Despite growth run, Abenomics still clouded by uncertainty

Abstract: Despite the longest growth run in nearly three decades, Japan’s economic outlook remains far from robust as uncertainty abounds over wage growth and business investment. Under Abenomics, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s program of radical monetary easing, fiscal spending and vows of structural reforms, the economy grew at an annualized rate of 0.5 percent in the October-December period, marking the eighth straight quarter of expansion. It slowed from a revised 2.2 percent increase in the previous quarter and was below the potential growth rate of around 1.0 percent. Many economists expect the economy to keep growing at a moderate pace this year, but the biggest wild card could be volatility in financial markets after the recent global stock market rout. The key question now is whether domestic demand — private consumption and corporate spending — can pick up further and help the world’s third-largest economy sustain its recent growth momentum, economists said. “Private consumption has been recovering on the back of modest wage growth, but is not solid enough to absorb shocks when something bad happens,” said Yuichiro Nagai, an economist at Barclays Securities Japan Ltd. Economists are focusing on how companies might handle pay hikes in annual negotiations between management and labor unions toward mid-March amid record earnings and the tightest labor market conditions in decades. More robust wage growth is seen as critical for consumers to increase spending and for the government to consider when it will be safe to declare an end to decades of deflation. “If you look at growth in pretax profits, the consumer price index and tightness in the labor market, companies may settle for a pay hike of around 2.3 percent,” Nagai said. That is still lower than the 3 percent hike Abe is asking companies to achieve during this year’s shuntō wage negotiations. Other economists also say 3 percent is a tall order and wage growth will likely be below 2.5 percent. “Even if it is below 2.5 percent, we believe the Abe administration will likely declare a break with deflation by the end of fiscal 2018 (through March 2019),” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief market economist at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. “It will also likely decide to go ahead with another consumption tax hike (as planned). The Bank of Japan, however, won’t be able to start normalizing its (crisis-mode) policy in that time frame,” Maruyama added. Bolstering domestic demand has been a challenge for the export-reliant economy ahead of the planned sales tax increase from 8 percent to 10 percent slated for October 2019. Consumption took a hit after the previous hike in 2014. The latest GDP data released Wednesday pointed to strength in capital spending. Businesses continued to increase investment for the fifth quarter in a row, up 0.7 percent. With borrowing costs low thanks to the BOJ’s bold monetary easing, companies have been stepping up investment to boost capacity amid robust demand for domestic products and to cope with shortages of manpower. Labor shortages are particularly severe in the services industry amid economic growth and a shrinking population, with the availability of jobs across sectors hitting its highest in over four decades. Travel agency H.I.S Co., for instance, is turning to robotics to boost efficiency and save labor. At a hotel that recently opened in Tokyo’s glitzy Ginza district, two humanoid robots serve as receptionists at the front desk. The use of advanced technology such as robotics enables the hotel, called Henn Na Hotel (strange hotel), to manage with roughly a fourth of the manpower needed to operate a hotel of a similar size, a company official said. Strong demand for such labor-saving technology is one reason why economists predict capital spending will remain solid. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will also give a near-term boost. “If you are talking about a time span of a decade or two, the domestic market will get smaller,” Barclays’ Nagai said. “For the next few years, companies will be encouraged to increase spending to prepare for the Olympics and on research and development related to artificial intelligence and self-driving technology.” That still hinges on whether the recent volatility in financial markets is only temporary or something lasting much longer. While the yen’s depreciation against the dollar and the euro has given companies a helpful boost to their earnings, wild swings will likely hurt sentiment and give corporate managers a reason to put off spending. “We will have to monitor how things will go in financial markets,” a senior government official said. “What we have right now is not a high-growth economy but one that has been gradually recovering with the help of recovering domestic demand.”


Bangladesh preparing barren islet to house 100,000 Rohingya refugees, denies it's a concentration camp

Abstract: DHAKA/BHASAN CHAR/COX'S BAZAR, BANGLADESH - Bangladesh is racing to turn an uninhabited and muddy Bay of Bengal island into home for 100,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled a military crackdown in Myanmar, and top officials have given conflicting signals about whether the refugees will be stranded there. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Monday that putting Rohingya on the low-lying island would be a “temporary arrangement” to ease congestion at the camps in Cox’s Bazar, refuge for nearly 700,000 who have crossed from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since the end of August. However, one of her advisers told Reuters that, once there, they would only be able to leave the island if they wanted to go back to Myanmar or were selected for asylum by a third country. “It’s not a concentration camp, but there may be some restrictions. We are not giving them a Bangladeshi passport or ID card,” said H.T. Imam, adding that the island would have a police encampment with 40 to 50 armed personnel. British and Chinese engineers are helping prepare the island to receive refugees before the onset of monsoon rains in April, which could bring disastrous flooding to ramshackle camps farther south that now teem with about 1 million Rohingya. Hasina’s adviser, Imam, said the question of selecting Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar to move to the island was not finalized, but it could be decided by lottery or on a volunteer-basis. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement: “We would emphasize that any relocation plan involving refugees would need to be based on and implemented through voluntary and informed decisions.” Humanitarian agencies criticized the plan to bring Rohingya to the island when it was first proposed in 2015. Aid workers said they remain seriously concerned that the silt island is vulnerable to frequent cyclones and cannot sustain livelihoods for thousands of people. But work on the project has accelerated in recent months, according to architectural plans and two letters from the Bangladesh Navy to local government officials and contractors. A year ago, when Reuters journalists visited Bhasan Char — whose name means “floating island” — there were no roads, buildings or people. Returning on Feb. 14, they found hundreds of laborers carrying bricks and sand from ships on its muddy northwest shore. Satellite images now show roads and what appears to be a helipad. Floating Island, which emerged from the silt only about 20 years ago, is about 30 km (21 miles) from the mainland. Flat and shape-shifting, it regularly floods during June-September. Pirates roam the nearby waters to kidnap fishermen for ransom, residents of nearby islands say. The plans show metal-roofed, brick buildings raised on pylons and fitted with solar panels. There will be 1,440 blocks, each housing 16 families. The Chinese construction company Sinohydro — known for building China’s Three Gorges Dam — has begun work on a 13-km flood-defense embankment for the $280 million project. HR Wallingford, a British engineering and environmental hydraulics consultancy, is advising the project on “coastal stabilization and flood protection measures,” the company said in a statement earlier this month. Omar Waraich, deputy South Asia director for rights group Amnesty International, said there was “no one in the humanitarian community we spoke to who thought this was a good idea. This is a silt island that only emerged into view recently.” Residents of nearby Sandwip Island, which is larger and less remote, say monsoon storms regularly kill people, destroy homes and cut contact with the mainland. However, a senior member of the prime minister’s staff, Director General Kabir bin Anwar, said humanitarian organizations critical of the plan are “absolutely wrong because they don’t understand the topography” of Bangladesh. The government is building cyclone shelters on the island, he said, adding that there are salt-tolerant paddies and people living there could fish or graze cows and buffalo. Anwar also dismissed concerns about delivering basic aid to the island. “We don’t need help from any foreign NGOs or local NGOs. We can feed them,” he said. Bangladeshis living on nearby islands are critical of their government’s efforts for the Rohingya. Belal Beg, 80, who was born on Sandwip island, said there was resistance to settling Rohingya on Bhasan Char because huge numbers of Bangladeshis are displaced by coastal erosion each year with no measures taken to protect them. “We should first care for our own people but the government is deciding to give shelter to immigrants,” Beg said. Many Rohingya also reject the idea of moving to an island even farther from Myanmar, which many of them have called home for generations. Jahid Hussain, a Rohingya refugee at Chakmakul refugee camp in Bangladesh, said he had fled Myanmar to save his life and would not risk it by living on Bhasan Char. “I would rather die right here,” he said. The latest unrest in Myanmar’s Rakhine state began on Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked dozens of police posts and an army base, prompting an army counteroffensive that forced entire villages to flee. They joined about 300,000 Rohingya already in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most crowded nations, who had fled previous bouts of violence. Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel peace laureate and leader of Buddhist-majority Myanmar, has been heavily criticized by Western nations for not speaking out against what the United States and the United Nations have branded ethnic cleansing. Myanmar denies that ethnic cleansing has taken place and says it has been conducting legitimate operations against terrorists in northern Rakhine. Describing the island, Hasina told a news conference in Dhaka that “from a natural point of view it is very nice” and said although the initial plan was to put 100,000 people there, it had room for as many as 1 million.


