activist investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason, who, notwithstanding their minority ownership of Xerox shares, have yanked the Xerox Board in more directions than can be counted.” Representatives for Icahn and Deason weren’t immediately available for comment. Xerox said in an emailed statement that it’s “extremely confident” the former board acted correctly in terminating the transaction, “due to, among other things, the continuously expanding unresolved accounting issues at Fuji Xerox,” the companies’ joint venture. Icahn and fellow billionaire Deason had argued the Fujifilm offer undervalued Xerox. The pair, who collectively held about 13 percent of Xerox, reached a settlement with the company after months of public fighting over the merits of the Fujifilm transaction. Under the terms of the settlement, Norwalk, Connecticut-based Xerox pulled out of the Fujifilm deal and Keith Cozza, CEO of Icahn Enterprises, became its chairman. John Visentin replaced Jeff Jacobson as Xerox’s CEO. The newly filed lawsuit and other litigation might drive Xerox bonds into junk territory, Robert Schiffman and Mike Campellone, senior credit analyst and credit associate analyst, respectively, at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a note Monday. “If a white-knight strategic buyer doesn’t emerge, non-investment grade rating action risk looms large,” the analysts said. Moody’s rates Xerox’s debt Baa3, the lowest investment-grade rating. Deason sued Xerox in February in Manhattan state court to block the acquisition, accusing Jacobson of acting without authorization to strike a deal that preserved his job at shareholders’ expense. The lawsuit also claimed that the company’s board breached its fiduciary duties. A judge issued an injunction in April barring Xerox from holding a shareholder vote on the proposed merger at its annual meeting, now scheduled for July. Yet, Fujifilm hasn’t given up on the deal. In May, the company appealed. Fujifilm, based in Tokyo’s Minato Ward, has also asked the state court to dissolve the injunction. The proposed merger, announced in January, would have cemented a longtime relationship between the two firms, which have operated the joint venture Fuji Xerox Co. for the past 50 years. The deal would have generated “billions of dollars in synergies,” lawyers for Fujifilm said in Monday’s complaint. The transaction is “value-enhancing for Fujifilm’s shareholders and thus Fujifilm is compelled to take steps to protect its rights.” The company accused the Xerox board of breaching terms of its January agreement “thanks in no small part to Icahn and Deason’s machinations.” Icahn initially favored the merger, urging Xerox to sell to Fujifilm after it expressed interest in 2017, Fujifilm said in its complaint. As details of the possible merger took shape, Fujifilm indicated that it would seek an “outright buyout” of Xerox, in part to push out activist investors. Following the proposal put forward in January, Icahn and Deason came out against the deal. In May, they said they would consider any cash bid for the company of at least $40 per share, or more than $10 billion. The May 13 agreement under which the deal was ended was basically “a corporate takeover” by the two investors. It “sought to ensure that the Xerox Board is comprised of many individuals with longstanding connections to Icahn and Deason for at least the next year, effectively granting Icahn and Deason control of the Xerox board for no consideration whatsoever,” Fujifilm said. Fujifilm seeks damages for breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and a finding that Fujifilm is entitled to a $183 million termination fee.
|
carl icahn;fujifilm;xerox;darwin deason
|
jp0010210
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/19
|
Osaka quake highlights dangers posed by concrete-block walls
|
The death on Monday of a 9-year-old girl in Osaka Prefecture highlights the potential dangers of violating building codes and of concrete-block walls, which can turn lethal when major earthquakes strike. Following the incident in the city of Takatsuki, in which a 40-meter-long wall surrounding a school’s swimming pool collapsed and crushed the girl, the Takatsuki Municipal Government apologized and admitted that the wall was in violation of building codes. City officials said the total height of the structure was 3.5 meters — a 1.6-meter wall on top of a 1.9-meter concrete foundation — exceeding the legal cap of 2.2 meters. It also lacked legally required support blocks, they said. “I am deeply sorry for the collapse at the school facility, causing the fatal accident. We take on responsibility as it is the city’s property,” Takatsuki Mayor Takeshi Hamada said at a news conference Monday. The city inspected the wall in January last year, but officials said they were not aware of the dangers posed by concrete-block structures. In the wake of the incident, education minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tuesday that he will ask all elementary and junior high school operators nationwide to conduct safety inspections of concrete-block walls near schools. The city’s failure to detect the vulnerability of the wall during its inspections, however, is not unusual, experts said, noting that similar dangerous structures prone to collapse can be found across the nation. “Many are not aware that their walls could pose serious harm to people if a quake hits. Many leave them as they are without taking any measures,” said Kazuya Koga, a professor at Fukuoka University who is well-versed in disaster prevention. Koga, who has been studying concrete-block walls across the archipelago, said 70 percent to 90 percent of concrete walls in each municipality do not meet legal standards. Miyagi Prefecture is the only exception due to its strict inspection rules for concrete-block structures. “I’ve been conducting inspections since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995. And I’ve never seen a concrete-block wall that meets the legal standards collapse (after a quake),” Koga said. “So if the walls were made in accordance with the law, there would be no issue.” The danger of such walls drew wide public attention in 1978, when 18 people were crushed to death by collapsed blocks following a major earthquake off Miyagi. Following that tragedy municipalities called on residents to reinforce their concrete walls, with some providing subsidies for property owners. But the efforts were not effective, Koga said. Miyagi Prefecture went further, hiring experts to check concrete-block walls around schools and sending written warnings to owners of illegally built walls — urging them add reinforcements, Koga said. “Other municipalities should follow in the footsteps of Miyagi” or similar tragedies could happen again, Koga said. Masayoshi Saichi, a professor of construction engineering at Tohoku Institute of Technology, echoed this view, noting the high number of concrete-block walls that could collapse easily if a strong quake occurs. “Aged and illegal concrete-block walls need to be removed and replaced with new ones,” he said. The education ministry has been retrofitting public elementary and junior high school buildings to make them able to withstand earthquakes measuring 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7. As of April 1, 2017, the ministry had completed reinforcement of buildings at 98.9 percent of the schools. The measure, however, does not cover concrete-block walls in the vicinity of schools.
|
quake;collapse;danger;wall;concrete block
|
jp0010211
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/19
|
Takatsuki residents mourn death of 9-year-old girl, as cleanup in quake-hit Kansai continues
|
TAKATSUKI, OSAKA PREF. - They came to offer flowers, juice and silent prayers in memory of a 9-year-old girl — some touched by the tragic death of a child they had never seen or met, others by the loss of a neighbor. As the cleanup continued Tuesday across the Kansai region following Monday’s magnitude 6.1 earthquake centered in Takatsuki, residents of the town stopped to pay their respects at a makeshift memorial to Rina Miyake, who had been on her way to her elementary school when a concrete wall surrounding the school’s swimming pool collapsed and killed her. “It was such a tragedy,” said Haruo Kurikoma, 81, who lives nearby but said he did not know Miyake. He added that the incident had many worried about what would happen to homes and structures in the area if aftershocks continue. “I felt about two dozen aftershocks yesterday and this morning, and we’re wondering what will happen if they continue,” he said. The tributes came as — outwardly — life in Takatsuki, which lies between Osaka and Kyoto prefectures, appeared to be improving on Tuesday. Trains from Takatsuki Station, which had been shut down just 24 hours earlier, were running almost normally, although express trains were still behind schedule. But concerns about aftershocks lingered, while households without gas wondered how much longer they would have to wait. Water supplies had yet to be restored in parts of the cities of Takatsuki and Minoo on Tuesday, prompting local authorities to dispatch water trucks. Some 112,000 households in the prefecture were without gas as of Tuesday morning. Osaka Gas Co. said the supply is expected to be back on at all affected households by next Monday. A few shops beside Takatsuki station remained closed due to the quake, but most were open for business. Damage to buildings, houses and other structures appeared minimal. Roads connecting Takatsuki to Osaka and Kyoto were also mostly undamaged, and vehicle traffic was normal. “We have fresh water and getting food and supplies isn’t a problem. Some shops in and around Takatsuki ran short on food items yesterday, though,” said local residents Tatsuyuki Miyazato and Tomomi Oso. “Our house did shake quite a bit, but damage was minimal and everybody was OK,” said Oso. A smaller earthquake occurred in the same area in the early hours of Tuesday as many spent a sleepless night at evacuation centers set up in the prefecture. The number of evacuees stood at about 1,700 as of 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, according to the Osaka prefectural government, but many were returning home later in the day. Sanae Ichikawa and her two children Akane, 10, and Masaru, 8, spent the night in a local elementary school that had been turned into an evacuation center. By Tuesday morning, about 20 people remained at the school, Takatsuki officials said. Ichikawa said she and her family would be heading home later Tuesday, adding that she was unsure when her children’s school would reopen. “But it will be a relief to go home and sleep in our own beds tonight. However, we were told that the gas won’t be back on until next week, which is going to make it tough to take a bath,” she said. Others in Takatsuki used the re-establishment of rail links to travel to either Osaka or Kyoto Tuesday to go shopping. “There were a number of household items we had that were damaged and we need to restock the kitchen, so it’s off to Osaka for a shopping trip today, which is what a lot of my friends are doing as well,” said Izumi Fukuda, a 38-year-old Osaka resident who said her family’s house in Takatsuki shook considerably but that there had been no injuries. While authorities reported Monday that, in addition to Rina Miyake, the quake killed three people in their 80s, police said Tuesday that an 81-year-old woman in Takatsuki who had been listed as among the three elderly people who perished is now believed to have died from illness. The police also announced Tuesday that Norihiro Kusumoto, a 66-year old resident in Takatsuki, was killed by the quake. A total of 334 houses have been damaged by the quake, according to a tally by the central government. Of these, 265 were in Osaka Prefecture, 64 in Kyoto , three in Nara and two in Hyogo. Disaster management minister Hachiro Okonogi said he will lead a survey team to the area to assess the extent of the damage.
