Fate of troubled Monju reactor hangs in the balance

Abstract: After decades of repeated troubles, the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor is at a crossroads. Earlier this month, the Nuclear Regulation Authority lodged its first official request with the education and science ministry to find a new entity to replace the government-backed Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) to operate the trouble-plagued facility in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture. The ministry has been given about six months to find a replacement. If it fails to do so, the NRA asked the ministry to conduct a fundamental rethink of Monju’s status, which, pundits say, could lead to its decommissioning. Following are questions and answers about the accident-prone research facility that was completed in April 1991 but has remained, except for brief operational interludes, effectively idled since then. What is Monju? It is Japan’s sole prototype fast-breeder reactor, designed to produce more plutonium fuel than it consumes to generate electricity. Once touted as a “dream reactor,” Monju is the central component of the country’s nuclear fuel cycle program aimed at resolving the nation’s shortage of natural energy sources. The plan has been to extract plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear fuel and reprocess them into plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel to be reused at the fast-breeder and other nuclear reactors. Had Monju worked according to plan, it was assumed Japan would no longer need to import uranium. Monju reached criticality in April 1994 and began generating electricity for the first time the following year. However, it was forced to shut down in December 1995, following a sodium coolant leak and fire, and subsequent cover-up attempt. Did it resume operation after the 1995 accident? The reactor went online again in May 2010 for the first time in about 14 years. But just three months later, in August, it was again forced to shut down after a fuel-loading device fell into the reactor vessel. Monju has been idle since then. Other troubles include JAEA’s failure in 2012 to inspect some 10,000 reactor components, including more than 50 parts vital for the reactor’s safety. This prompted the NRA in 2013 to issue an effective ban on restarting the reactor. Due to a spate of accidents and JAEA’s apparent slipshod safety management, Monju has operated for just 250 days since it reached criticality in 1994. Still, more than ¥1 trillion in taxpayers’ money has been poured into the facility. Reports say about ¥20 billion in funding is required annually to maintain Monju even when it is offline. Earlier this month, Taro Kono, an anti-nuclear Cabinet minister in charge of administrative reforms, criticized the JAEA for wasting money on nuclear fuel transport ship Kaiei Maru, which has been used only four times since its introduction in 2006 but costs about ¥1.2 billion annually to maintain. Why has Monju been prone to accidents? Unlike ordinary nuclear reactors that use water as a coolant, the fast-breeder reactor uses sodium, which reacts violently with water. Experts say Monju’s past accidents were partly due to the difficulty in handling sodium. Will the science ministry be able to find a replacement for the JAEA? It would be extremely difficult, experts say. The key to operating the facility is whether a candidate has the skill and experience to handle sodium. Hideyuki Ban, co-director of the Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, said companies that have been involved in Monju’s construction or operations, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and the Japan Atomic Power Company, could be possible candidates. But those companies’ knowledge and ability to handle sodium or Monju itself do not exceed that of the JAEA, he said. “Although it has struggled, . . . (in the end the JAEA) has continued to run the facility up until now,” Ban said. “I believe there is no entity that has deeper knowledge (about Monju) than the JAEA.” What would happen if the government scrapped the Monju project? What the government fears most is that it could have a huge impact on the nuclear fuel cycle goals Japan has pursued since the 1950s. “There is no change in the government’s policy to pursue (the nuclear fuel cycle) by gaining (the acceptance of) municipalities and the international community,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Nov. 13. Some 17,000 tons of spent fuel rods are stored at nuclear power plants across Japan, waiting to be reprocessed to extract plutonium. If the Monju project is scrapped, they may end up as dangerous waste with nowhere to go. Experts say that because the government plans to restart reactors nationwide, the storage pools will become full of spent fuel rods. Thus it is widely believed that the government will continue to pursue the use of reprocessed fuel in ordinary light-water reactors even if the fast-breeder reactor project is discontinued. How much plutonium does Japan possess? As of December 2014, Japan had about 47.8 tons of plutonium, according to the Cabinet Office. This includes about 10.8 tons in Japan and 37 tons that have been reprocessed and stored in the U.K. and France, waiting to be returned to Japan to be used as fuel. NHK reported the amount is enough to make about 5,900 atomic bombs. Are there any countries other than Japan pushing to develop fast-breeder reactors? Russia, China and India are still eagerly pushing to develop fast-breeder reactors, but none has established the technologies to operate the reactors. Many industrialized countries, including the U.K. and Germany, gave up development of the reactors a while ago, given the technical and cost hurdles.

fast-breeder reactor
monju
nuclear reactors
plutonium


DPJ on the rocks amid calls for merger with Ishin no To

Abstract: Japan’s largest opposition party appears to be in danger of falling apart, as some of its core members prepared Thursday to officially demand that their leader dissolve the party and create a new force with Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party). Democratic Party of Japan policy chief Goshi Hosono and former President Seiji Maehara held talks with former Ishin President Kenji Eda on Wednesday night and agreed to work for the dissolution of the two parties and the formation of a new opposition force powerful enough to challenge Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in next summer’s Upper House election. Maehara is set to put the demand to DPJ President Katsuya Okada “sometime soon,” according to Kyodo News. Eda had met with Okada on Wednesday night and suggested the two parties dissolve and form a fresh force, but Okada rejected the idea, the news agency reported, quoting an anonymous source close to Eda. Since the DPJ lost power to the LDP in the December 2012 general election, the party has struggled to gain voter support and muster much influence in a Diet mostly dominated by the ruling LDP-Komeito coalition. The move, however, could trigger an internal feud between conservative DPJ members who support Hosono and Maehara, and those who are close to Okada and reluctant to dissolve the party. During a news conference Thursday, Okada said he had not confirmed the reported agreement, and attempted to reassure party supporters. “There is no need to worry. I am the leader (of the DPJ),” Okada said. Okada declined to make further comment, but said that to break the stagnant situation “(the party’s) essence must be changed.” “Changing the signs won’t work,” he said in an apparent reference that a new party could end up being the same people calling themselves by a new party name. Hosono and Maehara have been eager to form a new opposition force with Ishin for a long time and have criticized Okada after he seemed to be looking at ways to cooperate with the Japanese Communist Party in the next Upper House election. Meanwhile, the head of Ishin, Yorihisa Matsuno, who has repeatedly voiced hope of creating a new opposition force with the DPJ by the end of this year, welcomed the move and urged the DPJ leadership to accept the demand. “It would only take a nod from a member of (the DPJ’s) leadership such as Okada or (Secretary-General Yukio) Edano” to realize the realignment of the opposition forces, Matsuno said at a news conference. According to NHK polls, the DPJ’s support rate has faltered to around 7 to 10 percent in the past year, while that of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s LDP stands at about 35 to 40 percent.

democratic party of japan
goshi hosono
katsuya okada
opposition
kenji eda
seiji maehara
ishin no to


Zzzz — a novel way to manipulate sleep

Abstract: The Milinda Panha is a Buddhist text written more than 2,000 years ago. It takes the form of a dialogue between Indo-Greek King Menander I and a Buddhist sage. At one point, the king is interested in the meaning of dreams. The sage talks about the possible influences of the waking life on dreams and then mentions that they occur in the period between falling asleep and deep sleep. This insight is fascinating, because scientists weren’t able to make much more progress than this until the 1950s. For something so universal, it’s odd that scientists really didn’t start to understand what goes on when we sleep until relatively recently. The breakthrough came when American physiologists Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman were making observations of sleeping infants and recording different phases of sleep. In particular, they noticed that the eyes would sometimes jerk and twitch under the eyelids. The pair named this “rapid eye movement” (REM) sleep and later found that it didn’t just occur in babies but in people of all ages. We’ve seen it since in all mammals and in birds, too. You probably know that REM sleep is closely associated with dreaming. Wake someone during REM sleep and they will almost always be able to tell you about the dream they were having. It turns out that dreams are quite taxing in terms of energy, as measured by oxygen use and glucose metabolism in the brain. The brain uses up at least as much energy — and sometimes more — when in REM sleep compared to when we are awake. Now, it seems, our understanding of sleep has taken another important step forward. Yu Hayashi of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine at the University of Tsukuba and colleagues have discovered the identity of the neurons that control REM sleep. “We found a brain region that controls REM sleep, and we hope to discover drugs that affect the activity of this area,” Hayashi says. “This should lead to an increase in REM sleep and, hence, improve sleep quality.” Hayashi’s colleague, Shigeyoshi Itohara, of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute says there will be ethical concerns to take into account. “However,” he says, “if our understanding reaches a certain level, we might be able to create a novel way to manipulate sleep in humans.” The pair studied sleeping mice to identify the neural circuit in the brain that regulates REM sleep. They also found that REM sleep controls the physiology of the other major sleep phase, the imaginatively named non-REM (NREM) sleep. Neuroscientists suspected that REM sleep was controlled from a part of the brainstem called the pons. Hayashi and Itohara observed that many cells in the pons originated from a distant brain area called the rhombic lip during early embryonic development. The team used a new technique to label cells from the rhombic lip in order to track their migration through the brain. They could then activate the cells artificially. They used a technique ominously called “DREADD,” which stands for “Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs.” They used mice that were genetically engineered to have special rhombic lip cells, which could then be controlled by giving the mice a drug. Hayashi’s team were able to suppress REM sleep, leading to an increase in the dreamless blank of NREM sleep. The scientists then investigated the role of REM sleep in controlling the other phases of sleep. If you record brainwaves at different stages of sleep, you find that NREM sleep has large, slow waves of activity moving across the brain, whereas REM sleep has lots of unsynchronized activity. Using their master control switch — the DREADD system — the team could shorten or lengthen REM sleep. What they discovered was that size of the slow waves that followed in the next bout of NREM sleep were correspondingly smaller or larger. It’s the first time that anyone knew that there was a hierarchy of sleep, and that NREM was controlled by REM sleep. “We found that REM sleep enhances slow waves during NREM sleep. Slow waves are important for memory consolidation,” Hayashi says. “Thus, we think one role for REM sleep is to control NREM sleep quality.” It’s important to understand how and why our sleep patterns evolved. Reptiles, amphibians and fish don’t have two phases of sleep in the same way that mammals and birds do. We know that new experiences we have during the day are stored in the brain that night during NREM sleep. Until the work of Hayashi and Itohara, we didn’t know that REM sleep had such an important role in this consolidation. “I hypothesize that REM sleep has crucial roles in nondeclarative memory and emotional memory,” Itohara says. Nondeclarative memory, also known as procedural memory, relates to unconscious memories and skills, such as knowing how to ride a bike. REM sleep occurs in bursts, getting longer throughout the night. By the end of the night, adults will have spent 90-120 minutes in REM sleep, totalling 20-25 percent of total sleep time. However, people with depression have more REM sleep, meaning they wake up still feeling tired. Sleep scientists try to understand the function of REM sleep by waking people up when their eyes start to flicker and their brain waves change. In this way researchers have built up a large set of dream diaries, and they found gender differences in dream subjects. There are obviously a huge variety of dreams but, generally, scientists have found that men tend to dream about fighting other men, whereas women commonly dream about talking with men and other women. A better understanding of how and why we sleep won’t just help us all feel more refreshed, it will help us understand how the brain works — and eventually help us answer those questions about dreams that Menander was so keen to understand.


