Washington officials thought no one in the Japanese government took charge during the early stages of the nuclear crisis in Fukushima, former envoy Kevin Maher said Thursday. Maher said that Naoto Kan’s administration treated the crisis as the plant operator’s problem, not the government’s. “There was nobody in charge. Nobody in the Japanese political system […]
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara accused Prime Minister Naoto Kan, along with his cabinet, of being “not Japanese” for not visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on Monday to honor Japan’s war dead. Kan and his cabinet visited a different, non-controversial shrine instead. Ishihara went on to comment on Japan’s current political turmoil, saying: “The Japanese race […]
More than 50 members of Japan’s conservative opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party, including leader Sadakazu Tanigaki and former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, visited Yasukuni Shrine Monday. The August 15 visit marks the 66th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, and by coincidence is the beginning of the Obon, a Buddhist festival that […]
A Japanese TV show that aired Tuesday advocated imitating Adolf Hitler to become an influential speaker. In a new low, even for Japanese TV, the show, “Kyokasho ni nosetai!” (“Let’s put it on the TEXTBOOK!”), looked at how Hitler “brainwashed the populace,” and how these techniques can be “applied to school and the workplace.” Other […]
Japan has a state-of-the-art forecasting system that predicts the trajectory and magnitude of radiation leaked into the air, but Japan didn’t act on its own information, according to the Associated Press. The forecasting system, SPEEDI, was built in 1986 at a cost of 11 billion yen ($140 million). The system uses weather conditions and the […]
Hardly after the 66th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara said Japan should perform simulated nuclear weapons tests to maintain its presence on the world stage. Ishihara said at a press conference that the Obama administration has been conducting subcritical nuclear tests and computer simulations since 2010, even after Obama […]
Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s administration announced Thursday that it would fire three senior policy officials over allegations that the government had grown too friendly with the nuclear power industry. The three officials that the Trade and Industry Minister, Banri Kaieda, canned were Kazuo Matsunaga, Vice Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry; Nobuaki Terasaka, head of […]
Today marks the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. At a ceremony held at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park today, Prime Minister Naoto Kan drew parallels between the atomic bombing and the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. He took the opportunity to expound on the importance for Japan to […]
Tochigi became the fourth prefecture to have beef shipments suspended due to fears of radiation contamination. Tochigi joins Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi to find cattle contaminated with radioactive cesium after eating straw grown near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The straw was contaminated with 690,000 becquerels per kilogram, well over the government’s limit of […]
Yoshitaka Shindo, right, Tomomi Inada, center, and Masahisa Sato, rear, talk to media at Gimpo Airport in Seoul Monday. Three Japanese lawmakers from the Liberal Democratic Party pushing Tokyo’s claims to the Liancourt Rocks were denied entry to South Korea Monday. The three lawmakers were Yoshiktaka Shindo, the grandson of a general in the Imperial Japanese […]
As Tokyo moves to ratify the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the U.S. said Thursday that it will not accept any loopholes Japan might seek in resolving the long-running source of conflict. Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said, “We will not rest until we […]
South Korean Prime Minister Kim Hwang-Sik criticized the Japanese government’s boycott of Korean Air Tuesday, calling it a breach of international rules. Tokyo ordered civil servants not to fly on Korean Air after the private company held a demonstration flight of its new Airbus A380 over the disputed Liancourt Rocks. Kim was quoted by a […]
State minister in charge of handling the nuclear accident, Goshi Hosono, said that the first phase to bring the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant under control was completed as scheduled on Sunday. Hosono said, “We believe Step 1 of stably cooling (the reactors) and eliminating risks of a hydrogen explosion has been achieved.” According […]
Japan and other pro-whaling nations walked out of the International Whaling Commission’s annual talks in Jersey Thursday in protest of a proposal to create a symbolic whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic. Delegates from Japan and Iceland, as well as a number of Caribbean and African nations that totally allegedly receive payoffs to vote in […]
While researching my last post about the record-high poverty rate in Japan, I came across a title for a 2008 BBC documentary entitled Japan: A Story of Love and Hate. The film follows a 58-year-old postal worker living on the poverty line. The film asks how the quality of life could be so miserable in […]