Second lawsuit eyed against government over eugenics law, as records in 13 prefectures show sterilizations of children aged 15 and below

Abstract: A Hokkaido man in his 70s plans to file a lawsuit seeking damages from the government over his forced sterilization at around age 20 under the 1948 eugenic protection law, sources said Thursday, as a related investigation unearthed documents showing children aged 15 and below — including one as young as 9 — were also sterilized under the law. The revelations follow a lawsuit filed against the state by a woman in her 60s in Miyagi Prefecture on Jan. 30, seeking ¥11 million in damages over her forced sterilization when she was a teenager. Japan’s now-defunct eugenic protection law authorized the sterilization of people with mental disabilities and illness or hereditary disorders to prevent births of what were feared would be “inferior” offspring. It also allowed for forcible abortions without the consent of the individuals or their relatives. But the 1953 notification had limited the forcible removal of reproductive organs to only cases where there was “a possibility of bearing a baby.” The most recently identified records, released Wednesday, show that at least 13 prefectures documented the sterilization of children aged 15 and below due to mental disabilities and other reasons, with the youngest having been aged 9 at the time of the surgery. This latest find raises suspicions that sterilization may have been forced on young girls despite stipulations in the law against such surgeries being conducted on those who had no possibility of becoming pregnant. According to a tally by Kyodo News, papers listing individual names of people believed to have been subjected to sterilization have been found in 23 prefectures. So far there are records involving 3,402 men and women, with the oldest having been 57 years old. Referring to the cases involving children, Keiko Toshimitsu, a visiting bioethics researcher at a Ritsumeikan University research center, said “it would be surprising if such sterilizations were implemented widely.” “Girls would have had to undergo abdominal surgeries, which are great physical burdens. I suspect that the operations were conducted based on extreme discrimination and prejudice,” Toshimitsu added. In 2016, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women recommended that Japan adopt “specific measures aimed at providing all victims of forced sterilizations with assistance to access legal remedies and provide them with compensation and rehabilitative services.” The state has not apologized or provided compensation to the around 25,000 people who were sterilized under the now defunct law, saying it was legal at the time. Of the total, 16,500 people are believed to have undergone surgery without their consent. While the eugenics protection law was scrapped in 1996 and replaced by the maternal protection law on abortion, human rights infringements under the eugenic law have drawn renewed attention recently, as in the lawsuit filed in January by the woman in Miyagi Prefecture at the Sendai District Court. The filing by the woman, who has not disclosed her name, is the first such suit over forced sterilizations in Japan, and asserts that the state has failed to legislate for relief measures despite serious human rights infringements. She also claims that the 1948 law denied human equality and the right to pursue happiness and was therefore unconstitutional. In the wake of that lawsuit, bar associations set up call centers in Sapporo and four other cities on Feb. 2 and urged others to join efforts to address the issue. The Hokkaido man currently planning to file his lawsuit was among several people who contacted the call centers, according to lawyers. The man, who was about 20 when he was allegedly sterilized on grounds of having a mental disorder, has said he was unable to refuse the surgery at the time and wants the state to admit to its mistake, they said. He intends to file the lawsuit with the Sapporo District Court after checking if the Hokkaido Prefectural Government has kept records on his sterilization. The prefectural government said Monday it has records on 1,129 people who were sterilized under the controversial law, the youngest being an 11-year-old girl. By prefecture Hokkaido is said to have the largest group, with 2,593 people believed to have been forcibly sterilized under the program.


Kyoto executives consider making nightlife in Kyoto more tourist-friendly

Abstract: KYOTO - As residents and tourists in Kyoto complain more about higher prices, hotel shortages and crowds at train stations, shrines and temples, Kansai’s corporate leaders are searching for ways to keep visitors coming. One way, they suggested recently, is to ensure people can experience what they call “Kyoto culture at night.” The G-rated, family-friendly version, that is. Earlier this month, a panel of executives at a Kansai economic meeting in Kyoto discussed the need for more things to keep tourists entertained at night. A 2016 municipal survey of Japanese and foreign tourists showed that complaints about tourists spots closing too early was one thing many disliked, though it was far down the list compared to massive crowds, rude bus drivers and other ill-mannered tourists. Though the discussion by the business leaders produced no specific plan of action, the ideas floated ranged from increasing the number of traditional arts performances to designing new forms of evening spectacles designed to ensure that more of Kyoto’s tourists have someplace to see and spend their money at other than bars, nightclubs, pubs and the neon-lit entertainment establishments that line both sides of the Kamo River. The suggestions came with the latest statistics on inbound tourism all pointing upward. Kimiharu Banno, head of the transport ministry’s Kinki bureau, told conference participants that over 12 million foreign tourists were estimated to have visited the six prefectures of the Kansai region last year, with 59 percent of them staying in Osaka and 27 percent in Kyoto. “The number of inbound visitors to the Kansai region has more than quadrupled since 2012,” he said. A survey by the Kyoto Shimbun newspaper earlier this month estimated there were nearly 34,000 rooms available for lodging as of April 2017 and that, with many other hotels under construction, the figure could reach 42,000 by 2020. But concern about maintaining tourism revenue and repeat visitors is growing, and there are also worries about will happen after the city introduces a lodging tax in October. The fear is that once the sun goes down, more travelers may opt to return to Osaka, only 30 minutes by train, with its greater selection of cheaper accommodations and more diverse nightlife. There were also suggestions floated by the business leaders that more evening events would help reduce potential friction between residents and tourists at area watering holes. In a city with a tradition of exclusive tea houses that refuse entry to those who are not regulars, smaller establishments can be reluctant to turn their bar stools and tables over to tourists for fear of alienating loyal customers who might drop by and find the place full of strangers. So, the thinking goes, the best solution is to satisfy tourist desires for more interesting evening events while also placating local concerns. Whether Kyoto can and will develop a new nightlife industry for tourists is debatable. But some influential people in Kansai seem to think it might be a good — and profitable — idea.


U.S. has political blind spot for right-wing threat, analysts say

Abstract: WASHINGTON - Robert Bowers, accused of massacring 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue, spewed extreme anti-Semitic invective openly on social media, and had 10 guns registered in his name. Cesar Sayoc, who sent 15 pipe bombs to anti-Trump Democrats and media, tweeted threats to dozens of public figures, including sending a TV commentator a picture of a decapitated sheep. One week after the Pittsburgh attack, Americans are asking why U.S. law enforcement wasn’t aware of either extremist. The number of violent acts by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, racists and anti-Semites has steadily climbed over the past decade, in recent years killing more Americans than Islamic extremists have. But security experts say the government refuses to pursue them problem with equal intensity. “The United States has a problem with far-right extremism and terrorism that we have to face up to,” said Peter Singer a security expert at the New America think tank. “The number of attacks, combined with resistance to talking about the problem, dedicating resources to the problem — it is killing our fellow Americans at a rate greater than even ISIS,” he added, using one of the acronyms for the Islamic State terrorist group. The threat from the right has been clear since extremists killed 168 in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1995. After the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attacks, U.S. law enforcement concentrated their focus to Islamic extremism. Yet today, more than 70 percent of nearly 300 murders by ideological extremists in the United States in the past decade were by far-right actors, according to data compiled by New America. In 2017, 20 of 34 such killings were perpetrated by the far right. In the same October week as the bombs and the synagogue shooting, a white supremacist shot dead two African-Americans at a Kentucky supermarket, and a Wisconsin conservative activist was arrested trying to buy radioactive material to kill someone. Daryl Johnson, formerly a domestic terrorism analyst in the Department of Homeland Security, says there is a conscious political blind spot toward the extremists on the right. In 2009, he warned in a DHS report of a resurgence of right-wing extremism, after the economic crash and the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States. The report drew an intense political backlash, he said. Nobody wanted to hear about the problem, or give it a name. His unit was dissolved. Since then, significant right-wing shootings, arson and bombings have slowly increased, with Democrats and Republicans both responsible, Johnson said. The Obama administration feared antagonizing opponents. The Trump administration doesn’t want to take aim at supporters. “Republicans don’t want to attack them,” said Johnson, now a security consultant at DT Analytics. “That’s part of their constituency.” As a consequence, last year the far-right made an unprecedented show of strength when white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and others joined hands in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The rally erupted into brawls with counterprotesters, one of whom was killed by a neo-Nazi. Rather than criticize the extremists, Trump prevaricated, insisting that “both sides” were to blame and that there were “very fine people on both sides.” “We have the first president in modern history celebrated by these groups, that these groups believe is on message with them. The political tides are with them,” said Singer. After Charlottesville, Democrats in Congress demanded action, but Republicans refused to hold hearings on right-wing extremism. Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler says that after Pittsburgh, Republicans are again avoiding calls to discuss the problem. “14 pipe bombs mailed in unprecedented political assassination attempt. Deadliest massacre of Jews in U.S. history. Murder of 2 African Americans in KY … All in 1 week,” Nadler wrote on Twitter after the Pittsburgh attack. “All linked by one hateful ideology: white supremacy. We must act.” The FBI pursues violent extremists of any stripe. Punishments for hate crimes have gotten tougher, such as the 25-year prison sentence handed to a Texas man recently for burning a mosque. But the government still will not treat extremism as a singular nationwide threat, critics say. “There is as much a threat from white supremacists and anti-Semites as there is from Islamic extremists. So resources should be allocated appropriately,” said Heidi Beirich, who leads Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism. “It’s not a question of one or the other; it’s both.” The experts say the government has tied its own hands, by being wary of accusations that they are spying on U.S. citizens online. Monitoring potential jihadis is accepted because their acts fall under the official designation “terrorism.” That isn’t applied to other ideological extremists. “There are legitimate civil liberty concerns” about the government monitoring of right-wing extremists, said Beirich. But, she noted, social media is a public place. People “have no expectation of privacy when they post there,” she said. “If you were to try to look for these people or find warning signs about them, you know where they are.”

religion
u.s .
barack obama
terrorism
rights
elections
ethnicity
discrimination
donald trump


South Africans make bricks from human urine

Abstract: CAPE TOWN - South African researchers have made bricks using human urine in a process that could one day help reduce global warming emissions by finding a productive use for the waste product. The gray bricks are produced in a lab over eight days using urine, calcium, sand and bacteria. Fertilizers are also produced. And the bricks do not smell. The bricks are made using urea — a chemical found in urine and also synthesized around the world to make fertilizer. The process of growing bricks from urea has been tested in the United States with synthetic solutions, but the new brick uses human urine for the first time, the researchers said. “We literally pee this away every day and flush it through the sewer networks,” said Dyllon Randall, a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town’s civil engineering department who is part of the team that developed the brick. “Why not recover this instead and make multiple products?” The bio-bricks are created through a process called microbial induced carbonate precipitation, which is similar to the process that produces coral reefs. Loose sand is colonized with bacteria that produce the enzyme urease. The enzyme breaks down the urea in urine while producing the rocky substance calcium carbonate through a complex chemical reaction. A brick or column of any shape can be made. The bricks are formed at room temperature, cutting the harmful carbon dioxide emitted when making regular bricks that are kiln-fired. One obstacle preventing mass production is that the bricks use huge amounts of pee. To make a single brick requires about 20 liters of urine — a couple of weeks’ worth of wee for a typical adult. “So, I get it from the boys bathroom opposite the laboratory. I put a little sign up and all the university boys contribute to my research,” said Suzanne Lambert, who proved the concept for the research by making the first brick. “I definitely see commercialization in the next decade or two, but there is still a lot of lab work to be done,” she said.

