TOKYO —

The Japanese government said Monday that it may have to shoot down a North Korean rocket if it passes over Japan.

Analysts have said there is a possibility that the rocket, which Pyongyang said it will launch between April 12 and 16, may pass over Kyushu or Okinawa. Pyongyang insists the program is part of peaceful space research, while Japan, the U.S. and other nations see it as a disguised missile test.

Speaking in the Diet, Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka said that upon receiving the go-ahead from Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, he will issue an order to the Self-Defense Forces to activate Japan’s missile defense system and shoot down the rocket, Fuji TV reported. The SDF have Aegis-equipped destroyers carrying ballistic missile interceptors and ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptors in their arsenal.

North Korea says the rocket will take a “safer” flight path compared to previous launches that strayed into Japanese airspace.

In 2009, Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket over Japan in what it claimed at the time was an attempt to get a satellite into orbit. Tokyo and its allies said it was a ballistic missile test.

Japan Today

The market is doing a good job of showing the potential formation of a major cyclical bottom after closing above the weekly Ichimoku cloud for the fist time since July 2007. This further solidifies basing prospects and we could be in the process of seeing a major bullish structural shift that exposes a move towards 85.00-90.00 over the coming months. Shorter-term studies are however very stretched, and as such, we will look to take advantage of dips back to 82.00 to establish a fresh long position in the major currency pair. We will only look to exit on a weekly close back under previous resistance now turned support at 78.00. Target 95.00.

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/

TOKYO — The whole of Japan must redouble efforts to help rid tsunami-hit communities of the millions of tons of waste generated by last year’s disaster, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Sunday.

As the country marked the first anniversary of the tragedy that claimed more than 19,000 lives, Noda urged areas outside of the disaster zone to pitch in to help dispose of the rubble.

“Today is a day of mourning as well as a day to renew our resolve to rebuild,” he told a press conference just hours after the country observed a minute’s silence at the exact moment the tsunami-causing quake struck last year.

“I urge the entire public to recognize that we are all directly involved in reconstruction.”

The monster tsunami crushed whole communities along Japan’s northeast coast, leaving behind 22.5 million tons of debris, including splintered houses and wrecked cars, most of which remains piled up in the region.

Only a handful of municipalities outside the disaster zone have offered to help process the debris, amid stiff public opposition from residents who fear it could be contaminated by radiation.

The tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, sending reactors into meltdown and shooting toxic isotopes into the atmosphere.

The government insists debris in Iwate and Miyagi, north of Fukushima, is virtually radiation free and does not pose a risk to human health when incinerated or processed.

“The world lavished praise on the spirit of the Japanese for helping one another in the aftermath of the disaster,” Noda said. “That Japanese psyche is being tested again. The processing of debris is a symbol of that.”

Tokyo has offered to largely offset any costs local governments incur in accepting the waste.

Noda said he will be asking private companies, such as cement and paper producers, to help out with the task.

© 2012 AFP

A family pays respects to tsunami victims at the Okawa school near Ishinomaki, where 74 pupils were killed and four are missing. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

JAPAN FELL silent yesterday to remember last year’s March 11th disaster, which killed 19,000 people, triggered a still-unresolved nuclear crisis and drove hundreds of thousands of refugees from their homes.

Millions across the country bowed their heads and prayed at 2.46pm, the exact time the magnitude-9 earthquake struck off the northeast, unleashing a huge tsunami that bludgeoned the coast and levelled cities and towns.

Sirens wailed and Buddhist bells rang in towns across the Tohoku (northeast) region, where many of the 344,000 evacuees still homeless from the disaster live in cramped temporary housing.

The anniversary was marked by anti-nuclear protests in Tokyo and other cities, amid the ongoing struggle to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Demonstrators formed a human chain around the Diet (parliament building), while about 16,000 people gathered in Fukushima prefecture, close to the contaminated exclusion zone around the crippled complex.

