Japan Times: News & Business

The battle between Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Democratic Party of Japan kingpin Ichiro Ozawa comes at a time when Japan is struggling with a slumping economy, strong yen and numerous other issues requiring prompt attention.
But from fiscal to foreign policy, the remedies that Ozawa has proposed stand in stark contrast to the path so far tread by Kan, forecasting a drastic change in leadership if the DPJ power broker manages to emerge from the race as the next prime minister.

Competition in the highway express bus industry is heating up as more and more people look for ways to cut domestic travel costs.
Travel agencies in Nagoya have started organizing tours using chartered buses, while companies that operate commercial routes have introduced new prices and new vehicles to lure new passengers.

The Bank of Japan may seek to delay implementing further monetary easing until at least October, waiting to see whether the yen's gains and a U.S. slowdown will force it to abandon a forecast for a sustained recovery.
BOJ Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa and the Policy Board will probably forgo fresh liquidity injections at a two-day meeting ending Tuesday, according to all but one of 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The board will keep the benchmark rate at 0.1 percent, where it's been since 2008, all 15 economists predicted.

HONOLULU (Kyodo) Gathered on a battleship in Pearl Harbor, some 800 veterans on Thursday marked the 65th anniversary of Japan's formal surrender ending World War II.
"All great leaders know the mightiest undertakings succeed because of the strength and courage, determination and sacrifice, of men and women whose names will never be recorded in history books or memorialized in museums," said U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, a retired U.S. Army four-star general and third-generation Japanese-American born in Hawaii.

Transport minister Seiji Maehara sacked the head of a regional Japan Coast Guard office and his deputy Friday over a public relations debacle following a helicopter crash last month in the Seto Inland Sea that killed all five on board.
The dismissal of Toshihiro Hayashi, head of the 6th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, and his deputy, Kiyoshi Nakamura, effective Sept. 10, stems from the "seriousness of the deaths of five people and the concealment of the fact (that the coast guard helicopter had been conducting) demonstration flights," Maehara said at a news conference.

The national public pension fund, the world's largest, will sell about ¥4 trillion in assets this fiscal year to fund rising payouts as the population ages.
That follows asset sales of ¥720 billion, all in Japanese bonds, in the fiscal year that ended in March, Takahiro Mitani, president of the Government Pension Investment Fund, said Thursday.

The internal affairs ministry has found problems with the farm ministry's food labeling oversight system and urged it Friday to take corrective steps over a spate of mislabeling cases since 2007.
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry looked at inquiries carried out by nine of the farm ministry's local offices into suspected mislabeling cases in 2006 and 2007.

Kumamoto Gov. Ikuo Kabashima feels what is lacking in politics is patience, both by the Democratic Party of Japan and voters.
"I've only served for 2 1/2 years as governor, but during this period we have already had four prime ministers. In such a short period, how can one prime minister achieve anything?" said Kabashima, who was a highly respected professor of political science at the University of Tokyo before becoming governor in April 2008.

The Democratic Party of Japan's presidential election is developing into an unexpectedly tight race, with Prime Minister Naoto Kan gaining 160 votes among the party's 412 Diet members, compared with the 170 of his sole challenger, Ichiro Ozawa, a Kyodo News survey showed Friday.
The situation remains fluid, however, as roughly 80 lawmakers either said they had not decided or refused to respond. They make up around 20 percent of the DPJ members in both Diet chambers.

The British coalition government, formed after the last election between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, has not only survived its first quarter in power but has launched some significant reforms that could change the way Britain is governed.
One immediate and welcome change has been the renewal of the importance of the Cabinet as the central organ of government and confirmation that the prime minister is not an executive president as Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher attempted to become. All major decisions now have to be agreed by both parties in the coalition.

