Daily Japan Headlines: Wednesday, Sept 7, 2011
Photo Source: Wall Street Journal.
Wall Street Journal: China to Overtake Japan in Luxury Demand
It will overtake Japan this year to be the country with the biggest appetite for luxury goods, HSBC predicts in a research report issued late last week. The broker said that it expects China’s consumers to keep spending, even if their affluent counterparts in the West stop.
The reasons are, at least in part, cultural. “Displaying wealth has become a trend in China, and we think this will continue to translate into growing purchases of luxury goods for oneself, or as gifts,” HSBC said. “We think consumer habits may not necessarily always correspond to income levels due to the need to socially fit in and show off wealth.”
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AFP: More than 100 dead or missing after Japan typhoon
At least 50 people have been confirmed dead in nine prefectures.
With more than 50 people still missing, the storm looks likely to be Japan’s deadliest since October 1979, when a powerful typhoon claimed 115 lives, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
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BBC Video: Japan: Rescuers continue search for typhoon survivors
Helicopters have begun lifting supplies to communities cut off by a powerful typhoon in central and western Japan.
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Washington Post: Bank of Japan maintains zero interest rates amid strong yen, global economic worries
Japan’s central bank kept its key interest rate unchanged at virtually zero Wednesday to help the world’s No. 3 economy weather a strong yen and worries about a global slowdown.
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USA Today: Toyota halting Camry imports from Japan
Toyota plans to phase out importing Camrys made in its Japanese factories, Automotive News reports. Those imports were always a small portion of the total demand, with the rest being made in the U.S.
Camry, along with Honda’s Accord, is the “most American” car, with 80% of its parts coming from U.S. suppliers, more than some models from Detroit’s Big 3 makers
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Wall Street Journal: Japan Tobacco: Nicotine, Yes; Radioactivity, No
The world’s third-largest tobacco company by sales volume said Tuesday that in order to “allay consumer concern” about the possibility of radiation contamination in cigarettes, it has been conducting tests since mid-August on the domestic cured leaf tobacco harvest to seek out traces of radioactive material in the wake of the country’s worst-ever nuclear incident at Fukushima Daiichi.
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Hollywood Reporter: Himizu: Venice Film Review
Director Sono Sion had already written his adaptation of the 2001 manga comic Himizu, a shrill teenage wail of existential discomfort, when on March 11 an earthquake and tsunami devastated northern Japan. His intuition to rewrite it in light of those tragic events brings poignant meaning to a nearly unwatchable adaptation of a genre comic targeted at Japanese teens. This bizarre overlay of styles and moods is a daring gamble that somehow heightens understanding of Japan’s disaster, as though the only possible aesthetic approach was via cinema of the absurd.
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