20
SUNNY
The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
More than a week after the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11, Japan’s commercial broadcasters are still weighing the crisis as it develops. The weekend following the catastrophe, all planned programming was canned for round-the-clock coverage of the tragedy, and whatever you want ...
A funny thing happened on the way to jail for the 19-year-old boy who was arrested Mar. 3 for allegedly cheating on a Kyoto University entrance exam: The media suddenly became all reflective of its coverage and sympathetic of his situation. Some may see ...
Case 1: Kabuki stars are different. Last month, the 38-year-old kabuki actor Kataoka Ainosuke held a press conference and admitted that he is the father of a boy who is now a fifth-year elementary school student. Ainosuke is not married to the boy’s 43-year-old ...
When she emerged in 2009 fully developed as a club-kid pop diva, Kesha Rose Sebert was seen as a trashier version of whatever it is Lady Gaga is supposed to represent. But if you have to resort to comparison for the sake of description, ...
In the late 1990s, I did piece work for a public relations company, translating achievement reports into English for its non-Japanese clients. The reports outlined how and where the company had secured mentions of its clients’ products in various media, and included equivalent advertising ...
Twenty-five years ago, Japan was a very competitive manufacturing country, and much of its economic policy since then has been in response to trade friction with the United States, which demanded greater access to Japanese markets for American agricultural products in order to offset ...
Last week, the Fuji TV newsmagazine “Mr. Sunday” looked at Korean pop’s success in Japan from two angles. Taking a street-level perspective, the show’s host, Seiji Miyane, hung out in Tokyo’s Okubo district, which has become “the new Harajuku” because young Japanese women flock ...
When NHK’s in-depth news program, “Closeup Gendai,” addresses a pressing social issue, it usually offers possible solutions articulated by experts. Two weeks ago, however, the show covered a problem that seems to have no solution. The subject of the opening segment was a middle-aged ...
The tempest in a teapot whipped up by a segment on the British quiz-cum-comedy show “QI” has prompted debate on cross-cultural sensitivity. The BBC has apologized for the segment, which, contrary to a statement issued by Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, did not make fun ...
Results from Japan’s national census last year are dribbling in and the reaction in the media often focuses on one pair of statistics: The number of households is increasing while population is declining, which means that there are a lot more single-person households than ...
The micro-blogging service Twitter is an effective PR instrument, but one fraught with risk for celebrities who want to juice their notoriety by connecting directly and on their own terms with the public. Forgoing the filtering function of publicists, they may endear themselves to ...
Media persons of the year: Toshikazu Sugaya and Atsuko Muraki Toshikazu Sugaya’s 1992 conviction for the murder of a little girl in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, was reviewed by judges in 2009 after years of pleading by his defense team, which claimed the DNA evidence ...