At least four killed, more than 300 injured after strong earthquake rattles Osaka

Abstract: OSAKA - One of the most powerful earthquakes to rock the Kansai region in decades struck Osaka and neighboring prefectures Monday morning, leaving at least four people dead and more than 300 injured. The earthquake, which had a magnitude of 6.1 and registered lower 6 on the Japanese intensity scale to 7, hit at 7:58 a.m. at a depth of about 13 km under northern Osaka, the Meteorological Agency said. No tsunami warning was issued. The quake literally woke the Kansai region and underscored the fact that the region remains just as vulnerable as other parts of Japan that have been more seismically active since the magnitude 7.3 Great Hanshin Earthquake killed 6,434 people and left Kobe devastated in 1995. Osaka officials were still assessing the damage as of Monday evening. Rina Miyake, a 9-year-old girl in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, was confirmed dead after a wall surrounding a swimming pool fell on her as she walked past. Also in the prefecture, Motochika Goto, a man in his 80s from Ibaraki, died after he was crushed by a bookshelf at his home, according to the Osaka Prefectural Government. In Higashiyodogawa Ward in the city of Osaka, 80-year-old Minoru Yasui died after being hit by a falling wall. Later in the day, a fourth death was reported in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, where an 81-year-old woman was confirmed dead after she was crushed under a dislodged chest of drawers in her house, city officials said. Dozens of fires were reported in Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto and Mie prefectures, according to police and municipal authorities. In Takatsuki and Ibaraki, gas supplies to 108,000 locations were interrupted, Osaka Gas Co. said, while a water pipe under a road in Takatsuki burst and flooded the area, according to the police. Kansai Electric Power Co., meanwhile, said its nuclear plants in Fukui Prefecture were operating normally. No abnormalities were reported at the Takahama, Mihama and Oi plants in the prefecture. In the city of Osaka, initial fears of widespread panic and chaos had receded by midday after subway services to parts of the city center were gradually restored. Life on the streets in the Umeda and Namba districts had largely returned to normal, although the major shopping centers around Osaka Station were closed and the crowds were smaller than normal. Some posted notices in both Japanese and English announcing they were closed for the day because of the quake. By late Monday afternoon, worries about aftershocks were growing. A few convenience stores appeared to be running low on certain items. “We’ve done a brisk business these past few hours, especially in bottled water,” said Tetsunari Nigawa, who works at a convenience store near central Osaka’s Umeda Station. At Namba Station, groups of foreign and Japanese tourists found transportation to Kansai International Airport greatly curtailed, with the fastest trains suspended and only one, a non-reserved train, in operation. Bus services from the airport to parts of Kansai including Wakayama and Nara prefectures had partially resumed by mid-afternoon. Up to 70 people were seen standing calmly in line at taxi stands in Umeda Station. By Monday night, most of the main north-south Midosuji Subway Line and other city subway lines that run through central Osaka had reopened. “It was a strong quake and reminded me of the 1995 earthquake. It was quite a surprise,” said Yoko Inoue, 38, who was waiting for a taxi near Umeda Station. Kepco said late Monday afternoon that there were still some power outages in their service areas. With rain forecast, the Meteorological Agency warned against landslides, adding that people should be wary that aftershocks might hit in the next few days. Soon after the morning quake, the government set up an emergency task force in Tokyo to gather information about the situation. The central government vowed to “do its utmost” with disaster-relief efforts and to help with reconstruction, as well as provide the public with more information. Learning of Miyake’s death, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, speaking in Tokyo, said the government instructed the education ministry to re-evaluate nationwide safety standards for cinder block walls along school commuting routes. As of Monday afternoon, more than 1,100 residents were taking refuge in 462 evacuation centers in Osaka Prefecture, prefectural officials added. The top government spokesman also urged residents in the hardest-hit areas to stay calm and be vigilant against aftershocks, which he said could be as strong as a lower 6, over the next week or so. A senior government official expressed guarded optimism about the damage, citing what appeared to be the quake’s “localized” nature. More than 60 bullet trains were canceled in the morning and some expressways were closed. Both Kansai International and Kobe airport temporarily closed but resumed operations after confirming there was no structural damage. In Osaka Prefecture, power was restored after the quake left about 170,800 homes and buildings without electricity for several hours. The quake left many commuters stranded at stations or on streets during the morning rush hour after disrupting shinkansen and other rail operations in western and central Japan. In a quake with an intensity of lower 6, it is difficult to remain standing, and unsecured furniture may move or topple over, according to the Meteorological Agency. Although the magnitude was relatively weak, the quake is believed to have triggered high-intensity tremors because it struck at a shallow depth. It was the latest in a string of quakes over the past few days, including a magnitude 4.6 quake that hit southern Gunma Prefecture on Sunday and a magnitude 4.5 temblor that struck Chiba Prefecture on Saturday.

earthquake
osaka
meteorological agency
kepco
fukui nuclear plants


Residents voice fear amid chaos of Osaka quake

Abstract: Sushi chef Soshu Yoshiyama got a rude awakening at 7:58 a.m. Monday when his home in the town of Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, was buffeted by strong, vertical jolts the likes of which he had never experienced before. He said he thought the earthquake lasted about 10 to 15 seconds. “It was vertical thrusts and I heard a big ‘bang’ sound. I’ve lived here for about 10 years, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” Yoshiyama, 68, said in a phone interview with The Japan Times on Monday morning, shortly after the magnitude 6.1 quake rocked the Osaka area. His house, including his sushi bar on the first floor, is just a few blocks away from Juei Elementary School, where a 9-year-old girl was killed when the wall around a swimming pool collapsed on her as she was walking by. The quake in Takatsuki registered as a lower 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale to 7. Yoshiyama, however, said he doesn’t know much about what happened in his neighborhood, including the girl’s death, because he was preoccupied with the damage to his sushi bar. “Many bottles and all of the dishes were broken. They are all useless now,” he said. According to the Meteorological Agency, the quake’s impact was felt in much of the Kansai region, including northern Osaka, southern Kyoto, southern Shiga, and southeastern Hyogo and Nara prefectures. Polish fashion designer Daria Miura, 45, a 20-year resident of Japan, was on a Hankyu Line train headed for Kobe when the temblor hit. “It felt as if the train was running on square wheels,” Miura said in a message in Polish. “I saw paramedics take a pair of injured passengers away,” she wrote. The train stopped at Shukugawa Station in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, stranding Miura, who was on her way to meet a client, until 3 p.m. While waiting, she began worrying about her son, who was going to Kyoto University, and her husband, who was at home with their cats in Higashi-Osaka. “I couldn’t reach my husband for about 30 minutes. Neither of my private au cellphone or the company-owned SoftBank phone worked,” she wrote, referring to the two Japanese cellular brands. “I was really worried when I saw the quake was a lower 6.” After eventually making contact, she said “it was depressing” to see the post-quake photos of her apartment from her husband, which showed their fallen TV on the floor, knocked over plants and damaged furniture. “I asked my husband to stock water just in case of any aftershocks,” she wrote. The quake struck at the height of the morning rush hour. At Ikoma Station in Nara, hundreds of commuters were milling about, waiting for word on when the trains to Osaka and Nara would resume. “Our house shook hard, but thankfully there was no damage,” said 43-year-old Hiroshi Nakatani, an Ikoma resident who was on his way to work in Osaka. Eduardo, a Spanish resident of Osaka who wished to be identified only by his first name, was just about to leave for work when the quake hit. He said he could “feel how the whole building was moving” and described the earthquake as having a “slow, rocking kind of motion.” The shaking felt like it only lasted for five seconds or so, he added, but the experience was frightening because he had never been through such a strong quake. His company arranged for a car to take him to his office in the city as all the trains had stopped running. However, soon after midday, several hours after the quake, many of the roads were still congested. Many foreign residents used social media to express their experience with the quake. “Woke up screaming cuz of this damn earth quake. Legit felt like a nightmare and that the building was gonna crash down on me,” New Yorker Ayana Wyse, 31, who lives near Osaka Dome, posted on Twitter. Wyse, who produces English videos for Japanese cram schools, said she “was pretty scared” but calmed down after getting messages from her friends. “Biggest shake I have ever experienced,” she wrote. Some Twitter users shared photos and videos of the damage, such as a leaking water pipe on a road in the town of Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, which was heavily damaged by the temblor. Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura warned residents of aftershocks. “In Kumamoto, there were two strong earthquakes. Please stay alert and stay safe,” he wrote on Twitter. Kumamoto Mayor Kazufumi Onishi, who has been dealing with the aftermath of the fatal 2016 quakes that hit central Kyushu, warned on Twitter to verify information shared on social media to prevent panic.

residents
voices
damage
osaka earthquake


M6.1 quake in Osaka as seen on Twitter

Abstract: Scenes from social media of the powerful earthquake that struck the Osaka area at 7:58 a.m. Monday morning. M6.1 Osaka earthquake June 18, 2018


Japan's criminal justice reforms aim to enhance transparency of interrogations — are they working?

