Category Archives: Japan

Japan’s top ad agency indicted over Olympics bid-rigging scandal

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Dentsu Group charged after arrest of Tokyo 2020 committee official accused of rigging Games-related tenders

Japan’s biggest advertising agency and five other companies have been indicted for allegedly violating an anti-monopoly law, in a corruption scandal over allegations of bid-rigging during the Tokyo Olympics.

The indictment followed the arrest this month of a senior Tokyo 2020 organising committee official and three others who were accused of rigging a string of Olympic Games-related tenders.

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China and Japan meet for formal security talks to stabilise tensions

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Officials meet in Tokyo to discuss concerns at China’s cooperation with Russia and Japan’s military buildup

Chinese and Japanese officials met in Tokyo on Wednesday for formal security talks for the first time in four years, in a meeting aimed at stabilising increasingly strained relations.

In Japan’s national security strategy, released in December, China was described as “the greatest strategic challenge” to Japan’s peace and security.

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Spy balloon, UFO or Dragon Ball? Japan baffled by iron ball washed up on beach

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About 1.5 metres in diameter, the mysterious metal sphere has been the source of intense speculation online

Police and residents in a Japanese coastal town have been left baffled by a large iron ball that has washed up on a local beach, with authorities admitting they have no idea what it is – only that it isn’t about to explode.

The sphere, measuring about 1.5 metres in diameter, has been at the centre of fevered speculation since it washed up on Enshu beach in the city of Hamamatsu on the country’s Pacific coast, local media reports said.

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Truss urges west to safeguard Taiwan security ‘before it’s too late’

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In Tokyo speech to conservative lawmakers, former British PM issues warning about Chinese aggression

Liz Truss has used her first overseas speech since resigning as British prime minister to call on the west to safeguard Taiwan’s security and economy in the face of Chinese aggression “before it is too late”.

Speaking in Tokyo at a meeting of mainly conservative lawmakers that included the former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, Truss said Britain had been naive to court the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in 2015, adding that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as a warning of what happens when democracies fail to stand up to authoritarian regimes.

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Japan’s new whaling ‘mother ship’ being built to travel as far as Antarctica

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Company says vessel’s construction will help ‘pass on our whaling culture to the next generation’

A Japanese company is building a new whaling ship designed to travel as far as Antarctica, sparking fears commercial operations could resume in the Southern Ocean.

Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Plibsersek, reaffirmed the Albanese government’s commitment to a global moratorium on commercial whaling, while Greenpeace condemned the practice as “brutal and unnecessary”.

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Japan sees its number of islands double after recount

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Digital mapping leads to around 7,000 new islands being discovered though it’s unlikely to expand Japan’s territory, media reports say

It can’t be easy keeping count of the number of islands scattered around an area of more than 370,000 square kilometres, in a country that is regularly subjected to volcanic activity and extreme weather.

While Japan has seen the formation of new islands, and the quiet disappearance of another, geographers have said official statistics showing it is made up of around 6,000 islands are way off the mark.

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Japan says aerial objects spotted in recent years were likely Chinese spy balloons

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Defence ministry demands China’s government ‘confirm the facts’ after analysis of incidents since 2019 find objects were likely used for surveillance

A new analysis of unidentified aerial objects that flew over Japan’s airspace in recent years “strongly” suggests they were Chinese spy balloons, according to Tokyo’s defence ministry.

“After further analysis of specific balloon-shaped flying objects previously identified in Japanese airspace, including those in November 2019, June 2020 and September 2021, we have concluded that the balloons are strongly presumed to be unmanned reconnaissance balloons flown by China,” the defence ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday.

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Fukushima: Japan insists release of 1.3m tonnes of ‘treated’ water is safe

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Neighbouring countries and local fishers express concern as 12th anniversary of nuclear disaster looms

Almost 12 years have passed since the strongest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history resulted in a tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people along its north-east coast.

As the country prepares to mark the 11 March anniversary, one of the disaster’s most troubling legacies is about to come into full view with the release of more than 1m tonnes of “treated” water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

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Old-school backpacks too heavy, Japan’s pupils complain

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Sturdy leather bag known as randoseru can weigh 4-10kg when full, leaving students in pain and wanting something lighter

It’s a familiar sight every weekday morning and afternoon all over Japan: children as young as six creaking under the strain of a leather backpack crammed with textbooks.

The randoseru – a Japanese derivation of ransel, the obsolete Dutch word for backpack – is a fixture of primary school education, a repository for everything a child needs to get through a day at school.

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Japanese prime minister fires aide over anti-LGBTQ+ remarks

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Fumio Kishida says official’s comments ‘outrageous and completely incompatible with policies’

The Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has sacked an aide who said he would not want to live next to LGBTQ+ couples and that people would flee Japan if same-sex marriage was permitted.

In remarks reported by local media, Masayoshi Arai, an economy and trade official who joined Kishida’s staff as a secretary in October, said he did not even want to look at same-sex couples.