|
damage;shelter;supply;takatsuki;osaka earthquake
|
jp0010212
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/19
|
Different disaster, same story: Osaka quake prompts online hate speech targeting foreigners
|
Monday’s deadly quake in Osaka Prefecture has led to the resurgence of what has become a familiar — if disconcerting — post-disaster trend on the internet: a slew of hate speech-driven tweets warning of “crimes” committed by foreign residents. In the aftermath of the magnitude 6.1 earthquake, which left at least three dead and hundreds injured, scores of tweets were seen labeling ethnic non-Japanese — particularly ethnic Koreans and Chinese — as criminals who may take advantage of post-quake confusion to rob banks and convenience stores, and commit other dangerous crimes. Authorities warned against the propagation of groundless rumors on the internet, and urged people not to spread hate speech and false information. “When a quake happens in the Kansai region, there is a strong possibility of Chinese and Koreans engaging in wrongdoing. It’s possible they will go after ATMs in banks and convenience stores,” one Twitter user wrote. “Who are those Koreans poisoning water in the wells every time a quake happens?” wrote another . This is by no means the first time online rumors vilifying those of Korean descent and other foreign residents have emerged after a disaster. Similar online slurs were seen in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011 and the 2016 quakes that ravaged Kumamoto Prefecture, as well as the floods and landslides that devastated Hiroshima Prefecture in 2014. “The spread of post-disaster or post-accident disinformation implying crimes have been committed by foreign residents or describing them as dangerous has been a recurring phenomenon,” said Koichi Yasuda, a freelance journalist who has covered extensively issues related to human rights of non-Japanese people. Yasuda cited the so-called Kanto Massacre, which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, in which scores of ethnic Koreans were murdered by the army, police and vigilantes after unsubstantiated rumors were spread that they were rioting and committing acts of sabotage — including the poisoning of wells. Such baseless information “sows divisions in society,” potentially resulting in a particular demographic being “identified and pilloried as enemies” by the general public, Yasuda said. The tweets denigrating non-Japanese have also drawn fierce condemnation on social media, with some urging their fellow Twitter users to swiftly report such xenophobic language. “Post-disaster, hate-speech talk that foreign residents are committing crimes stokes public suspicions for no good reason, and possibly leads to them being hurt or discriminated against. Let’s report these comments as soon as you find them,” wrote one Twitter user. Central and local governments are taking steps to challenge such hate speech. “When the Kumamoto earthquake happened two years ago, online rumors verging on hate speech, as well as one saying that, for example, a lion has escaped a zoo , spread,” said Ken Kuruma, an official with the Justice Ministry’s Human Rights Bureau. On Monday, the bureau posted a tweet warning against the possible advent of “disinformation” seeking to “stoke discrimination and prejudice” on the internet. The Osaka Prefectural Government, too, posted a similar message on its website voicing dismay over the “proliferation” of factually erroneous online posts that describe “accidents that never happened.” “Please be mindful of the source of information and make a sufficient effort to confirm its credibility,” the prefecture said. Aside from tweets targeting foreign residents, rumors also surfaced Monday that the jolt had resulted in a Keihan Electric Railway train being derailed. When contacted by The Japan Times, a spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that such an accident had never occurred. A picture also went viral of a zebra having escaped a zoo, with multiple media outlets reporting that the photo was thought to have been copied from an old online news page.
|
internet;twitter;hate speech;osaka earthquake
|
jp0010213
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/19
|
Kotaro Kake denies meeting Abe to discuss school project amid cronyism claims
|
OKAYAMA - The head of a school operator at the center of cronyism allegations involving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied on Tuesday having met with the prime minister regarding a project to open a school of veterinary medicine in a special deregulation zone. “I have no memory and there are no records” of such a meeting with Abe, said Kotaro Kake, a longtime friend of the prime minister who heads Kake Gakuen, at his first news conference since the allegations surfaced. He apologized for what he called a mix-up that saw a school official claim a meeting did take place between the two. Based on information provided by the school’s secretary-general, Yoshihito Watanabe, the Ehime Prefectural Government said in a document submitted to the Diet in May that Kake met with Abe to discuss the opening of a veterinary school before it received government approval. According to the document, the meeting took place on Feb. 25, 2015 — nearly two years before the government endorsed the project on Jan. 20, 2017. Abe has said he only learned about the project the day the government approved it. Watanabe, however, told Kake that he made up the meeting in order “to push forward” the project, according to the school chief. Watanabe visited the Ehime Prefectural Government offices on May 26 and apologized for giving the incorrect statement. As disciplinary measures for violating compliance protocols, Kake said he and Watanabe will take pay cuts. “(The prime minister and I) have been confidants for decades but we only meet on the basis that we do not talk about our work. I believe he is not interested in (my business),” Kake said. Education ministry documents leaked last year stated that Cabinet Office officials used phrases such as “what the highest level of the prime minister’s office has said” and “in line with the prime minister’s wishes” when explaining the veterinary school project. Opposition parties have asked the prime minister to clarify his position, and Abe has repeatedly denied any involvement. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga declined to comment on Kake’s news conference, saying that the matter only concerns correspondence between the school and local authorities.
|
shinzo abe;scandals;kotaro kake;kake gakuen
|
jp0010214
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/19
|
Anxious travelers cancel bookings, spooked by deadly Osaka quake
|
Monday morning’s deadly earthquake in Osaka has affected tourism in the region, with travelers at home and overseas canceling bookings in the affected areas. At least four people were killed and hundreds more injured in the quake. The operator of a hotel in central Kyoto said Tuesday that the quake has cost the firm some ¥4.4 million following cancellations of bookings for about 300 rooms. The reservations included several school trips to the city that had been planned this week. The hotel has 408 rooms. “We’re operating as usual, but many people fear for their safety because Osaka and Takatsuki (the site of the quake’s epicenter) are nearby,” said a staffer who requested his name be withheld. “I hope everything will get back to normal within a week, but reports about damage in the area have been hurting (the business) more than I thought.” “We may see more cancellations today and tomorrow,” the staffer added. The operator requested that the name of the hotel be withheld out of concern that information on cancellations could further affect business. A room management employee at another Kyoto hotel reported a wave of cancellations and said some customers were fearful of aftershocks. “Only today we received about 107 cancellation requests, and as many as 602 yesterday,” he said. However, he said the firm has seen some new customers seeking accommodation after being stranded between their homes and their travel destinations. In the heart of the city of Osaka, Rihga Royal Hotel Osaka, which has 1,042 rooms, saw roughly 100 cancellations each for Monday and Tuesday, according to Chie Takahashi, who manages public relations. She said the figures include reservations by foreign guests. Disruptions to transportation networks also hit tour operators. Osaka-based tour operator Hankyu Travel International Co. has been busy responding to a number of inquiries from customers, including non-Japanese travelers. “Only areas close (to the epicenter) have been severely affected by the quake, but disruption in transportation has affected tours, as halts or delays of transport carriers make travel physically impossible,” said the firm’s spokeswoman. The transportation network “collapsed for the entire day… making it impossible to travel, so many people have canceled their trips,” said Reiko Tatsumi, a spokeswoman for tour operator Kinki Nippon Tourist Co.’s Kansai bureau. “But most firms have resumed their services so everything should soon get back to normal.” Keihan Bus Corp., which operates bus tours of Kyoto and shuttle bus services connecting Japan’s ancient capital with Kansai International Airport, suspended two sightseeing routes and about a third of its airport buses on Monday due to the quake. “We’ve had some inquiries from individual customers, but it’s not like they’re canceling reservations one after another,” said public relations officer Hiroshi Takagawa. He said the company does not have a tally of how many people were affected by the suspension of services because there are many who do not make prior reservations. But he noted that some who had planned to go on the bus tours may have had to give up their plans because trains and other transportation options were suspended on Monday. Bus operations returned to normal on Tuesday, he said.
|
osaka;kyoto;tourism;osaka earthquake
|
jp0010215
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/19
|
Neighbors and family members mourn those who died in Osaka quake
|
OSAKA - Neighbors and family members mourned Tuesday for those who died in the powerful earthquake that rocked Osaka Prefecture a day earlier, including a 9-year-old girl remembered as a bubbly child who often greeted them with a smile. Rina Miyake, 9, was on her way to elementary school in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, when a concrete wall surrounding the school’s swimming pool collapsed, killing her. The girl, who lived with her brother and parents, had left for school 10 minutes earlier than usual on Monday to join a greeting campaign as a class representative. “She usually left for school around 8 a.m. but told me she had to leave early since it was her turn to join the greeting (campaign),” said a 71-year-old woman who lives across the street from the girl’s family. “It’s unfortunate that the quake occurred on this day.” Another neighbor remembered Rina as a gregarious child. “Since many cars pass close to the school, children usually walked at the side of the road,” the 69-year-old woman said. “I will miss her as she always smiled and waved to me.” A temporary memorial was set up Monday evening in front of the school, where bouquets of flowers lined its main gate in memory of the girl. In Higashiyodogawa Ward, Osaka, Minoru Yasui, 80, was also killed when a wall collapsed in the quake. Yasui, who lived with four other family members, had been bound for his daily practice of keeping watch over children making their way to school. A few minutes after leaving home and immediately after greeting an acquaintance the quake struck, and Yasui, who walked with a cane, was buried under the collapsed wall of a nearby residence. Neighbors and family members rushed to the scene, with his wife holding his hand, though they were unable to revive him. “I feel empty. I just can’t understand how this could have happened,” Yasui’s wife, Sanae, 78, said tearfully. His son Katsuyuki, 54, echoed her thoughts. “We had dinner together Sunday night to celebrate Father’s Day,” he said. “I can’t make sense of my feelings.” Yasui was known to be close to the neighborhood children and was often seen riding his bicycle in the area. “He must’ve felt invigorated by helping keep watch over children,” Katsuyuki said. A third victim of the quake, Motochika Goto, 85, of Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, died after being crushed by a bookshelf in his apartment. He had worked for a major trading company and was known by neighbors to enjoy reading foreign books and taking strolls in the area. “When my two daughters entered university, he gave them books. He also gave us souvenirs from his hometown in the Kyushu region. He was a kind person,” said a 65-year-old neighbor who declined to be identified.
|
children;earthquakes;osaka earthquake
|
jp0010216
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2018/06/26
|
Wall Street plunges amid escalating trade row
|
NEW YORK - U.S. stocks sank in a broad sell-off on Monday, with the S&P 500 dropping more than 1.5 percent and technology firms bearing the brunt of an escalating trade dispute between the United States and other leading economies. The U.S. Treasury Department was drafting curbs that would block firms with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying U.S. technology firms, a government official said on Sunday. A Wall Street Journal report also said the U.S. planned to block additional technology exports to China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the restrictions will not be specific to China but would apply “to all countries that are trying to steal our technology. “Investors are now beginning to worry that this heated rhetoric is something that will last for a while and could actually lead to disruption of trade,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York. “They want to stick with equities, but rather hide out from areas most likely to be adversely affected by a pick up in trade tensions.” The S&P technology index dropped 2.8 percent, set for their biggest-one day plunge in three months. The Philadelphia Semiconductor index dropped 3.8 percent, with chipmakers taking a hit as they depend on China for a large part of their revenue. The so-called FANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon , Netflix and Alphabet — tumbled between 3.2 percent and 6.6 percent, with investors taking profits after the four stocks hit record highs last week. Harley-Davidson tumbled 5.8 percent after it forecast additional costs due to higher European Union tariffs on motorbikes imported from the United States. At 12:55 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 363.41 points, or 1.48 percent, at 24,217.48, the S&P 500 was down 42.17 points, or 1.53 percent, at 2,712.71 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 187.48 points, or 2.44 percent, at 7,505.34. The CBOE Volatility index, known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, spiked to 17.92, highest in two months. Brent crude prices fell as traders factored in an expected output increase agreed at the OPEC meet on Friday. The S&P energy index was down 2.1 percent. Campbell Soup was the biggest percentage gainer on the S&P 500, rising 10 percent after a New York Post report that Kraft Heinz was considering buying the company. Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 3.84-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and for a 3.94-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P index recorded seven new 52-week highs and 17 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 45 new highs and 53 new lows.