Abstract: The National Police Agency said in early June that interrogations of crime suspects were fully recorded in 81.9 percent of all the 3,197 cases tried by lay judges in fiscal 2017, up from 72.8 percent the year before. The data were released ahead of June 2019 — the deadline for implementing full recording of the entire interrogation process in cases subject to lay judge trials. The reform is being implemented as part of a major overhaul of Japan’s criminal justice system. What are the changes and why are the reforms being put into place? Let’s examine the revisions to the criminal justice system in more detail: How is the criminal justice system changing with regard to interrogations? By next June, all questioning conducted in cases that will be tried by lay judges, including murder or kidnapping, as well as special investigations by prosecutors will have to be audio recorded or videotaped. There are some exceptions to the rule, such as when suspects refuse to be recorded, or investigators believe that putting them on record is deterring them from confessing. However, the mandatory recording under the 2016 revision of the Criminal Procedure Law, which specifies how criminal trials should take place, will only affect some 2 to 3 percent of all cases taken to court. Critics say there is still a long way to go before the criminal justice system can achieve the level of transparency they seek. What is the importance of recording interrogations? Japan’s justice system is notorious for its reliance on confessions and testimony when building cases. This has at times resulted in miscarriages of justice, such as a 1967 murder-robbery case that involved Takao Sugiyama and Shoji Sakurai. The two were sentenced to life in prison in 1970 but found not guilty in 2011 after a retrial, since the judges ruled that there was a lack of hard evidence to support the prosecutors’ case and the confessions of the accused were unreliable. In a case often referred to as the “Fukawa Incident” the two men were arrested based on their own confessions and witness testimony, despite a lack of physical evidence to support their claims. Sugiyama and Sakurai, who were released on parole in 1996, have both said that their confessions were coerced by investigators. Experts claim that audio and video recording of the entire interrogation will help detect forced confessions, because suspects’ testimony would change over the course of the questioning to suit the scenario investigators have in mind. What triggered the overhaul of the criminal justice system? A string of court cases where the accused was eventually found innocent shed light on some of the questionable practices used by prosecutors during their investigations. One of the most notorious cases, often referred to as the Postal Fraud Case, involved Atsuko Muraki — at the time a senior bureaucrat at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. Muraki was accused of forging a governmental certification so that an organization could get postal discounts. She was charged with document forgery in 2009, with prosecutors suspecting that she had instructed a junior official to issue the bogus certification. However, the junior official, who was charged with conspiring with Muraki, later accused prosecutors of coercing false confessions from him and fabricating the involvement of his boss in the case. Muraki was acquitted in 2010. The high-profile case met with public anger and threw into question what goes on behind the closed doors of the interrogation room. The Justice Ministry pledged to make the criminal investigation process more transparent and break away from the justice system’s reliance on confessions and testimony. The newly revised law is a result of that overhaul. How was the criminal justice system changed? The initial purpose of the law revision was to make the investigation process more transparent. The first meetings to draft the legislation focused on recording the investigation process, as well as reducing the prosecutor’s dependency on confessions and testimony. However, as the draft law was hashed out, prosecutors expressed concern that the recording could deter suspects from confessing. The discussion shifted to “diversifying” the investigation process, and methods to aid investigators such as the Japanese-style plea-bargaining system and expansion of cases subject to wiretapping were added in the reform. Although experts have welcomed some of the revisions, such as an increase in criminal cases that allow for state-appointed lawyers, many are wary of the trade-offs that were made in return. What changes have already been made to the criminal justice system? Some changes have already taken effect, such as the introduction of a bargaining system that allows criminal suspects to negotiate deals with prosecutors in exchange for information on other criminals. Judges also now have the authority to provide those who testify at court with immunity from prosecution. An expansion of the scope of criminal cases subject to wiretapping by investigators has also already taken effect. Most of the changes to the criminal justice system were brought about through an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law. Those revisions are being implemented incrementally over the course of a three year period through 2019.

recording
criminal justice system
criminal procedure law


Household assets in Japan hit record-high ¥1.83 quadrillion at end of 2017 fiscal year

Abstract: Financial assets held by households stood at a record ¥1.83 quadrillion ($17 trillion) at the end of March, climbing 2.5 percent from a year earlier thanks to a rise in share prices, the Bank of Japan said Wednesday. The figure marked a record-high on a fiscal year-end basis for the sixth year in a row. By asset type, cash and deposits increased 2.3 percent to ¥961 trillion, and equities rose 11.7 percent to ¥199 trillion. Investment trusts gained 1.4 percent to ¥73 trillion while debt securities fell 5.5 percent to ¥23 trillion. Assets held by companies excluding financial institutions rose 8.5 percent, to ¥1.18 quadrillion. Meanwhile, the outstanding balance of domestic government bonds increased 1.2 percent to ¥1.1 quadrillion, of which the Bank of Japan held ¥459 trillion, or 41.8 percent. The BOJ’s holdings rose 7.4 percent but the pace of year-on-year growth slowed from last March’s 17.3 percent as the central bank has been scaling down its government debt purchases, having shifted the focus of its ultra-easy policy from monetary base expansion to interest rates in 2016. Government bonds held by foreign investors rose 2.5 percent to ¥120 trillion, or 10.9 percent of the total.


Helsinki emerges as possible location for Trump-Putin summit: U.S. official

Abstract: WASHINGTON - The Finnish capital of Helsinki is being considered as a location for a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said over the weekend it was likely Trump would meet his Russian counterpart “in the not too distant future” following White House national security adviser John Bolton’s visit to Moscow this week. The senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said while Helsinki was the likeliest choice, the final decision depended on the outcome of talks Bolton is having with the Russians. Vienna had been also discussed as a potential site for the meeting, but officials said that idea has been abandoned. The highly anticipated Trump-Putin meeting is likely to take place after a July 11-12 NATO summit in Brussels that Trump is expected to attend. Trump is also expected to visit London for talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May on the trip. Trump, who has said he wants better relations with Russia, last met Putin in November in Vietnam on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit. A probe of Russia’s alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. election has hung over Trump’s presidency. U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia. Moscow denies meddling in the U.S. election and Trump denies any collusion took place.

helsinki
donald trump
russia
vladimir putin
mike pompeo
john bolton
nato


Swede jailed for life over Rwanda genocide

Abstract: STOCKHOLM - A Stockholm court on Wednesday sentenced a Swedish man of Rwandan origin to life in prison for participating in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Theodore Tabaro, 49, was sentenced by the Stockholm district court for “genocide” after he was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and kidnappings of the Tutsi minority. He was acquitted of rape due to lack of evidence. The incidents occurred between April-May 1994 in Rwanda’s southwestern sectors of Winteko, Nyakanyinya and Mibirizi, according to the verdict. Tabaro participated in an attack against a Nyakanyinya school in which hundreds of people, including women and children, had been ordered to seek refuge. The court said he, along with other culprits, “threw hand grenades at the building” and “shot and stabbed” civilians. Eight hundred people, many of them children, were killed or seriously injured. He also participated a few days later in an attack against a monastery in Mibirizi. Investigators and prosecutors in the case interviewed dozens of witnesses and survivors in Rwanda, Europe and North America. At least 36 deaths and seven rape victims were identified during the investigation. Sixteen of the 30 survivors and relatives of victims who lodged the case against Tabaro, will be compensated, the court said. Tabaro was arrested in October 2016 at his home in Orebro, 160 kilometers (100 miles) west of Stockholm. He arrived in Sweden in 1998 and was naturalized in 2006. In 2014 and 2016, Sweden sentenced two other naturalized Rwandan Swedes, Stanislas Mbanenande and Claver Berinkidi, to life in prison for participating in the Rwandan genocide. Triggered after the assassination of Rwandan President Hutu Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994, the genocide claimed 800,000 lives in three months, mainly among the Tutsi minority, according to U.N. figures.

rwanda
genocide
court
theodore tabaro
rape
sweden
crime


Tokyo-raised American Chessy Prout fights for rights of sexual assault victims

Abstract: Chessy Prout, an American teenager who spent most of her childhood in Japan, initially felt a sense of powerlessness as the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault gained steam last year. About four years before the movement evolved into a global force, Prout, now 19, was sexually assaulted by one of the most popular senior students at an elite boarding school in New Hampshire. Fast forward to late 2017, and she began to see she was not alone in her experience. But she also felt overwhelmed by the scale of sexual violence. There were “millions of other people who were going through and feeling the same thing as I was feeling and I could do nothing to help them,” Prout said in recalling her first reaction to the movement during her recent visit to Tokyo to promote her memoir, which details the assault and subsequent trials. “So for a while I felt really helpless and depressed that I couldn’t do anything.” Prout said she was in a particularly somber mood around November, as it coincided with the time her memoir was in the final phase of editing, and her story had not yet been told. To write the book detailing her life before and after the assault at St. Paul’s School in May 2014, she had to intensively recall her hardships. After months of writing, she was weary. But then she became encouraged and inspired by the countless messages of support on social media for sexual assault survivors, while mainstream media outlets also finally started to give sexual assault some of the attention it deserved. Joining hands with other women who had stayed silent for decades, she has become much more active in telling her personal story inside and outside the United States since the publication in March of her 405-page memoir, “I Have the Right To: A High School Survivor’s Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope”. During her visit to Japan, she promoted her memoir and spoke about sexual violence at a gathering at the International School of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo, where she used to study. “I was the nameless, faceless victim,” she said. “Nobody cared about who I was or what I was going through. “I wanted to reclaim my story” through writing the book, she said. “I wanted to reclaim my voice and I wanted to use my voice.” The assault took place in a secluded mechanical room on campus as part of a ritualized competition among some upperclassmen called the “Senior Salute,” in which the boys are said to have tried to have sex with as many younger girls as possible before graduation. Prout and her family, who relocated to the United States from Japan following the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake, did everything they could to address the attack. And yet they faced an unforeseen backlash from a wide section of the community at a school they had once trusted. The book, which she wrote with Boston Globe investigative reporter Jenn Abelson, recounts how the school and her perpetrator denied responsibility by disclosing a number of messages exchanged between the parties following the attack. In the course of a subsequent criminal trial that made headlines across the United States, in which Prout appeared as an anonymous victim, she continued to suffer in silence and isolation. She said the 162-year-old institution, where her father and older sister had also studied, devoted its collective energy to protect the school’s prestige. “They wanted to ignore the problem, ignore me and stay away from me as I was challenging the status quo,” she said of school administrators. The school settled in January a civil lawsuit filed by her parents. The perpetrator, Owen Labrie, was convicted in 2015 of three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault, a felony charge of using a computer to lure a minor, and child endangerment, but was acquitted of felony rape. He is appealing his conviction. To tell her side of the story, Prout first shed her anonymity on NBC’s Today show in 2016. The teenager felt she was psychologically hurt the most by the betrayal she experienced from friends and St. Paul officials. Despite the trauma, Prout is aware she is “lucky,” as her family was supportive of her throughout and she was able to leave the community behind. When asked if she has any advice for others, Prout said, “Knowing that what somebody did to you is not your fault and you have the right to heal in any way you want to and … being able to talk to somebody who one can trust (are essential).” Before coping with the difficulties of the assault, Prout, however, said she was angry for a long time at her parents for making her leave Tokyo in the wake of the 2011 disaster. She said that “Tokyo was the only home I really knew” after living in the capital for 11 years, since she was a 6-month-old baby, adding it was “a big culture shock” and took a while for her to adapt to an American lifestyle. Because of the struggle Prout’s family had to go through after the earthquake, with her father having had to stay in Tokyo for work and the rest fleeing to Florida, she thinks they grew stronger together as a family. Years have gone by since the family’s move to the United States. But Prout, who will be starting college in New York this fall, said she still misses Japan’s culture of politeness and “mutual respect.” In addition to making efforts to amplify the #MeToo movement, she is now leading a social media campaign, #IHaveTheRightTo, to help empower other sexual assault survivors to seek justice, as well as teaching children about consent and how to respect other people’s boundaries. Teaching these ideas in school, she said, is paramount because “it’s a fact of life” that everyone needs to deal with sexuality at some point even if it is not talked about in a classroom setting. “I truly believe in the power of conversation and human connections,” Prout said.

