Japan News for February 16, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• The editor of Foreigner Underground Crime File explains his decision to publish and responds to his critics in a new article published by Metropolis. [Link]
• The yen climbed to a one-month high against the dollar on Thursday as Japanese data showing surprisingly strong fourth-quarter growth bolstered expectations for a Bank of Japan interest rate rise next week. [Link]
• The South Korean government plans to confiscate the assets of 41 descendents of those who amassed riches through cooperation with Japan during its colonial rule of Korea between 1910 and 1945, the Ministry of Patriots and Veteran Affairs said Thursday. [Link]
• A US hedge fund has submitted proposals to take a majority stake in Sapporo, Japan’s number three brewer. Steel Partners, which already owns 17.52% of the beer maker, wants to up its holding to 66.6%. [Link]
• The delay in the arrival of U.S. F-22 stealth fighter planes in Japan is not due to any demand from North Korea, a U.S. military spokesman said on Thursday, adding that the deployment is still set to go ahead. [Link]
• The New York Times has a report on Toyota Co.’s management training system and the “Toyota Way.” [Link]
• The number of crimes committed by juveniles, including assault causing injury and extortion, that are attributable to bullying increased by 68 to 233 last year, the most in 20 years, National Police Agency officials said Thursday. Citing the reason for the increase, the NPA said, “In addition to an increase in the number of cases reported to police amid growing public awareness of bullying, there’s also a possibility that the number of bullying incidents has been increasing.” [Link]
• The Wall Street Journal reports on NTT DoCoMo’s efforts to improve the security of cellphones as such phones become even faster and faster. [Link]
• A hotel in Osaka run by the embattled inn chain Apa Group has failed to meet the required quake-resistance standard and was shut down, city officials said Wednesday. [Link]
• Ten households from Japan’s main island Honshu have decided to move to the northern town of Shibetsu in Hokkaido, attracted by the local government’s deal to give them free land if they build a house in the town within three years. [Link]
• The Japanese government has decided to establish a system through which a public organization will issue job-training certificates to so-called freeters, or people with no fixed employment, as proof of their ability to help them find full-time jobs. [Link]
• Procter & Gamble Co. said on Thursday it was seeking a buyer for its Japanese adult diaper business even as the market posts steady growth due to the country’s greying population. [Link]
• Hawai’i trampoline gymnasts Nani Vercruyssen and Kelsen Onigama won their respective age divisions in the All-Japan Double Mini-Trampoline Chapmpionships last week in Kaminoyama, Japan. [Link]
• Nearly two in five Japanese eat ice cream every week, according to a new infoPLANT survey. [Link]

Evening Update:

• A deputy director of Tokyo University was arrested for groping on a train earlier this week, police said Friday. Keiji Takehara, 53, allegedly touched the thighs of a 24-year-old woman who sat next to him on the JR Keihin Tohoku line from Hamamatsucho to Akihabara. [Link]
• A university student under arrest for trying to withdraw money from the account of a man found dead last month, along with his mother, has admitted to their murder and robbery. “I spent the money at video game arcades. I murdered them so I could steal some money,” the suspect, 21-year-old Hiroshi Shimura, was quoted as telling investigators. [Link]
• Three women who were forced into sexual servitude by Japan in World War Two on Thursday told the U.S. Congress harrowing tales of abuse and said they rejected Japanese official apologies as an insult. [Link]
• The Self-Defense Force’s (SDF) military police is investigating a 49-year-old Air SDF officer on suspicion of leaking sensitive information about a fire on board a Chinese submarine to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. [Link]
• Japanese authorities are resisting international pressure to let a Greenpeace vessel tow a stricken whaling ship away from Antarctica’s pristine coast, amid fears of an oil spill. [Link]
• Japan has suspended beef imports from a U.S. facility after finding a meat shipment that may have violated the age limit of beef imports as agreed upon between Japan and the United States. [Link]
• An 82-year-old man and his 79-year-old wife have received a triple dose of good luck by winning the first, second and third prizes of a lottery for recipients of New Year’s postcards. [Link]