|
china;stocks;wall street;s & p;steve mnuchin;trade war;fang
|
jp0010217
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2018/06/26
|
Migrant deaths from heat on U.S.-Mexico border up 55% to 48: Border Patrol
|
TAOS, NEW MEXICO - The number of migrants dying from extreme heat on the U.S.-Mexico border rose 55 percent in the last nine months after an increase in unaccompanied children and families trying to enter the United States illegally, the U.S. government said on Monday. Heat-related deaths, the main cause of migrant fatalities on the U.S. southwest border, rose to 48, up from 31 over the same period in 2017, said U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora. The death toll is expected to rise in the triple-digit heat of summer months as vulnerable, unacclimatized immigrants attempt to cross harsh environments, putting border fatalities on track for a year-on-year increase in 2018, Zamora said. The Border Patrol recorded a 12 percent year-on-year rise in immigrant arrests in the eight months to May 31, Zamora said. “We are geared up to surpass last year’s heat-related deaths and the summer is just beginning,” he said in a telephone interview. “The demographics of the illegal aliens we are apprehending, the family units, the unaccompanied children, they’re a lot more vulnerable.” Humanitarian groups such as San Diego, California-based Border Angels say the main cause of rising deaths is tighter border security and law enforcement, such as the recent imposition of a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossers. This has prompted migrants to make long treks through hostile terrain via remote crossing points. “We’ve seen people crossing in more dangerous areas, so even though there’s less people crossing there are more people dying,” said Enrique Morones, founder of the group whose volunteers leave water for migrants. Until four years ago, the vast majority of migrants arrested at the border were Mexicans. With improved economic conditions in Mexico, their number has fallen, as have overall arrests on the border, which dropped to 303,916 in 2017, down 26 percent from 2016, according to Border Patrol data. Immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador now top the list of people arrested at the southern border as gun and gang-related violence drives an exodus from those countries, according to U.S. government data. As the number of arrests on the border have fallen, the United Nations International Organization for Migration has recorded a rise in migrant deaths for the last four years, with the total reaching 415 in 2017. Immigrants, including children, from sub-tropical and mountainous areas are arriving at the border poorly nourished, unacclimatized to arid conditions and susceptible to heat-exhaustion, Zamora said. Families apprehended at the border increased five-fold since 2013 while the number of unaccompanied children detained in 2017 was almost double that in 2010, according to Border Patrol data. Morones at Border Angels suspects patrol agents of destroying water supplies the group drops off for migrants in the desert. One such act was caught on video in Arizona by another humanitarian group called No More Deaths. Border patrol spokesman Zamora said actions shown in the No More Deaths video were “unacceptable” and in no way representative of the agency’s values. The agency conducts its own humanitarian rescues, which rose slightly to 748 people in the eight months through May, he said.
|
u.s .;immigrants;migrants;mexico border;donald trump;border patrol;zero-tolerance policy
|
jp0010218
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/26
|
Not having children is 'selfish': LDP heavyweight Toshihiro Nikai
|
A leading Liberal Democratic Party official on Tuesday called people opting not to have children “selfish,” in the latest controversial remark from a politician of the ruling party urging people to have babies. “During and after the war when (people) were living on the edge of starvation, nobody said it’s better not to have children because it would be too much trouble,” LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai said, adding, “These days, some people have a selfish idea that it is better not to give birth to children.” “In order for everyone (in Japan) to be happy, we should have many children and develop our country,” the 79-year-old Lower House member also said in a speech in Tokyo. The comments, following controversial remarks regarding childbearing by fellow party members, are likely to draw criticism that politicians are out of sync with realities in Japan, where working parents struggle to place their children in day care. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has sought to promote women’s empowerment and increase the number of women in the workplace as a key pillar of his government’s growth strategy amid a rapidly graying population and labor shortage. In May, Kanji Kato, a third-term LDP Lower House member, stirred controversy by revealing he tells newlywed couples when he attends wedding receptions that they “must raise at least three children.” Later in the month, Koichi Hagiuda, executive acting secretary-general of the LDP and a close aide to Abe, said raising infants and toddlers is a job for mothers and that fathers taking the primary role is an “unwelcome idea.” The LDP members have been criticized as lacking in understanding of the difficulties faced by families with small children, including finding child care facilities. A recent survey conducted by a major Japanese think tank showed an estimated 348,000 children nationwide weren’t able to gain admission to such facilities despite their parents’ wishes. The Nomura Research Institute pointed out that an additional 599,000 children must be accepted at day care facilities — nearly double the capacity for 320,000 the government plans to achieve by the end of fiscal 2020 — if the government hopes to reach its goal of raising the employment rate of women 25 to 44 years old to 80 percent by the end of fiscal 2022 from 66 percent in 2009.
|
children;ldp;toshihiro nikai
|
jp0010220
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2018/06/26
|
Japan's Foreign Ministry to create new division dedicated solely to North Korea
|
To cope with the growing number of diplomatic tasks concerning the Korean Peninsula, the Foreign Ministry plans to split its Northeast Asia Division into two sections on July 1 to create a new division dedicated solely to North Korean affairs, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference Tuesday. It is rare for a ministry division to be focused only on the affairs of a single country. The First Northeast Asia Division will deal with South Korean issues and the Second Northeast Asia Division will be in charge of North Korean affairs, a Foreign Ministry official said. “Work related to the Korean Peninsula has dramatically increased,” Suga said. “We need to strengthen Japan-South Korea cooperation and efficiently cope with nuclear and missile development and abduction issues involving the North.” Currently, the Northeast Asia Division, which deals with both South and North Korean issues, employs about 30 officials. The total workforce will be boosted at a later date, the ministry official said. On April 6, Foreign Minister Taro Kono told a news conference that the ministry had planned to split the division into two in the summer, partly because the workload of officials in charge of North Korean affairs had “abnormally increased” in recent months. “The current division is reaching the limits of what it can handle as a single entity,” Kono said at that time.
|
north korea;nuclear weapons;foreign ministry;abductions
|
jp0010221
|
[
"business"
] |
2018/06/21
|
Scientific study finds asylum seekers boosting European economies
|
NEW YORK - Asylum seekers moving to Europe have raised their adopted nations’ economic output, lowered unemployment and not placed a burden on public finances, scientists said on Wednesday. An analysis of economic and migration data for the last three decades found asylum seekers added to gross domestic products and boosted net tax revenues by as much as 1 percent, said a study published in Science Advances by French economists. The findings come amid a rise of anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe, where immigration peaked in 2015 with the arrival of more than a million refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa. An annual report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees released on Tuesday showed the global number of refugees grew by a record 2.9 million in 2017 to 25.4 million. The research from 1985 to 2015 looked at asylum seekers — migrants who demonstrate a fear of persecution in their homeland in order to be resettled in a new country. “The cliche that international migration is associated with economic ‘burden’ can be dispelled,” wrote the scientists from the French National Center for Scientific Research, the University of Clermont-Auvergne and Paris-Nanterre University. The research analyzed data from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Asylum seekers contributed most to a country’s gross domestic product after three to seven years, the research found. They marginally lowered unemployment rates and had a near-zero impact on public finances, it said. Greece, where the bulk of migrants fleeing civil war in Syria have entered Europe, was not included because fiscal data before 1990 were unavailable, it said. Chad Sparber, an associate professor of economics at the U.S.-based Colgate University, said the study was a reminder there is no convincing economic case against humanitarian migration. But he warned against dismissing the views of residents who might personally feel a negative consequence of immigration. “There are people who do lose or suffer,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Immigration on balance is good,” he said. “But I still recognize that it’s not true for every person.”
|
france;europe;syria;gdp;asylum seekers;economies;finances
|
jp0010222
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2018/06/21
|
White House to propose merging Labor and Education departments: report
|
WASHINGTON - The White House plans to propose on Thursday to merge the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Citing a person with knowledge of the proposal, the Journal said the plan follows a review of Cabinet agencies that looked for ways to shrink the federal government. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Congress would likely have to approve the merger, and it was unclear whether lawmakers would be in favor of a major governmental reorganization with November elections looming. Republicans have long complained about the size of the federal government and many have taken particular aim at the Education Department, which they see as intruding on local and state authority. President Donald Trump also plans to propose as early as Thursday moving many social safety net programs into a new “mega-department” that would replace the Health and Human Services Department, The New York Times reported, citing administration officials briefed on the proposal. Among the programs to be moved to the new department is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which serves more than 40 million low-income Americans, the Times said. SNAP currently is run by the Agriculture Department. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is the architect of the plan, the newspaper said. OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
|
u.s .;bureaucracy;donald trump
|
jp0010223
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"science-health-asia-pacific"
] |
2018/06/21
|
North Korea data show slight children's health gains but third of drinking water contaminated: U.N.
|
GENEVA - New data from North Korea show a “slight” improvement in children’s health, the United Nations reported Wednesday, saying the isolated nation had made a step forward by providing better information about the condition of its people. The findings published by UNICEF were based on surveys of more than 8,500 North Korean households conducted by the government’s Central Bureau of Statistics. While North Korean children continue to confront major health challenges, the data show that the national stunting rate, a key indicator of malnutrition among children, dropped from 32.4 percent in 2009 — the last time the surveys were conducted — to 19 percent last year. But the figures on stunting varied significantly across the country. In Pyongyang, 10 percent of children were affected by stunting, while in the rural Ryanggang province the rate was 32 percent. Pyongyang’s cooperation with UNICEF in collecting and releasing the data has also improved substantially since 2009, the agency’s East Asia and Pacific director, Karin Hulshof, told reporters in Geneva. “This new seriousness and improved openness about data is in UNICEF’s view a real step forward,” she said. Hulshof declined to tie North Korea’s increased cooperation to changes that followed the death of leader Kim Jong Il in December 2011. His son and successor, Kim Jong Un, has made a series of outreaches to the international community, including a historic nuclear summit with U.S. President Donald Trump this month. But UNICEF said the improved cooperation on children’s health predated the latest diplomatic developments. “I would just like to remind everyone that these data were collected in 2017, so that is sometime before the latest summits,” Hulshof said, noting the agreement to carry out the fresh surveys was reached between UNICEF and Pyongyang in 2016. The data also indicated that a full third of North Korea’s drinking water is contaminated, posing another major threat to healthy growth among children. UNICEF said those water problems were likely linked to poor systems for managing human waste. And, while the stunting figures indicate nutrition has improved for some, “only 1 in 3 children age 6 to 23 months receive the minimum acceptable diet,” Hulshof said. A separate U.N.-led report last year found chronic food shortages in North Korea, with around 41 percent of the population — or some 10.5 million people — undernourished. The U.N. official credited increased humanitarian aid for the gains made and voiced hope that better data would allow international agencies to more effectively target their assistance in the country. Hulshof said UNICEF would now move on to “a detailed analysis of the data to put the numbers in context.” But, she added, “the data is already providing us with a lot of food for thought.” UNICEF said the methodology it used in North Korea was the same used in the 107 other countries where the surveys, known as the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), have been carried out. Still, the actual questionnaires in private homes were filled out by workers from the totalitarian state. Hulshof said there should be no concerns about the quality of the data, as UNICEF was responsible for processing the findings and used cross-referencing to spot any inconsistencies. “We are confident that these numbers are real numbers,” she said.
