Controversy No. 1: Cats are people, too
Award-winning novelist Masako Bando received a lot of flack for her essay, "Killing Kittens," which appeared in the evening edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun on Aug. 24. The seventh in a series about her life in Tahiti, the essay revealed that Bando has three female cats and that whenever one gives birth she tosses the litter over a cliff near her house. Though she says the decision to kill the kittens causes her "pain and sadness," she feels it is the most responsible thing she can do since she doesn't believe she has the right to sterilize her cats and strays harm the environment.
By the afternoon of the day after publication, the Nikkei had received 880 e-mails and 172 phone calls expressing outrage over the essay, which was subsequently covered by other Japanese media. Aera published an article based on an e-mail interview with Bando in its Sept. 4 issue.