Japan nuke companies stacked public meetings

North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy

Updated October 03, 2011 11:00:46

An independent investigation in Japan has revealed a long history of nuclear power companies conspiring with governments to manipulate public opinion in favour of nuclear energy.

One nuclear company even stacked public meetings with its own employees who posed as ordinary citizens to speak in support of nuclear power plants.

"The number one reactor has been operating for 30 years and I've never had a problem selling my rice or vegetables because of fears of radiation," a man posing as a farmer told a gathering of citizens discussing a proposal to use plutonium fuel at the Genkai nuclear plant on the southern island of Kyushu.

The man was not a farmer at all. It turns out he is an employee of the Kyushu Electric Power Company, the operator of the Genkai nuclear plant.

In another meeting aired live on TV after the Fukushima meltdowns, the company asked viewers to email in questions.

But again, the questions were all written by the company and sent in by employees posing as ordinary citizens, and these emails urged the company to restart reactors left idle after the Fukushima disaster.

The head of an independent investigation panel, Nobuo Gohara, says the meetings were supposed to be an opportunity for the public to ask questions, but Kyushu Electric blatantly planted leading questions and favourable comments.

Not only that, the panel found that the utility also destroyed important documents relating to its investigation.

It also implicated the governor of the prefecture, saying Yasushi Furukawa was colluding with the nuclear company to manipulate public opinion.

"There's a lack of transparency between Kyushu electric and local officials," Mr Gohara said.

The panel recommended that the utility stop making political donations and refrain from buying tickets to political fundraisers and has called on the governor to disentangle himself from the nuclear company.

"I've been urged in the report to rethink my relationship with Kyushu Electric Power Company," Mr Furukawa said.

"So I will consider what an appropriate relationship should be."

The Kyushu Electric Power Company has promised not to rig, stage or manipulate public meetings ever again.

"This is the moment of truth for our company," said vice-president Yoshinori Fukahori. "We will do out utmost to prevent a recurrence."

But if you think this was a one-off case involving one Japanese nuclear power company, you would be wrong.

Another investigation has found that at least three other nuclear firms also rigged meetings in an attempt to manipulate public opinion and they did it in collusion with the Nuclear Safety Agency - the very government body supposed to keep them on the straight and narrow.

Tags: nuclear-energy, nuclear-issues, environment, nuclear-accident, disasters-and-accidents, japan

First posted October 03, 2011 09:09:34

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Police crack down on brakeless bicycles / Warn that in-vogue racing bikes are illegal on public roads, pose serious danger

The Yomiuri Shimbun

More and more riders of fixed-gear bikes--racing bicycles without brakes--are being ticketed by police for riding on public roads.

Riding a bicycle without brakes on a public road is a violation of the Road Traffic Law.

The number of cases in which police have taken action against such bicycles--known as "fixies" in the West and "piste bikes" in Japan--has also increased. "Piste" is a French word meaning race track.

Piste bikes have fixed gears directly linking the rotation of pedals to the rear wheel and are primarily used for track racing.

To stop the bikes, riders must stop the rotation of the pedals, but they can be difficult to stop quickly.

The law stipulates that bicycles on public roads must be equipped with brakes on both front and rear wheels. The Metropolitan Police Department warns that violators face up to a 50,000 yen fine.

In February last year, a 34-year-old company employee crashed his piste bike into a 69-year-old woman on a road in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo.

The woman fell, hit her head and died. The man was referred to prosecutors on suspicion of serious negligent homicide and violation of the Road Traffic Law.

In May last year, a piste bike hit a 92-year-old woman cleaning a road in Shibuya and the woman suffered a broken collar bone.

The bicycles in both cases did not have brakes. "Such accidents are caused partly because of overconfidence on the part of the riders that they have the skill to avoid collisions with pedestrians," a senior MPD officer said.

The MPD ticketed riders on bicycles with faulty brakes in only two cases in 2009, but the number jumped to 661 in 2010.

By the end of August this year, the number has already reached 614, up 238 from the same period last year, accounting for 52 percent of traffic violations by bicycle riders.

Police in other parts of the country are cracking down harder on piste bikes, with Aichi and Kumamoto prefectural police having taken action against violators for the first time in September.

