A printers union in Hyogo Prefecture said at a meeting on Wednesday that its members will refuse to fill orders placed by gangsters, reports the Nikkei Shimbun (Oct. 26).
The Hyogo Printing Industry Association voted at a Kobe hotel in favor of its members breaking ties with organized crime and refusing to fill orders for business cards, New Year greeting cards, and declarations of membership termination in compliance with the recently enacted laws.
Read the rest of the story: Printers in Hyogo break off relations with gangsters, refuse to print business cards.

It is the second wild boardroom drama to shake up corporate Japan in days: the country’s leading tissue maker, Daio Paper, said on Friday that it would file a criminal complaint against its former chairman, accusing him of illicitly borrowing $140 million in company money and channeling some of it to a Las Vegas casino company.
The controversy provides yet another lens into the seemingly free-wheeling behavior — and disregard for corporate governance — still seen among top management at some of Japan’s leading companies.
Olympus, the medical imaging and digital camera …

Japan’s 12.1 trillion yen ($160 billion) extra budget for rebuilding northeast coastal areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami will likely boost gross domestic product by around 1.7 percent, the government said on Friday.
The effect will be mostly felt in the fiscal year starting next April, mainly in the form of public spending, the Cabinet Office said.
The third extra budget for the year ending in March, submitted to parliament on Friday, earmarks 9.24 trillion yen for the reconstruction effort, including 2 trillion yen for subsidies and other steps …

The sunken wreck of a Japanese World War II submarine was found partially buried in the seabed of a Papua New Guinea harbor during a search for unexploded munitions, Australia’s military said Friday.
Australian and New Zealand warships found it 55 meters underwater while working in the area to clear WWII-era explosives Thursday, a Defense Department statement said.
Simpson Harbor is in the town of Rabaul, which was a major Japanese base on the northeast coast of the South Pacific nation.
The wreck is partially buried in sand but upright. Australian navy historians …

The Fukushima nuclear accident released double the amount of cesium-137 into the atmosphere than the government initially estimated, reaching 40 percent of the total emitted during the Chernobyl disaster, a preliminary report said.
The estimate of much higher levels of cesium-137 comes from a worldwide network of sensors. Report coauthor Andreas Stohl, of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, said the government estimate came only from data in Japan and didn’t include emissions blown out to the Pacific Ocean.
Cesium-137 is considered harmful because it can remain in the environment for decades, …

Companies have been urged to give their employees more time off to procreate; shops have offered discounts for larger families; and the government has introduced child allowances to lift the birthrate.
Yet try as it may, Japan appears unable to stop its inexorable slide into long-term population decline.
With the global population forecast to reach 9 billion by the middle of the decade, Japan is bucking the trend. Instead, its low birthrate and ageing society are taking the world’s third-biggest economy to the brink of a demographic crisis to which it is …

The manager and another employee at a Tokyo hostess club were among those arrested for employing minors, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Oct. 25).
Officers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police took manager Koji Nakakarumai, 31, staff member Ichiro Goto, 28, and two others into custody for employing high school girls at hostess club Apricot in Sumida Ward in violation of the adult-entertainment law.
Nakakarumai and Goto have denied the allegations, while the two others have admitted involvement.
Read the rest of the story: Tokyo hostess club busted for employing high school girls.

Los Angeles-based Hulu, the online television and film streaming site, has expanded its distribution in Japan, via a deal with Sony. According to Hulu, it has launched on Sony BRAVIA HDTV and Sonys PlayStation 3 gaming consoles, as the first non-gaming app to be distributed on the PS3 in Japan. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Hulu announced its entry into the Japanese market on September 1st. Access to Hulu on those devices requires a monthly subscription to Hulus Japanese service.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense has created one of the most versatile flying robots I have ever seen, and what is thought to be the world’s first spherical flying robot to boot.
The robot manages to combine the best of both a helicopter and a winged plane and can hover as well as travel very fast with forward motion. In fact, this little 350 gram, 42cm diameter ball can reach speeds of up to 60km/h.
As you can see in the video below, due to the use of three on-board gyro sensors it …

The introduction of stricter anti-gang laws in recent years has forced the yakuza, Japan’s underworld organisations, to diversify and seek new sources of income.
That change in direction has meant more criminal involvement in the boardroom.
The Japanese authorities have stamped out sokaiya – mob-sponsored racketeers who threatened to disrupt shareholder meetings unless they were paid off.
Read the rest of the story: Japan fights yakuza efforts to make it a nine-fingered economy.