Stories about Japan from August, 2008
Japan: Ainu recognized as indigenous people
On June 6, a couple of months prior to the International Day of the World's Indigenous People, the Japanese Diet passed a resolution to officially recognize the Ainu as an indigenous people. Immediately following the passage of the resolution, a government panel held its first meeting to start working on...
Japan: Water Art
Mari posts a youtube video on water art work at Canal City in Fukuoka.
Japan: Revising the Law of Transgendered People
Joe Jones from Mutant frog blogs about the Act Regarding Special Provisions for the Treatment of the Gender of Persons With Gender Identity Disorder recently passed in the Diet.
Japan: Letter to Google about Street View
One year after its debut in the United States, Google's Street View has arrived in Japan, where it is already drawing criticism. Despite the company's generally positive image in this country, bulletin board threads and blogs are filled with comments questioning the way Google has rolled out its latest service.
Japan: Atomic Bombing Anniversary
Yesterday was the the anniversary of the atomic bombing in Japan, Tokyogenso expresses hope for world peace. Martin from Kurashi quotes from the NHK documentary about the effects of atomic bomb to the victims.
Japan: Tama Art University
Chiemi from Pink mag wrote a feature story about the creative pedagogy in Tama Art University.
iSummit2008: The Japanese-English divide
The 2008 iSummit in Sapporo, Japan ended last week after three days of keynotes and lab sessions on open content and open culture. Blogger Shinya Ichinohe (shinyai), who attended the event, reflected on his experiences, noting that while grateful for all that he learned, he also regrets the division which emerged between Japanese-language and English-language tracks.
Japan: CNET article on Mainichi scandal sparks huge response
An article [ja] by former Mainichi journalist Toshinao Sasaki has sparked a huge response from Japanese Internet users, scoring a whopping 23643 votes on CNET and nearly one thousand bookmarks on Hatena, as well as many blog reactions [ja] and forum discussions [ja]. In the article, Sasaki quotes from anonymous...
Japan: Blogger takes FCCJ to task over WaiWai editorial
Blogger Aki at Fusou Note takes the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan to task over misinformation in an editorial on the recent WaiWai controversy, pointing out misrepresentations and outright mistakes. Aki describes the FCCJ editorial as “a desperate attempt to cover up the harmful nature of the WaiWai column”.
Japan: Toyota's Just-In-Time System and the Akihabara Killings (Part 2)
In the first part of this two-part series, we translated the first half of a blog entry by blogger boiledema, who presented a very personal perspective on the Akihabara massacre on June 8th. In this second half, boiledema elaborates further on Japan's temp worker industry, expresses his frustration at Kato's actions on June 8th, and provides further details about Toyota.
Blogger of the week: Hanako Tokita
In this week's installment of the Blogger of the Week series we talked to Hanako Tokita, the editor of the Global Voices Lingua site in Japanese and author for Japan, about blogging, the perception of Japan and of course her involvement with Global Voices.