|
north korea;children;health;unicef;stunting rate
|
jp0010224
|
[
"national",
"social-issues"
] |
2018/06/21
|
School uniforms go unisex as Japanese schools seek better fit for LGBT students
|
An emerging number of Japanese schools are introducing unisex uniforms or flexible uniform codes in an effort to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. School officials hope the move will ease the mental anguish of such students, who are usually required to wear gender-based uniforms typified by jackets with stand-up collars and trousers for boys, and sailor-type outfits with skirts for girls. At Kashiwanoha Junior High School, which opened in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, in April, students can freely choose whether to wear skirts or slacks or ties or ribbons with blazers, regardless of their sex. Originally, the school did not intend to make students wear a uniform, but had to change course because nearly 90 percent of parents and prospective students surveyed wanted one. A panel of parents, teachers, prospective students and education board members was set up to discuss the uniform designs. Some said consideration should be paid to LGBT students and that girls should also be allowed to wear trousers because they are more practical and warmer in winter. “We thought it would be better to let students wear something they feel comfortable in if they have to struggle to come to school because of uniforms,” said Koshin Taki, the vice principal of Kashiwanoha Junior High. “We chose a subdued color and check patterns so the uniform would be suitable for any student.” Similar moves are spreading in Japan, with a junior high school in Fukuoka Prefecture preparing to abandon the stand-up collars and sailor suits for blazers that will let students mix and match with skirts or trousers when the April 2019 school year kicks off. In Tokyo, the Setagaya Ward Board of Education is set to follow suit in April, while boards of education in the cities of Osaka and Fukuoka plan to broach the topic in the near future. Anri Ishizaki, who heads FRENS, a nonprofit organization supporting LGBT people, said trying to fit all students in gender-specific uniforms can be a burden to sexual minorities who are afraid to come out. “Some students are embarrassed and cannot concentrate on their studies because of uniforms. In some cases, they stop going to school,” said Ishizaki. “Although uniforms are not the only factors tormenting them, it is a significant element as they are required to wear them all the time,” added Ishizaki, noting that offering students more options is likely to provide “a sense of ease.” In 2014, there were 606 cases of consultations related to gender dysphoria, according to a survey by the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry covering elementary, junior high and high schools across Japan. The following year, the ministry issued a notice encouraging schools to improve support for sexual minorities and pay consideration to their clothing, hairstyles, and bathroom use. Tombow Co., the uniform maker picked by Kashiwanoha Junior High, said it began developing unisex uniforms after schools began making more inquiries about them around the time of the ministry’s 2015 notice. Ayumi Okuno, a designer at Tombow, said she found in interviews with LGBT students that many do not want to wear uniforms that clearly differentiate male and female shapes and silhouettes, so she tries not to highlight certain aspects, such as curves that emphasize femininity. “We are also offering various suggestions to schools so they can select what works best for them,” said Okuno, noting that it can accommodate flexible dress codes like the one at Kashiwanoha Junior High, styles that suit the gender identity of each student, or even the frequent use of gym clothes except for ceremonies and formal occasions. About 50 percent of Tombow’s uniforms are the stand-up collar and sailor skirt types, but more schools across Japan are introducing slacks for girls, the company said. Although the two schools mentioned above allow female transgender students to wear skirts, Okuno believes such a product will be difficult to develop and market. “Even if schools and students accept such a uniform, it is likely to be frowned upon by many people in society,” she said. While the introduction of a new dress code is seen as a positive step forward, it will be difficult to take such measures without accidentally outing sexual minorities, experts say. In the 2014 survey, only about 20 percent of the students in the 606 consultations on gender dysphoria had revealed their gender identities to their peers, and around 60 percent were in the closet. Kashiwanoha Junior High’s Taki said he is carefully monitoring students’ reactions to the new dress code as some of the female students are fearful about drawing special attention for wearing trousers. He emphasized that the dress code offers options not only to transgender students but also to those who want to be practical. “I hope it will help students choose what they want to wear without necessarily disclosing their gender identity,” he said.
|
gender;lgbt;school;chiba;students;uniforms
|
jp0010225
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/21
|
Half of Japan's visiting nurses suffer some form of harassment: survey
|
Around half of respondents in a survey of visiting nurses said they have suffered some form of harassment when going to patients’ homes, an industry survey showed Thursday. The number of nurses visiting patients outside of medical institutions has been on the rise amid the growing number of elderly people who prefer to receive nursing services at home. But the nurses often have to go to the patients’ homes alone. Asked whether they had experienced forms of physical, mental or sexual harassment, half of the respondents for each category said yes, according to the survey by the National Association for Visiting Nurse Service. The association sent questionnaires to 11,160 nurses and 5,580 administrators in February and March in its first large-scale nationwide survey. About 30 percent of nurses and nearly 40 percent of the administrators responded. According to the survey, 53 percent of respondents said they were verbally harassed, while 45 percent said they have been subjected to violence and 48 percent cited sexual harassment. For every type of harassment, about 30 percent replied that they had suffered abuse within the past year. Among the forms of harassment, many respondents said they were yelled at, told that they were incompetent, or were threatened. Of those who cited sexual harassment, some of them said they were touched or shown adult videos. The study also said that 97 percent of responding nurses reported the problems to their superiors. Among measures to protect the nurses, around 70 percent of the administrators who responded said they have sent nurses in pairs or more in cases where they are at a high risk of being subjected to violence. Some administrators have canceled their contracts after finding out that their employees had been harassed, while others said they are not sure what to do. “Small operators may be unable to deal with such problems, so we need to figure out safety measures for visiting nurses extensively and systematically,” said Akiko Miki, a professor of Kansai Medical University in charge of the survey.
|
harassment;elderly;nurses;nursing care
|
jp0010226
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/21
|
Record number of climbers stranded on Japanese mountains in 2017
|
A record 3,111 people became stranded on mountains last year amid a boom in the popularity of mountaineering that has led many inexperienced climbers to venture into the backcountry, a National Police Agency report showed Thursday. The total was up 182 from the previous year while those that died or weren’t found also hit a record, up 35 to 354, the report said. The agency began compiling such data in 1961. With the rise in inbound tourism in recent years, the number of stranded foreign climbers grew to 121, a nearly threefold increase from 2013, it said. About half of the total number of people stranded were age 60 and over. By age group, those in their 60s accounted for 741, or 23.8 percent of the total, while those in their 70s came in at 669, or 21.5 percent. People in their 50s accounted for 14.6 percent of the total, or 455. By region, Nagano Prefecture saw the largest number of incidents involving stranded climbers with 292, followed by Hokkaido’s 236 and Yamanashi Prefecture’s 161. Attributing the increase in the number of alpine accidents to a lack of mountaineering knowledge, experience and physical strength among many climbers, the agency is urging people to give themselves plenty of time to complete their trips and to always climb with others. An NPA official said foreign visitors who have become stranded tend to be unfamiliar with Japanese mountains, which are prone to drastic weather changes. In October, a Malaysian man and a Singaporean woman, along with a Japanese couple, became stranded on Mount Asahidake in Hokkaido. They were rescued from the snowy 2,291-meter peak via helicopter after losing their way while descending the mountain. They had to spend a night outdoors in frigid temperatures but escaped without serious injuries. Mountaineering has become a popular sport in Japan over the past several years, and the trend is reflected in the growing number of alpine incidents as well. The number of people stranded on mountains has increased 1.7 times from 10 years ago, while the number of those who died or weren’t found grew 1.4 times over the same period. Among last year’s total, an overwhelming 2,223 people, or 71.5 percent, were mountaineering when they became stranded, while 380 people, or 12.2 percent, were hunting for wild vegetables or mushrooms. Among foreign people who became stranded, skiing and mountaineering were the two most popular activities they engaged in.
|
accidents;tourism;national police agency;climbing;mountains
|
jp0010227
|
[
"world"
] |
2018/06/07
|
U.S. blocks U.N. health panel from backing taxes on sugary drinks
|
GENEVA - The Trump administration has torpedoed a plan to recommend higher taxes on sugary drinks, forcing a World Health Organization panel to back off the U.N. agency’s previous call for such taxes as a way to fight obesity, diabetes and other life-threatening conditions. The move disappointed many public health experts but was enthusiastically welcomed by the International Food and Beverage Alliance — a group that represents companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo. and Unilever. The revelations came as a WHO panel on non-communicable diseases issued a report that aimed to cut down on diseases like diabetes, cancer and obesity, which kill about 40 million people each year. The fight against such diseases is a priority for the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Dr. Sania Nishtar, co-chair of panel, said most of its 26 members supported a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages but one commissioner — whom she did not identify — hampered drafting stronger language. Eric Hargan, the U.S. deputy secretary for health and human services, reported that he was that member, saying it was not clear that imposing taxes on sugary drinks like sodas and fruit juices would improve public health. WHO has argued exactly that over the last two years. “Deputy Secretary Hargan opposed endorsing increasing taxes on sugary drinks in the commission report,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said, noting that the panel’s mandate was to make “bold” recommendations. “Taxes on sugary drinks is not new, bold, or innovative.” She also said that “evidence is lacking that such a tax produces positive health outcomes.” The U.S. provides a significant percentage of the WHO’s yearly budget. The sweetened-drink industry has come out strongly against any such tax, but Nishtar said she was not aware of any industry lobbying of the commissioners. Commission member Ilona Kickbusch, a former WHO staffer who directs the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, said the United States “made it clear” that it did not want more regulation. “They (the Trump administration) felt that the evidence was not strong enough that the tax would reduce the obesity epidemic,” she said. Commission members said they decided to press ahead with the report, leaving open the possibility that the commission could strengthen its call in the future. The independent commission, created last year by Ghebreyesus, did recommend taxes on tobacco and alcohol. Decisions made by the Trump administration have often run afoul of U.S. allies and competitors alike. Last week the U.S. government announced new steel and aluminum tariffs against allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union. Last year, President Donald Trump rejected the landmark Paris accord to fight global warming. WHO often convenes expert panels to ultimately set its own policies and to make tricky public health decisions. Last month, a separate WHO expert group decided that Congo’s Ebola outbreak did not warrant being designated as an international emergency — a decision WHO accepted as its own. Two years ago Dr. Douglas Bettcher, who heads the WHO’s non-communicable diseases department, said that consumption of free sugars amounted to a “major factor” in the global increase of people suffering from obesity and diabetes. He insisted that taxes on sugary drinks would enable governments to “reduce suffering and save lives.” Back then, WHO said a 20 percent price increase for such drinks would dramatically cut consumption. “WHO’s position cannot change because of this report. What WHO said some years ago holds, because consumption of sugar is associated with obesity and at the same time, taxing sugar was shown to reduce consumption in many countries,” Ghebreyesus said. “Not only that, the money from the taxes can be used to strengthen the health system,” he added. “There are many good examples of countries like Philippines, Ireland, South Africa, and Mexico that have demonstrated this.” But instead of explicitly recommending a sugar tax, the WHO commission said that countries themselves should decide if they want higher taxes on sugary drinks. “When engagement with the private sector fails to contribute to the achievement of public health goals, governments should employ their regulatory and legislative powers to protect” their people, the report says. The beverage trade group applauded their decision. “IFBA strongly agrees with the (WHO panel’s) assessment that the WHO and other government agencies should increase engagement of the private sector to achieve further progress,” the group said in a statement. Jack Winkler, an emeritus professor of nutrition policy at London Metropolitan University, rejected the U.S. claim, saying there’s now convincing evidence that taxing sugary drinks works, citing, among other research, a recent article in the journal, The BMJ. He said policies adopted in the U.K. show that taxing sugar-loaded drinks not only spurred manufacturers to reformulate their products but that “it has made the healthy choice the cheaper choice.” Winkler said the WHO’s own acknowledgment that progress on combating obesity and other non-communicable disease has been slow makes the panel’s refusal to endorse sugar taxes outright especially unfortunate. “When WHO doesn’t pick up on a practical solution that also raises money, it is particularly absurd,” he said. “The recommendation on such taxes is now conspicuously limp.” In its report, the commission also recommended that governments prioritize measures to restrict junk food advertising. Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the failure of the WHO’s commission to reach an agreement on sugar taxes was “difficult to fathom.” He noted that since this was the only the first report from that panel, it might still revise its advice in later reports. “It would be very disappointing if this issue remained unresolved in its next report,” McKee said.
