Japan News for April 05, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• Police are planning to set up an investigation headquarters to search for two children of a Saitama Prefecture housewife who was apparently murdered in 1973, judging there is a strong possibility they were abducted by North Korean agents. [Link]
• U.S. Sen. Daniel Inoue, D-Hawaii, has sent a letter to Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, and other lawmakers, expressing opposition to the resolution on the so-called comfort women issue that calls on the Japanese government to officially apologize over the matter. [Link]
• A group that claims to have kidnapped two Japanese in Paraguay has doubled the ransom for their release to $300,000, or some 36 million yen. [Link]
• Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will pay his first official visit to the United States from April 26-27: He will meet U.S. President George W. Bush at Camp David for talks on the bilateral alliance as well as issues including North Korea and Iraq. [Link]
• An 18-year-old Iranian girl who was granted a special residence permit after her family received a deportation order for illegally residing in Japan attended an entrance ceremony for her junior college in Gunma prefecture on Wednesday. [Link]
• Five recently-discovered human bodies were left to decompose in a house in western Japan, apparently because of a belief in resurrection. [Link]
• A U.S. court has dismissed a case filed by an American woman living in Japan who demanded 95 million dollars in damages over an insurance company’s refusal to provide information relating to a traffic accident. [Link]
• A Japanese man and a Canadian woman were killed by an avalanche on Monday morning while skiing in British Columbia, western Canada, the Consulate General of Japan in Vancouver said Tuesday. [Link]
• A man has been arrested for setting fire to a mountain forest in Hyogo prefecture. [Link]
• Japan’s two largest airlines have gained attention with the introduction of a monitoring system under which third-party specialists enter the cockpits of aircraft to evaluate crew performance and point out safety strengths and weaknesses. [Link]
• Nike announced that a new 30-second broadcast commercial featuring Japanese star and Boston Red Sox rookie pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka began airing yesterday on television exclusively in Japan to mark the athlete’s professional debut this week in the U.S. [Link]
• An indicator that showed the right engine of a Japan Airlines (JAL) jet was overheated on Tuesday, forcing it to make an emergency landing at Fukuoka Airport, was found to have malfunctioned because water built up around its sensor. [Link]
• China’s premier urged his Japanese counterpart not to visit a Tokyo war shrine at the center of tensions over Japan’s past military aggression in Asia, a news report said Wednesday. [Link]
• North Korea said Wednesday it has decided not to allow American and Japanese reporters to visit Pyongyang for the coverage of a mass gymnastics event to be held there from this month to commemorate major national anniversaries. [Link]

Afternoon Update:

• A group that claims to have kidnapped two Japanese in Paraguay has again raised the ransom for their release to $750,000. [Link]
• Three in ten Japanese netizens are interested in Second Life English lessons, according to a survey translation at What Japan thinks. [Link]
• A cold air mass that enveloped much of the nation caused snowy rain to fall in central Tokyo on Wednesday evening, the first time in 19 years that the capital has seen snow in April. [Link]
• According to Yonhap News, South Korean politicians are under fire for not doing their part in denouncing Japan’s “historical distortion.” [Link]
• Police suspended a large-scale search for a Japanese businessman, his secretary and two Paraguayans reportedly kidnapped by gunmen on a rural highway, saying they were concerned about the victims’ safety. [Link]
• More than 2 million yen in cash has been found in a mailbox in Ehime prefecture. Local police are searching for the owner. [Link]
• Itaru Murakami, 55, chief of N-H-K’s Kumamoto bureau, has been accused of sexually harassing a woman during a farewell party, sources at the public broadcaster said Thursday. [Link]
• The government will set up a panel of experts by the end of this month to research collective self-defense, government sources said Thursday. Shunji Yanai, a former Japanese ambassador to the United States, will head the panel, according to the sources. [Link]
• Sports writer Hirotada Ototake, who was born with no arms or legs and has been appointed as a full-time teacher at a public elementary school in Tokyo, addressed students at its opening ceremony for the new academic year on Thursday. [Link]
• Sales of new imported vehicles in Japan, including those assembled overseas by Japanese automakers, fell 5% in fiscal 2006 from the previous year to 256,415 units partly because the euro’s appreciation against the yen boosted prices of European cars, an industry group said Thursday. [Link]
• As the hunt continues for Lindsay Hawker痴 killer, the Times Tokyo correspondent Richard Lloyd Parry explains why Western visitors take risks they would never take at home, and why our assumptions about Japan are wrong [Link]