Japan's bears are widely vilified and little understood
On Aug. 6, the BBC aired a story about four Ussuri brown bears being successfully transported from a museum in Hokkaido to a wildlife park in England. In the story, a British organization called Wild Welfare said it had become "concerned" about the animals' ...
Hoarding in Japan isn't as dark as NHK makes it out to be
Thanks to Marie Kondo, everyone knows about the Japanese art of katazuke, or "tidying up." Kondo's books on organizing your things and deciding what items you should throw away have been translated into numerous languages and she's been interviewed by myriad international media outlets. Katazuke ...
Japan's rigid koseki system keeps it all in the family
Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Mio Sugita is being criticized for comments she made about how LGBT individuals should not receive government “support” because, biologically speaking, they can’t have children and are thus “unproductive” as members of society. Although the media have covered her remarks ...
Aum executions fail to end debate over cult's motives
The execution of 13 members of the religious group Aum Shinrikyo in two rounds on July 6 and 26, including the group’s 63-year-old leader, Shoko Asahara (whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto), for the 1995 subway sarin attack and other crimes, was hardly a ...
News outlets in Japan question belated flood response
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe probably regrets attending a drinking party thrown by some Liberal Democratic Party colleagues on July 5. Even if he didn’t suffer a hangover, as some reports implied, he was forced to dodge media brickbats over his colleagues’ seeming inability to ...
Dementia is pushing cancer out of the medical spotlight
The media love cancer — what causes it, how to prevent it, who has it. Cancer is something that potentially touches everybody in a dramatic way, and therefore public interest is keen. There’s a lot invested in cancer, particularly in the area of early diagnosis. ...
Rose-tinted views of elderly workers' plight
The media has been conscientious in its coverage of the need for foreign workers in Japan. A May 20 NHK Special was particularly thorough in its portrayal of Mimasaka, Okayama Prefecture, which is encouraging Vietnamese laborers to move to the city. Several news outlets ...
Shinzo Abe's Kake Gakuen scandal refuses to lie down and die
Most people believe politicians lie, though the reflexive skepticism with which the current U.S. president’s pronouncements are met is probably exceptional. The secret to successful lying is to never admit to it in the slightest way. That rule of thumb has been challenged by a ...
Public remains ignorant of the hazards associated with smoking
“Secondhand smoke” describes the fumes in the air that result from someone smoking tobacco. “Sidestream smoke” (fukuryūen) comes off the tip of the cigarette itself rather than out of the mouth of the person smoking it. Since sidestream smoke is estimated to make up ...
Should the elderly be stopped from driving?
On June 10, a car crashed into a supermarket in Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, injuring 14 people. At first the incident sounded like yet another elderly person losing control of a vehicle and causing destruction, but then it transpires that the driver was a 55-year-old ...
Undocumented workers in a constant state of uncertainty
People who live in a state of daily desperation sometimes react to their circumstances with violence against others or themselves and, while such actions are a manifestation of frustration, they can also alert the larger world to that frustration, even if it wasn't intended. ...
Market forces in Japan failing to tackle growing plastics problem
Last month, news outlets all over the world reported on the discovery of a plastic shopping bag at the bottom of the Mariana Trench near the Philippines, the deepest point in the Earth’s oceans. The discovery was made by a group of Japanese researchers ...