chessy prout
schools
new hampshire
sex crimes


Japan to reinforce police gun holsters to prevent firearm theft

Abstract: The National Police Agency is accelerating plans to reinforce police officers’ gun holsters and safety straps so their firearms cannot be stolen, agency officials said Wednesday. The move comes in the wake of an incident in the city of Toyama the previous day where a 21-year-old man stabbed an officer, stole his gun and shot a school security guard nearby, killing both. The agency had intended to make improvements to the standard-issue firearm holder by around 2020, but will move up the plan in response to the Toyama incident, the officials said. The plan involves redesigning the holster and attachments to make it difficult for those other than the officer wearing it to take out the gun, they said. On Tuesday, Keita Shimazu, a former member of the Self-Defense Forces, stabbed the 46-year-old officer at a police box, took his gun before moving on to an elementary school in the neighborhood and gunning down a 68-year-old security guard. Shimazu was arrested after being shot by another police officer who arrived at the elementary school in response to the incident. According to agency statistics, before the Toyama incident there had been six cases since 2013 in which local police officers were robbed of their pistols. Of those, the gun was fired in three of the cases. In the past, police have made improvements to officers’ gun holsters by reinforcing the elastic cords that attach the revolvers to belts. That change was made following a 2005 incident in Gifu Prefecture where two Japanese-Brazilian brothers robbed a policeman of a loaded gun by cutting the cord with a knife, and fled in a vehicle. They were arrested three weeks later.


Uzbek envoy eager to deepen relationship with Japan

Abstract: Uzbekistan Ambassador Gayrat Fazilov wants to strengthen the strategic partnership with Japan. “We see Japan as a very close partner in the Asia Pacific region,” Ambassador Fazilov said during a courtesy visit to The Japan Times on Wednesday. “My task as ambassador is to open a new page” and increase the level of cooperation. The bilateral cooperation has become stronger, with the two countries entering into a strategic partnership in 2002. In October 2015, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Uzbekistan and agreed with then-President Islam Karimov to further deepen ties through people-to-people exchanges and technical cooperation, among other measures. The embassy is planning to organize a special symposium on bilateral cooperation in collaboration with the Diet, he said. The Central Asian country is ready to accept direct investment from Japan, the envoy added. Uzbekistan has set up seven free economic zones that offer tax and other benefits to foreign companies. The ambassador mentioned other benefits for investing in Uzbekistan, located at the heart of the Central Asia, which includes a highly educated labor force. Uzbekistan is “one of the fastest developing countries,” said Fazilov. Its economy grew 5.3 percent in 2017 from the previous year. Tourism is booming in Uzbekistan, with the country allowing Japanese visitors since February to stay up to 30 days without a visa. Last year, the number of Japanese tourists to Uzbekistan grew 30 percent and the first five months of this year saw a 43 percent surge from the same period in the previous year, according to the envoy.

gayrat fazilov
diplomacy
uzbekistan-japan relations


Panasonic employee drives innovation by connecting young, enterprising new entrants to Japan's workforce

Abstract: It’s often difficult for people to maintain the enterprising spirit they had when they first entered the workplace, fresh out of university. Especially in a large company it is difficult for people’s voices are heard, and often they feel isolated as there are not many opportunities to get to know others who share their passions. Many eventually give up asking questions and coming up with new ideas, and start to just go with the flow. In the hope of changing this sense of stagnation and lifting the spirits of young employees at major companies, Makoto Hamamatsu, 35, an employee at electronics giant Panasonic Corp., co-launched a group in September 2016 that would allow people in their 20s and 30s to connect, share ideas and create innovation. Named One Japan, the community has grown in less than two years from some 120 members in 26 firms to roughly 1,200 people in 50 large companies, including Toyota Motor Corp., Canon Inc., NTT group, Japan Post Holdings Co. and Fuji Xerox Co. “We call it a community where the wisdom and passion of young people who work for major companies come together,” said Hamamatsu, who currently works at Panasonic’s consumer electronics business development section. By connecting people within and outside companies, he hopes to create innovation and revitalize the firms where they work, he said. “I don’t want to see people giving up trying. … Big companies tend to have rigid organization structures or monoculture, and that’s not good for revitalizing the corporations,” he said. “I want people to create an enterprising atmosphere, rather than sensing the existing corporate culture and going along with it. I want to see more people take a step forward.” The idea for One Japan stemmed from a gathering Hamamatsu launched in 2012 with young employees at Panasonic Corp. After he joined Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (now Panasonic) in 2006, Hamamatsu began asking his colleagues to go for a drink after work or participate in study sessions about their career paths. After hosting similar events attended by hundreds of young employees for six years, Hamamatsu decided to create a group and called it One Panasonic. In a giant organization like Panasonic that has more than 200,000 employees, it is hard to meet people from other departments who also have an enterprising spirit, and people tend to feel powerless to propose new business ideas alone, Hamamatsu said. But by creating One Panasonic, people started to connect with peers with whom they had never spoken before, and to exchange ideas, he said. “The biggest result we’ve achieved through the activities is elevating members’ motivation, and more people have started to take initiative,” he said. “And that is really huge. … Some people told me that they were thinking about quitting the company, but decided to remain in the end because of One Panasonic.” Hoping to extend their network beyond the company, One Panasonic got together with similar groups of young workers at Fuji Xerox Co. and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. to launch One Japan. Members from different companies within the community hold small gatherings to discuss their shared interests such as health care, marketing or accounting. Just a little over a year since its launch the group is still in its early stages, but attempts to break down the walls between the corporations are already starting to blossom into actual products and services. One such product under development is an artificial intelligence robot that guides people in “mindfulness meditation,” a method considered to improve people’s concentration. The project was launched after Fuji Xerox asked One Japan to provide ideas for a new service using robots. There are several other services and products currently under development — some of which could be announced in a few months, he added. The group also holds an all-member gathering about twice a year to discuss topics like open innovation or work style. They also invite management-level officials from their companies to exchange ideas, because it is crucial to gain their understanding and support if they want to change corporate culture or start new projects, Hamamatsu said. Around 800 people attended last September’s gathering in Tokyo, including the vice president of Japan Tobacco Inc. and the senior managing director of Panasonic. At the venue, more than 40 companies also showcased products or services they are working on to get feedback from various people with different professional backgrounds. In a bid to change working styles for the better, the group also conducted surveys on more than 1,000 members to find out their views on juggling work and child rearing or on having side jobs. Hamamatsu hopes to use the results as evidence to show what young workers want and to change their working environment. It’s tough for Hamamatsu to continue juggling his time between work for Panasonic and efforts to foster his One Japan and One Panasonic initiatives. But, he said, a sense of mission has driven him to continue to lead the groups for years. “This kind of activity usually fades out after a few years. But I want to change such stereotypical things,” Hamamatsu said. “I eventually want to expand what we are doing to overseas.”

