The Yokohama District Court on Thursday ordered a former U.S. Navy civilian employee to pay ¥13.7 million in damages to relatives of a Japanese man who died after being pushed over by the defendant outside a bar near the U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, in 2006.
Presiding Judge Toshihiko Tsuruoka, meanwhile, exempted the Japanese government from paying compensation on the grounds that the acts committed by Robert Burns Nolan, 59, were not related to his official duty. (Japan Times)
Ex-U.S. Navy employee to pay kin Y14 million for causing man's death
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Ichihashi book on life on lam to be made into flick
A movie based on the book written by Tatsuya Ichihashi, whose slaying of a British English teacher in 2007 set off a nationwide manhunt, will debut next year, the publisher and film producer said Thursday.
Producer Sedic International told publisher Gentosha that it wanted to turn its book - "Taiho Sarerumade - Kuuhaku no Ninen Nanakagetsu no Kiroku" ("Before I Was Arrested - Records of the Blank Two Years and Seven Months") - into a movie and got the OK, a Gentosha official said.
"The incident grabbed a lot of social attention," Sedic International's Kensuke Zushi said. "We have no intention of casting Ichihashi in a positive light." (Japan Times)
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Suzuki takes VW before arbitration
Suzuki Motor Corp. said Thursday it started arbitration procedures over its partnership with Volkswagen AG as the domestic carmaker seeks to buy back its shares after declaring an end to their 2-year-old cooperation agreement.
The arbitration will take place at an international court in London, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture-based Suzuki said in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The carmaker said Nov. 18 it had terminated the partnership with Wolfsburg, Germany-based Volkswagen and is demanding the German automaker sell back its 19.9 percent stake in Suzuki. (Japan Times)
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Female manager of gentlemen's 'snack club' stabbed to death
Police said Thursday they have arrested a man for allegedly stabbing to death the female manager of a gentlemen's snack club, Snack Reika, in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Wednesday afternoon.
According to TBS, the suspect-a 69-year-old man-called police and told them what he had done, and then remained at the scene until police arrived shortly after 5 p.m.
Police found the victim, identified as Reiko Kinoshita, collapsed on the floor with two knives protruding from her body and at least 10 stab and slash wounds around her face, neck and chest. A third knife was found on the floor of the bar. (Japan Today)
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Greenpeace Japan ranks major supermarkets on seafood radiation
In the past few months Greenpeace Japan has been monitoring the radioactive contamination of land and sea that resulted from the destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in March this year.
Between 12 October and 8 November the team, led by Greenpeace Japan Oceans Campaigner Wakao Hanaoka, took seafood samples from five supermarket chains - Aeon, Ito Yokado, Uny (Apita), Daiei and Seiyu -, taking 15 samples from each.
Of the 75 samples, radioactive cesium 134 and 137 were detected in 27 samples.
The samples that stood out were from Pacific cod. In total, seven cod caught in Hokkaido, Iwate and Miyagi, were sampled and five were found to be contaminated.
(fis.com)
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Board members in Olympus cover-up resign
Shares of scandal-plagued Olympus rallied after three board members of the Japanese camera maker quit ahead of today's meeting with a company ex-CEO turned whistleblower.
Shares soared as much as 25% in early trade Friday after former Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, former executive Vice President Hisashi Mori and Auditor Hideo Yamada quit. The company claims the trio helped fake payments for merger transactions to cover $1.4 billion in losses.
The resignations are the latest in a series of incidents in a scandal that began on October 14 with the firing of Michael Woodford as chief executive, who subsequently went public with allegations the Olympus management team and board had covered up hundreds of millions of losses in bad investments dating back to the 1990s. (CNN)
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Japan deflation persists
Japan's core consumer prices fell for the first time in four months in the year to October after a cigarette tax hike a year ago dropped out from calculations revealing persistent deflation caused by chronically weak domestic demand.
In fact, November data for the Tokyo area showed deeper declines that exceeded analysts' forecasts and backed the view that the Bank of Japan will maintain ultra-easy monetary policy for the foreseeable future.
A narrower measure of prices that excludes both food and energy fell from a year ago in a sign that the world's third-largest economy continued to struggle with lackluster job market, weak consumer demand and excess capacity. (Reuters)
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Playing by ear: Blind tennis, the smash from Japan
For Miyoshi Takei, being blind turned out to be just a minor obstacle when it came to playing tennis. In fact, it's what impelled him to try in the first place.
