Tokyo:

As Japan embarks on a major military build-up, it’s struggling to fill its ranks with the women that its forces need and its policymakers have pledged to recruit.

Following a wave of sexual harassment cases, the number of women applying to join the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) decreased by 12 per cent in the year ending March 2023, after several years of steady growth. Some victims have said an entrenched culture of harassment could deter women from signing up.

But nine months after the defence ministry pledged to take drastic measures, it has no plans to take action on a key recommendation issued by an independent panel of experts – implementing a national system for reviewing anti-harassment training standards – according to two ministry officials responsible for training. 

The government-appointed panel had identified in a report published in August that the military’s superficial harassment education – which made only limited mention of sexual harassment – and a lack of centralised oversight of such training were contributing factors to cultural problems within the institution.

The head of the panel, Makoto Tadaki, said some training sessions – one of which Reuters attended – were at odds with the gravity of the situation. 

A servicewoman who is suing the government over an alleged sexual harassment incident also said in an interview that the education she received over the past 10 years was ineffective.

Calls to root out harassment and increase the number of servicewomen come as aging Japan faces rising threats from China, North Korea and Russia and navigates the burdensome legacy of its wartime past. 

Women make up just 9 per cent of military personnel in Japan, compared to 17 per cent in the United States, Tokyo’s key security ally.

The SDF referred Reuters’ questions to the defence ministry, which said in an emailed response that harassment “must never be allowed, as it destroys mutual trust between service members and undermines their strength.”

The ministry said it had hosted harassment prevention lectures by external experts since 2023, made sessions more discussion-based and planned to invite specialists to review its training this year.

It did not respond to questions on whether it would implement the panel’s recommendation to centralise oversight of training.

After ex-soldier Rina Gonoi went public with allegations of sexual assault in 2022, the defence ministry conducted a survey that year that uncovered more than 170 alleged sexual harassment incidents in the SDF.

Another alleged victim was an Okinawa-based servicewoman who accused a senior of making lewd remarks toward her in 2013. She was then publicly named in harassment training materials distributed to her colleagues in 2014, she told Reuters. The alleged perpetrator was not identified in the materials.

Reuters does not name alleged victims of sexual harassment. Her allegations were corroborated with documents in the lawsuit she filed last year, after she said she exhausted an internal complaints process.

HAPHAZARD TRAINING

The defence ministry offers an annual online module on general harassment. It also provides training materials to officers for in-person sessions, but doesn’t offer training on delivering harassment education and doesn’t track how or when the officers carry out harassment training, the two defence officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, justified the existing system as offering flexibility to commanders.

The six experts concluded in their review that existing training amounted to “generic, superficial statements” that were “not effective in helping people apply the training in the real world.” 

In April, Reuters attended a harassment prevention course delivered by an external instructor to over 100 mid-ranking military officers at a base on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Instructor Keiko Yoshimoto presented harassment as a communication issue and focused discussions on generational differences and how they played out in preferences for types of cars and flavours of crisps.

“Generational differences make it hard for people to communicate,” she said, adding that people should understand the basics of communication before they could deal with specifics around sexual harassment. 

Law professor Tadaki, who separately witnessed part of Yoshimoto’s session, said it “did not feel like the sort of training you would expect against a backdrop of there being so many cases of harassment surfacing.”

He added that it would likely take more time to increase oversight over the quality of training.

Two months after the panel issued its report, local media reported that a sailor had in 2022 been ordered against her will to meet a superior that she had accused of sexual harassment. She later quit the SDF.

Gonoi and the Okinawa-based servicewoman have criticised the system as inadequate.

“People would say ‘everyone put up with that kind of behaviour, it was normal back in our time,’ – but these issues are being passed down to my generation because nothing was done to stop it,” the servicewoman told Reuters in March.

She added that the harassment training she has since received was often poorly conducted and that more centralised oversight was needed: “Rather than trying to make a point about sexual harassment, (officers) pick materials that are easy to teach, something that will fit into the time they have.”

FEAR OF COMPLAINTS

The defence ministry officials said that training on sexual harassment largely takes place within a broader anti-harassment curriculum. At the two-hour training session attended by Reuters, about two minutes were dedicated to sexual harassment.

When Reuters asked about sexual harassment incidents during interviews with the officials, as well as two senior uniformed officers, they responded by speaking about general harassment. 

The officials said it was challenging to give standardised training on harassment because service members in high-stress environments may give orders in a direct way that is unusual in other circumstances. 

