New companies that set up shop in parts of Japan devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March will be exempt from paying corporate taxes for five years, the government said on Tuesday, as it looks to combat snowballing unemployment in the region.
Startups in special industrial zones in the country’s northeast will be immune from corporate taxes as the country looks to stem an exodus from areas that were already suffering from rapidly shrinking populations prior to the March 11 disaster, Vice Finance Minister Fumihiko Igarashi told reporters after …

Seoul’s plan to develop a naval base on Ulleung Island is aimed at boosting its claim over the disputed Dokdo islets. It will also inflame tensions with Japan.
South Korea’s decision to build a naval pier at Sadong Port on Ulleung Island is creating further strains in its already troubled relationship with Japan.
Ulleung is the closest South Korean territory to disputed islets known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan that are claimed by both countries. South Korea’s Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs Ministry is set to provide 217.5 billion won …

The behind-the-scenes powerbroker in Japan’s ruling party has been hospitalized with ureter stones hours after going on trial in a political funding scandal.
Doctors said Friday that Ichiro Ozawa would need to be hospitalized for about a week.
Read the rest of the story: Japan ruling party powerbroker hospitalized.

Carlos Ghosn, chief executive officer of Nissan Motor Co., said Japan faces a “hollowing out” of its industrial base should the government fail to take steps to counter the yen’s rise.
“I have spoken to the prime minister about this directly,” Ghosn said in an interview from Rio de Janeiro yesterday after Yokohama, Japan-based Nissan announced a new $1.4 billion auto plant in Brazil. “If Japan wants employment, you’re going to have to do something about establishing a normal exchange rate.”
Nissan, Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., Japan’s three largest …

Nine North Koreans who defected to Japan have been flown to South Korea for resettlement.
The group was put on a flight out of Japan on Tuesday. Japanese authorities said they had requested to be sent to South Korea, and Tokyo decided to honor that request for humanitarian reasons.
Read the rest of the story: Japan puts NKorean defectors on plane to Seoul.

The first government spokesman in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear crisis outbreak has been suspended one month for touching and kissing a woman during duty hours, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) said.
After a scandal magazine revealed Hidehiko Nishiyama’s extramarital affair with a fellow METI bureucrat in June, he was stood down from his role of spokesman for METI’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. He had repeatedly touched and kissed the woman in her 30s while they were on duty in the midst of reponding to …

Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s government was at 54.6 percent, a Kyodo news agency survey showed on Sunday, down 8.2 percentage points in the first month after he took office.
Noda, Japan’s sixth premier in five years, enjoyed strong support right after he took over from his unpopular predecessor, but the 54-year-old premier had to sack his trade minister just a week after taking office due to gaffes.
His government is now trying to draft and submit to the divided parliament this month another extra budget to fund rebuilding …

Japan’s finance minister said on Friday the government will secure an additional 15 trillion yen in funds for currency market intervention, as it looks to boost its ability to tame the yen.
Jun Azumi added that the finance ministry will require currency traders to report daily their trading positions for another three months beyond the end of September in an effort to deter speculative moves.
Japan will boost the size of its intervention funds by 15 trillion yen ($195.79 billion) to "flexibly" respond to the yen’s upward trend, Azumi said, adding that …

Japan will let children and pregnant women return to certain areas near the Fukushima nuclear plant, the trade minister said on Friday, following an improvement in living conditions after a huge earthquake and tsunami in March.
Schools have been shut down in these areas located within the 20-30 km radius of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where about 60,000 people lived prior to the radiation leaks from the nuclear plant.
Though evacuation was not mandatory for residents as the radioactivity was within limits, some 30,000 left these areas, a spokesman at the Nuclear …

Finance Minister Jun Azumi says he will not rule out Japan sharing some of the burden related to a bailout scheme for Greece, provided Europe maps out a rational plan that can ease market jitters.
Speaking days after meetings of the International Monetary Fund and G20 that were dominated by discussion of Europe’s sovereign debt problems, Azumi urged each country to make efforts to implement what was agreed at a European summit on July 21.
“Each country should respond to the rescue plan by winning approval from their parliaments, and if they …