Nikkei Asia • 2nd December 2023

Japan's over-the-counter emergency contraception trial: 5 things to know

TOKYO -- Japanese pharmacies began selling emergency contraceptive pills without prescriptions this week, as part of a government-led trial that could see the nation join over 90 countries that offer over-the-counter access to the drug.

The trial marks a tentative step forward for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in the only Group of Seven country still requiring prescriptions for the so-called morning-after pill, which the World Health Organization considers an essential medici

Nikkei Asia • 25th October 2023

Japan's top court finds transgender sterilization law unconstitutional

TOKYO -- Japan's Supreme Court concluded Wednesday that a law requiring citizens to undergo sterilization before changing their legal gender is unconstitutional, in a sign of progress for transgender rights advocates.

The decision is the first by the top court to find Japan's rules on legal gender change at odds with the constitution, and highlights the growing rift between public opinion and the government on LGBTQ rights in the only Group of Seven nation not to legally recognize same-sex unio

Nikkei Asia • 12th October 2023

Japan seeks dissolution of scandal-hit Unification Church

TOKYO -- Japan's government announced on Thursday its decision to request a court order to dissolve the scandal-ridden Unification Church as a religious corporation, following an 11-month-long investigation triggered by the murder of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over his perceived links to the group.

At a news conference in Tokyo, Masahito Moriyama, Japan's culture minister, said the group has "inflicted large amounts of continuous damage on many people's lives since around 1980," including

Nikkei Asia • 2nd October 2023

J-pop agency Johnny's to split into two entities with new names

TOKYO -- Japan's largest talent agency, Johnny and Associates, announced Monday it would change its name, after admitting to decades of sexual abuse by its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa.

At a news conference in Tokyo, Noriyuki Higashiyama, who took over as agency president last month, told reporters the company plans to rename itself "Smile Up" from Oct. 17, as part of the agency's "vision" to win back fans' trust.

Nikkei Asia • 24th January 2023

Inside Japan's gender problem: The men tasked with empowering women

TOKYO -- On a sunny day in Machida, western Tokyo, back in April 2021, a man in a suit was catching the attention of passersby. From underneath his dark, formal jacket, the unmistakable bulge of a pregnant belly was impossible to ignore.

His curious get-up attracted quite the crowd, and after delivering a stump speech and talking with supporters, the apparent medical miracle caught a train back to Japan's parliament building.

Nikkei Asia • 26th June 2023

Trans rights progress in Asia hits barricade of tradition, legal maze

TEHRAN/BANGKOK/TOKYO -- Phoenix, a transgender woman living in Iran, dreamt of being able to express her true gender identity every day from the age of eight. "I remember seeing my older cousin in her princess dress at her wedding and thinking, 'I wish I could wear that,'" she said.

Being assigned male at birth was a curse for Phoenix, who asked to be identified only by her first name. She grappled with gender dysphoria throughout her teens and faced regular bullying, harassment and beatings at

Nikkei Asia • 14th June 2022

Abortion in Asia: The limits of choice

"Keeping it was never an option," says Rara, a woman in her 20s from Jakarta, Indonesia.

It was 2017 and Rara (not her real name) was studying communication at a private university in the capital. After falling pregnant by her unmarried partner, who had another girlfriend at the time, she felt she could not disappoint her devout Muslim parents.

Nikkei Asia • 30th June 2023

Gender equality vital for Japan's economic growth: U.K. envoy

NIKKO, Japan --The U.K.'s ambassador to Tokyo has called on Japan to increase female representation in business and politics in order to remain a "strong partner."

"It really matters to us that Japan continues to grow as an economy [and is] using all of the resources available to it," Julia Longbottom, the U.K.'s first female ambassador to Japan, told Nikkei Asia in a recent interview. "Until women genuinely feel able to step forward and be treated as individuals with the same talent and potent

Nikkei Asia • 1st March 2022

Asia's femtech revolution: the quest for better women's health

TOKYO -- International Women's Day marks 67 days since the beginning of 2022. That is seven days more than the average number of school days a girl in Laos misses every year due to period poverty.

Period poverty -- inadequate access to menstrual hygiene tools and education -- is estimated to affect as many as 1 in 10 menstruating girls and women worldwide, according to a report by the United Nations.

Nikkei Asia • 27th September 2023

Japan's top court reviews legality of trans sterilization rule

TOKYO -- The top bench of Japan's Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments from a transgender woman on the constitutionality of a law that requires sterilization before citizens can change their legal gender.

The claimant, who identifies as female but was assigned male at birth and has not undergone sex reassignment surgery (SRS), argued that requiring people to alter their genitalia in order to amend their gender on official documents violates "the fundamental human right to have one's gende

Nikkei Asia • 16th June 2023

Japan passes controversial LGBT law: 5 things to know

TOKYO -- Japan's parliament passed the country's first law addressing anti-LGBTQ discrimination on Friday, following months of pressure on the government to provide legal protections for sexual minorities.

The contentious legislation and the debate surrounding it highlight the growing gulf between Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and public opinion on gender-related issues.

