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Keiji Hirano
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2009
Archives detail '49 miscarriage of justice
, a professor emeritus at Fukushima University, poses in front of the school's Matsukawa case archives. Below: Makoto Suzuki, a defendant in the case first sentenced to death and then acquitted, is interviewed in November. KYODO PHOTO
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2007
'54 letters bear out kids' nuclear fears
the threat of nuclear bombs, it also has an important place in the history of Japan's wooden fishing boats," he said. The Fukuryu Maru was used as a training vessel for 10 years by Tokyo University of Fisheries after its radioactivity was confirmed two years after the blast to have fallen to safe levels....
JAPAN
Sep 28, 2007
Web site documents wartime sex slaves
have lived for more than half a century after the war, suffering practically as much as they did during the several years they spent in military comfort stations," it says. The museum also preserves the testimony of several former comfort women.
JAPAN
Jul 11, 2007
Film on accused gropers reflects judiciary flaws: lawyers
Criminal trials involving accused "chikan" — men who use the anonymity of crowded trains to grope women — represent the dark side of Japan's judicial system, according to their defense lawyers.
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2006
Minamata disease relief is still elusive
, while keeping a cool head as administrators," Kunio Yanagida, a nonfiction writer, told a public meeting Saturday in Tokyo. Yanagida was on the nine-member advisory panel to former Environment Minister Yuriko Koike that proposed in September that the government develop a new relief framework to help...
JAPAN
Sep 19, 2006
Tokyo's Wako University staging exhibition on Minamata disease
Wako University is holding an exhibition through Sept. 24 on Minamata disease at its campus in Machida, western Tokyo, aiming to show how the mercury-poisoning disease has affected Japan's postwar society.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2006
Photographer captures essence of elderly full of life, near death
As a freelance photo journalist, Munesuke Yamamoto has witnessed numerous deaths in war zones around the world, but he is now focusing on the living, specifically elderly people in Japan.
JAPAN
Jul 22, 2006
Activists worry free speech being eroded
fliers on my days off for more than 30 years. "I was told when I became a central government employee in 1972 that engaging in political activities may result in punishment," he admitted.
JAPAN
Jul 21, 2005
Emigrants await ruling in breach of promise suit
Some 1,300 Japanese citizens left for "a promised land" in the Caribbean almost 50 years ago, encouraged by a government-sponsored emigration program.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 21, 2005
Emigrants await ruling in breach of promise suit
Some 1,300 Japanese citizens left for "a promised land" in the Caribbean almost 50 years ago, encouraged by a government-sponsored emigration program.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2005
Japan's sexual slavery focus of museum
In a bid to keep wartime sexual violence against women in people's minds, female activists in Japan are set to open a museum in Tokyo to collect and display materials mainly about those who were forced into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army during the war.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 11, 2004
Film depicts Japan's gender equality strife
A documentary film about an American woman's struggle to achieve gender equality in postwar Japan, sponsored and made by Japanese women, is set to be released next April.
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2004
Rice harvested by children to be donated to Cambodia
The U.N. World Food Program and a Japanese nongovernmental organization will ship to Cambodia 32 tons of rice harvested by children in Japan to help poor women and children in developing nations.
JAPAN
Mar 5, 2004
Memory of feisty journalist, activist for women's rights to live on at center
The memory of Yayori Matsui, a journalist and women's rights activist who passed away at the end of 2002, will live on in a collection of her papers being established by the Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center in Tokyo.
JAPAN
Nov 27, 2003
Flag, anthem rules kill free-thought right: teachers
Miwako Sato, a public elementary school teacher in the western Tokyo suburb of Kunitachi, may file a lawsuit early next year over the use of the controversial national flag and anthem in schools.
JAPAN
Oct 18, 2003
Junta critic's 'Burma's Children' photo show portrays Myanmar plight
Munesuke Yamamoto's visa applications to Myanmar have repeatedly been rejected since the freelance photographer conducted an exclusive interview with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon in September 1998.
JAPAN
Sep 25, 2003
Ex-night school teacher still learns from students
For Yoshikazu Kenjo, those who attended his junior high evening classes were not only his students but also his teachers.
JAPAN
Sep 17, 2003
10% of public school students eligible for welfare
The prolonged economic slump has extended into the nation's classrooms, with around 1.15 million public elementary and junior high school students qualifying for financial aid in fiscal 2002.
JAPAN
Sep 3, 2003
Obscenity trial prompts freedom-of-speech outcry
Motonori Kishi was bemused when he was arrested in October on suspicion of distributing obscene material -- despite the fact that his firm's comic books feature uncensored scenes depicting sexual intercourse.
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2003
Plea of innocence from the grave
The man convicted of one of Japan's most shocking postwar crimes is insisting on his innocence from "beyond the grave."

Longform

Akira Oishi (left) and Shinichi Okanobori have taken on the responsibility of surveying the flora and fauna of Mount Tenran and Mount Tonosu in Saitama Prefecture.
Inside Japan's 100-year project to monitor its deteriorating biodiversity