100 YEARS AGO
Tuesday, June 3, 1924
Tokyo gaily makes merry
Through great evergreen gates, in luxurious limousines or behind prancing horses, a thousand invited notables will proceed to the Imperial Palace tomorrow at noon to attend the luncheon given by the Prince Regent, the Crown Princess, and Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress.
Prince Kan-in, Prince Tokugawa, Admiral Togo, Prince and Princess Kaya, Prince and Princess Taka Kuni, and Baron and Baroness Hamao will be among the scores of nobles present at the gay court function which is tomorrow’s event in marking the national week of celebration of the recent marriage of the Prince Regent.
Foreign diplomats and others were received at an Imperial banquet Saturday night, but no foreigners are to attend tomorrow’s reception.
Governors and mayors from all over the Empire are assembling in Japan’s Capital for the gala days. The city in holiday mood is bedecked in flags, bright paper lanterns, banners, triumphal arches, and masses of gay flowers. At night, decorated trams are run over the principle lines of the street railway system. This will be done until June 10.
The main entrance to the Marunouchi Building is trimmed with Rising Sun flags and evergreen. At the Babasakimon Gate of the Imperial Palace grounds monster pillars of green tower into the sky, while at Sakuradamon and other entrances similar causeways are being built.
75 YEARS AGO
Tuesday, June 28, 1949
USSR sends back POW’s saturated in Red Doctrine
The Takasago Maru slipped into port this morning, her white hull limmed sharply against the green of the sea and the hills of Maizuru. The long-awaited ship had reached home from Nahodka in Siberia.
Aboard, massed solid khaki along rails, were 2,000 picked men, ruddy of color, robust of build.
Voices raucous with vitality sang in drilled harmony the Internationale and the International Youth Song, the hymn to Communist youth of the world adopted at the International Youth Congress in Prague in the fall of 1947.
These songs were “a slap in the face” to the throng which turned out to welcome the first repatriates from the Soviet Union. In answer to the proffered hand of sympathy, this was a gesture of defiance, of sheer rudeness.
Mayor Shuji Yanagida of Maizuru, who has been out to greet practically every incoming repatriate ship, stated that the tendency of the Soviet Union to send back an obviously trained corps of Communist youths became evident when the results of the last general election in Japan were announced. He expressed his conviction that this was a definite bid to sway domestic politics in Japan by sending reinforcements to back the Communists.
50 YEARS AGO
Saturday, June 29, 1974
Whalers eye tourism
Growing pressure from conservationists abroad for stricter controls on whale hunting has caused some of Japan’s whaling towns to ponder whether they should seek their livelihood through tourism instead of whaling.
The town of Oshika in Miyagi Prefecture, known as a giant whaling base, is considering a change from a “whaling town” to a “tourist town” as it has become increasingly difficult to continue hunting whales.
About one-fifth of all the town’s population of a little more than 10,000 are engaged in whaling and related trades. The town earned ¥1,860 million from the whaling industry last year. They have annually hauled in about 1,500 whales, including sperm and sei whales.
They were relieved to see the U.S.-sponsored 10-year moratorium of all commercial whaling voted down at the London meeting of the International Whaling Commission. But they were still shocked to see catch quotas drastically reduced.
“The reduction of the catch quota is a life-and-death matter for the town,” Mayor Satoshi Watanabe said. “Although the town has a 70-year-old tradition as a whaling base, there is no knowing what the future has in store.”
25 YEARS AGO
Saturday, June 19, 1999
13% of Japanese tapped the Internet in 1998
More and more Japanese are using the Internet, with the number reaching about 17 million, or 13.4 percent of the population, in fiscal 1998, according to the 1999 White Paper Communications in Japan released Friday.
The rapid growth of the Internet, which is now accessed by more than 10 percent of the nation’s households, comes just five years after commercial Internet services were launched in Japan.
In contrast, it took 13 years for personal computers, 15 years for mobile and car phones and 76 years for telephones to spread to the same extent.
The volume of information on Web sites increased 3.4 times between February 1998 and last February, the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry said in the annual report. Meanwhile, Internet-related businesses — such as Internet service providers, online merchants and those selling Internet-related equipment such as computers, modem and software — have also been growing sharply.
The report points out that an increasing number of Japanese women are now using the Internet.
Surveys show that women accounted for 25.6 percent of Internet users in Japan in 1998, up 7.8 percentage points from the previous year. In the United States, women made up 35.8 percent of Internet users in 1998, down 4.7 percentage points from 1997.
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