Nikkei Asia • 26th October 2023

Japan's top court scraps transgender sterilization rule: 3 things to know

TOKYO -- The Grand Bench of Japan's Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a law requiring people to remove their reproductive organs in order to change their legal gender is unconstitutional and invalid.

The landmark decision voided a provision of Japan's special law on gender identity disorder (GID), overturning a 2019 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the law. It has been lauded by many LGBTQ activists as a step forward for transgender rights.

Nikkei Asia • 26th June 2023

G7 gender equality ministers vow to boost women executives

NIKKO, Japan -- Group of Seven ministers for gender equality have vowed to "expand and support" women's representation in executive and managerial positions, following last week's revelation by the World Economic Forum that women account for just 25% of C-suite positions globally despite representing 42% of the workforce.

Female representatives from G7 nations and the European Union met in the historic Japanese town of Nikko, north of Tokyo, on Saturday and Sunday to discuss women's empowerment

Nikkei Asia • 30th May 2023

Japan court: 'Unconstitutional' not to allow same-sex marriage

TOKYO -- A Japanese court on Tuesday ruled it is "unconstitutional" for the nation not to legally recognize same-sex unions, a mark of progress for LGBTQ rights in the only Group of Seven country without legal protections for sexual minorities.

In a case brought by a male same-sex couple against the state, the Nagoya District Court in central Japan ruled that the country's lack of marriage equality violates the constitution's Article 14, Clause 1, which enshrines the right to equality, and Arti

Nikkei Asia • 8th November 2023

U.S. opposes Israeli reoccupation of Gaza as G7 urges pauses for aid

TOKYO -- Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized U.S. opposition to Israel's reoccupation of the Gaza Strip after its war with Hamas, as G7 foreign ministers called for humanitarian pauses in the fighting at the conclusion of a two-day meeting in Tokyo.

"The reality is that there may be a need for some transition period at the end of the conflict, but it's imperative that the Palestinian people be central to governance in Gaza and in the West Bank, and we don't see a reoccupation," Blinken

Nikkei Asia • 13th October 2023

Japan requests revocation of Unification Church's corporate status

TOKYO -- The Japanese government on Friday submitted a request to the Tokyo District Court to revoke the corporate status of the scandal-hit Unification Church, after a monthslong investigation prompted by the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over his perceived links to the group last year.

The court will hold a closed hearing on the issue in the coming weeks to review the government's appeal. If it rules to dissolve the church as a "religious juridical corporation," the group

Nikkei Asia • 6th September 2022

Strings pulled: Dissecting Japan's Unification Church problem

TOKYO -- On Nov. 10, 2019, Ichiro Inamori was met with enthusiastic applause onstage at a gathering in Ginowan, a sunny beach town in Japan's southern Okinawa prefecture. He was about to give a lecture regarding "pure love, happy family and sound society" at an event entitled "Lecture on Families of Hope."

His 90-minute speech would go on to detail how same-sex unions endanger Japan's national stability and destroy families. "In countries where same-sex marriage is legalized ... the number of h

Nikkei Asia • 12th September 2023

J-pop agency Johnny's sex abuse scandal: 5 things to know

TOKYO -- The president of Japan's largest talent agency, Johnny and Associates, has quit after acknowledging decades of child sex abuse by its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa.

This comes after months of abuse allegations from Kitagawa's former employees spanning more than 50 years, with possibly hundreds of victims -- some of whom were in elementary school at the time.

Nikkei Asia • 7th September 2023

J-pop talent agency president quits over founder's child sex abuse

TOKYO -- The president of Johnny & Associates, Japan's largest talent agency, announced her resignation on Thursday, following a string of allegations of child sex abuse against the company's late founder, Johnny Kitagawa.

Julie Keiko Fujishima, Kitagawa's niece, will be succeeded by actor Noriyuki Higashiyama, who has been employed by Johnny & Associates since 1979, the agency told reporters in Tokyo.

Nikkei Asia • 4th August 2023

U.N. group urges 'transparency' from Japan on Johnny's abuse claims

TOKYO -- A United Nations working group on Friday called on Japan's government to ensure transparency in the handling of multiple claims of child sexual abuse against the late Johnny Kitagawa, founder of the country's largest talent agency, Johnny and Associates.

"The perceived inaction by the government and [the company] among victims ... highlights the need for the government, as the primary duty bearer, to ensure transparent investigations" into the case, Pichamon Yeophantong, a political sc

Nikkei Asia • 25th July 2023

How a $30 cherry helps boost rural Japan

Tokyo's Ota wholesale market was the last place I expected to find myself at 6 a.m. on a torrentially rainy Friday in mid-June. As I weaved my way -- shoes sodden and hair frizzy -- through the crates of fresh fish and piles of potatoes, I will admit I questioned my life choices more than once.

But the chance of being one of the first in Japan to sample Yamagata prefecture's new luxury cherry variety, the Benio, was unmissable. As a former Yamagata resident, I equate the start of the Japanese s

Nikkei Asia • 24th July 2023

U.N. group begins probe of alleged Japan talent agency sex abuse

TOKYO -- Experts from a United Nations working group arrived in Japan on Monday to begin their review of the country's business and human rights record, which will include an investigation into multiple accusations of child sexual abuse against the late Johnny Kitagawa, founder of Japan's biggest talent agency.

