Timeline of Japan 1980-2000
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1980 Jan 11, Honda announced that it would build Japan's first US passenger-car assembly plant in Ohio.
(HN, 1/11/99)
1980 Jan 16, Paul McCartney was arrested in Tokyo for marijuana possession. He was released and deported on Jan 25.
(www.taima.org/en/hemplib3.htm#mccartney)
1980 Jan 25, Paul McCartney was released from Tokyo jail & deported.
(www.taima.org/en/hemplib3.htm#mccartney)
1980 May 22, The computer game Pac-Man was first released in Japan. Pac-Man, with its characters: Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, epitomized the arcade games of the 1980s.
(SFC, 7/5/97, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man)
1980 Jul 17, Zenko Suzuki (1911-2004) was appointed prime minister of Japan. He resigned after 2 years.
(SFC, 7/21/04, p.B7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenko_Suzuki)
1980 The film "Kagemusha" was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1980 The Noda Shoyu Co. Ltd. was renamed Kikkoman.
(SFC, 1/3/00, p.B7)
1980 Dr. Fujio Masuoka, a researcher at Toshiba, filed a patent for a variation on floating-gate memory. His invention was dubbed flash memory because it allowed entire sections of memory to be erased quickly.
(Econ, 3/11/06, Survey p.28)
1981 Apr 9, The submarine USS George Washington ran into the Japanese freighter Nisso Maru. 2 Japanese crewmen were killed.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,164904,00.html)
1981 Jul, Kenji Urada (37), Japanese factory worker, was killed by a robot’s hydraulic arm becoming the 1st recorded victim to die at the hands of robot. Details of the accident were revealed for the first time on December 8, 1981, following a government investigation.
(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.18)(www.tslpl.org/art/811211.htm)
1981 Nov 12, The Double Eagle V landed in California 84 hours and 31 minutes following its Nov 10 launch in Japan. It was the 1st balloon to cross the Pacific ocean. Rocky Aoki (1938-2008), founder of the Benihana steakhouse (1964), was part of the crew.
(http://www.benihana.com/ballooning_history.asp)(SFC, 7/12/08, p.B5)
1981 Nov 18, In Los Angeles Kazuyoshi Miura and his wife (28), visitors from Japan, were shot in a downtown parking lot. His wife went into a coma and later died in Japan. In 1985 Miura was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his wife for insurance money and in 1994 he was convicted of murder. In 1998 a Japanese high court overturned the sentence. In 2008 Miura was arrested in Saipan. He was extradited to the US and committed suicide by hanging on Oct 10, 4 days prior to arraignment on murder conspiracy charges. He was 61.
(SSFC, 2/24/08, p.B3)(SFC, 10/15/08, p.B4)
1981 Japan bailed out the US economy by loading up on 30-year government bonds.
(WSJ, 6/25/96, p.A12)
1981 Japan promised to restrict car exports to America. The restrictions boosted car prices by almost 40% in 1984.
(Econ, 4/8/17, p.65)
1981 Japan signed the UN Refugee Convention of 1951.
(Econ., 3/14/15, p.42)
1981 In Japan Masayoshi Son (b.1957), US educated entrepreneur, set up Softbank as a software distributor.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.71)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son)
1982 Feb 9, On approach to Haneda Airport a Japan Airlines DC-8 plunged into Tokyo Bay killing 24 people. 141 survived the crash caused when the captain pushed the nose down prematurely and engaged in a struggle with the co-pilot.
(WSJ, 3/10/98, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_350)
1982 Aug 11, Pan Am flight 830 from Tokyo to Honolulu was bombed. The bombing was set in motion when Mohammed Rashed, wife Christine Pinter and their son traveled to Tokyo with fraudulent identification documents. Rashed tucked a bomb beneath window seat 47K, pulled the pin, engaged the timer and got off in Japan. Toru Ozawa (16), vacationing with his family, occupied the same seat on the next leg and was killed. 15 people were injured. In 1998 Mohammed Rashid, a Palestinian national, was turned over to the US by Egypt on charges related to the bombing. In 2002 Rashid pleaded guilty in exchange for a release date of March 20, 2013.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_830)(AP, 3/17/13)
1982 Nov 26, Yasuhiro Nakasone of the LDP was elected 71st Japanese prime minister.
(HN, 11/26/98)(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.10)
1982 Chalmers Johnson authored "MITI and the Japanese Economic Miracle."
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A14)
1982 Konishiki, born Salevaa Atisanoe in American Samoa, began competing in sumo wrestling. He opened sumo wrestling to international competition and achieved the 2nd-highest rank. The 600-pound wrestler announced his retirement in 1997.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.A23)
1982 Racketeering by a sokaiya was outlawed. Extortion of Japanese firms by sokaiya had been going on for almost a hundred years.
(SFC, 12/3/97, p.D3)
1982 Honda, the first Japanese auto maker to start production in the US, began making the Honda Accord at Marysville, Ohio.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl F, 10/7/96, p.71)(WSJ, 4/1/09, p.A20)
1982 Japan’s Sony Corp. introduced the 1st CD player.
(WSJ, 3/7/05, p.A8)
1983 Feb 24, A US congressional commission, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, released a report condemning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a "grave injustice."
(AP, 2/24/98)(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A10)
1983 Mar, Compact Disc recordings, introduced by Phillips and Sony in Europe in 1982, were introduced to the US.
(www.iconnect.net/home/bsnpubs/cdhist.html)
1983 Apr 15, Tokyo Disneyland opened.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Disneyland)
1983 May 26, A 7.8 earthquake struck off the shore of Hokkaido, Japan, and a major tsunami followed. Some 100 fatalities were due to the tsunami.
(http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119551140/abstract)
1983 Jun, Japan’s Nissan began to produce trucks in the US. Nissan became the first foreign carmaker in America when it opened an assembly plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
(http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=N040)(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1983 Nov 11, President Reagan became the first U.S. chief executive to address the Diet, Japan's national legislature.
(AP, 11/11/03)
1983 Chio Uno wrote her memoir "I Will Go On Living." It became a best seller and a TV movie.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A21)
1983 In Japan Kenshi Hirokane created his Mr Shima, a salaryman manga (cartoon) character. By 2008 some 30 million Shima Kosaku books had been sold.
(Econ, 8/9/08, p.65)
1983 In Japan Koji Takahashi founded the Life Space cult. His self-enlightenment seminars were an instant success. The group believed that the human body never dies.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A14)
1983 The Green Cross Corp., a major Japanese pharmaceutical firm, was later accused of having sold unheated blood products at this time even after learning that they could infect people with the AIDS virus. In 1996 prosecutors raided their offices. Drug company executives, Renzo Matsushita (79), Takehiko Kawano (69) and Tadakazu Suyama (72) pleaded guilty in 1997 and began prison terms in 2000.
(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A14)(SFC, 2/25/00, p.D4)
1983 Keiko Arimoto of Japan was lured to N. Korea while job hunting in Denmark. In 2002 N. Korea admitted to having kidnapped her and listed her as dead.
(SFC, 9/18/02, p.A10)
1984 The Japanese film "The Funeral" by Juzo Itami (1933-1997) was produced.
(SFC,12/22/97, p.A19)
1984 In Japan Kazuo Inamori, founder of the Japanese technology group Kyocera, established the annual Kyoto Prizes for achievements in advanced technology, basic sciences, arts and philosophy. The Inamori Foundation administered the awards.
(SFC, 6/9/06, p.B3)(http://en.kyocera.de/kyocera_n/english/news/kyotoprize2004.html)
1984 In Japan a concrete anti-tsunami structure spanning 673 feet (205 m) was completed in Fudai under Mayor Kotaku Wamura. The total bill of 3.56 billion yen was split between the prefecture and central government. Two disasters in 1896 and 1933 had destroyed hundreds of homes and killed 439 people. The wall allowed Fudai to survive the tsunami of 2011.
(AP, 5/13/11)
1984 In Japan a split in the yakuza, the country’s biggest organized crime group, left some two dozen gang members dead in territorial battles.
(Econ, 9/12/15, p.38)
1984 Japan’s Sakura company rolled out the first gel ink pen. By 1999 the gelly pen was a huge fad among kids in the US.
(WSJ, 6/15/99, p.A1)
1984 Shoko Asahara started a yoga school in Tokyo. In 1987 he founded the Aum Shinri Kyo cult.
(WSJ, 9/28/01, p.A12)
1984 GM and Toyota established a joint venture, the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), to build cars in Fremont, California.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
1984 Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing retailer, opened its first store.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.65)
1985 Jun 23, All 329 people aboard an Air India Boeing 747 were killed when Flight 182 from Montreal to London crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland, apparently because of a bomb. An hour earlier, a bomb in baggage intended for another Air India flight exploded in a Tokyo airport, killing two baggage handlers. In 2000 Canadian police arrested 2 men of Sikh origin for the bombing. In 2001 Canadian prosecutors filed murder charges against Inderjit Singh Reyat. In 2003 Reyat was sentenced to 5 years for his role in making the bomb. Reyat spent 10 years in prison for building the bomb that exploded at the Narita airport, and another five years for helping make the Flight 182 bomb. In 2005 a Canadian judge acquitted 2 men who had been accused of conspiring in the case. Talwinder Parmar (1944-1992) was later assumed to have been the mastermind behind the attacks. In 2010 Reyat was found guilty of perjury. In 2011 he was sentenced to an additional 9 years in prison. In 2017 Canada’s parole board allowed Reyat to return to private residence following a year in a halfway house.
(AP, 6/23/97)(SFC, 10/28/00, p.A13)(SFC, 6/6/01, p.C3)(AP, 2/11/03)(AP, 3/17/05)(Econ, 6/16/07, p.47)(Reuters, 9/18/10)(Reuters, 1/7/11)(AFP, 2/15/17)
1985 Aug 12, The world's worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into Mount Otsuka, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo, killing 520 of 524 people onboard. A flawed splice made by Boeing 7 years earlier was the probable cause. In 2006 Japan opened a museum to remember the crash. Boeing and JAL paid undisclosed settlements to each victim’s family. Singer Kyu Sakamoto, whose song "Sukiyaki" topped US hit charts in 1963, was among the dead.
(AP, 8/12/97)(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.A1)(AFP, 8/12/10)
1985 Sep 22, In NYC ministers of America, Japan, West Germany, France and Britain (the Group of Five, G-5) unified and adopted the Plaza Accord for currency intervention and struggled to control capital exchange-rate movements. Led by the US Treasury's Sec. James Baker, it was the first effort to restore some semblance of order to the monetary system since the collapse of the postwar Breton Woods gold-anchored finance systems in the early 1970s. In the wake of the accord the dollar lost almost 30% of its value.
(www.g7.utoronto.ca/finance/fm850922.htm)(WSJ, 3/8/04, p.A2)(Econ, 10/9/04, p.72)
1985 The film "Ran" was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1985 The Studio Ghibli was founded by film animators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata in suburban Tokyo
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1985 Nintendo Co. of Japan launched its first home video game console: the Nintendo Entertainment System with “Super Mario Bros." included. In Japan it was known as the Family Computer or Famicom.
(Hem, 4/96, p.29)(Econ, 12/24/16, p.68)
1986 Mar 11, The Japanese probe Sakigake flew by Halley's Comet at 6.8 million km.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1986 Nov 1, In Japan seven charred bodies of women of the cult Friends of Truth were found on a beach. Their leader had recently died in a hospital.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A19)
1986 Nov 15, In the Philippines Japanese executive Noboyuki Wakaoji was kidnapped. He was released after over four months in captivity allegedly after the payment of a huge ransom. Two gang members wee later convicted sentenced to life terms. In 2010 Rolando Fajardo, leader of the kidnapping gang, was arrested.
(www.pctc.gov.ph/papers/InternationalTerrorism.htm)(AFP, 11/1/10)
1986 Nov 20, The US Federal Reserve Board approved a $500 million equity investment by Japan’s Sumitomo Bank in Goldman Sachs.
(Econ, 5/19/07, SR p.20)(http://tinyurl.com/3xdm2q)
1986 The Japanese anime film "Laputa Castle in the Sky" was made by Hayao Miyazaki.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1986 The Japanese anime film "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Gods" was made by Hayao Miyazaki. It was released as "Warriors of the Wind" in the US.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1986 The Japanese film "Tampopo," directed by Juzo Itami, was produced and released in the US in 1987. It was about an enterprising widow who fulfills her aspiration to become Tokyo's best noodle maker with the help of a truck driver who fancies himself a cowboy.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1986 Japan passed equal-employment-opportunity legislation removing most legal barriers to women in the workplace. Discrimination remained rampant.
(Econ, 11/20/10, SR p.8)
1986 Takako Doi was elected the head of the Socialist Party and became the first woman to lead a political party in Japan.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)
1986 Japan began its H-2 rocket program. The H-2 was terminated in 1999.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.D8)
1986-1988 Kiichi Miyazawa served as finance minister. He presided over a "bubble economy" period of inflated land and stock prices.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A16)
1987 Mar 30, Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" was bought for $39.85 million. The Vincent van Gogh painting "Sunflowers" was presented by art teacher Claude-Emile Schuffenecker at a 1901 Paris exhibition. It sold in 1987 for $40.3 million to the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Co. and was reported in 1997 to be a possible fake. Van Gogh’s letters refer to only 6 paintings of sunflowers, and the Yasuda painting is a seventh.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.D4)(HN, 3/30/98)
1987 Apr 17, President Reagan slapped $300 million in punitive duties on imported Japanese computers, television sets and power tools, in retaliation for Japan's alleged violation of a computer chip trade agreement.
(AP, 4/17/97)
1987 Sep, Eamonn Fingleton authored an article in Euromoney titled “Why Japanese Banks Are Shaky."
(www.fingleton.net/about_ef.php)
1987 Oct 31, Noboro Takeshita (d.2000 at 76), leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, was elected party president in his first official step toward replacing Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. He served as premier to 1989.
(AP, 10/31/97)(SFC, 6/19/00, p.E2)
1987 Nov 18, CBS Inc. announced it had agreed to sell its records division to Sony Corp. for about $2 billion.
(AP, 11/18/97)
1987 In Japan Haruki Murakami authored "Norwegian Wood." The novel experimented with reality. An English translation was made in 1997. By 2010 the love story sold more than 10 million copies in Japan and 2.6 million abroad in 36 languages. The film "Norwegian Wood," by Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung, opened in Japan in December, 2010.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.B7)(AP, 11/26/10)
1987 Robert Whiting published "You Gotta Have Wa," a nonfiction work on Japanese baseball.
(SFC, 8/14/99, p.B10)
1987 The Japanese film "Tampopo," directed by Juzo Itami, was released in the US. It was about an enterprising widow who fulfills her aspiration to become Tokyo's best noodle maker with the help of a truck driver who fancies himself a cowboy.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1987 The Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth) cult was founded by Shoko Asahara. It was a combination of Christianity and Buddhism.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A14)
1987 Japan gave its tentative consent to co-develop a version of the US F-16 fighter jet.
(WSJ, 3/22/96, p.A-1)
1987 Japan began privatizing Japan National Railways, the state railroad monopoly.
(WSJ, 1/10/05, p.A10)
1987 Japan privatized Japan Airlines (JAL). By 2001 it required 3 state bailouts.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.76)
1987 Toyota introduced All Trac models, featuring 4-wheel-drive, of Camry and other cars.
(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1988 Apr, The Japanese Red Army bombed a US military recreational club in Naples. 5 people were killed.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
1988 Jun 8, Nippon Airways announced that painting eyeballs on Jets cut bird collisions by 20%.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1988 Aug 10, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, a measure providing $20,000 payments to Japanese-Americans interned by the US government during World War II. The American government issued a formal apology and eventually compensated 80,000 victims
(AP, 8/10/97)(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A1)(Econ., 6/20/20, p.64)
1988 Yuji Ichioka (d.2002 at 66), San Francisco born historian, authored "Issei," a study of 1st generation Japanese-Americans.
(SFC, 9/21/02, p.A30)
1988 Clyde Prestowitz authored "Trading Places." T prescribed a tough US trade stance to counter Japan's economic challenge.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A14)
1988 The Japanese horror film "Evil Dead Trap" starred Miyuki Ono and was directed by Toshiharu Ikeda.
(SFC, 10/25/98, p.D2)
1988 The Japanese anime film “Grave of the Fireflies" was made by Isao Takahata. It was based on Akiyuki Nosaka’s autobiographical novel (1967) of the same name recounting raids on Kobe in March 1945.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)(Econ., 4/4/15, p.16)
1988 The Japanese anime film “My Neighbor Totoro" was made by Hayao Miyazaki.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)(SFC, 8/7/09, p.E2)
1988 The Recruit Scandal exposed leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who were accused of accepting stock and cash bribes from the Recruit Co., a personnel recruiting and publishing conglomerate.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)
1988 Yasumitsu Shigeta founded Hikari Tsushim (light communications), a mobile phone franchise. His assets were valued at $70 billion when his stock and internet assets collapsed in 2000 and his fortune dropped to $2.5 billion.
(WSJ, 4/27/00, p.A1)
1988 Nintendo of Japan launched its Nintendo Power magazine aimed at boys 8-15 years old. It claims a subscription based circulation of 1 million.
(Hem, 4/96, p.30)
1988 Sony Corp. acquired CBS Records. [see Nov 18, 1987]
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.C7)
1989 Jan 7, Emperor Hirohito of Japan died at age 87 after the longest reign in the history of Japan (1922-89); he was succeeded by Crown Prince Akihito. Heisei, which means Peace and Prosperity, was adopted as the new reign name. For the first time since 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in the Diet's Upper House. In 1989 Edward Behr authored "Hirohito: Behind the Myth." In 2000 Herbert P. Bix authored "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan." Hirohito was a marine biologist and collector. His work included the illustrated book "Crabs of Sagami Bay."
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(AP, 1/7/98)(WSJ, 8/30/00, p.A24)(WSJ, 5/29/01, p.A20)
1989 Feb 24, A state funeral was held in Japan for Emperor Hirohito, who died the month before at age 87.
(AP, 2/24/99)
1989 Apr 1, A Japanese 3% consumption, or sales tax, took effect. It earned Sadanori Yamanaka (d.2004) the nickname "Mr. Consumption Tax." In 1997 it rose to 5%. Yamanaka led the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's tax commission for eight years, beginning in 1979.
(AP, 2/20/04)(Econ, 6/23/12, p.43)
1989 Apr 25, Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita announced his resignation in order to take responsibility for his involvement in Japan's Recruit stock scandal.
(AP, 4/25/99)
1989 Jun 3, Japan’s Foreign Minister Sousuke Uno was named prime minister. He replaced Noboru Takeshita, who resigned to save his ruling Liberal Democratic Party from further embarrassment over an influence peddling scandal.
(www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,957926,00.html)
1989 Jul 23, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in the upper house of the Diet in parliamentary elections.
(AP, 7/23/99)
1989 Jul 24, Japan’s PM Sousuke Uno (1922-1998) resigned in the wake of Japan's ruling party's defeat. Uno resigned amid a scandal involving his geisha mistress. Criticism focused on allegations that he treated her in a miserly fashion.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1989-7/1989-07-24-ABC-11.html)(SFC, 8/20/96, p.A18)
1989 Aug 9, Toshiki Kaifu was elected prime minister of Japan, succeeding Sousuke Uno.
(AP, 8/9/99)
1989 Sep 27, Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc. agreed to a $3.4 billion buyout by Sony Corporation.
(AP, 9/27/99)
1989 Oct 30, Mitsubishi Estate Co., a major Japanese real estate concern, announced it was buying 51 percent of Rockefeller Group Inc. of New York.
