Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on August 2014

BRASS ACTION

• For the first time ever, the top uniformed military officers of Japan, the U.S. and South Korea held face-to-face talks. The meeting took place early last month in Hawaii.
• Japan’s youngest mayor—29-year-old Hiroto Fujii of Minokamo city in Gifu Prefecture—was arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe from a local business owner.
• About 300 people attended a meeting in Adachi-ku to call for the dissolution of Aleph, the successor to the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult.
• Members of a government advisory panel have recommended that a group of Christian churches in Nagasaki be listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

THE AIR UP THERE

• Japanese officials are set to adopt the Boeing 777-300ER as the government’s new official state aircraft.
• The planes will be used for shuttling the prime minister and the imperial family on overseas trips.
• Among the requirements for the new aircraft are that they’re able to “fly directly to the U.S. East Coast,” as well as provide VIP rooms and executive offices.
• Meanwhile, ANA is set to introduce a “stretched” version of the Boeing Dreamliner, dubbed the 787-9.

FOREIGN INTRIGUE

• Newly declassified documents from the foreign ministry show that officials were unsure about the protocol for issuing a passport to Emperor Hirohito before a state visit to Europe in 1971. The emperor had not embarked on an overseas trip since assuming the throne in 1926.
• A bilateral economic partnership agreement is being credited with a surge in wine imports from Chile. Chilean wines have overtaken imports from Italy and trail only those from France in terms of market share.
• Under the provisions of a new trade deal, Mongolia has agreed to reduce tariffs on Japanese cars while Japan will lift import restrictions on Mongolian “heated beef.”

GRIM TIDINGS

• Officials at the trade ministry have determined that if a magnitude 9 earthquake were to strike along the Nankai Trough, it would liquefy the soil underneath nearly half of the petrochemical complexes on the Pacific coast.
• Authorities at the justice ministry say more than 200 organizations that participated in a government-sponsored training program for foreigners abused their interns last year.
• The labor ministry announced that the number of compensation claims for “work-related depression or other mental illnesses” hit a record high in fiscal 2013.

INTO THE WILD

• Scientists in Hiroshima have bred a flightless ladybug for use as a biopesticide in greenhouses.
• According to the environment ministry, the number of licensed hunters in Japan has fallen from 518,000 in 1975 to just 198,000 in 2011.
• What’s more, only 9 percent of hunters 40 years ago were aged 60 or older; today, that figure is 66 percent.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Composer Writes Music for Poem by Barefoot Gen creator Keiji Nakazawa” (via Mainichi Japan)