“I’ve decided to protest because I want an end to nuclear power in this country,” said Sachio Miyasagi, one of about 20,000 protesters in Hibiya Park, central Tokyo. “It’s clear from what happened last year that it is too dangerous.”

At the National Theatre a few miles away, Emperor Akihito, who is recovering from heart surgery, stood with prime minister Yoshihiko Noda and 1,200 other mourners and said prayers for the dead. The emperor said Japan must recover. “We shall never forget those who gave their lives helping others.”

Eriko Okuda, who lost her parents and two children in the tsunami, tearfully told the audience that her heart ached every time she thought of what they went through. “I’m sometimes embarrassed that I survived.”

Mr Noda earlier pledged that the world’s third-largest economy would emerge stronger from the tragedy. “Our goal is not simply to reconstruct the Japan that existed before March 11th, 2011, but to build a new Japan,” he said in an advertisement published in the Washington Post yesterday. “We are determined to overcome this historic challenge.”

The anniversary has been marred, however, by widespread criticism that the pace of recovery is slowing, typified by yesterday’s headline in the English-language daily, the Japan Times – “A Year On, Tohoku Stuck in Limbo.”

Just 6 per cent of the 22.5 tons of debris left behind by the quake and tsunami has been cleared, held back by widespread fears that it is contaminated by fallout from the triple nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Large swathes of the northeast coast still resemble wastelands, and rebuilding is stalled by financial and other problems.

The nuclear meltdown and a series of explosions showered about 8 per cent of Japan with radioactive contamination and forced the evacuation of over 100,000 people.

Recent revelations suggest that the Fukushima plant narrowly avoid a worse catastrophe in the week after March 11th last year. Then prime minister Naoto Kan stopped the plant’s managers from fleeing and abandoning its out-of-control reactors, possibly saving Tokyo.

“I’ve been looking at the pictures on TV all day and still can’t believe we lived through it,” says Kaori Naiji, who gave birth to her daughter, Wakana, during the disaster. “There was a power cut and no heating, and I couldn’t call anyone after my baby was born because the phones were down,” she recalls. “And we didn’t even know what was going on the nuclear plant.”

Like many yesterday, she said she is afraid for Japan’s future and wonders how it will recover. “I look at my daughter and she embodies our hope. I want her to live in a different world.”

DAVID McNEILL in Tokyo

Shipbuilders construct a wooden fishing vessel in Minamisanriku, Japan, nearly a year after the March 11 tsunami hit the northeastern Japanese town.    Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo

It comes from the survivors of the small towns along the northeastern coast that were wiped out by the tsunami. More than 19,000 of their family members and friends were killed. But it was the largely inept response to the disaster by the central government – which continues to some degree even now – that has forced them to fall back on the ancient Japanese virtue of koh, or a shared spiritual purpose reflected in mutual help.

MONITOR’S VIEW: Humanitarian acts as antidotes to war

Survivors in that region devised community-based solutions to cope with the devastation rather than wait for Tokyo’s politicians and bureaucrats to act. Largely left to their own devices, they came up with models of cooperation that have the possibility of being as effective in sustaining their communities as the billions in promised government aid.

In the first weeks after the disaster, the normal market economy collapsed. Neighbors had to learn how to barter for goods and services. Then makeshift shops popped up along the roads, creating a local economy cut off from the rest of Japan.

Then, a flood of 50,000 volunteers helped bolster that spirit of cooperation. Aid groups not only assisted in cleaning up the immense debris and in providing disaster relief – their attitude helped revive the spirit of giving at a time of deep suffering and anxiety. Amazingly, Japan’s Red Cross Society received more than $3.7 billion in donations, some of it from overseas. Three of 4 Japanese have given money to aid groups.

A cooperation-based economy developed, best seen in groups of fishermen helping each other in cooperatives. The tsunami wiped out 263 fishing ports. In the region’s other major economy, agriculture, farmers also learned to work together more closely.