|
u.s .;food;health;u.n .;who;soft drinks;coca-cola;unilever;pepsico
|
jp0010228
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2018/06/07
|
Malaysia's Najib Razak is out of power but his legacy lives on in giant skyscraper
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KUALA LUMPUR - As Malaysia seeks to move beyond the excesses associated with nearly a decade of rule under ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak, one of his pet projects continues to rise irreversibly skyward to become the tallest building in Southeast Asia. Just months from completion, Exchange 106 — “Najib’s tower” — is one of only a few mega-projects cleared by a new government that has pledged to review deals struck by the previous administration. Yet the 492-meter skyscraper remains an irritant as they try to dismantle Najib’s legacy after the May 9 election upset, which drove the National Front coalition out of power after it had run Malaysia for the six decades since independence from Britain. They can order that his photos be removed from government offices and that posters carrying his “1Malaysia” slogan be taken down. One staff member at the library of a government agency said they had even received a directive to “hide Najib’s books” by not having them displayed on front desks. But it doesn’t make sense to dismantle a giant skyscraper that is almost finished. Symbolically, the building will rise above the famous Petronas Twin Towers built during the previous term of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Najib’s mentor-turned-foe. But financially it could still hurt Malaysia. The new government has said that funds raised to finance the project by the scandal-plagued state fund 1MDB had not been used for that purpose, and that its Indonesian developer needs an “injection of funds” from the government to keep the project on track. “The true picture was not told,” new Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said in a video that was posted online. “It is better to get the building completed and owned by us than to let it be abandoned.” Lim said he could not disclose how much money the government has put into the project. In just his first few weeks back in office, Mahathir has canceled a planned high-speed rail project between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, and pledged to renegotiate a deal with Chinese partners to build a 688-kilometer East Coast Rail Link. He has said both projects are too expensive and have limited economic benefit. Another big property development, Bandar Malaysia, hangs in the balance after a $1.7 billion deal to sell a majority stake to a Malaysian-Chinese consortium fell through in May 2017. A year on, the project has failed to attract any buyers. Exchange 106 was conceived as the centerpiece of a financial district in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, that would rival the likes of London’s Canary Wharf. The Tun Razak Exchange — named after Najib’s father and launched by Najib in 2012 — was expected to be a commercial, residential and leisure hub that would generate a gross development value (GDV) of more than 26 billion ringgit ($6.55 billion), create 500,000 jobs and lure more than 100 top global companies. However, the plan proved to be a tough sell. Questions about the finances of project developer 1MDB, a state fund set up by Najib over a decade ago, started around 2013. By 2015, it had become the center of money laundering investigations worldwide. In a statement last month, the Finance Ministry said some $3 billion of debt raised by 1MDB to fund the development of the complex in 2013 was not used for that purpose. Today, the 70-acre (28-hectare) site remains largely undeveloped and is dominated by a gleaming tower of glass and steel — Exchange 106 — rising from its center. Some big foreign firms have signed up. Banking group HSBC and insurer Prudential plan to move their country headquarters into other buildings on the site, and Australian property firm Lendlease penned a deal to develop a complex consisting of a hotel, residential blocks and a shopping center. A number of plots remain unsold, though, and the government has yet to clarify publicly whether it will stick to the initial plans for the huge new financial district. As for Exchange 106, the finance ministry in March confirmed it had bought back a 51 percent stake in the building, after initially selling all of it to Indonesian developer Mulia Group for 665 million ringgit ($168 million). At the time, the ministry said its participation was pre-agreed and was necessary because of the building’s strategic location and iconic nature. Lim has since said that the development “needed an injection of funds.” A spokeswoman for Mulia said around half the building has been leased since it was first marketed back in 2016. Local media reported that mainly local firms have signed up, with real estate agents saying some parts of the design may not appeal to multinational companies. For example, Sarkunan Subramaniam, managing director at Knight Frank Malaysia, who has visited the site recently, said that unlike other modern office buildings, the floors in Exchange 106 are not raised to allow for wiring for workstations. Market conditions also do not augur well for the project. Malaysia’s capital has been experiencing an oversupply of office space in recent years.
|
malaysia;buildings;najib razak
|
jp0010229
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"social-issues-asia-pacific"
] |
2018/06/07
|
Former New Zealand sex worker given award in U.K. queen's birthday honors list
|
LONDON - Catherine Healy, a former New Zealand sex worker-turned-women’s rights activist who successfully campaigned to decriminalize prostitution in the country, was awarded the title of dame to mark the official birthday of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II on Monday. New Zealand awards such honors twice a year — at New Year and again in June to mark the monarch’s official birthday. Healy, 62, who founded the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective and helped to draft a law passed in 2003 that legitimized brothels and gave employment rights to sex workers, was awarded the title of dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Countries have been divided over how to address prostitution with some such as Canada, Sweden and Norway introducing laws to punish the client without criminalizing those in sex work. Almost 30 countries, including the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand, have legalized or decriminalized prostitution. Women’s rights campaigners who support decriminalization or legalization of sex work hope Healy’s honor will help tackle stigma and encourage sex workers who are victims of violence to report crimes to the police without fear of retribution. “Stigma and criminalization create an environment of impunity in which violence and exploitation thrive,” Luca Stevenson of the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe, said. “It is crucial that the needs of the most marginalized such as undocumented migrant sex workers, trans women sex workers or sex workers who use drugs are listened to and prioritized. Sex workers, even the most stigmatized, can speak for themselves.” Yet other activists call for the abolition of prostitution and say most women are victims of human trafficking and have been lured, duped or forced into sexual slavery by pimps and traffickers, largely due to their poor socioeconomic status. The royal endorsement given to Healy is a “slap in the face to women everywhere,” said Rachel Moran, an activist who opposes decriminalization as she argues it will increase violence against women and make exploitation easier for sex traffickers.
|
awards;sex;new zealand;prostitution;queen elizabeth
|
jp0010230
|
[
"national"
] |
2018/06/07
|
60,000 elderly drivers in Japan suspected of having dementia during license renewal: police
|
Nearly 60,000 drivers aged 75 and over were judged to possibly have dementia when renewing their licenses in the first year of stricter screening for elderly drivers, the National Police Agency said Thursday. The revised road traffic law, which requires elderly drivers to see a doctor if dementia is suspected during a preliminary screening, took effect on March 12 last year. Fatal crashes involving senior citizens have become a major issue due to the rapid aging of the population. The agency said in a report that 2,105,477 holders of driver’s licenses took cognitive function tests in the first year of the revised law, and 57,099 of them were suspected of having dementia. A total of 1,892 of those drivers had their licenses suspended or nullified, up about threefold from 597 in 2016. A further 16,115 gave up their licenses after being judged as possibly having dementia, while 4,517 people stopped their renewal procedure and their licenses became null and void. Some 1,515 others are still in the middle of their renewal procedures, suggesting the number of suspensions and nullifications is likely to grow. Overall, 151,528 people in Japan voluntarily returned their licenses to the police between January and April this year, with some 70 percent of them (105,560) age 75 or older, according to preliminary data from the NPA. Before the law’s revision, doctors’ diagnoses were encouraged but not mandatory when dementia was suspected in cognitive tests. The number of traffic deaths in Japan has been on the decline, dropping to a record-low of 3,694 people in 2017. But serious accidents caused by elderly drivers have continued to attract national attention, particularly as the country is expected to have more elderly drivers in coming years. Last month, a 90-year-old woman was arrested after allegedly running a red light and hitting four pedestrians in Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. One of the pedestrians died. The latest police tally showed 13,063 drivers were allowed to continue driving after seeing doctors, but 9,563 of them are required to have another medical exam conducted in six months as their cognitive functions are seen to be deteriorating. The number of people feared to be experiencing lower levels of deterioration in their cognitive functions and who were not required to have a medical examination totaled 553,810, while 1,494,568 didn’t show any signs of cognitive problems. As alternative transportation services for the elderly who give up their licenses are limited, the NPA set up an expert group last October to study whether to introduce driving permits that would limit where, when and what type of vehicles senior citizens can drive. Such licenses have been issued in Europe and the United States. An NPA official said the agency also plans to ask automakers how advanced safety technologies might make up for the deterioration in the driving skills of the elderly.
