Nipponica

Japanese government workers will survey an uninhabited southwest Alaskan island from Monday to pave the way for the first recovery in over 70 years of remains of World War II soldiers who died fighting U.S. forces there.

Some 2,600 Japanese soldiers died on Attu Island in May 1943, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, in a doomed attempt to hold the northern Pacific island, captured in June 1942, from over 10,000 U.S. personnel.

Remains of around 320 soldiers were recovered in 1953, but later inspections in 2007 and 2008 did not culminate in the collection of any remains.

The annual number of telegrams the NTT group handles peaked at about 95 million in the 1960s, when the group was still Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public, and plummeted 96% in about 60 years to about 3.8 million amid the spread of more accessible online communication methods such as email and messaging apps.

The most common reason for using telegrams was emergency communication during the peak period, accounting for 86%, but congratulatory and condolence messages have accounted for over 90% in recent years.

News to me.

Rahm Emanuel would not attend the event on Friday because it had been “politicised” by Nagasaki’s decision not to invite Israel, the embassy said. Instead, he would honour the victims of the Nagasaki bombing at a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo and a lower-ranked US official would attend the Nagasaki event, it said.

The mayor of Nagasaki, Shiro Suzuki, said his decision not to invite Israel was unchanged despite announcements by the US, five other G7 countries and the EU that they would send lower-ranked envoys instead of ambassadors to the ceremony.

“We only want to hold the ceremony in a peaceful and solemn atmosphere” to honour the victims, Suzuki said on Thursday. “It is absolutely not because of political reasons.

This is a bad call for the US and its undeserving ambassador to Japan. The US destroyed Nagasaki and should always be there to acknowledge its past.

Japan should reaffirm its recognition of history in a proposed joint declaration with South Korea next year, outgoing South Korean Ambassador to Japan Yun Duk-min said in a recent interview with Jiji Press.

Yun reiterated hopes that Japanese and South Korean leaders will announce such a declaration in 2025 to mark the 60th anniversary of the normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties.

Japan has always considered its history of Korea, and all the negative aspects of it including comfort women, to be a closed book that should never be invoked. Doubt this will change that policy.

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.

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 memorial marking 79 years since the Nemuro air raid by U.S. military planes near the end of World War II, which claimed the lives of approximately 400 people, was held in this north Japan city on July 15

About 30 people, including bereaved families and others concerned, gathered at Narumi Park in the center of Nemuro, where the largest number of people were killed by the bombardment, to pray for the souls of the victims and to think about the importance of peace.

You rarely hear about how the Second World War affected Hokkaido but citizen did suffer from similar raids than those in the rest of the country.

On July 13, a symposium titled "The Two Suzukis Who Gave Birth to the Constitution -- Postwar History Beginning in Fukushima" organized to shed light on a fragment of Japan's postwar history and explore the future of the Constitution will be held in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture. One of those two is Yasuzo Suzuki (1904-1983) from Minamisoma, and the other is Yoshio Suzuki (1894-1963) from Shirakawa.

The symposium will be held at Ukifune Bunka Kaikan hall from 2 p.m. on July 13. Admission is free, up to a maximum capacity of 300 people. Applications can be made through a dedicated form accessed by QR code, or by emailing the event secretariat at info@kenriken.jp.net.

During the Yamato Period (300-710), this village was one of the earliest capitals of the nascent Yamato state, even meriting its own aptly named Asuka Period (552-645) — a time of cultural blooming and political consolidation (indeed, it was during this era that the country of Japan began to refer to itself by the modern name of “Nihon” instead of the archaic “Wa”).

A cycling tour of this former capital does sounds like a relaxing way to spend a day. Lots of ruins from the earliest eras of human settlement in Japan to see.