Inspired not only by the region’s devastation but also the residents’ spirit, Japanese companies and academia began to act. Toyota, for example, plans to build a car factory in the region, known as Tohoku. A group of universities has organized a volunteer network to provide assistance in rebuilding local industries and promoting tourism.

Helping drive these private efforts has been a serious drop in the public’s trust of government. Political squabbling and the delay in reconstruction, not to mention misleading information about the radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, have created a crisis of credibility for both lawmakers and government ministries. The disasters laid bare a long history of business-government collusion, which only further pushed the survivors to seek their own solutions.

The shutdown of 52 of Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants over safety concerns has also led to proposals to build solar and wind projects in the tsunami-hit zone. This idea of energy self-reliance reflects a desire to build up a local economy that is not dependent on the rest of Japan.

MONITOR’S VIEW: China and ‘uncommon’ acts of goodness

A clean-slate mentality may be contributing to these proposals. To be sure, much work remains in order to relocate the more than 300,000 people still living in temporary housing. Local officials are meeting resistance to plans for relocating towns to higher ground rather than rely again on tsunami-hindering walls.

Whatever roadblocks arise, however, Japan’s koh is back. A loss of faith in Tokyo’s authority has been a gain for the Japanese.

http://www.csmonitor.com

TOKYO —

Last year’s Fukushima disaster plunged the nuclear industry into its deepest crisis since Chernobyl, but dire predictions that nuclear power would have to be abandoned have proved wide of the mark.

Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes when the tsunami caused reactors at the plant to overheat, spewing radioactive plumes into the air, and sparking a mad rush to stop the reactors from exploding.

As engineers battled to prevent a catastrophe to rival Chernobyl in 1986, some analysts declared the much-trumpeted “nuclear renaissance,” driven by surging energy demand and the need to move away from fossil fuels, was dead.

However, a year on from the March 2011 crisis, commentators and those within the nuclear industry itself are now saying the future of atomic power is brighter than ever.

“Fukushima did cause a slowdown in plans for new reactors and prompted a focus on an energy mix that I think will include more natural gas and a little more renewables,” said Colette Lewiner, an energy specialist at French consultancy Cap Gemini.

“But it wasn’t the end of nuclear, contrary to what perhaps was being predicted after the accident.”

The most visible impact was closer scrutiny and—in some countries—tougher safety standards for existing plants, said Lewiner.

But hardly anything changed on the strategic view for an energy source that already provides for nearly a sixth of the planet’s electricity needs.

While a few countries are turning away from atomic energy, several more are forging ahead with plans to bolster nuclear power.

France and Britain have both declared they will proceed with next-generation reactors, the United States has approved its first nuclear plant since 1978, while China and India remain on course for building scores of reactors in the coming years.

In 2011, about 60 countries approached the International Atomic Energy Agency about starting nuclear programs, the IAEA said in February.

“We expect that this year Vietnam, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Belarus will start building their first nuclear power plants,” the agency’s deputy director general, Kwaku Aning, said.

Only Italy, which abandoned nuclear after Chernobyl, Switzerland which has approved plans to phase out its five plants by 2034, and Germany which has declared it will scrap nuclear by 2022, are moving fervently away from the energy source.

In Japan, the last of the country’s 54 reactors is expected to be shut down within weeks of the anniversary of the disaster in the face of a bitter backlash against a once-trusted power source.

But the closure is unlikely to be permanent, given the country’s hunger for energy, said Shinichiro Takiguchi, executive senior researcher at Japan Research Institute.

“Basically, the general consensus for the long term is reduce nuclear power” but not stop it, he said. “It’s more reasonable to increase the use of other energy sources and gradually reduce nuclear while taking additional safety measures.”

On Monday, IAEA chief Yukio Amano said nuclear power had become safer since the disaster and that the industry had “come a long way” in the intervening 12 months.

John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association (WNA) in London, argued that the industry had “inadvertently” emerged stronger from Fukushima.

