Newspaper News

The rivalry between the Asahi and the Yomiuri sometimes takes on the appearance of a battle between gangsters:

HANNO, Saitama — A former Asahi newspaper salesman was arrested for drunkenly bursting into a sales office run by rival Yomiuri brandishing a knife, police said.

Yutaka Kadowaki, 65, the former Asahi salesman from Hidaka, Saitama Prefecture, admitted to breaking the Firearms and Swords Control Law.

“I was mad because the Yomiuri’s young punks wouldn’t say ‘hi’ to me when we met on the streets, so I thought I’d teach them a lesson,” Kadowaki told the police.

But the rivalry probably doesn’t cause as much worry for deliverymen, who can devote their time on the job to more relaxing pursuits:

An Asahi newspaper deliveryman has been arrested for urinating on underpants a woman had hung out to dry, police said.

Mitsunori Yamada, 38, the newspaper deliveryman from Suzuka, was arrested for willful destruction of property. He admits to the allegations.

“I did it for my own satisfaction,” he told the police, adding that he did not know the 51-year-old woman who had hung out the underpants.