On Sept. 28, Mitsunori Fukuda, 36, of the TV comedy duo Tutorial received a ticket for riding a piste bike in Tokyo.

Fukuda was stopped by police in Setagaya Ward while he was riding a sport bike with only a front wheel brake.

He explained to his production company, "I thought it was all right if one of the wheels had a brake." He added, "I'll make sure not to do it again."

Goro Murayama, 39, a curator at the Jitensha Bunka Center, which promotes bicycles in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, said an increasing number of young people have begun riding piste bikes recently after seeing them in magazines because they feel the bikes are fashionable.

Fixed-gear bikes usually cost from tens of thousands of yen up to about 300,000 yen.

Though bicycle makers have released models equipped with brakes, some buyers remove the brakes to make them look more fashionable.

In December last year, the MPD asked the Bicycle Dealers of Tokyo, an association of bicycle shop owners, to explain to customers that bikes without brakes are not allowed on public roads.

Because many piste bikes are sold on the Internet, the MPD in February asked Yahoo Japan Corp. and Rakuten Inc., which operate online shopping malls, to instruct bicycle shop operators to explain brake requirements on their Web sites.

An official of Y. International Inc., a chain of sport bicycle shops in Tokyo and the surrounding area, said, "When we sell piste bikes without brakes, we ask customers to sign affidavits that they will not ride on public roads."

Haruka Takachiho, 59, a writer who is also an avid fan of bicycles, said, "Professional bicycle racers who know the most about piste bikes say it's impossible to ride them on public roads without brakes."

"Though some young people ride piste bikes without brakes to be fashionable, they may cause very serious accidents. It's unforgivable to think anything goes as long as it looks fashionable," he said.

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Quake resistance work needed at 23,000 public school buildings

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Nearly 23,000 buildings at public primary and middle schools around the country, except for the three quake-hit prefectures in Tohoku, are not sufficiently earthquake resistant or have not been checked for earthquake resistance, the education ministry has said.

The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry announced recently the status of earthquake-resistance repairs and construction on public schools in Tokyo, Hokkaido and 42 other prefectures as of April 1.

The ministry was unable to examine buildings in the three prefectures due to the aftermath of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.

The ministry earlier announced that all public primary and middle school buildings in the country will be earthquake resistant by the end of fiscal 2015.

Out of 116,397 buildings, including main school buildings and gymnasiums, 22,911 buildings, or about 20 percent, are insufficient in terms of being earthquake resistant, or have had no earthquake-resistance examinations.

Of those, 4,614 buildings were categorized as highly likely to collapse in an earthquake with an intensity of upper 6 or more, according to the ministry.

Out of the 44 prefectures examined, 80.3 percent of buildings are equipped with sufficient earthquake resistance, up seven percentage points from one year ago, marking the largest ever year-on-year increase.

While prefectures such as Shizuoka (98.2 percent), Kanagawa (97.7 percent) and Aichi (95.5 percent) have quite high earthquake-resistance retrofit rates, the figures were much lower in Hokkaido (69 percent) and six other prefectures such as Hiroshima (59.1 percent), Yamaguchi (61.7 percent) and Ibaraki (64.1 percent).

There are 35 cities, including some ordinance-designated special cities, that have 100 or more buildings with insufficient earthquake resistance or had undergone no earthquake-resistance examinations. Kitakyushu had 460 such buildings, while Sapporo had 267. The 35 cities have 6,089 such buildings, or 27 percent of the 22,911 buildings.

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Japan's life expectancy 'down to equality and public health measures'

Elderly Japanese people exercise in the grounds of a Tokyo temple. Public health campaigns seems to contribute significantly to life expectancy. Photograph: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

It's not just the sushi – and it's definitely not the sake. Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world but the reasons, says an analysis, are as much to do with equality and public health measures as diet.

A baby girl born in Japan today can expect to live to 86 and a boy to nearly 80. But it has not always been so.

According to a paper in a Lancet series on healthcare in Japan, this is a rise of 30 years from the expected lifespan in 1947. While Japanese diet has contributed, it is far from the only factor.

The remarkable improvement in Japanese health began with the rapid economic growth of the late 1950s and 1960s. The government invested heavily in public health, introducing universal health insurance in 1961, free treatment for tuberculosis and cutting childhood deaths through vaccination and treatment of intestinal and respiratory infections.