pollution
south africa
biotechnology
waste
conservation
chemistry


Pakistan's 'father of Taliban' killed

Abstract: ISLAMABAD - Prominent Pakistani cleric Maulana Samiul Haq, known as the “father of the Taliban,” was killed in a knife attack at his home in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Friday, his family and police said. Haq’s son, Hamidul Haq, said his father was alone in his bedroom when he was attacked by an assailant, who escaped undetected. “My father has been martyred. … His guard had gone out minutes before the attack, and upon his return he saw my father in critical condition,” he told reporters. Police say Haq, 81, was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died. Yousaf Shah, Haq’s spokesman, said neither the attacker nor their motive was yet known. Soon after his death, scores of Haq’s supporters rioted, damaging shops and vehicles in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Haq’s family appealed to his followers to remain peaceful. A religious scholar with a large following among radical Islamists, Haq was the head of his faction of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) party. Haq was a revered teacher with vast influence over Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban, many of whose leaders and commanders studied a strict interpretation of Islam at his Haqqani seminary, earning him the “father of the Taliban” title. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the deputy leader of the Haqqani network, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, was one of dozens of Taliban leaders who graduated from Haq’s seminary, located in the conservative Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province on the border with Afghanistan. In recent weeks, dozens of Afghan clerics had appealed to Haq to use his influence with Afghanistan’s Taliban to plot a path to peace that would end the 17-year-long war there. Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi and Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned Haq’s killing. “We lost a great scholar and religious leader today,” said Khan in a statement from China, where he is on an official visit. Khan was widely criticized for embracing Haq ahead of Pakistan’s July elections, which put the former cricketer in power. Khan’s provincial government in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa donated millions of dollars to Haq’s hard-line seminary. He defended the move saying he wanted to see Pakistan’s thousands of madrassas, or religious schools, broaden their curriculum. Haq’s funeral is expected to be held Saturday in Akora Khattak.

pakistan
religion
murder
terrorism
taliban
maulana samiul haq


Disaster relief tech: Hand-shaped robot and cybersuit for rescue dogs tested in Fukushima

Abstract: MINAMISOMA, FUKUSHIMA PREF. - A recent disaster-response demonstration in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, featured tests of a hand-shaped, fire-resistant robot that can remove rubble as well as a cybersuit for rescue dogs. The Friday event was hosted by the Cabinet Office and others. The hand-shaped robot, developed by Tohoku University, has fingers consisting of small ball-like parts, operated through wires running through its length. The robot, which features enhanced fire resistance, is expected to be useful in the event of a plant fire, according to the university. At the test event Friday, the robot removed gas cylinders and rubble from a fire. The cybersuit, developed by the university and others, is equipped with a camera and a GPS device. During the test, a rescue dog searched for missing people while wearing the suit, which uses three-dimensional geographical data. “Disaster-relief robots were used in search operations at collapsed houses after torrential rains in western Japan earlier this year,” said Satoshi Tadokoro, a professor at the university. “I want to proceed with robot development in order to contribute to society.”

fukushima
fukushima no . 1
radiation
robots
nuclear energy
nuclear waste


LDP's Seiko Noda goes against custom, addressing lawmakers with honorific suffix san, not kun

Abstract: Former internal affairs minister Seiko Noda, the first female chair of the Lower House Budget Committee, is making headlines for her unconventional style in steering deliberations — calling lawmakers by their names with the honorific suffix san , rather than kun , which is usually used for men. In Budget Committee deliberations, it has been customary for the chair to use “kun” for lawmakers, regardless of their gender. But when Noda, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, debuted as the committee chair Thursday, she didn’t adhere to that custom, instead addressing all lawmakers with the “san” suffix. “Society normally uses ‘san’ for both men and women. I didn’t really think about it,” Noda told reporters after her first session as the chair on Thursday, adding that it seemed “natural” to address them as such. The Budget Committee deliberates on a number of important issues at the Diet, and committee meetings are often televised live. In steering deliberations, Noda said she was trying to make the sessions easy to understand for the public. At one point during deliberations, she urged Justice Minister Takashi Yamashita to “make it short and simple, please” as he delivered a series of long answers about a bill to amend the immigration control law. Noda, however, is not the first chair to use “san.” In 1993, Takako Doi, who became the first female speaker of the Lower House, also made news when she addressed lawmakers with the suffix. Noda, who formerly served as female empowerment minister, has been known for trying to crack the glass ceiling in Japan’s still male-dominated political arena. She has twice fallen short in a quest to become the country’s first female prime minister, failing both times to get enough intraparty support to even run in the LDP presidential election to challenge Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Still, she has made no secret that her quest for the top post remains a primary goal. Upon announcing in August that she was ending her LDP presidential bid, she noted that there was still plenty of work for her to do within the party. “If the LDP backs a policy of empowering women or making them ‘shine,’ I think we have to prove that ourselves first,” Noda said at the time.

lower house
names
seiko noda
budget committee


Fukuoka enlists artificial intelligence in fight against organized crime

Abstract: Advances in artificial intelligence have come along in leaps and bounds in recent years, prompting police in Fukuoka and Kyoto to look into ways of using the technology to tackle organized crime. The Fukuoka Prefectural Police in Kyushu face a particularly daunting task, with some of the country’s most violent crime syndicates operating in their jurisdiction. These groups are so violent they’ve even been known to lob hand grenades — dubbed “pineapples” in yakuza slang — at each other. The Kudo-kai has been particularly virulent in resisting police crackdowns and retaliating against civilians who don’t toe the line. They’re certainly not above murder. In 1998, gang members reportedly killed the former head of a local fishermen’s association after he refused to let Kudo-kai get a cut of the harbor business. Experimenting with new ways of tackling organized crime, police authorities in Fukuoka are trying to create a yakuza attack prediction system based on artificial intelligence. By implementing such technology, the authorities hope to protect witnesses and sources from gang syndicates. Traditionally, the authorities have patrolled the neighborhoods of people who are under their protection. Unfortunately, they can’t be there 24/7 and are looking into ways to predict an attack on a witness or source before it happens. Police who are familiar with organized crime have noticed that gang members typically scout areas they plan to attack in cars in advance. The authorities are therefore looking to tail members of a crime syndicate on a regular basis, paying close attention to their daily activities and the manner in which they are using their vehicles. Police hope to collect data on gang movements, analyzing the patterns on a computer in order to predict when and where an attack might occur so that they can act in real time to prevent it from happening. Police in Fukuoka hope to have a system up and running within the next fiscal year. Police in Kyoto and other prefectures are working on similar systems. One has to wonder, however, whether such a system can really work? Mike Maness, a senior director of TrapWire Inc., thinks so. Maness has served for almost 20 years as an operations officer and field manager with the Central Intelligence Agency. He spent 15 years working undercover against terrorism and organized criminal networks. Using a combination of facial recognition, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, social media tools and proprietary analytic capabilities, TrapWire created a system that is able to identify patterns indicative of planned criminal behavior and alert authorities in real time. A number of government agencies in the United States use their services, as well as civilian operators. “Not only this is type of system feasible, we’ve been doing it in the U.S. for almost a decade,” Maness says. “The Fukuoka police are taking exactly the right approach: attempting to prevent criminal activity instead of reacting to an event after it has happened. This ‘left of boom’ approach is being adopted by local, state and federal police agencies around the world as they realize they cannot be everywhere all the time.” “Left of boom” is a military term describing the moment before a bomb explodes. By contrast, “right of boom” describes the moment after a bomb detonates. While artificial intelligence is certainly a powerful tool in the fight against crime, Maness warns that it isn’t the ultimate solution. “No single source of intelligence, whether HUMINT (human intelligence) or AI alone, can help predict and prevent crime,” Maness says. “It requires an amalgamation of all these disciplines, plus the addition of social media monitoring, suspicious activity reports from the public and the cooperation of the private sector. “By combining HUMINT with all the other sources of intelligence noted above, police are acquiring a more fulsome understanding of planned attacks or criminal events, and are able to thwart the operation rather than react to the event and pick up the pieces.” I know police officers in Japan who used to joke that they would be out of work if the country’s Crime Prevention Bureau — now known as the Community Safety Bureau — really did its job. Crime prevention has always seemed like something of a pipe dream for law enforcement agencies, but for once real change could actually be on the horizon.

