Nipponica

The Brazilian government on Thursday offered its first apology over the persecution of Japanese immigrants in the country during and after World War II.

The apology was made over two cases -- one in which Brazil, as part of the Allies, evicted Japanese immigrants from their houses in Santos during the war, and another involving mistreatment on Anchieta Island of people imprisoned amid postwar unrest in the immigrant community.

Masanori Matsugawa, mayor of the Okinawa Prefecture city of Ginowan, was found dead at a hotel in Tokyo on July 26, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) told the Mainichi Shimbun.

Matsugawa, 70, is said to have arrived in Tokyo on July 24 to conduct official duties. He is believed to have died from illness.

Another Hyogo prefectural government employee linked to power harassment allegations against Gov. Motohiko Saito was found to have died, in an apparent suicide, sources have said.

The employee, a former section chief, who was in charge of gathering funds for last year's victory parades for the Hanshin Tigers and the Orix Buffaloes, both professional baseball teams, and was recuperating from sickness, died in April, Saito said at a news conference Wednesday.

This guy needs to go. Now.

The 280-ton jetfoil vessel operated by Tokai Kisen Co. reported at around 10 a.m. that it had "lost control of steering due to an oil leak." There have been no reports of injuries among the 116 passengers and five crew members.

Three passengers so far reported they were not feeling well, and food and water were delivered to the ship by a coast guard helicopter.

Japan's average hourly minimum wage is set to rise by another record amount as the government endeavors to support households in the face of persistent inflation and as it works to boost economic growth with wage-driven stimulus.

A panel tasked with arriving at a target for the minimum wage has agreed to a national average increase of ¥50 ($0.30), the fourth record increase in as many years.

Should be more but progress...

U.S. Forces Japan said Monday it will create a "new forum for cooperation" with Okinawa's government and local residents, amid criticism over recent revelations of cases of alleged sexual assault involving U.S. military members in the southern island prefecture.

The forum, to be launched in coordination with Japan's central government, will "serve as a venue for the constructive exchange of ideas in the pursuit of shared goals," U.S. Forces Japan Commander Lt. Gen. Ricky Rupp said in a press release.

E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday started online prescriptions and medicine delivery services in Japan in cooperation with some 2,500 drug stores across the country, the retailer's Japan unit said.

While people are now able to obtain medicine without visiting pharmacies through the Amazon Pharmacy service, it means small- and medium-sized pharmacies lagging behind in digitalization may face difficulties continuing their businesses.

The chairman and president of a major Japanese dietary supplement maker announced their resignation on Tuesday, as the company probes dozens of deaths potentially linked to products meant to lower cholesterol.

Kobayashi Pharmaceutical is at the centre of a health scare linked to its over-the-counter tablets containing red yeast rice, which is fermented with a mould culture.

Japan Airlines (JAL) and flag carrier Garuda Indonesia will soon bolster their business tie-up by launching a revenue-sharing arrangement to maximize earnings on routes, Nikkei has learned.

JAL and Garuda, which have been in a code-sharing agreement since 2018, will enter into a joint venture. The two sides will coordinate schedules and fares, providing passengers with more convenient connections.

When you pick up a Japanese text written before 1945, the language used in it will likely look different to what you’re used to, and that’s the Japanese you’ll need to tackle in order to read Akutagawa, who is considered by many to be the greatest writer in Japanese history. He even has a literary prize named after him — the 171st 芥川龍之介賞 (Akutagawa Ryūnosuke-shō) was jointly awarded Wednesday to Sanzo K. Matsunaga and Aki Asahina for their works "Bari Sanko" and "Sanshouo no Shijuku-nichi," respectively.

To be able to read this work, it will first be necessary to understand the differences between prewar and postwar literature. One major difference is the aforementioned use of 旧漢字 — however, modern editions of books will always replace these old characters with their modern equivalents. For example, in an old edition of “Kappa,” the “並” in 人並 (hitonami, ordinary) may have been its 旧漢字 equivalent, “竝.” Fortunately, there is no need to have to read these old characters.

Interesting story about the evolution of written Japanese and one of the nation's most treasured authors.

A total of 900 copies of the "Guidebook for Foreign Residents" have been published in English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese and simple Japanese. The simple Japanese version has furigana readings for all of the kanji characters, which the city's Multicultural Affairs Division says it expects foreign residents not covered by the other five language versions will be able to use.

It is good that local governments are putting things like this together. Perhaps bits of it more general can be 'open sourced' for other municipalities to create similar guides for their residents.

Over a year has passed since the PDAS-X06 unmanned experimental aircraft, part of a space travel project, crashed into the sea off Shimojishima Airport in the city of Miyakojima, Okinawa Prefecture.

