This year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners have been announced, and one of this year’s winners is a Japanese woman, Mayu Yamamoto, “who developed a way to extract a vanilla fragrance and flavor from cow dung“.

Or, officially -

CHEMISTRY: Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan, for developing a way to extract vanillin — vanilla fragrance and flavoring — from cow dung.
REFERENCE: “Novel Production Method for Plant Polyphenol from Livestock Excrement Using Subcritical Water Reaction,” Mayu Yamamoto, International Medical Center of Japan.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Mayu Yamamoto
PRESS NOTE: Toscanini’s Ice Cream, the finest ice cream shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has created a new ice cream flavor in honor of Mayu Yamamoto. The flavor is called “Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist.”

Other winners included studies on hamster jetlag, the side-effects of sword swallowing, and fans of Dr Nakamats will be delighted that he scooped the Nutrition prize “for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting).”

Researchers at Hiroshima University have successfully bred frogs with transparent skin that makes their internal organs and blood vessels.

The researchers say that this will make it possible to study the innards of the frogs without dissecting them.

They also say they can fuse the genes of fluorescent proteins to the frog’s genes which will make them glow in the dark.

Via Pink Tentacle

A spokesperson for the Institute of Cetacean Research, an organization commissioned by the government of Japan to oversee whale hunting in the name of research, is denying claims that the whaling industry is in decline because of lack of demand for the meat among Japanese.

Earlier this week, Iceland’s Fisheries Ministry decided not to issue quotas for the season beginning in September, citing low demand for the meat in the domestic market and poor short-term prospects for export to Japan.

The move prompted New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter to claim it shows demand for whale meat is not as strong as pro-whaling nations like Japan continue to assert.

“It appears obvious there is almost no market for whale meat, so if the Japanese government will not listen to the conservation argument to stop whaling, perhaps Iceland’s official recognition that there’s no market for the meat could finally encourage Japan to stop its expanded ’scientific’ whaling program,” Carter said Monday.

Carter also claims that Japan’s whale stockpiles are at 40,000 tons because of a lack in demand, while the Institute of Cetacean Research says the actual number is closer to 4,000 tons. They say this level of surplus is maintained in order to ensure demand does not outstrip supply.

Both Japan and China are scheduled to launch unmanned lunar missions sometime next month.

The Japanese mission named SELENE is said to be the biggest lunar mission since America’s Apollo missions.

According to AP reports, SELENE, a $276 million project, is the largest lunar mission since the Apollo program in terms of overall scope and ambition. It outpaces the former Soviet Union’s Luna program and NASA’s Clementine and Lunar Prospector projects.

Japanese mission will place a main satellite in orbit around the moon and deploy two smaller satellites in polar orbits. The satellites will study the moon’s origin and evolution.

The China mission will use stereo cameras to generate three-dimensional images of the lunar surface and X-ray spectrometers to study lunar dust.

Both countries are considering manned missions to the moon some time around 2025.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo Hospital have joined with a venture company to develop a system that uses 3D inkjet printers to generate artificial bones for facial reconstructive surgery.

To make an artificial bone with this technology, a 3D computer model of the bone is first created based on the patient’s X-ray and CT scan data. The computer model is then sliced into a large number of cross-sections and the data is sent to a special 3D inkjet printer, which works sort of like an ordinary inkjet printer by transferring tiny droplets of liquid onto a surface. However, unlike ordinary printers that print on paper, this one prints onto thin layers of powdered alpha-tricalcium phosphate (alpha-TCP). The “ink” is a water-based polymer adhesive that hardens the alpha-TCP it comes into contact with. By repeatedly laying down the powder and printing successive layers on top of one another, the printer is able to physically reproduce the desired bone to an accuracy of one millimeter.

Strong, lightweight and porous, the printed bones have characteristics similar to natural bone, and because they are tailored to fit exactly where they need to go, they are quick to integrate with the surrounding bone. The printed bone is also designed to be resorbed by the body as the surrounding bone slowly grows into it and replaces it.

The team hopes to commercialize the technology by 2010.

Via Pink Tentacle

Villagers in central China have apparently been digging up dinosaur bones and boiling them in soup or grinding them into powder for Traditional Chinese Medicine, believing they were from flying dragons and had healing powers.