(AP, 10/30/99)
1989 Nov 4, In Japan Yokohama lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, was kidnapped with his wife and infant son. He had been leading a legal crusade against the Aum Shinri Kyo cult. Later top members of the cult admitted to killing the family. In 1998 Kazuaki Okazaki (38) was sentenced to death for the murder. In 2000 Satoru Hashimoto was sentenced to death for the strangling deaths of the Sakamoto family and for the 1995 sarin gas attacks.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A12)(SFC, 7/26/00, p.A14)
1989 Dec 25, The Bank of Japan raised interest rates to slow the heated economy.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.66)
1989 Dec 31, The Japanese Nikkei Index peaked at 38,915. The DJIA was at 2753.
(WSJ, 9/5/01, p.C1)
1989 Karel Von Wolferen authored “The Enigma of Japanese Power."
(Econ, 11/14/09, p.78)
1989 Shintaro Isihara and Akio Morita, former chairman of Sony, co-authored "The Japan That Can Say No." It argued that Japan should challenge US hegemony and act as a geopolitical free agent.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A10)
1989 The Japanese anime film “Kiki’s Delivery Service" was made by Hayao Miyazaki.
(SFC, 8/7/09, p.E2)
1989 The Japanese police drama film "Violent Cop" starred Takeshi Kitano, who also directed.
(SFC, 8/27/99, p.C3)
1989 Japan’s PM Sousuke Uno resigned over a scandal involving his geisha mistress. Criticism focused on allegations that he treated her in a miserly fashion.
(SFC, 8/20/96, p.A18)(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1989 In Japan mutilated skulls and bones were found near the former Tokyo headquarters of Unit 731, a covert body charged with developing techniques of chemical and biological warfare during WWII.
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.48)
1989 Nintendo Co. of Japan launched its Game Boy product, a portable, hand-held game system with interchangeable game packs. The game was designed by Gunpei Yokoi (d.1997 at 56).
(Hem, 4/96, p.29)(SFC, 10/11/97, p.A19)
1989 The Showa Shinzan snowball-fight championship was begun as a tourist attraction in Sobetsucho, Japan.
(WSJ, 2/26/04, p.A1)
1989 Japan’s Toyoto Corp. launched the Lexus, a premium brand car, in the US.
(Econ, 6/7/14, p.69)
1990 Feb 18, In general elections, Japan's conservative governing party held onto its 34-year-old majority in the Parliament's lower house.
(AP, 2/18/00)
1990 Apr, The Aum Shinri Kyo cult sent three trucks into central Tokyo to spray poisonous botulin mists. The convoy then attacked US bases at Yokohama and Yokosuka. The botulin did not work and the cult turned to use anthrax.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1990 May 15, The "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" (1890) by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) sold for $82.5 million to Ryoei Saito, Japan's second-largest paper manufacturer.
(www.vggallery.com/painting/p_0753.htm)
1990 Nov 26, Japanese business giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. agreed to acquire MCA Inc. for $6.6 billion.
(AP, 11/26/01)
1990 A 173-page memoir by Japanese Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989), created at the request of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and dictated to the emperor’s aides soon after the end of the war, was published in Japan. It covers events from the Japanese assassination of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 to the emperor's surrender broadcast recorded on Aug. 14, 1945. On Dec. 6, 2017, the transcript of the memoir was sold at auction in NYC for $275,000.
(AP, 12/5/17)(SFC, 12/8/17, p.A2)
1990 Shintaro Ishihara (b.1932), a member of Japan’s House of Representatives, authored “The Japan That Can Say No," in which he outlines what Japan must do in order to be the mainspring of the new world order.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shintaro_Ishihara)
1990 The film "Dreams" was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1990 Japan raised its interest rates and ordered banks to curtail property lending. This resulted in a major crash in land values. Speculation in domestic real estate, stocks, overpriced overseas investments, and foreign pressure to force the value of the yen upward causes a collapse of the "bubble economy."
(WSJ, 11/30/95, p.A-1)(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)
1990 Chiyo Uno (1897-1996) was awarded a title by the emperor and named a "person of cultural merit." Her best know book was "Ohan" (1957).
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A21)(http://asian-literature.suite101.com/article.cfm/uno_chiyo)
1990 The Sakura Bank was created from the merger of Mitsui Bank and Taiyo Kobe Bank.
(WSJ, 10/15/99, p.A10)
1990 Fusako Sano (9) disappeared while walking home in Sanjo in Niigita Prefecture. In 2000 she was found held hostage at the home of Nobuyuki Sato (37), 35 miles away from where she was kidnapped.
(SFC, 4/11/00, p.A12)
1990-2000 This was a period of economic stagnation in Japan and later called "the lost decade." It resulted in the opening of the Japanese economy to foreigners. In 2006 a trio of economists authored a paper “Zombie lending and depressed re-structuring in Japan," which examined how subsidies to weak firms prolonged Japan’s period of deflation.
(WSJ, 12/28/00, p.A1)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.62)
1991 Mar, The video game “Street Fighter II" was released in Japan by Capcom. It introduced female characters. It was a sequel to Capcom's 1987 fighting game Street Fighter.
(SFC, 2/15/11, p.E5)
1991 Jun 3, Mount Unzendake in southern Japan erupted and left 43 people dead and nearly 2,300 homeless. The dead included volcano experts Maurice and Katia Krafft.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.A17)(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.A17)(AP, 6/3/01)(WSJ, 4/18/02, p.D7)
1991 Jul 12, A Japanese professor who had translated Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" was found stabbed to death, nine days after the novel's Italian translator was attacked in Milan.
(AP, 7/12/01)
1991 Dr. Junichi Saga authored "Confessions of a Yakuza." It was based on the testimony of Eiji Ijichi, a retired Japanese gangster. In 2003 it was noted that Bob Dylan used lines from the book in his 2001 album "Love and Theft."
(WSJ, 7/8/03, p.A1)
1991 Christo created his "Umbrellas" sculpture that lasted 3 weeks. 1,760 yellow umbrellas were unfurled north of Los Angeles and another 1,340 blue ones in Ibaraki, Japan.
(SFC, 3/2/97, p.E4)(SSFC, 2/13/05, p.A10)
1991 The Japanese anime film "Only Yesterday" was made by Isao Takahata.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1991 The film "Rhapsody in August" was directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was about a family who lost an uncle in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1991 The sci-fi Japanese film "Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer" was filmed. Shinya Tsukamoto starred in and directed the film.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.D4)
1991 Factional infighting brought down Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu and his cabinet. He was replaced by Kiichi Miyazawa.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)
1991 In Japan Toshikazu Sugaya, a kindergarten bus driver, was arrested in the murder of a 4-year-old girl in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, a year earlier. A local court sentenced him to life imprisonment in 1993, and Japan's top court rejected his appeal in 2000. In 2010 a court officially declared him innocent in the murder and offered a rare apology for a forced confession and wrongful conviction that kept him behind bars for more than 17 years. Sugaya (63), was serving a life sentence when new DNA tests last year showed his innocence.
(AP, 3/26/10)
1991 Ryoei Saito purchased 2 paintings by Van Gogh and Renoir for $185 million.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R4)
1991 Carbon nanotubules, formed from hexagonal arrays of carbon atoms, were first discovered by Sumio Iijima of NEC Fundamental Research Labs in Tsukuba, Japan. In 2001 IBM scientists assembled transistors using carbon nanotubules.
(SFC, 4/27/01, p.B1,4)
1991 Sony introduced the first commercial lithium-ion batteries in its CCD-TR1 camcorder. They had a capacity to overheat. In 2004 the US banned them as cargo on passenger planes. In 2006 Dell and Apple initiated recalls for laptop computers with recently manufactured, problematic lithium-ion batteries.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.52)(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.23)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.16)
1992 Jan 8, President Bush collapsed during a state dinner in Tokyo; White House officials said Bush was suffering from stomach flu.
(AP, 1/8/02)
1992 Jan 13, Japan apologized for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.
(AP, 1/13/98)
1992 Feb 3, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa sparked controversy by saying American workers were losing the drive "to live by the sweat of their brow."
(AP, 2/3/02)
1992 Jun 11, Baseball owners approved the sale of Seattle Mariners to a Japanese group.
(http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/S/Seattle_Mariners.stm)
1992 Oct 17, Japanese exchange student Yoshi Hattori, 16, was shot and killed by Rodney Peairs in Center, La., after Hattori and his American host mistakenly knocked on Peairs' door while looking for a Halloween party. Peairs was acquitted of manslaughter, but in a civil trial was ordered to pay more than $650,000 in damages to Hattori's family.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1992 Oct 23, Japanese Emperor Akihito began a visit to China, the first by a Japanese monarch.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1992 Yuko Iwanami, the granddaughter of Hideki Tojo, published "My Grandfather Hideki Tojo."
(WSJ, 4/30/98, p.A15)
1992 Nobuhiro Watsuki first published “Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story" in the boy’s magazine Weekly Shonen Jump Special. He re-wrote it in 1994 and expanded the saga of the Meiji Restoration of 1868 as a serial that ran thru 1999. In 2004 it became the top-selling graphic novel in the US.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.B3)
1992 The Japanese anime film "Porco Rosso" was made by Hayao Miyazaki.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1992 The Japanese film "The Winners" featured an old gent's quest to take his team to the national gateball championships. Gateball, based on croquet, was invented after WW II by Washin Suzuki, a former military policeman, as a game for children. It was later promoted as good exercise for seniors.
(WSJ, 1/10/00, p.A1)
1992 Emp. Akihito opened a museum devoted to the art and poetry collections of past rulers on his palace grounds.
(SFC,12/15/97, p.E3)
1992 The government passed the PKO bill. The controversial legislation allowed troops to be sent abroad on peace-keeping missions.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)
1992 Japan passed a law that made it a crime to demand that a securities company return investment losses.
(SFC, 12/3/97, p.D3)
1992 Japan passed an anti-mob law the clearly defined illegal behavior and penalized companies with yakuza ties. This led to the practice of using former policemen to replace yakuza for protection.
(Econ, 2/28/09, p.45)
1992 Ling Ling (d.2008), a giant panda born at China's Beijing Zoo in 1985, came to Tokyo. He later traveled to Mexico three times for unsuccessful mating.
(AP, 4/30/08)
1992 Juzo Itami, film director, was slashed in the face and seriously injured by Japanese mobsters upset over his unflattering portrayal of gangsters in a film.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1992 The Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan began sponsoring the Blue Planet Prize, an award for environmental work.
(SFC, 6/15/99, p.A20)
1992 Nicola Zappetti, American gangster in Japan, died. He had told his story to Robert Whiting who published in 1999: "Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan."
(SFC, 8/14/99, p.B1)
1993 Jan 15, A 7.5 earthquake struck northern Japan and 2 people died.
(http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2003/eq_030925/)
1993 Feb 9, Saburo Okita (b.1914), Japanese economist and former foreign minister (1979-80), died. He to a large part introduced the “flying geese" pattern of economic development to the Western political and business audiences. Kaname Akamatsu, Japanese economist, had developed the multi-tier hierarchical 'flying geese' model in the 1930s to describe how industrialization spreads from developed countries to the developing countries.
(www.risklatte.com/Articles_new/BraveEconomist/Brave_10.php)(Econ, 11/13/10, p.50)
1993 Feb 28, Ishiro Honda (81), Japanese director, producer (Godzilla), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0393094/)
1993 Apr 15, The Group of Seven nations unveiled a $28.4 billion aid package for Russia at the conclusion of an emergency two-day meeting in Tokyo.
(AP, 4/15/98)
1993 Apr 16, At the White House, President Clinton pressed Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa to help ease Japan's persistent trade surplus with the United States.
(AP, 4/16/98)
1993 May 23, A jury in Baton Rouge, La., acquitted Rodney Peairs of manslaughter in the shooting death of Yoshi Hattori, a Japanese exchange student he'd mistaken for an intruder. Peairs was later found liable in a civil suit brought by Hattori's parents.
(AP, 5/23/08)
1993 Jun 9, As millions of Japanese watched on television, Crown Prince Naruhito wed commoner Masako Owada in an elaborate Shinto religious ceremony.
(AP, 6/9/98)
1993 Jun 18, In Japan, the government of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa fell.
(AP, 6/18/98)
1993 Jun, The Aum Shinri Kyo cult pumped a slurry of liquid anthrax into a sprayer and created a cloud that would settle on victims, but it didn't work.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1993 Jul 6, On the eve of the Group of Seven summit in Tokyo, President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa expressed optimism about resolving a contentious trade dispute between their countries.
(AP, 7/6/98)
1993 Jul 7, The Group of Seven nations (G7), on the first day of their economic summit in Tokyo, unveiled a long-sought agreement on world trade. Prior to the summit opening, President Clinton delivered a speech at Waseda University.
(AP, 7/7/03)
1993 Jul 8, Leaders of the Group of Seven, in the second day of their Tokyo summit, warned against the dismembering of Bosnia, but backed away from a threat to use force.
(AP, 7/8/03)
1993 Jul 12, 196 people were killed when an earthquake measuring a magnitude of 7.8 struck northern Japan.
(AP, 7/12/98)
1993 Jul 19, Szymon Goldberg (84), Polish-born violinist, conductor, died in Japan. He became a US citizen in 1953 and two years later founded the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra.
(http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200152693/default.html)
1993 Jul 22, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa agreed to resign, following big election losses by the scandal-plagued Liberal Democrats.
(AP, 7/22/98)
1993 Jul, The Aum Shinri Kyo cult again pumped a slurry of liquid anthrax into a sprayer and shot it near the Imperial Palace and around central Tokyo without success.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1993 Aug 5, Japan's Cabinet resigned, paving the way for the end of 38 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.
(AP, 8/5/03)
1993 Aug 6, Morihiro Hosokawa was elected the new prime minister of Japan by the country's lower house of Parliament. The Liberal Democratic Party was ousted after ruling since 1955. Hosokawa had formed the Japan New Party in May 1992. It ruled for only 8 months.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.B-13)(AP, 8/6/98)(Econ, 11/10/07, p.52)
1993 The film "Madadayo" was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1993 The American film “Rising Sun" was directed by Philip Kaufman. It was based on detective thriller by Michael Crichton and marked a peak in American Japanophobia.
(SFC, 5/23/12, p.E3)(Econ, 6/28/14, p.27)
1993 The American Akebono was promoted to yokozuna, the 1st rank of sumo wrestling.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.A25)
1993 Japan’s government lifted a four-year moratorium on capital punishment.
(AP, 9/16/05)
1993 The government of Japan approved 7 foreign access zones to promote imports and foreign investments.
(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.B-13)
1993 Japan’s “Kono Statement" was its first apology for incidents of sexual slavery during WWII. Yohei Kono was Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time.
(Economist, 9/8/12, p.38)(AP, 6/1/13)
1993 In Japan Shuji Nakamura, an employee of Nichia Corp., invented the blue light-emitting diode (LED). In 2001 Nakamura sued Nichia in a patent dispute that later settled for $7 million.
(Econ, 2/7/04, p.60)(Econ, 9/23/06, TQ p.27)
1993 Kobo Abe, Japanese writer, died. He wrote "Woman in the Dunes." In 1996 his last novel "Kangaroo Notebook" was published.
(SFC, 6/23/96, BR, p.4)
1994 Jan 23, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, visiting Japan, met with Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, who promised to go through with a scheduled summit with President Clinton.
(AP, 1/23/99)
1994 Jan 29, Japan's Parliament approved watershed measures to stem political corruption.
(AP, 1/29/99)
1994 Apr 8, Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa announced his intention to resign in the wake of an ever-widening financial scandal. In 1998 Hosokawa abandoned politics and began studying ceramics. In 2006 his pieces fetched as much as $10,000.
(AP, 4/8/99)(SSFC, 2/19/06, p.A21)
1994 Apr 25, Conservative Tsutomu Hata, former foreign minister, became prime minister of Japan, succeeding Morihiro Hosokawa as political infighting continued.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(AP, 4/25/99)
1994 May 24, The United States and Japan agreed to revive efforts to pry open Japanese markets to U.S. goods.
(AP, 5/24/99)
1994 June 21, Seven people died and more than 200 were sickened by fumes from the lethal nerve gas sarin in Matsumoto in Central Japan. The Aum Shinri Kyo cult (Supreme Truth) was later charged with the attack.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A13)
1994 Jun 25, Japanese Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata, faced with certain defeat in a no-confidence vote, announced his intention to resign after just two months in office.
(AP, 6/25/99)
1994 Jun 29, Japan's parliament chose Tomiichi Murayama to be the new prime minister, succeeding Tsutoma Hata.
(AP, 6/29/04)
1994 Jun, Koken Nosaka (d.2004), a top government spokesman under Japan's first Socialist prime minister, helped end political turmoil by brokering a once-unthinkable alliance between his party, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party and the now-defunct Sakigake Party.
(AP, 4/18/04)
1994 Aug 7, The 10th International Conference on AIDS opened in Yokohama, Japan.
(AP, 8/7/99)
1994 Aug 11, The Tenth International Conference on AIDS concluded in Yokohama, Japan.
(AP, 8/11/99)
1994 Oct 1, The United States and Japan reached a series of trade agreements, averting a threatened trade war.
(AP, 10/1/99)
1994 Oct 13, Kenzabuto Oe, Japanese novelist, won the Noble prize for literature. His work included "An Echo of Heaven."
(SFC, 7/7/96, BR p.9)(AP, 10/13/99)
1994 Nov 25, Sony Corporation co-founder Akio Morita retired as chairman of the electronics giant for health reasons.
(AP, 11/25/04)
1994 Dec 3, Japan’s Sony Corp. launched its PlayStation game console.
(WSJ, 3/7/05, p.A8)(Econ, 12/10/11, SR p.4)
1994 Dec, Ichiro Ozawa helped form the new opposition Shinshinto, New Freedom Party, through an alliance of nine small parties opposed to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, LDP.
(SFC,12/27/97, p.A12)
1994 Sheldon Harris (d.2002) wrote "Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-Up." It was about Japanese medical units in Manchuria that engaged in horrific warfare experiments on humans.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C4)(SFC, 9/9/02, p.A22)
1994 The thriller film "Angel Dust" was directed by Sogo Ishi.
(SFC, 7/18/97, p.D3)
1994 The 52-story Shinjuku Park Tower in Tokyo, Japan, was completed. It was designed by Kenzo Tenge and built for the Tokyo Gas Urban Development Company.
(www.tokyoarchitecture.info/Building/4035/Shinjuku_Park_Tower.php)
1994 The Asian and Pacific Trade Center opened in Osaka as the first functioning foreign access zone.
(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.B-13)
1994 Tomiicchi Murayama of the Social Democrats became the head of the government coalition.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A26)
1994 Japan introduced subsidies for solar power technology. A typical system cost $16,000 per kilowatt, of which the government paid half. The subsidies were phased out in 2005.
(Econ, 11/18/06, p.73)
1994 Aoyama, a Japanese-born North Korean engineer, began spying for Japan. In 1997 as an industrial spy in Beijing he confirmed that North Korea had developed a nuclear bomb.
(SFC, 11/28/02, p.F5)
1994 The Japanese were first allowed to buy mobile phones.
(WSJ, 4/28/00, p.A6)
1994 Japan posted a record trade surplus of $120.9 billion.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
1994-1995 Haruki Murakami (b.1949) authored his 3-volume novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," a surreal 600-page exploration of fear. An English version was published in 1997. In 2011 a stage version premiered in Edinburgh.
(Econ, 8/27/11, p.75)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami)
1994-1997 Hisako Takahashi, a Labor Ministry official, served on the Supreme Court. She was the 1st woman to serve on the Japanese high court.
