Japan News for May 27, 2007

Today’s Japan-related news links:

• Hakuho muscled out fellow ozeki Chiyotaikai to win his second consecutive Emperor’s Cup Saturday, all but securing his promotion to grand champion at the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament. [Link]
• Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited a monument in Lithuania on Saturday to pay homage to the late Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who helped save about 6,000 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust by issuing them transit visas. [Link]
• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe assured the public Friday that steps will be taken to ensure that data on pension premium payments get straightened out following the discovery of widespread mistakes in the Social Insurance Agency’s pension records. [Link]
• Japan is set to import more U.S. beef over the next few months as demand rises with warmer weather and stores move to expand sales, the Nikkei business daily said on Saturday. [Link]
• Charles Overby, professor emeritus of Ohio University and an active campaigner for the pacifist values of the Japanese Constitution, will go on a one-month lecture tour across Japan from Saturday, his supporters in Japan said Friday. [Link]
• 63% of Japanese support the establishment of the baby drop-off box in Kumamoto Prefecture, according to a goo/Mainichi survey. [Link]
• Police have arrested a person for being involved in an alleged gang rape of two Japanese students in the central Pakistani city of Lahore. [Link]
• North Korea on Saturday renewed its criticism of Japanese politicians who visited a controversial war shrine last month, calling their move an organized attempt to restore Japan’s past militarism. [Link]
• In a terrifying moment Thursday, a baby carriage with a 4-month-old infant was dragged along a platform in Tokyo by a departing JR Yamanote Line train. [Link]
• Former Osaka Prefectural Assembly member Kanako Otsuji, who has declared that she is a lesbian, is set to have a wedding ceremony with her partner at a park there early next month. [Link]
• A woman arrested on suspicion of stabbing a 2-year-old girl in Yokohama on Thursday has told police she did so because she thought the girl would bite her, it was learned Saturday. [Link]
• The Tokyo metropolitan government is expected to require all operators of amusement facilities in Tokyo to conduct biannual ultrasonic and magnetic inspections of rides for fractures invisible to the naked eye. [Link]
• Whale meat consumption increasing little by little in Japan, according to the Asahi Shinbun. [Link]
• Japan’s Finance Ministry is considering changing the current system of setting more or less the same level of tuition fees for all courses at state universities by introducing different levels in accordance with the field of study and its associated costs, ministry sources said Saturday. [Link]
• A Japanese candle manufacturer has been ordered to compensate a rival firm for falsely describing the competitor’s products as inferior in quality and dangerous during seminars on its own products. [Link]
• The Osaka High Court has overturned a lower court ruling that convicted a bank employee of groping a female passenger on a crowded train, saying the victim’s testimony was unnatural and there was a possibility the perpetrator was a different person. [Link]
• Eleven junior high school students suffered hyperventilation and were rushed to hospital after talking about ghosts on a bus during a school trip Saturday afternoon in Kyoto. [Link]
• A community-based organization to help people free themselves from excessive debt is planning to erect signs in a forest at the foot of Mount Fuji where people often commit suicide, in a bid to stop people overwhelmed by debt from taking their own lives. [Link]