kyoto
yakuza
organized crime
fukuoka
artificial intelligence
kodo-kai


Testing times for students' English-language ability in Japan

Abstract: The education ministry last year announced it would change the common testing system for universities, starting in 2020. A major change is expected to be made to the English-language component of the exam. Applicants will be asked to take English tests developed by commercial testing companies for the preliminary evaluation. The main reason for the change is that the ministry wants to emphasize interactive communication, specifically speaking and writing, in the evaluation of students’ English skills. The current English test concentrates on listening and reading. According to the National Center for University Entrance Examinations, the ministry has selected eight companies whose tests they would accept for university admission purposes, which means applicants will have to pay more money in their quest to gain entrance to national schools, anywhere from about ¥6,000 to more than ¥25,000 for each test they sit. In June, the Japan Association of National Universities adopted standards for the English examination portion of the testing process , although these standards are not binding. Any university can decide to what degree the new tests will figure in their criteria for allowing applicants to take university entrance tests. The University of Tokyo, the most prestigious college in the country, subsequently announced in September that it would not require applicants to take the private English tests . The university didn’t state definitively how it will evaluate English ability, but suggested it could look at applicants’ performance in their high school studies. The University of Tokyo decision calls into question the rationale behind the new testing system, which some say isn’t practical or fair. It has also focused attention on how English is taught in Japanese schools. Teachers will be expected to raise the English communication skills of their students if for no other reason than to do well on English tests as part of the admissions process, which is not the ostensible purpose of the new approach to English education, although it seems to be the immediate goal. In covering the matter, two Asahi Shimbun reporters decided to take commercial tests to get a better idea of what applicants should expect . The first thing they noticed was that the three tests they sat — TOEFL ($235), which is administered by Educational Testing Services of the United States, the Cambridge English test (about ¥9,700 to ¥25,300) and Japan’s Eiken test (about ¥5,800 to ¥16,500) — were very different from one another. The TOEFL was designed to evaluate the English abilities of students who want to attend American schools, while the Cambridge test seemed geared toward British English. The journalists reported experiencing significant challenges in the listening and speaking portions. One reporter said she couldn’t understand the recorded lecture on the TOEFL exam. The Cambridge test was difficult because of “rhythms” that the examinees weren’t used to. The Eiken exam was easier if only because the explanations were provided in Japanese. The reporters did OK on some parts of the test and poorly on others. On the six-level Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which the ministry will use to evaluate the results of the private tests, their scores were fairly low, and their conclusions were that the new system would not be effective in judging students’ English communication abilities. Also, applicants can take up to two tests during the prescribed testing period and then submit the results of the test they scored higher on, which means they can game the system. Gaming the system is probably what Japan’s English-language instruction industry wants and whatever improvements the new testing policy will make in terms of language ability in the long run, it is definitely a pot of gold for private education companies — and not just testing services. Last March, Kyodo News reported on an increase in the number of students at English conversation schools who were Japanese elementary school teachers . In 2011, the education ministry approved “foreign-language activities” for fifth- and sixth-year elementary school students. The policy will be expanded to third- and fourth-year students in 2020, while for fifth and sixth graders, English will become an officially graded subject. In response, more Japanese elementary school teachers, who typically cover all subjects, feel they need to sharpen their English communication skills because speaking will be a central part of the program. The issue was discussed on the Sept. 22 edition of the Video News web program. Because high school students who want to enter university will have to take private tests to evaluate their speaking and writing skills, there will be more pressure on junior and senior high school English teachers who are not native speakers. During the discussion, sociologist Shinji Miyadai said that, according to conventional wisdom, native speakers should teach conversation, which means more students will be going to private conversation schools, too, but only for the purpose of getting a good score on the English tests used for university entrance. Masahiko Abe, a professor at the University of Tokyo who recently published a book deriding the government’s approach to English-language study , said during the Video News discussion that making students take private tests only benefits the English instruction industry. As the Asahi reporters noted, the tests are so different in terms of what they evaluate that there’s no consistency from one to another in terms of results when universities decide which students will take their tests. More to the point, Abe said, the government’s approach will not accomplish its stated mission, which is to improve students’ abilities to interact with the English-speaking world. Testing the four language skills separately will not tell the evaluator much about the examinee’s ability to communicate. Such tests can only diagnose specific problems that may need fixing. When you use such tests for university entrance purposes, it effectively makes the process a competition, which means that nothing is going to change after 2020. It will just be more expensive.

english
english-language education
university entrance examinations


Little buzz in Japan over Canada's move to legalize marijuana

Abstract: Japan’s media coverage of Canada’s Oct. 17 announcement that possession and use of marijuana would be legalized — subject to certain restrictions — has been mostly brief and low-key. To access the best source about marijuana in Japanese, I suggest you buy a subscription to the Japan Medical Abstracts Society, which operates Ichushi Web. Enter marifana (marijuana) into the search window and you’ll get 562 hits for research studies and academic papers in which the wacky weed figures. To avoid the outlay, I managed to cajole a professor at the Kobe University School of Medicine to summarize what he found in the database. “In the past, taimasō (hemp) was openly cultivated in Japan,” replies Dr. Naohiro Hohashi. “Its fibers were utilized in the making of clothing, for fishing implements, and even for producing the shimenawa (sacred ropes) that are fastened to the gates of Shinto shrines and so on. Its seeds were added to shichimi (a popular food seasoning) and used for bird feed. “With the implementation of a law prohibiting its use in 1946, however, possession of cannabis sativa, as well as its sale, cultivation and so on became illegal.” Hohashi says the tone of the published medical studies concerning marijuana is overwhelmingly negative, maintaining that users may be susceptible to memory loss and hallucinations. Another concern, he adds, is the ease with which users become listless or emotionally detached, which are characteristic symptoms of the amotivational syndrome. “At present,” he says, “anyone who desires to cultivate marijuana ( taima ) in Japan must obtain the permission of the governor of the relevant prefecture. Presently some 40 individuals (mostly farmers) have been permitted to cultivate the plant, and another 300 or so, including law enforcement officials, have been authorized to use it for research. As the law currently stands, utilization of marijuana-based products for medical use is illegal.” While research into cannabinoid, a biologically active substance present in marijuana, has been ongoing, Japan is the only country among G10 members with an outright ban on use of marijuana for medical purposes. “Research has been applied to such diseases as multiple sclerosis, spinal injuries, diseases of the spine, cancer, AIDS, severe arthritis, epilepsy, among others,” Hohashi says. “It is actually being prescribed to patients. In Japan, however, a fixed view persists that ‘marijuana is bad.’ For such a view to change, evidence of its efficacy, and adverse reactions, from medical and pharmacological perspectives will be needed.” In February 2007, Japan’s Otsuka Pharmaceuticals announced it had licensed the cannabinoid drug Sativex from GW Pharmaceuticals to conduct research, which is done in the United States. In October 2015, Otsuka announced that the results of its latest trials, on treatment of pain in patients with advanced cancer, had been inconclusive. Friday (Nov. 9) was something less than sanguine, reporting on Canada’s move with the headline “Addicts tripping out wander the streets aimlessly: A terrifying future awaits with the opening of marijuana sales in Canada.” At the top of the page was a photo of a long queue of customers outside a branch of Quebec Cannabis Society in Montreal. “Marijuana can impair memory and learning functions and its prolonged abuse may affect the brain, leading to serious health issues,” Dr. Masahiko Funada, director of the Department of Drug Dependence Research at the National Institute of Mental Health, told the magazine, pointing out that unlike many other types of drugs, marijuana can be cultivated without technical knowhow or special equipment. “We’re concerned that legalization in Canada may lead to more Japanese taking interest in it, and after using it in Canada more of them will become habitual users and bring it back to Japan,” he said. Former health ministry official Ryoji Takahama told Friday that prosecutions for marijuana possession in Japan, at about 3,000 per year, have been increasing since 2014. “Interceptions by customs at ports of entry are probably just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “Usage in Japan is definitely on the increase.” Takahama attributes the recent spread to wider availability of seeds, which he says are easier to conceal yet enable “large-scale propagation.” “There are a lot of transactions going on with people who sell the seeds via the internet,” he added. “At present, investigations have been lagging.” The News Scramble column in Shukan Jitsuwa (Nov. 8) quoted a Japanese journalist based in the U.S., who said: “In Japan, marijuana is treated as a ‘narcotic drug’ together with amphetamines, heroin, cocaine and so on, but in North America it is understood to be different. In Canada there are many who say they have never smoked tobacco but have smoked marijuana, and it’s said to be easier for minors to obtain than alcohol or cigarettes.” In a survey of people aged 15 and above taken earlier this year in Canada, 14 percent said they “had used marijuana within the past three months” and, of these, 56 percent said they “smoked it on a daily or weekly basis.” The basis for Canada’s decision to legalize pot, Shukan Jitsuwa explains, is to cut off the profits being made by criminal organizations by putting distribution in the hands of the state. The move has led the Japanese Consulate in Vancouver to issue a warning to the effect that possession or purchase of marijuana will be treated as a criminal offense, and that the law can affect Japanese not only at home, but in some cases “be applied to those outside the country.” Shukan Jitsuwa concludes: “In countries where it’s legal, chocolates and other types of candy containing marijuana are being sold. Readers should exercise caution not to mistakenly purchase and carry them back to Japan.”