panasonic
makoto hamamatsu
one japan
network


If Niigata gubernatorial race was a litmus test, Abe and Nikai passed

Abstract: NIIGATA - Sunday’s gubernatorial race in Niigata Prefecture was seen as a political litmus test for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito ruling coalition after months of cronyism scandals related to school operators Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen. If so, it was a test that Abe and his closest LDP allies, especially LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai, appear to have passed as they look toward their final political exam in September — the LDP presidential election. But in Niigata, local issues trumped whatever worries voters might have had about the scandal-ridden Abe administration. The first question that decided the election was which candidate would be most effective in working with Tokyo to ensure it would receive financial assistance for local economic development and social welfare projects. Especially at a time when the population is rapidly aging and declining. The second question was how voters felt about the way candidates would handle the issue of reactor restarts at the giant Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. Thus Hideyo Hanazumi, 60, a former secretary to powerful LDP secretary-general Toshihiro Nikai, won by playing up his Tokyo experience and promising he had the right connections there to ensure Niigata would receive money for all manner of public works projects, especially transportation infrastructure projects that he said would create new jobs. Hanazumi won with 546,670 votes, about 37,000 more than his main rival Chikako Ikeda, who focused on opposing the nuclear power issue while supporters blasted Abe and the ruling coalition over the various scandals. Voter turnout was 58.25 percent, or 5.2 points higher than the last election. “I promise to make Niigata strong and an easy place to live,” Hanazumi said following his victory Sunday night. But after being initially reluctant to address the nuclear power issue, Hanazumi may have caught Ikeda’s supporters off guard by switching tactics in the last days of the campaign and suggesting he would not be a pushover when it came to approving the reboots of the No. 6 and 7 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. The move appeared to pay dividends, as NHK and local media polls showed he picked up a few votes from those who opposed the restarts. A poll by the local daily Niigata Nippo before the election showed that 65 percent of respondents remain opposed to restarting the reactors. “As long as the people of Niigata remain unconvinced, (the reactors) won’t be restarted,” Hanazumi told supporters following his Sunday night victory. But Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace Germany, who was in Niigata to observe the election, said that regardless of political statements, there were no prospects for restarts in the coming few years. “The new governor needs to maintain Niigata’s existing policy which is to conclude investigations into the Fukushima nuclear disaster, as well establish a credible evacuation plan. Tepco also needs to fully disclose how it was that the risks of liquefaction at unit Kashiwazaki Kariwa 6 & 7 reactors were not notified to Japan’s nuclear regulator before safety approval last year,” said Burnie. In Tokyo, top LDP officials did not comment on Hanazumi’s attitude toward nuclear power, but saw his victory as public vindication of the ruling parties. “The people of Niigata trusted the LDP and Komeito and voted for the candidate the two parties supported,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday morning. Hanazumi’s win was also a victory for his old boss Nikai, who heads an LDP faction of 44 members. Those votes will be crucial when the party elects a new president in September. Despite the scandals and low popularity ratings, Abe is seeking a third term as LDP president and counting on the Nikai faction to help him get it. Hanazumi’s win could now make it difficult for Abe’s rivals to peel off votes from the Nikai faction.

niigata prefecture
shinzo abe
ldp
toshihiro nikai
hideyo hanazumi
tepco
nuclear energy


Car crashes into Gunma supermarket, injuring 14; driver held

Abstract: SHIBUKAWA, GUNMA PREF. - A car crashed into a supermarket in Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, on Sunday afternoon, injuring 14 people. None of the 14 is in a life-threatening condition but five were seriously injured, including one whose hip got broken, according to the Gunma Prefectural Police department’s Shibukawa station. Around 3:55 p.m., the fire department received an emergency call reporting that a car had plowed into Torisen, a supermarket in the Miyukida district. Katsuto Yajima, the 55-year-old driver, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of negligent driving resulting in injuries. Yajima told the police that he hit the gas pedal hard after feeling numbness on the right side of his body. According to police and other sources, Yajima’s car sailed through its glass entrance and came to halt about 15 meters inside after hitting a shelf. Yajima was on his way home from shopping when the accident occured. The police will investigate whether Yajima is ill and whether that led to the accident, investigative sources said. An eyewitness said the car was moving at a high speed when it smashed into the store. Takeshi Jin, 44, the manager, said the car appeared to crash into the store without stopping. “I rushed to the scene after hearing a bang,” said a 22-year-old Shibukawa woman who was inside. “I saw a boy lying bleeding on the floor, so I took him to a safe place,” said the woman, who was studying to be a nurse. Torisen Co., based in Tatebayashi, operates supermarkets mainly in Gunma and neighboring Tochigi.

gunma
shibukawa
torisen
vehicle accidents


Mie University ties up with local cake shop to reproduce stress-relieving ninja snacks

Abstract: Mie University in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, and Mon Pactole, a cake shop in Nabari in the prefecture, have jointly developed cookies inspired by preserved snacks that ninja are believed to have eaten to relieve stress. “We hope people will enjoy the deliciously revived modern-day ninja food,” said Makoto Hisamatsu, a professor emeritus at Mie University who led the endeavor to bring the ninja know-how to modern-day palates. In an effort to promote the region, which is known as the home of the Iga ninja tradition, Mie University has been actively involved in researching ninja customs since fiscal 2014. Hisamatsu, who specializes in food chemistry, focused on hyōrōgan portable rations thought to have been carried by ninja, and looked into related documents from the Edo Period. He found out through research that hyōrōgan was a spherical food made from sugar and a few kinds of herbal medicine, including dried Japanese yam, lotus fruit and adlay seeds, which had an effect of releasing stress and improving blood circulation. Judging from the ingredients it is believed that ninja might have consumed the treats not so much for their nutritional value as their calming effect, when they were under heavy stress while on duty. Hisamatsu became set on reviving the food together with Mon Pactole in November 2016. They added cinnamon and lotus seeds to popular cookies made by the shop for an event held in Milan in 2015, to coincide with the food-themed world exposition in the Italian city, to make them more similar to hyōrōgan. They surveyed some 200 people including students and foreigners to create a product that is acceptable to markets at home and abroad, and came up with disk-shaped crispy cookies with a diameter of around 2 centimeters. “It was difficult to balance the flavor of the cookies with the taste of herbal medicine,” recalled Mon Pactole President Shigeko Oishi. The cookies have been available for purchase at the university’s Co-op shop since late March, and by early May some 100 bags had been sold. The cookies, priced at ¥540 for a 55-gram bag, are also available at the Mon Pactole shop and major supermarkets in the prefecture, as well as at the Yahoo Shopping online retail website.

mie university
ninja
mon pactole
cookies


Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki to follow NATO gathering at tense moment

Abstract: WASHINGTON - Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will hold their long-awaited first summit next month in the Finnish capital of Helsinki at what could prove a historic turning point in international relations. The July 16 head-to-head between the U.S. and Russian leaders will follow a NATO summit in Brussels that Washington’s European partners fear will serve as another stage for Trump to berate them and scorn the Western alliance. Trump has long called for warmer ties with Moscow, but the talks come as Russia’s relations with the West languish at levels not seen since the Cold War. Asked about the upcoming summit, Trump told reporters accompanying him on a trip to Wisconsin: “We’re looking forward to it. If we could all get along, it would be great. The world has to start getting along.” The meeting will likely provoke criticism for the U.S. leader at home, where investigators are probing possible collusion between his presidential campaign team and Moscow. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s backing of Bashar Assad’s regime in the Syrian conflict will also loom large. Next month’s dialogue in Finland will see the two leaders discuss “the current state and prospects for development of Russian-U.S. relations,” said the Kremlin. A statement from the White House said the presidents will also broach various “national security issues.” Trump earlier said he expected discussions to be wide-ranging. “I think we’ll be talking about Syria. I think we’ll be talking about Ukraine. I think we’ll be talking about many other subjects. And we’ll see what happens. You never know about meetings what happens, right?” the U.S. president said. “I think a lot of good things can come with meetings with people.” The announcement came a day after Trump’s hawkish national security adviser John Bolton met Putin in Moscow, where he was given a warm welcome. “Your visit to Moscow gives us hope that we can at least take the first step to reviving full-blown ties between our states,” Putin told Bolton at the Kremlin after the two smiled and shook hands for the cameras. Bolton said there were areas for cooperation, but added that the lifting of U.S. sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 would not be on the table. Both sides have played down expectations of what the talks can hope to produce, saying the fact Trump and Putin are meeting at all is an achievement in itself. Also on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told U.S. lawmakers he was sure that Trump would confront Putin about allegations that Russian agents interfered in Western elections — including Trump’s own 2016 campaign. But one day later, Trump himself returned to Twitter to undercut his chief diplomat and declare: “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Since coming to power last year, Trump has sought to improve relations with Putin amid tensions between Moscow and the West. Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said he welcomed the planned dialogue. “The agenda of the meeting of Presidents Trump and Putin will be decided during the next two weeks, but they will certainly discuss the overall international situation and hopefully also arms control and disarmament issues,” he said in a statement. “Even small steps in reducing tensions would be in everybody’s interest.” Trump said this month that Russia should be re-admitted to the G7 group of industrialized democracies from which it was suspended after annexing Crimea. That comment came at a summit which ended in sharp disagreement between Trump and his G7 allies. According to remarks first published Thursday by news site Axios, and confirmed by a European diplomat, Trump shocked his G7 counterparts by declaring “NATO is as bad as NAFTA” — the free trade agreement that he has threatened to tear up. Nevertheless, and despite Western diplomats warning against the message sent by the Russian meeting coming straight after the tense NATO talks, alliance Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the summit. “Dialogue is not a sign of weakness, dialogue is a sign of strength. As long as we are strong, as long as we are united we can talk to Russia,” he said. The last — brief — meeting between Putin and Trump took place in November 2017 in Vietnam during an APEC summit. Putin and Trump discussed holding a summit during a phone call in March, when the U.S. leader reportedly ignored advice from his staff and congratulated the Russian president for his victory in elections that were criticized by observers as unfair. Moscow said Trump had invited Putin for a summit at the White House but the focus has shifted to a meeting on neutral ground. The U.S. president is due to attend the July 11 and 12 NATO summit in Brussels before heading to Britain to meet with Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II on July 13. Trump’s summit with Putin will come about a month after his historic meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which produced a vaguely worded statement on “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

helsinki
nato
donald trump
vladimir putin
g7
russia probe


Maizuru mayor, saved by nurse after stroke, says ban on women and girls entering sumo ring is outdated

Abstract: A mayor who suffered a stroke at a sumo event and was given first aid by a female nurse who entered the male-only ring has said the sport’s ancient ban on women is outdated. Ryozo Tatami, the mayor of Maizuru, in northern Kyoto Prefecture, resumed work Thursday after recovering from the stroke he suffered in April while making a speech in the ring, or dohyō . Sumo officials repeatedly demanded that the nurse leave the ring, triggering public criticism of the gender ban. Tatami said the ban is outdated, especially in life-threatening situations. “Even though sumo has a long history and traditions, its policy banning women and girls is irrelevant today,” Tatami told a news conference on his first day back at work. He was earlier presented with a bouquet as city employees welcomed his return. “At least in situations requiring first aid, whether you’re male or female should not matter. Anyone should be allowed to help out,” he said. When Tatami, 67, collapsed on the dohyō, two women in the audience, including one later identified as a nurse, rushed in and started performing first aid as sumo officials looked on helplessly. When two more women entered the dohyō trying to join the effort, a sumo official repeatedly made an announcement demanding that the women get out of the ring. In male-only sumo, women are considered ritually unclean and are banned from the dohyō — which is considered sacred. Tatami’s case has prompted sumo officials to review the policy. Some female mayors have also demanded that the sumo association treat them the same way as their male counterparts at sumo events. Japan Sumo Association Chairman Hakkaku has acknowledged that the announcement at the Maizuru event was inappropriate, but has also said that women can only enter the dohyō in an “emergency.”


