Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 29, 2017

Few recent scandals have been as entertaining as Lower House lawmaker Mayuko Toyota's verbal and physical attack on her secretary as revealed in a recording leaked to the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho. With the recording coming to light in the week before the Tokyo assembly elections, Toyota decided...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 22, 2017

Public questions Japan's duck and cover drills

On July 7, during a public assembly in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, Shunichi Tanaka, head of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, was asked how his organization would respond to a North Korean missile attack. Tanaka replied that it would make more sense for North Korea to hit Tokyo with a missile than...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 15, 2017

Fundraising loopholes, a political norm

The Liberal Democratic Party lost a large number of seats to Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike's upstart Tomin First Party in the Tokyo assembly election. Media surveys reveal that the public is dismayed by recent scandals involving the LDP, in particular the one surrounding educational company Kake Gakuen, which...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 8, 2017

Shogi: A measure of artificial intelligence

Though last Sunday's Tokyo assembly elections garnered the most media attention, another contest came in a close second, even if only two people were involved. Fourteen-year-old Sota Fujii's record-setting winning streak of 29 games of shogi was finally broken on July 2 when he lost a match to 22-year-old...

BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING

Jul 7, 2017

Lower tariffs on EU cheese imports may not translate to reduced prices for 'fromage' lovers

Japan and the European Union just announced a deal on free trade and will seek to reach a final agreement by the end of this year. The EU has already promised to phase out its 10 percent levy on Japanese automobiles, while Japan says it will eliminate taxes on a raft of food items.

COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS

Jul 2, 2017

New law to guarantee the guarantor pays

Until the postwar growth period, the majority of Japanese rented rather than owned the places where they lived, but renters in Japan have never had much in the way of rights. Still, it is difficult to evict someone from a home they rent, even when they've been delinquent with payments. The Leased Land...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 1, 2017

Once a drug user in Japan, always an outcast

Since being arrested for possession of stimulant drugs on June 2, it is assumed that 30-year-old actor Ryo Hashizume's career is over. As Mark Schilling wrote in the June 15 Japan Times, Hashizume's latest film, in which he played a supporting role, was pulled from theaters. It reopened June 17, but...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 24, 2017

Sticky bonds of the media and government

Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Council released a report critical of the Japanese government. The author, David Kaye, expressed concern over the way the media is pressured by the authorities to support their policies. The government objected to the report, saying it has never tried to sway...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 17, 2017

Does Japan really need more veterinarians?

The ongoing scandal involving the private educational corporation Kake Gakuen hinges on whether or not Prime Minister Shinzo Abe indirectly pushed the Cabinet to approve a new veterinary department for Okayama University of Science, a school run by Kake, whose chairman, Kotaro Kake, is a close friend...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 10, 2017

The Imperial family and public vs. LDP

NHK has become the go-to media outlet for scoops on the Imperial family. In July, the public broadcaster was the first to break the news that the Emperor wanted to step down and, last month, it was the first to report Princess Mako's intention to marry a man she met at university. Both stories annoyed...

BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING

Jun 9, 2017

With stagnant minimum wage, a 'decent life' is out of reach

One of the bedrock principles of market economics is that as demand for labor goes up, so do wages. Lately, there has been evidence that this idea may no longer be true.

COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS

Jun 4, 2017

Parking the car can drive you crazy

In the 1990s when we rented an old house in Saitama Prefecture, we needed a parking space since we had a car at the time. There was none on the property and so we talked the landlord into tearing down a decrepit prefabricated storage shed that stood next to the house. He did, and then, at our own expense,...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 3, 2017

The arrested development of female prisons

Though the prison population in Japan is remarkably small compared to other countries, there have been increases in recent years among certain demographics. The media is particularly sensitive to elderly inmates. Less remarked upon are female prisoners.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

May 27, 2017

Discrimination in day care is a vexed issue

Last January, the mayor of Chiba, Toshihito Kumagai, raised eyebrows when he called for increasing the number of male staff in the city's public day care program. Tending to children is still considered a woman's job in Japan, which is why pay remains criminally low. Over the years, however, men have...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

May 20, 2017

Will there be a price to free education?

During a Lower House budget committee debate on May 8, Akira Nagatsuma of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) asked Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to clarify remarks he had recently made about revising the Constitution. On May 3, which happened to be Constitution Day, Abe had delivered a message via...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

May 13, 2017

Japan's fisheries still swimming upstream

In March, the internet news site Videonews.com posted a conversation between environmental journalist Tetsuji Ida and Waseda University researcher Yasuhiro Sanada, who writes about fisheries. During the talk, Sanada said that whaling is a "dead industry," and seemed to think that the ongoing controversy...

BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING

May 12, 2017

Japan waking up to the problems of sleeping cash

In recent weeks there have been two well-reported robberies of people carrying large amounts of cash on the street. Thieves got away with ¥384 million after attacking a merchant in a Fukuoka parking lot. In Tokyo's Ginza district, a mugger managed to take ¥40 million from a man walking along a popular...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

May 6, 2017

Japanese tradition denies surrogacy

Most major media covered the March 22 Tokyo news conference where Sachiko Kishimoto of the nonprofit organization Oocyte Donation Network (OD-Net) explained how a woman in her 40s had recently given birth to a daughter who had been conceived using the woman's husband's sperm and an egg from a third party....

COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS

Apr 30, 2017

Safety Net Law to offer new lease on life for abandoned buildings

On April 19, the Lower House of the Diet unanimously passed a revision to the Safety Net Law. The revision creates a new system that will register vacant properties with local governments and, ideally, these properties will be renovated and then rented out to low-income individuals and families who are...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Apr 29, 2017

Voter apathy can threaten democracy

On April 17 the Asahi Shimbun reviewed the results of various local elections that had taken place the day before. The main story was not who got voted in or out, but whether or not anyone cared.

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