"I wanted to hit a ball that was flying through space as hard as I could, even though I couldn't see it," he once said. If only there was some way he could hear it.
Encouraged by his high school teacher, and after much trial and error, he created a spongy, lightweight ball that rattles so players can track it with their ears. A new sport was born -- blind tennis.
The first national blind tennis championships took place in Japan in the fall of 1990, and there are now hundreds of players in Japan as well as some in the countries he visited to introduce the sport: Britain, Korea, China, Taiwan and, recently, the United States, Russia and Australia. Takei won many national titles but did not compete in this years 22nd annual Blind Tennis Open held in Tokorozawa, Saitama on November 20.
Though it was his blindness that inspired him to push past the sight barrier of the game, which unlike many other sports had not been adapted for the visually impaired because it was thought to be impossible, it was also blindness that led to his undoing.
On the afternoon of January 16, 2011, returning home with his wife, who is also blind, he fell in front of an oncoming train on the Yamanote line in Tokyo. He was 42 years old. (CNN)
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Sea Shepherd prepares to tackle Japanese whalers
Environmental activist group Sea Shepherd is preparing for a three month voyage to the Southern Ocean and is expecting one of its most intense campaigns yet against Japanese whalers.
Three Sea Shepherd vessels - the Steve Irwin, the Bob Barker and the Brigitte Bardot - with a total of 88 crew members will head into Antarctic waters in December for what they call 'Operation Divine Wind' (or Kamikaze) with the objective of stopping Japanese whaling activities.
It's Sea Shepherd's eighth voyage to the Southern Ocean. The organisation claims that its harassment tactics last season forced the Japanese whaling fleet to cut short its hunting trip with a fraction of its usual catch. (sbs.com.au)
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Nikkei drops 0.06% on uncertain outlook for eurozone debt crisis
Tokyo stocks edged down on Friday, with the benchmark Nikkei stock index retreating 0.06 percent on ongoing concerns about a lack of cohesion between leaders in the crisis-hit eurozone.
Local brokers said that a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy at which the three stated they would continue to stand by the euro, failed to impress.
They said that investors were hoping to see the European Central Bank's (ECB) role expanded so that it would have the capability to lend to debt-ridden countries in the eurozone.
But Merkel continued to tow her line and stated that the ECB should remain independent, despite some analysts believing that this could unravel the very fabric of the eurozone and derail its future as a single-currency hub. (Xinhua)
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Japanese flock to see latest Chinese pandas in Tokyo
A pair of giant pandas from China have received a vibrant welcome since their arrival at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, despite often-strained ties between the two countries.
Since Ri Ri and Shin Shin were put on show at the zoo in early April, the Ueno area in the east of the capital has drawn more visitors and its economy has revived, locals say.
Around the zoo, panda-themed products abound, and cartoon panda signs have been posted almost everywhere.
The pandas are estimated to have caused the number of visitors to the zoo to grow by around 70 per cent, said Mayo Takayanagi, a spokeswoman for the municipality-run facility. (monstersandcritics.com)
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Boy, 16, held in girl's stabbing attack
A 16-year-old boy arrested in the stabbing of a 15-year-old girl in Misato, Saitama Prefecture, has said he did not know the victim and was carrying blades to kill pedestrians at random, the Saitama Prefectural Police said Tuesday.
The boy, a high school student in Misato, was arrested Monday evening on a street for illegally possessing a clasp knife with a 15-cm blade and a hatchet with a 17-cm blade. Police later added the charge of attempted murder after he admitted stabbing the girl Nov. 18.
The youth also indicated he may have been behind the stabbing of an 8-year-old girl in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, last week. (Japan Times)
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Japan's biggest website, awash in illegal drugs
Drugs, and drug culture, are common and prevalent in much of the West.
Kanagawa Prefectural cops arrested Ryuji Ota, 20, and nine others for supposedly trafficking in illegal stimulants. This past Oct., Japan's Sankei Newspaper reported, Ota and his accomplices apparently sold 0.05 grams of an illegal stimulant (the paper did not specify) to a 39-year-old male in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa for ¥5,000 (US$64).