Shibuya's Halloween havoc may tarnish future festivities

Abstract: Less than a decade ago, finding any sort of Halloween celebration in Tokyo would have been tough. Then, suddenly, October revelry was everywhere you looked in the capital. And in 2018, the spookiest event of the year has evolved once again in Japan: It’s now being held up as an example of hedonism by those arguing that society is in terminal decline. Well, not really Halloween per se. Most people still love creative costumes , children dressed up as just about anything and animals getting into the spirit of the event. We’re talking about Halloween celebrations in Shibuya , which exploded online last week after a steady stream of pictures and videos landed on social media highlighting debauchery in the neighborhood. Like many viral stories online, the internet reaction wasn’t only focused on a pop-up party gone wrong with a case of vehicular destruction thrown into the mix. Japanese netizens have always had an uneasy relationship with these types of large unofficial gatherings leading up to and including Oct. 31. There’s a general annoyance at what happens when thousands of people come together to stand around and drink (and inevitably leave a bunch of trash in the streets). Footage from a TV show about then-nascent Halloween happenings remains a meme online, primarily an interview with a guy who thinks it’s all pretty stupid. Still, Halloween celebrations in Shibuya this year gave netizens a series of attention-grabbing images and videos to latch on to. Let’s go down the list: People jumping on cars ; scuffles featuring folk dressed as Waldo ; punters screaming at cops; an older man taking creepy pictures of women ; revelers pouring water into a ticket machine at a ramen restaurant ( they apologized ); trash galore ; police arresting more than a dozen for groping, assault and theft ; and a defining clip that might be associated with Halloween celebrations in Shibuya for years to come: a group of people on Sunday dancing on a truck , flipping it over — and then dancing on it again . In the days that followed, additional footage appeared on YouTube showing the driver actually beckoning people to climb up onto the bed of his truck. As one commenter noted, however, he didn’t urge them to push the vehicle over. These uploads left Halloween bathed in an extremely negative light, even to the point where the usually “awww, shucks”-inducing footage of people (and mascots ) cleaning up the next day failed to cheer folks up. Many posted comments such as “ Japan is over ” under the most-shared clip of the truck being turned over, and numerous others on Twitter expressed similar sentiments . Others compared the scenes to a post-apocalyptic world from the anime “Fist Of The North Star.” A variety of media organizations broadcast this footage to even more viewers, including traditional television networks. Online publications, however, were able to offer the widest perspectives. One popular story, written by a reporter for Spa! but shared on Livedoor News , offered further details from the front lines. Huffington Post Japan really leaned into it, offering summaries of the madness alongside further reports of how officials reacted . Blogos , among others, noted how Halloween doesn’t provide an economic boost for the neighborhood. Yahoo Japan went so far as to label it a mistake . Mainstream media tried to uncover the reasons behind the chaos, while regular online users attempted to identify the people involved. Whereas TV programs blurred faces, Twitter users posted screenshots in an effort to locate those who participated in the Halloween havoc. A few offered suggestions on how to fix Halloween in Shibuya — the most inspired suggestion being to make it more like a traditional matsuri festival. But assessing blame — namely, treating Halloween celebrations in Shibuya this year as an opportunity to push one’s own views onto a situation — took priority. Young people , in particular, received a lot of flak . You’d expect non-Japanese participants to bear the brunt of numerous false accusations, but that wasn’t really the case (with the exception of a few ultranationalists). If anything, many expressed concern about how this would actually look to those visiting the country , with others pointing out that several non-Japanese individuals had actually appeared to try and stop the truck from being flipped over . Many online pointed to a different external source of fear: Saitama . They believed that people living in the prefectures outside of the capital were actually responsible for causing the most damage. The best argument, however, was presented by Roadsider’s Weekly’s Facebook page, which said the main culprit for the carnage was Shibuya itself , having lost any sense of tradition worth protecting because of rampant redevelopment. It feels practically plastic, so who would respect it, especially when pushed over the edge by a few too many Strong Zeros? Blame aside, Halloween celebrations in Shibuya in 2018 appear to have left something of a stink on such celebratory gatherings, and the authorities are likely to take a long, hard look at this next year ( local authorities are already considering charging revelers to take part in festivities in the future ). Some online suggested that it might be better for Japan to embrace the American tradition of trick-or-treating. After all, kids getting candy from police officers does tend to leave a better impression on social media.


British woman sues Ritsumeikan University over power harassment

Abstract: A British woman has filed a damages lawsuit against Ritsumeikan University, alleging that it failed to reprimand male professors who made remarks about her that constituted harassment and prevented her promotion. Blake Hayes is demanding ¥70 million in compensation from the operator of the university. The lawsuit was filed with the Kyoto District Court on Thursday. She became an associate professor of international studies at the university in 2009 and was nominated for the position of professor in 2015. But her potential promotion was voted down after two male professors criticized her at a faculty meeting, saying she is “high-handed” and “presses her opinion on others,” according to her claim. They also made remarks suggesting she had forged her doctorate. The university recognized those remarks as power harassment last year but did not punish the men and also did not hold another vote on her promotion. Hayes left the university the same year. Hayes told a news conference in Kyoto after filling the suit that she wanted the public to know that she is not the only woman being harassed and that it is not something people have to bear. The operator, Ritsumeikan Trust, said Thursday it cannot comment on the matter because it has yet to receive the complaint.

british
power harassment
ritsumeikan
blake hayes


Japan Times 1918: Tokyo celebrates the Allies' victory in World War I

Abstract: 100 YEARS AGO Thursday, Nov. 21 1918 Tokyo celebrates the Allies’ victory in WWI THE JAPAN TIMES Today the citizens of the capital of Japan rejoice with the Allies, of whom Japan has been so important a member, and celebrate the triumph of their common cause. The city will be decorated with a flood of flags by day and illuminations at night and cheers of “banzai” over the glorious termination of the great war will be heard on every hand. Enormous crowds will stream into Hibiya Park and neighborhood especially, and other parts of the city throughout the day. The municipal celebration at Hibiya Park will commence at 2 p.m. Leading citizens and guests specially invited will assemble at 1 p.m. The proceedings will begin with music by the army and navy bands after which Viscount Tajiri, mayor of Tokyo, will read an address of congratulations before the guests, including the members of the diplomatic corps. H.E. the British Ambassador Sir Conyngham Greene, on behalf of the Allies’ ambassadors and ministers, will deliver a congratulatory address, to be followed by the “Kimigayo.” Then, at the instance of Mayor Tajiri, three “banzai” will be given in honor of H.M. the Emperor, to be followed by similar cheers for the rulers of the Allied nations called for by Mr. Hara, premier. Mayor Tajiri will then propose similar cheers in honor of the Allied armies. This will conclude the formal part of the program. Two fine arches have been erected at the Hibiya and Saiwai gates, beautifully decorated with chrysanthemum flowers and Allied flags. A great tent has been pitched over the garden at the back of the bandstand, to be used as a dining hall. Various interesting fancy decorations have been constructed in the park. Interesting entertainments will go on for two days between noon and 9 o’clock in the evening. Among others, there will be kagura and daikagura dances; niwaka dances; juvenile fencing dances; popular theatricals by the Soganoya troupe; comic dances; kappore dances; cinema and moving picture shows; and fireworks at the park. Balloon flying will be held between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. for two days. 75 YEARS AGO Friday, Nov. 26, 1943 Tojo’s daughters lead busy life on home front THE JAPAN TIMES “A worker’s busy life is our life,” says Mrs. Katsuko Tojo, wife of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, in way of instructing her family. Mrs. Tojo’s daughters, Mitsue, 26, Makie, 21, and the two younger girls, Sachie and Kimie, have taken their mother’s words to heart in an endeavor to show the fighters at the front that the people at home, including the women, are all out to win the war. Mitsue, who is talented in needlework and knitting, has been mobilized by the family for the task of making shirts for father and sweaters for the younger girls. As old clothes are turned into new creations by Mitsue’s nimble fingers, it is no wonder that the prime minister’s family has not purchased new wearing apparel since the start of the war. Makie helps her elder sister with the cooking and it is said that even when visitors are invited to dinner the dishes are prepared at home. Mitsue is the leader of the Kojimachi women’s corps of the Dai Nippon Youth Corps. This summer, she and her younger sister worked in a certain munitions factory for one month, but as they entered under assumed names, no one knew that they were the daughters of the prime minister. 50 YEARS AGO Sunday, Nov. 10, 1968 33% of Japanese men drink nightly: survey THE JAPAN TIMES One out of every three Japanese adults takes an alcoholic drink with supper. And 70 percent of men and 10 percent of women smoke. These are some of the findings obtained in a 1966 health survey conducted by the Health and Welfare Ministry and released Saturday. The survey was conducted in October 1966 on a sample of 240,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s total. The survey also showed that two out of three families own refrigerators and the motion picture is the most popular form of entertainment. One-third of the males over 20 years of age drink liquor every night, another one-third drink sometimes and the remainder seldom drink. Nine percent of women drink sometimes, 2 percent every day and others only seldom. Among smokers, 50 percent of men consume 10 to 19 cigarettes a day, and 40 percent of women between five and nine. 25 YEARS AGO Sunday, Nov. 21, 1993 Nakamura comes up No. 1 in place names THE JAPAN TIMES The most frequent place name in the nation is Nakamura, followed by Shinden and Hara, according to a scientist at the National Sciences Museum. Hiroo Kanai, 63, head of the botanical studies section at the museum, picked up all place names, except the names of administrative districts, from 4,422 maps at 1/25,000 scale published by the Geographical Survey Institute. The total reached about 385,000 names. He found 715 places called Nakamura, followed by Shinden at 677 and Hara at 591. The list was followed by Honcho at 423, Hongo at 402, Shinmachi at 396, Tanaka at 376, Kimura at 355, Nakajima at 346 and Baba at 344. Kannai hit on the idea of making an index of place names to facilitate checking labels of plant specimens. He had students list all the place names and had a computer company put the data into a computer. The database facilitates sorting the names by kanji characters and lists of place names containing a particular kanji. The database shows there are 57 name places that include the kanji okami , which means “wolf.” Thirty-two are in the Tohoku region, 10 in Iwate Prefecture.

smoking
hideki tojo
alcohol
wwi
world war i
nakamura


Canadian held captive in Syria says Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda doesn't deserve criticism

