While surrogacy is not illegal in Japan, the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology has banned its members from assisting in surrogate births.

Back in October last year, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare called on the Science Council of Japan to debate “the propriety of surrogacy”, and the council submitted a report last week.

The Ministry of Health’s position, as of 2003 was that “surrogate births should be completely banned with penalties“, while the Science Council’s draft report “suggests that only those who are involved in such practice for profit-making should be punished.”

Penalties should be applied to these cases, it says, “on grounds that surrogate births cannot necessarily be seen as crimes that cause harm to people.” It goes on to say -

Surrogate mothers face physical and psychological burdens and surrogate births impose serious mental effects on children, and that it is “questionable” that surrogate mothers accept the role through self-determination even if they are aware of the risks of surrogate births.

This claim to be looking out for the mental wellbeing of children and mothers angers me. Other Japundits may feel differently. To me, it smacks of deeply chauvinist patronising of ‘the little woman’ who hasn’t the capacity to know what’s best for her. There’s no mention of fathers that I noticed.

A Nagano doctor, Yahiro Netsu, who has famously flouted the ban since 2001, commented on the report -

Netsu said he felt “indignant” that the Science Council is trying to deny the spirit of self-sacrifice of surrogate mothers who help others in difficulties despite their own physical risk.

While Netsu said he supports punishing doctors who assist surrogate births for profit, the doctor charged that the council has failed to listen to people who have difficulty conceiving. The report “gives the impression that the council is trying to impose the opinions of scholars on patients,” he said.

One would have imagined that any boost to Japan’s declining birth rate would be welcomed. But the view from certain ivory towers appears to be completely different.

Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone on record saying that the U.S. will abandon Japan in the future to forge stronger ties with China because the two countries worship money.

“The U.S. will gravitate more and more toward China at the expense of Japan as it seeks short-term benefit,” Ishihara, 75, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Jan. 9. “American and Chinese people share a similar value for just money, money, money.”

Japan’s adoption of U.S.-style capitalism has led to a wealth gap between urban and rural areas, he added. The co-author of the 1989 bestseller “The Japan That Can Say No,” also reiterated his view that the country should scrap its security treaty with the U.S. and strengthen its military.

Ishihara also claimed that many of Japan’s current woes are due to embrace of American-style capitalism by former Primer Minister Junichiro Koizumi and opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa.

“It was Ozawa who created a regional gap,” he said. “Ozawa ruined Japanese farming villages along with small and medium companies.”

Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s push to privatize parts of Japan’s postal system and boost competition were also a mistake, he said.

Only time will tell whether Koizumi’s reforms were good for Japan, but out here in the Tochigi countryside I hear nothing but complaints against the ex-Prime Minister. Many people out in the rural areas feel betrayed by Koizumi’s reforms and harbor deep bitterness against him and the “Koizumi children.”

Remember the Hello Kitty assault rifle that so many people, including many JAPUNDIT readers, claimed was a fake?

Well. . . .

Via Hello Kitty Hell

Remember the incident we reported on here back last April about the guy who was arrested for raping a young woman in a train in Osaka?

The guy sat down next to a 21-year-old womanh on the train and told her to keep quiet, threatening her with death if she screamed, and proceeded to have his way with her. Later he dragged her into the men’s toilet and completed the dastardly deed, totally uninhibited by the 40 other passengers in the car.

Subsequent investigation found out that he had raped two other women as well, one in another train and one in a station rest room.

Well, his trial is over, he has been found guilty, but though the judge called the crimes “audacious and dispicable” and admitted that the psychological damage to the victims is enormous, he sentenced the perp to 18 years behind bars, seven years less than the 25 years sought by prosecutors in the case.

Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 25 years in prison, saying the defendant had sent the victims “to the nadir of terror in public” and that it is likely that he will commit similar crimes in the future.

The defense had argued for leniency, claiming that brain damage suffered by [him] due to a traffic accident may have influenced his acts.

A traffic accident influenced his actions?

What happened? Did a car run over his willie?

Researchers in Japan and the U.S. have successfully transmitted the brain waves of a monkey half way around the world over the Internet to a robot that performed the correct movement.

The U.S. researchers at Duke University in North Carolina pinned down correlated patterns between a monkey’s brain nerve signals and leg movements. The monkey was trained to walk upright on a treadmill, its brain studded with electrodes to read the signals.

