https://www.scmp.com/rss/323203/feed Gavin Blair has covered politics, economics, business, entertainment and culture in Japan for publications in Asia, Europe and America for 15 years. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com It was a Friday when disaster struck, and all along Japan’s northeast coast, people were looking forward to the weekend. Office workers watched the clock, counting down the hours until the working week would be done – when, at 2.46pm, just as schools were about to let out, the ground began to shake. The ensuing earthquake of between magnitude 9.0 and 9.1 on March 11, 2011, was so powerful that it tilted the Earth’s axis and shifted Japan’s main island eastward by up to four metres. The tsunami... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3124725/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-disaster-10-years-tsunami?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3124725/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-disaster-10-years-tsunami?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:21 +0000 When the mother of a hikikomori social recluse in her 30s paid a Tokyo company 5.7 million yen (US$53,300), she had hoped they would reintegrate her daughter into society. Instead, workers from Elixir Arts broke down the woman’s front door, forcibly removed her from her flat, took her money and phone, and confined her to a company-run dormitory. On June 15, another hikikomori lodged a complaint with Tokyo police over a similar case in which his parents paid 7 million yen (US$65,400) to a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3090786/japan-extreme-bids-help-hikikomori-are-causing-them-further?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3090786/japan-extreme-bids-help-hikikomori-are-causing-them-further?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Jun 2020 08:00:12 +0000 Japan and South Korea are working to boost their attractiveness to Hong Kong firms considering contingency plans as China moves to introduce a national security law in the run-up to the 23rd anniversary of the former colony’s return to Chinese rule on July 1. The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress is expected to meet on Sunday to further discuss the law – which targets secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign and external forces endangering national... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3090575/national-security-law-could-japan-or-south-korea-take-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3090575/national-security-law-could-japan-or-south-korea-take-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 26 Jun 2020 23:00:20 +0000 Japan has seen few entrepreneurial success stories on the scale of SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son in recent decades, and not since the likes of Sony and Casio – both founded in the immediate aftermath of the nation’s World War II defeat – have many new Japanese companies gone on to carve a truly global presence. But with billions in losses from some of his biggest recent investments and a growing list of departures from his boardrooms, there is speculation whether an increasingly isolated Son has... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3085260/after-softbanks-massive-losses-and-jack-mas-departure-has-ceo?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3085260/after-softbanks-massive-losses-and-jack-mas-departure-has-ceo?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 20 May 2020 08:00:12 +0000 Japanese companies are helping to ramp up the production of ventilators and other medical equipment as Covid-19 infections keep rising in the country with the world’s oldest population, but red tape could get in the way. While Japan has 22,254 ventilators – vital medical equipment for patients hit hard by the coronavirus – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said he is looking to add as many as 15,000 more, including from overseas suppliers. On Thursday, the country of 127 million reported 265 new... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3079296/coronavirus-japans-bid-ramp-ventilator-production-risk?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3079296/coronavirus-japans-bid-ramp-ventilator-production-risk?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 10 Apr 2020 00:00:34 +0000 At the dizzy heights of Japan’s bubble economy, the land around the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was estimated to be worth more than all the real estate in California. In a reverse unthinkable in those heady days, there are now millions of hectares and millions of houses in Japan for which ownership cannot be established, are sitting empty, or even deliberately unclaimed by those who have inherited them. The combination of a shrinking population, falling land values, patchy registration records and... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3078366/japans-invisible-problem-enough-empty-homes-house-hong-kong-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3078366/japans-invisible-problem-enough-empty-homes-house-hong-kong-and?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Apr 2020 00:00:22 +0000 The two largest cryptocurrency heists in the world with losses totalling almost a billion dollars at exchanges in Tokyo, and a cultural tendency towards conservatism, seem to have barely dampened Japan’s enthusiasm for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Decades of stagnation since the bursting of the bubble economy at the dawn of the 1990s has left the government grasping for growth drivers. While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” brought some relief, the shrinking population and tax... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2131758/us1-billion-down-why-japan-still-love-bitcoin?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2131758/us1-billion-down-why-japan-still-love-bitcoin?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Feb 2018 23:03:17 +0000 The snap general election called this week by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for October 22 comes against a backdrop of his approval ratings still recovering from a series of scandals, scant enthusiasm for another political campaign and widespread suspicion that the move is little more than a cynical exercise in self-preservation. And yet victory for Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is all but assured. That’s because there’s little else to choose from as Japan, for all practical... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2113453/japan-election-any-party-you-long-its-abes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2113453/japan-election-any-party-you-long-its-abes?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Sep 2017 04:33:44 +0000 A senior officer in the Japan Self-Defence Forces (JSDF) presents his meishi name card, a crucial ritual in all formal interactions in Japanese culture. And yet the card of the officer, a stern-faced career soldier with decades of service, is adorned with two uniformed anime-type characters. The juxtaposition of cute anime characters with Japan’s de facto military is something of an allegory for the contradictions facing the JSDF. Against the background of rising risk and tensions in East Asia,... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2110382/japanese-pacifism-early-casualty-nuclear-north-korea?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2110382/japanese-pacifism-early-casualty-nuclear-north-korea?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Sep 2017 04:34:03 +0000 A resident of the Silver Wing Social Care elderly care home in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward chats happily to a staff member in the facility’s communal area, while in a nearby room another senior is being helped by a rehabilitation specialist to walk again after a fall last month. These workers never take a day off, never complain and don’t need to be paid, for they are robots. Silver Wing Social Care provides a glimpse into the future of Japan and indeed other industrialised nations as they follow its path... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2104809/why-japan-will-profit-most-artificial-intelligence?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2104809/why-japan-will-profit-most-artificial-intelligence?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 Aug 2017 02:32:06 +0000 Once known as “tobacco tengoku” or “smokers’ heaven”, Japan is now in a battle to make Tokyo 2020 a “smoke-free” Olympics. Lined up on one side are the World Health Organisation, the International Olympic Committee, Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, the Japanese health ministry and anti-smoking groups. On the other side sit many senior politicians of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, Japan Tobacco (JT) – a former state-owned monopoly and now the third-biggest tobacco company in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2098269/tobacco-free-2020-olympics-or-japan-blowing-smoke?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2098269/tobacco-free-2020-olympics-or-japan-blowing-smoke?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Jun 2017 06:02:49 +0000 As President Donald Trump’s administration recrafts its controversial travel ban on citizens from a handful of majority-Muslim countries and moves towards mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, the measures and a perceived rise in racism are stoking memories from dark episodes in America’s past treatment of minorities. Under the latest executive order regarding the ban, signed last week, Trump watered down the controversial January order that had indefinitely banned Syrian refugees and... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2079025/trumps-travel-ban-evokes-painful-memories-japanese-americans?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2079025/trumps-travel-ban-evokes-painful-memories-japanese-americans?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 15 Mar 2017 04:15:30 +0000 It’s just before midnight when the sounds of the first ‘champagne call’ of the evening ring out in Shangrila. A dozen slim, perfectly coiffed and stylishly attired young men gather around the woman who has ordered champagne and begin a carefully choreographed performance designed to make her feel like the most important person in the world. The call-and-response lyrics of the song tell the young lady that she’s a princess and that the attentions of this pack of Prince Charmings is focused... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2053389/inside-japans-host-clubs-male-geishas-or-just-pretty-men?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2053389/inside-japans-host-clubs-male-geishas-or-just-pretty-men?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 Dec 2016 08:00:15 +0000 Donald Trump is widely seen in Japan to have done poorly in the second US presidential debate. That has come as an added relief to many Japanese – closely watching the debate that started at 10am local time on a national holiday – as he refrained from tearing into Japan, unlike the first debate. After his repeated attacks on Japan over trade – accusing it of deliberately weakening the yen – and demanding it pays more for US military presence on its soil, Trump had softened his tone over the last... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2026693/deeper-trump-sinks-easier-japan-breathes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2026693/deeper-trump-sinks-easier-japan-breathes?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 10 Oct 2016 05:24:49 +0000 Outside the site of a new proposed US military base at Henoko on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, three members of the American anti-war campaign group Veterans for Peace are singing songs while surrounded by a cordon of police to show solidarity with local people demonstrating against the facility. Tarak Kauff, Ken Mayers and Michael Hanes, who were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, are part of a delegation of six visiting the island, three of whom are former US Marines previously... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2026154/how-trumps-white-house-bid-has-put-japan-defensive?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2026154/how-trumps-white-house-bid-has-put-japan-defensive?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Oct 2016 00:03:27 +0000 China’s increasing assertiveness in the East China Sea and a growing threat from North Korea’s missile development programme are pushing Japan to ramp up its own military capabilities, independently of the United States. Last week, Japan announced plans to accelerate the deployment of the US-made anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) following the landing of a North Korean Rodong intermediate-range ballistic missile 250km off its coast on August 3. That was followed by reports... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2006258/why-japan-boosting-its-missile-defences?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2006258/why-japan-boosting-its-missile-defences?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 Aug 2016 06:03:17 +0000