A wrap of the top or most interesting stories in Japan from January 7th.
– The top opposition party in the Diet (Japanese Parliament), the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has begun a leadership contest to replace the former leader Banri Kaieda, who lost his seat in the December 14 snap election. What was to be a contest between potentially four candidates was narrowed to three after Rehno (who only goes by one name), the only female candidate, withdrew from the race after failing to muster the support inside the party.
There has been criticism that by calling the December snap election, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was able to catch his opposition off guard and unprepared. With barely 50% of the nation showing up to the polls last month, all the DPJ leadership candidates are vowing to rebuild a stronger party at the January 18th leadership elections.
– The restarting of nuclear reactors is an election issue for the Abe government but In Western Japan, Hirohiko Izumida, the Governor of Niigata Prefecture – which neighbours Fukushima Prefecture – is unhappy with the investigation Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has done into the March 11 meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
At the same time, governments in Western Japan are asking for more political say into the reactivation of nuclear plants in prefectures which they neighbour. Currently only the hosting prefecture’s government gets the final word on these decisions.
– The buzz surrounding the Abe governments statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II is still making front pages. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga is attempting to quell any concerns the US may have about the August statement.
What’s caused concern is both Suga and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have said they will maintain the landmark Murayama statement “as a whole”, which The Japan Times writes “could leave room to disagree on some details or deviate from the wording of past apologies while upholding the general outline”.
– As if things couldn’t get worse for McDonalds in Japan, the company recently dug up a customer complaint from August where a woman allegedly found a human tooth in her french fries. At the same time, a labor dispute on the United States West Coast has led to a shortage of french fry stocks, which has spread as far as Venezuela.
– Famous Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, will be setting up an agony uncle column on his website to offer life advice to his fans. (The Guardian, Japan Times)