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Wave of ‘sushi terrorism’ grips Japan’s restaurant world

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Signature cuisine is at the centre of a police investigation after customers at revolving sushi restaurants posted video clips of themselves meddling with dishes

There are breaches of etiquette – drenching your rice in soy sauce, for one – and then there are heinous acts of “sushi terrorism”.

Japan’s signature cuisine is at the centre of a police investigation after customers at revolving sushi restaurants posted video clips of themselves interfering with food and playing pranks on other customers.

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Chip war: Japan and Netherlands expected to join US in ban on tech exports to China

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Washington officials appear to confirm deal to restrict export of semiconductor manufacturing technology to China

A Washington official has made the most direct comments by a US authority to date acknowledging the existence of a deal with Japan and the Netherlands for those countries to impose new restrictions on exports of chipmaking tools to China.

“We can’t talk about the deal right now,” said Don Graves, deputy commerce department secretary, on the sidelines of an event in Washington. “But you can certainly talk to our friends in Japan and the Netherlands.”

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Bizarre ‘whirlpool’ appears in night sky above Hawaii

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Phenomenon believed to have origins in launch of military GPS satellite from SpaceX in Florida

A camera on top of Hawaii’s tallest mountain has captured what looks like a spiral swirling through the night sky.

Researchers believe the strange phenomenon is linked to a military GPS satellite that launched from a SpaceX rocket in Florida.

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Japan and North Korea sound warning as deadly cold snap sweeps across Asia

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Extreme weather kills at least one person in Japan and more than 100 in Afghanistan while parts of China hit record low temperatures

Weather authorities in Japan and the Korean peninsula have issued warnings over freezing temperatures and gales that have killed at least one person, and stranded thousands.

Severe cold weather has already caused fatalities, havoc and record low temperatures across the region in the last fortnight, with at least 124 people dead in Afghanistan and record lows of -53C in northeastern China.

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Campaigners criticise Japan firm selling whale meat from vending machines

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Kyodo Senpaku opened ‘stores’ at two locations in Tokyo after successful trial

A Japanese whaling company has sparked an angry response from animal rights campaigners after it started selling whale meat from vending machines in an effort to boost consumption.

Kyodo Senpaku, whose vessels led Japan’s whaling fleet during its controversial expeditions to the Southern Ocean, opened its first kujira (whale meat) “stores” at two locations in Tokyo this month after a successful trial late last year.

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Japan’s ageing population poses urgent risk to society, says PM

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Fumio Kishida says country may be unable to function if birthrate does not rise

Japan’s low birthrate and ageing population pose an urgent risk to society, the country’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has said, as he pledged to address the issue by establishing a new government agency.

Birthrates are declining in many developed countries, but in Japan the issue is particularly acute because it has the world’s second highest proportion of people aged 65 and over, after the tiny state of Monaco, according to World Bank data.

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Japan PM aide told off by his ‘ashamed’ mother for putting hands in pockets on Biden trip

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Social media users said Seiji Kihara had bad manners and ‘more attitude than the prime minister’ but it was his mother’s comments that struck home

A senior aide to Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has apologised for putting his hands in his pockets during an official trip to the US, admitting that his mother had scolded him and told him she was “ashamed” of him.

Seiji Kihara, the deputy chief cabinet secretary, revealed on YouTube that his mother had read comments that he was “disgracing his parents” after he was caught with his hands in his trouser pockets as Kishida spoke to reporters outside Blair House in Washington.

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Fukushima: court upholds acquittals of three Tepco executives over disaster

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High court in Japan agreed defendants could not have predicted the massive tsunami that crippled the power plant and triggered a nuclear meltdown

Three former executives from the company that operates the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have had their not-guilty verdicts upheld by a court in Japan, dealing a blow to campaigners demanding the firm take legal responsibility for the disaster in March 2011.

The Tokyo high court on Wednesday cleared Tsunehisa Katsumata, the former chairman of Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), along with former vice-presidents Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto, of professional negligence resulting in death.

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Ex-Russian president suggests Japanese PM should ritually disembowel himself

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Dmitry Medvedev accuses Fumio Kishida of shameful subservience to US after Joe Biden meeting

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has accused Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida of shameful subservience to the US and suggested he should ritually disembowel himself.

His remarks on Saturday were the latest in a long line of shocking and provocative statements from Medvedev, who was once seen as a western-leaning reformer but has reinvented himself as an arch-hawk since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

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Japan’s PM vows to modernise military for new era of threats

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Fumio Kishida outlines step change in US-Japan security alliance after White House meeting with Joe Biden

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has pledged to modernise his country’s military alongside US president Joe Biden, warning that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had opened a dangerous new era and could embolden China.

Welcoming Kishida at the White House, Biden hailed the Japanese government’s announcement last month that it will double defence spending over the next five years and develop new capabilities.

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