Japan News for March 01, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• Japan’s whaling fleet has cut short its hunt in the Antarctic after a fire two weeks ago crippled the main boat. The controversial annual hunt, which Japan says was carried out for research purposes, was meant to continue until the end of March. [Link]
• South Korea and Japan will discuss the boundary of their exclusive economic zone (EEZ) waters in the Sea of Japan next week, resuming talks for the first time in five months. In the last round, Seoul pressed for the line to be drawn east of Dokdo, while Tokyo wanted the boundary to be set in waters between South Korea’s Ulleung Island and Dokdo, which it claims to be Japanese territory. [Link]
• The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday granted a pro-Pyongyang organization permission to use a concert venue to hold a meeting on human rights abuses against North Koreans in Japan, overriding a Tokyo Metropolitan Government order to revoke permission to use the facility. [Link]
• Japan has threatened to fight Alaska eskimo subsistence whaling if it doesn’t get hunt approval: Japan wants the United States and other nations to consent to the harvest of minke whales by some of its coastal villagers, and the Japanese might try to muster enough votes to block Alaska whaling if it doesn’t get its way. [Link]
• Contrary to claims that Chiang Kai-shek should be held accountable for the 228 Incident, a group of Taiwanese academics said yesterday that the Japanese colonial government’s scheming was to blame for the violence. [Link]
• A law professor has been arrested for dumping a massive amount of garbage (cooking pots, clothes, carpets and documents among other garbage — a total of 67 kilograms) on a riverbank in Hiroshima earlier this month before moving back to his home in Fukuoka Prefecture. A local resident spotted him illegally dumping the garbage. When police officers contacted him, he refused to be questioned saying, “Do you have a warrant?” and soon moved out of the apartment. [Link]
• Japan’s Ministry of Justice has stated that more than 5000 Peruvians reside on the Island nation illegally. In 2003, the number of illegal Peruvians residing in Japan was estimated to be at 7,230 while as of December 2006, the number reduced to 5,283. [Link]
• An Osaka man who rammed his car into five people, killing two of them and seriously injuring the three others, because he thought it was an order from the devil was acquitted on Wednesday because he was ruled insane at the time. [Link]
• Japan’s Health Ministry on Wednesday urged doctors to warn patients of possible abnormal behavior in children treated with influenza drugs after two more teenagers treated with Tamiflu fell to their deaths earlier this month. [Link]
• In a demonstration this week in Tokyo, a humanoid with camera eyes made by Kawada Industries Inc. poured tea from a bottle into a cup. [Link]

Afternoon Update:

• The Miyazaki prefectural government lifted at midnight Wednesday its restrictions on shipping chickens and eggs in designated areas of the southwestern Japan prefecture, marking an end to the outbreak of virulent bird flu which began 50 days ago. [Link]
• Kansai Telecasting Corp admitted Wednesday to three more suspected fabrications over health information aired in the “infotainment” show “Hakkutsu! Aruaru Daijiten II.” The Osaka-based television broadcaster admitted to the scam in a report submitted to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry’s Kinki Bureau of Telecommunications. [Link]
• A passenger train derailed today in Hokkaido after slamming into a truck at a railroad crossing, leaving dozens of people injured. [Link]
• The editor of a weekly newspaper calling itself “The Voice of Asian America” has apologized to community leaders and suspended a columnist who wrote a piece titled “Why I Hate Blacks.” In the column, the author wrote that Blacks were weak-willed and failed to prevent their enslavement, while citing the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese war as an example of how “we” resisted white oppression… [Link]
• Almost all age groups in Japan have seen increased use of home PC access to the internet over the last six years – except for 20 year-olds who have dropped from 23.6% to 11.9%. [Link]
• A local junior high school teacher is in hot water for rating students into five levels based on how often they come to school late, and putting up a list of the ratings in a school passageway. The teacher rated students who came late for classes into five levels — “yellow card,” “warning their parents by telephone,” “required to hold talks with their parents and teachers,” “required to meet with the principal” and “going directly to hell.” [Link]
• In a speech marking the anniversary of the March 1 movement, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun asked Japan to respect historical truth and be more sincere about settling pending bilateral issues, including Japanese leaders’ repeated visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war criminals. [Link]
• In a related story, a foreign professor has complained that his comments about the Japanese textbook issue on an South Korean English-language news channel were censored along with some comments on other matters. [Link]