A Tokyo assemblywoman subjected to sexist taunts by male colleagues last week said Tuesday the capital’s legislative body needs to be reformed so that the voices of women can be heard.
“A local-level assembly like the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly is not a friendly place for women to work, and it doesn’t make use of women’s dynamism,” Ayaka Shiomura, a member of Your Party, told a packed Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo.
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday adopted a set of economic reform strategies to boost mid- to long-term economic growth, including attracting more foreign investors to prop up stock prices.
The Japan Revitalization Strategy — the “third arrow” of “Abenomics” — includes a pledge to cut corporate tax, welcome more foreign workers, help working women and shake up the portfolio of the Government Pension Investment Fund, the world’s largest.
A man under the influence of quasi-legal herbs drove a speeding car into pedestrians Tuesday evening in the bustling Tokyo district of Ikebukuro, leaving one person dead and six people injured.
The driver, Keiji Nagura, a 37-year-old restaurant manager from Yoshikawa, Saitama Prefecture, was arrested Tuesday on initial suspicion of negligent driving resulting in injury. The incident killed a woman in her 20s, while six other pedestrians were injured, police said.
東京都議会一般質問で、晩婚化などについて質問した塩村文夏あやか都議（３５）に女性蔑視のヤジが相次いだ問題で２３日、発言の主が特定された。
全面否定から一転、名乗り出た鈴木章浩都議（５１）は記者会見で「配慮がなかった」と陳謝したが、議員辞職は否定。都議会への抗議電話は鳴りやまず、自民以外の各会派からは「ほかのヤジを発言した議員も名乗り出るべきだ」といった声が相次いだ。
To attract more foreign investment and help grow the economy, Japan is looking to encourage more foreigners to start their own businesses in Japan by easing visa requirements in specially designated zones.
The most common way to start a business here is to get an investor/business manager visa. But applicants must first secure office space and have at least ¥5 million on hand to invest in the business or hire at least two full-time workers before they even apply for it.
Keisuke Honda says that the results so far of Asian teams at the World Cup are a simple reflection of how far they are lagging behind the global elite in terms of ability, but the AC Milan midfielder still believes a miracle will send Japan through to the knockout phase of the competition.
Having only taken a point from two games so far after a 2-1 defeat to Cote d’Ivoire and a 0-0 draw against 10-man Greece, Japan is on the brink of elimination going into its final Group C game on Tuesday against Colombia in Cuiaba.
Okinawa on Monday held a memorial service to mark the 69th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa, with a crowd of some 4,600 people gathering to commemorate the more than 200,000 lives lost in the prefecture during the closing days of World War II.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy were among the guests at a memorial service held to commemorate the war dead.
Liquefaction is highly likely to disrupt around 43 percent of the petrochemical complexes on the Pacific coast if a feared magnitude-9 quake hits the Nankai Trough off central and western Japan, government researchers said Monday.
It is also likely to affect a quarter of all such facilities near the capital if a magnitude-7 quake hits Tokyo.
An Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is out of control and requires massive resources from governments and aid agencies to prevent it from spreading further, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said on Monday.
The death toll has hit 337 since February, the U.N. World Health Organization said last week, making it the deadliest outbreak since Ebola first emerged in 1976.
An Egyptian court on Monday convicted three journalists from Al-Jazeera English and sentenced them to seven years in prison each on terrorism-related charges in a case that has brought an outcry from rights groups.
The sentences were handed down against Australian correspondent Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian acting Cairo bureau chief Mohammed Fahmy, and Egyptian producer Baher Mohammed, who also received an extra three years in prison on separate charges.
Teenager Divock Origi became the youngest player to score in this World Cup when he cracked in an 88th-minute winner to give Belgium a 1-0 victory over Russia on Sunday and a place in the last 16.
Origi’s well-placed shot came after a dangerous jinking run and cutback from the left by Eden Hazard and it settled an otherwise turgid game during which the 73,000 fans regularly booed both teams.
Acting under pressure from Taiwan, the Japanese organizers of an exhibition of ancient Chinese artifacts on loan from the Taiwan National Palace Museum said Sunday that they have taken steps to remove promotional materials that dropped the word “national” in referring to the government-operated institution.
Officials of the Tokyo National Museum said they hope to hold the opening ceremony for the special exhibition on Monday as scheduled, if approved by the Taiwan National Palace Museum.
Tokyo plans to call on Pyongyang to provide more convincing answers to 150 questions and issues it raised in 2002 over North Korea’s abductions of Japanese, a government source said Saturday.
Japan will bring up the matter during talks with North Korea in the hope that it can clarify issues that were not fully addressed regarding Japanese kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s, the source said.
Public opposition to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s bid to overturn the ban on collective self-defense jumped to 55.4 percent from 48.1 percent last month, according to the latest survey.
In a nationwide telephone poll conducted by Kyodo News over the weekend, 57.7 percent of respondents said they are also against the Abe administration’s methods, which involve reinterpreting — rather than formally amending — the war-renouncing Constitution, while just 29.6 percent expressed support.
The United States, seizing on Egypt’s weak economy and shaky security, is seeking to convince its new president to embrace more moderate policies to achieve stability — and deliver more American aid.
In the few weeks since President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi officially took office, U.S. officials say they have seen some small encouraging signs that he is prepared to protect his people’s rights, including issuing severe penalties for sexual assault against women and freeing a jailed journalist.
At least 10 people were killed Saturday in raids by suspected Boko Haram gunmen on two villages near the town of Chibok where Islamists abducted more than 200 girls in April, residents and local leaders said.
Military fighter jets dropped bombs on the insurgents, halting the attacks after nine hours, said Enoch Mark, a Christian priest in Chibok, some 11 km from the attacked villages.
Marching imperiously with a puffed-out chest and soldier’s ramrod posture, Mohamad Hatta Yahaya’s tiny chicken strutted its rich yellow plumage for a stone-faced judge.
“Yes my hero, puff out your chest!” Mohamad Hatta cried out above the din of fellow fowl owners as his $10,000 bird pranced to victory in a “beauty contest” for serama chickens outside the capital, Kuala Lumpur.
At last month’s Global Gaming Expo Asia (G2E) in Macau, casino and resort operators, game machine manufacturers, government officials and countless others gathered to review gaming laws and markets in countries ranging from Vietnam to China and the Philippines.
But at this year’s G2E in the 3,000-room Venetian Macao resort, which boasts a shopping arcade mimicking the canals of Venice and acres of casino space large enough to host thousands of attendees from over 70 countries, it was Japan, the one major Asian country without casinos, that was on the minds of many attendees.
A sightseeing train derailed in Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture, on Saturday morning, injuring 15 passengers.
Of the 15 people taken to a hospital, three were severely injured, including to the head and chest, but their lives are not considered to be at risk, said Kyushu Railway Co. (JR Kyushu).
The Defense Ministry will conduct full-fledged studies on new missile defense systems that would better equip Japan to intercept North Korean ballistic missiles, officials said.
The ministry has started consultations with the United States on introducing the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and a ground-based version of the Standard Missile-3 interceptors mounted on Aegis destroyers, according to the officials.
