or yet another entry in my long series of crap that no one reads
in response to the horrible stabbing spree in akihabara, tokyo, japan a few weeks ago the japanese national police agency has once again shown why policy changes proposed during the height of public panic and tragedy have such a reputation for being […]

It’s official! Osaka prefecture has been declared the sexual assault capital of Japan according to statistics maintained by Japan’s National Police Agency.
According to the data, last year one in every 4,200 female residents of Osaka was raped or otherwise sexually assaulted. This compares to one in every 4,600 in Tokyo.
The Osaka rate is […]

The New York Times has a report about Huang Qi, a Chinese human rights advocate who, ironically told National Public Radio recently that there have been great improvements in the human rights situation in China.
BEIJING — Three weeks after the earthquake in Sichuan Province, five bereaved fathers whose children died in collapsed schools sought help […]

The Associated Press has a story of a unique defense against an assailant… a cup of tea. No word on whether the tea was oolong or green. I wonder if sake would have worked as well.

A man who appeared to be a laborer in his 60s allegedly pulled a knife and demanded money from a […]

An Osaka man has been arrested for a string of convenience store hold-ups that netted some 587,000 yen, which he used to feed his two dogs, five cats, five turtles, two snakes, and tropical fish.
Dubbed “The Dogman,” Takaharu Kawata would rob convenience stores at knifepoint while wearing an oversized black-and-white dog mask.
Mr Kawata, who is […]

WARNING
The video after the jump is very graphic.

Click here to read more. . . »

Via The Far Eastern Economic Review blog

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Japanese authorities have executed Tsutomu Miyazaki, a killer who murdered four little girls in the late 1980’s, ate their remains, drank their blood, and sent parts of their remains to their parents.
Miyazaki’s death sentence was finalized in February 2006, when the Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions that ruled he was mentally competent to take […]

It’s been quite some time since we’ve had an armpit update here on JAPUNDIT, so without much further ado. . .
[A Singapore man has been arrested for molesting] 23 women over the course of 15 months, smelling their armpits and touching them in lifts, staircase landings and their homes[.] He was caught after a housewife […]

After the dreadful knife attack in Akihabara last week, it was discovered that the killer had announced his intent on an internet message board, but his threat was not taken seriously.
Well anything in that vein is being taken very seriously now. On Monday, police made two unconnected arrests of idiots posting online death threats.
Yo […]

The Sankei Shinbun via Mainichi Wai Wai says it all.
Before his name appeared, he was only referred to as a patrol sergeant in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, age 41, who was on duty at the Akihabara “koban” (police box) on June 8.
Sergeant Ogino, who appears to be of medium build and height and who wears […]

The knife attacks in Akihabara on Sunday which left 7 dead and 11 injured, have made news the world over. Here is some of the coverage from the New York Times article:
A 25-year-old man who told the police he was tired of life went on a killing rampage in a popular shopping street in central Tokyo on […]

The New York Times has an interesting article on whistle-blowing* in Japan.  The article contends that until recently whistle-blowing was unheard of in Japan for a variety of reasons including strong loyalty between employees and employers and a culture of not making waves.
The first high-profile instance of a corporate whistle-blower was in 2000, when an employee at Mitsubishi […]

A Tokyo trucker, Masahiro Fujiwara, 47, has been arrested on charges of counterfeiting after using a colour photocopier to produce about 10 ¥10,000 notes.
His plan was to replace the bills in his wife’s purse with the fake ones, and go out drinking.
His wife, of course, had no notion that the money in her purse was […]

Japan’s criminal justice system is in the international spotlight this week with the release of a film produced by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) entitled ‘Presumed Guilty - Creating False Confessions‘ in which “former defendants talk about how they were forced to confess by investigators during interrogations.”
Tokyo lawyer Shinichiro Koike said “I hope […]

Jake Adelstein, an American reporter who has spend 15 years as a reporter for a Japanese language newspaper, posts a very interesting report about the problems the FBI has trying to get information about yakuza from the Japanese police department.
There’s talk in Japan of criminalizing simple possession, but some political parties (and publishers, who are […]

It’s a situation that almost beggars belief, but a Nagoya man died on Sunday after having doused himself in kerosene and being given a lighter by police.
Police were called to a domestic disturbance on Saturday night in Atsuta.
Six officers were dispatched to the scene and the man walked out onto the road to greet them, […]

Hydrogen sulfide - is there anything it can’t do? You don’t just have to top yourself with it - you can threaten others with it too.
Being the current suicide aide du jour taking Japan by storm, it seems it’s now being touted as an offensive weapon.
An Osaka robber dropped in on a loan company […]

Stories about misbehaving public officials are commonplace - they differ only in the details. But the details usually make interesting reading.
A Wakayama prefecture civil servant has made worldwide headlines with a feat of astonishing dedication.
Tax-payers in Kinokawa wish he could show similar dedication to his job. For it has been revealed […]

Remember the story of the U.S. Marine in Okinawa who was accused of raping a 14-year old girl that we reported on here, here, and here?
The Marine claimed he merely forced a kiss on the girl and charges were later dismissed by Japanese authorities when the girl dropped charges against him.
Though it looked […]

Mainichi Wai Wai has a report from a Japanese weekly magazine about a woman who has been arrrested for attempted murder of her future father-in-law over a misperception of his views on her upcoming marriage to his son.
[The woman] admits to the allegations, saying she attacked the old man during a drunken fit because […]