Japan News for January 30, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related links:

• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe found himself in hot water Monday as he was grilled at parliament over a gaffe by his health minister who called women “birth-giving machines” and challenged by the opposition leader for greater transparency in political funds reports. [Link]
• Emma Faust Tillman, the oldest person in the world, died Sunday. It is believed that Yone Minagawa, a 114-year-old Japanese woman, is now the world’s oldest person. [Link]
• Japan’s Trade Ministry said it had drawn up a plan requiring power producers to generate 16 billion kilowatt- hours of energy from renewable sources by March 2015. This would be an increase of 31 percent from the target of 12.2 billion kilowatt-hours, equal to 1.35 percent of total output, set for March 2010. [Link]
• Japanese police have arrested a Saitama-based North Korean engineer who serves as an adviser to a science association suspected of transferring advanced technologies to North Korea. [Link]
• A court ordered the nation’s public broadcaster and two production companies to pay damages to a women’s rights group for altering a news program on Japanese sex slavery during World War II after politicians allegedly pressured them to change its content, court officials said Monday. [Link]
• The Japanese rightist discusses Buraku segregation and organized crime in a new update. [Link]
• Fukumini analyzes the popularity of Japan’s foreign ministry website. [Link]
• The price of domestic sea cucumbers is soaring due to rising exports to China, where the popularity of the delicacy is growing. The fondness for the product has pushed up exports by several billion yen a year, giving it the nickname “the black diamond of the sea.” [Link]
• According to a recent poll, over two in five Japanese buy soft drinks every day. [Link]
• Britain is deregistering a key Sea Shepherd ship — the anti-whaling group’s best hope of intercepting and ramming whalers in southern waters — at Japan’s urging. This threatens to make it a flagless “pirate”, liable to arrest by vessels of any country. [Link]
• Car developer and importer Yoshio Takaoka, CEO of Auto EV and Girasole co-developer, has launched — Girasole — one of Japan’s first fully functional electric town car. Rechargeable at home and at the price of an average middle class car, an electric car built in collaboration by Italians and Japanese is aiming to be the first practical option for Japanese households looking for green personal travel. [Link]

Afternoon update:

• The enormous amount of money invested by municipal governments to build underground garbage collecting systems in new town areas has effectively been wasted, The Yomiuri Shimbun reports. Because of a reduction in the amount of garbage and separate collection of burnable and noncombustible garbage, the underground pipeline “dream system,” designed to make garbage bags and garbage-collecting vehicles obsolete, has become out of date. [Link]
• Japan’s household spending fell more than expected in December and the unemployment rate rose, signaling an anticipated rebound in consumption may be delayed. [Link]
• Sapporo Beverage Co. is set to halt all sales of drinks on behalf of Fujiya Co. in the wake of Fujiya’s food-safety scandal, the company announced Tuesday. [Link]
• Japan Airlines Corp said Monday its group companies will withdraw from 10 money-losing domestic routes in fiscal 2007, starting in April, as part of its efforts to restructure its troubled business. JAL said this is its largest-ever suspension in the number of domestic routes. [Link]
• The U.S. Navy said Monday it has relieved a submarine commander of duty after his nuclear vessel collided with a large Japanese commercial tanker in the Persian Gulf early this month. [Link]
• The second oldest elephant in captivity in Japan has sadly died after losing her balance and falling over. [Link]
• A 26-year-old man standing trial for theft has died from “economy-class syndrome” at a police cell in Osaka, officials said. “He died after he sat on the floor for a long time and blood clots developed in his veins,” a doctor said after examining the man. [Link]
• As China-Japan relations thaw, CCTV, China’s national television network, has announced plans for a series on Japanese society. CCTV will send its biggest ever team of journalists to Japan on March 4 to begin working on the series. [Link]