Japan News for February 14, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• Japan will not provide energy aid to North Korea under the six-nation nuclear disarmament accord struck in Beijing unless progress is made in resolving the fate of Japanese citizens abducted decades ago, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday. Instead of sending North Korea energy aid, Japan’s contribution to the agreement will come through helping assess the communist nation’s energy needs. [Link]
• Suspected mortar launchers were found near a U.S. base here shortly after explosions were heard late Monday night, police said Tuesday. Kanagawa Prefectural Police believe that leftist radicals who oppose the presence of the U.S. military in Japan launched mortars at Camp Zama in Kanagawa Prefecture. [Link]
• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to confer a special award on a policeman who died Monday after being hit by a train in Tokyo last week while he was trying to rescue a woman on the tracks, officials said Tuesday. [Link]
• More than 130 people died across the nation between 1981 and 2004 due to unvented-type compact water heaters–including those made by Rinnai Corp., which were recently linked to three deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning. [Link]
• A board member of an affiliate of the Asahi Shimbun national daily was arrested on Tuesday for molesting an employee in a taxi. Yutaka Shikata, 58, a board member of the Asahi Orikomi Osaka, who heads the company’s general affairs department, is accused of indecent assault. [Link]
• Two shots were fired at a checkpoint in front of Japan’s embassy in Iraq this past weekend, a Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday. There were no injuries, and Japanese officials are investigating, she said. [Link]
• The Philippines urged people on Tuesday not to touch migratory birds in case they are infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus, after an egret believed to have flown from Japan died two days after being captured by a farmer. [Link]
• A history textbook will soon be published in Korea and Japan simultaneously. The book, titled “History of Exchange between Korea and Japan from Ancient to Modern Time,” is the fruit of 10 years of work by some 30 history teachers of the two countries. [Link]
• French President Jacques Chirac has for the first time confirmed his appetite for extraconjugal affairs, saying that he loved many women in his lifetime “as discreetly as possible”. He did, however, appear to deny one old rumour: that he fathered an illegitimate son in Japan. [Link]
• New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter says he has won an assurance from anti-whaling activists they will not ram a Japanese ship in the Southern Ocean. [Link]
• Popular K-1 fighter Masato has married actress Shin Yazawa, the couple announced at a Tokyo hotel on Tuesday. [Link]

Afternoon update:

• Japan’s ambassador to the United States said Tuesday the passage of a U.S. resolution condemning Japan for acts of sexual exploitation during World War II could poison Japan-U.S. relations. [Link]
• The Japanese government has protested to an Australian journalist and his publisher, saying his book, “Princess Masako — Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne,” contains groundless claims, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. Tokyo is seeking an apology and corrections from the author, Ben Hills, and the publisher Random House over the book. [Link]
• Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, which has clashed with Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean, will end its protest on Wednesday as its ships are running low on fuel. But environmental group Greenpeace said its ship, the Esperanza, was in the Southern Ocean and now searching for the Japanese fleet to begin its actions to disrupt whaling. [Link]
• Shinzo Abe’s aim of revising Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow the nation to assert itself militarily for the first time in more than 60 years may be petering out, a casualty of the prime minister’s falling popularity, claims the Korea Herald. [Link]
• Fuji Television Network has come under fire for falsely portraying a company president who appeared in a popular television show as the owner of a dog that belonged to someone else. [Link]
• PingMag has interviewed German artist Anke Haarmann, who has created a documentary about the emergence of homeless tent villages in the parks and public spaces of Japan’s cities. [Link]
• Haruki Kadokawa’s hitorical spectacle of Mongolian hero “Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea” will be released in 425 screens, the biggest ever for a Japanese film, on March 3. [Link]
• Japan Airlines said Tuesday it had requested approval from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to reduce the fuel surcharge placed on nearly all international passenger tickets issued on or after April 1. The surcharge for tickets to North America will drop a whole 1000 yen. [Link]
• Mainichi’s WaiWai column gives some tips on how to tell the difference between a chocolate you’ve received from a women out of romantic interest and a chocolate that has merely been given out of social obligation. [Link]
• More than 40% of working women in their early 20s favor a custom that requires female workers to give chocolate to their male colleagues on Valentine’s Day even from a sense of obligation, while less than 20% of those in their late 30s approve of the practice of so-called “giri” (obligation) chocolate, a survey showed Tuesday. [Link]