Will Tokyo become Hashimoto's Wonderland?

Abstract: “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” — Alice Liddell from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” Six months have passed since Toru Hashimoto announced that when his term as Osaka mayor ends next month, he would retire from politics. Few believe him, but the utterance was in character, reflecting Hashimoto’s penchant for surprising allies and enemies. With the double election for mayor and governor now one week away, the question is whether Hashimoto will, like the Cheshire Cat from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” vanish from Osaka, only to reappear with a grin elsewhere (the prime minister’s office? The Diet?) in some other guise. Will he enter national politics if, as some media are speculating, next summer sees Upper and Lower House elections? Will he be appointed a nonelected member of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet after the new year, or at the very least chairman of some blue-ribbon government reform panel? Or, will he become an influential courtier, pontificating on the state of Japan on television by day, and slipping in and out of smoke-filled rooms and expensive nightclubs for private conversations with senior politicians at night? Answers vary, but where Hashimoto ends up next depends upon three things: the results of the Nov. 22 double election, his support in Tokyo and, perhaps most importantly, his own financial situation. A loss by Hashimoto’s hand-picked successor for mayor, Hirofumi Yoshimura, to Akira Yanagimoto, who is backed by the local chapters of the Liberal Democratic Party and Japan Communist Party, would likely create concerns about whether Hashimoto can still be a major political force, especially with the new national party, Osaka Ishin no Kai, he is creating. In politics, where power is often perception, Hashimoto could find his phone calls to senior LDP figures unreturned if a sense grows that his ability to expand the Ishin movement, with its LDP (or, at least, Abe) friendly views on constitutional revision, has waned. That leads to the second unknown, which is Hashimoto’s support base in Tokyo. Sure, he and Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui can pop by for tea and crumpets with Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga whenever they are in town. But the LDP remains a series of factions and not all of them are as anxious to court Hashimoto as Abe, or at least Suga, sometimes appears to be. Mayoral candidate Yanagimoto is the nephew of Takuji Yanagimoto, an Upper House member from Osaka who belongs to the faction of Wakayama-based Toshihiro Nikai. He, in turn, has proposed a plan to revitalize Osaka that Hashimoto has criticized as vague, hinting it’s merely a political ploy by a Yanagimoto ally to win votes in the Osaka races. But if the younger Akira wins the Osaka mayor’s chair, the Nikai faction wins an ally and Abe and Suga have to think more carefully about how to handle Hashimoto. Finally, money. Hashimoto was a well-paid private attorney and television commentator before going into politics. Becoming a Diet member not only means spending lots of money, it also means stricter laws governing things like payment for television appearances. Does Hashimoto want the financial risk that comes with entering national politics, or will he take the safer route and remain in private practice, where he’s sure to add to his bank account? Perhaps Hashimoto himself does not know. He may attempt to reinvent himself after he leaves office, to convince the world he is not the same person he was yesterday. And that leads to the most important question of all: After seven years in the political limelight, who is he really? Ah, that’s the great puzzle. Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.


Zimbabwe's Mr. Ugly pageant turns ugly as contestants accuse judges of bias

Abstract: HARARE - Pageant judges have crowned a new winner of Zimbabwe’s 4th annual “Mister Ugly” contest, upsetting supporters of the crowd favorite and prompting rioting at the event. Judges on Saturday chose 42-year-old Mison Sere, citing his numerous missing front teeth and a wide range of grotesque facial expressions, over William Masvinu, who had held the title since 2012. Masvinu and his supporters mobbed the judges upon hearing their decision, claiming that Sere was “too handsome” to win and his ugliness is not natural since it is based on missing teeth. “I am naturally ugly. He is not. He is ugly only when he opens his mouth,” maintained Masvinu, gesturing at his rival. “Do we have to lose our teeth to win? This is cheating,” shouted another contestant, Patrick Mupereki. While no one was injured, there was a great deal of pushing and shoving as the results were announced and insults were hurled at the judges. Beauty pageants are popular in this southern African country and even though they are typically for women, scandal is not unusual. Earlier this year, Miss Zimbabwe winner Emily Kachote faced a backlash on social media, with Zimbabweans calling her ugly and undeserving of the crown. She was later forced to step down when just two weeks into her reign, images surfaced of her posing nude — which incidentally also brought down her predecessor. Sere dismissed the critics as just “sore losers” as he pocketed the $500 in winnings. “They should just accept that I am uglier than them,” he said. “I hope to get a TV contract. I already moved around schools performing and showcasing my ugliness so this is a chance to make it on TV.” The complaints of Masvinu and the other contestants may have a degree of validity. Organizers had previously announced that disabilities or enhancements would not be accepted in the competition, in which “natural ugliness” was the focus. Pageant organizer David Machowa originally said that he began the contest to remove the stigma of ugliness. “Looks are God given. We should all be proud of who we are,” he said. The pageant involved three rounds of modeling, with individual and group struts down a catwalk at a Harare nightclub. “Sere made tremendous effort to enhance his ugliness by pulling facial stunts,” said judge Abigail Mataranyika, a university student. “Masvinu thought he is so ugly that he didn’t need to try hard. That cost him the crown.” This year’s competition attracted a record 36 entries, compared to just five in 2012 when Masvinu began his winning streak. The competition was suspended in 2014 due to a lack of sponsorship, but this year the owners of a string of Harare nightclubs donated $1,000.


Osaka group preps Kansai solution to Futenma base row

Abstract: OSAKA - If a group of Osaka residents has its way, the U.S. Marine Corps base at Futenma in Okinawa may not end up in the northern part of the island, but in one of five spots in their prefecture. The effort comes more than 20 years after the rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen sparked calls to reduce the U.S. base presence. Over the past 15 years, three U.S. presidents and nine prime ministers, including Shinzo Abe (now taking his second swing), have failed to fulfill the bilateral agreement to replace U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, with a new base in Henoko, in Nago. This is due to fierce local opposition that has only grown more intense since last November’s election of anti-base Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga, and a refusal by Tokyo and Washington to consider alternatives. Onaga, Nago Mayor Susume Inamine and a majority of Okinawans oppose the Henoko plan. Onaga recently defied Abe by withdrawing permission, granted by his predecessor, for a related landfill project. A long series of court battles between Okinawa and Tokyo now appears inevitable. Meanwhile, tensions and clashes between anti-base protesters from Okinawa and elsewhere, and security forces from Tokyo and Okinawa are increasing. To finally solve the problem, a small group of traditionally anti-base activists in Osaka has been calling for Futenma’s replacement airstrip to be built in Osaka. They hope to lighten Okinawa’s base-hosting burden and prevent an escalation of violence. The group, consisting of about a dozen core members, is led by Aki Matsumoto, a 32-year-old woman who became involved with the Okinawa base issue during college. As years passed by without any resolution, she realized that Japanese in the rest of the country were not thinking about the base issue as their problem. Pro-base and pro-security alliance Japanese were perfectly happy to voice their support for replacing the Futenma base, as long as nobody suggested its replacement be located in their quiet neighborhood, while anti-base protesters were not offering solutions. Caught in the middle were the Okinawans. “The members of our group who are offering to bring Futenma to Osaka are people who have long years of experience opposing U.S. bases around Japan, starting with Okinawa. Within Japanese society, which approves of a discriminatory policy toward Okinawa, shouting ‘We don’t need bases anywhere’ will just lead to the bases in Okinawa remaining where they are,” Matsumoto said. At present, Matsumoto and her group are thinking about five places in Osaka Prefecture where Futenma’s successor could be built. They include Kansai airport, Yao airport (a smaller facility used by the Self-Defense Forces), Yumeshima, an artificial island in the city of Osaka, Takatsuki, in the northern part of the prefecture, and Izumiotsu, a city on Osaka bay between Kansai airport and downtown Osaka. At a recent seminar on how to persuade Osaka residents to host the base, Matsuno said that at this point, the discussion is just getting started. The group’s goal and site suggestions, which include places where its members reside, have not yet been presented to government officials from either country, and the feasibility of each site still needs to be explored, she said. “I know there are concerns about bringing an Okinawa base to Osaka. However, we have to bear in mind that we’ve been avoiding responsibility for what’s happening in Okinawa. Upon deciding to bring the base to Osaka, all Osakans can resolve various problems and concerns,” Matsumoto said. A survey by the Cabinet Office earlier this year said 83 percent of the public believes the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty is useful for Japan’s peace and security, even as Okinawan media polls consistently show a clear majority of residents do not want the Futenma base to stay in their prefecture. A June survey by the Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper said that while 31 percent of residents want the base removed from Japan, about 22 percent were willing to see it moved to another prefecture. Midori Ikeda, a professor at Otsuma Women’s University in Tokyo who studies Okinawa discrimination issues, noted that mainland Japanese tend to make excuses for keeping the bases in Okinawa, which just encourages further discrimination. “People say the Okinawans have so many bases because they are too conciliatory, or that Okinawa is using them as a negotiating card to get more central government funding for local infrastructure projects,” Ikeda said. “But what we have now is a situation whereby peace activism and discrimination toward Okinawans exists side by side.” The idea of shifting Futenma’s operations to Kansai is not new. In 2009, and then again in 2012, during a time when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto suggested Kansai airport could host the base. In addition, Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui said in September 2012 that Osaka Prefecture could host Futenma’s replacement. “We’re ready to accept the base,” Matsui said at the time. However, Hashimoto and Matsui would later reverse their positions after the Liberal Democratic Party returned to power in December 2012. The hurdles — political, economic, and logistical — of trading the Henoko plan for Osaka are daunting. Tokyo and Washington remain firmly committed to the plan. Politically influential businesses involved in its construction would create problems if the plan were dropped. Local opposition in Osaka would have to be overcome and — most importantly — any new site would have to meet the logistic requirements of the U.S. Marines. In the past, Japanese officials in the ruling and opposition parties have also suggested Kyushu and Hokkaido as alternatives to Henoko. Kyushu in particular remains a possibility. There is a U.S. Navy base at Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, and the Defense Ministry has just unveiled a plan that would deploy up to 70 Self-Defense Forces aircraft, including contentious V-22 Ospreys, at underused Saga airport. In fact, there is already a group similar to Matsumoto’s in Fukuoka, which has proposed relocating Futenma’s operations there. Yet whatever the results of such efforts, it’s clear that some in Osaka who have long opposed building a new base in Okinawa believe it’s time for new, out-of-the-box thinking.