Using a coded lingo for its online business dealings, the group apparently sold drugs via 2ch. According to the report, the group sold drugs to 4,500 individuals between Apr. and Nov. of this year, with proceeds totaling ¥110,000,000 or $1.4 million. (Kotaku)
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Nikkei falls over 1 pct after Europe warning
The Nikkei share average
slipped on Tuesday, breaking a three-day rally, after a warning
from Standard & Poor's raised fears of possible sovereign credit
downgrades of top-rated European nations.
Shares in Olympus Corp soared as much as 15 percent
as investors bet that a panel report into its scandal-ridden
accounts would not turn up any nasty new surprises which could
lead to the stock being delisted from the Tokyo bourse. After
the close, the panel said it found no evidence of involvement by
organised crime.
(Reuters)
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Panel urges legal action in damning Olympus report
An independent panel issued a damning report on a $1.7 billion accounting scandal at Japan's disgraced Olympus Corp on Tuesday, urging legal action against the executives responsible for the cover-up and the replacement of other board members who knew.
The six-man panel of experts found no link with organised crime, however, an outcome that may help the 92-year-old maker of cameras and endoscopes remain listed on the Tokyo stock exchange and survive a scandal that ranks among Japan's worst.
But the report failed to satisfy Olympus' ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who blew the whistle on the scandal after being fired. (Reuters)
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Owners bet on Tohoku revival, restart businesses along coast
The day Masahiro Osada reopened his Chinese restaurant, the mayor showed up for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
A local TV station covered the event for the evening news. Osada spoke of the courage it took to restart his business in the tsunami-devastated town of Rikuzentakata, whose recovery remains in doubt as skeptical residents move elsewhere.
"I am hoping for a chain reaction of courage," Osada said.
By now, the towns along the northeast coast have drafted their reconstruction plans, with color-coded maps showing new commercial zones, public parks and residential communities on higher ground. Osada bet on this vision, taking out a nearly ¥3 million loan to buy restaurant supplies, even though he was some ¥16 million in debt. From last week, he began serving noodle dishes in a white prefabricated building erected by the central government. (Japan Times)
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Archives' return shows 'repentance'
South Korea considers Japan's handover of more than 1,200 volumes of ancient Korean archives as an "expression of repentance" over its brutal 1910-1945 colonial rule of the peninsula, Seoul's ambassador to Japan, Shin Kak Soo, said Tuesday.
By returning the seized archives, the Japanese government "has shown sincerity in making an expression of repentance over the past," Shin told Yonhap news agency ahead of the scheduled arrival of the archives in Seoul later Tuesday. (Japan Times)
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Welfare recipients reach nearly 2.06 million
Almost 2.06 million people were living on welfare benefits as of August, marking an all-time high for the second straight month, the welfare ministry said Tuesday in a preliminary report.
The precise total, 2,059,871, represented a rise of 9,376 from the previous high marked in July, when the record dating back to 1951 was broken.
Officials at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said the number of welfare recipients could continue to increase due to the aging of the population, the impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and the economic crisis in Europe. (Japan Times)
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Bribed lawmaker Muneo Suzuki out on parole
Muneo Suzuki was paroled Tuesday after spending a year in prison for accepting ¥11 million in bribes and committing other offenses while serving as a Diet member.
Suzuki, a native of Hokkaido, heads a small political party called New Party Daichi. The 63-year old former Lower House member lost his Diet seat last September after his sentence was finalized.
While imprisoned in Tochigi Prefecture, Suzuki, who underwent surgery for esophagus cancer in October 2010, said he was placed in the hospital ward and spent his days nursing the elderly or helping those with physical impairments. (Japan Times)
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Specifics on consumption tax increase due before end of month: Azumi
The government will aim to specify when and by how much the 5 percent consumption levy will be hiked in the social security and tax reform plan it hopes to present by year's end, Finance Minister Jun Azumi said Tuesday.
"We want to lay down the rate of the tax hike and when it will take effect. Obviously it is important for us to reveal which year and at what point" the consumption tax will go up, Azumi told reporters.
During a discussion of social security and the tax system by Cabinet ministers and ruling party executives Monday night, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda formally ordered those present to wrap up the talks within this year and map out the details of the tax increase.
(Japan Times)
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