Abstract: NEW YORK - A Canadian also held captive in Syria has said that freed Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda should not be criticized for doing his job. Yasuda, 44, who returned to Japan late last month after 40 months of captivity, has been criticized by some for putting himself in harm’s way by entering Syria alone. He was almost immediately taken hostage by a warring faction that then demanded a ransom for his release. “I think it is very important for journalists and humanitarians to go to areas where a lot of people don’t or can’t get to,” Sean Moore said in a telephone interview Thursday. “The truth has to be told somehow, and that is a journalist’s job.” “He (Yasuda) wasn’t carrying a handgun or an AK-47. He was there with a pen, and his punishment for carrying a pen was absolutely brutal and unnecessary,” Moore said. “Anybody that criticizes him truly doesn’t understand the situation,” said Moore, 48, a resident of Ontario who was freed in February after being held captive for about a month. Moore also faced criticism when he returned home. “Many said, ‘Sean Moore deserved it and should have been left to rot in hell.’ I was told I took the risk and now I should pay the price,” he said. “It is difficult to read and hear these comments.” Moore was taken hostage while trying to help a Canadian woman bring her two sons home from her ex-husband in Lebanon by taking them through Syria and to Turkey. “He (Yasuda) has been through literal hell. It is easy to put blinders on and walk away,” Moore said. Yasuda has said he and Moore were held at the same location, and Moore said Yasuda may have remembered his name because he said it every time guards threw food into his cell. The captivity was “a living hell,” including beatings, Moore said. He was confined in a 90-cm by 1.5 meter cell which was sometimes flooded, and he was fed rotting food. Moore said he did not see Yasuda at the facility since he was blindfolded and handcuffed any time his captors took him out of the cell. He also said his captors told him on the day of his release that they were Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. That group formed through a merger of several groups including the Nusra Front.

kidnapping
terrorism
syria
jumpei yasuda


Mahathir and Cheney among those to receive national honors

Abstract: The government said Saturday it will bestow honors at its annual fall event on 4,079 citizens and 135 foreign nationals for their achievements in various fields, including music, politics and business. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen will be among the foreign recipients from 58 countries and regions who are being recognized for their achievements . Mahathir, 93, who promoted his “Look East” policy of learning from Japan’s work ethic while in office between 1981 and 2003, will receive the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers, the highest decoration that will be awarded. He returned to his former office this year. Cheney, 77, and Cohen, 78, will join other former senior U.S. officials who have been honored by Japan for their roles in enhancing the security alliance between the two countries. Both will be conferred the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun. Among Japanese recipients, Takashi Imai, former president of what is now part of Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., and Juro Saito, a former president of the House of Councilors, will receive the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers. Imai, 88, also headed the nation’s most powerful business lobby, Keidanren. Saito, 78, presided over the Upper House for five years from 1995.

awards
dick cheney
mahathir mohamad
william cohen


Bahrain opposition chief gets life in jail over Qatar spy case

Abstract: DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Bahrain’s appeals court sentenced the head of the country’s Shiite opposition movement to jail for life Sunday over charges of spying for rival Persian Gulf state Qatar, a judicial source said. Sheikh Ali Salman, who headed the now-outlawed Al-Wefaq movement, had been acquitted by the high criminal court in June, a verdict the public prosecution appealed. The latest ruling on Sunday can also be appealed. Bahrain, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, severed all ties with Qatar in 2017, banning their citizens from travel to or communication with the emirate over what they say are Doha’s ties to both Iran and radical Islamist groups. Salman is currently serving a four-year sentence in a separate case — “inciting hatred” in the kingdom, which has seen mainly Shiite protests against the Sunni monarchy since 2011. In November, Salman and two other members of Al-Wefaq were charged with working for Qatari intelligence with the aim of overthrowing the Bahraini government. King Hamad has announced parliamentary elections on November 24 in Bahrain. Members of dissolved opposition parties, including Al-Wefaq and the secular Al-Waad group, are banned from running. The Sunni-ruled Persian Gulf state has been hit by waves of unrest since 2011, when security forces crushed Shiite-led protests demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister. Opposition movements have been outlawed and hundreds of dissidents have been imprisoned — with many stripped of their nationality. Bahrain last year ratified a constitutional amendment granting military courts the authority to try civilians charged with terrorism, a term that is loosely defined by the Bahraini penal code. In June, the kingdom amended its law on political rights, prohibiting “leaders and members of political associations dissolved for violating the kingdom’s constitution or its laws” from running in legislative elections. Bahrain, a key ally of the United States and home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, accuses Shiite Iran of provoking unrest in the kingdom. Iran denies the allegations. The United Nations and rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticized the Bahraini monarchy over its treatment of protesters. Amnesty and HRW categorise Salman and other jailed opposition leaders prisoners of conscience.


Aging Tokyo town lures young residents with offers of houses and land

Abstract: An inconspicuous wooden teahouse stands midway on a winding road that connects the center of a remote mountainous town in western Tokyo to a scenic lake that supplies water to the capital. Inside the old Japanese-style residence, there are several mismatching tables and chairs on a tatami mat floor, where hikers and bikers can take a break along the roughly 9-kilometer route between Okutama Station and Lake Okutama. Naoko Ida and her husband, Takayuki, who moved to the town several years ago from Kawasaki, opened the store last year after reforming a 100-year-old house they bought as part of the town’s rejuvenation program. This is the second used home the couple acquired in Okutama through programs aimed at luring young settlers to the town, where half the residents are 65 years old or above. “We were living at my parents’ home and were looking for a place to live on our own,” said Naoko Ida, 45. “We wanted to live close to nature somewhere in the Kanto region and we really liked Okutama when we drove here.” Joined by her 33-year-old husband, their two teenage daughters and 5-year-old son, the family first moved into a town-managed apartment three years ago and soon found a five-room house with a garden under a program in which the ownership of the dwelling and land will be transferred to them when they have lived there for 15 years. Last year, the town also matched the family with the house they turned into the cafe, about a 15-minute drive from their residence. Families with children or young couples planning to have them are welcome additions to the aging town. “Ever since Okutama town was created by a merger in 1955, the population has been continually decreasing,” said Kazutaka Niijima, head of the town’s office for youth settlement measures. The town’s population in 1960 totaled nearly 13,800, but the figure has dwindled to around 5,200 of late. Okutama — formed from what used to be the town of Hikawa and the villages of Kori and Ogochi — sits on the western end of Tokyo and has an area of 226 square kilometers, which equals about a tenth of the land area of the metropolis. The entire town is part of Chichibu-Tama-Kai National Park, so nature has been preserved. Niijima said Okutama was once a bustling town on the back of the forestry industry, but its fortunes declined as wood prices fell due to the liberalization of imports along with reduced demand for lumber. That fall in demand was due to wood being replaced by other materials, such as steel, for construction work, and by other types of fuel. “People who worked here had to look for other jobs elsewhere,” Niijima said. “As young people left, the older generations were left behind. We have come to a point where the town has only one person in the working-age population for each elderly person.” Nationwide, there were about 2.2 people for each elderly person, or those over the age 65, in 2017, according to the Cabinet Office. Niijima’s office, set up in 2016, is running a number of programs, including the housing plans used by the Ida family, aimed at attracting younger residents in the hopes of increasing the proportion of children in the population and eventually having a larger ratio of young people. The town utilizes donated vacant houses and finds suitable families to live there while offering prospective residents up to ¥2 million for renovations. Some such programs are geared toward married couples aged 45 or below and families where the parents are 50 years old or below with a child who is of junior high school age or younger. The town also offers generous child care support, including subsidizing all medical costs for children through high school. The Idas say they are enjoying their life in Okutama but noted that not everything is rosy. For example, the renovation subsidy for their home has not been enough to cover all the alterations they did, which totaled about ¥5 million. Within Japan, people have come from as far as Hokkaido, and families that moved to the town through the rejuvenation programs have included some who were originally from the Philippines and China. Now the town is about to welcome newcomers from New York — Shinichi Kashihara, 50, his 39-year-old Canadian wife, Samara Stob Kashihara, and their 5-year-old son, Issa. “I had been thinking about changing our environment, as my child was soon school age, and moving to Japan, as my parents there were getting old,” said Kashihara, a fashion business consultant who has lived in New York for 20 years. “That’s when I heard about Okutama’s project from an acquaintance and became interested in it.” He first contacted the town by email in February this year and applied to live in a vacant four-room house that happened to become available several months later. A few visits on, the Kashihara family was given the chance to live in the 50-year-old dwelling. “My job is basically mobile so I plan to continue it even after we move to Okutama,” he said. “With the Tokyo Olympics coming up (in 2020), I’m hoping to be able to engage in international projects from my base there.” Okutama’s Niijima said he hopes to make housing available more regularly, but he said this can be difficult because the programs depend on donated homes. “Vacant houses will become industrial waste if they are not utilized, and we believe using them for our resettlement measures is effective in turning them into resources and preventing them from becoming abandoned,” he said. “We hope people who want to live in harmony with nature will move here.”


