Newsround
Newsround - your completely one-sided, partial and unashamedly biased guide to the week's news in Japan.
MAR 18 - 31
English teacher murdered in IchikawaThe body of Lindsey Hawker, 22, was found covered in sand in a bathtub on the balcony of an apartment in Ichikawa, Chiba prefecture. Lindsey, from Coventry, who worked for Nova, had been missing for a few days.
Police have come in for criticism as when they arrived at the apartment on Tuesday with an arrest warrent from Tatsuya Ichihashi, 28, he managed to escape the group of 9 officers on barefoot and is still at large.
Ms Hawker's father and boyfriend have both travelled to Japan where they have made several emotional televised appeals.
Ishikawa earthquake
Last weekend saw a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the Noto peninsula, destroying more than 300 houses in Ishikawa prefecture. More than 1000 people are still in shelters according to local authorities. One person is said to have been killed, and about 280 people injured.
The whole area suffered more than a hundred aftershocks, many of them almost as strong as the initial tremor, throughout the week.
The inherent dignity in Japanese politicsIf you thought politics in Japan was all about anonymous old blokes agreeing with whatever they're told to, think again. In Iwate prefecture, there is a very special canditate in the forthcoming gubernatorial election on April 8.
The Great Sasuke, 38, is his name both in the wrestling ring and in the prefectural assembly, where he has served since 2003. Now he intends to stand for governer.
He told a recent press conference he "intends to continue wearing his mask even if he is elected as governor", having worn it in the prefectural assembly for the last 4 years. Unsurprisingly, the mask thing has apparently raised the hackles of his fellow assemblymen, but he's not to be deterred.
Japanese foreign minister shows his understanding of the world around him
Honestly, has their ever been a man less suitable for the post of Foreign Minister than Taro Aso?
Aso made a speech last week about diplomacy in the Middle East, a subject he just can't seem to resist spouting nonsense about.
"Japan is doing what Americans can't do. Japanese are trusted. If [you have] blue eyes and blond hair, it's probably no good. Luckily, we Japanese have yellow faces."Americans = blond hair and blue eyes. It's a stereotype that you could forgive uneducated country bumpkins for having. This man, however, is Japan's highest ranking foreign affairs spokesman. Who apparently can't recall his opposite number in the USA, the very blonde-haired, blue-eyed Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice. And the other 90-something per cent of the US population who also aren't from Aryan stock.
Incidentally, if anything happens to Mr Abe, this man will probably take over as PM...
MAR 4 - 17
What's that rumbling?The biggest story of the last fortnight (in fact it's never that far from the headlines) was and is the furore over the current status of Japanese government policy on war-time "comfort women".
Abe stated last Monday that there would be no further apology from Japan on the issue. Furthermore he announced a new investigation that would focus on the issue of coercion. This prompted outrage not only in Asia, but in Washington too, where Rep. Mike Honda, who'd been central in the tabling of the now-famous non-binding resolution, bit back, stating "the overwhelming historical record makes it clear that the Japanese Imperial Army forced as many as 200,000 women into sexual slavery during the Second World War."
Abe is now no longer speaking to the media on the subject, complaining that his original words were taken out of context and twisted. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said,
"We are considering appropriate measures, such as putting out a rebuttal to reports or comments that are not based on facts or that are based on incorrect interpretations."...while Abe himself said,
"My remarks have been twisted in a sense and reported overseas which further invites misunderstanding. This is an extremely unproductive situation."He's not arguing over the numbers or the existence of the women, but in arguing over the semantics (if there was in fact any coercion, and if so, who exactly was responsible for it) many feel the ruling LDP are looking for a way to weasel out of previous apologies and shift the burden of blame onto others, thereby conveniently sidestepping the issue rather than deal with it head-on in an open and frank manner.
And then on Thursday LDP policy chief Shoichi Nakagawa further muddied the waters by saying,
"Politicians must not make judgments on history. I believe the Kono statement included a historical judgment, and I doubt that it was proper. For people in positions of power, such as a chief Cabinet secretary, to make a historical judgment could cause a big problem."Extraordinary. Politicians make and shape history. But they shouldn't make judgments on it? What madness is this? If LDP politicians are urging us that the word of historians isn't to be trusted, and politicians themselves shouldn't make historical judgment, how on earth do they propose history be judged?
Why even bother?
No one had particularly high hopes for the talks between Japan and North Korea last week, but few would have predicted that they would break down quite as quickly as they did.
Japan's continued stance is that the NorKs must 'resolve the abduction issue', and that is first on the agenda. The NorKs' continued stance is that the issue has been settled and angrily refuse to address it. Hence the first day of the two-day talks saw an almost immediate walk out by the NorKs. Day two commenced without handshakes and broke up after only 45 minutes, with no date being set for further talks.
Wot constitutional rights?
As Newsround reported last November, and also previously in late October, the government has demanded that NHK radio broadcast extensive coverage of the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents.
This week a civic group in Osaka ("consisting of NHK subscribers in Hyogo and Kyoto prefectures, and viewers in the United States and France") filed suit against the government, seeking a repeal of the communications minister's order on the basis that it "infringes upon the freedom of press guaranteed under the Constitution".
