Suicide rates among Japanese women rose sharply during the pandemic, prompting calls for support for low-income households
The coronavirus had barely begun its surge across the globe when Ayako Sato was told that the nursery where she worked would temporarily close as part of Japan’s efforts to curb the outbreak.
The mother of two teenage daughters expected a few weeks of belt tightening, believing it wouldn’t be long before she was working again.
Continue reading...Activists seek ban on flying horses to Japan with thousands sent every year from Canada and France
Tens of thousands of horses are being subjected to long-haul flights, confined in crates with no food or water, to meet demand for horsemeat in Japan.
Since 2013, about 40,000 live horses have been flown to Japan from airports in western Canada. Under Canadian regulations, the journey can stretch up to 28 hours, during which the animals are allowed to go without food, water or rest.
Continue reading...Projectiles are believed to have landed in the sea outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone
North Korea test fired two ballistic missiles early on Thursday, in the biggest challenge so far to Joe Biden’s attempts to engage the regime over its nuclear weapons program.
The projectiles were launched on North Korea’s east coast and are believed to have landed in the sea outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, officials in Tokyo said.
Continue reading...Tree-viewing parties are banned as many coronavirus restrictions remain
Japan will emerge from 10 weeks of coronavirus restrictions on Sunday, just in time for the peak of the annual cherry blossom viewing season.
In normal years, the appearance of the delicate pink flowers is the cue for friends to spread out picnic blankets and lose their inhibitions in a ritual that often involves copious quantities of food and drink, and a nodding recognition of the floral spectacular. But the lifting of the state of emergency, announced earlier this month by the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, will not be celebrated beneath the sakura.
Continue reading...Overseas spectators will not be permitted to attend this summer’s rearranged Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. An announcement was made after a meeting of the International Olympic Committee, International Paralympic Committee, Tokyo metropolitan government, the Tokyo 2020 organising committee and the government of Japan on Saturday.
The decision, which was not unexpected, is due to continuing uncertainty amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with international travel restricted and variant coronavirus strains emerging. Japan is unlikely to be open to foreign tourists by the summer and it was felt some clarification over this matter should be given now.
Continue reading...Hiroshi Sasaki suggested a female entertainer should dress as a pig at the opening ceremony
Preparations for the Tokyo Olympics have again been thrown into turmoil after the creative director for the opening and closing ceremonies said he would resign over a sexist comment about a female entertainer, whom he likened to a pig.
Hiroshi Sasaki said he would step down after a weekly magazine revealed he had proposed to his creative team that Naomi Watanabe, a popular celebrity, should be lowered into the Olympic stadium dressed as a pig in an opening ceremony segment he called “Olympig”.
Continue reading...Analysis: The rapid development of battery-only cars is eclipsing petrol vehicles and even hybrids, leaving Japan’s big producers racing to catch up
Japan’s traditional carmaking giants need to raise their game in the race to develop pure, battery-driven electric vehicles or risk being left behind by Chinese, American and European producers, analysts have warned.
Despite dominating car production in Asia for decades, Japan’s big players have been slow to fully develop the battery-only technology that is now eclipsing hybrid vehicles as the most likely type of car to plug petrolheads into the automotive revolution.
Continue reading...Ruling is a major symbolic victory in a country where the constitution defines marriage as being based on ‘the mutual consent of both sexes’
A Japanese district court has ruled that not allowing same-sex couples to marry is “unconstitutional“, setting a new precedent in the only G7 nation not to fully recognise same-sex partnership, though it rejected demands for damages to be paid.
The ruling, the first in Japan on the legality of same-sex marriages, is a major symbolic victory in a country where the constitution defines marriage as being based on “the mutual consent of both sexes”.
Continue reading...Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are real
Some will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.
Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy.
Continue reading...From the Godfathers of Arabic rap to the father of Ethio-jazz, Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan guides a tour through global music’s greatest
This week I wrote about the glaring lack of international inclusivity in the Grammys’ newly redubbed global music (formerly world music) category.
In the category’s 38-year history, almost 80% of African nations have never had an artist nominated; no Middle Eastern or eastern European musician has ever won; every winner in the past eight years has been a repeat winner; and nearly two-thirds of the nominations have come from just six countries (the US, the UK, Brazil, Mali, South Africa, India). The situation shows little signs of improving.
Continue reading...Huge waves swept across swathes of the north-east coast after one of the strongest quakes ever recorded, triggering a nuclear meltdown
Japan has observed a moment’s silence to mark the 10th anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and triggered a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.
At 2:46 pm, the moment Japan’s north-east coast was struck by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on 11 March 2011, people attending private and public service across the affected region bowed and fell silent, some clasping their hands in prayer.
Continue reading...There’s a touch of Hollywood in this dramatised account of the 50 workers who stayed at Fukushima Daiichi in an attempt to avert catastrophe
Dangerously high concentrations of politeness are observed in this dramatisation of the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Not only do most of the heroic “50” left behind to avert nuclear catastrophe constantly apologise for underperforming in acts of barely believable self-sacrifice, at one point a manager begs forgiveness for refusing to allow two employees to re-enter the radioactive zone after a failed first attempt. To the feckless western mind more likely to view Homer Simpson as the standard-issue nuclear power-plant employee, it’s a relief when – just for a second – a few Fukushima workers contemplate running away.
It is possible director Setsurō Wakamatsu has taken the Hollywood route in portraying the staff as so infallibly courageous – though Fukushima 50 is adapted from journalist Ryusho Kadota’s book, which investigated the response to the earthquake and tsunami in more than 90 interviews. Possibly to avoid lawsuits from Tokyo Electric Power Company executives portrayed here as selfish and shamefully caught on a back foot, everyone in the film is fictionalised – except for prime minister Naoto Kan, though he is never referred to by name, and plant manager Masao Yoshida. Yoshida crucially defies orders and allows the reactors to be cooled with seawater – which prevented meltdown and the possible devastation of Japan’s entire eastern seaboard. The reactors also must be “vented” for pressure manually by workers agonisingly selected for the task. Played by Ken Watanabe as a man having the ultimate bad day at work, the simmering Yoshida looks in need of a similar intervention.
Continue reading...The disembodied head of the sacoglossan sea slug feasts on algae while its old body decomposes, and a new one grows
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then it’s unlikely that you are a sacoglossan sea slug (apologies to Rudyard Kipling).
Scientists in Japan have discovered that this species of sea slug can decapitate itself and then regrow an entirely new body, complete with a beating heart and other vital organs.
Continue reading...Academics reject J Mark Ramseyer’s claim women were not forced into sexual slavery during second world war
A Harvard University professor has sparked outrage among fellow academics and campaigners after claiming that women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military had chosen to work in wartime brothels.
J Mark Ramseyer, a professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School, challenged the accepted narrative that as many as 200,000 “comfort women” – mostly Koreans, but also Chinese, south-east Asians and a small number of Japanese and Europeans – were coerced or tricked into working in military brothels between 1932 and Japan’s defeat in 1945.
Continue reading...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.
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