(SFC, 12/22/01, p.A2)
1995 Jan 11, President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama held a low-key summit in Washington, playing down differences over trade.
(AP, 1/11/00)
1995 Jan 17, A magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the port city of Kobe, Japan. 5,502 people were killed in the worst earthquake to hit Japan since 1923.
(WSJ, 1/18/95, p.A1)(AP, 6/22/02)(SSFC, 4/16/06, p.F4)
1995 Feb 26, Barings PLC, Britain's oldest investment banking firm, was forced into bankruptcy after an employee in Singapore, Nicholas William Leeson (28), speculated in derivatives on Tokyo stock prices that resulted in losses exceeding $800 million [$1.4 billion].
(WSJ, 2/27/95, p.A1)(AP, 2/26/00)
1995 Mar 2, Ted Truman, a top int’l. staffer at the Federal Reserve, reported to Alan Greenspan that massive dollar sales were driving down the US currency. In response the Fed and Treasury bought $600 million in marks and yen and repeated the action next day joined by 13 central banks.
(WSJ, 1/18/05, p.A13)
1995 Mar 3, The dollar plunged to a new low against the Japanese yen. In response the Fed and US Treasury bought more yen and were joined by 13 central banks. American and Japan intervened in 1995 to halt the dollar’s slide against the yen. The dollar stabilized.
(AP, 3/3/00)(Econ, 3/29/08, p.100)
1995 Mar 10, The book "Blindside: Why Japan Is Still on Track to Overtake the US by the year 2000," by Eamonn Fingleton, was published. He argued that the Japanese economic slump was a ruse to lull rivals into complacency.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A14)
1995 Mar 19, In Japan 5 people died by poison gas in a subway. [see Mar 20]
(MC, 3/19/02)
1995 Mar 20, A gas attack by the Aum Shinri Kyo cult on Tokyo's subways killed 12 people. More than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the poisonous gas sarin leaked on five separate subway trains. Masato Yokoyama, a cult leader, was sentenced to death in 1999. In 2000 Robert Jay Lifton authored "Destroying the World To Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism." In 2001 Haruki Murakami's "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche" was published in English. In 2004 Shoko Asahara was convicted and sentenced to hang for masterminding the deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway and other crimes that killed 27 people.
(SFC, 7/4/96, p.A10)(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)(AP, 3/20/97)(SFC, 9/30/99, p.D14)(SFEC, 1/16/00, BR p.9)(SSFC, 4/29/01, DB p.81)(AP, 2/27/04)
1995 Mar 21, Thousands of Japanese police raided the offices of a secretive religious group, Aum Shinri Kyo, in connection with nerve-gas attacks on Tokyo subways that killed 12 people and sickened thousands. In ensuing weeks they found tons of chemicals used to make sarin nerve gas and evidence of biological weapons research.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(AP, 3/21/00)
1995 Mar 28, In Japan, Mitsubishi Bank and the Bank of Tokyo agreed to a merger to create what was then the world's largest bank.
(AP, 3/28/00)
1995 Mar 30, In Japan Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency, was seriously wounded by a masked gunman. Two months later a police officer confessed to the attack. He was a member of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult and said that he was ordered to carry out the attack. The confession was kept secret until anonymous newspaper accounts warned of a coverup in 1996.
(SFC, 10/30/96, p.A1,6)
1995 Apr 23, Hideo Murai, head of the science ministry of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult, was stabbed and killed. Police suspected that a cult leader ordered his murder so that he would not testify about Aum's nerve gas production.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)
1995 May 5, Talks collapsed between the United States and Japan on averting a trade fight over automobiles.
(AP, 5/5/00)
1995 May 16, The Clinton administration threatened punitive tariffs that would double the prices for Japan's most popular luxury cars.
(AP, 5/16/00)
1995 May 16, Aum Shinri Kyo cult leader Shoko Asahara was found hiding in a secret room at a cult compound in Kamikuishiki and arrested. A letter bomb exploded in Tokyo's city hall and injured an aid of the governor who had advocated withdrawing Aum's religious permit. His teachings declared that he was Christ, that meditation was required for enlightenment, and that Armageddon is imminent.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(SFC, 11/2/96, p.A9)(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A13)
1995 Jun 15, The Summit of 7 leading industrialist nations, G-7, met in Halifax, Canada, for talks on a unified front against terrorism. President Clinton met with Japanese PM Tomiichi Murayama on the opening day of a Group of Seven summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
(AP, 6/15/00)(SFC, 6/20/97, p.A16)
1995 Jun 22, Riot police stormed a hijacked jumbo jet in Hakodate, Japan, freeing all 364 people on board and capturing a lone hijacker.
(AP, 6/22/00)
1995 Jun, Japan's Fair Trade Commission clamped down on Shiseido's business practices and deregulated cosmetics imports. The FTC in this year had 220 investigators and a budget of ¥5.24 billion.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A10)(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.9)
1995 Sep 26, A bond trader at Japan's Daiwa Bank was charged with doctoring records to hide $1.1 billion in losses.
(AP, 9/26/00)
1995 Sep 29, Three U-S servicemen were indicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl and handed over to Japanese authorities. They were later convicted.
(AP, 9/29/00)
1995 Nov 2, Daiwa Bank was expelled from the US after it was learned that it tried to cover-up illicit trades by bond trader Toshihide Iguchi who lost some $1.1 billion between 1984-1995. Mr. Iguchi was later sentenced to 4 years in prison and fined nearly $2.6 million.
(WSJ, 1/8/97, p.A14)(AP, 11/2/00)
1995 Nov 7, In a Japanese courtroom, three American military men admitted to the ambush-rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl, an attack that outraged the Japanese and strained security ties between Japan and the US. The men later received prison sentences ranging from six and a-half to seven years.
(AP, 11/7/00)
1995 Dec 29, Japan's finance minister (Masayoshi Takemura) announced the resignation of the deputy finance minister (Kyosuke Shinozawa) over several scandals, including the ministry's cover-up of trading losses at Daiwa Bank's New York office.
(AP, 12/29/00)
1995 Dec, A government advisory panel urges that a new capital be set up by the year 2010 within 180 miles of Tokyo.
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-10)
1995 Dec, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama led the government plan to spend 6.7 bil to help cover the losses of the Junes, seven housing-loan companies, which total 63 billion. Japan has a larger bad-loan crises of $367 bil.
(WSJ, 12/20/95, p.A-10)
1995 Dec 8, There was an accident at the Japanese Menjou prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor in the Fukui Prefecture that forced closure. Two tons of non-radioactive, but violently reactive liquid sodium leaked from the cooling system. Japan had 51 nuclear power plants that produced 33.8% of its energy needs.
(WSJ, 12/27/95, p. A-7)(SFC, 3/13/97, p.A12)
1995 Mammon Mimizuka a "living national treasure of Japan," admired the work of Narrate Mochizuki Goldsmith (d.1997), who had developed a new art form of calligraphic brush writing on ceramics for refined renditions of medieval Japanese poetry on abstract sculptural forms.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A20)
1995 The Etsuko and Joe Price Collection: "Masterworks of Japanese Painting" is a CD that shows the Japanese Edo paintings housed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the greatest collection in the Western world.
(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.85)
1995 The book “A Passion for Success," by Kazuo Inamori, founder of the Japanese technology group Kyocera, was published in English.
(http://en.kyocera.de/kyocera_n/english/culture/success.html)
1995 A Japanese weekly comic book featured the story "Initial D," which focused on a drifter named Takumi, who honed his (car) sliding skills on early morning runs delivering tofu to a resort hotel in the mountains.
(WSJ, 9/18/03, p.A10)
1995 Yukinobu Hoshino (b.1954), Japanese manga artist, introduced a comic strip called “The Case Records of Professor Munakata," an “authority on the study of folklore, who reveals the invisible historical facts hidden behind the myths."
(Econ, 8/28/10, p.75)(www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=25688)
1995 The Japanese anime film "Whisper of the Heart" was made by Yoshifumi Kondo (d.1998 at 47).
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1995 In Japan a fad called purikura began. Young people began taking color photos in booths with customized backgrounds and digital decorations.
(SFC, 1/23/09, p.B9)
1995 American and Japan intervened to halt the dollar’s slide against the yen.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.100)
1995 In Japan executives of the Takashimaya department store chain paid $730,000 to ensure a quiet stockholders meeting. The money was paid to Isao Nishiura, the head of a group of Japanese mobsters (yakuza) who practice "sokaiya'" a form of extortion. Three executives and Isao were arrested in 1996. Payments had been made for as long as ten years.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1995 For this year US official aid donations were $7.3 bil. Japan’s was $14.5 bil. France’s was $8.4 bil. Germany’s was $7.5 bil.
(SFC, 6/18/96, p.A10)
1996 Jan 5, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama resigned.
(AP, 1/5/01)
1996 Jan 8, Trade Minister Hashimoto was endorsed by the ruling coalition to become prime minister.
(WSJ, 1/9/96, p.A-1)
1996 Jan, Sadako Abe, a Shiseido executive director, urged the company's board to consider acquisitions to boost global business in the cosmetics industry.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A10)
1996 Feb 10, A slab of mountainside crushed a highway tunnel on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, killing 20 people.
(AP, 2/10/01)
1996 Mar 7, Three US servicemen were convicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl and sentenced by a Japanese court to six and a-half to seven years in prison.
(AP, 3/7/01)
1996 Mar 28, Shin Kanemaru, power broker in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, died at 82.
(WSJ, 3/28/96,p.A-1)
1996 Mar, The Health Ministry removed barriers to imports of cosmetic products by unofficial distributors.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A1)
1996 Apr 5, The state owned Japanese National Railways Settlement Corp. owes $258 billion to banks, bondholders and the government.
(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.A-1)
1996 Apr 13, The US agreed to close the Futenma Air Station at Okinawa, Japan. The 1200 acre base is surrounded by the densely populated city of Iowan.
(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-8)
1996 Apr, Takafumi Horie (23), a student at the Univ. of Tokyo, set up Livin’ on the Edge Inc., a Web-site design company. In 2000 the company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and in 2004 the name was changed to Livedoor, after an Internet service provider that it took over in 2002.
(WSJ, 2/3/06, p.A1)
1996 Jun 14, Sumitomo Corp. announced that it had lost $1.8 billion over the last ten years in unauthorized trades done by head copper trader Yasuo Hamanaka. World copper markets were thrown into turmoil following disclosure by Sumitomo Corp. that a rogue trader had hidden multibillion-dollar losses.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A1)(AP, 6/14/97)
1996 Jun, In Japan the Diet gave approval to set up a government council to formulate a proposal for a new location for the nation's capital.
(WSJ, 9/24/96, p.B12)
1996 Aug 29, Authorities arrested Dr. Takeshi Abe, a hemophilia expert, who headed a government panel on AIDS in the 1980s when some 1,800 hemophiliacs were infected with AIDS after using blood-clotting agents contaminated with the AIDS virus. He had failed to recommend a heat treatment for the products more than 2 years after such treatment was approved in the US.
(SFC, 8/30/96, p.A18)
1996 Sep 27, In Japan the Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto dissolved the parliament and set new elections for Oct. 20.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)
1996 Oct 8, It was reported that a man's haircut costs $48.65.
(WSJ, 10/8/96, p.A17)
1996 Oct 20, The Liberal Democratic Party under Ryutaro Hashimoto won a plurality in the lower house. The vote marked a setback to reformers.
(WSJ, 10/21/96, p.A16)(USAT, 8/29/97, p.8A)
1996 Oct 22, Prosecutors arrested Yasuzo Harmonica, the former Sumitomo copper trader accused of racking up $2.6 billion in losses.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Nov 6, Parliament re-elected Ryutaro Hashimoto as prime minister.
(SFC, 11/7/96, p.a13)
1996 Dec 17, In Peru guerrillas took over a party at the house of the Japanese ambassador in Lima. They identified themselves as members of the Tupac Amaru guerrilla movement and demanded the release of imprisoned guerrillas. Nestor Cerpa Cartolini was later identified as the leader of the 20 or so guerrillas. Cerpa’s common-law wife, Nancy Gilvonio, was one of the imprisoned guerrillas whom he demanded be released. Pres. Fujimori’s brother was one of the hostages. All but 72 hostages were later released; the siege ended April 22, 1997, with a commando raid that resulted in the deaths of all the rebels, two commandos and one hostage.
(SFC,12/25/96,p.A12)(SFC,1/7/97,p.A10)(SFC,1/17/96, p.A12)(AP, 12/17/97)
1996 Dec 26, Honda Motor Co. announced the first human-shaped robot that can move independently and do basic tasks. It stood 6 feet and weighed 462 lbs. and took 10 years of engineering.
(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B10)
1996 Dec 26, Former Prime Minister Stoma Hata took 12 members of the opposition party Shinshinto (New Frontier Party) with him to form the new Sun Party.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.B3)
1996 The film "Shall We Dance" by Masayuki Suu won 13 national awards and created a ballroom dance craze.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, DB p.33)
1996 Japan introduced a new tax on alcohol.
(Econ, 3/26/05, p.43)
1996 Japan rescinded its 1948 Eugenics Protection Law. In 2019 the government agreed to pay compensation to thousands of people with disabilities who were forcibly sterilized under the law.
(Econ, 8/3/19, p.29)
1996 Katsuhiko Kawasaki began running the investigation division of the Tokyo Public Prosecutor's Office.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.B2)
1996 The Penndel Co. of Tokyo introduced its Milky Gel Roller. The gelly pen became a huge fad among kids by 1999 for its ability to write on skin and be easily rubbed off.
(WSJ, 6/15/99, p.A1)
1996 Japan’s Sony Corp. launched its Vaio brand of personal computers. In 2014 Vaio was sold to a private-equity fund.
(Econ, 7/12/14, p.57)
1996 Yahoo and SoftBank created Yahoo Japan.
(SSFC, 5/15/16, p.D3)
1996 In Japan knife crimes by juveniles increased by 30% to 431.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.A12)
1996 A UN report condemned Japan’s wartime military brothels.
(Econ 6/10/17, p.42)
1996-1998 In Japan an incipient economic recovery during this period turned into a fresh recession.
(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.3)
1997 Jan 2, The Russian oil tanker Nakhodka broke in two 90 miles off the coast of northwestern Japan. It carried 5 million gallons of fuel oil. The bow of the ship ran aground 5 days later and much oil was spilled.
(SFC, 1/8/96, p.C1)
1997 Jan 10, From Tokyo it was reported that scientists had successfully implanted micro-robotic backpacks onto cockroaches in experiments to control their movements.
(SFC, 1/10/96, p.B2)
1997 Jan 10, The Nikkei had fallen more than 16% over the last five weeks due to gloomy economic news and the government's recent vow to reduce its role in the economy.
(WSJ, 1/10/97, p.A1)
1997 Jan 29, Tatsuo Tomobe, member of the upper house of parliament, was arrested and accused of fraud. He had raised $75 million by offering high yields on deposits and using it to finance political ambitions.
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A17)
1997 Feb 7, In Japan Hiroshi Mikitani launched Rakuten, an e-commerce company. By 2012 it was Japan’s biggest cybermail service.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten)(SFC, 5/19/12, p.D3)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.60)
1997 Feb, Lebanon detained 5 members of the Japanese Red Army.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
1997 Mar 7, Japanese PM Ryutaro Hashimoto was sued by 5 people, because his smoking had violated the constitution guaranteeing a wholesome life.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1997 Mar 11, A nuclear fuel reprocessing plant experienced 2 fires and an explosion 70 miles northeast of Tokyo. There were no injuries. The chief investigator destroyed photographs of the accident. Debris was also removed and then replaced.
(SFC, 3/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 5/1/97, p.A13)
1997 Mar, Lebanon granted Kozo Okamoto, Japanese Red Army member, political asylum and deported 4 others to Japan. [see Jun 9]
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
1997 Apr 2, Tomoyuki Tanaka (86), producer (Godzilla), died of a stroke.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1997 Apr 21, In Japan drilling on the world's longest stretch of undersea highway (about 6 miles) was completed across Tokyo Bay to link the cities of Kawasaki and Kisarazu.
(SFC, 4/22/97, p.A8)
1997 Apr 24, In Japan the lower house of parliament voted to make heart transplants possible by recognizing the concept of brain death.
(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A12)
1997 Apr, Japan raised its national consumption tax from 3% to 5%. It was later seen as a move that wrecked economic confidence and sparked the beginning of a recession.
(WSJ, 8/13/98, p.A14)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.67)
1997 May 8, A law was passed to preserve the culture of the aboriginal Ainu people who have inhabited northern Japan since prehistoric times.
(SFC, 5/9/97, p.E3)
1997 May 27, In Kobe 11-year-old Jun Hase was beheaded by a killer who left the note: "So, this is the beginning of the game. I desperately want to see people die. Nothing makes me more excited than killing." A 14-year-old boy was later arrested for the murder. [see Jun 28]
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.C2)(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.D1)
1997 May, Shioro Takashima, head of the Japan Harbor Transportation Association (JHTA) and known as "The Emperor," died. He was succeeded by Mitsuo Masunaga.
(WSJ, 10/21/97, p.A13)
1997 Jun 5, The film "Tokyo Skin" by Urinary Hana was an Int'l. film festival award winner and premiered in the Bay Area.
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.)
1997 Jun 9, Five Japanese Red Army guerillas went on trial on charges of passport forgery and illegal entry. The light charges prevented their extradition to Japan. [see Mar]
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.A16)
1997 Jun 16, Sue Sumii died at age 95 working on the 8th volume of her novel "The River With No Bridge." It was about the plight of the burakumin (the untouchables) of Japan. She published the first volume in 1958.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A19)
1997 Jun 17, In Japan lawmakers rewrote the definition of death to allow life-saving transplants of body parts. Brain death rather than heart death would be the new criteria and would take effect in 3 months.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A9)
1997 Jun 18, It was reported that Japan was paying 5 Caribbean nations extensive aid and investment in order to gain support to block protections for endangered species. Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Dominica were all reported to have been bribed.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A8)
1997 Jun 28, Japanese police announced the arrest of a 14-year-old boy for the murder and beheading of an 11-year-old on May 27. The 15-year-old boy was convicted and sentenced to a juvenile prison, where he would be treated for mental illness. He could be kept there until age 26. In 2015 the killer published a detailed memoir, which quickly became a bestseller.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.D1)(SFC,10/18/97, p.A11)(Econ, 8/1/15, p.37)
1997 Jul 2, The Panamanian registered Diamond Grace oil tanker ran aground in Tokyo Bay and spilled nearly 2 million gallons of oil.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.A9)
1997 Jul 10, A mudslide in Izumi on the island of Kyushu killed 21 people and injured 14.
(SFC, 7/12/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 29, In Japan the Supreme Court upheld the government's right to control the nation's textbooks but not to tamper with the truth. Japan's Supreme Court ruled that the country's Education Ministry broke the law by removing mention of a Japanese World War II atrocity from historian Saburo Ienaga's high school textbook. Novelist Ryotaro Shiba was quoted: "A country whose textbooks lie... will inevitably collapse."
(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A12)(AP, 8/29/98)
1997 Sep 8, Prime Minister Hashimoto won re-election as head of the Liberal Democrats.
(WSJ, 9/9/97, p.A1)
1997 Oct 3, In Japan an experimental magnetically levitated train, the MLX01, set a world speed record when it reached 279.6 mph on a test track.
(SFC, 10/6/97, p.B8)
1997 Sep 22, Shoichi Yokoi (b.1915), Japanese WW II fighter who only surrendered in 1972, died. For 28 years he had hid in an underground jungle cave on Guam, fearing to come out of hiding even after finding leaflets declaring that World War II had ended.