Tokyo stocks tumble on U.S.-China trade friction

Abstract: Stocks turned sharply lower Monday, with investors becoming cautious again over the course of U.S.-China trade friction. The key Nikkei 225 fell 344.67 points, or 1.55 percent, to end at 21,898.99. It jumped 556.01 points Friday. The Nikkei fell below 22,000 on a closing basis after retaking the key threshold Friday for the first time in seven market days. The Topix, which covers all first-section issues on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, closed 18.37 points, or 1.11 percent, down at 1,640.39. It gained 26.71 points Friday. The market came under heavy selling pressure after U.S. National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow denied a media report Friday that Donald Trump had asked senior officials of his administration to draft a possible deal with China on trade. Also, massive selling of Fast Retailing, a heavyweight Nikkei 225 component, helped send the key yardstick sharply lower, market sources said. The clothing chain operator was sold after the company reported Friday a 10.0 percent year-on-year fall in same-store sales at its flagship Uniqlo stores for October. Following Kudlow’s denial of the media report, market participants “have begun to have doubts about whether they can be optimistic” over the U.S.-China dispute, Yoshihiko Tabei, chief analyst at Naito Securities Co., said. A wide range of issues posted losses amid the rekindled worries about trade tensions between the world’s biggest and second-biggest economies, an official of a bank-linked securities firm noted. Shanghai stocks’ sluggish performance Monday battered investor sentiment in the Tokyo market, Hiroaki Kuramochi, chief market analyst at Saxo Bank Securities Ltd., pointed out. “Buying was held in check ahead of the U.S. midterm elections” Tuesday, he also said. Falling issues overwhelmed rising ones 1,372 to 656 on the first section, while 83 issues were unchanged. Volume dropped to 1.489 billion shares from 1.818 billion Friday. Fast Retailing closed 4.76 percent lower following the announcement of the weaker October sales at the Uniqlo brand. Hitachi Chemical was downbeat after unveiling on Friday the discovery of additional cases of product quality inspection fraud. System integration service provider NTT Data and drugmaker Astellas were among other major losers. By contrast, apparel shop operator Adastria was upbeat after reporting Friday that its sales in October rose 2.4 percent from the year before on a same-store basis. Also on the plus side were mobile phone carrier SoftBank Group and beverage bottler Sapporo Holdings.


Dollar retakes ¥113 in Tokyo but topside capped

Abstract: The dollar rose back above ¥113 in Tokyo trading on Monday, but its topside was capped as market players retreated to the sidelines ahead of the U.S. midterm elections Tuesday. At 5 p.m., the dollar stood at ¥113.17-18, up from ¥112.96-97 at the same time Friday. The euro was at $1.1382-1382, down from $1.1435-1436, and at ¥128.83-83, down from ¥129.18-19. The dollar moved on a firm note around ¥113.10-20 in early trading after topping ¥113 in New York on Friday thanks to strong U.S. job data for October. Later in the morning, the greenback was caught in a tug of war between purchases by Japanese importers and selling sparked by a tumble of the Nikkei 225 average, traders said. The U.S. currency rose above ¥113.30 in the afternoon thanks to purchases for position adjustments before losing some of its momentum in late trading due to profit-taking, they said. “Stepping up dollar buying is difficult as a wait-and-see mood is increasing prior to the U.S. midterm elections,” an official of a bank-linked securities firm said. The official added that dollar buying is expected to take the upper hand after the closely watched elections. Meanwhile, a currency broker noted that while the Republican Party is seen maintaining more than half of the seats in the Senate, the Democratic Party is expected to win the House of Representatives. If this happens and President Donald Trump faces difficulties managing his administration as a result, the dollar could come under selling versus the yen, the broker said.


Iris Ohyama makes first foray into Japan's TV market

Abstract: Household product maker Iris Ohyama Inc. said Monday it will start selling television sets later this month in the firm’s first foray into the TV market, aiming to boost its consumer electronics business. The Sendai-based company plans to roll out its Luca-brand TVs on Nov. 22, the company said. The lineup will include four 4K options, including a 55-inch model. Prices will range from ¥79,800 to ¥148,000, about 30 to 40 percent cheaper than comparable models offered by major competitors. In addition, three other high-definition models will go on sale, and the company said it will consider new releases in 2019 after examining the sales results for the seven models to be released this month. Iris Ohyama plans to design the TVs and outsource production to a Chinese maker. The company also announced it will open a new office in Tokyo at the end of this month as a hub for research and development, as well as for sales. The move is part of the company’s effort to double its annual sales to ¥1 trillion by 2022. “We need to handle (TVs and other electronics products for entertainment) to achieve ¥1 trillion (in sales),” Iris Ohyama President Akihiro Ohyama said in an interview. But he added the company “has no plans to sell goods with very short product cycles” such as personal computers and smartphones. Iris Ohyama previously focused on storage, pet and gardening products. In 2009, the company started selling consumer electronics goods. In 2017, it released air conditioners. The company has been active in hiring engineers formerly employed at major electronics makers to develop and design its own products.


Reputation precedes Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo' as U.S. trial nears

Abstract: NEW YORK - He is accused of having a hand in dozens of murders, of using his drug cartel to smuggle more than 200 tons of cocaine into the United States, even pulling off running the massive operation from behind bars. That’s when he wasn’t busy escaping from jail — twice. The mythical criminal pedigree of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who was extradited in 2017 to face U.S. drug conspiracy charges, has sparked security concerns at his upcoming New York City trial that at times have drawn as much attention as the case’s sensational allegations. A look at those concerns for a trial that is starting Monday with jury selection. Opening statements are likely Nov. 13. ___ WITNESSES IN THE CROSS-HAIRS Prosecutors say Guzman was in the habit of ordering the killings of anyone who got in his way during his heyday in Mexico as boss of the Sinaloa cartel. In his way now is a lineup of government witnesses who survived the wave of violence and are expected to give details about the ruthless way he kept power for 20 years in the cutthroat world of international drug trafficking. The defense says the witnesses are the true bad guys whose testimony shouldn’t be trusted. The names of the witnesses have been blacked out on court documents with prosecutors saying their identities need to be protected because their cooperation could put them in the cross-hairs of a vengeful cartel. According to court papers, some are being held in special jail units for their protection, while others are in witness protection programs. The list of people who could turn up on the witness stand is long. Two standout possibilities are twin brothers Pedro and Margarito Flores, former Chicago-based narcotics wholesalers who did business with Guzman before their arrest in 2008. They agreed to cooperate and record phone conversations with Guzman about the size of shipments smuggled on boats and airplanes. In one, a voice identified as Guzman’s asks, “How much can you get rid of in a month?” The now imprisoned brothers paid a steep price for flipping: Prosecutors say in 2009 their father was murdered in Mexico by a cartel hit team. ___ FORTIFYING THE COURTHOUSE At pretrial hearings leading to the trial, heavily armed federal officers and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled outside. Anyone trying to attend the hearings was put through airport-style metal detectors at the courthouse entrance and at the door of the courtroom itself. The judge also agreed with prosecutors that the jury for the case should be kept anonymous, a measure typical in terrorism or mob cases where jury intimidation is a concern. No one’s hiding the ominous nature of the case from potential jurors. Questions for them on an initial screening form ask if they’ve ever heard of “El Chapo” along with, “Have you, or has anyone close to you, ever felt fearful of or threatened by people who you thought were associated with drug crimes?” Jurors also will be escorted to and from the courthouse by federal officers and sequestered from the public while inside. As a reason, the judge cited prosecutors’ contention that Guzman’s cartel “employs ‘sicarios,’ or hit men, who carried out hundreds of acts of violence, including murders, assaults and kidnappings.” ___ KEEPING AN EYE ON EL CHAPO After Guzman was brought to New York, authorities here decided he should be housed in solitary confinement in a high-security wing of a federal jail in Manhattan that has held notorious terrorists and mobsters. Central to that calculation was Guzman’s history of giving directions to his lieutenants from Mexican jails and credentials as a two-time escapee there. The second time was via a mile-long (1.6 km-long) tunnel dug to the shower in his cell. The logistical problem for his keepers: The case is being prosecuted across the East River in federal court in Brooklyn. For pre-trial hearings, authorities opted to transport him to and from jail by shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge to make way for a police motorcade that included a SWAT team and an ambulance, all tracked by helicopters. The judge indicated he thinks the time and expense involved would add up to a logistical nightmare — and an inconvenience for New Yorkers who rely on the bridge to commute — for a trial expected to last as long as four months. He said there would be adjustments, but didn’t elaborate. There’s now speculation that a special cell for Guzman has been set up in the bowels of the courthouse where he will spend the night after his days in court. But no one is saying. For security reasons, of course.

murder
drugs
cocaine
joaquin el chapo guzman


Mitsubishi Materials near to finalizing compensation fund for wartime forced labor in China

Abstract: BEIJING - Mitsubishi Materials Corp. is in the final stages of setting up a fund that will be used to pay compensation to thousands of Chinese people forced to labor in Japan during World War II, it was learned Sunday. The fund represents the final hurdle in a settlement that the Japanese company reached with the main groups of Chinese claimants in June 2016. Under the agreement, Mitsubishi Materials will pay 100,000 yuan (about $15,000) to each of the victims and their families. In accordance with the settlement, the fund will manage the money paid from the company to the 3,765 victims, and confirm eligibility for bereaved families with inheritance rights. The company aims to have the fund up and running by the end of the current year, which marks the 40th anniversary of the peace and friendship treaty between Japan and China, according to sources close to the arrangements. The fund, to be called the Historical Human Rights Peace Fund, will be jointly launched by Japan and China, the sources also said. Given the number of victims, the total settlement will reach into tens of millions of dollars. Those from China forced to work in Japan by Mitsubishi Materials, which was known at the time as Mitsubishi Mining Corp., labored at coal mines. They were among some 39,000 Chinese nationals brought to the country against their will between 1943 and 1945 in line with a Japanese government decision to use them to compensate for a shortage of domestic labor. Due to deprivation and the conditions of their work, 6,830 of them died. Starting in the 1990s, Chinese survivors of forced labor and their families filed a series of compensation lawsuits against the Japanese government and firms involved. So far, Mitsubishi Materials has paid compensation to around 10 survivors. But as an organization to handle investigations regarding inheritance rights has yet to be established, no payments have been made to bereaved families. The discharge of those payments is likely to strongly influence other postwar compensation cases. In South Korea last week, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that ordered a Japanese steel firm to pay compensation to former forced laborers. The development brings into sharp contrast the differing approaches to wartime compensation in China and South Korea. According to sources familiar with Sino-Japan relations, a civic organization on the Chinese side has so far identified more than 1,000 bereaved families. Besides tracking down survivors and bereaved families whose whereabouts are unknown, Mitsubishi Materials also agreed to construct memorials at the sites where the company’s mines were located and organize memorial ceremonies. In the initial disbursement, Mitsubishi Materials is to pay ¥100 million (about $883,000) to cover the cost of constructing memorials and ¥200 million to fund probes into those who were forced into labor during the war but have not been officially accounted for in records. In the settlement agreement, Mitsubishi Materials expressed “painful reflection” and pledged to set up the fund for a “permanent, comprehensive solution” of the forced labor issue and “pass on the facts to future generations” by building memorials. However, the bereaved families of some victims have indicated that they plan to continue litigation against Mitsubishi Materials, with one lawyer saying that the plaintiffs represented in the case number over 100. After the end of World War II in 1945, Japan’s Foreign Ministry compiled an investigative report on Chinese forced labor that listed the names of all Chinese males who were brought to Japan.


