Japan - Page 11

Members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, also known as the “Quad,” announced plans on Tuesday to launch a maritime initiative meant to combat illegal Chinese fishing in the Western Pacific Ocean, Kyodo News reported.

Tokyo police arrested a senior official of Japan’s Finance Ministry named Ono Heihachiro on Friday for allegedly “hitting and kicking” a fellow passenger while the two men were aboard a moving train, Japan’s Jiji Press reported.

China’s military deployed its “most powerful bombers” to conduct drills near Taiwan on Wednesday just 48 hours before U.S. President Joe Biden embarked on a six-day East Asia tour on Friday in what observers believe may have been a show of defiance against Washington’s support of Taipei’s sovereignty, China’s state-run Global Times reported on Thursday.

Multiple top Chinese diplomats threatened that America would “pay the price” if it continued to support the government of Taiwan and said that accepting the existence of a Taiwanese state would lead to “dangerous situations” – less than a week after a suspected Chinese nationalist opened fire at a Taiwanese church luncheon in California.

Japan’s government on Monday filed a diplomatic protest with Beijing over the violation of its maritime territory by China Coast Guard vessels near the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea earlier that same day, Kyodo News reported

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday announced an indefinite ban on entering Russia for 63 Japanese officials, including Prime Minister Kishida Fumio. The ban was presented as retaliation against Japan for sanctions it imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine.

China’s first operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, and its strike group sailed near Japan on Monday and held combat drills in the Western Pacific on Wednesday. 

China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) recently began deploying its most powerful stealth fighter jet, the J-20, to patrol the disputed East China Sea and South China Sea as part of “routine training sessions,” China’s state-run Global Times reported on Wednesday.

Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Thursday called for restrictions to the veto power of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC). The member uppermost on their minds was Russia, which has used its veto power to block resolutions condemning its own invasion of Ukraine.

China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday highlighted soaring rare-earth exports as a bright spot in the sputtering Chinese economy, suggesting the international obsession with “green energy” could be the Communist Party’s path to riches and power in the years ahead.

Japan’s government, which currently observes strict bans on foreign entries, made a rare exception to this policy on Tuesday when it welcomed 20 Ukrainians fleeing their country’s latest war with Russia into Tokyo on a government plane accompanying Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa upon his return from a recent trip to Poland.

A Japanese startup firm has reportedly developed a wristband that can deliver electric shocks to its wearer so you can experience pain in the metaverse.

North Korea’s government media outlets remained mum on Thursday as of press time regarding reports from Seoul that the communist regime launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. The North Korean launch followed a report that South Korea’s President-Elect Yoon Suk-yeol would pressure Pyongyang on human rights.

Japan’s Industry Ministry and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) issued a joint statement on Monday night asking residents of 16 Japanese prefectures, including Tokyo, to limit their electricity consumption due to a nationwide power shortage, Kyodo News reported on Tuesday.

Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa asked his United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) counterpart on Sunday to increase crude oil exports in an effort to stabilize the global petroleum market, which has experienced surging prices amid Russia’s latest war with Ukraine, Kyodo News reported on Monday.

A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northeastern Japan’s Fukushima prefecture late Wednesday causing damage and service disruptions to two nuclear power plants in Fukushima and killing three people across Japan, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported Thursday.

A powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan Wednesday, leaving two million homes in and around Tokyo without power, per reports.

The number of suicides committed by women in Japan increased in 2021 for the second consecutive year, Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reported Tuesday citing data from Japan’s Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

Fast Retailing, a Japanese multinational retail company that owns the clothing subsidiary Uniqlo, announced Thursday plans to “temporarily suspend” Uniqlo’s business in Russia.

Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo, embroiled in controversy last year for refusing to stop buying cotton from China’s slave fields in Xinjiang province, on Monday refused to close its stores in Russia as other fashion houses have done.

Japan’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday accused Russia’s military of ordering a helicopter to fly through Japanese airspace off the nation’s northernmost island of Hokkaido near islets disputed by Tokyo and Moscow.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it restarted all of its domestic plants in Japan following a two-day-long production halt caused by a cyberattack on the computer system of a Toyota parts supplier, Kyodo News reported.

Ukrainian state media, citing Reuters and Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun, appeared to endorse reports on Wednesday of as many as 70 Japanese nationals applying to join the ongoing war against Russia in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky posed in a samurai costume for a photo shared by his Twitter account last week, telling Japan’s Shūkan Bunshun magazine on Tuesday the image of him dressed as a medieval Japanese warrior was meant to convey a protective energy toward Ukraine as it faced increased Russian military aggression.

Children in Japan are “recommended to wear masks when possible” to prevent virus transmission at daycare facilities, a Japanese government panel wrote in an official recommendation Friday, according to Kyodo News.

Japan’s legislature passed a resolution on Tuesday “expressing concern” over China’s human rights violations in a document which failed to “directly mention China or use the term ‘human rights abuses,'” the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), reported.

Tokyo’s population decreased in 2021 for the first time in 26 years due, in part, to increased remote work availability during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic that encouraged people to leave the crowded metropolis, Bloomberg reported Monday.

China’s state-run Global Times was positively giddy on Tuesday about the latest Chinese Communist incursion into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), claiming the flight of 39 warplanes left the “Taiwan secessionists” feeling demoralized and subdued.

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is set to be re-appointed Tuesday via a secret ballot – standing for the role unopposed.

More than 500 pedestrians and bicyclists were admitted to hospitals across Tokyo between Thursday and Friday for injuries caused by “slipping and falling due to ice and snow on the streets” after the Japanese national capital region experienced its heaviest snowfall in four years, Kyodo News reported on Saturday.

Japan’s federal government is allegedly planning to limit exports of artificial intelligence (A.I.)-powered facial recognition software to China to prevent Beijing from using such technology to “surveil and persecute” ethnic minorities in China, particularly in its westernmost region of Xinjiang, the online newspaper Taiwan News reported on Monday.

A shortage of potato imports from North America will force McDonald’s Japan to ration french fries at nearly 300 locations nationwide from December 25 to December 30, the company announced Tuesday.

KFC is striving to ensure that it will meet its typical high demand in Japan for Christmas Day by urging customers to pre-order, avoiding the creation of the usual long times that now violate coronavirus social distancing measures, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Musashino, a city in western Tokyo, approved a plan that would allow foreign residents to vote in local referendums.

A delegation of nearly 100 Japanese legislators visited Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine on Tuesday, which honors Japanese military casualties, including those from World War II and “convicted war criminals,” Kyodo News reported.

Renowned historian Victor Davis Hanson explained in a recent PragerU video the events of December 7, 1941, and what the Japanese were thinking when they attacked Pearl Harbor without warning. “The Japanese underestimated American strength and overestimated their own,” Hanson said. “Instead of cowing America, the Pearl Harbor attack enraged it.”