(www.wanpela.com/holdouts/profiles/yokoi.html)
1997 Oct 15, The US set a deadline for three Japanese shipping companies to pay some $4 million in fines. The fines were imposed based on discriminatory Japanese harbor policies. The deadline was missed and the US threatened to block Japanese shipping from US ports. An agreement was later reached. The problem was with the Japan Harbor Transportation Association (JHTA), which was said to have ties with the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate. A settlement was approved on Oct 27.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/21/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/28/97, p.A1)
1997 Nov 1, Russia's Pres. Boris Yeltsin met with Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto at Krasnoyarsk to discuss economic cooperation.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A22)
1997 Nov 7, Shoichiro Toyoda (72), chairman of Toyota, planned to address the captains of Japanese industry and urge the severing of ties with the extortionists known as "sokaiya."
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A18)
1997 Nov 17, Authorities announced that the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank Ltd., the country's 11th largest bank, would be dissolved due to bad loans and that its operations would be transferred to a regional bank. The news sent the Tokyo stock exchange soaring.
(SFC,11/17/97, p.A17)
1997 Nov 24, In Japan the Yamaichi Securities firm, the nation's 4th largest, announced a shutdown due to debts totaling $24 billion. It was the third, after Sanyo Securities and Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, Japanese financial company to collapse in a month.
(SFC,11/24/97, p.A1)(AP, 11/24/98)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.66)
1997 Nov 26, In Japan Nomura Securities admitted funneling $2.9 million in profits to Ryuichi Koike, a suspected racketeer.
(SFC,11/27/97, p.B5)
1997 Nov 27, Japan launched the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite (TRMM) in a joint venture with NASA. Funding ended in 2004 a controlled de-orbit was planned.
(SFC, 7/19/04, p.A4)
1997 Dec 1, In Japan international talks on global warming began in Kyoto.
(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A1)
1997 Dec 5, The WTO ruled against the US claim that Kodak Film was unfairly blocked from the Japanese market.
(SFC,12/5/97, p.C3)
1997 Dec 8, At the UN conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan, US Vice President Al Gore signaled a willingness on the part of the US to compromise and perhaps raise the amount of greenhouse gases it is willing to cut.
(SFC,12/897, p.A1)
1997 Dec 11, In Kyoto, Japan, negotiators at the conference on global warming reached a compromise with a commitment by some 38 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% from 1990 levels over the next 10-15 years. Over 160 nations endorsed the treaty that binds industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gases. It was signed by 171 nations. Int’l. aviation was excluded from the protocol on condition that by 2007 countries and airlines of the Int’l. Civil Aviation Organization (ICOA) come up with a way of reducing emissions through a trading scheme.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 12/11/97, p.A1)(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A2)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.67)
1997 Dec 12, Japanese train builders (Maglev) claimed world speed record at 332 MPH.
(www.rtri.or.jp/rd/maglev/html/english/maglev_introduction_E.html)
1997 Dec 16, Prime Minister Hashimoto proposed a one-time cut in the national income tax of about $15.38 billion.
(SFC,12/17/97, p.A18)
1997 Dec 16, Hundreds of Japanese children went to the hospital with spasms and nausea caused by a TV cartoon show, "Pokemon."
(SFC,12/17/97, p.A26)
1997 Dec 19, Masaru Ibuka (b.1908), co-founder of Japan’s Sony Corp), died at age 89.
(www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/addlbios/ibuka.html)
1997 Dec 20, Juzo Itami (64), film director, jumped in suicide from his 8th story office, just before a magazine report about an affair. He made 10 films in 13 years that included "A Taxing Woman" and "Tampopo," which was released in the US in 1987.
(SFC,12/22/97, p.A19)(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1997 Dec 24, Toshiro Mifune (77), actor, died in Mitaka. His career included more than 130 films and television dramas.
(SFC,12/25/97, p.A25)
1997 Dec 26, Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the opposition Shinshinto, New Freedom Party, announced that the party would be disbanded.
(SFC,12/27/97, p.A12)
1997 Dec, Toyota introduced its new hybrid car, the Prius, in Japan. The $17,000 car sold some 3,500 units in the first few weeks.
(SFEC, 7/21/98, p.A1,9)
1997 Richard Katz authored "Japan: The System That Soured."
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A14)
1997 Japanese author Natsuo Kirino (b.1951) authored her crime novel “Out." The book’s title clearly conveys the experience of being on the out-side of social groups. It became a bestseller.
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.24)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natsuo_Kirino)
1997 The Japanese film "The Eel" was directed by Shohei Imamura and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, DB p.50)
1997 The Japanese film "Maborosi" was about a young woman who tries to recover from the death of her husband.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, DB p.53)
1997 The Japanese animated (anime) film "Princess Mononoke" was made with drawings by Hayao Miyazaki. In 1999 Helen McCarthy authored "Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation." Hyperion Press published "Princess Mononoke: The Art and Making of Japan's Most Popular Film of All Time."
(WSJ, 10/29/99, p.W9)(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1997 The Japanese film "Village of Dreams" was based on an autobiography of Kyoto-based artist Seizo Tashima: "The Village of My Paintings."
(SFC,11/26/97, p.E8)
1997 Japan under Ryutaro Hashimoto enacted the “big bang" financial reforms, which deregulated some financial services and introduced more competition in Japan’s capital markets.
(Econ, 9/17/05, p.23)
1997 Japan under Ryutaro Hashimoto increased consumption taxes.
(Econ, 9/17/05, p.24)
1997 In Japan the Nippon Kaigi, a nationalistic lobby group, was formed.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kaigi)(Econ, 6/6/15, p.33)
1997 Japan’s Sony Corp. launched the Vaio personal computer.
(WSJ, 3/7/05, p.A8)
1997 Kihoshi Saito (b.1907), Japanese woodblock artist, died.
(www.printdealers.com/artist_template.cfm?id=1330)
1998 Jan 12, Japan announced that the nation's banks carried only about $580 billion in bad or questionable loans.
(SFC, 1/13/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 26, Shinichi Suzuki (99), pioneer of the 1950s Suzuki method for teaching music to young children, died in Japan.
(SFC, 1/27/98, p.A20)(www.suzukiassociation.org/about/suzuki/)
1998 Jan 26, Public prosecutors raided the Ministry of Finance and arrested 2 bank regulators, Koichi Miyagawa (53) and Toshimi Taniuchi (48), on bribery charges.
(SFC, 1/27/98, p.A8)
1998 Jan 27, In Japan Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, the finance minister, announced that he will resign following the arrests of 2 senior officials on bribery charges.
(SFC, 1/28/98, p.A6)
1998 Jan 28, Two more finance ministry officials resigned and a 3rd committed suicide. Separately the lower house passed a $16 billion income tax cut.
(SFC, 1/29/98, p.A11)
1998 Jan 29, In Japan Finance Vice Minister Takeshi Komura stepped down in the bribery scandal and said "the responsibility is all mine."
(SFC, 1/30/98, p.A12)
1998 Jan 31, The XVIII Winter Olympic Games opened in Nagano.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.C3)
1998 Feb 3, A rocket attack on Tokyo's Narita Airport did no damage but slightly injured a cargo handler. Three rockets were involved. Later the leftist Revolutionary Workers Association claimed responsibility
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.C3)(SFC, 2/7/98, p.11)
1998 Feb 6, The Olympic Games began and for the first time curling was played as a medal sport.
(WSJ, 2/6/98, p.A20)
1998 Feb 8, Olga Danilova of Russia won the first gold medal of the Nagano Winter Games in 15-kilometer classical cross-country skiing.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1998 Feb 9, At the Nagano Games, German Georg Hackl won the men's luge for the third consecutive Olympics.
(AP, 2/9/99)
1998 Feb 10, Speedskater Hiroyasu Shimizu won Japan's first gold medal of the Nagano Olympics, in the 500-meter event.
(AP, 2/10/99)
1998 Feb 11, Skier Jonny Moseley won the first U.S. gold medal at Nagano, in men's moguls freestyle; Picabo Street won the women's super-G. Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for marijuana. His medal was later reinstated.
(AP, 2/11/99)
1998 Feb 14, Russia's Ilya Kulik won the men's figure skating gold medal at the Nagano Olympics.
(AP, 2/14/99)
1998 Feb 16, Skier Hermann Maier of Austria won the Super-G and Katja Seizinger of Germany won the women's downhill at the Nagano Olympics; Russia's Pasha Grishuk and Yeggeny Platov won the ice dancing event.
(AP, 2/16/08)
1998 Feb 17, The U.S. women's hockey team won the gold medal at Nagano, Japan, defeating Canada 3-1.
(AP, 2/17/99)
1988 Feb 18, The American hockey team in Nagano lost to the Czechs. Members of the team that night trashed their quarters in the Olympic Village, drained a fire extinguisher and tossed it out their 5th story window.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A1,16)
1998 Feb 22, The Czech Republic defeated Russia 1-0 to win men's hockey as the Nagano Winter Olympics came to a close.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A20)(AP, 2/22/99)
1998 Feb 26, Near Tokyo 3 businessmen hanged themselves in the suburban Le Piano hotel due to economic difficulties and the resulting loss of face. Masaaki Kobayashi, Masaru Sudo and Yoshimi Shoji were all presidents of auto parts companies.
(SFC, 2/27/98, p.D4)(SFC, 2/28/98, p.A8)
1998 Mar 5, Prosecutors raided the Finance Ministry and later arrested 2 officials, Takashi Sakakibara and Toshio Miyano for accepting bribes in exchange for approving new financial products.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.B3)
1998 Mar 11, The Tokyo Public Prosecutor's Office raided the offices of the Bank of Japan. Yasayuki Yoshizawa, director of the capital markets division, was arrested on suspicion of leaking market moving information.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.B2)
1998 Mar 12, Yoshio Sugiyama (46), a Finance Ministry official, hanged himself following a widening investigation in corruption.
(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A12)
1998 Mar 26, The ruling Liberal Democratic Party announced a $124 billion economic stimulus package.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A13)
1998 Apr 1, The 3-year Big Bang process was begun to create more efficient investment markets.
(SFC, 3/31/98, p.B1)
1998 Apr 3, Pres. Clinton warned that Japanese officials "have to make a break" with their past policies. Moody's Investor's Services changed its outlook on Japan's government debt to "negative" from "stable."
(SFC, 4/4/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 5, The $3.8 billion, 12,906 foot Akashi Kaikyo Bridge linking the islands of Shikoku and Honshu was opened. It was built to withstand an 8.5 earthquake and took ten years to build.
(SFC, 4/6/98, p.A13)
1998 Apr 9, Japan abandoned austerity policies and Prime Minister Hashimoto announced a $30 billion temporary cut in taxes to encourage consumer spending. Pressure to change was exerted by the US, int'l. investors and elite Japanese business leaders.
(SFC, 4/10/98, p.A14)
1998 Apr 19, Pres. Yeltsin held a summit with Prime Minister Ryutaro Hasimoto at the Kawana resort. Yeltsin promised to hand over KGB documents of interrogations of captured Japanese generals from WW II.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, p.A14)
1998 Apr 20, The Goldman Environmental Awards were presented to six winners in SF. The prizes were increased to $100,000. Hirofumi Yamashita (64) won for his 25-year struggle against the conversion of tidal flats to farmland on Ishaya Bay on Kyushu.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A8)
1998 Apr 27, A court ruled that Japan must compensate 3 South Korean women forced into sexual slavery during WW II, and awarded the women $2,300 each.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A8)
1998 May 23, The film "Pride, the Fateful Moment," about Gen'. Tojo was produced. It glorified Tojo and portrayed the Japanese invasion of Asia as a just campaign to liberate its neighbors from Western colonial rule. The film was supported by conservative lawmakers.
(SFC, 5/12/98, p.A12)
1998 May 30, In Japan the 4-year-old governing coalition fractured and the Social Democratic Party announced it would go it alone. The Liberal Democratic Party continued to run the government.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A26)
1998 Jun 4, A team of physicists from Japan reported that they had established that the subnuclear neutrino particles had mass. In an experiment called SuperKamiokande, they showed that muon neutrinos produced by cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere had gone missing by the time they should have reached an underground detector. This led them to suspect that the missing muon neutrinos had changed flavor through a process called oscillation, which required them to have mass. Their experiments showed that neutrinos spontaneously transform between three varieties (electron, muon and tau neutrinos) in a process known as oscillation.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A1)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.77)(Econ, 6/28/14, p.69)
1998 Jun 20, Suekiku Miyanaga (107), Japan's oldest person, died in Osumi.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A25)
1998 Jul 2, Japan announced that a string of bridge banks would be set up to run failed banks as bad loans are sold and lending is continued.
(SFC, 7/3/98, p.A14)
1998 Jul 4, Japan launched its Planet-B probe to Mars the Planet-B on its M-5 rocket, which is to begin beaming back photographs and data from the Red Planet in October 1999.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A10)(AP, 7/4/99)
1998 Jul 12, It was reported that Japan burns 38 million tons of garbage a year compared to 34 million for the US. Japan's air was reported to contain 10 times more dioxin that US air. Elections were held.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, Par p.16)(SFC, 7/13/98, p.A1)
1998 Jul 13, In Japan Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto resigned after voters rejected his Liberal Democratic Party.
(SFC, 7/13/98, p.A1)
1998 Jul 24, Keizo Obuchi, Japan's foreign minister, won the ruling party nomination for prime minister.
(SFC, 7/24/98, p.A14)
1998 Jul 25, In Japan some 60 people at a festival in the Wakayama prefecture were sickened after eating a curried rice dish. Four people died and police suspected that cyanide was mixed in the food. A district court convicted Masumi Hayashi in 2002 of deliberately lacing a pot of curry with arsenic and serving it to neighbors at the festival. In 2009 Japan's highest court upheld her death sentence.
(SFC, 7/27/98, p.A10)(AP, 4/21/09)
1998 Jul 29, In Japan the lower house of parliament approved Keizo Obuchi for prime minister. The upper house endorsed opposition leader Naoto Kan. The lower house had the power to overrule any upper house decision.
(SFC, 7/30/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 30, Japan's Parliament declared Keizo Obuchi the country's next prime minister.
(AP, 7/30/99)(SFC, 9/21/99, p.A10)
1998 Jul 31, Asa Takii, the oldest person in the country and a survivor of the Hiroshima blast, died at age 114.
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A19)
1998 Aug 4, Japan announced that it will begin a new nuclear power plant in Higashidori in Dec. 51 nuclear power plants currently supply about 1/3 of the nation's power.
(SFC, 8/5/98, p.A10)
1998 Aug 15, The week-long Festival of the Dead, called "O-bon," ended. The holiday is capped off with midnight visits to ancestral graves where incense and paper lanterns are burned.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A26)
1998 Aug 28, The money market interest rates were reported to be 0.5 % as compared to 7.5% in 1991.
(WSJ, 8/28/98, p.A10)
1998 Sep 6, Akira Kurosawa, film director, died at age 88.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1998 Sep 18, Japanese leaders agreed to a plan to take over some of the biggest and weakest banks and to use taxpayer money to dispose of some $606 billion in bad loans.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Sep 22, In Japan Typhoon Vicki killed 9 people and injured over 100.
(SFC, 9/23/98, p.A12)
1998 Sep 29, Japanese Leasing, a non-bank affiliate of the failed Long Term Credit Bank, announced that it is filing for bankruptcy with liabilities of 2.2 trillion yen or more than $16 billion. Two other affiliates of the LTCB are expected to suffer the same fate. This was the country's biggest-ever bankruptcy. LTCB was later renamed Shinsei.
(www.wsws.org/news/1998/sep1998/jap-s29.shtml)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.66)(Econ, 6/28/08, p.82)
1998 Oct 2, In Japan the parliament passed bills to provide $74 billion in taxpayer money to help banks recover from bad loans.
(SFC, 10/3/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 3, The G-7 finance ministers agreed to explore Pres. Clinton's proposed strategy for early IMF intervention to support weak economies. Masaru Hayami, governor of the Bank of Japan, said that capital supporting 19 major banks had dwindled to dangerously low levels.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 10/5/98, p.A3)
1998 Oct 7, In Japan Pres. Kim Dae Jung of South Korea urged the 2 countries to work together.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Oct 8, In Japan Prime Minister Obuchi issued an apology to the people of South Korea for 35 years of brutal colonial rule. Pres. Kim Dae-jung of South Korea accepted the written apology, the first ever issued by Japan to an individual country for its actions during WW II.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.13A)
1998 Oct 12, In Japan the parliament approved banking legislation that would allow the government to nationalize failing banks.
(SFC, 10/13/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 14, In the Philippines Typhoon Zeb killed 21 people and forced some 31,000 from their homes. The death toll went up to 70. It moved on to Taiwan where 20 people were killed and Japan where 12 died.
(SFC, 10/15/98, p.C4)(WSJ, 10/19/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 16, In Japan the Diet approved laws to pump $517 billion in public money into the country's cash-strapped banks.
(SFC, 10/17/98, p.A14)
1998 Oct 30, David Bower (86) of the US and Mikhail Budyko of Russia won the $427,600 Blue Planet Prize, awarded by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan for their work in solving environmental problems.
(SFC, 10/31/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct, South Korea lifted its ban on importing Japanese comic books, magazines, and movies. It was the first phase of a gradual opening to Japanese pop culture.
(SFEC, 12/6/98, p.A15)
1998 Nov 7, Japan offered more than $9 million in aid to Cuba with most of the money as a direct donation to buy rice. A 5 month drought followed by Hurricane Georges caused heavy agricultural losses.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.A28)
1998 Nov 16, Japan announced a $195 billion economic stimulus package. This was the 17th month in a row that the number of bankruptcies increased.
(SFC, 11/16/98, p.A10)(SFC, 11/17/98, p.B3)
1998 Nov 19, Pres. Clinton began a 5-day trip to Asia and in Japan suggested that current efforts to end an 8-year economic downturn may not be enough.
(SFC, 11/20/98, p.A16)
1998 Nov 21, Isao Okawa, chairman of CSK Corp., and Sega Enterprises, donated $27 million to MIT for the creation of a center for children founded on the belief that new digital technology will drive fundamental changes in education. He was at the Junior Summit where children created "Nation 1.0" as a forum for expression: www.nation1.net.
(SFC, 11/23/98, p.A5)
1998 Nov 25, Pres. Jiang Zemin of China and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi decided not to sign a joint declaration on the relationship between their countries during the Jiang's 6-day visit, the first ever by a Chinese head of state. Zemin wanted a written apology from Japan for WW II atrocities that began with a 1931 Japanese invasion. Only verbal apologies were made.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B3)
1998 Nov 27, The World Heritage bureau of UNESCO began a meeting in Kyoto, Japan.
(SFC, 11/27/98, p.A16)
1998 Nov, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi of Japan in a summit with Pres. Yeltsin agreed to give Russia close to $1 billion with $100 earmarked for the Kuriles.
(SFC, 1/19/99, p.A8)
1998 Dec 3, In Japan it was reported that the Jul-Sep quarter fell 0.7%. It was the 4th consecutive decrease in GDP.
(WSJ, 12/3/98, p.A16)
1998 Dec 5, In South Korea the first Japanese film since 1945 was screened. "Hana Bi" (Fireworks) was the first film shown since a ban on Japanese work was lifted in Oct.
(SFEC, 12/6/98, p.A15)
1998 Dec 9, It was reported that scientist in Japan had cloned several calves from an adult cow. It was the 3rd mammal duplicated after mice and sheep.
(SFC, 12/9/98, p.A8)
1998 Dec 15, In Japan Nawaki Hashimoto was found dead from cyanide poisoning. He had peddled cyanide to suicidal Japanese over a web site and one Tokyo woman died the same day from his cyanide.