Diet enacts key labor reform that opposition slams as 'karōshi promotion' bill

Abstract: The Diet enacted a bill Friday that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says represents the biggest shake-up of the nation’s labor laws in decades, ushering in a legally binding overtime cap and exempting skilled white-collar employees from work-time regulations. The government has also claimed the reform, which includes an “equal work, equal pay” measure, will increase wages for non-regular workers — such as part-timers and temporary workers — while enabling more flexible work styles. Ostensibly an attempt to slash overwork, the comprehensive legal package has, however, drawn fierce criticism from opposition lawmakers that it will do the exact opposite, by exacerbating Japan’s deeply ingrained problem of karōshi (death from overwork). “This is the first major reform in 70 years,” a proud Abe told reporters after a plenary session of the Upper House, referring to the 1947 enactment of the Labor Standards Act. “It will rectify the culture of working long hours, eradicate the term ‘non-regular workers’ and create diversity in the way people work, so that their careers will become more compatible with their child-rearing and nursing-care duties,” he said. The passage is a much-needed legislative win for Abe, who at the onset of this ongoing Diet session declared enacting the labor reform bill his top priority. Failing to achieve that stated goal would have cast doubt on his leadership within his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and marred his chances of winning re-election in the party’s critical leadership election. The vote, slated for September, is a race in which he needs to triumph in order to pursue his longtime ambition of revising the post-war Constitution. It remains to be seen, however, how much of a boost the reform’s enactment will prove for Abe’s popularity as it recovers from two favoritism scandals. A Jiji Press opinion poll conducted earlier this month found that 38.7 percent of respondents disapproved of the reform, with those who approved — at 29.5 percent — outnumbered. The bill was passed by a majority vote, receiving the backing of the LDP-Komeito coalition and conservative opposition Nippon Ishin no Kai. Now the government’s primary legislative focus shifts to a controversial casino bill that in all likelihood will provide the biggest source of political wrangling this session, as the Diet heads to a close in late July. The labor reform package, which comprehensively revises eight related laws, will for the first time ever put in place a legally binding cap on overtime at 360 hours annually, although it can be extended to 720 hours as an exception. Noncomplying employers will be penalized. Among the most controversial reforms on the horizon is the adoption of what is known as a white-collar exemption system, which will spare those described as “specialist” personnel with an annual income of more than ¥10.75 million — such as financial dealers and analysts — from work-hour regulations. The “high-level professional system,” as it is officially called, has long been pushed by the nation’s business community including the Keidanren, Japan’s largest business lobby group. It will allow employees to be paid based on their performance rather than the hours they work, paving the way for more flexible working styles and boosting overall productivity, the government claims. Noting that the system effectively dispenses with the concept of overtime pay, however, the opposition has argued it instead risks endorsing unpaid overwork. As a result they have dubbed the reform the “Karōshi Promotion Bill.” “Under the pretext of boosting productivity, the reform is first and foremost designed to cater to the needs of employers. Its fundamental purpose, it appears, is to help them cut back on the cost of overtime pay,” lawmaker Makoto Hamaguchi, of the Democratic Party for the People, told the Upper House session. Under the system, kin of karōshi victims will be hard-pressed to prove a correlation between overwork and the death of their loved ones because an “accurate” and “objective” grasp of the hours worked by employees will become “extremely difficult,” he added. “What this means is that even if there is karōshi it may no longer be recognized as such, which could result in the number of karōshi cases decreasing only on paper,” Hamaguchi said. Among other highlights of the bill is a so-called equal work, equal pay measure meant to curb what is seen as discriminatory treatment by firms against nonregular employees, including part-timers and temporary staff, who have long been at a disadvantage by being paid salaries lower than their full-time counterparts irrespective of their performance and abilities. The work-style reform has also been controversial because of revelations of sloppy preparation of evidence in support of the policy. In a major compromise, Abe in February removed the expansion of a so-called discretionary labor system — which was initially touted as a key component of the reform — from the bill after it emerged that key government data used to emphasize its benefits contained a number of statistical errors. The discretionary labor system allows employers to pay workers according to a predetermined number of hours instead of actual working hours, meaning workers are not paid for overtime work that is not agreed upon beforehand.


Two bullets found in school building after attack that killed two in Toyama

Abstract: TOYAMA - Two bullets were discovered inside an elementary school building in Toyama following an incident involving the killing of two people in the city on Tuesday, it has been learned. A former Self-Defense Forces member stole a gun loaded with five bullets from a police officer Tuesday after killing the officer at a nearby police box, and then gunned down a security guard. The attacker, Keita Shimazu, 21, is believed to have fired three shots near the school’s main gate, with one of them killing the security guard, Shinichi Nakamura, 68, police sources said. Bullets were found in a corridor, at the end farthest from the gate, and in the ceiling of a former sick room. Another, as well as the gun, were recovered near where Nakamura was lying after he was shot, according to the sources. Classes were being conducted at the school when Shimazu opened fire with the gun, which he took from the assistant inspector, Kenichi Inaizumi, 46, after stabbing him more than 30 times. Shimazu is also believed to have fired two shots near the police box. Inaizumi, who died of the stab wounds, had also been shot in his left hand, the sources said. Although the attacker has been in a critical condition since he was shot by a different police officer before his arrest, he has regained consciousness and now responds to communication, according to the sources.


Osaka floats out-of-box thinking for ties with North

Abstract: OSAKA - Though it remains to be seen how history will judge the June 12 summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, present Japanese and Western views across the political spectrum are generally either skeptical of North Korea’s sincerity in honoring any agreement or of America’s ability to sincerely negotiate an effective one. But no matter how one views the summit, it has set a precedent and created expectations worldwide that leaders in not only the U.S., but also Japan will now work harder to improve relations with North Korea. For Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in particular, that is a problem. Between the unresolved abduction issue and political allies who are wary of, if not hostile toward, friendly relations with Pyongyang, Abe and his allies lack the deep expertise and informal back-door channels to North Korea that his less ideologically rigid predecessors in the Liberal Democratic Party once enjoyed. This reality is felt especially in the Kansai region. While few Koreans or Japanese in Kansai have much faith in Abe’s ability to do more than follow Trump’s lead on North Korea, the days prior to the summit saw some out-of-the-box thinking whispered in the halls of Osaka’s political and media establishments as to how Tokyo might improve relations with Pyongyang. Perhaps the craziest idea floated by some media pundits was for Japan to extend Kim Jong Un an invitation to next year’s Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Osaka. The G20 host country typically invites a few non-G20 countries to attend as observers. These are countries that have some special connection to the host country, are impacted by the G20 agenda for that year, or are invited for other political reasons. What would a Kim visit to Osaka and Kansai look like? For starters, it might be a family reunion. Kim’s mother is said to be Ko Yong Hui, a Korean-Japanese born in Osaka who was Kim Jong Il’s third wife. A Kim visit would certainly put the spotlight on the history of Korean residents in Japan in a way nothing else would or could. At the summit itself, Kim could engage with not only world leaders but also Japanese businesses who see North Korea as the last great untapped market and are worried about losing out to Japan’s Asian neighbors and the U.S. if North Korea does open up. Yes, yes. Crazy. Unthinkable. Impractical. An Osaka joke. Stupid and dangerous, even, the thought of Kim being feted in Osaka (and possibly by neighboring Kyoto and Nara) by 20 world leaders next year, I can hear you saying. But seven months ago, the idea of a summit between a U.S. president and the leader of North Korea was considered impossible as well. Obviously, for a Kim visit to the G20 Osaka summit to become even remotely possible, a whole lot of things must happen first. Denuclearization talks must show rapid progress and Kim has to address the abduction issue in ways that convince Japan’s conservative leadership to risk making a political move as bold and controversial as offering him an invite to Osaka. To get to a point where the trust is there will require unprecedented amounts of formal and informal diplomatic efforts — and a lot of compromise from both sides — between now and next June, when the G20 takes place. Still, Osaka’s merchants have long prided themselves on risk-taking when it comes to new business ventures. Even if it doesn’t happen, publicly supporting the idea of Japan inviting Kim to the G20 Osaka summit would at least show that they are also unafraid of taking risks when it comes to new political ventures.

