Anal swabs cause ‘great psychological pain’, says Japan’s chief cabinet secretary
Tokyo has requested Beijing to stop taking anal swab tests for Covid-19 on Japanese citizens because the procedure causes psychological pain, a government spokesperson has said.
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Katsunobu Kato, said the government had not received a response that Beijing would change the testing procedure, so Japan would continue to ask China to alter the way of testing.
Continue reading...Tamayo Marukawa among 50 conservative MPs to urge local body not to support policy change
Japan’s minister for women’s empowerment and gender equality, Tamayo Marukawa, is among a group of conservative MPs who have opposed a legal change that would allow women to keep their birth name after marriage.
Japan is one of only a few industrialised countries where it is illegal for married couples to have different surnames. The country’s civil code, introduced in 1896, requires married couples to share a surname and while it does not stipulate which name they should adopt, in practice women take their husband’s name in 96% of cases.
Continue reading...Engine failure of a United Airlines Boeing prompts airlines in US and Japan to ground dozens of 777s
Boeing 777s have been grounded in the US and Japan after the US Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency airworthiness directive following a catastrophic engine failure on one of the planes in Denver on Saturday.
United Airlines said it was grounding all 24 of its Boeing 777s in active duty after one of its Boeing 777-200s had to make an emergency landing at the weekend, scattering engine debris across the ground.
Continue reading...LDP’s attempt to demonstrate gender equality after Olympic sexism row backfires
It was a move designed to show that Japan’s ruling party was committed to gender equality after the sexism row that forced one of its former prime ministers, Yoshiro Mori, to resign as head of Tokyo’s Olympic organising committee.
The time had come to give female members of the Liberal Democratic party (LDP) more prominence at key meetings, the party’s secretary general, Toshihiro Nikai, said this week, days after Mori had stepped down following his claim that meetings attended by “talkative women” tended to “drag on”.
Continue reading...Officials hope selection of Seiko Hashimoto will draw line under row over predecessor’s sexist remarks
Japan’s Olympics minister, Seiko Hashimoto, is in line to lead the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, just over five months before the delayed Games are due to open, according to media reports.
The committee, which is already battling public opposition to the Olympics because of the Covid-19 pandemic, was forced to search for a new president after its previous head, Yoshiro Mori, resigned last week after making derogatory remarks about women.
Continue reading...The Games are due to begin in July but Shimane prefecture says it might pull out of the prestigious pre-Games event
The head of a prefecture in Japan has said the area is considering pulling out of the Olympic torch relay, as the nation became the latest major economy to begin its vaccine rollout.
Tatsuya Maruyama, the governor of Shimane prefecture, said on Wednesday that it could withdraw from the key Olympic event and has called for the Tokyo 2020 Games to be cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...FTSE 100 posts biggest daily gain for over a month as investors buoyed up by vaccine and US economy hopes
The pound has hit its highest level against the dollar for almost three years as global markets were buoyed up by hopes for a faster economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Sterling rose by 0.5% to hit a 33-month high against the dollar on Monday, trading above $1.39 on the global currency markets for the first time since 2018, while also rising to a nine-month high against the euro of almost €1.15.
Continue reading...A 7.3-magnitude earthquake that shook Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures off the coast of Japan, injuring more than 100 people, was an aftershock of the devastating 2011 quake that caused the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, the nation’s meteorological agency has said.
The Japanese prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, expressed his sympathy to all affected and injured, although no deaths have been reported
Continue reading...Quake strikes at a depth of 60km in the Pacific off Fukushima but no tsunami warning has been issued
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake has taken place off the eastern coast of Japan, but no tsunami warning has been issued, Japanese authorities have said.
The quake on Saturday produced powerful shaking along parts of Japan’s eastern coast, and was felt strongly in Tokyo, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Continue reading...Mitsuko left Japan in 1960 for a new life in North Korea. Once there, she realised she – and hundreds of others like her – could never go back
It has been six decades since Mitsuko Minakawa boarded a ferry on the Sea of Japan coast, bound for a new life in North Korea. But the anguish of that sunny day in the spring of 1960 has never left her.
Two months earlier, Minakawa had married a Korean man, Choe Hwa-jae, a contemporary at Hokkaido University, where she was the only woman in a class of 100 students. Minakawa, then 21, and Choe were part of the mass repatriation of ethnic Korean residents of Japan – many of them the offspring of people who had been brought from the Korean peninsula by their Japanese colonisers to work in mines and factories.