(SFC, 1/9/99, p.A11)
1998 Risa Ishihara authored "Give Me A Break: Full-Time Housewife." She said that stay-at-home wives were "parasites" feeding on their husbands.
(WSJ, 3/26/00, p.A1)
1998 Richard Katz published "Japan: The System That Soured." It was about the rise and fall of Japan's economics following WW II.
(WSJ, 8/4/98, p.A16)
1998 Taichi Sakaiya published his serialized novel "Japan: 2018," that describes a Japanese economic decline beginning in the 1990s.
(WSJ, 5/4/98, p.A1)
1998 The Japanese film "Deep River" starred Toshiro Mifune and was directed by Kei Kumai, based on the novel by Shusaku Endo. It was about a group of Japanese tourists visiting Benares, India.
(SFC, 5/20/98, p.E3)
1998 The Japanese film "Gonin" starred Koichi Sato and was directed by Takashi Ishii.
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.B3)
1998 The Japanese film "Mr. Nice Guy" starred Jackie Chan and was directed by Samo Hung.
(SFC, 3/20/98, p.D3)
1998 The Japanese film "Sonatine" was written and directed by Takeshi "Beat" Kitano. he also starred in the film of a gangster who helps another gang fight a rival mob. The Japanese film "Fireworks" was the first film by director Takeshi Kitano. He starred in the film under the name Beat Takeshi.
(SFC, 3/20/98, p.D3)(SFEC, 4/12/98, DB p.10)
1998 The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was created from former LDP members, former socialists and young liberal newcomers. Yukio Hatoyama (b.1947) was one of the co-founders of the DPJ.
(www.dpj.or.jp/english/about_us/dpj_profile.html)(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.11)(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A3)
1998 By this year a new location for Japan’s capital could be determined.
(WSJ, 9/24/96, p.B12)
1998 In Japan private certifying firms were allowed to sign off on new buildings to supplement public inspectors.
(Econ, 12/10/05, p.46)
1998 In Japan workers’ pay equaled about 73% of corporate earnings.
(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.4)
1998 Suicides attributable to karoshi, death from over-work, rose from 32 in 1994 to 90 in 1998.
(SFC, 8/22/00, p.A10)
1998 USGS officials agreed to allow Japan to drill 2 prototype wells on the hydrate-rich north slope of Alaska.
(NH, 5/97, p.31)
1999 Jan 14, In Japan the ruling Liberal Democrats under prime Minister Keizo Obuchi formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a conservative rival.
(SFC, 1/15/99, p.A15)
1999 Jan 20, It was reported that the TV show Denpa Shonen (Don't Go for It, Electric Boy!) was the top rated variety show for the last 17 weeks. It featured Nasubi (eggplant), a 23-year-old comedian, confined to a one-room apartment without food or clothing working to win 1 million yen ($8,300) worth of prizes in magazine competitions.
(SFC, 1/20/99, p.E4)
1999 Jan 27, From Japan it was reported that thousands of fans welcomed back a hitchhiking duo who traveled from the Cape of Good Hope to a lighthouse in Norway along with a TV cameraman. The exploits began in 1998 and were aired weekly on the show "Susunu."
(WSJ, 1/27/99, p.A1)
1999 Jan 27, The Health Ministry approved Viagra in 6 months but still held back approval for the birth control pill, which has been waiting 9 years.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A16)
1999 Feb 19, In Japan the lower house passed a record $682.5 billion budget with huge spending increases and tax cuts.
(SFC, 2/20/99, p.B1)
1999 Feb 28, Japanese doctors performed their first legal organ transplant from a brain-dead patient. A 1997 law allowed the standard for death to be the cessation of brain activity. The last heart transplant was done in 1968.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/1/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 3, In Japan the short term interest rate fell to .02% as the central bank flooded the interbank market with cash.
(WSJ, 3/4/99, p.A9)
1999 Mar 23, Japanese navy ships fired warning shots at 2 suspected North Korean spy vessels that entered its waters 180 miles northwest of Tokyo.
(WSJ, 3/24/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 28, It was reported that Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi was preparing legislation to rehabilitate the flag, hinomaru, and national song, "Kimigayo," to national emblem status.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A23)
1999 Mar 28, In Japan the exploits of Nasubi, a 23-year-old comedian, came to an end as his producers revealed him naked to a studio audience. For over a year he had been shown on weekly TV, without his knowledge, trying to survive on prizes from magazine competitions. He never won any clothes.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.E5)
1999 Mar, In Tokyo the Showa Hall museum opened after being transformed from a war memorial to an exhibition of war time life.
(SFC, 7/1/99, p.A14)
1999 Apr 11, In Japan a gubernatorial election in Tokyo showed conservative author Shintaro Isihara (66) in the lead. Ishihara won with 29.6% of the total vote.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A10)(SFC, 4/12/99, p.A12)
1999 Apr 14, In western Japan Takayuki Otsuki (18) raped and killed Yayoi Motomura (23) before strangling to death her 11-month-old daughter Yuka in Yamaguchi. In 2000 Otsuki was convicted and jailed for life, but in 2008 he was sentenced to death. In 2012 Japan’s Supreme Court upheld the ruling.
(www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120220x1.html)
1999 Apr 29, In Japan Honda announced that its last EV Plus electric car was built in March.
(SFC, 4/30/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 30, The government issued a report that said unemployment had reached a record 4.8% in March and that spending by wage earners had declined by 3.6%.
(WSJ, 4/30/99, p.A13)
1999 Apr, The government announced that it had allowed cloned beef to be sold unmarked for the last 2 years. The news sparked a nationwide beef boycott.
(SFC, 1/25/00, p.A7)
1999 May 7, In Japan the parliament passed the country's first freedom of information act. Requests would not be honored for at least 2 years.
(SFC, 5/12/99, p.C2)
1999 May 18, In Japan the parliament enacted a law to ban child prostitution and child pornography.
(SFC, 5/19/99, p.A14)
1999 May 24, Japan's upper house voted to expand the country's military alliance with the US.
(SFC, 5/25/99, p.A8)
1999 Jun 2, In Japan the government agreed to make the birth control pill available by prescription.
(SFC, 6/3/99, p.A13)
1999 Jun, In Japan a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurred for 15 minutes at the No. 1 reactor of Shika Nuclear Power Plant in Ishikawa prefecture. Hokuriku Electric Power Co. failed to report the reaction to authorities. In 2007 the company agreed to shut down the reactor for inspection.
(AP, 3/15/07)
1999 Jul 3, It was reported that 29 people had died and 16 were missing over the past week following flash flooding and landslides in southwestern Japan.
(SFC, 7/3/99, p.A5)
1999 Jul 23, In Japan Yuzi Nishizawa (b.1970) attempted to hijack flight 61 from Tokyo and stabbed to death pilot Naoyuki Nagashima (51). The hijacker was overcome and the plane landed safely with 516 passengers. On March 23, 2005, Nishizawa was found to be guilty, but of unsound mind and thus only partly responsible for his actions. Presiding judge Hisaharu Yasui handed Nishizawa a life sentence in 2005.
(SFC, 7/24/99, p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANA_Flight_61)
1999 Jul 26, Japanese government officials and US Sec. of State Madeleine Albright issued a threat of economic and diplomatic consequences to North Korea if it fires another rocket over Japanese territory.
(SFC, 8/3/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 9, In Japan the parliament adopted the Rising Sun flag as the national symbol and an ode to the emperor.
(WSJ, 8/10/99, p.A1)
1999 Aug 12, In Japan lawmakers gave police the power to use wiretaps against crime suspects.
(SFC, 8/13/99, p.D3)
1999 Aug 19, Japan and Russia agreed to establish a military hotline.
(SFC, 8/20/99, p.A19)
1999 Sep 17, Japan inaugurated its $400 million Subaru telescope on Mount Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Subaru is the Japanese word for the constellation Pleiades.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.A21)
1999 Sep 21, Japan’s PM Keizo Obuchi easily won re-election as head of his party. This ensured that public money would continue to be used to spur economic recovery.
(SFC, 9/22/99, p.A14)
1999 Sep 24, In Japan typhoon Bart hit wreaked havoc in the south and killed at least 26 people.
(SFC, 9/25/99, p.A14)
1999 Sep 25, G7 leaders issued a joint statement that said it was up to the Japanese to drive down the value of the yen which had been strengthening against the dollar and threatened Japanese economic recovery.
(SFEC, 9/26/99, p.A14)
1999 Sep 30, In Japan 3 workers were hospitalized with radiation poisoning following an accidental 20-hour nuclear reaction at the JCO Co. nuclear processing plant in Tokaimura, 80 miles northeast of Tokyo. Area residents were told they could resume normal activity the next day. Production pressure was later cited as the cause of the accident. Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., the owner of JCO, promised to pay damages to victims of the accident. The number of people exposed was later raised to 69. Hisashi Ouchi (30), one of the 3 workers, died from radiation exposure on Dec 21. Masato Shinohara (40) died Apr 27, 2000.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A1)(SFC, 10/2/99, p.A1)(SFC, 10/4/99, p.A12)(SFC, 10/6/99, p.C16)(SFC, 10/16/99, p.A14)(SFC, 12/4/99, p.C1)(SFC, 12/22/99, p.C11)(SFC, 4/28/00, p.D6)
1999 Oct 3, Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony Corp., died in Tokyo at age 78.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.C7)
1999 Oct 14, Japan’s Sumitomo and Sakura Banks announced merger plans. In 2001 they fused into Sumitomo Mitsui.
(WSJ, 10/15/99, p.A10)(Econ, 5/20/06, Survey p.22)
1999 Oct, The magazine Shukan Bunshun began a 10-part series that accused Johnny Kitagawa, president of the talent agency Johnny's Jimusho, of sexual liaisons with teenage boys that he groomed for stardom.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.A26)
1999 Nov 15, In Japan the $95 million MTSAT satellite on the No. 8 H-2 rocket was aborted after takeoff from the Tanegashima Space Center. A launch in Feb. had also failed. In Dec. Japan announced that it would abandon the $4.14 billion H-2 rocket project.
(SFC, 11/16/99, p.E4)
1999 Nov 22, In Japan a T-33 jet crashed and killed 2 crewmen. The crash severed a 275,000-volt power line and some 800,000 homes lost power in the Tokyo area.
(SFC, 11/23/99, p.A16)
1999 Dec 1, In Japan Tatsuko Muraoka, acting leader of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult, took responsibility for the 1995 gassing of Tokyo subways, led by former guru Shoko Asahara, and promised some compensation to the victims.
(SFC, 12/2/99, p.D2)
1999 Dec, Parliament passed a law placing restrictions on Aum Shinri Kyo.
(WSJ, 9/28/01, p.A12)
1999 Dec, Japan executed 2 death row inmates, Teruo Ono and Kazuo Sagawa. This made 32 prisoners executed in the last 10 years with 50 still on death row. Executions in Japan were unannounced and held 2 times a year.
(SFC, 12/21/99, p.C7)
1999 Ryu Murakami authored "Bubble Fantasy – What Japan Could Have Done With That Money."
(WSJ, 8/23/01, p.A6)
1999 John Nathan authored "Sony: The Private Life," a history of the 53-year-old Sony Corporation.
(WSJ, 9/30/99, p.A24)
1999 The book "Katte wa Ikenai" (Don't Buy This ) was an ecological manifesto questioning the safety of household goods.
(SFC, 11/5/99, p.A15)
1999 The Japanese film "Dr. Akagi" was directed by Shohei Imamura. It was about Japan during the last days of WW II.
(SFC, 3/5/99, p.C3)
1999 The Japanese film "Jubaku: The Archipelago of Rotten Money" was based on a 1997 government investigation of bank corruption.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.A8)
1999 The Bank of Japan pioneered the tactic of forward guidance when it promised to leave its interest rate at zero until deflationary concerns subside.
(Econ, 6/11/16, p.77)
1999 Japan enacted corporate law that enabled the use of shares to buy firms.
(Econ, 12/1/07, SR p.7)
1999 Electronic trading replaced the floor auction on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
(WSJ, 4/6/06, p.C1)
1999 Masayoshi Son, the boss of Softbank, agreed for Softbank to buy a 30% stake in the Hangzhou-based Alibaba website founded by Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, for $20 million. In 2017 Alibaba was valued at $270 billion and Softbank still owned 28%.
(Econ, 4/1/17, p.58)
1999 The Japan National Large Telescope (Subaru) and the Gemini Northern Telescope were scheduled for completion on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. A twin of the latter was under construction in Chile.
(Hem., 7/95, p.115)
1999 NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s top mobile phone operator, pioneered internet access through its i-mode service. In 2001 it pioneered 3G technology and in 2005 embedded a credit card into a wireless chip enabling consumer financial payments.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.71)
1999 Japan’s Sony Corp. began selling the robotic dog AIBO. Production of the robot dog was cancelled in 2006 as part of a restructure program.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.59)(SFC, 2/2/06, p.C3)
1999 The Japan National Large Telescope (Subaru) and the Gemini Northern Telescope were scheduled for completion on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. A twin of the latter was under construction in Chile.
(Hem., 7/95, p.115)
1999 The Institute of space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS) planned to launch its Lunar-A to measure seismic activity on the Moon.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A10)
2000 Jan 21, In Japan 6 people that included the daughter (16) of Shoko Asahara broke into the Aum cult's Asashimura facility and kidnapped the 7-year-old son of Asahara. Two of the kidnappers were arrested over the next 2 days. The boy was found Jan 23 in the resort town of Hakone.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, p.A22)(SFC, 1/24/00, p.A7)
2000 Jan 23, Residents of Tokushina on Shikoku Island voted against a $980 million dam proposed by the government for the Yoshino River by a 10-1 margin. Prime Minister Obuchi later said the decision was up to the construction minister.
(SFC, 2/1/00, p.B1)
2000 Feb 6, In Japan Fusae Ota was elected governor of Osaka, and the 1st woman governor in Japan.
(SFC, 2/7/00, p.A14)
2000 Mar 1, In Japan police officials reported that the Aum Shinri Kyo sect had developed software for at least 10 government agencies and for more than 80 major companies in recent years. The sect had recently changed its name to Aleph and denounced its violent past.
(SFC, 3/2/00, p.A10)
2000 Mar 13, In Japan the government reported that the economy swung back into recession at the end of 1999.
(SFC, 3/13/00, p.A11)
2000 Mar 30, Mount Usu erupted on Hokaido following 22 years of dormancy. Evacuations from Date, Sobetsu and Abuta preceded the eruption.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.A17)(WSJ, 4/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 2, In Japan Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi suffered a stroke and Mikio Aoki took over as Acting Premier.
(SFC, 4/3/00, p.A8)
2000 Apr 4, In Japan the cabinet resigned and allowed the Parliament to elect Yoshiro Mori as the new Prime Minister. The former trade minister was elected as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party earlier the same day.
(SFC, 4/5/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 21, The Russian Coast Guard fired on a Japanese fishing boat near the disputed Kurile Islands and took it back to Yuzhno-Kurilsk island.
(SFC, 4/22/00, p.A8)
2000 May 6, The Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) was set up to help East Asian cash strapped countries defend their currencies in times of trouble. The initiative came in response to the 1997 East Asian financial crises. ASEAN, China, Japan, and South Korea launched the multilateral arrangement of currency swaps (CMI).
(WSJ, 5/5/05, p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Mai_Initiative)
2000 May 8, In Japan Hogen Fukunaga, founder of the Hono Hana Sampogyo, cult was arrested on fraud charges. Members were told that they would get cancer or die if their feet were not inspected by Fukunaga.
(SFC, 5/9/00, p.A12)
2000 May 11, In Japan the Aum Shinri Kyo cult, renamed Aleph, agreed to pay $37.4 million in compensation to victims of the 1995 gas attack in Tokyo.
(SFC, 5/12/00, p.D2)
2000 May 14, Former prime minister Keizo Obuchi died at age 62.
(SFC, 5/15/00, p.A12)
2000 Jun 1, Stores across Japan emptied beer vending machines to comply with a voluntary ban on beer vending to help reduce alcoholism.
(SFC, 6/2/00, p.B11)
2000 Jun 16, Empress Dowager Nagako died at age 97.
(SFC, 6/17/00, p.A20)
2000 Jun 19, Noboro Takeshita, former leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party and premier from 1987-1989, died at age 76.
(SFC, 6/19/00, p.E2)
2000 Jun 25, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's LDP lost power to its coalition partners in parliamentary elections. The coalition won 271 of 480 seats in the lower house.
(SFC, 6/26/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul 1, Lucie Blackman (21), a British citizen working in Tokyo, became the 8th Western woman to disappear in the last 5 years. In 2001 police found her remains encased in concrete near the residence of Joji Obara, a wealthy businessman and prime suspect. Obara was formally accused Apr 6, 2001. Some 4,800 tapes were found that linked Obara to some 400 rapes over 25 years [see April 24, 2007]. On Dec 16, 2008, Obara was convicted for the abduction and dismemberment of Blackman, but acquitted of her murder. The court also upheld an earlier conviction for the rapes of 9 other women. In 2011 Richard Lloyd Parry authored “People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman."
(SFC, 10/17/00, p.A13)(SFC, 2/10/01, p.A11)(SSFC, 2/11/01, p.C2)(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A11)(SFC, 4/9/01, p.A7)(AP, 12/16/08)(Econ, 2/26/11, p.90)
2000 Jul 19, In Okinawa over 25,000 demonstrators formed a chain around a US Air Base to protest American presence ahead of the G-8 meeting.
(SFC, 7/21/00, p.A8)
2000 Jul 20, In Japan Prime Minister Mori presided in informal discussions between G-8 leaders and 4 leaders from poor nations. Pres. Clinton arrived in Okinawa and went directly to the Cornerstone of peace Memorial where the names of 237,318 people, who died in the battle of Okinawa, are inscribed.
(SFC, 7/20/00, p.A12)(SFC, 7/21/00, p.A8)
2000 Aug 18, The Mount Oyama volcano erupted for a 5th time on the island of Miyake. The eruptions began July 9 after 17 years of dormancy.
(SFC, 8/19/00, p.A9)
2000 Aug 22, In Japan Mitsubishi Motors admitted that it had concealed tens of thousands customer complaints about automobile defects since 1977.
(SFC, 8/23/00, p.A10)
2000 Sep 11, In central and southern Japan torrential rains left 7 people dead. In Nagoya the Shinkawa River overflowed.
(SFC, 9/13/00, p.A14)
2000 Oct 5, In western Japan a 7.3 earthquake struck and at least 106 people were injured.
(SFC, 10/6/00, p.D6)(SFC, 10/7/00, p.A8)(SFEC, 10/8/00, p.A18)
2000 Oct 20, In Japan the Kyoei Life Insurance Co. filed for bankruptcy. The failure of the 11th-largest Japanese live insurer marked the biggest corporate failure since WW II.
(SFC, 10/21/00, p.D1)
2000 Nov 8, Fusako Shigenobu, founder of the Japanese Red Army, was arrested in Osaka after 20 years underground.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
2000 Dec 5, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori appointed a new Cabinet that included 2 former prime ministers, Miyazawa and Hashimoto.
(SFC, 12/5/00, p.A16)
2000 Dec 8, A 5-day mock trial was organized by women's groups against forced sexual slavery during WW II.
(SFC, 12/8/00, p.D7)
2000 Dec 12, Tokyo opened its 12th municipal subway, the Oedo Line.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.T3)
2000 Ryu Murakami authored his novel "Exodus From Hopeless Japan." It was about renegade schoolchildren who loose hope in the economic future of Japan and take matters into their own hands.