‘Japan Sumo Cup’ is possibly the most Japanese thing ever

Abstract: Do you like sumo? Into horse racing? Longtime fan of “Street Fighter”? Well, then do we have a game to match your specific and varied interests. “ Japan Sumo Cup ” is a free web-based game that — prepare yourself — lets you play as real sumo wrestlers riding actual horses from the Japan Racing Association while competing against characters from “Street Fighter.” No, this isn’t a joke. The Japan Racing Association developed the game with the Japan Sumo Association and Capcom to help promote an upcoming race on Nov. 29, and also created the most Japanese thing in quite some time. In this rhythm game, players can choose from different sumo wrestlers and then compete against characters from Capcom’s popular fighting series, including Blanka, Guile and M. Bison. The best part is that there are many nods to “Street Fighter” in “Japan Sumo Cup,” such as Dhalsim riding an elephant instead of a horse. Each fighter’s stage comes with a remixed version of their background music from the original game, and they even perform their signature moves when the race gets close. Ryu shoots out his Hadouken blast and Chun-Li does her Spinning Bird Kick. In order to win, players have to tap the arrow buttons on their keyboards at the right moments to rack up combos and win the race. Since the beats match the music from “Street Fighter,” old-school players who have the original soundtrack burned into their brains will have a leg up on the competition. With this game, the JRA and Sumo Association, long the pastimes of elderly men, are clearly trying to reach out to the next generation. It kind of reminds us of when JRA put QR codes on betting tickets in 2002 or when the Sumo Association held “gokon” matchmaking events at one of its matches. You can place your bets now on whether or not this joint venture pays off. “Japan Sumo Cuo” can be played for free online. The site says that more characters will be unlocked later this week.

street fighter
video games
capcom
japan pulse
sumo
horse racing


Who's responsible for the Fukushima disaster?

Abstract: The International Atomic Energy Agency released its comprehensive — but mostly ignored — final report on Fukushima on Aug. 30. It blamed the March 2011 triple meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant on a blind belief in “the nuclear safety myth.” In other words, the myth that Japan’s “nuclear power plants were so safe that an accident of this magnitude was simply unthinkable.” “The regulation of nuclear safety in Japan at the time of the accident was performed by a number of organizations with different roles and responsibilities and complex interrelationships,” the report said. “It was not fully clear which organizations had the responsibility and authority to issue binding instructions on how to respond to safety issues without delay. The regulations, guidelines and procedures in place at the time of the accident were not fully in line with international practice in some key areas, most notably in relation to periodic safety reviews, re-evaluation of hazards, severe accident management and safety culture.” I’m sure we all remember the “unforeseeable” accident that happened in Fukushima in March 2011, an accident that will take an estimated 40 years and billions of dollars to clean up, some of it already subsidized with taxpayer money and higher electric bills. Having restarted a reactor at the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima in August, one might suspect that the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Kyushu Electric Power Co. don’t appear to remember this accident very well. For a start, putting the reactor in Kagoshima back online didn’t exactly go according to plan. Despite months of inspection, seawater was detected in the reactor’s cooling system in late August. Alarm bells sounded. In spite of all the checks and balances that were introduced in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, power utilities are continuing to drop the ball as far as their reactors are concerned. How can we ensure such oversight is avoided? Katsunoba Onda, author of “Tepco: The Darkness of the Empire,” which predicted in 2007 the nuclear accident at Fukushima, and lawyer Hiroyuki Kawai, who established the National Network of Counsels in Cases against Nuclear Power Plants, have proposed a very simple way of ensuring this happens: hold nuclear plant operators criminally liable for negligence. The threat of incarceration might help them take their work more seriously and less likely to cut corners. The Prosecutorial Review Board appears to back such a proposal, approving the first criminal prosecutions of three former Tepco executives last July. The board consists of a panel of 11 private citizens, who operate under a rarely used set-up in the Japanese legal system that allows outsiders to review prosecutors’ decisions. The panel ordered that Tsunehisa Katsumata, chairman of Tepco at the time of the accident, and two former heads of the utility’s nuclear division, be charged with professional negligence resulting in death and injury. Prosecutors, however, have to date been slow to pursue criminal liability in the case. They did accept submissions from the public but then leaked their decision not to prosecute just as Japan won the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games. The story, however, doesn’t end there. This decision was again sent to the Prosecutorial Review Board, which again recommended that a criminal case be filed. For the second year in succession, the Prosecutorial Review Board overruled the prosecutors. Prosecutors have reportedly continued to reject the case because “it is not possible to prove negligence.” The IAEA report is expected to be submitted as evidence showing the exact opposite. “When you have a disaster of this scale, isn’t it crazy not to pursue responsibility?” Kawai, who led the citizen’s group that filed charges with the prosecutors, told Nikkan Gendai. “The common sense of the people overturned the judgment of prosecutors, prosecutors who favor large companies and the powerful. Tepco knew about the possibility of a large-scale tsunami and did nothing about it. The idea that if it’s not easily foreseeable, no one is responsible is mistaken. Abe says ‘Japan has the safest nuclear standards in the world.’ He’s the only one saying it. It’s not true. The Abe administration’s push for war and for nuclear energy are very dangerous — one mistake and this country will be destroyed.” If the Tepco executives are tried in court and found guilty, it wouldn’t be the first time nuclear power operators were convicted of criminal negligence resulting in death. In 1999, two employees died in an accident at the Tokaimura power plant run by JCO, a nuclear fuel cycle company. Six of the company’s executives were later charged and pleaded guilty to criminal charges of negligence resulting in the deaths. They were all given suspended sentences.

tepco
nuclear disaster
fukushima no . 1 power plant


Germans at Kurume 'getting arrogant'; Throne Assistance body meets; hope abandoned for 208 missing fishermen; Kaifu congratulates unified Germany

Abstract: 100 YEARS AGO Thursday, Oct. 7, 1915 Germans at Kurume ‘getting arrogant’ According to a message from Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture, some 700 German prisoners of war currently held at Kurume detention camp are becoming insolent. They refused to respond when the usual roll was called and burst out singing martial songs, paying no regard to the admonitions of the authorities. The demonstration was brought under control when some 100 soldiers with loaded rifles were dispatched to the camp from Kurume Regiment. Some practical measures will, it is understood, be taken to deal with the prisoners as they deserve. Recently the prisoners at Kurume have been markedly remiss in discipline, some trying to escape from the camp. Last Monday, camp director Masaki told the prisoners to be more careful in their conduct. Shortly after the director’s order was given, a prisoner failed to obey an order and was consequently punished severely. This incident led to the rebellious conduct the same evening. In this connection, it may be worth mentioning that the prisoners had been hoping for the return of four of their comrades who had escaped some time ago only to be recaptured, and that it was to their great disappointment that those four prisoners had subsequently been committed to prison by a court-martial. 75 YEARS AGO Sunday, Oct. 13, 1940 Throne Assistance body meets for the first time The Association for Assisting the Throne held its inaugural meeting today, marking the first step toward the realization of Japan’s new national order. Present were Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye, all Cabinet ministers except Commerce and Industry Minister Ichizo Kobayashi, who is in the Netherlands East Indies, along with assorted advisers, directors, councilors, and bureau and department heads of the association. After an opening address by Cabinet Secretary Kenji Tomita, the attendants paid their respects to the Emperor, prayed for victory, offered a silent tribute to the heroes who sacrificed their lives for the State in the China Affair and sang the national anthem. Premier Prince Konoye then read the historic declaration of the Association to the following effect: “Japan is now confronted with an epochal transitional period. The time has arrived when we should proceed with the establishment of a new order in Greater Asia and also a new world order, consolidating our league with our good neighbors internationally and establishing a new structure internally. “In view of the current international situation, the Government is bending all its efforts on the construction of a highly organized national defense structure in obedience to His Majesty’s command. “Such a structure will become possible when all old shells are cast off the fields of politics, economy, culture and others, and when all people start to cooperate with each other in one mind and every field of state mechanisms are enabled to function organically and smoothly. “The object of the Association is to enable the people to render their sincerest service to the Throne day and night through their respective occupations.” The association’s name is now commonly translated as Imperial Rule Assistance Association. 50 YEARS AGO Sunday, Oct. 10, 1965 Hope abandoned for missing fishermen The Maritime Safety Agency virtually gave up hope Saturday afternoon for the survival of the 208 Japanese fishermen missing in the Marianas in the central Pacific after their boats were caught in Typhoon Carmen on Thursday. U.S. Navy and Coast Guard rescue planes dispatched from Guam Island and 16 Japanese fishing boats were combing waters near Agrihan Island in the Marianas, where seven Japanese fishing boats with a total of 251 fishermen were caught in the typhoon. As of Saturday morning only one of the seven boats — the 160 ton No. 11 Benten Maru with a crew of 40 — was found aground near the island, with one crew member reported missing. Among the crewmen of the missing boats were 11 minors fresh out of junior high schools. The teenage boys were recruited by shipowners to help ease the short supply of fishermen. This is the second worst maritime disaster in modern Japanese fishing history. The worst accident was the one on May 9 and 10, 1954, when a total of 409 fishing boats were lost in waters off Hokkaido in a violent storm, killing 337 fishermen. 25 YEARS AGO Thursday, Oct. 4, 1990 Kaifu congratulates unified Germany A message of congratulations on Germany’s unification from Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu was aired on German television Tuesday, government officials said. “I heartily congratulate you on the accomplishment of unification of East and West Germany, the earnest wish of the German people, and pay deep tribute to the indomitable patience and wisdom shown by the German people for realization of unification,” Kaifu said. “I am convinced that a unified Germany will play a more important role in Europe, which seeks a new order, and for peace and prosperity of the international community. “There has not been a time like today when both Japan and Germany are being urged to contribute to the peace and prosperity of the international community.” German reunification is not likely to affect Japan’s foreign policy for the time being, government sources said. However, they expressed hope that creation of a unified German as a key member of the European Community might work against the emergence of a protectionist trading bloc.