Continue reading...Growing numbers of women ditch giri choco custom of ‘forced giving’ of gifts to senior male colleagues
Shifting gender politics and the coronavirus have combined to spell the possible end of the Japanese Valentine’s Day custom of women giving chocolates to male colleagues.
Traditionally, women are expected to buy gift-wrapped chocolates for the men in their working lives – usually senior colleagues and others who have helped them during the course of the year – as part of a tradition called giri choco, literally “obligation chocolates”.
Continue reading...Yoshiro Mori had insisted for days he would not quit but Japanese media say he will step down amid a growing tide of anger over his remarks
The president of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics organising committee, Yoshiro Mori, is expected to resign after derogatory comments he made about women caused an international uproar less than six months before the Games are due to open.
Mori, who has led the organising committee since 2014, will step down after insisting for days that he would not resign, the Fuji News Network reported on Thursday.
Continue reading...Yuriko Koike says attending meeting with under-fire Games chief would not send positive message
The governor of Tokyo has said she will not attend a key meeting of Olympic officials next week, as the row over sexist comments made by the head of the 2020 Games’ organising committee intensifies.
Yuriko Koike, who became the city’s first female governor in 2016, said she saw no merit in attending the meeting between the committee head, Yoshiro Mori, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, and Japan’s Olympics minister, Seiko Hashimoto.
Continue reading...Head of organising committee in Japan, Yoshiro Mori, under pressure to step down as anger grows
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has condemned derogatory remarks about women by the head of the Tokyo 2020 Games organising committee, Yoshiro Mori, as “absolutely inappropriate”.
The unusually strong intervention came after Mori complained last week that meetings tended to drag on because “competitive” women in attendance “talked too much”.
Continue reading...Schemes are in development from Sweden to China, but there are fears around transmission and social unrest
It is the question being asked with increasing urgency around the world, at least in countries where the vaccine is already available: how much freedom to live life as it was before the pandemic should be granted to those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19?
Its impacts range from the speed at which economies can open, to when grandparents and grandchildren can hug again, but it is causing growing unease among decision-makers who warn there is a danger of dividing societies already under huge strain due to pandemic restraints.
Continue reading...Alexandra Daddario’s American English teacher drinks, parties and explores BDSM in this cool movie that only occasionally veers into orientalism
Author and artist Catherine Hanrahan has adapted her novel of the same name for the screen and William Olsson directs. It is the story of Margaret, a young American woman in Tokyo, who has snagged a job teaching trainee flight attendants how to enunciate their English properly. Margaret drinks a lot, parties a lot, shows up hungover and late to work; she is also into BDSM, and is a sub, but can’t find any satisfactory partner, until she chances across Kazu (Takehiro Hira), a yakuza mobster whose naked body naturally turns out to be almost completely covered in scary tattoos. He has exactly the right fiercely negligent ruthlessness when he takes her to love hotels, but through an ironic quirk of fate turns out to have a softer side – something that this liaison with Margaret has unlocked, and in bed confesses to her mournfully that he is about to get married, and this lends something weirdly poignant and melancholy to their eroticism.
Continue reading...Billed as a celebration of humankind’s victory over coronavirus, Games could fall foul of pandemic for a second time
The Olympic rings have been spruced up and are once again overlooking Tokyo Bay. Countdown clocks have been reset, telling passersby there are just 171 days to go until the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games begin.
They are supposed to build excitement in the host city and among sports fans around the world. But Japan’s Olympic dream is quickly turning sour in the face of the worst global health crisis for a century.
Continue reading...Countries have adopted different rules on business activity, education, socialising and travel
Curfews and lockdowns Restrictions have largely been relaxed in most of Brazil’s 26 states, although several continue to limit opening hours for bars, restaurants and shops. A round-the-clock curfew was imposed this week in Brazil’s biggest state, Amazonas, after hospitals were overwhelmed.
Continue reading...The 48-year-old reportedly told police she was worried she would be forced to move out of the flat she shared with her mother
A Japanese woman who said she hid her mother’s corpse in a freezer in her apartment for a decade told police she feared eviction if the death was discovered, according to reports.
Yumi Yoshino, 48, was held “on suspicion of abandoning and hiding a female body” found on Wednesday inside the freezer in a Tokyo apartment, police said.
Continue reading...US president smooths over Trump-era complaints to deepen Japan security alliance as new secretary of state rejects Beijing’s South China Sea claims
Joe Biden has vowed to strengthen the US’s alliance with Japan to counter growing Chinese military activity in the volatile Asia-Pacific region, including a commitment to defend the Senkakus, a group of islands in the East China sea administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.
The US president and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga agreed during a phone call that their countries’ security alliance was “the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific”.
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