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Former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa will pledge in his campaign for the Feb. 9 Tokyo gubernatorial election to set out a road map for Japan to break with nuclear power generation by 2020, according to a close aide. "By making 2020 his target year, he ...
The leader of a rightist group said Saturday that Naoki Inose gave him ¥5 million shortly after being elected Tokyo governor in December 2012 for arranging a meeting he had with the founder of the nation's top hospital group, whose dubious ¥50 million loan ...
In a last-ditch attempt to win votes for the pro-base candidate in Sunday's Nago mayoral election, Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Shigeru Ishiba has promised voters Tokyo will set up a ¥50 billion fund to be used to revitalize the local economy. Ishiba made the announcement ...
The trial of Makoto Hirata, which commenced Thursday, is expected to reveal a number of new facts about the former Aum Shinrikyo fugitive, but of most interest to investigators will be how he managed to stay hidden for so long. Unlike the two Aum fugitives ...
Aum Shinrikyo fugitive Makoto Hirata's final day of freedom was nothing short of embarrassing for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Not that Hirata had expected it to turn out that way; as far as he was concerned, he was simply turning himself in after spending ...
Aum Shinrikyo's criminal activities began in the late 1980s and culminated in the 1995 nerve-gas attacks on Tokyo's subway system. The group was founded in 1984 by Shoko Asahara, the babbling, half-blind guru whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto. Initially starting life as a yoga ...
March 20 will mark the 19th anniversary of the toxic nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by members of the Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) doomsday cult. That attack, which shook Japanese society to its very foundations, resulted in 13 deaths and thousands of ...
It's no secret that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's most valuable public relations resource at the moment is his wife, Akie, whose candor contrasts vividly with the demure demeanor of most Japanese leaders' wives. The weekly magazine Aera has suggested that Akie's press ubiquity has ...
"Man the change-maker." That is one definition of Homo sapiens. Other creatures are changed — by Nature, by evolution — over vast expanses of time measured in hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Humankind consciously generates change. We innovate, build, invent, destroy, build ...
Shadows of winter clouds Run over the ocean Just before sunset It's a pretty haiku, but it becomes quite extraordinary when you learn that it was written aboard the International Space Station (ISS) by astronaut Koichi Wakata, who tweeted it to his 50,000 followers on Jan. 9. ...
To the frustration — and rising panic — of nuclear village chieftain and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Tokyo's gubernatorial election next month is shaping up to be a contest not about "local" issues like the 2020 Tokyo Olympics or even perennial complaints such as ...
The mayor of Hakodate said Saturday that his city plans to sue the central government and a utility around March to halt construction of a nuclear plant in nearby Aomori Prefecture. In the lawsuit to be filed at the Tokyo District Court, the Hakodate Municipal ...
Paul Polman, CEO of margarine maker Unilever, has criticized butter in the past, saying the dairy fat "kills." With sales of the company's spreads sagging, he is now embracing it. In what Unilever Foods President Antoine de Saint-Affrique calls a "fundamental turnaround" of a $4.8 ...
A top aide to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lashed out Friday at U.S. President Barack Obama's administration for expressing disappointment over the Japanese leader's contentious visit to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine, saying past Republican-led U.S. administrations would not have responded in such a fashion. "The ...
A group of companies in Japan are starting to buck the trend of making workers feel guilty for taking the full amount of vacation days to which they are entitled — and for good reason.
A fiscal 2012 education ministry survey of parents throughout Japan reports that total spending for a child going to private schools from kindergarten through senior high school came to ¥16.77 million on average, significantly more than the ¥5 million for a child going to ...
Plowing through the news, one is often struck by the proliferation of acronyms, jargon, new names and terms. It can be a baffling experience, so I thought I would provide some explanations, keywords, synonyms, associative notions and interpretations to aid comprehension — even at ...
A physician-writer wonders why a common narrative of shared commercial and cultural interests cannot be developed in the Mideast like the one that Jewish and Arab business owners had in his hometown in northern Argentina a half-century ago.
When I told the Japanese woman with whom I'd struck up a conversation in central Tokyo's very handy Haneda airport that I was flying to Lewchew, she looked puzzled. The invading Japanese, struggling with the Chinese reading of the characters, pronounced the name of the ...
"Resilience" is a hot topic these days — not in self-help books, but among policymakers worldwide. As governments become convinced that climate change is a real threat, they are taking steps to ensure communities can bounce back from the increasing impact of floods, storms, ...
Like all artists, novelists find the impetus to begin in various places. Some inspire themselves with a formal challenge. Georges Perec, for example, asked himself what would happen if he tried to write a novel entirely bereft of the letter "e." Others, in their ...
Career nihilist Osamu Dazai had already attempted suicide four times when he published his most famous novel in 1947. "The Setting Sun" quickly became a byword for the decline of Japan's aristocracy in the wake of World War II, but its portrait of a ...
Former journalist Ian McArthur's study of Henry Black, a Briton who became a professional rakugo-ka (storyteller) in Meiji Era (1868-1912) Japan, is a reminder that many colorful characters from that turbulent time — especially foreigners — remain little known to contemporary readers. "Henry Black: On ...
The latest Hello Kitty comic from Viz Media's Perfect Square imprint is a simple yet fun escape for young children enamoured with Japan's most recognizable feline. Hello Kitty: Delicious!, Various, VIZ, PERFECT SQUARE In February last year, Viz signed a deal with Sanrio to develop original ...
An orphanage is the setting for the new Nippon TV drama series, "Ashita, Mama ga Inai" ("Tomorrow, Mama Will Be Gone"; Wed., 10 p.m.), which stars the two hottest child actors in Japan right now, Rio Suzuki and Mana Ashida. Maki (Suzuki) is sent to ...
Takeshi Mito scored a game-high 24 points and Ira Brown's double-double helped propel the Toyama Grouses to a 68-52 home win on Saturday over the Shimane Susanoo Magic, who dropped their first game under new coach Reggie Hanson. Brown finished with 16 points, 12 rebounds ...
Kosuke Kimura may be Japanese soccer's best-kept secret, but the New York Red Bulls right back is hoping to announce himself on the biggest stage at this summer's World Cup. Kimura remains a relative unknown in his home country despite carving out a successful career ...
Akito Watabe will take his third crack at an Olympic medal when the Nordic combined competition begins at the Sochi Games on Feb. 12. Watabe, who competed for Japan at the 2006 Turin Games and again at Vancouver in 2010, is going in search of ...
Sochi Olympic gold medal hopeful Sara Takanashi posted her seventh World Cup win of the season on Saturday in a competition that was cut to one round of jumps. The 17-year-old from Hokkaido fell after landing on her first jump, but her distance of 104 ...
Professional athletes have been known to have different attitudes when dealing with fans. Autograph-seekers have been told, "Take a hike, son" by players in a bad mood or on a bad day. On the other extreme, the most polite professionals sometimes actually thank the fans ...
Reliever Junichi Tazawa avoided salary arbitration and reached an agreement with the Boston Red Sox on Friday. Tazawa, who emerged as a reliable setup man in the Red Sox' bullpen and helped them win the World Series last season, will see his salary rise from ...
Ozeki Kisenosato kept his slim hopes for promotion alive, overpowering Aminishiki while undefeated yokozuna Hakuho continued to wreak havoc with a demolition of Toyohibiki on the seventh day of the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament on Saturday. Hakuho, who is gunning for his 28th career ...