osaka
donald trump
kim jong un
north korea-japan relations


Online Japanese releases under fire after missing the mark

Abstract: Even the most innocuous upload can carry political baggage online in 2018. It’s a truth Western users have become used to, where a pancake restaurant’s idiotic rebranding strategy can become a discussion about the appropriation of gang culture . Recent examples show that Japanese netizens are just as interested in dissecting content that in years past would have just been expected. The story actually starts in the United States with actor Donald Glover’s musical project Childish Gambino and his newest song “This Is America.” That release — and the video accompanying it — are pointedly political. It inspired no shortage of praise and analysis that was both insightful and internet-y in equal measures. It also ushered in memes , parodies and re-imaginings. Attempts at riffing on it were sometimes met positively, but mostly generated controversy, whether it was via “ This Is Nigeria ” or a “women’s edit” of the clip accused of stripping away the meaning from Glover’s creation. Unfortunately, Japanese dance crew Alaventa don’t appear to monitor U.S. online controversies closely. The trio typically performs routines to pop songs but, instead, it went and created a video called “This Is Japan” that riffed on Gambino’s release. Collaborating with production team Creators , they posted a short video to Instagram of them dancing in the streets while singing retrofitted lyrics about omotenashi , Instagram poses and youth slang . If the reaction to the clip resembled a “This Is America” text meme, Glover would be labelled “netizens” and the guy with the gun to the back of his head would be “This Is Japan.” Users ridiculed it, so much so that it snuck into the country’s top trending bar (to the confusion of some ). Many targeted Alaventa for missing the meaning of the original, swapping out serious social issues in favor of youth trends and tourism buzzwords. People wrote in-depth articles about why the trio missed the mark, while others argued a real “This Is Japan” would focus on overwork and concealment of information. Alaventa quickly deleted all traces of their take from the web and issued an apology . The only winners out of this ended up being a band named This Is Japan, which got some free PR. Online users in Japan have long loved to rip into goofy internet ephemera, but “This Is Japan” felt different. The anger stemmed from Alaventa missing the political message of “This Is America,” and being angry at how simplistic their representation of Japan was. Part of it stems from embarrassment that this represents the country’s online culture, but so much of the criticism came from how it wasn’t serious enough. That’s a significant shift in a country often alright letting entertainment and politics stay far apart from one another. The band Radwimps, best known for their soundtrack to the hit film “Your Name.”, learned about the intersection of pop culture and politics soon after “This Is Japan” stopped trending. They released a new single on June 6, featuring a song called “Hinomaru.” “In this world, it feels like people in Japan don’t sing about their country in song,” the group’s vocalist Yojiro Noda wrote on Instagram , adding that he wanted to sing about his nation with no ideological bias. “I hope it will be received that way.” It was not. The song, which features lyrics with a nostalgic bend and lots of flags-fluttering-in-the-wind imagery, was accused of being nationalistic and pro-military . Summaries and reaction videos emerged, along with no shortage of netizens commenting on it. Noda himself tweeted out two clarifications , which only enraged more people . From there, a familiar discourse emerged — fans defended it, while everyone else took sides, including a call for protests outside of an upcoming Radwimps’ concert . Other bands and people rolled their eyes. It’s messy and often defined by people bunkered into one view or the other, but it did spark discussion about whether a song can really be free of ideology. Similar cases have cropped up — the last soccer World Cup saw something kinda like this happen around Sheena Ringo’s “ Nippon ” — but they’re beginning to feel constant in 2018, maybe reflecting a faster newscycle on social media. Besides Radwimps and “This Is Japan,” conversations have happened around comedy group Woman Rush Hour and the duo Yuzu’s “ Gaikokujin Tomodachi .” Even the New Year’s Eve blackface scandal spurred more talk among online types than before, a signal that issues once brushed aside are becoming central on social media. However, not all pop culture has experienced such self-analysis just yet. During both these social flair ups, the most discussed song online was a chipper and cheesy Eurobeat throwback called “U.S.A.” by Da Pump. It’s attracted many not as a result of any deep analysis or controversy, but because the whole package is so corny it has charmed the internet. It seems that escapism still has a place, after all.

donald glover
this is america
alaventa
this is japan
radwimps


Should the elderly be stopped from driving?

Abstract: On June 10, a car crashed into a supermarket in Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, injuring 14 people. At first the incident sounded like yet another elderly person losing control of a vehicle and causing destruction, but then it transpires that the driver was a 55-year-old man. Does that count as elderly? Police arrested the man on suspicion of negligent driving resulting in injuries. Reports say he bore down on the accelerator after he felt the right side of his body go numb, a condition that could be age-related. When it comes to traffic accidents, 55 may be the new 75. The conspicuous rise in auto accidents caused by older drivers, a development the media follows closely, has resulted in a nationwide movement to convince seniors to surrender their driving licenses. Although it’s hardly a problem limited to Japan, the rapidly aging society combined with other factors peculiar to Japan make it one that calls for specific action. One contributing factor is the lack of alternative transportation for the elderly, especially in rural and suburban areas. Without cars, many would be stranded at home, isolated from the community and thus more likely to fall into a state of indolence and depression, which can accelerate the onset of dementia and other cognitive disabilities. Many seniors not only want to drive, but feel it’s vital to their well-being. A less frequently mentioned issue but by no means a less relevant one is Japan’s road infrastructure . Elderly drivers would not be as much of a hazard if roadways were sufficiently wide and separated safely from sidewalks. Since this is a common situation throughout the country, most Japanese, including those in the media, don’t always acknowledge it as a contributing factor, but every time an older person plows into a bunch of kids walking to or from school, it’s as much to blame as is the driver’s loss of control. While the onus of responsibility falls on the vehicle operator, there is still a reluctance to deprive older people of their precious right to drive. In May, a 90-year-old woman killed a 57-year-old pedestrian and injured 3 others in Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture , when she ran a red light. No one is going to argue that 90 does not qualify as “elderly,” but as pointed out during a heated discussion of the story on Nippon TV’s afternoon information show, News Every , the woman had renewed her license in March after passing a cognitive evaluation last December with flying colors. In fact, she was rewarded with a “gold” license, which is given to people with excellent driving records. What the reporters found perplexing about the case was that the woman, while “showing no signs of cognitive impairment,” told police that she knew the signal was red, but drove through it anyway because she didn’t think any pedestrians were crossing at the time. The police arrested her but later let her go after concluding that the accident was caused by a diminishment of faculties. Does that mean the cognitive evaluation test she took was flawed? Shouldn’t her admission that she knowingly drove through a red light require some kind of penalty? In the end, the only thing that happened is that her license was revoked, obviously too late. In March 2017, a revised Road Traffic Law went into effect that is meant to address the problem of elderly drivers, but it still makes it easy for them, especially those who have clean driving records, to retain the right to drive. Persons over 75 years old who violate any of 18 given traffic rules must undergo an evaluation. Individuals who are not cleared are required to go to a physician for further evaluation, and if the doctor thinks they have reduced cognitive functions, their licenses will either be suspended or revoked. But according to a June 2 article in the Sankei Shimbun , of the 46,900 drivers or so who have been referred to doctors for further cognitive evaluation since the law went into effect, about 7,100 of those diagnosed with cognitive dysfunctions were still allowed to renew their licenses under the condition that they undergo another doctor’s evaluation within six months. One of the reasons for this potentially lethal leniency is that dementia, probably the most commonly understood manifestation of cognitive diminishment in older people, does not always mean the person can’t drive properly. As Katsuya Urakami, head of a national group that addresses dementia in Japan, told the Sankei Shimbun, even Alzheimer’s patients are not necessarily a danger behind the wheel, because Alzheimer’s does not primarily affect motor functions. Some U.S, states and Germany, drivers diagnosed with some form of dementia do not automatically lose their licenses but may be restricted from driving in certain areas or at certain times of the day. In many localities, however, there is still no safety net in place for people who do give up driving. The government announced June 8 that 8.25 million Japanese over the age of 65 “have difficulty shopping for food and daily supplies without a car” because stores are far away from where they live and they don’t have ready access to transportation. That figure represents a 21.6 percent increase over the past decade. Local governments may deem it more economical to allow older people to keep driving than to set up programs that help them get by without cars. Unsurprisingly, the prefectures where seniors are more likely to give up their licenses are Tokyo and Osaka, which have fully developed transportation systems. The problem may just fade away as the baby boomer generation, the first in Japan to uniformly take up driving as a civic right and modern privilege, dies out. According to a survey cited on a recent MBS radio program , the portion of the population interested in buying an automobile has now dropped below half. To many Japanese, owning a car just isn’t worth the expense or the trouble, which is another reason young people are moving to cities. Unlike their grandparents, they don’t equate driving with being alive.


