Today’s Japan-related news links:

• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed his strong determination for a revision of the Constitution Today, saying the nation’s administrative system, relations between central and local governments, diplomacy and national security policies faced major changes and could no longer accommodate the economic development and globalization that could not have been forecast when the Constitution was originally written 60 years ago. [Link]
• World Trade Organisation members are making progress in talks on cutting fishing subsidies but significant differences remain, not least between the United States and Japan. [Link]
• The South Korean government decided Wednesday to confiscate land owned by the descendants of nine people who amassed riches by cooperating with Japan during its colonization of Korea between 1910 and 1945. [Link]
• The Hokkaido Prefectural Government has retracted a ban on the Ainu indigenous people’s traditional ceremony “Iyomante,” which the governor placed in a 1955 directive. [Link]
• A massive profit warning by one of Japan’s “big four” consumer finance companies has prompted fears that the sector could be poised for disaster and that Japan itself could be on the brink of becoming a loan shark’s paradise. [Link]
• About 40% of Japan’s public and private universities and colleges had introduced e-learning systems as of the end of the 2006 academic year, underlining a rapid increase in the number of institutions that are tapping into electronic education. [Link]
• A municipal government in Hokkaido had admitted it mistakenly reported to police that a stainless slide had been stolen from one of its parks even though it was undergoing repairs at a factory. [Link]
• Japan Airlines Corp. booked a consolidated net loss of 16.2 billion yen (US$134.6 million) for the fiscal year through March, far worse than an earlier projection of a 3 billion yen (US$25 million) profit. [Link]
• Despite repeated denials, Japanese government officials knew for more than a decade about U.S. plans to deploy the new MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft that would not be acceptable to many residents of Okinawa Prefecture. [Link]
• Japan is witnessing the rise of the jisageya — people who deliberately devalue the property of land so it can be purchased at bargain basement prices, according to Spa/WaiWai. [Link]