germany
fukuoka
prisoners of war
kurume
imperial rule assistance association
maritime disaster
toshiki kaifu


Shortcomings identified in new reporting system into hospital deaths

Abstract: On Thursday, the government launched a new reporting system for deaths resulting from medical care. The iryojiko chosa seido (medical accidents investigation system), created based on last year’s revisions to the Medical Care Law, is aimed at preventing recurrences of medical accidents and ensuring patient safety. Under the system, all of the nation’s 180,000 hospitals and clinics are mandated to investigate “unexpected” cases of patient deaths themselves, regardless of their legal liability, and report the results to the next of kin and a third-party organization. While some people have hailed the move as a positive step to prevent adverse events, others say it falls short of adequately addressing the needs of patients and families wanting answers. Following are questions and answers on the issue: Does the new system cover all medical accidents in Japan? No. The system targets only “unexpected deaths” in relation to medical care. It is up to the heads of the medical institutions to determine whether the deaths could not have been anticipated. Also, since the system focuses on deaths that apparently resulted from improper patient care, it only covers those who died. Once a hospital concludes an unexpected death has occurred, it will probe the case. Their investigative teams must include outside experts to ensure impartiality. They must explain the results of their investigations to relatives of the deceased, and submit a report on each case to the Japan Medical Safety Research Organization — the health ministry-designated independent body held responsible for handling all reports. The names of doctors and hospitals are withheld in the reports. The organization’s job includes analyzing the information and proposing steps to avoid repeated fatal mistakes. What do the in-house investigations entail? The investigative team will examine medical records, interview doctors and others who provided care, and if necessary, interview the next of kin. They will perform autopsies or Ai — postmortem imaging before an autopsy — if they think they can gain further insight into the deaths, and if they have the consent of relatives. If the next of kin are unhappy with the conclusions made by the hospitals, they can ask the JMSRO to reinvestigate the cases, for a fee of ¥20,000. Why was the new reporting system created? The system was established in response to longtime calls by the public and medical community to create an independent, third-party mechanism to investigate medical errors and learn from them. A spate of serious accidents in the late 1990s sparked a public outcry and enhanced calls for patient safety. In January 1999, a patient mix-up at Yokohama City University Hospital resulted in surgeons performing cardiac surgery on a pulmonary patient, and pulmonary surgery on a cardiac patient. In another case that took place in February the same year at Hiroo General Hospital in Tokyo, a nurse mistakenly injected an antiseptic into a patient, who immediately died. The mistake was caused by improper labeling of medications. While these cases led to criminal prosecutions of the doctors and nurses involved, many in the medical community have argued that courts are not the best parties to deal with all adverse medical events, as judges do not have the high-level technical expertise necessary to determine often-complicated causal factors or to advise on error prevention. Patients and their families have also found it hard, mentally and financially, to sue hospitals. Is Japan’s approach unique? Not particularly. Across the world, there are two types of reporting systems: one focusing on learning and facilitating reform of hospitals, and the other focusing on pursuing public accountability, according to the World Health Organization. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry says Japan’s approach is the former, thus it won’t punish anyone, and will keep patients and hospitals anonymous. Are we seeing more medical errors? The number of reported cases in Japan is rising, but experts say it’s largely because hospitals are coming forward and making more of their cases public, whereas in the past, they tried to hide them. Because there has been no reporting system covering all medical institutions, the total number is unknown. According to the Japan Council for Quality Health Care, 3,194 adverse events, including those that resulted in the death or injury of patients, were reported by 993 institutions in 2014. That’s 2.5 times more than the number reported in 2005, when 555 institutions reported 1,265 cases. Reports to the state-affiliated body are mandatory for large hospitals, but voluntary for others. Is the system satisfactory for victims? Ikuko Yamaguchi, who has long been involved in the ministry-led process to create the new reporting system, said it is a big step toward making hospitals transparent and accountable, but still has shortcomings. Director of Osaka-based patient support group Consumer Organization for Medicine & Law (COML), which has offered more than 55,000 consultations to patients and their families over the last 25 years, she said the good news is patients’ families now have a way to find out the truth surrounding the deaths of loved ones without having to go to court. Until now, families had no option but to sue hospitals to have them explain cases in detail. To do so required hiring a lawyer at significant cost. Under the new system, it is the responsibility of hospitals and clinics to pay for the cost of postmortem investigations. But families can access such services only if the hospitals decide a case meets the “unexpected deaths” criteria, which Yamaguchi says will vary greatly from hospital to hospital. The patients cannot initiate the investigative proceedings by themselves. “The system is designed in such a way that the autonomy of hospitals will be protected,” Yamaguchi said. “That means it won’t function unless hospitals clean up their act by themselves.” Also, hospitals are only encouraged, not required, to share the written reports that they submit to the JMSRO with the next of kin, with no penalties stipulated for not sharing them. Many hospitals are believed to be hesitant to share detailed facts on such cases with the families for fear such information will be used against them in court. Yamaguchi said, however, that the number of civil cases will decline if hospitals pursue full disclosure.

deaths
investigation
hospitals
medical errors
medical care law


China city misses Guinness fried rice title because of wastage

Abstract: BEIJING - Guinness World Records has denied a Chinese city’s bid for the biggest serving of fried rice ever cooked, saying Yangzhou violated rules by wasting 150 kilograms of the feast. According to a posting on the record book’s Chinese microblog, organizers said 4 metric tons of cooked fried rice was distributed to five different outlets. However, it said a portion had been handled inappropriately, violating the organization’s rules requiring that the food be edible and not be wasted. Local media quoted the Yangzhou tourism bureau as saying some of the rice was considered inedible and sent to a farm to feed pigs. Yangzhou fried rice is famed in China and throughout the world for its creative use of ingredients, including carrots, peas and ham. Local media said the record attempt last Thursday involved 300 cooks frying up the dish in individual woks before ladling it into one giant bowl for presentation. Most of it was then distributed to schools that had taken part in the event. According to Guinness’ website, the Turkey Culinary Federation holds the current record for fried rice, having served up 3,150 kg of the dish on Sept. 27, 2014.

china
food
guinness world records
records


Tokyo plugs into Google Play Music

Abstract: If you haven’t heard the latest news from Google Play, you may have missed your opportunity to tune into a Google Play Billboard. From Oct. 8-24, music lovers can head over to Shibuya to, literally, plug into a selection of over 3,500 songs. The Google Play Billboard is meant to give visitors a much-needed chance to try out its new music service. After LINE launched its music-streaming service in July, followed only weeks later by Apple Music , as Google Play Music seemed to be stuck in buffering mode with no plans to enter the market. However, after finally launching in September, Google has been going to all lengths to make Google Play Music stand out from its competitors. Located on Supeinzaka near the Shibuya Parco department stores, the Google Play Billboard may appear, from a distance, to be any other advertisement. Within the billboard itself is 1,300 individual headphone jacks, however, continuously streaming music from noon-8 p.m. everyday. Each jack features a different song, and the song selection changes over time so that you’ll never know exactly what you’re plugging into. Just watching all the careful efforts that went into the construction of the billboard is like watching a symphony. The 3,500 songs that make up the Google Play Billboard playlist are hand-picked from submissions from the public that people voted for on the official Google Play Music website . The public were given six different categories to vote on — “a song you’d like to play when your significant other comes over”; “a song for when you feel that your heart is going to break”; “a song you’d personally want to leave for the next generation”; and so on. These categories, which play into people’s emotional connection with music, resulted in hundreds of songs featuring both a wide variety of both Japanese and Western music. Visitors to the Shibuya billboard can anticipate everything from Mary J. Blige to AKB48, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu to The Rolling Stones. Additionally, anyone who signs up for Google’s streaming service by Oct. 18 will be able to listen to the Google Play Billboard’s 3,500 songs unlimitedly for free, as well as pay a lifetime reduced rate of ¥780 per month . After only a week, the Google Play Billboard has made quite a splash on social media, thanks to the hashtags #GooglePlayMusic and #渋谷3500万曲ビルボード (Shibuya 35,000 song billboard). ぐえ！面白！壁に1万3000個イヤホンジャックがあって、それぞれ違う曲が流れてる…！！ #渋谷3500万曲ビルボード #googleplaymusic pic.twitter.com/B4DBPpsOFH — よっぴー/吉田尚記 (@yoshidahisanori) October 8, 2015 Regardless of whether Google’s PR campaign hits the right note or falls flat, the Google Play Billboard has certainly proven that music can bring us all together.

