Confusion persists as to the extent of the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake, which left 10,000 dead or missing, and sped up the earth’s rotation, shortening the day by 1.8 microseconds. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is currently pumping seawater into the reactor in an attempt to keep the […]
The latest estimates of the death toll from Friday’s 9.0-magnitude quake is now 10,000. More than 180,000 people have fled from Koriyama, Fukushima, amid fears of a nuclear meltdown, and up to 160 people may have already been exposed to radiation. Power shortages have caused some train lines in Tokyo to suspend services. As financial […]
The death toll in Friday’s earthquake, now estimated to have measured 9.0 on the Richter scale, has now reached 687. Fuji TV is reporting that the number of dead and missing is 2800. There are now conflicting reports of a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi (No. 1) nuclear power plant. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano […]
The death toll has reached 202 people, and more than 1000 people are still missing, after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake hit Japan Friday, the largest earthquake in Japanese history, and triggered a 13-foot tsunami. (American media are reporting an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, while Japanese media are reporting M8.8.) Four trains wiped out in the tsunami in Miyaki […]
A magnitude-8.8 earthquake hit off the coast of Japan near Miyagi prefecture at 2:46 p.m. local time today (a little over an hour ago), followed by a 7.4-magnitude aftershock about 30 minutes later. The earthquake triggered a 13-foot tsunami that wiped out cars along Miyagi’s coast. Much of Japan’s northeast coast has been affected. Live […]
Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Ryuichi Doi admitted Wednesday to signing a declaration that Japan should give up claims to the Liancourt Rocks during a visit to South Korea in February. The Liancourt Rocks are a group of two islets and 35 rocks in the Sea of Japan about halfway between Japan and Korea. They […]
Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara stepped down Sunday in the midst of a political funds scandal. Maehara received a 250,000-yen ($3000) donation from a South Korean woman whom he had known since childhood. The woman said she was unaware that the donation was illegal, and Maehara claimed to have been unaware of receiving the donation. […]
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., noted last week that Japan “has become a destination country, a haven, for international child abduction.” This has prompted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to urge Japan to join the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. This issue was in the news a lot in late […]
One of the top stories in Japan this week is the arrest of a 19-year-old boy who admitted to cheating on a college entrance exam. The Japanese media are focusing on how the boy was able to cheat in the first place, and calling for schools to update anticheating measures. However, I think it will […]
Keio Electric Railway Co installed cameras on some of its trains in this past week in an attempt to curb groping. Train groping is a huge problem in Japan. In 2008, police handled 1600 groping incidents in Tokyo alone. And that number is a small fraction of actual groping incidents. According to a 2010 survey, […]
Sony and Japanese pop group, Kishidan, apologized this week for the band wearing costumes resembling Nazi SS uniforms in a Feb. 23 interview. A statement issued Monday from the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center called for an apology from MTV Japan for airing the interview. In the statement, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the […]
As the introductory post to the Japan foreign policy blog, I pose the question, “Is Japan still relevant?” Twenty some years ago, no one would have thought to raise this question. In 1989, Japan was at the height of its asset price “bubble.” Japan’s post-war economy was dubbed an “economic miracle,” and it maintained the […]