Japan News for March 02, 2007

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    This morning’s Japan-related news links:

    • Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday there was no evidence Japan coerced Asian women into working as sex slaves during World War II, backtracking from a landmark 1993 statement in which the government acknowledged that it set up and ran brothels for its troops. [Link]
    • Despite rocky political relations, Japan needs Russia for gas and oil imports as the energy-hungry Asian power tries to ease its dependence on the volatile Middle East, analysts say. [Link]
    • Life expectancy in Japan rose for both women and men, with that of women, already the world’s longest, extending by nearly one year. [Link]
    • Tokyo will demand that Pyongyang acknowledge that the issue of Japanese abducted to North Korea remains “unresolved” during bilateral talks in Hanoi next week. [Link]
    • A group of researchers warned Thursday that global warming may wipe out the popular wintry landscape of frost-silvered trees popular in the mountainous resort of Zao in northeastern Japan in 20 years, noting that frost on the trees can now be seen for only two months, almost half the period of about 30 years ago. [Link]
    • South Korea’s Red Cross is seeking to resettle hundreds of ethnic Koreans residents of Sakhalin who want to live permanently in Korea. [Link]
    • A 32-year-old employee of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. was arrested Thursday on suspicion of molesting a 15-year-old middle school girl, police said. The man was reportedly dressed in a girl’s school uniform. [Link]
    • Sovereign Media Inc., an active interest niche magazine publishing company that publishes SCI FI — the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel, is launching Otaku USA Magazine in June. Patrick Macias, a correspondent for the N-H-K World Television show Tokyo Eye and author of Cruising the Anime City: an Otaku Guide to Neo-Tokyo, and Tokyoscope: The Japanese Cult film companion, will be editing the new magazine, [Link]

      • Afternoon update:

      • Following Abe’s remarks on comfort women, US Rep Mike Honda said in a statement that “the overwhelming historical record makes it clear that the Japanese Imperial Army forced as many as 200,000 women into sexual slavery during the Second World War.” [Link]
      • Lead about 220 times the upper limit set by the government has been detected in a river in Aichi Prefecture, officials at the prefectural government said Friday. The officials said that they have not identified the source of the toxic metal, adding that it has received no complaints from local residents about health problems. [Link]
      • Japan ranked 25th among 124 countries and regions in the World Economic Forum’s survey of competitive travel destinations:Switzerland topped the list, followed by Austria, Germany, Iceland and the United States, according to the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2007. The remaining top 10 were Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Luxembourg and Britain. [Link]
      • The National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan announced Thursday it would beef up the functions of a third-party organization to prevent the broadcasting of programs containing false data in the wake of the “Hakkutsu! Aru Aru Daijiten II” (Encyclopedia of Living) scandal. [Link]
      • Tokyo’s Arakawa Ward government has decided to improve its treatment of part-time employees starting in April, by introducing a system in which they will be eligible for pay raises and promotion. [Link]
      • Japanese fans will be the first in the world to get a look at the latest in the Spiderman series. The movie, again directed by Sam Raimi and originally scheduled for worldwide release on May 5, will now open in Japan first on May 1. [Link]
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