Japan News for June 01, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• The Tokyo High Court on Thursday upheld the death sentence for Seiichi Endo, the chemist who produced the sarin nerve gas used in mass murders carried out by the Aum Shinrikyo cult. [Link]
• The yen headed for the biggest monthly decline this year against the dollar as the U.S. stock market rallied to a record, encouraging investors to borrow in Japan and buy higher-yielding assets elsewhere. [Link]
• China issued a stern reminder to Japan on Thursday that it considers a visit to Tokyo by former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui to be politically motivated and suggested the trip could damage relations between the two sides. [Link]
• In 2006, Japan applied for 37,848 patents in China, more than any other country has. Half of the ten top foreign enterprises filing patent applications in China were Japanese companies. [Link]
• The body of a new born baby has been found in a cooler that an interior reform company received from an apartment caretaker in Hokkaido. [Link]
• Several dozen people have taken part in a rare public protest in the Chinese capital Beijing, against what they see as Japanese crimes during World War II. [Link]
• A jobless man arrested Tuesday for threatening a taxi driver in Yamagata with a knife has told investigators that he wanted to be arrested to escape from debt collectors. [Link]
• Swimming pools at 1,222 public and private elementary, junior and senior high schools lack sufficient safety devices to prevent youngsters from being sucked into water intake drains, a survey showed. [Link]
• A female inmate at Wakayama Prison has died from “economy class syndrome,” officials said on Thursday. [Link]
• Daisuke Matsuzaka had his winning streak snapped at six decisions after giving up six runs in 5 2/3 innings in the Boston Red Sox’s 8-4 loss to the Cleveland Indians on Wednesday. [Link]
• Mercury, Venus and Saturn can be seen lined up in the western sky just after sunset through early June in a rarely seen phenomenon, researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) said. [Link]
• Tsuneo Watanabe, chairman and editor in chief of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings, will be honored with the Media Person of the Year Award at this year’s Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. [Link]
• Kyoseishinto, a political organization headed by renowned architect Kisho Kurokawa, announced Thursday it would back Kurokawa’s wife, actress Ayako Wakao, as a candidate in this summer’s House of Councillors proportional representation race. [Link]
• Actress and singer Megumi Okina revealed that she plans to retire from show business at the end of this month after finishing up work with her agency. [Link]
• Nestle has decided to donate 10 yen to the famously bankrupt city of Yubari from every pack sold of its new Yubari Melon flavor of Kit Kat. [Link]
• Major security company SECOM Co. has decided to suspend a TV commercial because it believes a scene where a worker on a utility pole abruptly changes into a beast is embarrassing to utility workers. [Link]

Afternoon Update:

• Fusosha, the publishing arm of the conservative media conglomerate Fuji-Sankei Group, has decided to drop the controversial New History Textbook written by the members of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and publish a new textbook that “receives broader support from all layers of society”. [Link]
• Former Defense Agency deputy chief Norihiko Akagi is set to replace Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka who committed suicide. [Link]
• Japan indicated Thursday it may withdraw from the International Whaling Commission and seek to form a new whaling body as it faced strong opposition to its proposal for small-scale coastal whaling for four Japanese communities. [Link]
• The Nagoya High Court has rejected appeals by seven South Korean women who were denied compensation for slave labor performed at a Japanese factory during World War II. [Link]
• The leader of a Nagoya-based yakuza gang has been found stabbed to death in Kobe. [Link]
• Up to 900,000 houses in Tokyo and adjacent prefectures would be hit by floods if the area receives 20 percent more rainfall than it did during Typhoon Kathleen in 1947–the largest typhoon since World War II–which caused the banks of the Tonegawa river to collapse, the government said Thursday. [Link]
• Demolition of the “Elephant Cage” listening post, a vacated U.S. military facility in the village of Yomitan, Okinawa, began Thursday with heavy equipment destroying some of its key components, including 28-meter-tall towers and old antennas. [Link]
• Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is set for a rocky appearance before Australia’s parliament with war veterans on Tuesday calling for an apology over Japanese war crimes and environmentalists demanding an end to whaling. [Link]
• Crown Prince Naruhito will undergo surgery to have a benign duodenal polyp removed at the University of Tokyo Hospital next Wednesday. [Link]
• Public broadcaster N-H-K has taken punitive measures against an announcer and a reporter who were arrested. [Link]
• Entertainers from Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., an Osaka-based comedy entertainment company, will give free performances on June 10 in Wajima and Anamizumachi, Ishikawa Prefecture, to support Noto Peninsula residents hit by an earthquake in late March. [Link]
• The government will withhold endorsement of the taxi industry’s proposed fare hike in Tokyo until after August, in an apparent effort to avoid public furor before the House of Councillors election in July. [Link]
• American-Japanese model and sometime actress Kuroki Meisa (18) will be supplying eye candy for the lads in Miike Takashi痴 next film 鼎rows Zero・ [Link]
• The Tokyo District Court ordered a Tokyo ward office on Thursday to register as a resident a girl born to a common-law couple even though the office rejected her birth registration by her parents on the grounds that the parents refused to classify her as “an illegitimate child.” [Link]