NEWSWORTHY
Letters containing suspected cyanide targeted 18 Japanese newspapers and drugmakers
Threatening letters with white powder suspected to be potassium cyanide were recently sent to a total of 18 companies, police sources said Tuesday. The letters include those delivered to the Tokyo headquarters of major dailies the Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun, and offices of ...
Asahi Shimbun remembers 29-year-old reporter killed in 1987 ultra-rightist attack
The Asahi Shimbun daily and local residents on Thursday paid tribute to a 29-year-old reporter killed in a 1987 shooting at its western Japan bureau, in an attack claimed by ultra-rightists angered by the newspaper's "anti-national" reporting. Company officials also renewed their pledge to defend ...
In Japan no one wants to talk about sex education
The English "penis" — which rhymes with "Venice" in katakana — is the preferred technical term when discussing male genitalia in Japan, but even that seems to be taboo in broadcast situations.
Japanese newspaper reporter wounded in unsolved '87 shooting at Hanshin bureau dies
Hyoe Inukai, a former Asahi Shimbun reporter severely wounded by a shotgun during the unsolved 1987 attack on the daily's Hanshin bureau, has died, it was learned Friday. He was 73. Inukai died Tuesday at a hospital in Kagawa Prefecture. The cause of death is ...
Japanese media's hits and misses of 2017
The term "fake news" was used in so many different situations this year that it no longer describes an agreed upon concept but rather anything you don't agree with. This is why the U.S. press has had a difficult time making sense of its ...
Men still making houses as women try to leave home
Dogen Ogata's name is known worldwide before he knows it himself. He's 8 months old. One day last month, in all innocence, cradled in his mother's arms, he attended a session of the Kumamoto municipal assembly. Yuka Ogata, 42, is a member of the assembly. ...
#MeToo movement confuses media in Japan
During a recent discussion on Bunka Hoso's radio talk show, "Golden Radio," about sexual misconduct in the U.S., the participants wondered if the #MeToo social media movement would catch on in Japan. "Me Too" as a movement was started more than a decade ago ...
Ad money makes the news world go round
In a Nov. 8 press release, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center announced that Katsuya Takasu, the most famous plastic surgeon in Japan, was no longer a member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (AACS). Previously, the center had been urging the AACS ...
On the quest for the holy grail for as long as we live
Is death inevitable? True, everyone born before Aug. 4, 1900, has proved mortal (the world's oldest-known living person, a Japanese woman named Nabi Tajima, was born on that date). But the past is only an imperfect guide to the future, as the effervescent present ...
Fuji TV's wishful thinking is food for thought
Since 1987, Fuji TV has owned Monday night, specifically the 9 to 10 p.m. time slot, when it broadcasts fluffy romantic drama series starring the season's hottest actress and often a prominent member of a boy band. This phenomenon has its own name — getsu-ku ...
Abe: Will he be a man of his many words?
Since his big win in the lower house election on Oct. 22, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been talking about proceeding with measures to revise the Constitution, a project that has been close to his heart for most of his political career. However, during ...
Prepare for the future, at your convenience
Japan's first convenience store was not, as many suppose, 7-Eleven in Tokyo in 1974 but Mitsui in Kyoto in 1673. The genius behind it was Mitsui Hachirobei, heir to the sake shop his father had opened a generation earlier. Of samurai birth, the father saw ...
