According to figures released in a recent government white paper, Mainichi reports, the law abiding spirit of the Japanese people appears to be in decline. Japan has long been proud of its record of relatively low violent crimes and high success rates of solving and prosecuting crimes. But recent figures suggest that [...]

The Japan Times has a poignant and heartbreaking article by an anonymous author, as he discusses his intensely personal trials as a foreign father in Japan whose wife has lost interest in their marriage. This article should be a must read for any man that is considering getting married or [...]

A recent Yomiuri survey showed that 7% fewer people were reading books compared with a year earlier. The survey asked respondents whether they had read a book in the past month, and 53% responded that they had not. This was almost as high as the mark of 54% in 2002.

Intuitively, it may be [...]

A Kyodo news report yesterday proclaimed that 1 in 7 Japanese people were living in poverty, according to a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare release. This was the first time that the ministry has released such figures, which were calculated in accordance with the calculation methods used [...]

The latest issue of the annual UN Human Development Index (HDI) from the UN Development Program shows Japan in 10th place in the world. This places it 3 places above the US, but 8 spots below my home country of Australia (see the top 15 ranked countries below). The [...]

I saw this post from Lee at Tokyo Times last night, and I just had to post a link to it here. The video below is from a Fuji News broadcast, so it is in Japanese with no subtitles, but it is very powerful nonetheless. It shows how unwanted [...]

I’ve been meaning to do a post about Financial and Postal Affairs Minister Kamei Shizuka ever since the election, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it until now. Kamei, and the leader of the DPJ’s other coalition partner, Fukushima Mizuho, pose something of a problem for the Hatoyama administration. He needed to find [...]

Although the government has made several attempts over the last decade or so to change conditions for temporary (or ‘dispatched’) workers, a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry study has found that about 41% of non-regular workers are doing work on a par with that of regular employees, although only 16% [...]

According to a report in Japan Today yesterday, suicides in Japan have increased 4.5% over last year for the January to August period, amid concerns that this could pass the record figure of more than 34,000 set in 2003. Some 22,362 people committed suicide in the first 8 months of the year, [...]

The Japanese Medical Society on Child Abuse and Neglect, a body of medical specialists, social workers and nurses met last month to try to bring new awareness to the issue of child abuse in Japan. Apparently there were 42,662 cases of child abuse reported in [...]