(WSJ, 8/23/01, p.A6)
2000 Japan launched the “Project X" TV documentary series. It was about engineers and other overachievers who succeeded against the odds.
(Econ, 3/12/05, p.63)
2000 The Bank of Japan raised the key interest rate from zero to .25% and lowered it after 6 months when the increase made deflation worse.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.109)
2000 Japan recorded the 1st known case of two or more people using the Internet to form a suicide pact. Hundreds of suicides, if not more, from various countries copied that pattern in the following years.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.66)
2000 Toyota released its Prius in the US, the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle.
(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Japan
Go to Japan 2001
Return to home
1980 Jan 11, Honda announced that it would build Japan's first US passenger-car assembly plant in Ohio.
(HN, 1/11/99)
1980 Jan 16, Paul McCartney was arrested in Tokyo for marijuana possession. He was released and deported on Jan 25.
(www.taima.org/en/hemplib3.htm#mccartney)
1980 Jan 25, Paul McCartney was released from Tokyo jail & deported.
(www.taima.org/en/hemplib3.htm#mccartney)
1980 May 22, The computer game Pac-Man was first released in Japan. Pac-Man, with its characters: Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, epitomized the arcade games of the 1980s.
(SFC, 7/5/97, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man)
1980 Jul 17, Zenko Suzuki (1911-2004) was appointed prime minister of Japan. He resigned after 2 years.
(SFC, 7/21/04, p.B7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenko_Suzuki)
1980 The film "Kagemusha" was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1980 The Noda Shoyu Co. Ltd. was renamed Kikkoman.
(SFC, 1/3/00, p.B7)
1980 Dr. Fujio Masuoka, a researcher at Toshiba, filed a patent for a variation on floating-gate memory. His invention was dubbed flash memory because it allowed entire sections of memory to be erased quickly.
(Econ, 3/11/06, Survey p.28)
1981 Apr 9, The submarine USS George Washington ran into the Japanese freighter Nisso Maru. 2 Japanese crewmen were killed.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,164904,00.html)
1981 Jul, Kenji Urada (37), Japanese factory worker, was killed by a robot’s hydraulic arm becoming the 1st recorded victim to die at the hands of robot. Details of the accident were revealed for the first time on December 8, 1981, following a government investigation.
(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.18)(www.tslpl.org/art/811211.htm)
1981 Nov 12, The Double Eagle V landed in California 84 hours and 31 minutes following its Nov 10 launch in Japan. It was the 1st balloon to cross the Pacific ocean. Rocky Aoki (1938-2008), founder of the Benihana steakhouse (1964), was part of the crew.
(http://www.benihana.com/ballooning_history.asp)(SFC, 7/12/08, p.B5)
1981 Nov 18, In Los Angeles Kazuyoshi Miura and his wife (28), visitors from Japan, were shot in a downtown parking lot. His wife went into a coma and later died in Japan. In 1985 Miura was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his wife for insurance money and in 1994 he was convicted of murder. In 1998 a Japanese high court overturned the sentence. In 2008 Miura was arrested in Saipan. He was extradited to the US and committed suicide by hanging on Oct 10, 4 days prior to arraignment on murder conspiracy charges. He was 61.
(SSFC, 2/24/08, p.B3)(SFC, 10/15/08, p.B4)
1981 Japan bailed out the US economy by loading up on 30-year government bonds.
(WSJ, 6/25/96, p.A12)
1981 Japan promised to restrict car exports to America. The restrictions boosted car prices by almost 40% in 1984.
(Econ, 4/8/17, p.65)
1981 Japan signed the UN Refugee Convention of 1951.
(Econ., 3/14/15, p.42)
1981 In Japan Masayoshi Son (b.1957), US educated entrepreneur, set up Softbank as a software distributor.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.71)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son)
1982 Feb 9, On approach to Haneda Airport a Japan Airlines DC-8 plunged into Tokyo Bay killing 24 people. 141 survived the crash caused when the captain pushed the nose down prematurely and engaged in a struggle with the co-pilot.
(WSJ, 3/10/98, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_350)
1982 Aug 11, Pan Am flight 830 from Tokyo to Honolulu was bombed. The bombing was set in motion when Mohammed Rashed, wife Christine Pinter and their son traveled to Tokyo with fraudulent identification documents. Rashed tucked a bomb beneath window seat 47K, pulled the pin, engaged the timer and got off in Japan. Toru Ozawa (16), vacationing with his family, occupied the same seat on the next leg and was killed. 15 people were injured. In 1998 Mohammed Rashid, a Palestinian national, was turned over to the US by Egypt on charges related to the bombing. In 2002 Rashid pleaded guilty in exchange for a release date of March 20, 2013.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_830)(AP, 3/17/13)
1982 Nov 26, Yasuhiro Nakasone of the LDP was elected 71st Japanese prime minister.
(HN, 11/26/98)(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.10)
1982 Chalmers Johnson authored "MITI and the Japanese Economic Miracle."
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A14)
1982 Konishiki, born Salevaa Atisanoe in American Samoa, began competing in sumo wrestling. He opened sumo wrestling to international competition and achieved the 2nd-highest rank. The 600-pound wrestler announced his retirement in 1997.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.A23)
1982 Racketeering by a sokaiya was outlawed. Extortion of Japanese firms by sokaiya had been going on for almost a hundred years.
(SFC, 12/3/97, p.D3)
1982 Honda, the first Japanese auto maker to start production in the US, began making the Honda Accord at Marysville, Ohio.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl F, 10/7/96, p.71)(WSJ, 4/1/09, p.A20)
1982 Japan’s Sony Corp. introduced the 1st CD player.
(WSJ, 3/7/05, p.A8)
1983 Feb 24, A US congressional commission, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, released a report condemning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a "grave injustice."
(AP, 2/24/98)(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A10)
1983 Mar, Compact Disc recordings, introduced by Phillips and Sony in Europe in 1982, were introduced to the US.
(www.iconnect.net/home/bsnpubs/cdhist.html)
1983 Apr 15, Tokyo Disneyland opened.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Disneyland)
1983 May 26, A 7.8 earthquake struck off the shore of Hokkaido, Japan, and a major tsunami followed. Some 100 fatalities were due to the tsunami.
(http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119551140/abstract)
1983 Jun, Japan’s Nissan began to produce trucks in the US. Nissan became the first foreign carmaker in America when it opened an assembly plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
(http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=N040)(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1983 Nov 11, President Reagan became the first U.S. chief executive to address the Diet, Japan's national legislature.
(AP, 11/11/03)
1983 Chio Uno wrote her memoir "I Will Go On Living." It became a best seller and a TV movie.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A21)
1983 In Japan Kenshi Hirokane created his Mr Shima, a salaryman manga (cartoon) character. By 2008 some 30 million Shima Kosaku books had been sold.
(Econ, 8/9/08, p.65)
1983 In Japan Koji Takahashi founded the Life Space cult. His self-enlightenment seminars were an instant success. The group believed that the human body never dies.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A14)
1983 The Green Cross Corp., a major Japanese pharmaceutical firm, was later accused of having sold unheated blood products at this time even after learning that they could infect people with the AIDS virus. In 1996 prosecutors raided their offices. Drug company executives, Renzo Matsushita (79), Takehiko Kawano (69) and Tadakazu Suyama (72) pleaded guilty in 1997 and began prison terms in 2000.
(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A14)(SFC, 2/25/00, p.D4)
1983 Keiko Arimoto of Japan was lured to N. Korea while job hunting in Denmark. In 2002 N. Korea admitted to having kidnapped her and listed her as dead.
(SFC, 9/18/02, p.A10)
1984 The Japanese film "The Funeral" by Juzo Itami (1933-1997) was produced.
(SFC,12/22/97, p.A19)
1984 In Japan Kazuo Inamori, founder of the Japanese technology group Kyocera, established the annual Kyoto Prizes for achievements in advanced technology, basic sciences, arts and philosophy. The Inamori Foundation administered the awards.
(SFC, 6/9/06, p.B3)(http://en.kyocera.de/kyocera_n/english/news/kyotoprize2004.html)
1984 In Japan a concrete anti-tsunami structure spanning 673 feet (205 m) was completed in Fudai under Mayor Kotaku Wamura. The total bill of 3.56 billion yen was split between the prefecture and central government. Two disasters in 1896 and 1933 had destroyed hundreds of homes and killed 439 people. The wall allowed Fudai to survive the tsunami of 2011.
(AP, 5/13/11)
1984 In Japan a split in the yakuza, the country’s biggest organized crime group, left some two dozen gang members dead in territorial battles.
(Econ, 9/12/15, p.38)
1984 Japan’s Sakura company rolled out the first gel ink pen. By 1999 the gelly pen was a huge fad among kids in the US.
(WSJ, 6/15/99, p.A1)
1984 Shoko Asahara started a yoga school in Tokyo. In 1987 he founded the Aum Shinri Kyo cult.
(WSJ, 9/28/01, p.A12)
1984 GM and Toyota established a joint venture, the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), to build cars in Fremont, California.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
1984 Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing retailer, opened its first store.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.65)
1985 Jun 23, All 329 people aboard an Air India Boeing 747 were killed when Flight 182 from Montreal to London crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland, apparently because of a bomb. An hour earlier, a bomb in baggage intended for another Air India flight exploded in a Tokyo airport, killing two baggage handlers. In 2000 Canadian police arrested 2 men of Sikh origin for the bombing. In 2001 Canadian prosecutors filed murder charges against Inderjit Singh Reyat. In 2003 Reyat was sentenced to 5 years for his role in making the bomb. Reyat spent 10 years in prison for building the bomb that exploded at the Narita airport, and another five years for helping make the Flight 182 bomb. In 2005 a Canadian judge acquitted 2 men who had been accused of conspiring in the case. Talwinder Parmar (1944-1992) was later assumed to have been the mastermind behind the attacks. In 2010 Reyat was found guilty of perjury. In 2011 he was sentenced to an additional 9 years in prison. In 2017 Canada’s parole board allowed Reyat to return to private residence following a year in a halfway house.
(AP, 6/23/97)(SFC, 10/28/00, p.A13)(SFC, 6/6/01, p.C3)(AP, 2/11/03)(AP, 3/17/05)(Econ, 6/16/07, p.47)(Reuters, 9/18/10)(Reuters, 1/7/11)(AFP, 2/15/17)
1985 Aug 12, The world's worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into Mount Otsuka, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo, killing 520 of 524 people onboard. A flawed splice made by Boeing 7 years earlier was the probable cause. In 2006 Japan opened a museum to remember the crash. Boeing and JAL paid undisclosed settlements to each victim’s family. Singer Kyu Sakamoto, whose song "Sukiyaki" topped US hit charts in 1963, was among the dead.
(AP, 8/12/97)(WSJ, 7/27/06, p.A1)(AFP, 8/12/10)
1985 Sep 22, In NYC ministers of America, Japan, West Germany, France and Britain (the Group of Five, G-5) unified and adopted the Plaza Accord for currency intervention and struggled to control capital exchange-rate movements. Led by the US Treasury's Sec. James Baker, it was the first effort to restore some semblance of order to the monetary system since the collapse of the postwar Breton Woods gold-anchored finance systems in the early 1970s. In the wake of the accord the dollar lost almost 30% of its value.
(www.g7.utoronto.ca/finance/fm850922.htm)(WSJ, 3/8/04, p.A2)(Econ, 10/9/04, p.72)
1985 The film "Ran" was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1985 The Studio Ghibli was founded by film animators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata in suburban Tokyo
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1985 Nintendo Co. of Japan launched its first home video game console: the Nintendo Entertainment System with “Super Mario Bros." included. In Japan it was known as the Family Computer or Famicom.
(Hem, 4/96, p.29)(Econ, 12/24/16, p.68)
1986 Mar 11, The Japanese probe Sakigake flew by Halley's Comet at 6.8 million km.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1986 Nov 1, In Japan seven charred bodies of women of the cult Friends of Truth were found on a beach. Their leader had recently died in a hospital.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A19)
1986 Nov 15, In the Philippines Japanese executive Noboyuki Wakaoji was kidnapped. He was released after over four months in captivity allegedly after the payment of a huge ransom. Two gang members wee later convicted sentenced to life terms. In 2010 Rolando Fajardo, leader of the kidnapping gang, was arrested.
(www.pctc.gov.ph/papers/InternationalTerrorism.htm)(AFP, 11/1/10)
1986 Nov 20, The US Federal Reserve Board approved a $500 million equity investment by Japan’s Sumitomo Bank in Goldman Sachs.
(Econ, 5/19/07, SR p.20)(http://tinyurl.com/3xdm2q)
1986 The Japanese anime film "Laputa Castle in the Sky" was made by Hayao Miyazaki.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1986 The Japanese anime film "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Gods" was made by Hayao Miyazaki. It was released as "Warriors of the Wind" in the US.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1986 The Japanese film "Tampopo," directed by Juzo Itami, was produced and released in the US in 1987. It was about an enterprising widow who fulfills her aspiration to become Tokyo's best noodle maker with the help of a truck driver who fancies himself a cowboy.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1986 Japan passed equal-employment-opportunity legislation removing most legal barriers to women in the workplace. Discrimination remained rampant.
(Econ, 11/20/10, SR p.8)
1986 Takako Doi was elected the head of the Socialist Party and became the first woman to lead a political party in Japan.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)
1986 Japan began its H-2 rocket program. The H-2 was terminated in 1999.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.D8)
1986-1988 Kiichi Miyazawa served as finance minister. He presided over a "bubble economy" period of inflated land and stock prices.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A16)
1987 Mar 30, Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" was bought for $39.85 million. The Vincent van Gogh painting "Sunflowers" was presented by art teacher Claude-Emile Schuffenecker at a 1901 Paris exhibition. It sold in 1987 for $40.3 million to the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Co. and was reported in 1997 to be a possible fake. Van Gogh’s letters refer to only 6 paintings of sunflowers, and the Yasuda painting is a seventh.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.D4)(HN, 3/30/98)
1987 Apr 17, President Reagan slapped $300 million in punitive duties on imported Japanese computers, television sets and power tools, in retaliation for Japan's alleged violation of a computer chip trade agreement.
(AP, 4/17/97)
1987 Sep, Eamonn Fingleton authored an article in Euromoney titled “Why Japanese Banks Are Shaky."
(www.fingleton.net/about_ef.php)
1987 Oct 31, Noboro Takeshita (d.2000 at 76), leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, was elected party president in his first official step toward replacing Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. He served as premier to 1989.
(AP, 10/31/97)(SFC, 6/19/00, p.E2)
1987 Nov 18, CBS Inc. announced it had agreed to sell its records division to Sony Corp. for about $2 billion.
(AP, 11/18/97)
1987 In Japan Haruki Murakami authored "Norwegian Wood." The novel experimented with reality. An English translation was made in 1997. By 2010 the love story sold more than 10 million copies in Japan and 2.6 million abroad in 36 languages. The film "Norwegian Wood," by Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung, opened in Japan in December, 2010.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.B7)(AP, 11/26/10)
1987 Robert Whiting published "You Gotta Have Wa," a nonfiction work on Japanese baseball.
(SFC, 8/14/99, p.B10)
1987 The Japanese film "Tampopo," directed by Juzo Itami, was released in the US. It was about an enterprising widow who fulfills her aspiration to become Tokyo's best noodle maker with the help of a truck driver who fancies himself a cowboy.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1987 The Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth) cult was founded by Shoko Asahara. It was a combination of Christianity and Buddhism.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A14)
1987 Japan gave its tentative consent to co-develop a version of the US F-16 fighter jet.
(WSJ, 3/22/96, p.A-1)
1987 Japan began privatizing Japan National Railways, the state railroad monopoly.
(WSJ, 1/10/05, p.A10)
1987 Japan privatized Japan Airlines (JAL). By 2001 it required 3 state bailouts.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.76)
1987 Toyota introduced All Trac models, featuring 4-wheel-drive, of Camry and other cars.
(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1988 Apr, The Japanese Red Army bombed a US military recreational club in Naples. 5 people were killed.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
1988 Jun 8, Nippon Airways announced that painting eyeballs on Jets cut bird collisions by 20%.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1988 Aug 10, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, a measure providing $20,000 payments to Japanese-Americans interned by the US government during World War II. The American government issued a formal apology and eventually compensated 80,000 victims
(AP, 8/10/97)(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A1)(Econ., 6/20/20, p.64)
1988 Yuji Ichioka (d.2002 at 66), San Francisco born historian, authored "Issei," a study of 1st generation Japanese-Americans.
(SFC, 9/21/02, p.A30)
1988 Clyde Prestowitz authored "Trading Places." T prescribed a tough US trade stance to counter Japan's economic challenge.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A14)
1988 The Japanese horror film "Evil Dead Trap" starred Miyuki Ono and was directed by Toshiharu Ikeda.
(SFC, 10/25/98, p.D2)
1988 The Japanese anime film “Grave of the Fireflies" was made by Isao Takahata. It was based on Akiyuki Nosaka’s autobiographical novel (1967) of the same name recounting raids on Kobe in March 1945.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)(Econ., 4/4/15, p.16)
1988 The Japanese anime film “My Neighbor Totoro" was made by Hayao Miyazaki.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)(SFC, 8/7/09, p.E2)
1988 The Recruit Scandal exposed leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who were accused of accepting stock and cash bribes from the Recruit Co., a personnel recruiting and publishing conglomerate.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)
1988 Yasumitsu Shigeta founded Hikari Tsushim (light communications), a mobile phone franchise. His assets were valued at $70 billion when his stock and internet assets collapsed in 2000 and his fortune dropped to $2.5 billion.
(WSJ, 4/27/00, p.A1)
1988 Nintendo of Japan launched its Nintendo Power magazine aimed at boys 8-15 years old. It claims a subscription based circulation of 1 million.
(Hem, 4/96, p.30)
1988 Sony Corp. acquired CBS Records. [see Nov 18, 1987]
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.C7)
1989 Jan 7, Emperor Hirohito of Japan died at age 87 after the longest reign in the history of Japan (1922-89); he was succeeded by Crown Prince Akihito. Heisei, which means Peace and Prosperity, was adopted as the new reign name. For the first time since 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in the Diet's Upper House. In 1989 Edward Behr authored "Hirohito: Behind the Myth." In 2000 Herbert P. Bix authored "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan." Hirohito was a marine biologist and collector. His work included the illustrated book "Crabs of Sagami Bay."
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(AP, 1/7/98)(WSJ, 8/30/00, p.A24)(WSJ, 5/29/01, p.A20)
1989 Feb 24, A state funeral was held in Japan for Emperor Hirohito, who died the month before at age 87.
(AP, 2/24/99)
1989 Apr 1, A Japanese 3% consumption, or sales tax, took effect. It earned Sadanori Yamanaka (d.2004) the nickname "Mr. Consumption Tax." In 1997 it rose to 5%. Yamanaka led the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's tax commission for eight years, beginning in 1979.
(AP, 2/20/04)(Econ, 6/23/12, p.43)
1989 Apr 25, Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita announced his resignation in order to take responsibility for his involvement in Japan's Recruit stock scandal.
(AP, 4/25/99)
1989 Jun 3, Japan’s Foreign Minister Sousuke Uno was named prime minister. He replaced Noboru Takeshita, who resigned to save his ruling Liberal Democratic Party from further embarrassment over an influence peddling scandal.
(www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,957926,00.html)
1989 Jul 23, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in the upper house of the Diet in parliamentary elections.