Following the control of infectious diseases, Japan tackled its high death rate from stroke with salt reduction campaigns and the use of drugs to control blood pressure.

But beyond the government's initiatives, there are attitudes and cultural practices among the people of Japan that have also helped, says the article by Professor Kenji Shibuya, of the department of global health policy at the University of Tokyo, and colleagues.

"First, Japanese people give attention to hygiene in all aspects of their daily life," they write. "This attitude might partly be attributable to a complex interaction of culture, education, climate [eg humidity, temperature], environment [eg having plenty of water and being a rice-eating nation] and the old Shinto tradition of purifying the body and mind before meeting others.

"Second, they are health conscious. In Japan, regular check-ups are the norm. Mass screening is provided for everyone at school and work or in the community by local government authorities. A systematic check-up of the whole body, referred to as a human dry dock, is another type of health screening, which is popular amiong business people - they stay at clinics or hospitals for several days to undergo thorough physical examinations.

"Third, Japanese food has a balanced nutritional benefit and the diet of the Japanese population has improved in tandem with economic development over the past five decades."

The downside of Japan's success in keeping its people healthy is that the population is unbalanced and becoming more so. At the moment, 23% of the population is over 65 but by 2050, that will rise to 40% in a population shrinking from 127 million to 95 million. Other problems include drinking and smoking among overworking business people and a high suicide rate partly attributable to rising unemployment. Unless these issues are tackled, the paper suggests, Japan could lose its position at the top of the longevity table.

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UPDATE 1-Japan public fund's assets drop sharply in April-June - Reuters

* GPIF's assets fall 2.2 pct by end-June from end-March

* Fund's total assets of $1.48 trln similar to Russia's GDP

* Posts positive return for four straight quarters but lags Calpers

* Selection of emerging market equities fund managers in final stage (Add comments, background of asset sales)

By Chikafumi Hodo

TOKYO, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Japan's public pension fund, the world's largest, managed a small investment return in April-June while its assets fell sharply by $33 billion from the previous quarter, suggesting the fund sold assets to cover pension payouts.

The Government Pension Investment Fund's (GPIF) assets under management shrank 2.2 percent to 113.75 trillion yen ($1.48 trillion) in the latest quarter, still equivalent in size to the Russian economy, the world's 11th largest, in 2010.

The public fund acknowledged that it had sold assets to raise proceeds for payouts for the current financial year to March 2012 but declined to give details.

"Based on our plans, we are quietly selling (assets) to raise cash," Masahiro Ooe, a councilor at the GPIF, told a news briefing on the fund's performance.

Under its budget plan for the current financial year, the GPIF aims to generate about 8.9 trillion yen worth of cash for pension payouts, Ooe said.

In the previous financial year to March, the fund sold 4.77 trillion yen worth of domestic bonds and foreign securities.

The fund became a net seller of assets for the first time in 2009/10, selling 720 billion yen of Japanese bonds.

The GPIF said its rate of return on investments dropped to 0.21 percent in April-June, hurt by a fall in global equity prices and strength in the yen, which traded near record highs against the dollar.

The GPIF's April-June return, in positive territory for a fourth consecutive quarter, was down from 0.69 percent in the previous quarter.

It also pales in comparison to the 1.75 percent produced by the California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers) and was less than the 0.9 percent generated by the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board.

The GPIF's performance translated into a profit of 240 billion yen, down from 798.1 billion yen in January-March.

LAGS IN EQUITIES

During April-June, global equity markets were hurt by concerns over a U.S. economic slowdown and the euro zone debt crisis. Domestic shares were also hit by the impact of the March 11 earthquake on corporate earnings and a 3.2 percent strengthening of the yen to less than 80 per dollar. The yen hit a then-record high of 76.25 to the dollar in March.

Japan's broad Topix index dropped 2.3 percent during the three-month period.

The fund's investments in Japanese equities brought a negative return of 2.06 percent, or a 276.4 billion yen loss, while overseas equities produced a negative return of 1.81 percent, or a 236.4 billion yen loss.