music
google
google play music
japan pulse


Nevada cryotherapy center where worker died is closed because it lacked insurance

Abstract: LOS ANGELES - Nevada officials on Tuesday ordered the closure of a cryotherapy center just outside Las Vegas where police say a worker was found dead last week in a chamber that exposes a person’s body to extremely cold air. The facility operated by Rejuvenice LLC was ordered closed because it could not provide proof it had a worker’s compensation insurance policy, said Teri Williams, spokeswoman for the state Department of Business and Industry. The move to close the facility just outside the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson comes a week after Chelsea Ake-Salvacion, 24, was found dead of an apparent accident at the center on Oct. 20. Ake-Salvacion’s death has raised questions about the regulation of whole-body cryotherapy, which was offered at the clinic. The treatment has in the past few years become increasingly popular in the United States, especially with professional athletes and celebrities. Supporters of whole-body cryotherapy say it helps with recovery from injury or intense exercise and can improve mood. A person walks into a chamber that exposes the body to hypercooled air with a temperature as low as minus 240 degrees Fahrenheit (-151 degrees Celsius), while the person’s head remains outside. Ake-Salvacion was discovered dead in a chamber at the facility by another employee who called police, authorities said. Her death, which occurred when she was alone, has been determined to be accidental and no foul play was involved, said Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Officer Michael Rodriguez. The local coroner is still working to determine Ake-Salvacion’s exact cause and manner of death. The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration determined she was using the facility for personal use, Williams said. A representative for Rejuvenice did not immediately return a call or email seeking comment. It appears the facility was operating without a county business license, because it had not completed building and fire inspections, said Clark County Commissioner Mary Beth Scow. The death is of great concern to the local community, said Scow, who said the oversight of cryotherapy seems to fall between different state agencies. “It appears that there’s not a category for that because it is such a new industry,” she said. Hailey Cap, office manager at Rejuvenice, told the New York Times nitrous gas used to chill the air in a cryotherapy chamber can be debilitating. “I don’t know why she would go in there alone,” Cap told the newspaper.


Japan tricks out the Halloween treats

Abstract: Halloween is a time to carve pumpkins, enjoy a few scares and, most importantly, shovel as much candy as humanly possible into one’s own mouth. While the practice of door-to-door trick-or-treating may not be a thing in Japan, the custom of eating special Halloween snacks certainly translates. Plenty of companies, both overseas and domestic, are looking to cash in on this boom. In fact, American doughnut company Krispy Kreme is featuring some especially creepy creations at its Japanese outlets. The “ Mad for Monsters ” series is available through October and includes: Spider Chocolate Custard, Maple Milk Franken, Caramel Halloween Jack and Purple Potato Monster. We’re big fans of the three-doughnut box, which comes in the shape of a coffin. Lotte’s Koala’s March — aka crackers that depict adorable koalas doing adorable things — are dressing up, too. Be it strawberry, cookies and cream or chocolate, each cracker depicts koalas in different Halloween costumes. And if you want to your sugar crash to the next level, there’s Lotteria’s Kaola’s March shake: ♡ハロウィーン コアラのマーチシェーキ♡ シェーキにロッテ『コアラのマーチ』をトッピング♪パッケージもハロウィーン仕様の見た目にもかわいいシェーキ販売中☆ 是非お試しあれ～(*´▽｀)◇ゞ #ロッテリア #コアラのマーチシェーキ pic.twitter.com/sGBG1ChF2R — ロッテリア (@lotteria_pr) October 27, 2015 In a more chilled aisles of grocery stores, be on the look-out for pumpkin pudding cups. For those who enjoy a bit more crunch than jiggle there are Kit Kat’s Halloween bars . #キットカット パンプキンプリン味が新発売しました☆ パンプキンの甘くて優しい味わいが、口いっぱいに広がります♪みなさん、お見逃しなく！ pic.twitter.com/uCwUHiuWdS — KIT KAT Japan (@KITKATJapan) September 2, 2015 Of course, one crunchy pumpkin pudding treat is not enough. Luckily, Tohato Caramel Corn is featuring a similar pumpkin pudding product complete with costumed packaging that features Frankenstein’s monster and other ghouls. After you gobble down all of these treats, you might need something to wash it all down. Well, don’t fear because many companies have released some spooky sodas. Pepsi has released Pepsi Ghost , which features a special mystery flavor inside each bottle of witchy brew. It seems that most who have tried it are leaning toward either pumpkin or cherry as the flavor, but the jury is still out. Of course, tis the season of pumpkin lattes. While Lipton’s Sweet Pumpkin Tea Latte apparently hard to find, the tea has been defined as being extremely milky and rich. Both the pumpkin tea and Lipton’s infamous Yellow Label Tea are being sold in a package that features a mysterious black cat on an orange background. Unlike the pumpkin tea, however, there is no change in flavor in the Yellow Label Tea. Toppo and High Chew are doing much of the same — new costume, same product. ハイチュウハロウィンバージョン♡(#^.^#) つい買ってしまいました。。。笑 pic.twitter.com/7auUWNnx4p — 👦滝口ミラっちょ（森山）👶⚾ (@takiguchimira) September 14, 2014 Make sure you get a taste of these snacks before they slink away back into the shadows. With so many delicious options available at once, our wallets and stomachs truly have a reason to scream.


How male killers transform into caring parents

Abstract: When animals kill babies of their own species, it’s brutal and shocking. Infanticide goes against everything we think adults should be in terms of looking after younger members of the species. Surprisingly, however, it happens fairly frequently in the wild. What’s going on? Primatologist Yukimaru Sugiyama of Kyoto University was one of the first scientists to document infanticide in the wild. Studying gray langurs in India in the 1960s, he found that monkey troops generally consist of a male and several females. Sometimes, however, a troop’s male is driven out by a stronger “intruder” male. When this happens, the new male often kills the troop’s infants. Sugiyama suggested that the killings were often due to stress, perhaps brought on by overcrowding. Indeed, infanticide was long thought to be pathological. In other words, the only explanation for infanticide was that the animal behind the act was either stressed or sick. These days, however, we have a better understanding of infanticide in the wild — males have no genetic interest in babies that are fathered by someone else. Their evolutionary concern is to mate with females and produce their own offspring. It’s abhorrent to us but, as far as natural selection goes, it makes sense for animals to kill babies that aren’t their own. It’s a simple waste of resources to raise another male’s offspring. Many different animals commit infanticide, most famously lions. Prides consist of several females and a dominant male, but, inevitably, a younger and stronger male will challenge and defeat the resident male. If there are lion cubs around at that time, well, that’s bad luck for them. However, infanticide also occurs with gorillas — otherwise believed to be relatively peaceful apes — and certain monkey species, as well as mice. If that all seems grotesque to us, it’s perhaps more monstrous to find that males who kills babies can easily — and naturally — become caring parents themselves when they father their own children. It’s hard to believe that male killers can transform into a doting parent, and yet that’s just one of those wonderful things about science. Kumi Kuroda is a scientist who is fascinated by the parent-infant relationship. Based at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, her past work has included a study showing why babies — both human and nonhuman — calm down when they are picked up and carried. “The ultimate goal of our research is to understand and assist the parent-infant relationship in humans,” Kuroda says. Kuroda was a medical psychiatrist before she became a neuroscientist, and many people she saw were psychologically damaged by the parent-infant relationship they experienced in childhood. “So I joined the neuroscientific research field to really understand the brain mechanism of infant attachment to parents, and parental caring motivations,” she says. “To treat and prevent child maltreatment, we need to know how the normal brain works to care for young.” Now she is examining how male mice make the switch from killer to kind parent. Kuroda describes the typical behavior of a male committing infanticide. “A male mouse first approaches the unrelated pup,” she says, “(It then) sniffs the pup and squints into its eyes.” The male continues to sniff and poke the pup with its snout more violently, all the while becoming increasingly excited. “Finally its tail starts rattling,” Kuroda says, “and the male bites the pup.” Kuroda and her colleagues have identified regions in the brain that control both nurture and aggression. They have found that brain activity actually changes after a male has mated with a female and lived with her once she is pregnant. To test how this behavioral switch occurs, Kuroda’s team examined brain activation patterns that are induced by parenting and infanticide. The team recorded what happened when adult male mice were exposed to mouse pups. The adult’s behavior, whether paternal or infanticidal, was recorded. The scientists measured what was happening in nine different regions of the brain. To their surprise, Kuroda and her colleagues found that two tiny areas of the brain are responsible for a male’s behavior. They even showed that blocking the activity of the region that controls parental behavior could induce fathers to attack newborn pups. Their work has just been published in the journal EMBO. “There are several subsequent steps that need to be taken,” Kuroda says. “We think that social experience with a female must lead to paternal behavior through enhanced brain activity, but we need to determine how this happens.” How can this help us understand human behavior? Human society is structured differently from lions or gorillas, and we don’t (usually) have a mating system that consists of a single man and a number of women. However, research along the same lines as Kuroda and her colleagues might eventually shed light on what’s going on in those rare cases when men do commit murder. Should researchers be paying closer attention to the areas of the brain that Kuroda and her colleagues examined? “Infanticide committed by male mice is not equal to human child maltreatment,” Kuroda says, “but it may have some mechanistic similarities, which we want to investigate.” Kuroda says her team would like to investigate the function of these brain regions in primates, and are currently doing so in marmosets. “This is particularly important because currently we do not know of any regions in the primate brain that are related specifically to parenting behaviors,” she says. This surprises me. After all, parenting is so central to human nature and our offspring are extraordinarily demanding in terms of the time and resources they require. Human offspring require far more nurturing and care than the offspring of many other species and yet we still don’t know much about how our brains are wired to provide this nurturing. It’s chilling to think that opposing aspects of behavior may activate such tiny changes in brain activity. However, it’s also exhilarating to think that we may finally understand them more deeply.