|
survey;national police agency;elderly;cars
|
jp0010231
|
[
"national",
"history"
] |
2018/06/07
|
Hiroshima hibakusha, 86, kept horror of A-bombing to himself, until now
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For more than 70 years, Hiroshima resident Tokuo Shimizu kept the gruesome memories of the hellish scenes he saw at ground zero the day after the atomic bombing to himself. But at the age of 86, Shimizu has decided to share his A-bomb memories with younger generations to pass on the message that human beings should never wage war again. Shimizu was a second-year student at the Hiroshima Municipal Shipbuilding Engineering School (now Hiroshima Municipal Commercial High School) when the atomic bomb exploded over the city on Aug. 6, 1945. On that day, he was at Mitsubishi Heavy Industry’s Hiroshima Shipyard, which had been mobilized to build naval weapons to be used for suicide attacks. Suddenly, a strong flash of light streamed into the workplace. At first, he thought it was a short circuit. After taking refuge in a nearby air raid shelter, he saw a huge mushroom cloud rise above the central part of the city. After spending the night at the shelter worrying about his family, Shimizu headed back to his home in the city in what is now known as Higashi Ward. “I walked past people who were severely burned to the extent that they no longer looked human,” Shimizu recalled. “I tried to avoid stepping on the bodies.” Under the eaves of a house, he saw several dead bodies with their heads stuck in a water tank. Shimizu was so thirsty that he pushed the bodies aside and drank from the tank. “It was strange to see mosquito larvae floating in the water even under such circumstances,” he said. Shimizu still can’t forget the grim sights he witnessed around the Aioi Bridge, which had been used by the Allies as an aiming point for the bomb. The river was filled with so many bodies he couldn’t see the surface of the water. On the bridge was an American prisoner. A man who looked like a military policeman was standing beside him, urging people to torture him with sticks and stones. When he finally reached home, he found that the house was severely damaged but his mother was safe. Shimizu’s 27-year-old sister, Yasuko, however, was injured. She became ill while searching for her daughter, Mieko, who was a first-grader in elementary school. While in bed, she said she wanted to eat zenzai (sweet red bean soup), so the family begged a farmer and managed to get the ingredients. But she died before the dish was ready. “I wanted her to eat it,” Shimizu recalled. Yasuko’s husband was severely burned in the bombing and died before the war ended. Mieko was never found. Shimizu later heard from the late Keiji Nakazawa, who penned the famous manga series “Hadashi no Gen” (“Barefoot Gen”) and went to the same elementary school, that his niece was with him near the school’s gate when the bomb hit, blowing them both off their feet. Shimizu also lost close friends. All the first-year students who were mobilized to the area near where the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum now stands were killed. Among them was a former classmate who had waited a year to enter the shipbuilding engineering school because it was popular. His heart still aches when he thinks of these friends. Shimizu himself began showing acute symptoms of radiation sickness, including hair loss and bleeding gums. As he lost his father during the war, Shimizu went through difficult times making ends meet afterward. To survive, he ate weeds that grew near the railway tracks and earned meager wages from the black market. But things got better with time. In 1949, he moved to a liquor shop run by the family that another of his sisters had married into. There, he met his future but now deceased wife, Sachie, and ran the shop together for many years. Shimizu devoted himself to promoting the economy, serving as the first chairman of the shopping district promotion association. Together with other residents, he also built a shrine on the roof of his shop. Shimizu currently lives with a grandchild’s family and has been blessed with four great-grandchildren. “Without everyone’s efforts after the war, Hiroshima wouldn’t have recovered and become the city it is now. We should never ever wage war again,” Shimizu said.
|
history;hiroshima;hibakusha;atomic bombing
|
jp0010232
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/09
|
Undocumented workers in Japan in a constant state of uncertainty
|
People who live in a state of daily desperation sometimes react to their circumstances with violence against others or themselves and, while such actions are a manifestation of frustration, they can also alert the larger world to that frustration, even if it wasn’t intended. During a single week in May there were four suicide attempts involving three people at the East Japan Immigration Center in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture, where more than 300 foreign nationals are being detained as they await deportation. These acts follow the suicide of an Indian man at the center in April, which then led to a hunger strike by more than 100 detainees. Attorney Shoichi Ibuski, an expert on immigration issues who has represented foreign detainees, discussed the matter during the May 29 edition of the TBS Radio talk show Session 22 , saying that “there are more suicide attempts (at immigration facilities) than are reported.” Nevertheless, leading news outlets, which mostly ignore the issue of detained foreign nationals, have started to pay attention. The reason for the sudden interest isn’t clear, although it seems to be a confluence of sensational stories, the large increase in inbound tourism and the government’s sensitivity toward foreign visitors in the runup to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In May, the Asahi Shimbun and other publications posted a security video of a Turkish man being severely manhandled last July by employees of the Osaka Regional Immigration Bureau, fracturing his arm in the process. The man filed a lawsuit against the state on May 29. As Session 22 host Chiki Ogiue commented, the video was made public at around the same time that the “dangerous tackle” images from a Japanese college American football game were dominating the TV news cycle , and he wondered if the footage would have received more attention if the football scandal hadn’t happened. Ogiue suggests that the detention video is much more disturbing, a quality that by itself might have kept it off the nightly news, but the more pertinent consideration is whether broadcasters think the Japanese public is ready or willing to accept the treatment detainees receive in immigration control centers, treatment that Ibuski says amounts to violations of their human rights. He wonders if the public has bought into the government’s narrative that detainees are criminals even if they never actually call them criminals or characterize their detention as punishment. At issue is the length of their detention, which, for some, can be as much as several years. As Ibuski points out, detainees are technically being processed for departure. Once the procedure is complete, they will presumably leave Japan, but during the process they have to remain locked up. Most are overstayers, though a good number are seeking asylum. In effect, they have no status, which means they aren’t “prisoners” in a legal sense because “imprisonment” indicates a process that includes indictment and a conviction. Under indictment, a judge determines whether the accused is to be detained prior to and during a trial. When it comes to immigration problems, however, immigration officials make such determinations and do what they please. This vague status can also apply to those who have Japanese spouses or relatives residing legally in Japan, because until the process is finished, they are at the mercy of the Justice Ministry. Ibuski isn’t sure why the ministry keeps detainees locked up for so long. Session 22 also talked to Yugo Hirano, a reporter for Kyodo News who has probably covered the detainee issue more thoroughly than anyone. Hirano discussed one young man from India who came to Japan seeking asylum to avoid the military draft in his country and was granted permission for provisional stay ( kari taizai ). He married a Japanese woman, but ended up violating a condition of his approved stay and was detained in April 2017. He applied for provisional release ( kari homen ), but was not allowed to meet with his wife. After waiting a year, he swallowed shampoo in front of some staff, more out of desperation than in any attempt to kill himself. In a constant state of uncertainty, detainees follow the process but get no feedback as to how that process is progressing. Ibuski thinks the government wants to wear them down so that they leave Japan of their own will — and, perhaps more significantly, at their own expense. Forced deportations look bad to the rest of the world. Hirano has talked to Ministry of Justice officials who told him the detention policy is a “safety countermeasure” for the Tokyo Olympics, thus implying that undocumented foreign nationals are considered potential wrongdoers who will ruin the games for others. Hirano can find no data that supports this supposition. The vast majority of undocumented foreign nationals are law-abiding, since they would not do anything to risk their situation. The only thing “illegal” about them is their presence. As with the current controversy in the United States regarding asylum seekers detained and separated from their children as soon as they show up at the border, it is in the Japanese government’s interest to characterize undocumented foreign nationals as lawbreakers even though they have the right, at least as far as international society is concerned, to apply for residence. Ogiue says this thinking applies to all inbound foreign nationals, including tourists and workers. Everyone is seen as either an economic benefit or an economic liability. Thousands work in low-paying jobs, including many who have applied for refugee status, because Japan desperately needs them, but the government doesn’t know how to deal with them in a forthright manner, and so insists they are only here for a short period or pretends they don’t exist. In a discussion of the matter in the June issue of Sekai , Swiss novelist Max Frisch is quoted regarding his own country’s immigration policy as a means of explaining Japan’s current situation: “We asked for workers, but we got human beings instead.”
|
immigration;expats;foreign workers;shoichi ibuski
|
jp0010233
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/09
|
Japan's YouTubers go long with crowdfunded content
|
Natsuki Aso did not become a punk rock star, much to his teenage self’s regret. Around 15 minutes into the documentary “Natsuki: The Movie,” however, you’ll see that the 44-year-old was able to achieve a different kind of celebrity — replacing “concert appearances” with “vlog appearances,” and “screaming fans” with “adoring commenters.” That’s the underlying — and uplifting — takeaway in Chris Broad’s documentary on his friend: YouTube can make dreams happen in ways you’ve never thought of. This goes for Broad as well, his channel Abroad in Japan usually produces short videos on life here but, thanks to a crowdfunding campaign, he was able to produce his first full-length documentary. “Without Patreon, there’s no way this could ever have happened,” Broad says. “YouTube ad revenue alone simply isn’t enough to fund projects like this.” The campaign helped the film get the financial support it needed within three months. As incentives, Broad gave donors behind-the-scenes access to the production and sometimes even used their ideas in the documentary. Once the project was complete, he just had to upload it to his site and watch the view count rise. “The tragedy of many documentaries is that they’re often seen by small audiences due to the manner in which they’re distributed,” says Broad, whose film has now been viewed 280,000 times. “I’m incredibly lucky to have several hundred thousand amazing people who follow the YouTube channel, and it made sense for them all to be able to watch it through YouTube.” Broad’s choice of platform didn’t just make sense because of its ease, however. According to Alexa Internet, YouTube is the second-most popular website worldwide, and younger generations in Japan have taken to the service with “YouTuber” being selected as the ninth most popular career choice for those between 6 and 12. “It would have been extremely unlikely for a traditional production company to green-light a film like this, about an eccentric Japanese guy living in a remote, rural region of Japan, running a beauty salon and being at the end of his tether,” Broad says. He may be selling himself short. While audiences may not equate the idea of a YouTuber-produced documentary with the fare on Netflix or Amazon, or screened at a festival like Hot Docs, “Natsuki: The Movie” is incredibly touching and well-produced. “Making around 130 YouTube videos has taught me to think very carefully about every shot and sequence, and to ask whether it’s essential to the overall story,” Broad says. Aso, who makes frequent appearances in Abroad in Japan videos and is known for his exuberant personality, is genuinely relatable in the documentary. “I think I was able to show a part of me that you don’t usually see in the funny videos that I’m in,” Aso says. “Natsuki: The Movie” is one of many documentaries popping up on YouTube and YouTube Premium. The channel Japanese Ammo with Misa is also using Patreon to produce longer content. It can be a harder platform for creators to stand out on, but once noticed their audiences tend to be extremely loyal. “It’s incredibly exciting to think that, through crowdfunding, nearly anyone with a reasonable social media following of just a few thousand people could dream up an idea and conceivably fund it,” Broad says. “Hopefully, it means we’ll see a far greater diversity in original films going forward.”