The two officers said there were concerns within the military that too much focus on harassment could create operational issues and one suggested it might lead to unfair complaints.

The defence ministry said in a statement that it does not tolerate abuse and that its training aims to ensure commanders do not “hesitate to give necessary guidance on the job because they are concerned about harassment.”  

Tadaki, the professor, said Japan could learn from other militaries.

“The U.S., U.K., and France have a much clearer focus on preventing harassment from its root causes so its prevention programme is structured around improving the internal climate and culture of its organisation,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Tokyo:

More than 100,000 packets of sliced bread have been recalled in Japan after parts of a black rat’s body were discovered inside two of them, the manufacturer said Wednesday.

Food recalls are rare in Japan, a country with famously high standards of sanitation, and Pasco Shikishima Corporation said it was investigating how the rodent remains had crept in to its products.

The company said it was so far unaware of anyone falling sick after eating its processed white “chojuku” bread, long a staple of Japanese breakfast tables.

Around 104,000 packs of the bread have been recalled in mainland Japan, from Tokyo to the northern Aomori region.

“We would like to apologise deeply for causing trouble to our customers and clients,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Then on Wednesday, Pasco confirmed that parts of a black rat had contaminated the two packs.

They were produced by the breadmaker at a factory in Tokyo, whose assembly line has been suspended pending its probe, Pasco said.

“We will strengthen our quality management system to ensure there won’t be a recurrence,” it added.

Cleanness and hygiene are taken seriously in Japan, but food poisonings and recalls occasionally make headlines.

Last year, convenience store chain 7-Eleven apologised and announced recalls after a cockroach was found in a rice ball.

The latest health scare scandal in Japan was over the recall by drugmaker Kobayashi Pharmaceutical of dietary supplements meant to lower cholesterol.

The firm said last month it was probing five deaths potentially linked to the products containing red yeast rice, or “beni koji”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

This undated photo released by and taken from the official website of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, shows a SH-60K chopper. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Two Japanese navy helicopters carrying eight crew members crashed in the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo during a nighttime training flight after possibly colliding with each other, the country’s Defence Minister said Sunday. One crew member who had been recovered from the waters was later pronounced dead, while rescuers searched for seven others who were still missing.

The two SH-60K choppers from the Maritime Self Defence Force were carrying four crew each and lost contact late Saturday near Torishima island about 600 kilometres (370 miles) south of Tokyo, Defence Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known, but the two helicopters might have collided with each other before crashing into the water, Kihara said.

Rescuers have recovered a flight data recorder, a blade from each helicopter, and fragments believed to be from both choppers in the same area, signs that the two SH-60Ks were flying close to each other, Kihara said. Officials will analyze the flight data to try to determine what led to the crash.

The MSDF deployed eight warships and five aircraft for the search and rescue of the missing crew.

The helicopters, twin-engine, multi-mission aircraft developed by Sikorsky and known as Seahawks, were modified and produced in Japan by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. They were on nighttime anti-submarine training in the waters, Kihara said. One lost contact at 10:38 p.m. (1338 GMT) and sent an automatic emergency signal a minute later.

Only one distress call was heard — another sign the two helicopters were near the same place, because their signals use the same frequency and could not be differentiated, Kihara said.

One belonged to an air base in Nagasaki, and the other to a base in Tokushima prefecture.

The SH-60K aircraft is usually deployed on destroyers for anti-submarine missions.

Saturday’s training only involved the Japanese navy and was not part of a multinational exercise, defence officials said. They said no foreign aircraft or warships were spotted in the area.

Japan, under its 2022 security strategy, has been accelerating its military buildup and fortifying deterrence in the southwestern Japanese islands in the Pacific and East China Sea to counter threats from China’s increasingly assertive military activities. Japan in recent years has conducted its own extensive naval exercises as well as joint drills with its ally the United States and other partners.

Saturday’s crash comes a year after a Ground Self-Defence Force UH-60 Blackhawk crashed off the southwestern Japanese island of Miyako, leaving all 10 crew members dead. In January 2022, a Air Self-Defence F-15 fighter jet crashed off the northcentral coast of Japan, killing two crew.

Japan’s NHK public television said no weather advisories were issued in the area at the time of Saturday’s crash.

Representational image of a seismograph recording an earthquake.
| Photo Credit: via Reuters

A magnitude-6.0 earthquake struck off northeastern Japan’s Fukushima region on Thursday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, but no tsunami warning was issued.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries after the earthquake, whose epicentre had a depth of 40 kilometres (25 miles) and which was also felt in Tokyo.

TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, said “no abnormalities” had been detected at the stricken plant or others in the region.

Japan, one of the world’s most tectonically active countries, has strict building standards designed to ensure structures can withstand even the most powerful earthquakes.

The archipelago, home to around 125 million people, experiences around 1,500 jolts every year, the vast majority of which are mild.

The United States Geological Survey put the magnitude of Thursday’s quake at 6.1, with a depth of 40.1 kilometres.

It comes a day after at least nine people were killed and more than 1,000 injured by a powerful earthquake in Taiwan.

Wednesday’s magnitude-7.4 quake damaged dozens of buildings in Taiwan and prompted tsunami warnings as far as Japan and the Philippines.

Japan’s biggest earthquake on record was a massive magnitude-9.0 undersea jolt in March 2011 off Japan’s northeast coast, which triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing.

The 2011 catastrophe also sent three reactors into meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing Japan’s worst post-war disaster and the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

The total cost was estimated at 16.9 trillion yen ($112 billion), not including the hazardous decommissioning of the Fukushima facility, which is expected to take decades.

Representational image of a mother and child in Tokyo, Japan. The number of babies born in Japan last year fell for an eighth straight year to a new low in 2023
| Photo Credit: AP

The number of babies born in Japan last year fell for an eighth straight year to a new low, government data showed Tuesday, and a top official said it was critical for the country to reverse the trend in the coming half-dozen years.

The 758,631 babies born in Japan in 2023 were a 5.1% decline from the previous year, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. It was the lowest number of births since Japan started compiling the statistics in 1899.

The number of marriages fell by 5.9% to 489,281 couples, falling below a half-million for the first time in 90 years — one of the key reasons for the declining births. Out-of-wedlock births are rare in Japan because of family values based on a paternalistic tradition.

Surveys show that many younger Japanese balk at marrying or having families, discouraged by bleak job prospects, the high cost of living that rises at a faster pace than salaries and corporate cultures that are not compatible with having both parents work. Crying babies and children playing outside are increasingly considered a nuisance, and many young parents say they often feel isolated.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters Tuesday that the ongoing declining birth rate is at “critical state.”

“The period over the next six years or so until 2030s, when the younger population will start declining rapidly, will be the last chance we may be able to reverse the trend,” he said. “There is no time to waste.”

Japan’s biggest crisis: PM Kishida

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called the low births “the biggest crisis Japan faces,” and put forward a package of measures that have included more support and subsidies mostly for childbirth, children and their families.

But experts say they doubt whether the government’s efforts will be effective because so far they have largely focused on people who already are married or already are planning to have children, while not adequately addressing a growing population of young people who are reluctant to go that far.

The number of births has been falling since 50 years ago, when it peaked at about 2.1 million. The decline to an annual number below 760,000 has happened faster than earlier projections predicting that would happen by 2035.

Japan’s population of more than 125 million is projected to fall by about 30% to 87 million by 2070, with four out of every 10 people at age 65 or older. A shrinking and aging population has big implications for the economy and for national security as the country seeks to fortify its military to counter China’s increasingly assertive territorial ambitions.

A member of group of workers walks related a blue pipeline to move seawater, a part of the ability for liberating handled radioactive H2O to sea from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy plant, operated via Tokyo Electrical Energy Corporate Holdings, often referred to as TEPCO, right through a handled H2O dilution and discharge facility excursion for international media, in Futaba the city, northeastern Japan, Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023.
| Photograph Credit score: Reuters

At a little category of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s central regulate room, the handled H2O switch transfer is on. A graph on a pc observe within sight displays a gradual short of H2O ranges as handled radioactive wastewater is diluted and discharged into the Pacific Ocean.

Within the coastal branch of the plant, two seawater pumps are in motion, gushing torrents of seawater via sky blue pipes into the fat header the place the handled H2O, which comes ill via a far thinner dull pipe from the hilltop tanks, is diluted loads of occasions ahead of the reduce.

The pitch of the handled and diluted radioactive H2O flowing into an underground secondary puddle was once heard from underneath the garden as media, together with The Related Press, toured the plant in northeastern Japan for the primary month for the reason that H2O reduce started.

“The best way to eliminate the contaminated water is to remove the melted fuel debris,” stated Tokyo Electrical Energy Corporate Holdings spokesperson Kenichi Takahara, who escorted Sunday’s media excursion for international media.

