JAPAN: Man tried for Akihabara stabbing spree pleads guilty, apologies

Jan 27 10:46 PM US/Eastern

AP

TOKYO, Jan. 28 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The man charged with the June 2008 fatal stabbing rampage in Tokyo's Akihabara district that killed seven and wounded 10 pleaded guilty Thursday and apologized to the victims of the crime.

Tomohiro Kato, 27, said in the first hearing of the case at the Tokyo District Court that he is "certainly the one who committed the crime" although he cannot remember some parts of what happened on the day of the Sunday afternoon attack.

"I'm sorry for the people who died and got injured," said Kato, who was clad in a white shirt and a black suit, bowing his head.

The prosecution argued in its opening statement that Kato "did not receive decent treatment" at the office where he was employed as a temporary worker and "felt that what he wrote about in a cell-phone website was ignored."

"So he hit on the idea of getting other people to acknowledge his existence by erupting in anger and setting off a major crime."

Kato allegedly warned in advance of his crime on the website along with a number of posts in which he vented his frustration with his workplace.

The prosecution also said Kato was inspired by a fatal indiscriminate stabbing spree that occurred in March 2008 in Ibaraki Prefecture as well as an April 2005 incident in which three people were killed after a truck crashed into a shopping arcade in Sendai.

"It is apparent that he kept those incidents in mind and decided to kill people at random in Akihabara, where he had been a number of times before," according to the prosecution.

The focus of the trial is expected to be on a psychiatric examination that found him mentally competent at the time of the crime.

The prosecution indicted Kato on charges of murder and attempted murder based on the mental evaluation result.

On Thursday, the defense team questioned the exam result, suggesting Kato was mentally incompetent during the spree.

Kato is charged with running down five pedestrians, three of whom died, with a truck in a vehicle-free shopping area on June 8, 2008, and fatally stabbing four passersby with a dagger after getting out of the vehicle.  Eight others were injured in the stabbings, while one policeman was attacked but unharmed, according to the indictment.

The incident in the Tokyo electronics area, a popular district that attracts Japanese and foreign comic and animation fans, drew attention to the fragile situation facing temporary workers.

No citizen judges are taking part in the trial because he was indicted in October 2008, before the law on the lay judge system took effect.

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Japan's labour unions eye resurgence

By Miwa Suzuki (AFP) – Oct 17, 2009

TOKYO — After decades of decline, Japan's labour unions are looking to flex their new-found muscle in the wake of a historic power shift that handed them unprecedented close ties with the government.

The unions were a crucial support base for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose centre-left Democratic Party took power last month, ending more than half a century of almost unbroken rule by the business friendly conservatives.

"We are mates, comrades. We have the same thinking," said Tsuyoshi Takagi, who recently finished a four-year term as head of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation -- better known as Rengo -- which represents 6.8 million workers.

"The issue of employment is the most urgent problem we are now facing in Japan," he said in an interview with AFP before stepping down.

Hatoyama has pledged to create a more "fraternal society" and has attacked what he sees as the excesses of US-style capitalism.

His cabinet includes former labour chiefs and vocal opponents of free-market reforms that were stepped up during Junichiro Koizumi's 2001-2006 premiership and put another nail in the coffin of Japan's traditional job-for-life culture.

The recently ousted Liberal Democratic Party was close to big business so the current situation "is very new," said Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a politics professor at Tokyo's Aoyama Gakuin University.

"But we still don't know how far trade unionists can influence policies that were not in the party's manifesto," Yamamoto said.

Hatoyama's Democrats aim to hike the minimum wage to a national average of 1,000 yen (11 dollars) an hour, up from the current 713 yen, and ban the use of dispatch workers, or temporary workers, at manufacturing firms.

Such employees are easier to fire than regular workers and bore the brunt of a recent wave of layoffs.

Dispatch workers "have a lot of trouble" with companies where they work, said Takagi.

"We should prohibit those dispatches to the manufacturing factories," he said.

