Danger zones: What are Japan's coastal communities doing to avert a disaster like March 11?
Teruo Saito has lived most of his 79 years within a couple of hundred meters of the Pacific, in an area that has been overwhelmed by massive tsunamis twice in the last 600 years. Until last year's Great East Japan Earthquake, the retired company worker ...
Fukushima casts a shadow over India's industrial boom
The ongoing nuclear disaster in Fukushima has quashed once ambitious plans for the construction of new reactors in Japan. The government does, however, remain committed to promoting exports of nuclear reactors and technology as it sees huge potential in overseas markets. Nuclear energy will fuel ...
Linguists gutted by body-talk blight
Imagine a nation of people who no longer know where their center lies. That's what Japan has become in recent decades. One of the major casualties of the Japanese language's rapid and ongoing evolution is the diminishing use of body-related phrases — a phenomenon that ...
Cellphone bards hit bestseller lists
Like many other young Japanese, Rin, 21, punches her mobile phone keys very quickly. Holding her phone with two hands, and moving her thumbs deftly and smoothly, she quickly generates sentences on the small screen. But unlike others, her main reason for typing on ...
Japanese: A language in a state of flux
Languages are never static. They change and evolve with people over time. They also interact with other languages, and through an endless cycle of loaning and borrowing of words, ideas and concepts are shared, exchanged and nurtured across national and cultural boundaries. But the torrential ...
A night out — with divorce on the rocks
Ask a friend to name a detective, and legendary sleuths such as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Kosuke Kindaichi will probably figure in their reply. Regardless of nationalities, detectives seem to be familiar to many — provided they are fictional characters. In real life, however, ...
One night last month, while I was lazily channel-surfing at home, I happened on shot-putters doing their thing at the IAAF's World Athletics Championships in Osaka. As tiring as it was to watch, there was something truly moving and amazing about all those beefy men ...
Take a moment to try to think seriously about cheerleaders. Nowadays, they don't just wear skimpy outfits, wave pompoms and do high kicks. Oh no, the cheerleaders jump, tumble and perform acrobatic stunts. And, of course, they dance, chant and smile as well. But ...
Extragalactic androgyny cuts a dash in roster of chic, high-energy shows
While trivial matters such as global warming get blamed for weather going awry, Japan Fashion Week being moved forward this season by more than a month has caused more angst than a whole panorama of melting ice caps. Luckily, though, all was cool, as this ...
Fashionistas hold forth on a scene full of 'potential'
It seems that fashion weeks are the latest, well, fashion. They're everywhere — from Singapore to Sydney and Moscow to Mumbai, and that's not counting the "big four" seasonal collections in Paris, Milan, London and New York. So where does Japan Fashion Week figure in ...
Putting the fun back into feeling fit
Although you may be a typically busy worker, in Japan there's no shortage of easy exercise options to help keep you in shape — whether "10-minute fitness" clubs where you can have a quick workout without even changing your clothes, varieties of home exercise ...
No matter how wild or wacky their hobbies or obsessions, in the age of the Internet no one need feel isolated any more, and by casting all inhibitions aside almost anyone is assured of finding like-minded others out there in cyberspace — if not ...
| Party Name | Total (pre-election seats) |
Electoral districts | Proportional representation |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LDP | 316 (198) | 249 | 67 | |
| JIP | 36 (34) | 20 | 16 | |
| CRA | 49 (172) | 7 | 42 | |
| DPP | 28 (27) | 8 | 20 | |
| Sanseito | 15 (2) | 0 | 15 | |
| Mirai | 11 (0) | 0 | 11 | |
| JCP | 4 (8) | 0 | 4 | |
| Reiwa | 1 (8) | 0 | 1 | |
| Tax Cuts | 1 (5) | 1 | 0 | |
| CPJ | 0 (1) | 0 | 0 | |
| SDP | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 | |
| Minor parties | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 | |
| Independents | 4 (10) | 4 | 0 |