More Japanese women turn to doulas for maternity support

Abstract: The country is seeing an increase in the number of nonmedical professionals known as doulas, who provide emotional and physical support to women before, during or after childbirth, amid a rise in nuclear families and mothers coping with solo parenting. The tasks performed by a doula — modern Greek for female helper — range from offering advice and comfort to taking care of household chores. About 180 doulas are active in 26 of the 47 prefectures, according to an association of such women. “Family lifestyles have become more diverse and so have the concerns of family members,” said Kimiko Nishi, a 53-year-old doula and former child care worker. With more couples working, and their parents too, Nishi has come across many mothers who don’t know how they will cope with child-raising. One such is Mami Tanaka, a pseudonym for a 36-year-old mother of two in Tokyo. Once a week for three hours, Nishi takes care of Tanaka’s 2-year-old son and 5-month-old daughter, and cooks while the art teacher paints in a different room. Tanaka sought help from a doula after returning to her job two months after giving birth. She could not expect her husband to help out with housework, child care and applying to nursery school because he works at a restaurant until midnight. Her mother, who lives in western Japan, did not wish to get involved in child care duties and in any case she and Tanaka are always fighting. “If I’d had my mother to help me, I think both us would have gone nuts,” Tanaka said. “We are like ‘escort runners’ for child rearing,” Nishi said, alluding to the guide runners who encourage and support visually impaired athletes. “Creating a situation where a mother can be herself will bring smiles to the whole family.” Doulas have already taken root in Europe and the United States, and were fully introduced to Japan in 2012, when the Japan Doula Association was established, providing classes and certification training. About 360 women have taken the courses to learn about the physical and emotional changes associated with pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period, as well as to hone their household chores. Doulas charge ¥2,000 to ¥3,000 per hour for their services, and some local governments in the Tokyo metropolitan area subsidize the cost. “We want to create a system that helps someone who wants to rely on others to do so, which we are doing by cooperating with municipalities and businesses,” said Kasumi Ushida, a director of the association.


Superrealistic face masks by Japan firm attract attention from facial-recognition system developers

Abstract: Superrealistic plastic face masks produced by a firm in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, have recently attracted attention at home and abroad, from facial-recognition system developers to a Saudi Arabian royal family member. “Look, it makes your heart pound, doesn’t it?” says Osamu Kitagawa, 60, president of Real-f Co., as he shows off a face mask. The masks — called Real Face — are made of plastic resin roughly 1 to 2 millimeters thick. Kitagawa says he came up with the idea of making realistic masks more than a decade ago, when he was developing copy machines at a major printing device manufacturer. “I wanted to make copies of human beings,” he said. “I wanted to make two-dimensional pictures into three dimensions. That would be more interesting.” After he left the firm in 2009, it took him two years to develop the unique technology to produce masks before establishing his own company. A mask prototype is first created by plaster using 3D facial data taken from photographs that is captured by a technology Kitagawa says is a trade secret. Details are then engraved on the plaster mask using a chisel, and plastic resin is stretched over it. It takes about two weeks to complete a mask, which replicates every facial detail, including skin color, pores and the eyes’ capillaries and irises. The company of five employees sells more than 100 masks a year. Its customers have included an advertising agency that uses masks of actors at promotional events. Facial-recognition system developers also order masks of their employees to test out their systems during the development stage. Additionally, a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family made an order so the family could put the mask on display as if it were a portrait. Kitagawa said he has also received orders from medical workers and people who have facial scarring due to accidents or surgeries so they can cover the markings. But the firm has not been able to respond to the requests because it has not yet developed a technology that makes it possible to produce the masks using soft materials such as silicone. “I hope to achieve this somehow,” he said. The mask costs ¥300,000 for the initial model and ¥60,000 each for additional copy. For details, contact the firm at 077-548-8808 or 090-5054-7291.


Malicious descriptions about North and South Korean groups temporarily displayed on Google Maps

Abstract: Malicious descriptions, such as one targeting the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon, were displayed temporarily on Google Maps, it was learned Sunday. Chongryon’s Tokyo headquarters was described as criminal on the online map, while the former Tokyo headquarters site of the Japanese opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP) was indicated as the Japan chapter of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. The descriptions were deleted by Friday, and their author remains unknown. On the map, the Mie Prefecture branch of the pro-Seoul Korean Residents Union in Japan, or Mindan, was labeled as an anti-Japan South Korean base. Chongryon’s Human Rights Association for Korean Residents in Japan said that the descriptions were “discriminatory and cannot be justified” and that Google’s responsibility as the map’s provider can be pursued. The SDP said, “Malicious postings should be restricted.” Inappropriate descriptions by users have temporarily appeared on Google Maps several times in the past. In 2015, three people were accused of posting information on the map describing the Atomic Bomb Dome in the city of Hiroshima as a nuclear test site. At the time, Google said it was strengthening its ability to detect inaccurate information and prevent incorrect descriptions. Information technology journalist Yo Mikami said that Google Maps is a public service used by many people and that Google has a social responsibility to ensure its accuracy and prevent expressions of hate. Companies and groups need to watch for improper descriptions on their websites by themselves, Mikami said. A Google spokesman said that steps are “being taken continuously to ensure that (Google Maps) is used safely.” Google will modify or delete inaccurate information on the map if it is notified, the spokesman said.


Kansai Electric attaches delivery lockers to power poles to gauge demand

Abstract: SEIKA, KYOTO PREF. - Kansai Electric Power Co. said Thursday it has attached delivery lockers to power poles in Seika, a town in Kyoto Prefecture, to assess demand for such a service. The utility company intends to hear from users and examine the convenience of such lockers as it mulls whether to fully launch the service. The trial service will continue until March 15. Kansai Electric collaborated with Tokyo-based major delivery locker-maker Fulltime System Co., the Seika Municipal Government and delivery service firms Yamato Transport Co., Sagawa Express Co. and Japan Post Co. Delivery lockers were installed on three power poles on the sidewalk facing condominiums and within the grounds of the buildings. Some 30 families living in three condominium buildings in the town can use the service. If parcels are delivered to lockers while a registered user is not home, an email is sent to notify the user of the delivery. The user unlocks the locker and receives the parcel with a password or types of smart cards often used with transportation services. Delivery lockers at power poles will be useful when no space or power source is available to install such equipment at condominiums, people involved in the trial service said. In areas where Kansai Electric operates, there are some 2.7 million power poles. A Kansai Electric official said the service could make good use of power poles. It is the first time in Japan that power poles have been used for such a purpose.

delivery
kansai electric power
yamato transport
sagawa express


Nikkei jumps above 22,000 amid receding trade friction fears

Abstract: Stocks rebounded sharply on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday amid receding jitters over U.S.-China trade friction, sending the benchmark Nikkei above 22,000 for the first time in over one week. The 225-issue Nikkei average soared 556.01 points, or 2.56 percent, to end at 22,243.66, the first finish above 22,000 since Oct. 24. It plunged 232.81 points on Thursday. The Topix index of all first-section issues closed up 26.71 points, or 1.64 percent, at 1,658.76, after shedding 14.07 points the previous day. The Nikkei average retook 22,000 briefly in the morning following Wall Street’s advance Thursday, as concerns receded over the U.S.-China trade friction following telephone talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, market sources said. The key market indicator pared its early gains due to selling on a rally in early afternoon trading. But later, its gains expanded to over 600 points temporarily after a news report that Trump asked senior officials to draw up a possible deal with China on trade. “A compromise has come into sight” between the two countries, Mitsuo Shimizu, chief strategist at Aizawa Securities Co., said, referring to the news report. Market participants have waited for such a deal “for months,” Shimizu also said. He attributed Friday’s sharp rebound also to “purchases inspired by upward revisions” to earnings forecasts announced by major Japanese companies recently. In addition, investors bought back telecommunications issues that tumbled Thursday, brokers said. Rising issues overwhelmed falling ones 1,495 to 561 in the TSE’s first section, while 55 issues were unchanged. Volume rose to 1.818 billion shares from 1.782 billion shares on Thursday. China-linked issues, such as industrial equipment manufacturers Fanuc and Yaskawa Electric, were buoyant. Mobile phone carriers NTT Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank Group were also upbeat a day after their plunge. Semiconductor-related names, such as Tokyo Electron, Sumco and Shin-Etsu Chemical, were strong after their U.S. peers fared well in New York on Thursday. Railcar-maker Nippon Sharyo went limit-down with a 16.87 percent loss after announcing Thursday that an express train it made that crashed in Taiwan last month failed to meet part of the specifications set by the Taiwanese railway operator. Other major losers included automaker Suzuki and technology giant Sony. In index futures trading on the Osaka Exchange, the key December contract on the Nikkei average skyrocketed 690 points to end at 22,230.