Economists, however, warn such a ban could burden companies and ultimately lead to fewer jobs.

Some firms may just reduce their workforce to lower labour costs, said Hiroshi Watanabe, an economist at the Daiwa Institute of Research.

"This could jeopardise jobs for 'the working poor,' making them just 'the poor,'" he warned.

As in many other countries, Japan's labour unions have endured decades of decline as its economy matured.

Only 18 percent of workers were union members in 2008, sharply down from a peak of 56 percent in 1949 and matching a record low seen in 2007, according to the government.

Labour market deregulation has caused the number of dispatch workers in Japan to more than triple to 1.4 million in 2008, from 430,000 in 2002.

Rengo's members are mostly regular workers at big companies who generally earn more and are granted many fringe benefits, said Tetsuro Kato, a politics professor at Hitotsubashi University.

If the new government becomes serious about addressing the problems of dispatch workers on insecure job contracts, at the expense of regular workers' welfare, it might cause "friction" with Rengo, Kato said.

Workers at Japan's biggest companies won an average wage hike of just 1.8 percent in the spring wage offensive this year, according to the business lobby Keidanren, down from 1.95 percent in 2007 -- the first decline in five years.

But the unions' close ties with the government do not mean they will secure a good wage rise next year in their annual bargaining with companies, said Hideyuki Araki, an economist at Resona Research Institute.

"It's a separate issue because what companies are watching is how government policies would affect their earnings," he said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved

Tensions brewing between Japan Inc. and new govt

Tensions brewing between Japan Inc. and new govt

Sep-3-09 1:00pm

From: afp.com

Fresh from a landslide election win, Japan's next government faces signs of an emerging rift with big business, which fears some of its policies could hinder a recovery in the recession-hit economy.

Premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama has vowed to put the interests of people before those of corporate Japan. In a recent essay he criticised "unrestrained market fundamentalism and financial capitalism that are void of morals."

His Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has irked major manufacturers with a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020.

The ambitious target compares with an eight-percent cut promised by the pro-business Liberal Democratic Party, which was swept from power in a landmark election Sunday after governing Japan almost continuously since 1955.

The head of the top business lobby, Nippon Keidanren, has called on the DPJ to review its emission reduction target, telling Japanese media on Thursday that it may be unrealistic and "a burden to the people."

The lobby's head Fujio Mitarai -- chairman of high-tech giant Canon Inc. -- urged the DPJ to consider the "effects on jobs" of the sweeping plan.

Japanese companies have long argued that tighter emission rules would hurt their ability to compete with global rivals, and the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association has also spoken out against the plan.

"We are concerned about its feasibility given its impact on economic activities, effect on employment and significant burden on the Japanese people," said Honda Motor chairman Satoshi Aoki, who heads the association.

The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan has described the target as "very tough" and asked the party to be more realistic.

Another bone of contention is the DPJ's proposal to curb the use of temporary workers, who have borne the brunt of jobs cuts by companies struggling to cope with the worst recession in decades.

The party's allies in the labour unions have accused Japanese companies of being too quick to fire contract workers, who played a key role keeping Japan's plants and factories running before the economic crisis erupted.

After decades of cosy ties between the LDP and big business, Hatoyama's DPJ has pledged to shift the focus to households with measures including cash allowances for families, an increased minimum wage, and petrol tax cuts.

Rather than raising taxes, the opposition proposes funding its measures by cutting wasteful government spending.

The DPJ has decided to freeze the unspent portion of the extra budget drawn up by the LDP for this fiscal year and divert the money to its own welfare programmes, the Yomiuri newspaper reported in its evening edition.

Analysts believe the DPJ's proposed measures, worth a combined 16.8 trillion yen (177 billion yen) a year from 2012, could boost consumer spending -- for long a weak link in the economy.

But some are worried that the party is abandoning free-market reforms they see as vital in order to tackle the massive public debt and boost productivity to cope with an ageing and shrinking population.