The Working Group on Business and Human Rights traveled to the country at the government's invitation, and their investigation brings international scrutiny to an issue of major domestic

Nikkei Asia • 6th July 2023

Japan's Unification Church scandal lingers a year after Abe death

TOKYO -- One year after former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot, questions still surround links between his political party and the Unification Church -- ties that the man charged with his murder claimed as the motive for his actions.

Since the July 8 killing at an election rally in Nara in western Japan, revelations about close connections between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the church, formally known as The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification

Nikkei Asia • 12th April 2023

Former J-Pop idol accuses late music mogul of widespread sex abuse

TOKYO -- A former trainee idol with Japan's largest talent agency, Johnny & Associates, alleged Wednesday he was repeatedly sexually abused by Johnny Kitagawa, the agency's founder, who died in 2019.

Kauan Okamoto, a 26-year-old Brazilian-Japanese singer, said that Kitagawa abused him "between 15 and 20 times" from 2012 to 2016, after he joined the mogul's agency at age 15. Okamoto told a news conference he was aware of at least 100 boys having stayed in Kitagawa's Tokyo apartment, where the al

Nikkei Asia • 17th May 2023

Japanese stop-motion film brings 'wooden' samurai to life

TOKYO -- In the gruesome climactic scene of the film "HIDARI," the samurai hero Hidari Jingoro, spinning in midair, slices through the torsos of 12 of his adversaries simultaneously with a chain saw. For a split second, time seems to stand still, until the victims' bodies, chopped in half as if they were fruit, fall limply to the ground.

But instead of blood and guts, it is sawdust that spews from the enemies' gaping stomachs. And instead of the dull thud of human bodies, it is the clinking of

Nikkei Asia • 9th November 2021

Tokyo film festival proves that cinema can unite us all

TOKYO -- What's the one thing capable of transcending all geographical, linguistic, and cultural borders? One thing that all humans have in common?

It is a big question, and yet film director and producer Yujiro Harumoto answers instantly: "human emotion," he said. "Human emotion is universal. It's only ever the environment that changes."

Tokyo Weekender • 8th July 2021

Studio Sedic: Yamagata's Hidden Hollywood

Yamagata Prefecture boasts endless mountain landscapes, an abundance of terraced rice fields, 70 percent of Japan’s annual cherry yield and not a lot else. Or so the humble rural idyll would have you believe. Look closer and you will find, in the mountains of Yamagata’s northern Shonai region, Japan’s best-kept showbiz secret: Studio Sedic Shonai open set or as some like to call it — Yamagata’s Hollywood.

With a surface area of 88 hectares, Studio Sedic is the largest open film set in Japan. It

Face to Face • 18th March 2021

International Insights: In the Footsteps of Isabella Bird

(Japanese language version also available)

Japan Society Review • 8th February 2018

The Japan Society - My Falling Down House

It is difficult to envision, in our world dominated by the internet and social media, the sensation of being truly and utterly alone.

Culture Trip • 5th May 2018

The shamisen Japanese music's unsung hero

The shamisen, a traditional Japanese three-stringed instrument, produces a unique sound that is one of the most versatile and beautiful in the world. Though it has been used to entertain the public in geisha performances and bunraka theatre for centuries, the popularity of the shamisen shows no sign of waning.

First introduced to Japan from China in the form of the sanxian in the 16th century, the shamisen originally became popular in the Osaka area as an accompaniment for bunraku and kabuki pe

Japan Society Review • 17th August 2017

The Japan Society - Slow Boat

‘This is my botched Tokyo Exodus, the chronicle of my failures’ begins the anonymous narrator of Furukawa Hideo’s latest novella, Slow Boat. The story is a self-reflective, at times self-loathing, journey through the protagonist’s experiences of Tokyo, and the three girlfriends that characterise this journey. As is typical of Furukawa, the story straddles the real and the imagined, dipping in and out of the narrator’s memories, musings and dreams to create magical realism that would not be out o

Japan Society Review • 26th April 2017

The Japan Society - The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature

As a student of modern Japanese literature, it is seldom that I have anything affectionate to say about literary handbooks. I invariably associate them with essay crises and revision, and so was very surprised to find myself picking up the new Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature to read for pleasure. The conveniently short chapters make it very easy to dip in and out of, and the eclectic mixture of themes and writers covered means that there really is something to please everyone. F

Japan Society Review • 14th July 2016

The Japan Society - Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure

In declaring Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure to be ‘a tale that begins with Fukushima’, Furukawa Hideo sets himself a mammoth task. How to do such a defining event in modern Japanese history justice in just 140 pages? Furukawa certainly seems aware of the enormity of the challenge, and remains until the end torn between tackling it with fact or with fiction. Whether the responsibility is a privilege or a burden, the multi-prize

CONNECT Magazine • 12th April 2021

Expressing the Inexpressible: 10 Years of Cultural Responses to the 3.11 Disaster

10 Years of Cultural Responses to the 3.11 Disaster

This article originally featured in the April 2021 issue of Connect.