PD Aerospace, the Nagoya-based developer of the aircraft, aims to realize space travel by manned spacecraft from the airport under the Shimojishima Spaceport Project, which was signed between the company and Okinawa Prefecture in September 2020.

Under the project, the company’s spacecraft, which is designed to fly to an altitude of 100 kilometers, will allow passengers to experience a state of weightlessness for about five minutes. Originally, the company had planned to launch space travel in 2025, sending 100 passengers to space that year and gradually increasing capacity to 1,000 by 2030.

With this story and the previous one about Hokkaido Spaceport, Japanese industry is making up for lost time in the new space race. While JAXA is far from a small player in the industry, it is small in comparison to the legacy space states. But, experimentation like this could be vital to the next generation of spacecraft and there could be a breakthrough in the testing on Miyako.

Located on the Pacific coast, Taiki, with 5,300 people, is home to the Hokkaido Spaceport (HOSPO), billed as Asia’s first privately operated spaceport, which the town first proposed nearly 40 years ago.

Since 2008, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has been carrying out experiments involving scientific balloon, aeronautical technology and the Hayabusa2 laser altimeter at HOSPO following the signing of an agreement with the town.

But now, HOSPO is aiming to become one of Japan’s major domestic spaceports for launching satellite-equipped rockets and spacecraft as well as for the aerospace industry to conduct research and development.

In the future, convenience stores may become the new base for crane games. Lawson hopes that "people will be able to casually enjoy playing the games at their local convenience stores nationwide." It plans to expand its crane game services by offering original prizes that can only be obtained at the stores where the games are installed and by linking the games to campaigns.

This weblog is slowing turning into a crane game news site. At least this will give me a reason to go to Lawson.

In the meantime, determining a tsunami’s arrival time on shore could still prove to be an essential part of tsunami warning systems, given the density of the cable network in the Pacific Ocean.

“Optical fiber cable is everywhere offshore,” Aoki says, while noting that the network is far less developed on the Sea of Japan side given political sensitivities with Japan’s neighbors. “Using optical cable is a promising tool to quickly understand the arrival time of tsunami.”

This is a very innovative idea to leverage existing data infrastructure to dramatically increase seismic tracking. Also an interesting history of the current system of seismographs that power Japan's earthquake & tsunami early warning system.

The Mainichi Newspapers Co. will start delivering a newsletter in Japanese titled "Mainichi Shimbun nyusu de manabu eigo" (Learning English through Mainichi Shimbun news) on July 24. It will feature a selection of Mainichi Shimbun articles that have English translations -- in other words, the Japanese originals of The Mainichi's English-language pieces.

He was arrested Sunday when his ship docked in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, a police statement said. He later appeared before a district court to look into a request to detain him pending a decision on his possible extradition to Japan, the statement said.

He was detained in Germany in 2012 on a Costa Rican extradition warrant but skipped bail after learning that he was also sought for extradition by Japan, which has accused him of endangering whalers’ lives during operations in the Antarctic Ocean. He has since lived in countries including France and the United States.

Japan on Saturday extended its designation of its continental shelf to the eastern part of islands some 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo, enabling the resource-poor country to start research on extracting maritime natural resources such as rare metals from the region.

A revised Cabinet order took effect designating a significant portion of the Ogasawara Plateau sea area as part of its continental shelf, an area of around 120,000 square kilometers. Its move to enlarge the shelf has triggered opposition from China.

As this expansion is on the Pacific side of Japan, there is no credible claim or complaint that could be made on this expansion, assuming it gets approved by all relevant authorities in the UN. Since the US, the area’s closest territorial neighbor, did not reject the proposal, should be a done deal.

According to the Takasaki Municipal Government, the 42-year-old ALT is employed on a one-year contract to teach English at a public junior high school in the city. He was arrested by local police on May 22 for allegedly stealing whiskey and other items from a convenience store in Takasaki on April 29. The man was also accused of stealing items from convenience stores on three other occasions, and was indicted for theft at the Takasaki branch of the Maebashi District Court.

Stealing is a crime and should be punished but one other factor to consider is that wages for English teaching have been stagnant for decades, much like every other profession. You can make the argument that a lot of these teachers are not actually trained in teaching, but at some point you have to accept that they are human beings that deserve a living wage for a job that their governments decide is important.

Japanese online marketplace Mercari has laid off nearly half of the employees from its U.S. subsidiary, Nikkei has learned, as it struggles with falling sales and competition from low-price Chinese e-commerce rivals like Temu.

The June layoffs have apparently reduced the workforce to a little over 100 people. The subsidiary had 226 employees at the end of June 2023, excluding temporary workers, a securities filing showed.