Until last year, the fossils were being sold in Henan province as “dragon bones” at about 4 yuan (65 yen) per kilogram, scientist Dong Zhiming told the Associated Press.

Fortunately, after discovering that they were really dinosaur bones, the villagers donated 200 kilograms of them to Dong, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “They had believed that the ‘dragon bones’ were from the dragons flying in the sky,” Dong said.

According to AP, the calcium-rich bones were sometimes boiled with other ingredients and fed to children as a treatment for dizziness and leg cramps. Other times they were ground up and made into a paste that was applied directly to fractures and other injuries. The practice had been going on for at least two decades.

Well, you know Shakespeare said that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.” He was undoubtedly right, so think I would go with the dragon theory rather than the dinosaur one–which has been questioned by Creationists worldwide anyway? They are usually wrong–but maybe not always…

And remember that eating dinosaurs is not unknown in the West. The annual dinner party of the Explorers Club, for example, had a frozen Woolly Mammoth they dug up in Russia on the menu. And they eat other things that “would raise eyebrows in the foc’sle of a pirate ship” let alone any restaurant in Shanghai.

Use it or lose it
Antediluvian bones
Just museum piece?

Size may not count–except in the record books–but China now seems to have broken the official record. Thirty feet is hard to beat but this one isn’t actually real so may not really count.

The 30-foot penile totem, appropriately named Sky Pillar, is located in the Longwan Shaman Amusement Park in Changchun City, China.

The statue is basically a steel structure that is wrapped in more than 6,500 feet of straw. I don’t think that Disney Corp. would have such a thing in one of it’s theme parks, though–especially as a ride.

According to Adult Web Life (I only check such websites for the pictures. No (!) I mean to scan for the news articles of potential use in Japundit posts…) the president of the park, Cheng Weiguang, commented that the member is a totem of “Shamanistic culture,” which originated in Changchun City:

The legend says that a Shaman hero named Ewenki had vanquished a cruel female ruler and afterwards gave her a penis totem – reminding her to respect males and not kill them at will. The statue stands atop the 1250 foot high Qinlong Hill and can be seen by many as a reminder of their “ancestors’ pursuit of happiness and prosperity.” Some tourists say they felt uncomfortable about the statue – but others didn’t care. One said, “It’s just a pillar. I don’t care. It can be a symbol of the park.”

That’s the sensible spirit! But–all it would take is maybe 6,500+ feet of straw to wrap some prominent Tokyo landmark, do a little cosmetic magic on it, and thus regain face by beating this foreign record? Why not– for the glory, the record, for the Gipper, or just because it isn’t there yet?

However, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest living erect penis on record with them is 13 inches, but don’t get too cock-sure yet–as with most things, it is all relative:

• The barnacle has the largest penis as a proportion of its overall body size.
• Among vertebrates, the Argentine Blue-bill duck has the longest penis relative to its body size.

There are many theories out there concerning the origins of mankind, some more plausible than others. And I don’t know which one you were taught, but I bet it wasn’t this one.

“The Black Mountain Grape Homonids”

According to Melinda Wenner posting in LiveScience, a new study says Americans and Japanese read faces differently. In Japan, for example, people tend to look to the eyes for emotional cues, whereas Americans tend to look to the mouth.

Researcher Masaki Yuki, a behavioral scientist at Hokkaido University in Japan  said this could be because the Japanese, when in the presence of others, try to suppress their emotions more than Americans do.

In any case, the eyes are more difficult to control than the mouth, he said, so they probably provide better clues about a person’s emotional state even if he or she is trying to hide it.

Japanese people tend to shy away from overt displays of emotion, and rarely smile or frown with their mouths because the Japanese culture tends to emphasize conformity, humbleness and emotional suppression, traits that are thought to promote better relationships.

When Yuki entered graduate school and began communicating with American scholars over e-mail, he was often confused by their use of emoticons such as smiley faces and sad faces, or for example. “It took some time before I finally understood that they were faces.” In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). “After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles,” he said.

Research has shown that the expressive muscles around the eyes provide key clues about a person’s genuine emotions. The post goes on to describe the study that Yuki and team conducted on the basis of this smiley face brainstorm.