But domestic bonds benefited from safe-haven inflows and the fund's investments in Japanese bonds produced a return of 1.11 percent, or a 651.3 billion yen profit. Its investments in foreign bonds produced a return of 0.4 percent, or a 37.7 billion yen profit.

The GPIF managed to outperform market benchmarks in all four asset classes -- domestic bonds, domestic equities, foreign bonds and foreign equities.

The GPIF invests the reserves of national and corporate pension plans and must provide for a rapidly ageing population. It allocates about two-thirds of its assets to Japanese government bonds, where benchmark 10-year yields are slightly above 1 percent.

By contrast, equities account for 50 percent of Calpers' asset allocation and 60 percent for the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board.

The GPIF, aiming to diversify its portfolios and generate higher returns as it confronts huge shortfalls and an ageing population, plans to begin investing in emerging markets equities by the end of the current financial year.

Ooe said the GPIF was in the final stage of selecting asset managers to supervise its emerging market equities funds.

"We want to complete the process of selection as soon as possible," he said. He did not indicate how many companies remained in the running. ($1 = 76.985 Japanese Yen) (Reporting by Chikafumi Hodo; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Edmund Klamann)

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Japan PM resigning amid sinking public confidence (AP)

TOKYO – Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced Friday he would resign after almost 15 months in office amid plunging approval ratings over his government's handling of the tsunami disaster and nuclear crisis.

In a nationally televised speech, Kan said he was stepping down as chief of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and would officially quit as prime minister after the ruling party votes Monday to pick a new leader — the country's sixth prime minister in five years.

Japan has been plagued by high turnover in political leadership at a time when the country faces huge problems, including an aging population, bulging debt and stagnant economy — and now reconstruction from the worst disaster to hit the country since World War II.

Former Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, a 49-year-old expert in defense and a China hawk, is viewed as the front-runner to replace Kan. Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Trade Minister Banri Kaieda are also viewed as contenders.

The decision was widely expected because in June, Kan had promised to quit once lawmakers passed three key pieces of legislation, the final two of which cleared the parliament earlier Friday. Kan managed to survive only a few months longer than the four previous prime ministers, who each lasted a year or less.

Looking back on his year and three months in office, Kan said he did all he could given difficulties he faced, including the disasters and a major election defeat in upper house elections last summer that left the parliament in gridlock.

"Under the severe circumstances, I feel I've done everything that I had to do," he said. "Now I would like to see you choose someone respectable as a new prime minister."

The 64-year-old Kan has seen his approval ratings tumble below 20 percent amid a perceived lack of leadership after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which led to meltdowns at three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

Only 10 percent of respondents approved of Kan's job performance, while 69 percent disapproved, in an AP-GfK poll conducted between July 29 and Aug. 10. Some 21 percent said they neither approved or disappoved. The poll's margin of error was 3.8 percent.

Survivors have complained about slow recovery efforts, and radiation has spread into the air, water and some foods. Radiation leaking from the plant has declined dramatically as workers try to bring the plant to a cold shutdown by January.

Many of the 100,000 people who were evacuated from around the plant live in temporary housing or shelter, and have no idea when they will be able to return to their homes. Accumulated radiation in some locations may keep them away for a long time, government officials have said recently.

Kan was at least partly undone by persistent political infighting, including within his own party. While the public hungered for political cooperation and vision in the wake of the crisis, parliamentary sessions frequently descended into squabbling matches that have disillusioned with public.

It was a no-confidence motion in June submitted by an opposition bloc that prompted Kan in June to promise he would resign in a desperate attempt to keep his own party members from joining the vote.

In the wake of the crisis, Kan urged Japan to become less reliant on nuclear energy, but his appeal did little to boost his image.

At an evening press conference, Kan said that the atomic crisis made him realize that having so many nuclear power plants in quake-prone Japan "could endanger the people's future."

Contenders will officially declare their candidacy on Saturday, followed by a debate on Sunday and party vote Monday. The new Cabinet is expected to be installed Tuesday.

Kan urged the Democrats to seek unity as they pick a new leader. A key player in the process remains party kingpin Ichiro Ozawa, who still wields enormous influence even though he lost to Kan in the party leadership election last September.

"I hope to see this party become one, where everyone from the young to the veterans can discuss policy actively and freely, then cooperate and act as one," Kan said.