aggression mice gorillas monkeys lions infanticide


Kyoto forum's leaders warm up to renewables

Abstract: Each autumn, the world’s most influential scientists, engineers, business leaders and science policy experts gather in Kyoto for the Science and Technology in Society Forum. The STS Forum is the brainchild of Koji Omi, a former finance minister and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry bureaucrat and one of Japan’s most powerful behind-the-scenes politicians. A regular STS theme over the years has been energy. Omi, as befitting a conservative Liberal Democratic Party politician and former METI bureaucrat, has long been aggressively pro-nuclear power. When Naoto Kan addressed the STS in 2009 as deputy prime minister, just after the Democratic Party of Japan took power from the LDP, he spoke of the need to pursue solar power and biomass energy. A few foreign attendees applauded, but guests from Keidanren, the utilities and the Japanese government sat stone-faced. For years, STS energy discussions were scripted less to address the realities of worldwide energy trends and how they were impacting “science and technology in society” and more to reflect the world view of Omi and the pro-nuclear Japanese government. This approach warmed the hearts of Japan’s fossil fuel lobby and nuclear power village. But it meant STS didn’t exactly attract creative, innovative thinking on cutting-edge energy technology issues. At this year’s conference in early October, however, renewable energy developments could no longer be ignored. Finally, some of Japan’s most influential leaders had given a nod, however slight, to more renewable energy discussion at STS. The old men at STS and in Japan’s nuclear power village had long seen renewable energy proponents as “communists” “eco-terrorists” or “dreamers” who were their ideological enemies and, therefore, not to be trusted with something as important as the nation’s energy future. It took them a while to admit (to themselves) that renewable energy was here to stay, especially since Japan’s major corporations (STS sponsors, many of them) were taking renewable energy very seriously indeed. True, Omi did make perfunctory remarks about nuclear power continuing to remain necessary — “both fission and fusion power,” he said. But the change of weather at the Kyoto conference was not merely the arrival of autumn. It was the winds of a subtle change in attitude: Some of Japan’s most trenchant defenders of fossil fuels and nuclear power were at least willing to listen to more presentations on the technological challenges of nuclear power and devoted a number of sessions to it. That this happened in Kyoto is also no surprise. From Hokkaido to Okinawa, local governments are pushing forward with renewable energy goals that are far more ambitious than the national energy strategy calling for 22 percent to 24 percent of electricity to be supplied by renewables by 2030. Kyoto Prefecture has announced it aims to be nuclear power-free by 2040. With liberalization of Japan’s electricity sector taking place over the next few years, most international predications showing renewable energy becoming ever-cheaper and battery storage technologies becoming ever-more efficient, local governments around Japan are often better poised to take advantage of these changes than megacity dwellers, who are hooked on lifestyles that require huge amounts of electricity and live in places whose sheer size means decisions take longer and opponents are more numerous and better funded. The revolution won’t happen overnight. But it is happening, and is now so obvious that even STS members who once fought tooth and nail to keep renewable energy discussion on the margins are, however reluctantly, embracing it more as a legitimate topic of discussion. When STS members gather in Kyoto next year, it may well be nuclear power, rather than renewable energy, advocates who suddenly find themselves, if not entirely on the margins, then at least further outside the center of attention.

energy
science
renewable energy
fossil fuels
science and technology in society


Japan's rich: acutely aware of their wealth and not flashy with it

Abstract: One of the biggest socioeconomic issues in the developed world right now is the widening income gap between the rich and the not-rich. In the U.S., the gap has become so big that the so-called 1 percent have adopted a siege mentality by isolating themselves from the rest of society, in either gated communities or urban condominium towers. In Japan the rich are different, or at least, they seem to be. It’s often said that in Japan you may live right next door to a millionaire and not know it because his house looks just like yours. The idea that wealthy people in Japan don’t show off their wealth is perhaps grounded in the Japanese stereotype of not wanting to stand out from the crowd. Still, with Japan’s stock market on a general roll for the last several years, the Japanese media has started talking about the “superrich” ( chō-fuyūsō ). But how do you define a rich person in Japan? According to Atsushi Miura, who last year published a book titled “The New Rich,” the financial industry considers a person to be wealthy if their yearly income is over ¥30 million and they have assets of at least ¥100 million. About 1.3 million Japanese people have assets in that range, or 1 percent of the population. Another way to define the rich is that they tend to live off the interest and other capital gains derived from their assets, without ever touching those assets. In his research, Miura found that Japan’s 1 percent does indeed tend to avoid ostentation. They don’t build mansions — we’re talking real mansions, not condos — and believe it unseemly to “throw one’s money around indiscriminately.” However, the Japanese rich will spend money on things they like and tend to favor the intangible. They’re more likely to patronize the arts and go to concerts than splurge on sports cars or expensive jewelry. They travel often and take cruises. Miura has also found that the new Japanese rich are looking inward more: They buy Japanese stuff and travel domestically. They prefer expensive nihonshu to foreign wine, and Japanese artworks to Western ones. This is not simply a matter of taste. It is also an expression of civic responsibility. The new rich understand their place in society, and know that Japan needs their money. In a sense they take the “trickle-down” component of the theory of “Abenomics” to heart. Nevertheless, rich people still try to avoid having their assets taxed, so if they can keep those assets overseas, they will, and it was only this year that the government finally mandated that people with foreign assets of over ¥50 million must report them. Another characteristic of the new rich is that they are conscious of being rich, whereas traditionally rich people in Japan didn’t ponder their wealth. They took if for granted. That’s mainly because the new rich usually obtained their wealth through their own efforts or through some special skill or idea. Even people who inherit wealth or are in line to inherit wealth tend to get jobs and work their whole lives. There’s no concept of the “idle rich” in Japan. In fact, what the children of rich people inherit and what keeps them rich is not so much money itself but the tools for making money: the best education money can buy and a fundamental understanding of how money works, neither of which the average person may be able to access so readily. This idea was explored more fully on a recent segment of the TV Tokyo financial program “Nikkei Plus 10,” in which an employee from Nomura Research named Junji Hatoriya talked about how the new rich maintain their wealth while the vast Japanese middle class continues to just get by. Hatoriya identified three important segments of upper-income earners who “will become the new rich in the future.” The first segment is composed of the children of rich parents. Miura’s own research in this area dovetails almost perfectly with Nomura’s: The children of the rich are not necessarily inheriting their wealth or expecting to inherit it. Instead, they are learning from their parents’ example and embarking on their own investment strategies. Only 8 percent of the general population has any “experience in investing,” while 24 percent of children of people with assets of over ¥100 million have such experience, and 52 percent have stock portfolios themselves. Another segment is “power couples,” which Nomura defines as married couples in which both partners work and bring home a combined income of at least ¥10 million a year. Forty-four percent of power couples have investment experience, while only 15 percent of all double-income households do. More significantly, power couples usually employ financial planners and other professionals who advise them on how to manage their money, because they usually don’t have time to do it themselves. They spend their money freely, but mainly on things that will give them more free time, such as housekeeping services and expensive private day care. The last segment is the one that really intrigues Nomura: “digital seniors.” These are retired people who are tech-savvy and spend a good deal of their time online. They understand how the world works and educate themselves about investments through the Internet. Which isn’t to say they buy and sell stocks online. They still do that the old-fashioned way — through brokers — but since they have deep knowledge about financial trends, they are able to talk seriously to these professionals and make sound decisions. Nomura estimates that there about 8.8 million digital seniors, whose average assets amount to about ¥26 million, while the average assets of all seniors is about ¥14 million. It literally pays to know how to use your computer.


At 122 meters, Milan expo baguette bags Guinness length record

Abstract: MILAN - A judge from Guinness World Records has certified a 122-meter-long baguette baked at the Milan Expo 2015 World’s Fair as the longest in the world. Some 60 French and Italian bakers worked nearly seven hours Sunday to bake the French bread characterized by its soft middle and crusty exterior, methodically moving a specially designed portable oven along the length of the doughy preparation. The bakers worked at a rate of 20 meters an hour, their progress complicated by working outdoors and the biggest challenge to avoid any breakage. “It’s very difficult to do a big baguette because we are outside, you know, the temperature, it’s cold and we are outside so for the dough it’s not easy,” said Dominique Anract, one of the bakers and owner of the La Pompadour bakery in Paris. Putting a plastic cover over the dough helped. The Italian maker of Nutella, Ferrero, backed the enterprise to beat the 111-meter record held by a French supermarket chain. Once certified as a record-breaker, the baguette was cut and smeared with Nutella to share with the hundreds of Expo goers who celebrated the record. It was at least the fourth world record declared during the six-month Expo, which closes Oct. 31, including the longest pizza at 1.5954 km.