One result was that, since Japanese people tend to focus on the eyes, they could be better, overall, than Americans at perceiving people’s true feelings. Although this might be a very useful skill, it could also have potential drawbacks.

Yuki pointed out: “Would you really want to know if your friend’s, lover’s, or boss’s smile was not genuine? In some contexts, especially in the United States, maybe it is better not to know.”

Photo of coffee mugs: Uploaded to Flickr 01/08/06 by mu_0623, Some rights reserved.

I’m usually quite quick to denounce anything that sounds like a pseudo-scientific fad. And the fact that I’m usually right doesn’t stop the more credulous around me from dismissing me with a sigh and a look that seems to pity my negativity.

I’m not being negative - I just don’t want to devote any brain power to something that’s obvious nonsense. I come from a nation of cynics, after all. It’s in my nature. Here though, I feel dreadfully outnumbered, and as if I’m fighting an uphill battle. And I fear that some time soon, I’ll just stop fighting.

You’ll probably remember the recent natto scam. I remember at the time saying that if something like natto had special slimming powers, then surely my mother-in-law and middle-aged women like her all over Japan would already know this. And would have been telling us. Despite my being dismissed as “negative”, it all proved to be bullshit after not too long, when the proverbial natto hit the fan.

I’ll also never forget the “Hidden dangers in your Kotatsu” programme which ‘revealed’ that if you weren’t careful, you’d be cooked alive by your kotatsu…

Science, I had been led to believe, comes from dreadfully dull but earnest types in labs. It doesn’t come from unqualified, overexcitable goons on a variety show.

But the one that’s bugging me now, and I freely admit to being late to pick up on this, is マイナスイオン - “minus ion” - another bit of ’science’ that seems only to exist in Japan.

True, if you google long and deep enough, you’ll find occasional references going back many years and worldwide. But does any of it actually support the idea? Is any of it more than mere speculation? That’s not important. “Minus Ion” - the trend - has morphed in the media spotlight beyond any need for scientific back-up.

If you’re not familiar with this - and if you don’t live in Japan there’s no reason why you should ever have heard of it - I won’t bore you with the details, except to say it’s a belief that pollution and other harmful particles in the air have a positive charge (”Plus Ion”) and as your body takes them in, it requires negatively charged particles to neutralise them, otherwise you’ll lose the will to live, or something. Sounds like crap? Yes, I thought that too. And yet all over Japan, you’ll find countless machines and accessories which apparently spew out the precious “minus ions”. My wife’s hairdryer, for example…

Anyway, if you’re not daft enough to spend millions of yen on “minus ion” accoutrements, but are still daft enough to believe you need a fix, then you can do so by hanging out occasionally on riversides, in the mountains, near waterfalls and such, so goes the legend. Hence I got an earful of “minus ions” throughout Golden Week, as friends, family, and acquaintances rushed off to the countryside to inhale as many “minus ions” as they could before sucking up all the “plus ions” of the U-Turn Rush.

Are these people not just talking about what we backwards folks simply call “fresh air”?

Oooh, look at the minus ions on THAT!

From the folks over at JAPANJIN, an in-depth report on the Museum of Poop, complete with snapshots and movies.

The Nisshin Maru seems to have given Sea Shepherd the slip, but the smaller Kaiko Maru found itself squarely in the Robert Hunter’s sights. A ramming incident occurred in which both ships were damaged and each now claims that the other was responsible. Apparently there is video footage of this, but I have been unable to find it.

For now there seems to be a truce of sorts as the Sea Shepherd group prepares to depart Antarctic waters with dwindling fuel supplies. The organisation also dropped a threat by Captain or “Cap’n” (he IS captain of a pirate ship, after all) Paul Watson to have the Farley Mowat ram the Nisshin Maru. . . if he could find the damn thing, that is.

So it appears to be all over for this year. None too soon, I might add, and with limited casualties. But seriously, who throws acid? What are they? Bond Villains?

Cap’n Watson, despite his reckless tactics, has a point when he talks about next year’s planned hunt of fin and humpback whales. Opposition to whaling from the anti-whaling nations led by Australia and New Zealand will intensify.