Kan, who called off a planned trip to visit President Barack Obama next month due to the political uncertainty, said Tokyo should keep Japan-U.S. alliance as "cornerstone" of its security and foreign policy.

He also urged his successor to "not put off any longer" attempts to rein in Japan's public debt, which has grown to more than twice the size of the country's gross domestic product. The idea of raising the country's 5 percent sales tax as a way to address this problem and raise money for reconstruction efforts seems to have lost traction.

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Government's move to monitor online sparks public outcry

While the government defends its new monitoring program of online postings concerning the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to stem the spread of "inaccurate" information, critics say it harkens back to Big Brother.

The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy said tweets on Twitter and postings to blogs will be monitored for groundless and inaccurate information that could inflame and mislead the public.

The agency said it is trying to "track down inaccurate information and to provide correct ones instead."

But critics are skeptical about the agency's motive, especially because the government has been under fire for failing to provide an accurate picture of what has been occurring at the plant and the spread of radioactive contamination.

The cost for the project was earmarked in an extra government budget to finance the rebuilding of northeastern Japan ravaged by the March 11 disaster.

The agency announced details of the monitoring project in late June when it solicited bids.

An advertising company in Tokyo won the contract, which is estimated at 70 million yen ($913,000).

The project started this month and will likely continue until March.

The agency said the Internet is overrun by discussions that are often unsubstantiated. One example, it said, is a posting that recommended mouthwash containing iodine as a safeguard against possible exposure to radiation.

Upon identifying erroneous information, the agency will carry at its website "correct information" in a Q&A format after consulting with experts.

The agency will not demand that the original texts and postings be deleted. It will also not ask for the posters' identity.

But the agency's new project drew fire on the Internet immediately after it was announced.

Some blasted it as suppression of free speech. Others criticized the government for trying to weed out information that it deems unfavorable, at the same time it appears ill-equipped to send out information properly and in a timely manner.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations denounced the project in a statement on July 29, arguing it threatens to infringe on freedom of speech.

"The government will likely restrict free discussions by unilaterally criticizing what it regards as 'inaccurate' and imperil freedom of expression," said the statement released under the president's name.

Kazuo Hizumi, a lawyer who compiled the statement, raised doubts about the legitimacy of government surveillance.

"Many people look to online information because they do not trust what the government says," he said. "Providing accurate information is what the government is supposed to do in the first place; not spending money on a project to interfere with circulation of information."

An official at the agency in charge of the undertaking acknowledged that the government had problems in regards to handling the information.

But the official said that many people appear to misunderstand the project.

"We are listening to public opinion and trying to sending out reliable information by showing grounds for it and making it easier for people to comprehend," the official said.

Shinya Ichinohe, associate professor of law on information at Keiwa College, said that the public outcry over the project is understandable, given how the government has handled information pertaining to the Fukushima crisis.

But keeping track of online texts and postings alone will not likely dampen discussion on the Internet.

"If the government gets an idea of how the public obtains information and tries to improve the way it sends out reports based on its findings, the undertaking will be rather positive," Ichinohe said.

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Rule changes for public housing buyers

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The government will likely take special measures to permit the sale of public houses to be built by disaster-hit local governments to disaster survivors wishing to buy them within five years from the construction date, it was learned Monday.

Normally, wooden public houses are available for purchase only after 7-1/2 years have passed since construction. However, the government plans to take special measures to help disaster victims put their lives back in order sooner.

The government likely will include a pertinent regulation in the bills tentatively named Great East Japan Restoration Special Measures, to be submitted to an extraordinary Diet session in autumn.

Houses are scheduled to be built in the disaster-hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima from autumn by local governments, with subsidies from the central government.

The government expects to facilitate early settlement of disaster survivors by making home purchases possible sooner. A senior official at the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry said, "Disaster victims will be able to purchase their own houses as fixed assets early, which will help them stabilize their social status."

The government also feels that if the number of wooden houses built with local wood increases, it will help revive the local forestry industry.

To support disaster victims' housing, the government plans to supply temporary housing units where people can live rent-free for a maximum of two years and houses where people are required to pay rent but can live long-term and purchase the houses if they choose to.

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