(AP, 7/23/99)
1989 Jul 24, Japan’s PM Sousuke Uno (1922-1998) resigned in the wake of Japan's ruling party's defeat. Uno resigned amid a scandal involving his geisha mistress. Criticism focused on allegations that he treated her in a miserly fashion.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1989-7/1989-07-24-ABC-11.html)(SFC, 8/20/96, p.A18)
1989 Aug 9, Toshiki Kaifu was elected prime minister of Japan, succeeding Sousuke Uno.
(AP, 8/9/99)
1989 Sep 27, Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc. agreed to a $3.4 billion buyout by Sony Corporation.
(AP, 9/27/99)
1989 Oct 30, Mitsubishi Estate Co., a major Japanese real estate concern, announced it was buying 51 percent of Rockefeller Group Inc. of New York.
(AP, 10/30/99)
1989 Nov 4, In Japan Yokohama lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, was kidnapped with his wife and infant son. He had been leading a legal crusade against the Aum Shinri Kyo cult. Later top members of the cult admitted to killing the family. In 1998 Kazuaki Okazaki (38) was sentenced to death for the murder. In 2000 Satoru Hashimoto was sentenced to death for the strangling deaths of the Sakamoto family and for the 1995 sarin gas attacks.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A12)(SFC, 7/26/00, p.A14)
1989 Dec 25, The Bank of Japan raised interest rates to slow the heated economy.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.66)
1989 Dec 31, The Japanese Nikkei Index peaked at 38,915. The DJIA was at 2753.
(WSJ, 9/5/01, p.C1)
1989 Karel Von Wolferen authored “The Enigma of Japanese Power."
(Econ, 11/14/09, p.78)
1989 Shintaro Isihara and Akio Morita, former chairman of Sony, co-authored "The Japan That Can Say No." It argued that Japan should challenge US hegemony and act as a geopolitical free agent.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A10)
1989 The Japanese anime film “Kiki’s Delivery Service" was made by Hayao Miyazaki.
(SFC, 8/7/09, p.E2)
1989 The Japanese police drama film "Violent Cop" starred Takeshi Kitano, who also directed.
(SFC, 8/27/99, p.C3)
1989 Japan’s PM Sousuke Uno resigned over a scandal involving his geisha mistress. Criticism focused on allegations that he treated her in a miserly fashion.
(SFC, 8/20/96, p.A18)(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1989 In Japan mutilated skulls and bones were found near the former Tokyo headquarters of Unit 731, a covert body charged with developing techniques of chemical and biological warfare during WWII.
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.48)
1989 Nintendo Co. of Japan launched its Game Boy product, a portable, hand-held game system with interchangeable game packs. The game was designed by Gunpei Yokoi (d.1997 at 56).
(Hem, 4/96, p.29)(SFC, 10/11/97, p.A19)
1989 The Showa Shinzan snowball-fight championship was begun as a tourist attraction in Sobetsucho, Japan.
(WSJ, 2/26/04, p.A1)
1989 Japan’s Toyoto Corp. launched the Lexus, a premium brand car, in the US.
(Econ, 6/7/14, p.69)
1990 Feb 18, In general elections, Japan's conservative governing party held onto its 34-year-old majority in the Parliament's lower house.
(AP, 2/18/00)
1990 Apr, The Aum Shinri Kyo cult sent three trucks into central Tokyo to spray poisonous botulin mists. The convoy then attacked US bases at Yokohama and Yokosuka. The botulin did not work and the cult turned to use anthrax.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1990 May 15, The "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" (1890) by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) sold for $82.5 million to Ryoei Saito, Japan's second-largest paper manufacturer.
(www.vggallery.com/painting/p_0753.htm)
1990 Nov 26, Japanese business giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. agreed to acquire MCA Inc. for $6.6 billion.
(AP, 11/26/01)
1990 A 173-page memoir by Japanese Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989), created at the request of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and dictated to the emperor’s aides soon after the end of the war, was published in Japan. It covers events from the Japanese assassination of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 to the emperor's surrender broadcast recorded on Aug. 14, 1945. On Dec. 6, 2017, the transcript of the memoir was sold at auction in NYC for $275,000.
(AP, 12/5/17)(SFC, 12/8/17, p.A2)
1990 Shintaro Ishihara (b.1932), a member of Japan’s House of Representatives, authored “The Japan That Can Say No," in which he outlines what Japan must do in order to be the mainspring of the new world order.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shintaro_Ishihara)
1990 The film "Dreams" was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1990 Japan raised its interest rates and ordered banks to curtail property lending. This resulted in a major crash in land values. Speculation in domestic real estate, stocks, overpriced overseas investments, and foreign pressure to force the value of the yen upward causes a collapse of the "bubble economy."
(WSJ, 11/30/95, p.A-1)(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)
1990 Chiyo Uno (1897-1996) was awarded a title by the emperor and named a "person of cultural merit." Her best know book was "Ohan" (1957).
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A21)(http://asian-literature.suite101.com/article.cfm/uno_chiyo)
1990 The Sakura Bank was created from the merger of Mitsui Bank and Taiyo Kobe Bank.
(WSJ, 10/15/99, p.A10)
1990 Fusako Sano (9) disappeared while walking home in Sanjo in Niigita Prefecture. In 2000 she was found held hostage at the home of Nobuyuki Sato (37), 35 miles away from where she was kidnapped.
(SFC, 4/11/00, p.A12)
1990-2000 This was a period of economic stagnation in Japan and later called "the lost decade." It resulted in the opening of the Japanese economy to foreigners. In 2006 a trio of economists authored a paper “Zombie lending and depressed re-structuring in Japan," which examined how subsidies to weak firms prolonged Japan’s period of deflation.
(WSJ, 12/28/00, p.A1)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.62)
1991 Mar, The video game “Street Fighter II" was released in Japan by Capcom. It introduced female characters. It was a sequel to Capcom's 1987 fighting game Street Fighter.
(SFC, 2/15/11, p.E5)
1991 Jun 3, Mount Unzendake in southern Japan erupted and left 43 people dead and nearly 2,300 homeless. The dead included volcano experts Maurice and Katia Krafft.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.A17)(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.A17)(AP, 6/3/01)(WSJ, 4/18/02, p.D7)
1991 Jul 12, A Japanese professor who had translated Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" was found stabbed to death, nine days after the novel's Italian translator was attacked in Milan.
(AP, 7/12/01)
1991 Dr. Junichi Saga authored "Confessions of a Yakuza." It was based on the testimony of Eiji Ijichi, a retired Japanese gangster. In 2003 it was noted that Bob Dylan used lines from the book in his 2001 album "Love and Theft."
(WSJ, 7/8/03, p.A1)
1991 Christo created his "Umbrellas" sculpture that lasted 3 weeks. 1,760 yellow umbrellas were unfurled north of Los Angeles and another 1,340 blue ones in Ibaraki, Japan.
(SFC, 3/2/97, p.E4)(SSFC, 2/13/05, p.A10)
1991 The Japanese anime film "Only Yesterday" was made by Isao Takahata.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1991 The film "Rhapsody in August" was directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was about a family who lost an uncle in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1991 The sci-fi Japanese film "Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer" was filmed. Shinya Tsukamoto starred in and directed the film.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.D4)
1991 Factional infighting brought down Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu and his cabinet. He was replaced by Kiichi Miyazawa.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)
1991 In Japan Toshikazu Sugaya, a kindergarten bus driver, was arrested in the murder of a 4-year-old girl in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, a year earlier. A local court sentenced him to life imprisonment in 1993, and Japan's top court rejected his appeal in 2000. In 2010 a court officially declared him innocent in the murder and offered a rare apology for a forced confession and wrongful conviction that kept him behind bars for more than 17 years. Sugaya (63), was serving a life sentence when new DNA tests last year showed his innocence.
(AP, 3/26/10)
1991 Ryoei Saito purchased 2 paintings by Van Gogh and Renoir for $185 million.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R4)
1991 Carbon nanotubules, formed from hexagonal arrays of carbon atoms, were first discovered by Sumio Iijima of NEC Fundamental Research Labs in Tsukuba, Japan. In 2001 IBM scientists assembled transistors using carbon nanotubules.
(SFC, 4/27/01, p.B1,4)
1991 Sony introduced the first commercial lithium-ion batteries in its CCD-TR1 camcorder. They had a capacity to overheat. In 2004 the US banned them as cargo on passenger planes. In 2006 Dell and Apple initiated recalls for laptop computers with recently manufactured, problematic lithium-ion batteries.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.52)(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.23)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.16)
1992 Jan 8, President Bush collapsed during a state dinner in Tokyo; White House officials said Bush was suffering from stomach flu.
(AP, 1/8/02)
1992 Jan 13, Japan apologized for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.
(AP, 1/13/98)
1992 Feb 3, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa sparked controversy by saying American workers were losing the drive "to live by the sweat of their brow."
(AP, 2/3/02)
1992 Jun 11, Baseball owners approved the sale of Seattle Mariners to a Japanese group.
(http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/S/Seattle_Mariners.stm)
1992 Oct 17, Japanese exchange student Yoshi Hattori, 16, was shot and killed by Rodney Peairs in Center, La., after Hattori and his American host mistakenly knocked on Peairs' door while looking for a Halloween party. Peairs was acquitted of manslaughter, but in a civil trial was ordered to pay more than $650,000 in damages to Hattori's family.
(AP, 10/17/97)
1992 Oct 23, Japanese Emperor Akihito began a visit to China, the first by a Japanese monarch.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1992 Yuko Iwanami, the granddaughter of Hideki Tojo, published "My Grandfather Hideki Tojo."
(WSJ, 4/30/98, p.A15)
1992 Nobuhiro Watsuki first published “Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story" in the boy’s magazine Weekly Shonen Jump Special. He re-wrote it in 1994 and expanded the saga of the Meiji Restoration of 1868 as a serial that ran thru 1999. In 2004 it became the top-selling graphic novel in the US.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.B3)
1992 The Japanese anime film "Porco Rosso" was made by Hayao Miyazaki.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1992 The Japanese film "The Winners" featured an old gent's quest to take his team to the national gateball championships. Gateball, based on croquet, was invented after WW II by Washin Suzuki, a former military policeman, as a game for children. It was later promoted as good exercise for seniors.
(WSJ, 1/10/00, p.A1)
1992 Emp. Akihito opened a museum devoted to the art and poetry collections of past rulers on his palace grounds.
(SFC,12/15/97, p.E3)
1992 The government passed the PKO bill. The controversial legislation allowed troops to be sent abroad on peace-keeping missions.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)
1992 Japan passed a law that made it a crime to demand that a securities company return investment losses.
(SFC, 12/3/97, p.D3)
1992 Japan passed an anti-mob law the clearly defined illegal behavior and penalized companies with yakuza ties. This led to the practice of using former policemen to replace yakuza for protection.
(Econ, 2/28/09, p.45)
1992 Ling Ling (d.2008), a giant panda born at China's Beijing Zoo in 1985, came to Tokyo. He later traveled to Mexico three times for unsuccessful mating.
(AP, 4/30/08)
1992 Juzo Itami, film director, was slashed in the face and seriously injured by Japanese mobsters upset over his unflattering portrayal of gangsters in a film.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1992 The Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan began sponsoring the Blue Planet Prize, an award for environmental work.
(SFC, 6/15/99, p.A20)
1992 Nicola Zappetti, American gangster in Japan, died. He had told his story to Robert Whiting who published in 1999: "Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan."
(SFC, 8/14/99, p.B1)
1993 Jan 15, A 7.5 earthquake struck northern Japan and 2 people died.
(http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2003/eq_030925/)
1993 Feb 9, Saburo Okita (b.1914), Japanese economist and former foreign minister (1979-80), died. He to a large part introduced the “flying geese" pattern of economic development to the Western political and business audiences. Kaname Akamatsu, Japanese economist, had developed the multi-tier hierarchical 'flying geese' model in the 1930s to describe how industrialization spreads from developed countries to the developing countries.
(www.risklatte.com/Articles_new/BraveEconomist/Brave_10.php)(Econ, 11/13/10, p.50)
1993 Feb 28, Ishiro Honda (81), Japanese director, producer (Godzilla), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0393094/)
1993 Apr 15, The Group of Seven nations unveiled a $28.4 billion aid package for Russia at the conclusion of an emergency two-day meeting in Tokyo.
(AP, 4/15/98)
1993 Apr 16, At the White House, President Clinton pressed Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa to help ease Japan's persistent trade surplus with the United States.
(AP, 4/16/98)
1993 May 23, A jury in Baton Rouge, La., acquitted Rodney Peairs of manslaughter in the shooting death of Yoshi Hattori, a Japanese exchange student he'd mistaken for an intruder. Peairs was later found liable in a civil suit brought by Hattori's parents.
(AP, 5/23/08)
1993 Jun 9, As millions of Japanese watched on television, Crown Prince Naruhito wed commoner Masako Owada in an elaborate Shinto religious ceremony.
(AP, 6/9/98)
1993 Jun 18, In Japan, the government of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa fell.
(AP, 6/18/98)
1993 Jun, The Aum Shinri Kyo cult pumped a slurry of liquid anthrax into a sprayer and created a cloud that would settle on victims, but it didn't work.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1993 Jul 6, On the eve of the Group of Seven summit in Tokyo, President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa expressed optimism about resolving a contentious trade dispute between their countries.
(AP, 7/6/98)
1993 Jul 7, The Group of Seven nations (G7), on the first day of their economic summit in Tokyo, unveiled a long-sought agreement on world trade. Prior to the summit opening, President Clinton delivered a speech at Waseda University.
(AP, 7/7/03)
1993 Jul 8, Leaders of the Group of Seven, in the second day of their Tokyo summit, warned against the dismembering of Bosnia, but backed away from a threat to use force.
(AP, 7/8/03)
1993 Jul 12, 196 people were killed when an earthquake measuring a magnitude of 7.8 struck northern Japan.
(AP, 7/12/98)
1993 Jul 19, Szymon Goldberg (84), Polish-born violinist, conductor, died in Japan. He became a US citizen in 1953 and two years later founded the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra.
(http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200152693/default.html)
1993 Jul 22, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa agreed to resign, following big election losses by the scandal-plagued Liberal Democrats.
(AP, 7/22/98)
1993 Jul, The Aum Shinri Kyo cult again pumped a slurry of liquid anthrax into a sprayer and shot it near the Imperial Palace and around central Tokyo without success.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)
1993 Aug 5, Japan's Cabinet resigned, paving the way for the end of 38 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.
(AP, 8/5/03)
1993 Aug 6, Morihiro Hosokawa was elected the new prime minister of Japan by the country's lower house of Parliament. The Liberal Democratic Party was ousted after ruling since 1955. Hosokawa had formed the Japan New Party in May 1992. It ruled for only 8 months.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.B-13)(AP, 8/6/98)(Econ, 11/10/07, p.52)
1993 The film "Madadayo" was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1993 The American film “Rising Sun" was directed by Philip Kaufman. It was based on detective thriller by Michael Crichton and marked a peak in American Japanophobia.
(SFC, 5/23/12, p.E3)(Econ, 6/28/14, p.27)
1993 The American Akebono was promoted to yokozuna, the 1st rank of sumo wrestling.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.A25)
1993 Japan’s government lifted a four-year moratorium on capital punishment.
(AP, 9/16/05)
1993 The government of Japan approved 7 foreign access zones to promote imports and foreign investments.
(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.B-13)
1993 Japan’s “Kono Statement" was its first apology for incidents of sexual slavery during WWII. Yohei Kono was Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time.
(Economist, 9/8/12, p.38)(AP, 6/1/13)
1993 In Japan Shuji Nakamura, an employee of Nichia Corp., invented the blue light-emitting diode (LED). In 2001 Nakamura sued Nichia in a patent dispute that later settled for $7 million.
(Econ, 2/7/04, p.60)(Econ, 9/23/06, TQ p.27)
1993 Kobo Abe, Japanese writer, died. He wrote "Woman in the Dunes." In 1996 his last novel "Kangaroo Notebook" was published.
(SFC, 6/23/96, BR, p.4)
1994 Jan 23, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, visiting Japan, met with Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, who promised to go through with a scheduled summit with President Clinton.
(AP, 1/23/99)
1994 Jan 29, Japan's Parliament approved watershed measures to stem political corruption.
(AP, 1/29/99)
1994 Apr 8, Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa announced his intention to resign in the wake of an ever-widening financial scandal. In 1998 Hosokawa abandoned politics and began studying ceramics. In 2006 his pieces fetched as much as $10,000.
(AP, 4/8/99)(SSFC, 2/19/06, p.A21)
1994 Apr 25, Conservative Tsutomu Hata, former foreign minister, became prime minister of Japan, succeeding Morihiro Hosokawa as political infighting continued.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(AP, 4/25/99)
1994 May 24, The United States and Japan agreed to revive efforts to pry open Japanese markets to U.S. goods.
(AP, 5/24/99)
1994 June 21, Seven people died and more than 200 were sickened by fumes from the lethal nerve gas sarin in Matsumoto in Central Japan. The Aum Shinri Kyo cult (Supreme Truth) was later charged with the attack.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A13)
1994 Jun 25, Japanese Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata, faced with certain defeat in a no-confidence vote, announced his intention to resign after just two months in office.
(AP, 6/25/99)
1994 Jun 29, Japan's parliament chose Tomiichi Murayama to be the new prime minister, succeeding Tsutoma Hata.
(AP, 6/29/04)
1994 Jun, Koken Nosaka (d.2004), a top government spokesman under Japan's first Socialist prime minister, helped end political turmoil by brokering a once-unthinkable alliance between his party, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party and the now-defunct Sakigake Party.
(AP, 4/18/04)
1994 Aug 7, The 10th International Conference on AIDS opened in Yokohama, Japan.
(AP, 8/7/99)
1994 Aug 11, The Tenth International Conference on AIDS concluded in Yokohama, Japan.
(AP, 8/11/99)
1994 Oct 1, The United States and Japan reached a series of trade agreements, averting a threatened trade war.
(AP, 10/1/99)
1994 Oct 13, Kenzabuto Oe, Japanese novelist, won the Noble prize for literature. His work included "An Echo of Heaven."
(SFC, 7/7/96, BR p.9)(AP, 10/13/99)
1994 Nov 25, Sony Corporation co-founder Akio Morita retired as chairman of the electronics giant for health reasons.
(AP, 11/25/04)
1994 Dec 3, Japan’s Sony Corp. launched its PlayStation game console.
(WSJ, 3/7/05, p.A8)(Econ, 12/10/11, SR p.4)
1994 Dec, Ichiro Ozawa helped form the new opposition Shinshinto, New Freedom Party, through an alliance of nine small parties opposed to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, LDP.
(SFC,12/27/97, p.A12)
1994 Sheldon Harris (d.2002) wrote "Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-Up." It was about Japanese medical units in Manchuria that engaged in horrific warfare experiments on humans.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C4)(SFC, 9/9/02, p.A22)
1994 The thriller film "Angel Dust" was directed by Sogo Ishi.
(SFC, 7/18/97, p.D3)
1994 The 52-story Shinjuku Park Tower in Tokyo, Japan, was completed. It was designed by Kenzo Tenge and built for the Tokyo Gas Urban Development Company.
(www.tokyoarchitecture.info/Building/4035/Shinjuku_Park_Tower.php)
1994 The Asian and Pacific Trade Center opened in Osaka as the first functioning foreign access zone.
(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.B-13)
1994 Tomiicchi Murayama of the Social Democrats became the head of the government coalition.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A26)
1994 Japan introduced subsidies for solar power technology. A typical system cost $16,000 per kilowatt, of which the government paid half. The subsidies were phased out in 2005.
(Econ, 11/18/06, p.73)
1994 Aoyama, a Japanese-born North Korean engineer, began spying for Japan. In 1997 as an industrial spy in Beijing he confirmed that North Korea had developed a nuclear bomb.