|
youtube;chris broad;abroad in japan
|
jp0010234
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/09
|
Communication difficulties continue to torment Japan
|
If communication is measurable in terms of number of words, we are the greatest communicators in the history of our species. Question: Who’s listening? There’s the rub, says President magazine. Listening is the hard part. It’s harder than talking — in part, writes Toshiyuki Goda of the NHK Broadcast Research Center in his contribution to President’s feature on “listening ability,” because, as speakers, we can keep the dialogue within our comfort zone, while listening may take us outside it — into the realm of our own ignorance, which is uncomfortable enough; or, worse, into that of the awkward silence. The on-air broadcaster is particularly sensitive to the latter, but it bedevils all social intercourse. Goda gives an innocuous but clear example. “What,” asks the interviewer, “were your thoughts at the time?” The guest struggles to recall. “Hmm. Well … it was 20 years ago.” “You must have felt sad?” “Yes, I suppose I did.” “And angry?” “Well … yes.” The faux pas leaps off the page at you — putting words in the interviewee’s mouth. Even on-air, a little silence is permissible. Off-air, much is. Our torrent of words chokes the silence in which words can acquire depth and meaning. All too often we speak — and the word must be understood in its broadest sense, to include mailing, posting, tweeting, messaging, thumbs up, thumbs down, and all the other communicating tools at our increasingly restless fingertips — past each other rather than to each other, fears AI researcher Noriko Arai, a National Institute of Informatics mathematician best known for her efforts to develop an artificially intelligent robot smart enough to pass Tokyo University’s entrance exam. Her concern, in her article written for President, is a perceived decline in reading skills. Just as speaking now often means writing, so listening includes reading. To read badly is to listen badly. President being a business publication, Arai focuses on the office implications. Bosses despair, she says, at how their simplest instructions get misconstrued. She doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that the writing is muddy. The fault is assumed to be the reader’s. Maybe it is. Reading tests she cites suggest as much. Persistent misunderstanding of simple texts bewilder researchers who take elementary literacy for granted. We communicate and communicate, young people especially, and yet, says Arai, young people in particular, particularly nowadays, are shockingly deprived of what she calls “real life experience.” Parents take care of their daily needs, extracurricular cram schools guide them step by step up the exam ladder, package tour operators send them on trips to remote places with all the conveniences of home packed into the package, and so on — to say nothing, as she for some reason does, of mass absorption in virtual reality, which is reality scrubbed of what makes it real. What does this have to do with communication? Simply this: To speak (or write) we must have something to say; to listen (or read) with attention requires faith that the speaker has something to say. Arai mentions a test question. Make a sentence, it says, with the word katto , meaning trouble, conflict, anxiety, to be upset. She presents three sample answers, one from a student who was upset when his parents challenged his choice of university arts over science; another from a young woman who suffered anxiety when her mother emailed to ask whether she wanted curry or hamburger for dinner — didn’t her mother know she was on a diet? The third is from a young man who feels katto when he thinks about the end of the world. Arai’s objections, respectively: (1) trivial; (2) trivial; (3) spacey; vision focused either too close or too far to bear practical fruit, like marketable products, innovative sales campaigns and so on, which is what your employer hired you to think about, and if that’s what you were thinking about, maybe you’d misread your boss’s emails less often. Many Tokyo University students, Arai says, want to work not for corporations but for NGOs and NPOs. They want to be of use, to help people in need — people, that is, coping with real katto. Many fail to make the cut. They have good intentions and good heads — but their real-life experience is so thin, Arai says, that they are judged to have nothing substantial to contribute. Her overriding concern is expressed by the title of her recent bestselling book: “AI vs. Children who Can’t Read their Textbooks.” With AI gaining ground as rapidly as it is, insufficiently literate children face a bleak future — a redundant future, a “hiring ice age” to make the last one, which relegated much of the generation born in the 1970s and ’80s to a life of unrewarding part-time labor, seem warm by comparison. Why hire human intelligence when artificial intelligence is so much more intelligent, inexpensive, indefatigable, and obedient? ( Will it be obedient? Or will we have to be, to it?) Maybe even adequate literacy will be no protection. The themes President addresses — speaking and listening, reading and writing, communicating and failing to communicate — are always timely, doubly so now, as Japan wallows in scandal, corporate and political, faked data being the common thread, and the world braces for what is shaping up as a most extraordinary summit. The summiteers are surely the most remarkable ever to meet at this level of power and urgency. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is heir to an established tradition in his country of rule by terror and has yet to break new ground, unless his summiteering is the new ground. U.S. President Donald Trump, any way you look at him, is revolutionary. He communicates, as President notes, in a manner quite foreign to world leaders of comparable importance. His tweets proclaim a new era, the “Trump Era,” in which nuanced articulateness is an unlamented thing of the failed past. Real leaders are actors, not orators. Their speaking is doing, not speechifying. They make deals, not speeches. So we’ll see what kind of deal these two leaders make.
|
communication;noriko arai;ai
|
jp0010235
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/30
|
Celebrating the memes the 2018 soccer World Cup has created
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Japan’s surprising success at the 2018 World Cup in Russia has dominated headlines and morning shows domestically. News organizations abroad, however, honed in on a very different topic — trash. It was a virtual replay of one of the last World Cup’s most viral stories : Japanese supporters stuck around after the national team’s matches and cleaned up their own garbage . Western websites gushed over the practice, with numerous outlets devoting space to explaining why this was part of Japanese culture at large . Upping the ante from 2014, fans of other countries joined in , leading to more uplifting stories and speculation that Japan kick-started this tidying-up trend . Perhaps it’s the latest incarnation of some people’s fascination with “ nice Japan ,” or just a smear of marshmallow cream on a particularly depressing online news cycle. However, it’s defined Japan’s World Cup in English-language media (and served as a wake-up call for some Chinese media ). Japanese news outlets, meanwhile, haven’t latched onto it quite as hard — the squad’s performance leads — but plenty of reports and tweets have celebrated this shared interest in collecting rubbish. It tiptoes toward Japanese exceptionalism, but for the most part is taken as feel-good content for Facebook. That said, Japan’s web-centric publications and netizens found plenty of other juicy stories around the games. The first big viral post of the competition actually focused on something negative, a rarity at a gathering like the World Cup. Buzzfeed Japan reported on a video of a Colombia fan asking two Japanese women to repeat a phrase that essentially meant “I’m a prostitute” (in more vulgar terms) in Spanish, without them realizing it. Many Colombians denounced his actions. The end result of the June 19 match — a 2-1 win for Japan — prompted a different sort of meme. Colombia fan @stephyayy tweeted “F— sushi forever” out of frustration. Japanese fans found it, and proceeded to flood her mentions with sushi, in emoji and photo form , much to netizens’ delight . Buzzfeed, meanwhile, highlighted how many outside Japan reacted to the win — by comparing the players to anime . It was the Senegal game on June 24 that got netizens buzzing the most, however. While Japan charmed with good manners, the Senegalese team attracted viral attention for their joyous dancing , which one Japanese Twitter user found goes well with bubbly idol pop . The match itself provided a stadium’s-worth of moments to be transformed into memes. Goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima’s boneheaded decision to punch the ball right into the leg of an opposing player (causing it to ricochet into the goal) led to a lot of digital groans, and one creative effort to fix it . Offside traps wowed viewers at home and around the world . A guy in the stands delivered a solid header , and he’s already selling merch . And the game ended in a draw, though Keisuke Honda’s face after scoring the equalizer feels like a win for … well, the whole internet. The aftermath of that result gave the web one more viral hit, as actor John Sulo sang the theme song to “One Piece” with several Japan fans (and people say Cool Japan doesn’t work?). Japanese netizens also developed a fascination with Senegalese head coach Aliou Cisse. A popular hashtag imagined the 42-year-old manager as a school band teacher, with all sorts of riffs using photos of him . Interest in Cisse remained strong even ahead of the Poland game, with users imagining him in other situations, like buying cigarettes . Later, Japanese netizens expressed sympathy and respect for him after Senegal went out due to fair-play points (online, reaction to Japan’s pass-a-thon to close out the loss to Poland ranged from “ boring ” to people joking about how casual fans don’t get how the World Cup works). Most of the stuff coming out of Russia during the World Cup is fun and vaguely upbeat, which is fitting for a large-scale sporting event. Yet one final online trend in Japan subverts the narrative built around the good manners of the Samurai Blue’s supporters. Following all group games, fans took to the streets of Shibuya for some revelry . Plenty of YouTubers made videos reacting to the win, but it was Hikakin, the nation’s most popular creator, who came up with a different twist. He went to Shibuya the morning after the first victory — and cleaned up trash left by fans the night before . Others started making similar clips . The Shibuya scramble crossing didn’t look like “Mad Max” or anything — it wasn’t even close to being as grungy as it gets after Halloween — but after all the English-language praise about Japan’s “culture of cleaning up,” it was nice to be reminded that such blanket generalizations simply aren’t true. Turns out Japanese fans are like any other sports fan in the world — they want to go nuts when their team does well and maybe abandon some beer cans in the street accidentally.
|
world cup;meme;japan pulse
|
jp0010236
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/30
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Implementation of minpaku laws lambasted
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One year ago, the Kasumigaseki Watch column in the monthly business magazine Keizaikai (August 2017) noted that while the government has set an annual target of 40 million foreign visitors by 2020, the tourism ministry was unable to formulate an effective strategy due to “insufficient” staistical data. Keizaikai cited a survey by the Tourism Agency in which hotel statistics suggested a decline in the number of foreign visitors — which contradicted port-of-entry data that showed record-breaking arrivals. The inconsistency, it was supposed, could be attributed to the increase in stays at “residences offering lodgings” — commonly referred to in Japanese as minpaku — of which as many as 40,000 may have existed up to last month. The report was careful not to blame minpaku entirely for the discrepancy, as visitors might also spend their nights sleeping aboard cruise ships, overnighting on long-distance buses, in internet cafes and other places excluded from the tally. More to the point, a government ministry was openly expressing displeasure with the status quo. And when that happens, some sort of crackdown usually follows. That’s what occurred on June 15 of this year, when a new law went into effect that will require minpaku to maintain a registry of guests, a certain level of hygiene and respond promptly to any complaints from neighbors. It also restricted the offering of accommodations in private homes to a maximum of 180 days a year, with violators subject to fines of up to ¥1 million. Nikkei Business (June 18) reported the reaction to the new law with the headline “Bureaucratic clumsiness invokes chaos.” The law’s good intentions aside, the magazine lambasted what was happening on the front lines of the business as resembling a “slapstick comedy.” In condominiums and other large buildings, when used for nonresidential purposes, the law makes it obligatory for owners to install a sprinkler system, but few minpaku operators have bothered to do so, mainly because the costs were prohibitive. With the new law, however, local fire inspectors must visit and issue their stamp of approval. Previously they’d been willing to overlook the ordinances if a site was equipped with other safety features, such as flame-retardant walls. Waste disposal also figures in the equation. In the past, guests would just discard their waste in the same manner as other residents. But now minpaku operators are being pressured to pay for their rubbish pickup, which requires them to deal with a private contractor. But few such contractors are set up to deal with minpaku clients. While the operators were attempting to negotiate the new obstacle course erected by the bureaucracy, online booking service Airbnb cancelled some 30,000 minpaku reservations during June. “Airbee,” as it’s popularly called in Japanese, is said to have incurred considerable losses. On its morning program on June 15, NHK Radio chimed in with its own justification for the crackdown on minpaku. Citing the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks by IS terrorists in Paris in which 130 people were killed and another 413 injured, the broadcast implied that minpaku might serve as a base for terrorists — despite there being no evidence that the attackers in France had availed themselves of online booking services. Nevertheless, at the urging of the Metropolitan Police Department ahead of the 2020 Olympics, minpaku hosts will be encouraged to report any “suspicious behavior” on the part of guests, including refusing to allow their passport to be photocopied, referring to a memo or other separate document when transcribing their own name or address, or when the actual number of staying guests turns out to vary from what was initially reserved. “It’s possible terrorists will choose to stay at minpaku, where identification checks are vague,” explained Isao Itabashi, head of the Research Center at the Council for Public Policy, during the broadcast, adding, “So it’s important that along with sharing data on suspicious guests, the minpaku operators liaise closely with the police.” Meanwhile, Shukan Shincho (June 21) reported that — of all places — a five-story sumo stable in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward has become involved in the current minpaku kerfuffle. A member of the Takasago Ichimon group, the Nishikido stable occupies the building’s basement and first two floors. To supplement its revenues, 10 rooms on the three upper floors, named Mitoizumi using the stablemaster’s former name, were intended from the get-go to be rented out. The rooms were advertised on an unnamed booking service’s website with the description: “Super rare! Famous sumo stablemaster on ground floor! Just three minutes from JR Ryogoku Station. Relatively new; auto-lock.” Some displeased residents of the neighborhood were heard to remark, “Recently lots of foreign guests with rucksacks and luggage have been coming and going … so we supposed the place was being operated as a minpaku.” The stablemaster’s excuse was that he had entrusted two realtors to rent out the rooms, and one, unbeknown to him, had hooked up with the minpaku booking service. For a charge of just ¥5,539 per night, sojourners could stay in a conveniently located room furnished with a microwave oven and refrigerator. Stablemaster Nishikido insisted he only became aware of the situation after receiving complaints about noise late at night. “I feel like I’ve been swindled,” he told the magazine. Nacio Cronin, the Imperial Hotel’s director of international public relations, says: “Aside from obvious safety concerns such as fires, injuries and property damages resulting from usage of unsupervised, unfamiliar facilities, the mere idea of unmonitored foreign guests on holiday evidently raises concerns among some less internationally oriented natives.” As such, he says, minpaku may be “incompatible with the Japanese national character.” Asked if he thought the new restrictions might lead to a pinch on hotel rooms, Cronin echoed predictions already voiced by numerous others that in July and August of 2020, many visitors not acclimated to the intense heat and oppressive tropical humidity of Tokyo “will likely seek out more than just a small air-conditioned cubicle.” “Two summers from now, Tokyo may be facing a severe shortage of accommodation options,” he warned.