france
italy
guinness world records
expo
milan
baguette


The Fukushima nuclear cleanup, four years on

Abstract: Tokyo Electric Power Co. is scheduled to complete a seaside wall at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station at the end of the month. Since January, slightly tainted water has overflowed from drainage systems at Fukushima No. 1 into the ocean nine times. The company, which outlined the progress on the barrier last week during a tour of the facility, expects the completed wall to reduce the flow of contaminated water into the ocean. Following are questions about the current state of the plant: What are the next milestones? Along with the seaside wall, Tepco is reinforcing the drainage system that collects surface water from various parts of the facility with a new covered channel. Work on the new configuration, which began in May, is expected to be completed by March. The company also expects to start freezing a soil barrier around the wrecked reactor buildings by the end of the year. How long will decommissioning take? Tepco expects it will take another 30 years to 40 years to decommission the Fukushima No. 1 facility. What is the timeline for removing the spent fuel? Tepco expects to begin removing spent fuel in the No. 3 reactor in 2017, two years later than it estimated in 2013. Fuel removal in reactors 1 and 2 is expected to begin in 2020. Tepco is currently removing rubble from the three reactors that melted down. Once rubble is removed and the flow of water into the reactors is stabilized, workers will be able to enter the facility with a greater degree of safety, according to company spokesman Tatsuhiro Yamagishi. Tepco removed the largest piece of debris from the spent fuel pool inside the No. 3 reactor in August, a milestone for the early stage of decommissioning. Almost all debris removal efforts at No. 3 are complete, according to Akira Ono, chief of the Fukushima No. 1 plant. How much will the decommissioning cost? The company estimates that water management and reactor stabilization will cost more than ¥1 trillion in the next 10 years. The company had spent roughly ¥430.6 billion on decommissioning the facility as of June 30, according to Yamagishi. How many people are working at the site? About 7,000 contract workers and Tepco employees are at the facility on any given weekday. About half the workers are from the Tohoku region.

fukushima no . 1
nuclear power
tepco
q & a


UNESCO strikes political nerve with Nanking Massacre documents

Abstract: A fierce battle is raging over UNESCO’s stewardship of history. Last week, Japan — the biggest donor to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — created an international stir by threatening to suspend or reduce its financial contributions after the body accepted what China claims are historical documents about the 1937 Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, for inscription into its Memory of the World register. What is the Memory of the World program? And why are China and Japan battling over the details of the wartime atrocity? What is the purpose of the Memory of the World program? UNESCO launched the program in 1992 to fully preserve, protect and make permanently accessible documentary heritage with due recognition, according to the U.N. body’s website. UNESCO provides assistance to preserve historical materials,such as hand-written documents, photos, paintings, movies and other forms of records left across the world. So far 348 items in various categories have been registered, including the world’s oldest existing copy of the Quran, the archives of the Dutch East India Company, the hand-written musical score of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, and the original “Diary of Anne Frank.” From Japan, five items have been registered, including documents on the Keicho Period Mission to Europe in the 17th century, materials related to the internment and repatriation of Japanese held in Siberia after the end of World War II, and historical documents archived at Toji Temple in Kyoto dated from 763 to 1711. UNESCO helps make registered materials more accessible, for example, by creating digitized copies and catalogs that are accessible over the Internet. How are the nominated documents screened? The International Advisory Committee, which consists of 14 experts appointed by the director-general of UNESCO, screens the applications. Countries, municipalities, private groups or individuals are all allowed to file nomination applications. The IAC then makes recommendations for registration that are usually endorsed by the director-general. The 14 experts, who serve in a personal capacity, are “chosen for their authority in the field of the safeguarding of documentary heritage,” according to UNESCO’s website. The director-general convenes IAC sessions every two years. Japan criticized UNESCO’s screening process as opaque and biased. Why? Japanese officials argued that the historical materials being presented are not verified as authentic by third-party historians or other countries involved in political rows over the materials. Tokyo and Beijing have been at odds over historical evidence on the weekslong massacre, in particular the number of estimated victims slaughtered after the Japanese army occupied Nanking in December 1937. The city is now pronounced Nanjing. The Chinese government claims that about 300,000 Chinese were massacred and numerous women raped by Imperial Japanese soldiers. The Japanese government does not deny that its troops murdered noncombatants and looted the city, but instead claims that the number cannot be determined by historical evidence. Despite the rhetorical dueling, Japan was not even allowed to review the documents China submitted, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said last week. “The (screening process) takes place amid concealment and secrecy,” Suga alleged at a morning news conference on Oct. 13. Is the process unfair? According to Koichiro Matsuura, former director-general of UNESCO, the Memory of the World program is not based on any international treaty. Thus UNESCO does not disclose all of the materials submitted for nomination, or the minutes of the advisory committee’s deliberations. Nor does it listen to the opinions of countries potentially related to the materials nominated, the former diplomat said in a recent interview with Kyodo News. By contrast, UNESCO’S World Heritage program, which documents such cultural and natural heritage as architectural and monumental works, is based on an international convention, and the registration process involves deliberation by member countries. In addition, the preliminary reviews of the heritage program’s advisory panel are disclosed, too, Matsuura pointed out. “The system (used by the Memory of the World program) is still immature,” he reportedly said. Historians note that Tokyo admits the Rape of Nanking occurred. So why is it so upset with China and UNESCO? Japanese politicians and bureaucrats believe that China, even 70 years after the end of the war, is still trying to use Japan’s wartime misdeeds for propaganda and diplomatic purposes. Toward that end, China has often exaggerated or even fabricated the particulars of Japan’s wartime atrocities to weaken its diplomatic position, they say. Some nationalist politicians and intellectuals meanwhile maintain the massacre never took place, making the contentious issue even more sensitive in Japanese political circles. This has apparently encouraged the Cabinet of nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to take a tougher stance against UNESCO. Mainstream Japanese historians believe the Imperial Japanese Army slaughtered numerous captured Chinese soldiers and noncombatants, based on historical materials written by the soldiers. These include records of battles written during or shortly after Japan occupied the city. Their estimates range from 40,000 to 200,000 victims. They also agree that no existing evidence can provide a tally of the actual number of deaths with pinpoint accuracy.

wwii
nanking massacre
china-japan relations
unesco
memory of the world


Turncoat mobster gives glimpse at '70s Lufthansa 'Goodfellas' heist, ringleader's warning to lie low

Abstract: NEW YORK - The robbery crew that pulled off one of the biggest heists in U.S. history — the $6 million Lufthansa theft immortalized in “Goodfellas” — was elated at first but became fearful of being robbed itself, a turncoat mobster testified Tuesday at the trial of his former Mafia boss. The defendant, Vincent Asaro, was “very happy, really euphoric” when he learned about the mountain of $100 bills scored in the armed holdup, Gaspare Valenti told a jury in Brooklyn federal court. “We thought there was going to be $2 million in cash and there was $6 million.” But Valenti testified that the joy quickly evaporated when Asaro warned him, “We’ve got to be real careful now. They’ll look to rob us. They’ll look to kill us. It could be anyone who hears of the score.” The testimony marked the first time Valenti has given his blow-by-blow account of the heist. Prosecutors say he voluntarily came forward in 2008, implicated Asaro and agreed to testify against him in violation of the Mafia’s once-sacred vow of silence. After taking the witness stand Tuesday, Valenti, 68, was asked to point out Asaro in the courtroom and describe an article of clothing he was wearing — a blue V-neck sweater. He then described how he met the 80-year-old defendant in the 1960s and started working for him as a devoted Bonanno organized crime family associate. “I was very close with him. … We had, like, a bond,” he said. Valenti testified that his involvement in the heist orchestrated by James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke — played by Robert De Niro in the movie — began when Asaro told him, “Jimmy Burke has a big score at the airport coming up, and you’re invited to go.” The plan called for Valenti and another robber to take a stolen black van to the airport terminal and use bolt cutters to break into a side entrance, he said. Once inside the terminal, they teamed up with other armed and masked bandits who were holding several workers hostage in a lunch room, he said. The crew forced one of the workers to open a safe, where they discovered dozens of boxes containing packets holding $125,000 each, bags of gold chains and containers with precious gems that they threw into the van, he said. They then fled and rendezvoused with Asaro and Burke, who were in a car about a mile away, he said. Asked if the crew had an escape plan, Valenti responded, “No. It’s amazing — a robbery that big and nothing was discussed about where to go afterward.” Asaro and Burke decided the haul should be put in the basement of Valenti’s house in Brooklyn before it was moved to various stash houses, the witness said. Burke “gave very little money out at the beginning,” he said, and when he did, it was with a caveat: Don’t spend it in a lavish way that would draw the attention of law enforcement. Still, he said, Asaro used it to buy a second home, a boat and a Bill Blass designer addition of a Lincoln Continental. Prosecutors have said Asaro also gambled away a big chunk of his $750,000 cut at the racetrack. The defense has accused Valenti and other admitted mobsters expected to testify at the trial of framing Asaro to win leniency in their own cases. If convicted of racketeering conspiracy and other charges, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

new york
crime
robbery
mafia
jfk
goodfellas
gangster
lufthansa


Warning: This viral video of high school girls might make you blush

Abstract: Cosmetic company Shiseido has recently uploaded a YouTube video that is blowing viewers’ minds with a bona fide twist. In the promo video, titled “High School Girl? — The Makeup Secrets of High School Girls,” the camera weaves through a classroom full of drop-dead cute young women who pout and wink like true pop idols. But everything is not as it seems. The camera zooms in on the page of a book that one girl is reading. The small text reads “Did you notice the boys in this classroom?” As the camera backs out of the room, the viewer realizes that — SPOILER ALERT — they’re all dudes. The big gender-flipping reveal highlights the transformative properties of Shiseido’s makeup, which give you the tools to be whatever you want to be (granted, having veteran hair & makeup artists helps). Whether this invokes deeper commentary on herbivore men or gender fluidity or whatever, the bottom line is Shiseido has struck viral-video gold. [This behind-the-scenes video shows how the makeup specialists pulled it off.]

