Traditionally, shunto was only for full-time regular workers, but this year unions are coming together to expand this custom to include workers on non-standard, irregular, casual, and contingent contracts.
Pushing Japan to remilitarize was never, and still is not, a good idea. This is not just because an arms race in Asia is the last thing the region needs. But also because Japan, consistently unable to face up to its own history, is simply not the country to represent the world’s liberal democracies in Asia, especially as a military power.
The Kishida government has declared that all Japan taxpayers have a “responsibility” to support its policy of dramatically increasing military expenditures, accepting the premise that Japan’s neighbors are likely to launch an armed attack unless deterred from doing so. This marks the effective end of “New Capitalism.”
The Tokyo Labor Relations Commission provided us a bright day in labor history with the first ever ruling extending union rights to those engaged in work via an online platform.
New aid offered by Australia to Pacific island nations is aimed at reducing Beijing’s influence over Pacific island nations, an issue which has emerged as a major concern for US allies in the region.
Japan has reluctantly agreed to help Sri Lanka overcome its economic crisis–worse than any other the South Asian island nation has faced in its seventy-year history–in part because of Tokyo’s concerns about Chinese political influence.
China’s “debt trap diplomacy” has been widely denounced by both the West and Japan, and it formed an underpinning theme for the latest edition of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VIII). However, the fact of the matter is that G7 countries, not China, are the largest holders of African debt.
Although the government is introducing plans to address the climate crisis, concrete measures are proving slow to appear as a consequence of corporate lobbying, according to some nongovernmental organizations.
Due to rising inflation, the recent decision to hike the average minimum wage appears set to offer little or no advance to the real quality of life for low-income Japanese. This comes in spite of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s economic policy theme of “New Capitalism,” which is supposed to create a fairer society by enhancing the living standards of ordinary citizens.
Concerns about the Unification Church’s fundraising activities in Japan have spiraled in the weeks following the assassination of Shinzo Abe; the momentum of public outrage now threatens to carry matters too far.
