Japan's tsunami refugees brace for harsh winter
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Nikkei falls, cautious ahead of Italian bond sale
Japan's benchmark Nikkei
slipped on Thursday ahead of an Italian debt sale that could
prove challenging in thin volumes, while the euro's tumble
against the yen to a 10-year low pressured exporters.
Elpida Memory, Japan's last remaining player in the
dynamic random-access memory chip market, sank as much as 10
percent after a report said it may delay paying back 30 billion
yen ($385 million) in public funds.
The chipmaker underperformed the Nikkei average, which fell
0.3 percent to 8,398.89, taking cues from declines in U.S. and
European shares as well as a broad fall in the euro on renewed
concerns over the euro zone sovereign debt crisis.
The broader Topix reversed earlier losses and gained
0.1 percent to 722.12.
(Reuters)
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Olympus plans to fill half of board with outside directors
Olympus Corp. is planning to double the number of outside directors to constitute as much as half of its board to help reinforce oversight of management, sources said Thursday.
The step is a response to the current board's failure to prevent the coverup of massive investment losses, a scheme that certain board members, including former Chairman and President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, actually orchestrated, the sources said.
Olympus' board has 11 members, including three outside directors. But the camera and medical equipment maker plans to add five or six outside members who have no ties to the company and who are well-versed in corporate governance and compliance issues, including lawyers and financial industry executives. (Japan Times)
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Hometown rush jams roads, trains
The annual yearend vacation rush to peaked Friday as people jammed trains, airports and expressways nationwide in an effort to get to hometowns or resorts to spend the New Year's holidays.
Most domestic flights departing from Tokyo's Haneda airport and other major airports across the nation were fully booked Friday, a day after the exodus peaked for overseas-bound travelers at Narita airport, airlines said.
On the Tokaido Shinkansen Line, nonreserved seats on the first Nozomi express from JR Tokyo Station were filled to 180 percent of capacity at 6 a.m., Central Japan Railway Co. said. (Japan Times)
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Heian Period 'Godfather' brought to life on NHK
Marlon Brando's title character in the 1972 film "The Godfather" might not be the first thing that comes to mind at the mention of 12th century warlord Taira no Kiyomori, but the comparison has proven particularly effective for public broadcaster NHK, which will air a yearlong Sunday-evening drama about the famous samurai next year.
NHK executive director Takeshi Shibata first announced the new drama, "Taira no Kiyomori," in October 2010. At the time, he didn't know who would play the lead role, but he knew what he wanted from the show: "an energetic Heian Period (794-1185) version of 'The Godfather.'" (Japan Times)
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U.S. hails delivery of Futenma environmental impact report
The United States on Wednesday welcomed the delivery of Japan's environmental impact report to the Okinawa Prefectural Government on the relocation of the Futenma base, calling the move "significant progress" on their military realignment plan.
Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a statement that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta welcomed the news and "looks forward to working with Japan in taking the next step: securing the landfill permit."
His remarks came as Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima repeated that he will not give the green light to the land reclamation work needed to build the replacement facility for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. (Japan Times)
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Lacking powerhouses, it was a lean year for Japanese movies
Some years, the top four or five Japanese films quickly leap off my short list to my annual Best Ten. But this was not a great year for the local film industry, in terms of either box office or major awards winners. No masterpieces, in other words, though several have stayed with me, usually more for their performances or their story or their style, rather than all three combined.
1. "Tsumetai Nettaigyo (Cold Fish)": The story of this Sion Sono shocker, about the mousy owner of a tropical-fish store who gets eaten alive, personally and professionally, by his piranha of a rival, is a bad dream brought to life with Sono's by-now-patented Grand Guignol theatrics. The highlight is Denden's superbly evil incarnation as the villain, all avid grins, hellacious rages and voracious appetites. (Japan Times)
1. "Tsumetai Nettaigyo (Cold Fish)": The story of this Sion Sono shocker, about the mousy owner of a tropical-fish store who gets eaten alive, personally and professionally, by his piranha of a rival, is a bad dream brought to life with Sono's by-now-patented Grand Guignol theatrics. The highlight is Denden's superbly evil incarnation as the villain, all avid grins, hellacious rages and voracious appetites. (Japan Times)
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DNA used to ID 2,383 in Tohoku
DNA analysis was used to identify 2,383 disaster victims in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, a survey by the National Police Agency said Thursday.
After finding it difficult to identify victims, most of whom died in the March 11 tsunami and whose bodies were not recovered until much later, police started collecting DNA samples from more than 7,000 family members of the missing victims and putting the data into a database.
According to the NPA, the number of victims found in the three prefectures, which bore the full brunt of the quake and tsunami, totaled 15,773 as of Dec. 11, with 15,104 successfully identified.
(Japan Times)
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Nomura outduels Goldman
Nomura Holdings Inc. pulled ahead of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to hold on to the top spot for mergers and acquisitions advisory work in Japan in 2011 after the two competed neck and neck during the last two months.
Nomura, the nation's largest brokerage, this year advised companies on 134 transactions worth $65.4 billion, including Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.'s $13.7 billion acquisition of Swiss drugmaker Nycomed. Goldman Sachs came in second after handling 24 deals worth $62.3 billion. (Japan Times)
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Japan, India agree to boost maritime security cooperation
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on Wednesday signed a joint statement enhancing cooperation in maritime security activities in the Indian Ocean.
Noda and Singh held talks at the Hyderabad House, an Indian government guesthouse, and agreed to boost the "Strategic and Global Partnership" between the two countries in fields of security and the economy.