By focusing on additional safety and better design, the industry had reassured countries eager for a secure gigawatt source of electricity, he said.

“In the past 10 years, most major governments in the world have analyzed their energy and environmental needs for the 21st century, and have concluded that they will need nuclear,” Ritch said.

“After Fukushima, those countries re-evaluated, and with few exceptions, mainly Germany, reaffirmed their original decisions.”

Patrick Criqui, an economist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), said Germany “is going to be an interesting real-life experiment” about whether the switch to a renewables-based system will work.

“In the short term, the answer is no. It’s open to debate whether they can achieve this ambitious goal in the long term.”

Fukushima has been widely described as a disaster, but so far no fatalities have been attributed to it.

Even so, the cost in fear, disruption and economic losses is huge.

Estimates of the bill vary enormously, from tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars, depending on whether this comprises only cleaning up the site or compensating evacuees as well.

Such figures are ready ammunition to those who say the true costs of nuclear are underestimated.

“It took a severe accident like Fukushima to show (Japan) that the power utilities are incapable of handling the costs, leaving the state to foot a huge bill,” said Ryutaro Kono, an economist with BNP Paribas in Tokyo.

© 2012 AFP

TOKYO —Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Wednesday pledged floods would never again disrupt business in the kingdom as she sought to reassure investors during a trip to Japan.

The Thai premier said she had ordered the establishment of schemes to help companies get back on their feet from the disaster that knocked businesses sideways last year.

“I have reaffirmed to the Japanese government and business leaders that the Royal Thai government is committed to ensuring that the devastation caused by such disasters will never happen again,” she told reporters in Tokyo during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.

“The Thai government has expedited assistance to affected factories in order to rehabilitate their operations as soon as possible,” she said, adding it had created a fund to subsidize disaster insurance for businesses.

As many as one in 10 Japanese companies in Thailand said they were considering leaving the country in the wake of the flooding, which crimped supply chains and hammered profits.

The Thai government has since launched a charm offensive as it seeks to reassure investors that the kingdom remains a good place to do business.

Noda said Thailand and Japan, which mark the 125th year of diplomatic relations this year, share the same basic values and remain strategic partners.

The two countries “agreed to enhance cooperative relations in the areas of space, railway and information computer technology development at a time that Thailand needs to build infrastructure following the floods,” he said.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano, who met Yingluck earlier, proposed the sale to Thailand of Japan’s observation satellite system to help the country monitor and forecast flood damage.

Thailand suffered a double-digit contraction in the final three months of 2011, the sharpest on record, as the worst floods in half a century pummeled the nation’s industrial sector.

The months-long floods took a heavy toll on Thailand’s industrial heartland north of Bangkok, with many factories forced to close temporarily.

Yingluck is due to meet Crown Prince Naruhito, who is standing in for Emperor Akihito after heart surgery, and visit Japan’s tsunami-hit northeast on Thursday.

© 2012 AFP

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By Joel Kruger | DailyFX – 4 hours ago

TOKYO — Norika Fujiwara on Friday reprised her role in the stage musical “Cabaret” at the Tokyo International Forum. Fujiwara, 40 has acted in three previous stage musicals, but this is the first time she has returned to perform the same role.

“Cabaret” tells the story of pre-World War II cabaret performer Sally Bowles (Fujiwara) in Berlin and her romance with an American novelist, Cliff Bradshaw, played by Tsuyoshi Abe.

According to promoters, audiences expressed an overwhelming desire for an encore run in surveys given out during the performance’s last run in Tokyo in 2010. Fujiwara described the encore run as a gift from the heavens.

She said there is less pressure this time. “Sally is inside my soul,” she said.

She does have a passionate kiss scene, which prompted one reporter to ask about the rumor she is dating a foreign securities analyst. But Fujiwara said she is thinking only about her role. “I’m devoting 24 hours a day to Sally. After the musical ends, then I’ll have more time for a private life.”

The musical will be performed until March 18.

Japan Today