Now I have some problems with whaling. In principal, I don’t disagree with the minke hunt, as these are not endangered animals and could be harvested in a sustainable fashion. However, it is very difficult to hunt them humanely. Say what you want about battery hens and cattle slaughter, the torturous, sometimes as long as 30 minute death by grenade-tipped harpoon of a highly intelligent creature in front of its family grouping is not something I’m comfortable with.

The second problem is with the fin and humpback whales. Fin whales, in contrast to the minke whales, are endangered and the humpback is listed as vulnerable. I would hope that I don’t have to defend the view that a species formally listed as endangered should not be commercially hunted (and lets be honest, the hunt is commercial). The humpback, and this is where I would deviate from scientific to more emotional and personal reasoning, should also not be hunted and there will be renewed and forceful opposition from Australia on this.

I grew up on the east coast of Australia and every year watched the humpbacks on their annual migration from the frozen Southern Ocean to the warm breeding waters of the Queensland coast. They would return with their calves a few months later, remaining always close to the continent and visible to commercial tour operators and recreational whale-watchers. Most would recognise certain whales that return year after year and have names for specific members of the pod. The prospect that these humpbacks, so well-known and beloved of coastal dwelling Australians, could be slaughtered and served as dog food in Japan is distressing to many.

But I will concede that this is not a rational justification for preventing the humpback hunt. It is not a cold and removed assessment of whether Japan should be allowed to hunt these majestic creatures based on economic or ecological principles. They’re only listed as vulnerable after all.

As I have mentioned on the Japan Talk podcast a number of times, it is unseasonably warm in the Tokyo area this year.

Now we get a report that the cherry trees in Tokyo’s Ueno Part have already started to bloom – about a month earlier than normal.

[O]fficials said five trees had already blossomed and that four more trees were expected to blossom by next weekend.

More fuel to add heat to the global warming debate here.

Japan To Host Special IWC Conference In February to Discuss Whaling Ban

Japanese Whaling Vessel With A Successfully Caught Scientific Research Project

Japan’s announcement to host a special IWC - International Whale Commission - conference this February in order to “re-assess” the population of whales has been met with outrage from activists and anti-whaling nations. Japan leads the pro-whaling block of nations from Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific Islands and hopes with their assistance to lift the ban on commercialized whaling. Right now the Japanese Whaling Fleet is playing a cat-and-mouse game in the Southern Ocean with anti-whaling ships lead by Greenpeace and the controversial Sea Shepherd Society. The Sea Shepherd Society has offered $25,000 for the location of the whaling fleet which is believed to be using satellite technology to avoid them. Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd are not expected to co-operate as Greenpeace has criticized the group for apparently going too far in their protest in the past while Sea Shepherd accuses Greenpeace of showboating but doing little else to actually save the whales.

Commercialized whaling has been internationally banned for over twenty years. Whales were near the brink of extinction at the time the ban was put in place. Iceland and Norway are the only nations that officially ignore the ban. Bowing to threats of economic sanctions from the US, Japan relunctantly accepted the ban but it continues to hunt whales for “scientific research.”. This “scientific research” nets about 800-1000 whales every year. The main target of this research is the more numerous minke whale but other species have been hunted in smaller numbers such as the Sperm, Sei, and Byrd’s whales, and just recently the Fin Whale. This year Japanese whalers plan to hunt at least 50 Fin and Humpback Whales.

A Minke Whale Carcass Is Hauled Away For Scientific Research

After the research is supposedly performed, the whales often end up in restaurants and supermarkets for the scientific perusal of the average consumer.

Like many island nations, Japan has a long history of whaling. They used everything of the whale from the oil, meat, and bone. Commercialized whaling didn’t really develop until late due to Japan’s long period of isolation. It was only after WWII that whale meat became a major part of the the Japanese diet due to overall food shortages following the war. Whale meat became a customary item in children’s lunches. It should be pointed out that at this time, whale meat was not seen as a culinary delicacy in the post-war period but as a substitute source of protein. Basically, it was the poor man’s steak not the rich man’s pate.

The overall demand is not very high for whale meat in Japan nor for whale byproducts. While some old-timers may wax nostaglically on their old school lunches, for others who were alive during that time, whale meat reminds them of poverty. The whalers are trying to create demand rather than supply a demand as the tons of whale meat that has gone unsold over the past few years shows. Precious whale meat was also discovered in pet food in 2003 by Environmental Investigation Agency; no doubt a last ditch effort to unload unsold whale meat.