The statement said the Maritime Self-Defense Force and the Indian Navy would conduct joint exercises next year. Noda and Singh also agreed that negotiations should proceed concerning a bilateral agreement on peaceful nuclear energy cooperation. (Yomiuri)
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Tokyo to help 10,000 youths study abroad
The Tokyo metropolitan government has announced a project to help 10,000 young people study abroad over eight years starting in fiscal 2012 to rectify their increasingly inward-looking mind-sets.
"Through studying abroad, we'd like to help young people toughen up so they can serve as leaders in the future," a Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education official said.
Announced last week, the project will send not only high school and university students, but also young craftspeople overseas in the eight years from fiscal 2012 to 2020. (Yomiuri)
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45% on death row given meds for stress
According to the Justice Ministry, nearly half of death row inmates were on continuous medication for mental stress as of late November. However, a ministry official said no inmates were insane.
The ministry's data showed that 56 of 124 inmates on death row had complained of psychological symptoms and had been continuously treated with drugs.
Symptoms such as insomnia and hallucination can occur when confined to a closed space for a long period of time. As some inmates have been detained for over 30 years, it is suspected that many of their symptoms are the result of their lengthy detention, observers said. (Yomiuri)
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Sea Shepherd anti-whaling ship damaged while chasing Japanese vessel
It's that time of year again: whaling season. And for the past 25 years, whaling season has been accompanied by anti-whaling season.
The latest? A boat - part of the whaling fleet's nemesis, the Sea Shepherd marine conservation group - was chasing the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean when a large wave hit the "Brigitte Bardot," disabling it. Anti-whaling activists: 0, rogue wave: 1
The ship is being towed to safety today after being stranded off the coast of Australia. Though the conservation group is down a ship, the rogue wave did succeed in putting a spotlight on Japan's annual whaling season and the activist effort to put an end to it. (csmonitor.com)
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Korean group in Japan holds memorial for Kim
About 10,000 Korean residents in Japan attended a memorial in Tokyo Thursday to mourn the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s late leader Kim Jong-il, organizers said.
The event, organized by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, also known as Chongryon, was carried out in a school hall affiliated with the organization.
Many attendees arrived at the memorial hall before 11 am, the official start of the service, the organization said. After observing a minute's silence, the attendees took turns to place red carnations on a stand in the hall.
The organization's local chapters also held similar memorial services in various parts of Japan. (csmonitor.com)
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Softbank to release record-long TV ad featuring 'White Family'
Japanese cell phone giant Softbank Mobile will release a record-long 5-minute, 30-second-long television commercial featuring the "White Family" - the multiracial, multispecie nuclear family that has driven Softbank ad campaigns for several years.
The commercial, titled "Letters from Space," depict the family father - a white, talking dog - trying to fulfill his dream of space travel.
The ad also features astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, as well as actresses Aya Ueto and Kanako Higuchi. (Japan Today)
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Japan's Nikkei at lowest year-end level since 1982
Japan's main share index has closed at its lowest end-of-year level since 1982.
The Nikkei 225 index finished Friday up 0.7% to 8,455.35
Stocks have been hit by a weak global economy, as well as a devastating earthquake and tsunami on 16 March that left 20,000 people dead or missing and sparked a nuclear crisis.
Shares have lost a fifth of their value this year, with the majority of losses in the two days following the disaster.
The disaster severely disrupted manufacturing at carmakers such as Toyota and electronics firms such as Sony. (BBC)
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Sony PlayStation Vita sales fall sharply after Japanese launch
Sales of the PlayStation Vita have fallen by nearly 80 percent during the week that ended on December 25 according to tracking firm Media Create. Sony sold approximately 325,000 Vita units on December 17 and 18, but only sold about 10,000 units a day during the following week. Sales of the PlayStation Portable beat sales of the PlayStation Vita by approximately 25,000 units. In addition, Nintendo saw massive sales of the 3DS during the same week and nearly sold half a million units. That pushes Nintendo over four million units sold for the entire year, a fact that Nintendo officials mentioned in a recent press release. (Digital Trends)
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Japan indicts Chinese skipper for illegal fishing
Prosecutors have indicted the skipper of a Chinese fishing boat for illegally operating in Japanese waters, a local official said Friday.
The Nagasaki District Public Prosecutors Office has finalised its case against Zhong Jinyin, 39, the official said, following his December 20 arrest near islands off southwest Japan.
It was not clear when he would appear in court.
The arrest, the second in the area in less than two months, took place after a six-hour pursuit. Japanese officers found coral and tools on the boat. (Channel NewsAsia)
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Trade deficit not necessarily problematic, but is for Japan
Japan has finally joined the ranks of countries running a trade deficit! According to a Dec. 21 announcement made by the Finance Ministry, the country posted a trade deficit of 680 billion yen for the month of November. Even if it were to bounce back with a trade surplus in December, an annual trade deficit for 2011 is said to be inevitable.
The trade deficit is to be expected, seeing as Japan has been treated to a triple punch of the Great East Japan Earthquake and related disasters, a strong yen, and the European sovereign debt crisis. The future remains uncertain. While some observers say that a trade surplus will return as soon as the effects of the ongoing nuclear disaster diminish, others predict that the trade deficit will continue. (Mainichi)
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Japan's wartime sex slavery, Gwangju uprising included in high school textbooks
The education ministry on Friday approved a set of revised guidelines for high school history textbooks that mention Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japan's World War II soldiers.
Under the revised guidelines, the new textbooks will describe how Japan "intensely drafted (Korean) workers, soldiers and comfort women for the Japanese military during the Pacific War," the ministry said. The Pacific War refers to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean.
The move comes as South Korea has pressed Japan to resolve long-standing grievances over Tokyo's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, euphemistically called "comfort women." The Korean Peninsula came under the Japanese colonial rule from 1910-45. (Mainichi)
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