"The DPJ has failed to point to any clear policies related to job creation, industrial promotion, population problems, deregulation, policy finance methods and fiscal consolidation," said Barclays Capital economist Kyohei Morita.

"This makes it difficult to see how the Japanese economy will develop over the long term."

Experts say, however, that corporate Japan could benefit from assistance from the incoming government in areas such as electric cars and energy-efficient appliances.

The DPJ plan is likely to require individual firms to cut emission, but could also create new opportunities for companies with environmental technologies, said Yoko Monoe, an analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research.

Rising poverty looms large in Japan's election

Rising poverty looms large in Japan's election

By Harumi Ozawa (AFP) – Aug 22, 2009

KITAKYUSHU, Japan — Tomoshi Okuda is a man of faith, not politics. But the Japanese pastor has seen enough new faces on his nightly rounds feeding the homeless to persuade him that something needs to change.

He's not the only one eager for a fresh start. With unemployment rising in the wake of the worst recession in decades, voters appear to be deserting Prime Minister Taro Aso's long-ruling party ahead of an August 30 election.

It's a far cry from the 2005 lower house vote when premier Junichiro Koizumi won by a landslide on a platform of harsh economic reforms. These days many people blame his measures for a growing rich-poor divide.

"I'm watching who will offer the most drastic change to the course of Koizumi's structural reform," Okuda told AFP during his rounds on a rainy evening in Kitakyushu, an industrial city in southwest Japan.

The 45-year-old Baptist pastor hands out bananas and rice meals to people sleeping on the streets, including one 68-year-old woman sheltering from the downpour on a flattened cardboard box in a shopping arcade.

"I want to start working again, but I can't with my broken leg," she said.

Thousands of workers have been laid off in the local area, home to plants run by major firms including Nissan, Toshiba and Canon -- which have all been hit hard by slumping exports and Japan's worst post-war recession.

"In April alone, we saw 69 new faces on the street, three times more than in the same month last year. One young man, only 29, was a temporary worker at a Nissan auto parts factory who was laid off in December," Okuda said.

"Another 27-year-old man lived homeless with his wife, 24, and a four-year-old girl. Her apparently pink shoes were black with dust."

Some people are even believed to have starved to death after being refused welfare benefits. In the latest case here, a 39-year-old man was reportedly found dead with nine yen (9.5 US cents) in his wallet and an unposted note saying "help."

Across the country almost 230,000 temporary workers have lost their jobs since the recession began last year, pushing the jobless rate up to a six-year high of 5.4 percent -- within striking distance of its post-war peak.

Although Japan's economy rebounded in the second quarter of 2009, there has been little sign of a bounce in the polls for Aso, whose Liberal Democratic Party has ruled almost uninterrupted for more than half a century.

"Voters are totally fed up with the one-party LDP rule. Nobody believes in it any more and people are really desperately wanting to see a change," said Noriko Hama, a professor of economics at Doshisha Business School in Kyoto.

The LDP and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have both pledged to roll back some of Koizumi's reforms, which were aimed at slimming down the public sector and reducing the huge national debt.

Aso has pledged to break away from "excessive market capitalism," while the DPJ wants to boost spending on child support, education, healthcare and employment measures, and restrict the use of temporary job contracts.

The DPJ's agenda mirrors US President Barack Obama's efforts to increase public spending to boost the economy and medical care, said Yoshinobu Yamamoto, professor of politics at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo.

"What the DPJ is trying to do seems similar to the old style of government intervention in the economy," he said.

Japan once took great pride in having an egalitarian society and life-time employment following its rise from the ashes of World War II.

But many people now fear for the future and are relying on handouts or working longer to make ends meet. The number of households on welfare benefits hit a record high of 1.2 million in April, according to the most recent data.

"The LDP and (its coalition partner) New Komeito have been in government for too long, and look what happened. Things are not good," said 66-year-old Tokyo resident Shigeo Utsumi, who wants to work but cannot find a good job.

"It's probably a good idea to let the DPJ take over, at least once. We're heading for disaster if nothing changes."

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved