Japan News for April 22, 2007

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    Today’s Japan-related news links:

    • Japan is responsible for the conditions in which women were forced to serve as sex slaves to Japanese soldiers during World War II, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in an interview with Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal on April 17. [Link]
    • Japan has no plans to boost its defence spending to keep up with China’s own rising military spending, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also told US reporters. [Link]
    • A fairly strong earthquake jolted islands in southern Kagoshima Prefecture in the predawn hours of Saturday: There was no report of casualties or damage to properties. [Link]
    • The Japanese and U.S. governments will likely agree at a bilateral summit meeting scheduled for Friday on Japan’s participation in a U.S. project to develop a coal-fueled, near-zero emission power plant. [Link]
    • A man angry at North Korea was arrested Friday as he tried to chop off his own arm with an axe in front of the headquarters in Japan of Koreans affiliated with the communist state. [Link via DPRK Studies]
    • A British diplomat has said things that are “neither diplomatic nor tactful” in a Japan Times editorial entitled “A Japanese Sense of Humor?” [Link]
    • Tim Blackman, the father of murdered British hostess Lucie Blackman, is in Japan for the trial of Joji Obara, the businessman accused of Lucie’s killing and rape, which is expected to end on Tuesday. [Link]
    • The man who gunned down Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito had a run-in with local residents in 1995 when he tried to set up his own toll road, it has been revealed. [Link]
    • Organized crime syndicates have become more ingenious in hiding guns, with only 44 percent of seized firearms belonging to such groups being found in gang-related locations last year, a drop from 62 percent a decade ago, the National Police Agency said. [Link]
    • A man under arrest for robbing several convenience stores in Gunma has been hit with a new charge for illegally manufacturing a gun. [Link]
    • The Arizona Star has a story about an American man returning a Japanese military sword being returned to the family of a soldier died carrying it in over 60 years ago. [Link]
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