youtube
shiseido
makeup
viral video
japan pulse
viral marketing


Technology key to clinching overseas projects, new infrastructure minister says

Abstract: Japan should keep promoting its high technological standards when pushing for infrastructure projects overseas, despite a recent loss to China on bidding for Indonesia’s first high-speed railway, the new land, infrastructure, transport and tourism minister said Friday. Keiichi Ishii, 57, a Lower House member of junior ruling coalition partner Komeito, said Japan should stick to its technological edge when exporting infrastructure, though it will need to fully examine how China won the Indonesian rail project. Jakarta dropped both country’s proposals last month, citing cost reasons, but subsequently awarded the contract to China, which, unlike Japan, did not require government guarantees. The loss to China is seen as a serious blow. “The biggest strength of our country (in infrastructure building) is safety and technologies,” Ishii said in an interview with media organizations following his appointment Wednesday. “That’s our unwavering principle. On top of that, we will need to understand where the needs of countries are.” Infrastructure exports are a key part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s drive to boost economic growth. Japan’s failure to win the Indonesian contract has thrown cold water on that plan. Ishii, chosen by Komeito to assume the party’s only post in the 19-minister Cabinet, will also oversee tourism policy. The number of visitors arriving in Japan has surged in recent years, and is expected to top 19 million this year, well in line with the goal of 20 million per year by 2020. Ishii remained cautious on the idea floated by some members of the ruling coalition that the nation revise the goal upward to 30 million per year. “We first need to be prepared to accept these 20 million people into our country smoothly,” he said. He added that Japan needs to tackle such issues as boosting airport capacity and improving Wi-Fi access before considering higher goals.

indonesia
land
infrastructure
komeito
keiichi ishii
transport and tourism minister


'Obsolete' gangsters proving problematic

Abstract: Organized crime syndicates are not fading away, they’re just becoming obsolete. Lawyer Hideaki Kubori and journalist Atsushi Mizoguchi, the country’s leading expert on the powerful Yamaguchi-gumi gang, held a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo on Oct. 20. While the recent breakup of the Yamaguchi-gumi led discussions, Kubori and Mizoguchi provided a succinct outline of the yakuza syndicates’ decline. “At first, they were parasites swarming to collect money whenever there was a bankruptcy. They were especially active before the ’80s,” said Kubori, who has 45 years’ experience in dealing with yakuza-related issues. Kubori noted the syndicates’ ties to gangsters known collectively as sōkaiya (specialized racketeers that extort money from companies by threatening to publicly humiliate management boards at annual shareholders meetings). In 1982, Kubori said, the government enacted legislation that banned payoffs to sōkaiya. In 1992, the country’s first anti-organized crime laws were enacted but had little effect. In 1997, however, the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office arrested executives of a major securities firms for paying off gangsters and their associates, a move that Kubori said made large corporations sit up and take notice. Beginning in 2009, the police began to crack down on the gangs, and prefectural bodies began drafting anti-organized crime ordinances. By Oct. 1, 2011, such legislation had been enacted by local governments nationwide, making it illegal to work with gang syndicates. Ultimately, Kubota said, the consequences were devastating for organized crime syndicates. Any time someone takes out a loan, rents an apartment or even opens a bank account, applicants must acknowledge they do not have any ties to organized crime. If subsequent ties are identified, the police can — and often do — arrest applicants on suspicion of fraud. Life as a gangster in Japan has become something of an inconvenience. Mizoguchi noted that organized crime syndicates no longer engage in gang wars because, legally speaking, the leaders of the gang are held liable for any damages incurred. What’s more, syndicates are failing to recruit the country’s youth. “Youngsters aren’t joining yakuza syndicates,” Mizoguchi said. “They’d rather remain outside the gangs in a gray zone where they can put profit first. I can’t see this new generation of criminals getting involved in a gang war, and they certainly wouldn’t want to use firearms. At the worst, they might use a metal bat or beer bottle to bash their opponents into submission.” Both Kubori and Mizoguchi agreed that local authorities now need to target organized crime leaders for tax evasion. For example, police in Fukuoka arrested Satoru Nomura, head of the Kudo-kai, on June 16 on suspicion of not paying income tax on his earnings. “The (Yamaguchi-gumi) split will ultimately weaken the power of organized crime syndicates,” Kubori said. “As the country’s economy expanded so did the yakuza. Now, however, the domestic economic situation has changed.” Gangsters themselves aren’t seeing many advantages to working in a syndicate. “We can’t even wear our badges in public,” a low-ranking member in the Inagawa-kai, the third largest crime syndicate, told me earlier this year. “We can’t show people business cards with the organization’s logo on it. It’s like paying for a McDonald’s franchise without being able to use the golden arches — what’s the point? The brand no longer encourages people to pay up or earns respect. It’s a liability, not an asset.” A number of former gangsters agree. “Organized crime syndicates used to be thought of as a necessary evil,” Satoru Takegaki, a former Yamaguchi-gumi leader, told me in September. “Now they’re just evil. They are no longer even necessary.” Takegaki now runs Gojin-kai, a nonprofit organization that specializes in rehabilitating former gangsters. He said anti-gang legislation had made life for many low-level yakuza members economically unfeasible. Many are quitting but have few alternative opportunities, Takegaki said. Many of them are poorly educated and lack discipline. Takegaki helps many find work in the salvaging industry, dismantling obsolete electrical equipment. Still, he said, the country’s lawmakers need to provide better assistance to former gangsters who end up on welfare. “Dismantling a refrigerator is easy once you know how to do it but you have to careful, as dangerous materials are often involved,” he said. “The government is dismantling organized crime syndicates with no plan on what to do with the mess that is left behind. That can’t be good.”


Emperor Yoshihito's coronation; crowds pack Tokyo dance halls before ban; Hikari superexpress now world's fastest; nearly 600 dolphins slaughtered in Nagasaki

Abstract: 100 YEARS AGO Thursday, Nov. 11 1915 ‘Divine’ Coronation for Emperor Yoshihito The Coronation of His Majesty the Emperor Yoshihito, the 123rd Emperor in an unbroken line of illustrious sovereigns, was held today in the ancient Imperial Palace in Kyoto with impressive simplicity befitting the solemn occasion. The day opened with the weather fair and calm and the preparations for the morning ceremony passed off without a hitch. The great ritual service before the “Kashiko-dokoro,” enshrined in the Shunko-Den, began at eight o’clock this morning. At this important ceremonial, Emperor Yoshihito formally acquired the Three Sacred Treasures — the Divine Sword, Jewel and Mirror — and reported before his ancestral spirit, the “Kashiko-dokoro,” the fact of his succession to the great and time-honored heritage. His Majesty then fervently prayed for the prosperity of his reign. In the spacious compound before the Imperial Sanctuary, sheds were built for the accommodation of persons entitled to be present at this ritual service. Here assembled this morning most prominent men of the Empire as well as the diplomatic representatives of foreign powers. Glittering gold lace on the civilians’ full dresses and the brilliant decorations worn by military and naval officers served to embellish the spectacle of a most distinguished gathering. At the climax of the ceremony, chamberlains placed the Divine Sword and the Divine Jewel by the side of the Emperor on a table. His Majesty, rising from his seat, proceeded in front of the door of the Sanctuary, and after performing obeisance to the spirit of his Ancestress, symbolized by the Divine Mirror enshrined in the Sanctuary, recited an Imperial Report announcing his formal acquisition of the Divine Treasures and praying at the same time. Obeisance was then performed by royalties and the Emperor left the Sanctuary with his retinue. 75 YEARS AGO Sunday, Nov. 3, 1940 Crowds throng Tokyo dance halls before ban All the remaining dance halls in Tokyo were crowded on Thursday night with dance-lovers, out to have their last night of fun, elbowing and jostling in the throng to the plaintive melody of Auld Lang Syne which signaled the curtains to be drawn on the 13-year-old history of Tokyo’s dance halls. With the halls overflowing with three to five times more than the unusual number, the cheerful faces of taxi-dancers, about to start afresh in their new careers within a few hours, were seen over the shoulders of their partners on the narrow floor, made more narrower by those waiting their turn. The trumpets blared more energetically and the orchestras were tuning it up more gaily as if to make the sayonara night appropriate to their gay but short history. “About one-half of the dancers are going back to their homes,” said a manager. “The other half have obtained jobs as typists, office-workers and employees in a chemical factory. At least, we are glad that all of the girls have got jobs before we closed.” Dancing had been banned by a law enforced from Nov. 1. 50 YEARS AGO Tuesday, Nov. 2, 1965 JNR’s Hikari is now world’s fastest train The superexpress Hikari of the New Tokaido Line Monday began the world’s fastest train service at an average speed of 162.3 kph, cutting travel time between Tokyo and Osaka by 50 minutes to 3 hours 10 minutes. The previous world record holder in terms of average operational speed was the French train Mistral, which travels a little over 130 kph. It took a long time for the Japanese National Railways to make the Tokyo-Osaka train the fastest in the world. Ever since Japan’s first express train covered the distance — in 17 hours and 40 minutes — in 1904, the JNR devoted its top brains in a bid to reduce travel time on the line, which has always been regarded as the “face” of the JNR because of its commercial importance. By 1934, the company had managed to shorten the trip to eight hours, but the quest for speed had to make way for military transportation requirements during the war. With the electrification of the whole Tokyo-Osaka section in 1955, the travel time was cut to 7½ hours. Then, with the completion of the New Tokaido Line in October last year, the Hikari and Kodama “bullet trains” started running the distance in five and four hours respectively. Both the Hikari and the Kodama have a maximum speed of 200 kph. 25 YEARS AGO Sunday, Nov. 4, 1990 Nearly 600 dolphins killed in Nagasaki Fishermen drove hundreds of dolphins onto a beach and slaughtered them for their meat Friday on the East China Sea island of Fukuejima, police said Saturday. A police spokesman said fishermen came across a school of up to 3,000 dolphins off Miiraku, a coastal town on the island in Nagasaki Prefecture, at around 5 p.m. Friday. A local fisheries union sent boats to the area early Saturday and the fishermen chased hundreds of the animals onto Shiragahama Beach. Eyewitnesses said at least 580 dolphins were forced ashore and beaten to death with clubs. The fishermen then used cranes to pile the carcasses atop a breakwater, they said. The police spokesman said residents of the Goto Islands, which include Fukuejima, traditionally eat dolphin meat. Residents of Miiraku said dolphin meat is an important source of protein for them because beef and pork are too expensive. One elderly woman said, “Although conservationists are increasingly critical of us, we have no choice but to eat them because we have so many dolphins.”

dolphins
nagasaki
imperial family
dancing
emperor taisho
hikari
fukuejima