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A sit-in by visa violators and their families entered its second day Tuesday in front of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau with protesters seeking government good will. The action at the bureau in Minato Ward is being organized by the Asian People’s Friendship Society, ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“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, ...
Takashi Miike's blood-soaked vengeance tale, one of two Japanese films being shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, draws the biggest boos so far, with critics savaging it as overacted and cliched.
Have you ever given your best effort while striving to achieve something but felt like what you were doing was futile? That’s the feeling I’m getting about Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics. With just over three months to go until the IOC ...
Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan officially replaced Hirohisa Fujii as finance minister Thursday after the veteran financial expert resigned for health reasons. Kan’s priorities will be to get the 2010 budget passed as quickly as possible and to get a grip on the government’s ...
The all-time high fiscal 2010 budget draft approved Friday casts considerable doubt on whether the country can sustain its finances or if through such spending it can buy its way out of the economic slump, experts warn. With the ballooning public debt and sharp ...
The Cabinet led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama adopted on Tuesday a set of tax reforms for fiscal 2010 that would increase the burden on taxpayers by a total of around ¥980 billion a year. The plan has the government maintaining the current gasoline ...
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama decided Monday to stick with one of his key policy pledges but to abandon another, saying the government will not set an income cap on the child-care allowance but will maintain the current gasoline tax rate. Both were key elements ...
The Bank of Japan said Friday it will maintain its key interest rate at around 0.1 percent, making clear its determination to hold the line against deflation. The key interest rate has been kept at an extremely low level since last December, when the ...
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama adopted on Tuesday a basic policy on compiling the fiscal 2010 budget, including a ¥44 trillion limit on issuing new bonds. Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the ¥44 trillion cap underlines the administration’s determination to spend ...
After haggling with a junior coalition partner over the size, the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Tuesday announced a ¥7.2 trillion economic stimulus package aimed at lifting the sagging economy and overcoming deflation. Some economists, however, doubt the set of new measures ...
Amid mounting pressure from the government to rein in deflation and the surging yen, the Bank of Japan said Tuesday it would pump some ¥10 trillion into the banking system to keep the economy on a recovery track. Calling an emergency meeting in the ...
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Monday he will follow as much as possible the recommendations in his waste-cutting panel’s review of 449 public works projects in the budgetary requests for fiscal 2010, which came in at a record ¥95 trillion. To slash the budget ...
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s waste-cutting panel finished its nine-day review of allocations Friday for 447 public works projects in the government’s record-high ¥95 trillion budget for fiscal 2010. By Friday, the panel had recommended budget cuts totaling nearly ¥750 billion, and demanded the return ...
This year marks Emperor Akihito’s 20th year on the Chrysanthemum Throne. Designated by the Constitution as the “symbol” of the state and required to be politically neutral, the 75-year-old Emperor and the Imperial family are nonetheless often subjected to media scrutiny, particularly in recent ...
The top three banking groups posted net profits for the six months to September as the global downturn eased, according to earnings results announced as of Wednesday. On Wednesday, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. said its consolidated net profit rose 53.2 percent, to ¥140.9 ...