Japan's gods: More benevolent than fearsome

Abstract: “Much that is kindly and gracious in the life of the Japanese today,” wrote the eminent historian George Bailey Sansom in 1931, “can be traced to those sentiments which caused their remote ancestors to ascribe divinity not only to the powerful and awe-inspiring … but also to the lovely and pleasant.” Gods come in many shapes and forms, endowed with myriad attributes. There are powerful gods and powerless gods, friendly and malicious gods, life-giving and life-destroying gods, gods who demand animal and human sacrifice and gods who wouldn’t dream of such a thing. The untamed primitive imagination is sensitive to its environment as ours can never be again. The founding environments of Western civilization — the deserts of Mesopotamia, the stony soil and craggy mountains of Greece — were harsh and unforgiving. They bred harsh and unforgiving gods. The contrast to Japan is stark. Japan’s gentle climate and yielding landscape bred “kindly and gracious” gods, whose people, if Sansom is correct, take after them. Pre-modern Japanese history is striking in its relative lack of cruelty. The word “relative” is important. Any 2,000-year span will contain horrific episodes. Three that stand out, under rulers who might well be described as psychopathic in their relish of other people’s suffering, are a brief reign of terror under Shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori (ruled 1429-1441), which ended with his murder; the brutal unification of the fractured nation begun in the mid-16th century by warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), who was also murdered; and the anti-Christian genocide of the early 17th century, whose tortures ran the gamut from crucifixion to burning, boiling and burying alive. It may or may not be significant — but probably is — that the latter two instances occurred after Japan had come under Western influence. This is not to say that Japanese history is otherwise pacific. But at times, and sometimes for very extended times, it is: the peace of the Heian Period (794-1185) lasted four centuries; that of the Edo Period (1603-1868) more than two; and if we broaden our scope to include prehistory, the Jomon Period (circa 14,000 BC-circa 300 BC) may well represent the longest peace ever, anywhere. War and slaughter made their inroads all the same, glorified with such poetic and martial fervor as to leave even Western bellicosity in the shade. But cruelty and violence are not synonymous. Violence there was, in abundance. Cruelty, though, in the sense of sadism, so conspicuous in history and myth elsewhere, tarnishes Japan’s history and mythology relatively little. Japan’s gods and goddesses are powerful but not power-mad, capricious but not vindictive; to be worshipped more in joy than in fear. They are not monstrous, awesome, omnipotent or terrifying, as are other gods we know: Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Biblical. Japan’s birth is a love story. Two young deities — a boy-god and a girl-god — discover each other as human adolescents do, shyly and awkwardly at first, then with growing confidence. It’s a beautiful story, very different from the Biblical creation or the Greek poet Hesiod’s Theogony, circa 9th century BC: “And Night bore hateful Doom and black Fate, and Death, and Sleep and the brood of Dreams … .” Japan’s myriad gods wage no wars, launch no mass slaughters, drink no blood, are mild even in their anger, and laugh. Imagine the Biblical God laughing — or Greece’s pre-Olympian Titans — “strong, hulking creatures,” says Hesiod, “that beggar description. … A hundred hands stuck out of their shoulders, grotesque, and 50 heads grew on each stumpy neck.” What in Japanese mythology compares to the castration of a monstrous Titan by his scarcely less monstrous son; or the wrathful Biblical God’s mankind-destroying flood, or His destruction of whole cities by “brimstone and fire”? The most violent episode in Japanese mythology is the rampage through the Sun Goddess’ rice fields by her unruly brother Susano’o, the Storm God. Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, hides in a cave, from which she is lured out by — of all things! — a rollicking erotic dance staged by the other deities. Drawn by their laughter, she pokes her head out to see what’s happening. Light returns to the world, never to vanish again. The Christian religion enjoins us to love our enemies. It’s an injunction much preached and little heeded. If we loved our enemies they’d be our friends, not our enemies. Japanese morality has no comparable ethic, and Japanese conduct down the ages is refreshingly free of the hypocrisy that inevitably arises from religious requirements beyond the reach of all but the saintly few. Japanese warriors didn’t love their enemies. The remarkable thing is how little they hated them. They killed them and were killed by them, but the attitude toward death was such that, generally speaking, the infliction of it was not in the spirit of hatred, more in that of human beings engaged in the highest human activity there is, so that what looks like wanton slaughter from a pacifist point of view is to the combatants a manifestation of life at its highest peak of intensity. You didn’t hate your enemy, or impute evil to him. An enemy was a kind of relative, a brother-in-arms, and the way you expressed the relationship was by killing him or being killed by him. The customary collection of and gloating over enemy heads seems to belie the civilized rituality that that implies. An old woman named O-An, looking back in 17th-century peace on 16th-century wars she’d experienced as a child — her recollections, written down by unknown scribes, enjoyed great popularity throughout the Edo Period — tells awestruck children who love to listen to her: “The severed heads taken by our side were collected in the castle keep. We attached name tags to all of them, to keep track of whose they were. … We weren’t frightened of the heads. We would lie down and sleep with blood-stinking heads all around us.” Horrible enough — but the mutilation of dead bodies has this to be said for it: It is better than the mutilation of live ones.

ashikaga yoshinori
oda nobunaga
mythology
amaterasu
o-an
susano ' o


Foreign mega-deals challenged by Fujifilm and Takeda shareholders

Abstract: Fujifilm Holdings Corp. President Kenji Sukeno told shareholders on Thursday that the company will continue to pursue a merger with Xerox Corp. despite the U.S. printer and copier-maker’s decision to terminate the deal. “It is the best option for Fuji Xerox and Xerox. I will continue to seek (the merger),” Sukeno told an annual shareholders meeting in Tokyo at a time when the two companies have diverged over their merger deal announced in January. Under the deal, Fujifilm would acquire a 50.1 percent stake in Xerox and merge it with joint venture Fuji Xerox Co. The Japanese company holds a 75 percent stake in Fuji Xerox, with Xerox owning the rest. But Xerox shareholders Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason have objected, claiming Xerox has been undervalued. In May, Xerox said it had decided to terminate the merger after settling with shareholders. Under the agreement, Xerox also reshuffled its management, replacing CEO Jeff Jacobson, who worked with Fujifilm on the planned merger, with John Visentin, a former information technology service firm adviser added to the board by Icahn. At the annual meeting, shareholders raised concerns about the outlook for the merger. When asked about the impact that the termination of the merger contract would have on Fujifilm, Sukeno dismissed any ramifications for the company, saying, “It is Xerox that would be negatively affected.” He said Fujifilm intends to continue fighting a New York court injunction on April 27 blocking the deal. Deason filed for the injunction in February. “We will first explain our position to the appeals court,” Sukeno said. In a separate legal action, Fujifilm sued Xerox earlier this month for damages expected to top $1 billion (¥110 billion) for canceling the merger contract. Meanwhile, a group of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. shareholders trying to stop its £46 billion ($62 billion) buyout of Irish drugmaker Shire Plc failed on Thursday to pass a proposal at its annual meeting. At Takeda’s general shareholders meeting in Osaka, the group had sought to secure the passage of a proposal aimed at changing a company rule to require shareholder approval in advance for large acquisitions. The group, comprising former Takeda employees and ordinary shareholders, had described the deal, announced in May, as too risky. The deal would be the biggest Japanese acquisition of a foreign company. Some Takeda shareholders have also raised concerns that its plan to finance about 50 percent of the Shire takeover with newly issued shares could significantly dilute the value of each share.


North and South Korea hold talks on connecting roads and railways across their border

Abstract: SEOUL - North and South Korea held talks Thursday on establishing roadways to run across their border — part of the initiatives agreed between their leaders to forge closer ties. South Korea’s Moon Jae-in and the North’s Kim Jong Un agreed in a landmark summit held in April to a broader plan to re-connect or newly establish railways and roadways between the two countries. Linking the transport systems of the two Koreas will require the modernization of the impoverished North’s aging and crumbling roadway infrastructure. Officials who met at the border Thursday to hammer out details chose two routes along the peninsula’s western and eastern coasts for the first-phase of modernization works, according to a joint statement released by the South’s government. One will connect the South’s eastern border county of Goseong with the North’s major eastern port of Wonsan, and the other will run between the North’s western city of Kaesong and the capital Pyongyang, said the statement. Joint “field research” on the routes will begin in early August, it added. The agreement came two days after the two Koreas held similar talks on connecting the railways running across the border. The two sides then agreed to conduct a joint-study “at an early date” on modernizing the railways — originally built by Japan in the early 20th century but left to crumble for decades after the 1950-53 Korean War resulted in the division of the peninsula. Linking the transport infrastructure of the two countries would give trade-dependent South Korea — the world’s 11th-largest economy — a land route to the markets of China, Russia and on to Europe. But doing so would be a huge upheaval to the status quo on the peninsula: There has been no direct civilian communication between the countries since their division was sealed by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War — not even by post. Despite the diplomatic thaw, with summits between the North’s leader Kim Jong Un and both the South’s President Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump of the U.S., Pyongyang remains the target of heavy sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs. Pyongyang and Seoul are scheduled to hold forestry-related talks on July 4.

south korea
goseong
wonsan
kaesong
pyongyang
north korea
panmunjom


Unions face fewer funds to back Democrats as Supreme Court hands Illinois GOP governor win over public worker fees

Abstract: CHICAGO - The Supreme Court’s ruling in an Illinois labor case gave Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner a rare victory in his campaign to weaken public-worker unions and something to tout in a tough re-election battle. It also has fired up unions and their Democratic allies who are looking to stop him. The court on Wednesday said public employees can’t be forced to pay fees to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining. The decision is expected to financially weaken unions and affect millions of government workers. Rauner, who faces billionaire businessman J.B. Pritzker in November, filed the initial lawsuit challenging the fees shortly after taking office in 2015. He traveled to Washington D.C. in anticipation of the decision, which he called a “historic victory.” “This ruling is pro-worker and pro-taxpayer,” Rauner said. “State employees — union and nonunion — do tremendous work for the people of Illinois. This ruling is a great victory for our democracy, our public employees, and the taxpayers who count on us to bargain on their behalf.” Rauner was joined on the court steps after the decision was issued by Mark Janus, a child support specialist for the state who took over as plaintiff, and members of the Liberty Justice Center, the legal affiliate of the conservative Illinois Policy Institute. The organization represented Janus along with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Pritzker said he was “appalled” by the decision, and called it “another example of Rauner partnering with anti-worker special interest groups” like the Illinois Policy Institute “to pursue his own agenda over the best interests of working families.” “The fight is far from over,” said Pritzker, who has received early, strong support from Illinois unions. Some union members stood with him in Springfield Wednesday, where Pritzker said that while the decision will win Rauner some backing “the vast majority of people in Illinois know this decision is bad for them.” Labor has historically wielded significant political might in Illinois. But despite spending more than $10 million in 2014, the unions were unable to stop Rauner — a wealthy former private equity investor — from becoming the first GOP Illinois governor in more than a decade. The lawsuit against the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 31 was one of the first attacks Rauner launched against organized labor after railing throughout the campaign about public-employee unions and their “union bosses.” That same day, Rauner issued an executive order directing that the state put the “fair share fees,” collected from about 6,500 state employees’ paychecks, into an escrow account rather than forwarding them to unions. His office said it could keep an estimated $3.75 million from being deposited into the unions’ bank accounts. He later relented on the order after objections from unions and the Democratic attorney general. He was replaced as plaintiff in the case after a judge ruled he didn’t have standing to sue. The fees, which are lower than members’ dues, are intended to cover the cost of nonpolitical union activity such as collective bargaining. Unions argued they guard against “free riders,” or workers who benefit from union representation but don’t contribute to the cost of providing it. Rauner argues all public-worker union activity is inherently political, because unions negotiate contracts and other issues with the same office holders they either help elect or fight to defeat. He saw the case as a fundamental piece of his strategy to transform Illinois government by making public-worker unions less powerful — a mission that’s been largely thwarted by a Democratic-controlled Legislature. Rauner’s office said the state would notify employees of the decision Wednesday and workers would be given the opportunity to leave the union. Illinois also will stop withholding the fees from non-union members’ paychecks. “The worker now has the ability to make his own decision or her decision, and that’s why I brought this case,” Janus said from the Supreme Court steps Wednesday. Unions, expecting the ruling, have stepped up recruiting and education efforts in recent months and been holding pro-labor rallies in Chicago and other cities. They pledged Wednesday that their efforts will not let up. “We are more resolved than ever to fight like hell to win for our members and the communities they care so much about,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said.

