Japan News for January 17, 2007

A few quick links this morning:

• According to Mutantfrog Travelogue, angry users of the English-language anime/manga forum, 4chan.org, are responsible for an attack that knocked out American-born Japanese activist Aruto Debito’s website yesterday. The attacks were in retaliation for Debito’s stance against anonymous slander on 2ch.net. 4chan also made news last year when stupid posts by some of its users ended up sparking a terror alert across America.
• The Supreme Court will likely overturn a Hiroshima High Court ruling that ordered a construction company to pay 27.5 million yen ($228,244) in compensation to Chinese wartime laborers, The Asahi Shinbun reports.
• On Tuesday, the Tokyo metropolitan government held its first earthquake drill for foreign residents and visitors. The event was held to mark the 12th anniversary today of the Great Hanshin Earthquake that leveled much of Kobe in 1995, killing in excess of 6,400 people.
• The reviewers at Midnight Eye have posted their Best/Worst Japanese films of 2006 list!
• The U.S. National Archives has announced the availability of 100,000 pages of recently declassified records as a result of a search for files relevant to Japanese war crimes. In addition, the Archives has released a new reference book, Researching Japanese War Crimes Records: Introductory Essays[PDF link] and an electronic records finding aid that will help researchers locate and use the thousands of new and extant files in the National Archives related to the war in the Pacific. Online highlights of the archives can be found here. [via FG]
• Washington Post movie reviewer Stephen Hunter comments on Letters from Iwo Jima in his review titled The Japanese Soldier, a Casualty of War Films.
Afternoon update:
• Fujiya admits to covering up a cover-up: Fujiya announced Tuesday that its plant in Saitama Prefecture kept using cream beyond the expiration date to make shortcake until Jan. 5, revising an earlier statement that it had stopped such practices in November.
• The density of radon in the atmosphere sharply increased before the Great Hanshin Earthquake devastated Kobe and surrounding areas in January 1995, researchers have said. The discovery may help predict earthquakes in the future.
• Members of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling party vowed Wednesday to continue visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. How about Abe?
• Nanae Aoyama, the23-year-old author of “Hitori Biyori,” has been selected as the winner of the 136th Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award, for a novel depicting the flow of life.
• A civic group in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture on Wednesday made a direct petition to the city’s mayor, Ryoichi Kabaya, to set a local ordinance to hold a referendum on whether or not to allow the deployment of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at the U.S. Navy’s Yokosuka base.
• Oricon – Japan’s analog to Billboard in the United States and top music industry ranking chart provider, has filed a civil suit against a freelance writer who wrote a magazine article in which he wrote about serious flaws in Oricon’s ranking system. The President of Oricon – Koike Suguru – has publicly announced that he would like for Ugaya to “shut up” and would drop the case if Ugaya publicly apologizes and admits his mistakes
• Fight fire…with flower?