Also Read | China’s allies lead Pacific criticism of Fukushima water release

However Takahara stated the shortage of data from throughout the nuclear reactors makes making plans and construction of the vital robot era and a facility for the melted gas elimination extraordinarily tough.

“Removal of the melted fuel debris is not like we can just take it out and be finished,” he stated.

The projected decades-long reduce of handled H2O has been strongly adversarial via fishing teams and criticized via neighboring nations. China right away prevented imports of seafood from Japan in reaction. In Seoul, hundreds of South Koreans rallied over the weekend to sentence the reduce, tough Japan to retain it in tanks.

Japan’s Overseas Ministry on Sunday issued a move advisory to Eastern electorate to virtue residue warning week in China. It stated operate of harassment, together with large telephone screams, have focused to the Eastern embassy, consulate and Eastern faculties in China, and it recommended Eastern in China to steer clear of the ones playgrounds and from protests of the H2O reduce, and to not communicate loudly in Eastern to steer clear of consideration.

Managing the ever-growing quantity of radioactive wastewater held in additional than 1,000 tanks has been a security possibility and a burden for the reason that plant was once wrecked via a large earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. The tanks are already crammed to 98% in their 1.37 million-ton capability.

Freeing the H2O into the ocean is a milestone for the decommissioning of the plant, which is predicted to hurry a long time. However it’s just the start of the demanding situations forward, such because the elimination of the fatally radioactive melted gas particles that left-overs within the 3 broken reactors, a frightening activity if ever completed.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electrical Energy Corporate Holdings, began liberating the primary bundle of seven,800 heaps from 10 of the gang B tanks, some of the least radioactive H2O on the plant.

They are saying the H2O is handled and diluted to ranges which might be more secure than world requirements, and thus far, checking out via TEPCO and executive companies has discovered disagree revealed radioactivity in seawater and fish samples taken upcoming the reduce.

The Eastern executive and TEPCO say liberating the H2O is an unavoidable step within the decommissioning of the plant.

For the reason that earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant’s cooling programs and brought about 3 reactors to soften, extremely infected cooling H2O carried out to the broken reactors has leaked ceaselessly to the structures’ basements and blended with groundwater. Some H2O is recycled to chill the nuclear gas, week the remains is saved within the tanks.

The reduce began on the day by day month of 460 heaps and strikes slowly. TEPCO plans to reduce 31,200 heaps of handled H2O via the top of March 2024, which might blank handiest 10 tanks for the reason that web page will proceed to create radioactive H2O.

Also Read | What’s happening at Fukushima plant 12 years after meltdown?

The month will accelerate nearest and about 1/3 of the tanks will likely be got rid of over the upcoming 10 years, releasing up length for the plant’s decommissioning, stated TEPCO government Junichi Matsumoto, who’s answerable for the handled H2O reduce. The H2O will likely be discharged over 30 years, however so long as melted gas remains within the reactors, it calls for cooling H2O below the tide probability.

About 880 heaps of radioactive melted nuclear gas stay throughout the reactors. Robot probes have supplied some knowledge however the situation of the melted particles left-overs in large part unknown, and the volume may well be even better, says Takahara, the TEPCO spokesman.

A tribulation elimination of melted particles the use of a vast remote-controlled robot arm is about to start out in Unit 2 nearest this yr, regardless that it’s going to be an excessively little quantity, Takahara stated.

Spent gas elimination from the Unit 1 reactor’s cooling puddle is about to begin in 2027. The reactor supremacy continues to be lined with particles from the explosion 12 years in the past and must be wiped clean up upcoming striking a protecting safeguard to comprise radioactive mud.

Throughout the worst-hit Unit 1, maximum of its reactor core melted and fell to the base of the principle containment chamber and most likely farther into the concrete basement. A robot probe despatched throughout the Unit 1 number one containment chamber has discovered that its pedestal — the principle supporting construction immediately below its core — was once broadly broken.

Maximum of its thick concrete external was once lacking, exposing the interior metal reinforcement, prompting regulators to invite TEPCO to form possibility review.

The federal government has caught to its preliminary 30-to-40-year goal for finishing the decommissioning, with out defining what that suggests. Dashing the time table may just motive extra radiation publicity to staff and extra environmental injury. Some mavens say it might be not possible to take away the entire melted gas particles via 2051 and would hurry 50-100 years, if accomplished in any respect.