The signals were fed into a humanoid robot that walked in response to the signals.

“There may come an era when you could move a remotely located robot as if it is yourself and play tennis with it,” said Mitsuo Kawato, research director of a Japan Science and Technology Agency research institute in Seika, Kyoto Prefecture.

Wouldn’t playing tennis with yourself result in endless rallies?

A starving homeless 70-year-old woman who was dumped by an ambulance outside the Hamamatsu, Japan city hall died after municipal officials did nothing to help her.

Officials said a police officer found the homeless woman in a weak state near Hamamatsu Station at about noon on Nov. 22, and called for an ambulance. The woman told paramedics that she had not eaten for four days and wanted some food. Since she did not show any signs of illness or injury, she was taken to city hall, which has a social welfare division.

The woman got out of the ambulance herself, but she soon lay down on the asphalt. Social welfare division officials gave her a packet of dried rice used as emergency food. To eat it, however, she had to open the packet and wait 20 to 30 minutes after adding hot water or 60 to 70 minutes after adding cold water.

Municipal government officials watched over the woman and considered what to do with her, but she was not taken anywhere.

A member of a support group for homeless people was the one who discovered the woman had died.

“Before I came, no one touched her body and checked her condition even though a public health nurse was present,” the member said. “Couldn’t they have taken her inside or at least have laid a blanket down on the road for her?”

The member said that when he approached the woman, the emergency food was unopened on her chest.

Rather than showing any remorse for the poor woman who died on their doorstep, government employees insisted they handled the situation the best that they could.

“Within the scope of what we were authorized to do, we did everything that should have been done,” a social welfare section official said. “To workers, the woman didn’t appear debilitated. They aren’t doctors so they couldn’t predict that her condition would suddenly change.”

. . .

“Workers gave emergency food to the woman, who was complaining of hunger, and considered what welfare facilities she could be taken to. They also called for an ambulance the second time. They did not evade their duties or fail to carry out their legal responsibilities,” a report by the Naka-ku social welfare division said.

The cause of death was acute heart failure.

Yesterday was Coming of Age Day, a national holiday in Japan during which everyone who will reach majority (20 years old in Japan) during the year celebrates their new status.

This year’s festivities, however, were a bit dampened by the news that new adults in Japan last year numbered only 1.35 million (690,000 men and 660,000 women), the lowest number on record.

Of course, the big question facing Japan right now is how is a dwindling pool of workers going to be able to pay for the care of a rapidly expanding population of retirees.

Moon Ji-ae, a female Korean news anchor, has been fired on the heels of a public clamor for her head after something or someone caused her to break up at the end of a newscast.

Damn. . . Losing your job over a little chuckle seems a bit brutal. Maybe the people of Korea prefer there news to be presented thusly. . .

Japan is said to have become the world’s largest “urban mine,” due to the vast deposits of gold, silver, indium and other recyclable rare metals that are available in home appliances here.

Japan owns about 6,800 tons of gold (16 percent of the world’s known deposits) and about 60,000 tons of silver, accounting for 22 percent of global deposits, according to the research by the National Institute for Materials Science.

Furthermore, Japan’s stockpile of indium, used to make liquid crystals, constitutes around 61 percent of global deposits, it said.

The institued arrived at their conclusions about 20 rare metals used in home appliances using Japanese government trade statistics.

It calculated Japan’s stockpiles of the rare metals by subtracting the amount exported — including those used for exported parts and finished products — from those imported, including those used in imported goods.

It also includes rare metals in home appliances being manufactured and in use, as well as those in discarded products, the institute said.

The Fiji Times recently ran an editorial urging taxi drivers to stop ripping off visitors, immigration officials to stop chewing gum and being so grumpy, and shop assistants to stop their rude hassling of customers. But mostly it encouraged its citizens to refrain from urinating on tourists.

The paper reported that an incident in March last year, in which a drunk Fijian soldier exposed himself on an airplane and urinated on a Japanese woman, has done untold damage to Fiji.

"This unforgivable offence has caused untold damage in Japan a market which Fiji has strived for decades to cultivate," the newspaper said.

"All it takes is one moment of stupidity to paint a black picture of this nation and her people in a lucrative market. The incident has generated widespread, negative publicity at a time when we need it the least."

The editorial went on to point out that urinating on tourists brings on “global notoriety” and “unwanted exposure” for the country.