Daily Japan Headlines: Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Written By: guyjin on May 25, 2011 No Comment

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Hiroyuki Takeuchi and the handwritten Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun. Photo Source: LA Times.

LA Times: A newspaper unplugged in Japan’s quake zone

For six days, working by flashlight, wearing overcoats in the chilly office, they put the paper out by hand, with black felt-tip markers and large sheets of white paper.
The afternoon paper’s daily circulation fell from 14,000 to just six hand-copied issues, which the staff posted at community centers and convenience stores — anywhere residents congregated.

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Nikkei: Japanese Unhappy Despite Scoring High On OECD Index

Even as their country stacks up favorably against others in such areas as income, jobs, education and health, the people of Japan report relatively less satisfaction with their own lives in a new index released Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Just 40% of Japanese said they were satisfied with their lives, compared with the average of 59%.

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Bloomberg: Kan Faces Budget-Funding Discord as Ruling Party Members Oppose Tax Rise

“The DPJ was never really united from the beginning, but when a disaster like this happens, the disunity becomes even clearer,” said Hiroshi Miyazaki, chief economist at Shinkin Asset Management Co. in Tokyo.

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Washington Post: Japan’s exports drop 12.5 percent in April, showing effects 1 month after tsunami disaster

Japan’s exports to the United States dropped 23.3 percent, and Asia-bound shipments declined 6.6 percent in April. Japan’s exports to China also fell 6.8 percent, marking the first year-on-year decline in 18 months, the ministry said.

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Telegraph: Solar panels to be fitted in all Japan’s new homes and buildings by 2030

Naoto Kan, the prime minister, is expected to confirm the “Sunrise Plan” initiative in a statement on the nation’s energy policy at the forthcoming Group of Eight Summit opening this week in France.

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MSNBC: ‘Two-faced rupture’ made Japan tsunami so big: Unusual shift of quake fault led to the devastating 9.0-magnitude disaster

Two-faced_rupture

“It was not appreciated before that this size of earthquake was possible on this plate boundary,” Stanford University geophysicist Greg Beroza said in a statement. “It was thought that typical earthquakes were much smaller.”

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Deseret News: Lessons from Japan’s lost decades

Economists talk about “the lost decade” of the 1990s, when the Japanese economy ground to a halt. I would suggest there have now been two lost decades, with only minimal economic growth at times led by new government spending and enormous budget deficits.

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AFP: Japan court acquits two after decades in jail

It was the latest case of a wrongful conviction blamed on heavy-handed tactics of Japanese police or prosecutors, who boast a near-perfect conviction record and rely heavily on confessions.

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Wall Street Journal: Japan’s Gree Plays Global Game

In an interview, Yoshikazu Tanaka, Gree’s 34-year-old founder, said the rise of smartphones around the world has paved the way for his business to go global.
“Now is our chance to enter the race at its early stages,” Mr. Tanaka said. “The fact that our business is very lucrative in Japan enables us to invest in overseas acquisitions and other steps to expand abroad.”

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