unions
democrats
illinois
gop
u.s. supreme court
public-sector workers


Trump to meet Putin in Helsinki on July 16 for first bilateral summit between U.S. and Russia leaders

Abstract: MOSCOW - Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16 for their first bilateral summit as the leaders seek to reverse a downward spiral in relations that has been exacerbated by findings that Russia meddled in U.S. elections. The Kremlin and the White House announced the meeting in simultaneous statements issued Thursday, a day after Putin hosted U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton for talks in Moscow. Their unusually warm discussions at the Kremlin Wednesday came amid the worst tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals since the Cold War. Trump has pushed for improving the relationship — inviting Putin to the White House in a March phone call after the Russian leader’s re-election to a fourth term as president. The summit itself is likely to boost Kremlin efforts to ease its international isolation, though officials had played down hopes of any breakthrough. ‘First steps’ “Your visit to Moscow gives us hope that we can make at least the first steps toward restoring full-scale relations between our countries,” Putin told Bolton at the opening of their meeting Wednesday. Trump had startled other Western leaders earlier this month when he said the Group of Seven should re-admit Russia on the eve of its annual summit in Quebec. The group of industrialized democracies suspended Russia’s participation after its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The announcement that U.S. and Russian leaders will meet comes as Trump faces relentless pressure over the U.S. probe into Russia meddling and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it. Putin has said there was no meddling, and Trump has called the continuing investigation a “witch hunt.” Russia “continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump tweeted on Thursday. Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that he expects Trump to discuss Russian interference in U.S. elections and the Kremlin’s military incursions into Ukraine and Syria, along with other potentially touchy subjects, when he meets with Putin. ‘Broad range’ “There are a broad range of issues the president’s going to talk about that need to be addressed,” Pence said in an interview with Bloomberg News aboard Air Force Two on Wednesday. They include the “economic relationship with the United States and Russia and countries of the world.” Trump has said he’s confronted Putin about Russia’s involvement in the election in previous meetings. He has enacted new sanctions Congress ordered against Russia to punish the country for its election activities and hasn’t lifted sanctions put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama. The summit “is of huge significance,” Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Wednesday. “It will be the main international event of the summer.” Bolton said it’s “not unusual” for Trump and Putin to meet because other world leaders have also had such talks with Putin. Bolton, though, added that “the summit itself is a deliverable.” “I don’t think that we expect necessarily any specific outcomes or decisions” from the meeting, Bolton said. “It’s important after the length of time that has gone by without a bilateral summit like this to allow them to cover all the issues they choose.” The summit is, above all, a symbolic achievement for Putin as he seeks to put ties with the U.S. back on track with Trump in the White House, said Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research group set up by the Kremlin. “It means he can reverse the trend in our relations, ensure they have hit the bottom and legitimize them once again,” Kortunov said in an interview in Moscow.

helsinki
russia
donald trump
vladimir putin
finland
john bolton
u.s .


Teenager's suicide, after sexual harassment by teacher goes unpunished, sparks soul-searching across China

Abstract: BEIJING - The suicide of a teenager in China whose sexual harassment case was dismissed has triggered nationwide soul-searching over her treatment, and anger at onlookers who encouraged her to jump off a building. Li Yiyi, 19, died last week after throwing herself from the eighth floor of a department store in Qingyang, a city in northwest Gansu province, following previous suicide attempts, police told reporters. A public outcry erupted after videos of the scene circulated online and reports that some bystanders had jeered her and urged the young woman to “jump quickly” while firefighters tried to save her. The police said Monday they had detained two people who had booed, and started investigations into six others for verbally abusive online posts about Li. “The world is getting more and more indifferent. I’m scared. Just how mentally defective are those people who jeered for her to jump?” questioned one user on Twitter-like Weibo. The case has put a new spotlight on the struggle among Chinese women to get legal help in sexual abuse allegations. The teenager had been upset because prosecutors cleared a high school teacher whom she had accused of forcibly kissing her and trying take her clothes off in September 2016. Li and her father had repeatedly sought charges against him but local prosecutors decided not to try him, declaring that his behavior was a “slight” offense that did not constitute a crime. She appealed to a higher prosecutor, who also rejected her case. The teacher was briefly detained but kept his job. “She fought for two years. Except for her father, no one — including teachers, the school, the court and the prosecutor — cared about her pain. Only those firefighters kept trying to save her,” a Weibo user wrote. Sexual harassment cases have rocked Chinese university campuses in recent months, fueling a #MeToo movement that nonetheless has been more low-key than in other countries due to censorship by the authorities. There is no legal definition of sexual harassment in China, and there are no national regulations on how to handle sexual assault cases in schools or workplaces. Guo Jianmei, a women’s rights lawyer in Beijing, said very few sexual assault cases are prosecuted due to lack of evidence, and a lack of respect for women has contributed to such cases not being taken seriously in China. “Her case follows a typical pattern where her helplessness and loneliness after long-term pressure sent her toward a path to death,” Guo said. “It happens a lot. And it is hidden harassment, which is hard to get convicted as there is no obvious violence in the action,” she said. “She was actually very brave as she went to the police and talked about it. Most girls just cry in private and then become depressed. They wouldn’t even dare to tell their parents.” A 26-year-old Chinese graduate student drew social media praise last month after she tried to sue police for dismissing her rape report, in what is was believed to have been the first such attempt to challenge authorities on a sexual assault allegation. The burden of proof is high for alleged victims, according to lawyers. In a 2017 survey of more than 6,500 Chinese students, conducted by the Guangzhou Gender and Sexuality Education Centre, 70 percent reported having been sexually harassed and over 40 percent said the cases took place in public areas on campus. But only 4 percent of women and even fewer men had reported campus sexual abuse cases to police, according to a 2015 Sina.com survey. Li had attempted to kill herself four other times before succeeding in taking her own life, police said Monday. Police said the teacher was detained for 10 days on a minor offense. The officers said they were investigating if the suicide was linked to the sexual harassment case. “The thing my daughter could not let go was that the person was only lightly punished. The school didn’t even admit they did wrong… They think she made too big of a deal out of a small matter,” Li’s father told The Beijing News. In a complaint to prosecutors, Li said the school had “deceived” her, and had chosen not to punish the teacher because he was “hard to replace.” The captain of the rescue team at the local fire department, Xu Jiwei, who had intervened in Li’s previous suicide attempts, told reporters the young woman had begged him to let her die. Xu said in a rare emotional account that the whole firefighting squad cried after Li fell and they were “deeply sorry” for her death.


Number of consultations with Japan labor bureaus over 'power harassment' up 1.6 percent in fiscal 2017

Abstract: The number of consultations by workers with local labor bureaus over job-related bullying and harassment, including so-called power harassment, grew 1.6 percent in fiscal 2017 from the previous year to a record 72,067, a labor ministry report revealed Wednesday. Power harassment, mainly bullying by superiors, includes verbal insults or being intentionally ignored. “Amid a rise in interest in harassment in society, employees are calling on employers to take measures” to improve the working environment, a ministry official said. Overall work-related consultations on disputes totaled 253,005, down 1 percent. Of them, consultations over bullying and harassment topped the list for the sixth consecutive year, followed by voluntary resignation and dismissal. Consultations concerning the nonrenewal of employment contracts jumped 15.8 percent to 14,442. This figure reflects the high number of companies that ended contracts with nonregular workers before a system that allows fixed-term employees to switch to indefinite-term contracts was fully implemented April 1, an observer said.


Australian artist emerges alive after being buried under road for three days

Abstract: HOBART, AUSTRALIA - An Australian performance artist who was buried in a steel container under a busy road for 72 hours as part of a so-called dark arts festival was released from his self-imposed prison Sunday. Mike Parr, a 73-year-old performance artist whose creative endeavors typically explore physical limits, was entombed in the mini-shipping container late Thursday and the road was resealed above him. Oxygen was pumped into the container where Parr had access to water, reading and writing material, a heater and a distress button in case anything went wrong — but no food. He was equipped with a bucket for sanitary use. The burial act was part of the Dark Mofo Festival on the island state of Tasmania. It was designed to highlight violence perpetrated by colonialists against Aboriginal communities, the festival said on its website. Dark arts festivals showcase artwork and performances that often celebrate ancient rituals. The festival has attracted controversy for placing inverted red crosses across Hobart, the Tasmanian capital, prompting some Christian groups to denounce the installations as satanic. Parr’s previous performance art included wrapping himself up in fuse wire, then setting it alight, and sewing up his face.

australia
artist
tasmania
aboriginal
dark arts . festival