A Whaling Ship From Ayukawa In Northern Japan

Japanese whalers maintain that hunting whales has been a long cultural tradition. This is true but it has never been such an integral part of Japanese culture that its absence would cause any irrepairable if even visible damage. In addition, the overall Japanese economy is hardly dependent on the industry.

Japanese whalers and other whaling nations contend that part of their purpose for whaling is that whales deplete fishing stocks. However the species of whales mainly collected for Japanese scientific research, the minke of the North Pacific and Antartic regions, show their consumption consists almost entirely of krill and not fish. Over-fishing is the main culprit behind dwindling fish stocks not scapegoatish whales. When Japanese whalers maintain this opinion, it simply furthers the opinion that their research is useless as they themselves pay no attention to the results. The concept of culling the herds is not very applicable in this case as it would be with deer and caribou who lack a natural predator and have more-limited space in which to live.

Japan, Iceland, Norway, and other pro-whaling nations have a hard row to hoe against such widespread condemnation of whaling. History is the main stumbling block for these nations to overcome in order to get the ban lifted. One has only to look at the history of whaling and its effect on the overall species to see why measures are so strict. Mankind has constantly shown itself to be carelessly ruthless in the eradication or near-extinction of many species that were once numerous. A mere twenty years have passed since the international ban on whaling was put in place. Twenty years seems a relatively short time for a species that had been hunted with such fierce efficiency in just the last two centuries alone to make such an amazing recovery that it now requires culling. Apparently the significant numbers killed every year from hunting, scientific research, and accidents are not enough.

A Covered-Up Harpoon-Gun

Whalers pushed the whales to the brink of extinction only a few decades ago. What makes pro-whaling nations think anyone will trust them to only hunt their quota and not do the same thing again that they did before? With factory ships that can process their catches at sea away from prying eyes in remote areas, it makes whaling more difficult to manage than land-based hunting. Pro-whaling nations barely hold back now under the ban. How will they behave without the ban with such an indignant attitude?

Furthermore, the whaling industry today seems to resemble another rare species: a white elephant. Whaling is far more expensive to maintain compared to the profit attainable. Commericialized whaling for Japan would only result in more unsold whale meat and fat guilt-ridden pets. Some whale meat has even been found to be contaminated by pollutants that are harmful to pregnant women and children. So much for children’s lunchboxes - the minke whale meat while leaner and without the contamination is typically more expensive and less likely to be put in children’s lunches on a large scale. The Japanese government has been wasting a significant amount of money on their white elephant industry through IWC political-wrangling and vainly trying to promote the image of whale meat to the general public particularly to the youth who have no memories of leaner times when abundant whale meat symbolized poverty. So far it has been money ill-spent as the whale fleet rushes off to replenish the stock of whale meat that has succumbed to the consumption of freezer-burn rather than voracious consumer demand.

There’s more money to be had in whale-watching these days than whale-hunting. A clever whaler would trade in his harpoon-gun for a telescope and take whale-photo-hunters on a more profitable venture without shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars on sophisticated equipment just to avoid those pesky anti-whaling groups.

A Factory Ship Now Used As A Musuem But Seemingly Ready To Sail If The Ban Is Lifted

« Collapse story

Mainichi Wai Wai has a report from the weekly magazine Shukan Post (so you just know it’s true) on a strange affliction that seems to be spreading among Japanese women. Called iku-iku-byo (cum, cum sickness), it reportedly causes women to experience constant orgasm.

“If a guy simply taps me on the shoulder, I just swoon. Even when I go to the toilet, my body reacts. I’m a little bit scared of myself,” one woman sufferer tells Shukan Post.

Another adds: “When I got on the train one day, I could feel blood gushing toward a certain part of my body and it felt so good I almost let out a moan. It was sheer murder when everybody got pushed into the carriage.”

Yet another woman has her say.

“Even the vibration of my mobile phone is enough to set me off,” she says.

The article goes on to claim that such women may be suffering from something called persistent sexual arousal syndrome or PSAS, a condition documented for the first time only five years ago by Dr. Sandra Leiblum of the United States.