Kenya late last month launched a new constitution. The event was marked by a gala celebration in Nairobi that included other regional leaders and heads of state. Sadly, among the guests was Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. His attendance, while no doubt intended to honor his hosts, was also a snub at the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has accused Mr. Bashir of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Yet, rather than honor that warrant and arrest Mr. Bashir, Kenya afforded him high honors. It is both a snub to the ICC and a troubling indication of the Kenyan government's thinking about human rights.
The ICC made history by issuing a warrant for Mr. Bashir's arrest in March 2009 on five counts of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes for allegedly orchestrating atrocities in the troubled region of Darfur in southern Sudan. The indictment was historic: It was the first time that a sitting head of state had been served with charges by the ICC. Three months later, the court added three counts of genocide to the charges against him. The warrant alleged that that Mr. Bashir, and his government, were complicit in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese and the displacement of millions more after they rose up against central government discrimination and neglect.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the U.S. economy limps toward the second anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, anemic growth has left unemployment near 10 percent, with little prospect of improvement soon. Little wonder that, with midterm congressional elections coming in November, Americans are angrily asking why the government's hyper-aggressive stimulus policies have not turned things around. What more, if anything, can be done?
The honest answer — but one that few voters want to hear — is that it took more than a decade to dig today's hole, and climbing out of it will take a while, too. As Carmen Reinhart and I warned in our 2009 book on the 800-year history of financial crises (with the ironic title "This Time is Different"), slow, protracted recovery with sustained high unemployment is the norm in the aftermath of a deep financial crisis.

The U.S. auto safety regulator's recent interim report that found driver error to be the probable cause of most of the sudden acceleration accidents it probed involving Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles confirms the warnings of an American psychologist and ergonomist that motorists failed to use the brakes.
Richard Schmidt, a safety expert and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a recent telephone interview with The Japan Times that an avalanche of negative media exposure about Toyota's massive recalls spurred a spike in complaints in the past several months, causing undue damage to the carmaker's reputation.

Japan and the European Union should start talks to conclude a free-trade agreement, Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero agreed Thursday.
Yonekura, chief of the country's most influential business lobby, called on Zapatero to support the launch of the FTA talks, to which the Spanish leader showed a positive stance.

While the intense speculation that Toyota Motor Corp. may have covered up electronic defects appears to have ebbed, Japanese experts say the world's top automaker deserves a failing grade for its risk management, and the resulting damage to its reputation was worse than it should have been.
They noted that the furor over the unintended acceleration issue may have been affected by multiple factors — overreaction by the U.S. media, a shift in the business environment, and the American political mood at the time.

KOBE (Kyodo) The Kobe Municipal Government man ban people with tattoos from a beach in Suma Ward following the recent arrests of college students for alleged marijuana possession during a music event at the beach, municipal officials said.
The city intends to come up with a concrete plan this year, including establishing an ordinance, but banning tattooed people from a public beach is rare though not uncommon at commercial establishments, particularly bathing facilities.

SHINGU, Wakayama Pref. (Kyodo) Taiji fishermen caught the first dolphins Thursday in their annual hunt, which kicked off the previous day.
The annual hunt for dolphins, whales and other cetaceans off the Wakayama Prefecture whaling town involved a fleet of six boats, which left the port at around 5:30 a.m.

OKAYAMA (Kyodo) Only 4 percent of about 200 school nurses think it's appropriate to inoculate girls against cervical cancer at school, an Okayama University survey showed Thursday, apparently mirroring the teachers' concerns about their ability to deal with possible side effects.
Mikiya Nakatsuka, a professor at the university and a member of the survey team, said, "I suppose many nursing teachers feel uneasy about providing explanations (about the disease or group vaccination) to parents or coping with side effects."

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is capturing a record share of Japan's equity underwriting market as foreign investment banks benefit from local companies selling a greater proportion of stock overseas.
The New York-based firm has an 18.4 percent share excluding self-led offerings for the fiscal year that started April 1, its best showing since Bloomberg began compiling the data in 1999. Goldman Sachs worked on the $6 billion public offering of Inpex Corp., Japan's largest energy explorer, and Mizuho Financial Group Inc.'s $9 billion share sale.

CHONGQING, China (Kyodo) Takeshi Niinami, president of Lawson Inc., said Thursday the convenience store chain operator intends to raise the number of its stores in China to as many as 10,000 from some 300 at present over the next 10 years.
The company, currently operating in Shanghai and Chongqing, hopes to expand into seven to 10 more cities, he said, citing Beijing, Tianjin and Guangzhou as possibilities.