|
airbnb;minpaku laws
|
jp0010237
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2018/06/30
|
Shinzo Abe's Kake Gakuen scandal refuses to lie down and die
|
Most people believe politicians lie, though the reflexive skepticism with which the current U.S. president’s pronouncements are met is probably exceptional. The secret to successful lying is to never admit to it in the slightest way. That rule of thumb has been challenged by a development in the neverending scandal associated with an Ehime Prefecture veterinary school the government approved last year. The school is run by Kake Gakuen, a company whose chairman, Kotaro Kake, is suspected of having used his friendship with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to get the school opened. Both men insist their relationship had no impact on Kake’s approval, but then, in May, officials of Ehime Prefecture said that an employee of Kake Gakuen told them prior to their acceptance of the school that Abe had discussed the matter with Kake in a meeting that took place on Feb. 25, 2015. Abe, however, claims he only learned about the project in January 2017. The school official, Yoshihito Watanabe, then backtracked and said there was no meeting and that he lied to Ehime officials, without really explaining why (something about his “mood” at the moment). As Masao Yora pointed out in his May 30 Mainichi Shimbun column , Watanabe’s confession set up an interesting conundrum. He admits to lying and yet the general feeling, at least among the press, is that he is lying about the lie. In order to protect his boss and the prime minister, he falls on his sword, hoping that by doing so the scandal will finally draw to a close. However, what’s significant about Watanabe’s admission, says Yora, is that eventual approval of the veterinary school may have been based on his lie. If that’s the case, shouldn’t the approval be reviewed? More to the point — and something even Yora doesn’t mention — is that the lie implies that the prime minister’s interest affected the approval process, even though, ethically speaking, it shouldn’t have. The fact that Kotaro Kake himself held a news conference on June 19 to reinforce the story that there was never a meeting between him and Abe regarding the school only proves that the matter still isn’t settled. The ostensible reason for the event was for Kake to announce his company’s in-house punishment of not only Watanabe, but also himself as Watanabe’s superior, to take responsibility for the lie. However, the news conference simply exacerbated existing doubts about the veracity of Kake’s story. The timing alone raised eyebrows. Kake called the news conference two hours before it was to take place at the company’s headquarters in Okayama, a day after a major earthquake struck Osaka, thus assuring that any coverage would be buried inside newspapers and on nightly news broadcasts. More significantly, only members of the local press club were invited to attend, locking out major media outlets. Nevertheless, when TV Asahi heard about the news conference it diverted a crew covering the quake to Okayama. They didn’t get in, but they did make a report that was broadcast on TV Asahi’s Hodo Station that night, showing them standing at the gates of Kake Gakuen asking the school’s PR representative why they couldn’t enter. The person cited time and space limitations, although later in the broadcast TV Asahi aired footage showing that there was plenty of room during the news conference. The event lasted 25 minutes, and consisted mostly of an explanation of the veterinary school, but during the Q&A session, Kake was visibly uncomfortable. Several times he seemed incapable of maintaining his story, which was that there was “no record” of his discussing the school with Abe on Feb. 25, 2015. One reporter asked him when he talked about the school with the prime minister “for the first time.” Flustered, Kake said he didn’t think he talked about it, and then corrected himself, saying it was after approval. This admission led to a flurry of questions about the details of that discussion, with Kake repeatedly saying, “I can’t remember.” This exchange was similar to one that took place in the Diet on May 25 between opposition lawmaker Yuko Mori and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kotaro Nogami regarding visitor logs that would have indicated if Kake had visited Abe at the prime minister’s residence on the date in question. Officially, these logs don’t exist because apparently they are immediately thrown away for reasons that make no sense to anyone. Mori pointed out that on May 22, Abe told the Diet that he “confirmed” he hadn’t met Kake on that date, but if there are no logs, how could he confirm such a thing? Nogami replied that they “confirmed there was no log.” The conversation turned even more slapstick when Mori and Nogami sparred over a YouTube video showing Abe being interviewed on a 2012 TV variety show and “bragging” about the detailed records of visitors to the residence. Did the policy change? asked Mori. Nogami said Abe was talking about something else. Regardless of whether there was a meeting between Abe and Kake three years ago, attempts by the Liberal Democratic Party and Kake to shut the matter down have been inept. During a June 22 Bunka Hoso radio discussion , writer Isao Mori explained how Kake demanded he retract something he wrote about a meeting between Kake officials and the education minister in 2014, providing him with an authorized itinerary of the day he cited in the article as proof. Mori made the correction, but now he wonders why, if Kake keeps such meticulous records, they can’t provide the press with Kotaro Kake’s schedule for Feb. 25, 2015. If they did that, the scandal would be over in a minute, but all they do is “confirm” that there is no record. Following its report, Hodo Station commentator Kenji Goto explained that the news conference was probably called to convince the public that the matter has been resolved, but the only thing it verifiably did was further inflame the opposition’s and the media’s suspicions. What the public thinks is anybody’s guess.
|
shinzo abe;scandal;kake gakuen
|
jp0010238
|
[
"national",
"history"
] |
2018/06/30
|
Japan Times 1918: Captain Yoshita Masaki saved after insisting on going down with his ship
|
100 YEARS AGO Thursday, July 18 1918 Nothing definite has yet been ascertained as to the cause of the explosion on the Kawachi. It is supposed that the disaster was due to the ignition of powder or heavy oil. An eyewitness states that at the time of the explosion the thick yellow fumes of powder and the black smoke of the oil were both noticeable. The vessel is lying at a depth of nine fathoms and there is some hope that she may be refloated and once more take her place among the floating castles of the Japanese Navy as was the case of the Mikasa, which met with a similar fate several years ago at Sasebo. Capt. Yoshita Masaki is said to have remained aboard his ship until the last moment, apparently determined to share her fate, and paying no heed to the officers and men who besought him to leave while there was yet time. It was necessary to take him by the arms and positively force him into the boat, and then he told those accompanying him that he would only survive so long as the cause of the disaster remained unknown. When everything had been cleared up, he said he would take proper steps to discharge his responsibilities. 75 YEARS AGO Wednesday, July 14, 1943 First library for blind to hold opening rites The building to house the first library for the blind in Japan has been completed at Suwa-cho, Yodobashi-ku, and the opening ceremonies will take place there on July 18. The project was started through the efforts of Kazuo Homma 20, who lost his eyesight when 6 years old, to start a library for the blind. Realizing that very few facilities for cultural development were accessible to the blind, Homma had determined on the occasion of the 2600th year celebration of the founding of the Japanese Empire to dedicate his life to the construction of a library for the blind. His privately operated Braille library has been utilized by 1,200 persons up to the present and the average monthly circulation of the books amounted to 1,000 volumes. “The library work cannot be done by the blind people alone, as the braille books must be produced for us by people who can see and, therefore I would earnestly ask for the cooperation and assistance of all,” Homma said. 50 YEARS AGO Friday, July 5, 1968 Monkeys roam free in the streets of Osaka Two monkeys hopped from roof to roof and roamed around busy shopping streets Thursday in Tennoji, Osaka, evading 30 zoo officials and 15 policemen. They escaped from Tennoji Zoo at around 6:50 p.m. Wednesday after climbing over a 3.5-meter-tall fence of the popular Monkey Island, along with three others. Out of the five animals, one was caught and two others returned to the zoo early Thursday morning. A search for them was resumed at 3:30 a.m. under the direction of Tatsumi Wada, superintendent of the zoo’s southern gate during the search. They did no harm to residents but one of them turned up at Shitennoji Gakuen, a girls’ school near the zoo at around 10 a.m. causing the classes to be suspended for 15 minutes. The animal romped around the school grounds and then entered a few classrooms braving the shrieks of panicky high school students. It retreated into nearby streets when zoo officials came to the school with nets. The two runaway monkeys were still at large by late afternoon. 25 YEARS AGO Sunday, July 18, 1993 The honeymoon ends when the baby arrives One of the new phenomena surrounding child rearing in Japan is an increasing number of young mothers who seem to find little joy in raising their babies. One such mother was described in a letter from her parents who were asked to take care of her baby while she took an eight-day holiday with her husband to Hokkaido. The baby was just over 3 months old and according to the letter the grandparents were kept busy for 24 hours a day. The letter ended by noticing that when the mother came home the baby refused to breastfeed. “It looked like the baby was retaliating,” the grandmother wrote. The letter drew an avalanche of responses, according to the paper. Those criticizing the young mother’s action outnumbered those supporting her, the paper said and printed partial quotes of representative ones. Here are some of them. “I can’t think of leaving my baby for any length of time because I’m so fond of him. While taking care of my son, I thought of the toils and troubles my mother must have had in raising me in the northern part of Japan in the severe winter. To ask for an eight-day holiday because she had taken care of her baby for three months is outrageous” — Housewife, 33, Sendai “I always tell my daughter I won’t take care of her crying baby. A grandmother is helpless when faced with a baby crying in search of her mother’s milk. I’ve told her I would give whatever help I could but I wouldn’t allow her to take advantage of my sympathy.” — Housewife, 59, Ibaraki Prefecture “Raising a kid of 3 years and a 1-year old baby, I am keeping quite active taking aerobics and sign language lessons and enjoying my time with my baby and small child. I don’t think I’m being sacrificed for the little ones nor am I sacrificing them for my sake. If you have to depend on someone to help every time you have a trying time then you should not have had a baby.” — Housewife, 26, Nagano “If your husband is not cooperative, your stress from child raising could become unbearable. There are all kinds of babies — some quite gentle and others hard to control. I think it’s better to seek the help of your friends and parents and get some time to breathe than to handle the baby with meanness as a result of accumulated stress.” — Housewife, 26, Fukuoka
|
osaka;marriage;blind;shipping;monkeys;honeymoons
|
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