If all of this is true, I wonder why Japan’s birthrate continues to decline. . .

Thanks to Mr. Pink!

A hospital in Japan has admitted using kidneys removed from patients for medical reasons for transplant into other patients.

“The hospital was aware of 11 transplants, and they gained the director’s consent,” [hospital director Hiromichi] Sadashima said. He added, however, that in some cases he had received reports after the surgery had finished.

[Head of the hospital's department of urology Makoto] Mannami said he contacted another doctor, asking him to let him know if he had any kidneys that he was throwing away. However, he added that he had not planned to perform any operations from the outset, but rather that they were carried out when he happened to find kidneys that could be used in transplants.

The consent of the “doners” apparently was not obtained.

Mainichi Picture of the day

One of these two women is an android, Android Repliee Q2, and one isn’t, can you tell which is which in the first 5 seconds?
As you might all know, Japan is the leader in the android industry, and is unmatched when it comes to female android idols!

It seems that every time I read a news report about the whaling situation in Japan I end up getting more and more confused.

We keep hearing about how Japanese people love to eat whale because it is part of the culinary cultural heritage. Then we get reports that stocks of whale meat in Japan are exploding because not enough people are eating it. I have looked for whale meat at the store on countless occasions, but there is never any being sold.

Now we get word that Japan will be buying whale meat from Iceland!

The meat of the first whale caught in Icelandic waters since the North Atlantic nation resumed commercial whaling was destined for consumers in Japan, news reports said Monday.

The roughly 20-metre long fin whale was harpooned Saturday off Iceland’s west coast, and was landed Sunday at a whaling station near Reykjavik.

I have no strong feelings one way or the other about whaling, but this kind of thing really makes me wonder just what in the heck is going on here!?!

Rememeber Dr.Netsu, the gynecologist who oversaw the surrogate birth where a grandma gave birth to a grandchild?

He is on the spotlight again in Mainichi’s renowned Wai-Wai column, describing him as the “Maverick doctor who tastes the forbidden fruits of the gynecological world“. Japan has been debating the issue of surrogate births since several years now, but Netsu’s latest achievements as well as Aki Mukai’s case refreshed the debate again. As cloning and several other medical advancements, the issue calls forth ethical considerations that many detractors worry about, such as the relationship between the surrogate mother, the child, and the “real” mother whose egg has been inseminated, in the case of a surrogate childbirth involving a host mother.

Japan is currently caught up in a fierce debate over surrogate pregnancies, sparked by actress Aki Mukai’s battle to have the child born to a surrogate mother in the United States legally recognized as her own.

The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology bans surrogate pregnancies, but the law doesn’t, a loophole 64-year-old Netsu has been able to exploit successfully at least five times over the past half a decade.

When asked about Aki Mukai’s case two years ago in an interview by Yomiuri Shinbun, Yahiro Netsu replied:

Ms. Mukai’s action has done much to support my argument concerning surrogate conception in recent years, although I wish she had tried to have a baby in Japan. Still, her coming out with a desire to have a baby through surrogate birth was an attempt to overcome the status quo in which the biological mother of a baby is defined as the legal mother of the child in this country. She has played a great role in encouraging infertile couples in Japan to follow suit.

The famous, or rather infamous, doctor is described as a Maverick in the gynecologists circles, due to his controversial and challenging actions:

Netsu-san is always touching on the forbidden fruits of the gynecological world,You’ve got to remember that surrogate pregnancies are banned for a reason. Everybody goes on about how the mothers feel, but what about the kids in these cases? There are no laws in place at the moment, which creates all sorts of problems in areas like inheritance.

Stay tuned, Netsu-San has more tricks up to his sleeves!

For the first time in Japan, and the fourth time worldwide, a woman gives birth to her grandchild after having implanted her daughter’s egg, fertilized with the sperms of the daughter’s husband.

The family resorted to surrogate birth after the daughter had a surgery to remove her womb following her marriage. The mother, who is in her 50s, suggested bearing her grandchild as a surrogate mother, and so they proceeded in 2004. She gave birth to the child in spring last year in Suwa Maternity Clinic in Shimosuwamachi, Nagano Prefecture.

(source Daily Yomiuri)