Japanese Politics & Culture

Eleven-year-old Hiroki Ando will likely die if he does not get a new heart. Hiroki suffers from cardiomyopathy, which inflames and impairs the heart. The same disease killed his sister five years ago.
“We have two children in our family who got a disease that happens one out of every 100,000 people. I am sorry for my children. We are having my daughter and Hiroki going through this harsh experience,” said father Ryuki Ando. (CNN)

The British government said Saturday it would this year appoint Mitsuko Uchida, one of the world’s leading classical pianists, a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Uchida, 60, will be awarded the honor, equivalent to the knighthoods given to men, by Queen Elizabeth in the near future. (Yomiuri)

A volcanic eruption on a remote Russian island north of Japan has created a giant ash cloud that threatens passing aeroplanes, geologists said. The eruption of Sarychev Peak on uninhabited Matua Island, part of the Kuril Islands archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean, began on Friday and is still under way. (telegraph.co.uk)

Prosecutors arrested a senior Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry official on Sunday over a case of postal system abuse involving a fabricated ministry document.
The Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office’s special investigation squad suspects Atsuko Muraki, 53, director general of the ministry’s Equal Employment, Children and Families Bureau, was involved in issuing the document for an organization to enable it to use a mail discount system for the handicapped, according to investigative sources. (AP)

A group of space researchers led by Nagoya University astronomer Yasuo Fukui recently captured the world’s first image of a supernova explosion showing gas spreading toward its poles, Fukui said.
Fukui’s group took the photo of the explosion in a cluster of stars in the Carina constellation, around 17,000 light-years from Earth, with the university’s Nanten radio telescope in Chile. (AP)

Japan plans to impose a total ban on exports to North Korea as part of its new economic sanctions against Pyongyang following last month’s nuclear test, news reports said.
The move comes after the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously Friday to slap tougher sanctions on North Korea to cripple its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. (AFP)

Police arrested a 17-year-old male student Saturday on suspicion of killing a 15-year-old boy from a different school who was found dead early Friday in a river in Tondabayashi, Osaka Prefecture.
The suspect, whose identity is being withheld because he is a minor, surfaced as police investigators looked into whether the victim may have had problems with someone. (AP)

Interest in Japan among global investors and policymakers is abysmal. Indeed, in many discussions, Japan is regarded as a museum piece or even a “failed economic state.” High national debt, low returns on capital, high vulnerability to energy and agricultural shocks, a growing class of the permanently poor?.?.?.?the list of reasons to ignore Japan is well known. This attitude is dangerous. (BusinessWeek)

Japan’s internal affairs and communications minister has resigned, dealing a setback to conservative Prime Minister Taro Aso just months before a general election.
Kunio Hatoyama, the brother of Japan’s main opposition party leader Yukio Hatoyama, stepped down in a row related to the privatisation of the country’s huge postal service. (AFP)

Japan is counting down to its biggest legal revolution in 60 years, opening up its criminal justice system by bringing the public into court as lay judges — but many say they’d rather leave it to professionals.
The new system, aimed at speeding up trials that have often dragged on for years, will require six members of the public chosen at random to join three professional judges to pass verdicts and sentences in serious criminal cases. (Reuters)