No news yet on when the lawsuit is likely to be thrown out.
Who do you trust?
A Yamagata police officer showed he'd dedicated himself to the wrong sort of on-the-job training this week after being arrested "for snatching a bag from a woman in the parking lot of a pachinko parlor".
"Yoshiyuki Watanabe, 43, an assistant inspector at Shinjo Police Station's traffic division, was taken into custody late Sunday night after he admitted to the allegations.
At about 11:20 p.m. on Saturday, Watanabe snatched a bag containing about 1.24 million yen in cash from a 69-year-old employee of a pachinko parlor prize exchange booth at the parking lot of a pachinko parlor in Mamurogawa before fleeing in his car, local police said."
And finally...
This has nothing at all to do with Japan, but the temptation was overwhelming.
The BBC had a wonderfully arch report on Israel's decision to recall a diplomat from El Salvador this week -
"...after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.Oh to have been the officer who had to remove the ball.
Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Zehavit Ben-Hillel confirmed that lurid reports of the incident in the Israeli press were accurate. "We're talking about behaviour that is unbecoming of a diplomat," she said."
end of FEB - MAR 3
This week we're celebrating Foot-in-Mouth Week, where authority figures across Japan have shown a complete lack of any grasp on reality.Just as the weather was improving...
PM Abe threw a cat among the pigeons this week in the seemingly never-ending quarrel over second World War sex slaves (or "comfort women").
After a group of US House of Representatives members, led my Rep. Mike Honda, drafted "a nonbinding resolution calling for Abe to 'formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility' for using 'comfort women' during the war", South Korean president Roh stirred it up by using a national television address to voice support for the American resolution and added
"Japan needs to, above all, show an attitude of respecting the historical truth and acts that support this. Instead of trying to beautify or justify its past wrongdoing, [Japan] should show sincerity that is in line with its conscience."At this point you might have expected Abe to put out the usual statement about the issue already having been settled in full, which it should have been by the 1993 Kono Statement, which was seen as an official acknowledgement though it didn't lead to any compensation claims being met.
A leading group of LDP members is now pushing for an amendment to the Kono Statement on the basis that, as Mr Abe put it -
"The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion. We have to take it from there."So quite what the official Japanese government position on this issue now is, is anyone's guess. But until we find out, expect outrage from the neighbours.
(An in-depth and unusually frank article from the Mainichi can be found here.
Ibuki Special: pt I
Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki got two shots in this week.
First up he told an LDP convention in Nagasaki that "Japan is an extremely homogenous country", which is true if you interpret it as meaning the overwhelming majority of people in Japan are of Japanese stock. But what it Japanese stock? While many in positions similar to Mr Ibuki would have us believe some myth of Japanese racial 'uniqueness', modern DNA tests prove this to be absurd, in that modern Japanese are mainly a mixture of Chinese and Korean, as well as Ainu and Ryukyu indigenous peoples.
Mr Ibuki could probably have left himself enough room to back out if he'd left it there, but he went on to clarify his position by saying
"Japan has been historically governed by the Yamato (Japanese) race. Japan is an extremely homogenous country. In the long, multifaceted history, Japan has been governed by the Japanese all the way."Japan for the Japanese, eh? Nice.
Ibuki Special: pt II
And fresh from that gem of modern thinking, Mr Ibuki had a word to say about human rights later in the week.
Japan is frequently criticised as being behind the times with regard to human rights legislation. In fact there is even sizeable opposition to the introduction of protective HR laws. (See here for translation of some extraordinary anti-HR propaganda put out recently.)
Needless to say, Mr Ibuki has a rather singular take on the whole Human Rights issue.
"No matter how nutritious it is, if one ate only butter every single day, one would get metabolic syndrome. Human rights are important, but if we respect them too much, Japanese society will end up having human rights metabolic syndrome."Yeah, you don't want to respect those pesky human rights too much.
A new perspective on the Middle East, from those in the know
Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who never keeps his feet too far from his mouth, showed just how suited he is to the job of being the face of Japanese concerns abroad when he told the Middle East Research Institute of Japan in a speech
"In the field of diplomacy, the Middle East is the equivalent of Tokyo's Ginza shopping district, the upscale must-see for over a century for folks visiting Tokyo. It is the area in which others will assess your overall strengths in the field of diplomacy."Yes, that's it Taro-kun. You've got it. It's exactly like a shopping district and a playground rolled into one. Well done, not only for thinking it, but for saying it out loud.
Oh dear oh dear
The best brains in the policin' biz were on the case this week when a man died in hospital in Kashiwa, Chiba prefecture, after being found "lying trussed up, gagged and unconscious on a railway line."
The body was spotted one the line by the driver of an approaching train, who managed to stop in time, and reported the matter to the police. The man was unconscious and died later in hospital.
Police revealed that "his mouth was covered with adhesive tape, his left wrist was handcuffed and his legs were bound with a plastic rope." The story concludes
"Investigators suspect that the man either committed suicide by leaping onto the tracks or was murdered."I know it's best always to keep an open mind, but come on.