On October 19, 2020, the Osaka District Court ruled against a cabaret owner suing a bar hostess for ¥2 million (US$15,200) for dating a coworker. The plaintiff had made male and female employees sign a contract prohibiting any romance between employees, stipulating that they pay that amount if they failed to observe the ban.
Japanese employers have often used “taps on the shoulder” to induce unwanted employees to resign, but the courts have made clear that workers have no need to agree to give up their jobs.
Since 2008, I have always devoted my end-year columns to counting down the Top Ten human rights issues as they pertain to Non-Japanese residents of Japan. This year I’m moving this feature to the Shingetsu News Agency.
We were told that the 1985 Equal Employment Opportunity Act marked the “dawn of a new age” for female workers in Japan. No more could employers blithely set up special marry-and-leave retirement systems for their female employees, a practice that had previously been considered perfectly legal.
The Moritomo Gakuen school affair was the first of the major scandals that shook the government of Shinzo Abe beginning in February 2017. This a working timeline which the Shingetsu News Agency intends to fill out and update in the weeks and months ahead.
A Japanese court overturned a welfare reduction for the first time ever on February 22, 2021.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of February 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of January 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on January 31, 2019.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on January 23, 2019.