(SFC, 11/28/02, p.F5)
1994 The Japanese were first allowed to buy mobile phones.
(WSJ, 4/28/00, p.A6)
1994 Japan posted a record trade surplus of $120.9 billion.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
1994-1995 Haruki Murakami (b.1949) authored his 3-volume novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," a surreal 600-page exploration of fear. An English version was published in 1997. In 2011 a stage version premiered in Edinburgh.
(Econ, 8/27/11, p.75)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami)
1994-1997 Hisako Takahashi, a Labor Ministry official, served on the Supreme Court. She was the 1st woman to serve on the Japanese high court.
(SFC, 12/22/01, p.A2)
1995 Jan 11, President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama held a low-key summit in Washington, playing down differences over trade.
(AP, 1/11/00)
1995 Jan 17, A magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the port city of Kobe, Japan. 5,502 people were killed in the worst earthquake to hit Japan since 1923.
(WSJ, 1/18/95, p.A1)(AP, 6/22/02)(SSFC, 4/16/06, p.F4)
1995 Feb 26, Barings PLC, Britain's oldest investment banking firm, was forced into bankruptcy after an employee in Singapore, Nicholas William Leeson (28), speculated in derivatives on Tokyo stock prices that resulted in losses exceeding $800 million [$1.4 billion].
(WSJ, 2/27/95, p.A1)(AP, 2/26/00)
1995 Mar 2, Ted Truman, a top int’l. staffer at the Federal Reserve, reported to Alan Greenspan that massive dollar sales were driving down the US currency. In response the Fed and Treasury bought $600 million in marks and yen and repeated the action next day joined by 13 central banks.
(WSJ, 1/18/05, p.A13)
1995 Mar 3, The dollar plunged to a new low against the Japanese yen. In response the Fed and US Treasury bought more yen and were joined by 13 central banks. American and Japan intervened in 1995 to halt the dollar’s slide against the yen. The dollar stabilized.
(AP, 3/3/00)(Econ, 3/29/08, p.100)
1995 Mar 10, The book "Blindside: Why Japan Is Still on Track to Overtake the US by the year 2000," by Eamonn Fingleton, was published. He argued that the Japanese economic slump was a ruse to lull rivals into complacency.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A14)
1995 Mar 19, In Japan 5 people died by poison gas in a subway. [see Mar 20]
(MC, 3/19/02)
1995 Mar 20, A gas attack by the Aum Shinri Kyo cult on Tokyo's subways killed 12 people. More than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the poisonous gas sarin leaked on five separate subway trains. Masato Yokoyama, a cult leader, was sentenced to death in 1999. In 2000 Robert Jay Lifton authored "Destroying the World To Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism." In 2001 Haruki Murakami's "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche" was published in English. In 2004 Shoko Asahara was convicted and sentenced to hang for masterminding the deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway and other crimes that killed 27 people.
(SFC, 7/4/96, p.A10)(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A12)(AP, 3/20/97)(SFC, 9/30/99, p.D14)(SFEC, 1/16/00, BR p.9)(SSFC, 4/29/01, DB p.81)(AP, 2/27/04)
1995 Mar 21, Thousands of Japanese police raided the offices of a secretive religious group, Aum Shinri Kyo, in connection with nerve-gas attacks on Tokyo subways that killed 12 people and sickened thousands. In ensuing weeks they found tons of chemicals used to make sarin nerve gas and evidence of biological weapons research.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(AP, 3/21/00)
1995 Mar 28, In Japan, Mitsubishi Bank and the Bank of Tokyo agreed to a merger to create what was then the world's largest bank.
(AP, 3/28/00)
1995 Mar 30, In Japan Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency, was seriously wounded by a masked gunman. Two months later a police officer confessed to the attack. He was a member of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult and said that he was ordered to carry out the attack. The confession was kept secret until anonymous newspaper accounts warned of a coverup in 1996.
(SFC, 10/30/96, p.A1,6)
1995 Apr 23, Hideo Murai, head of the science ministry of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult, was stabbed and killed. Police suspected that a cult leader ordered his murder so that he would not testify about Aum's nerve gas production.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)
1995 May 5, Talks collapsed between the United States and Japan on averting a trade fight over automobiles.
(AP, 5/5/00)
1995 May 16, The Clinton administration threatened punitive tariffs that would double the prices for Japan's most popular luxury cars.
(AP, 5/16/00)
1995 May 16, Aum Shinri Kyo cult leader Shoko Asahara was found hiding in a secret room at a cult compound in Kamikuishiki and arrested. A letter bomb exploded in Tokyo's city hall and injured an aid of the governor who had advocated withdrawing Aum's religious permit. His teachings declared that he was Christ, that meditation was required for enlightenment, and that Armageddon is imminent.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(SFC, 11/2/96, p.A9)(SFC, 9/29/97, p.A13)
1995 Jun 15, The Summit of 7 leading industrialist nations, G-7, met in Halifax, Canada, for talks on a unified front against terrorism. President Clinton met with Japanese PM Tomiichi Murayama on the opening day of a Group of Seven summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
(AP, 6/15/00)(SFC, 6/20/97, p.A16)
1995 Jun 22, Riot police stormed a hijacked jumbo jet in Hakodate, Japan, freeing all 364 people on board and capturing a lone hijacker.
(AP, 6/22/00)
1995 Jun, Japan's Fair Trade Commission clamped down on Shiseido's business practices and deregulated cosmetics imports. The FTC in this year had 220 investigators and a budget of ¥5.24 billion.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A10)(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.9)
1995 Sep 26, A bond trader at Japan's Daiwa Bank was charged with doctoring records to hide $1.1 billion in losses.
(AP, 9/26/00)
1995 Sep 29, Three U-S servicemen were indicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl and handed over to Japanese authorities. They were later convicted.
(AP, 9/29/00)
1995 Nov 2, Daiwa Bank was expelled from the US after it was learned that it tried to cover-up illicit trades by bond trader Toshihide Iguchi who lost some $1.1 billion between 1984-1995. Mr. Iguchi was later sentenced to 4 years in prison and fined nearly $2.6 million.
(WSJ, 1/8/97, p.A14)(AP, 11/2/00)
1995 Nov 7, In a Japanese courtroom, three American military men admitted to the ambush-rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl, an attack that outraged the Japanese and strained security ties between Japan and the US. The men later received prison sentences ranging from six and a-half to seven years.
(AP, 11/7/00)
1995 Dec 29, Japan's finance minister (Masayoshi Takemura) announced the resignation of the deputy finance minister (Kyosuke Shinozawa) over several scandals, including the ministry's cover-up of trading losses at Daiwa Bank's New York office.
(AP, 12/29/00)
1995 Dec, A government advisory panel urges that a new capital be set up by the year 2010 within 180 miles of Tokyo.
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-10)
1995 Dec, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama led the government plan to spend 6.7 bil to help cover the losses of the Junes, seven housing-loan companies, which total 63 billion. Japan has a larger bad-loan crises of $367 bil.
(WSJ, 12/20/95, p.A-10)
1995 Dec 8, There was an accident at the Japanese Menjou prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor in the Fukui Prefecture that forced closure. Two tons of non-radioactive, but violently reactive liquid sodium leaked from the cooling system. Japan had 51 nuclear power plants that produced 33.8% of its energy needs.
(WSJ, 12/27/95, p. A-7)(SFC, 3/13/97, p.A12)
1995 Mammon Mimizuka a "living national treasure of Japan," admired the work of Narrate Mochizuki Goldsmith (d.1997), who had developed a new art form of calligraphic brush writing on ceramics for refined renditions of medieval Japanese poetry on abstract sculptural forms.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A20)
1995 The Etsuko and Joe Price Collection: "Masterworks of Japanese Painting" is a CD that shows the Japanese Edo paintings housed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the greatest collection in the Western world.
(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.85)
1995 The book “A Passion for Success," by Kazuo Inamori, founder of the Japanese technology group Kyocera, was published in English.
(http://en.kyocera.de/kyocera_n/english/culture/success.html)
1995 A Japanese weekly comic book featured the story "Initial D," which focused on a drifter named Takumi, who honed his (car) sliding skills on early morning runs delivering tofu to a resort hotel in the mountains.
(WSJ, 9/18/03, p.A10)
1995 Yukinobu Hoshino (b.1954), Japanese manga artist, introduced a comic strip called “The Case Records of Professor Munakata," an “authority on the study of folklore, who reveals the invisible historical facts hidden behind the myths."
(Econ, 8/28/10, p.75)(www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=25688)
1995 The Japanese anime film "Whisper of the Heart" was made by Yoshifumi Kondo (d.1998 at 47).
(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1995 In Japan a fad called purikura began. Young people began taking color photos in booths with customized backgrounds and digital decorations.
(SFC, 1/23/09, p.B9)
1995 American and Japan intervened to halt the dollar’s slide against the yen.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.100)
1995 In Japan executives of the Takashimaya department store chain paid $730,000 to ensure a quiet stockholders meeting. The money was paid to Isao Nishiura, the head of a group of Japanese mobsters (yakuza) who practice "sokaiya'" a form of extortion. Three executives and Isao were arrested in 1996. Payments had been made for as long as ten years.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1995 For this year US official aid donations were $7.3 bil. Japan’s was $14.5 bil. France’s was $8.4 bil. Germany’s was $7.5 bil.
(SFC, 6/18/96, p.A10)
1996 Jan 5, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama resigned.
(AP, 1/5/01)
1996 Jan 8, Trade Minister Hashimoto was endorsed by the ruling coalition to become prime minister.
(WSJ, 1/9/96, p.A-1)
1996 Jan, Sadako Abe, a Shiseido executive director, urged the company's board to consider acquisitions to boost global business in the cosmetics industry.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A10)
1996 Feb 10, A slab of mountainside crushed a highway tunnel on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, killing 20 people.
(AP, 2/10/01)
1996 Mar 7, Three US servicemen were convicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl and sentenced by a Japanese court to six and a-half to seven years in prison.
(AP, 3/7/01)
1996 Mar 28, Shin Kanemaru, power broker in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, died at 82.
(WSJ, 3/28/96,p.A-1)
1996 Mar, The Health Ministry removed barriers to imports of cosmetic products by unofficial distributors.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A1)
1996 Apr 5, The state owned Japanese National Railways Settlement Corp. owes $258 billion to banks, bondholders and the government.
(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.A-1)
1996 Apr 13, The US agreed to close the Futenma Air Station at Okinawa, Japan. The 1200 acre base is surrounded by the densely populated city of Iowan.
(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-8)
1996 Apr, Takafumi Horie (23), a student at the Univ. of Tokyo, set up Livin’ on the Edge Inc., a Web-site design company. In 2000 the company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and in 2004 the name was changed to Livedoor, after an Internet service provider that it took over in 2002.
(WSJ, 2/3/06, p.A1)
1996 Jun 14, Sumitomo Corp. announced that it had lost $1.8 billion over the last ten years in unauthorized trades done by head copper trader Yasuo Hamanaka. World copper markets were thrown into turmoil following disclosure by Sumitomo Corp. that a rogue trader had hidden multibillion-dollar losses.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A1)(AP, 6/14/97)
1996 Jun, In Japan the Diet gave approval to set up a government council to formulate a proposal for a new location for the nation's capital.
(WSJ, 9/24/96, p.B12)
1996 Aug 29, Authorities arrested Dr. Takeshi Abe, a hemophilia expert, who headed a government panel on AIDS in the 1980s when some 1,800 hemophiliacs were infected with AIDS after using blood-clotting agents contaminated with the AIDS virus. He had failed to recommend a heat treatment for the products more than 2 years after such treatment was approved in the US.
(SFC, 8/30/96, p.A18)
1996 Sep 27, In Japan the Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto dissolved the parliament and set new elections for Oct. 20.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)
1996 Oct 8, It was reported that a man's haircut costs $48.65.
(WSJ, 10/8/96, p.A17)
1996 Oct 20, The Liberal Democratic Party under Ryutaro Hashimoto won a plurality in the lower house. The vote marked a setback to reformers.
(WSJ, 10/21/96, p.A16)(USAT, 8/29/97, p.8A)
1996 Oct 22, Prosecutors arrested Yasuzo Harmonica, the former Sumitomo copper trader accused of racking up $2.6 billion in losses.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1996 Nov 6, Parliament re-elected Ryutaro Hashimoto as prime minister.
(SFC, 11/7/96, p.a13)
1996 Dec 17, In Peru guerrillas took over a party at the house of the Japanese ambassador in Lima. They identified themselves as members of the Tupac Amaru guerrilla movement and demanded the release of imprisoned guerrillas. Nestor Cerpa Cartolini was later identified as the leader of the 20 or so guerrillas. Cerpa’s common-law wife, Nancy Gilvonio, was one of the imprisoned guerrillas whom he demanded be released. Pres. Fujimori’s brother was one of the hostages. All but 72 hostages were later released; the siege ended April 22, 1997, with a commando raid that resulted in the deaths of all the rebels, two commandos and one hostage.
(SFC,12/25/96,p.A12)(SFC,1/7/97,p.A10)(SFC,1/17/96, p.A12)(AP, 12/17/97)
1996 Dec 26, Honda Motor Co. announced the first human-shaped robot that can move independently and do basic tasks. It stood 6 feet and weighed 462 lbs. and took 10 years of engineering.
(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B10)
1996 Dec 26, Former Prime Minister Stoma Hata took 12 members of the opposition party Shinshinto (New Frontier Party) with him to form the new Sun Party.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.B3)
1996 The film "Shall We Dance" by Masayuki Suu won 13 national awards and created a ballroom dance craze.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, DB p.33)
1996 Japan introduced a new tax on alcohol.
(Econ, 3/26/05, p.43)
1996 Japan rescinded its 1948 Eugenics Protection Law. In 2019 the government agreed to pay compensation to thousands of people with disabilities who were forcibly sterilized under the law.
(Econ, 8/3/19, p.29)
1996 Katsuhiko Kawasaki began running the investigation division of the Tokyo Public Prosecutor's Office.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.B2)
1996 The Penndel Co. of Tokyo introduced its Milky Gel Roller. The gelly pen became a huge fad among kids by 1999 for its ability to write on skin and be easily rubbed off.
(WSJ, 6/15/99, p.A1)
1996 Japan’s Sony Corp. launched its Vaio brand of personal computers. In 2014 Vaio was sold to a private-equity fund.
(Econ, 7/12/14, p.57)
1996 Yahoo and SoftBank created Yahoo Japan.
(SSFC, 5/15/16, p.D3)
1996 In Japan knife crimes by juveniles increased by 30% to 431.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.A12)
1996 A UN report condemned Japan’s wartime military brothels.
(Econ 6/10/17, p.42)
1996-1998 In Japan an incipient economic recovery during this period turned into a fresh recession.
(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.3)
1997 Jan 2, The Russian oil tanker Nakhodka broke in two 90 miles off the coast of northwestern Japan. It carried 5 million gallons of fuel oil. The bow of the ship ran aground 5 days later and much oil was spilled.
(SFC, 1/8/96, p.C1)
1997 Jan 10, From Tokyo it was reported that scientists had successfully implanted micro-robotic backpacks onto cockroaches in experiments to control their movements.
(SFC, 1/10/96, p.B2)
1997 Jan 10, The Nikkei had fallen more than 16% over the last five weeks due to gloomy economic news and the government's recent vow to reduce its role in the economy.
(WSJ, 1/10/97, p.A1)
1997 Jan 29, Tatsuo Tomobe, member of the upper house of parliament, was arrested and accused of fraud. He had raised $75 million by offering high yields on deposits and using it to finance political ambitions.
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A17)
1997 Feb 7, In Japan Hiroshi Mikitani launched Rakuten, an e-commerce company. By 2012 it was Japan’s biggest cybermail service.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten)(SFC, 5/19/12, p.D3)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.60)
1997 Feb, Lebanon detained 5 members of the Japanese Red Army.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
1997 Mar 7, Japanese PM Ryutaro Hashimoto was sued by 5 people, because his smoking had violated the constitution guaranteeing a wholesome life.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1997 Mar 11, A nuclear fuel reprocessing plant experienced 2 fires and an explosion 70 miles northeast of Tokyo. There were no injuries. The chief investigator destroyed photographs of the accident. Debris was also removed and then replaced.
(SFC, 3/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 5/1/97, p.A13)
1997 Mar, Lebanon granted Kozo Okamoto, Japanese Red Army member, political asylum and deported 4 others to Japan. [see Jun 9]
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
1997 Apr 2, Tomoyuki Tanaka (86), producer (Godzilla), died of a stroke.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1997 Apr 21, In Japan drilling on the world's longest stretch of undersea highway (about 6 miles) was completed across Tokyo Bay to link the cities of Kawasaki and Kisarazu.
(SFC, 4/22/97, p.A8)
1997 Apr 24, In Japan the lower house of parliament voted to make heart transplants possible by recognizing the concept of brain death.
(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A12)
1997 Apr, Japan raised its national consumption tax from 3% to 5%. It was later seen as a move that wrecked economic confidence and sparked the beginning of a recession.
(WSJ, 8/13/98, p.A14)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.67)
1997 May 8, A law was passed to preserve the culture of the aboriginal Ainu people who have inhabited northern Japan since prehistoric times.
(SFC, 5/9/97, p.E3)
1997 May 27, In Kobe 11-year-old Jun Hase was beheaded by a killer who left the note: "So, this is the beginning of the game. I desperately want to see people die. Nothing makes me more excited than killing." A 14-year-old boy was later arrested for the murder. [see Jun 28]
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.C2)(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.D1)
1997 May, Shioro Takashima, head of the Japan Harbor Transportation Association (JHTA) and known as "The Emperor," died. He was succeeded by Mitsuo Masunaga.
(WSJ, 10/21/97, p.A13)
1997 Jun 5, The film "Tokyo Skin" by Urinary Hana was an Int'l. film festival award winner and premiered in the Bay Area.
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.)
1997 Jun 9, Five Japanese Red Army guerillas went on trial on charges of passport forgery and illegal entry. The light charges prevented their extradition to Japan. [see Mar]
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.A16)
1997 Jun 16, Sue Sumii died at age 95 working on the 8th volume of her novel "The River With No Bridge." It was about the plight of the burakumin (the untouchables) of Japan. She published the first volume in 1958.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A19)
1997 Jun 17, In Japan lawmakers rewrote the definition of death to allow life-saving transplants of body parts. Brain death rather than heart death would be the new criteria and would take effect in 3 months.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A9)
1997 Jun 18, It was reported that Japan was paying 5 Caribbean nations extensive aid and investment in order to gain support to block protections for endangered species. Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Dominica were all reported to have been bribed.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A8)
1997 Jun 28, Japanese police announced the arrest of a 14-year-old boy for the murder and beheading of an 11-year-old on May 27. The 15-year-old boy was convicted and sentenced to a juvenile prison, where he would be treated for mental illness. He could be kept there until age 26. In 2015 the killer published a detailed memoir, which quickly became a bestseller.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.D1)(SFC,10/18/97, p.A11)(Econ, 8/1/15, p.37)
1997 Jul 2, The Panamanian registered Diamond Grace oil tanker ran aground in Tokyo Bay and spilled nearly 2 million gallons of oil.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.A9)
1997 Jul 10, A mudslide in Izumi on the island of Kyushu killed 21 people and injured 14.
(SFC, 7/12/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 29, In Japan the Supreme Court upheld the government's right to control the nation's textbooks but not to tamper with the truth. Japan's Supreme Court ruled that the country's Education Ministry broke the law by removing mention of a Japanese World War II atrocity from historian Saburo Ienaga's high school textbook. Novelist Ryotaro Shiba was quoted: "A country whose textbooks lie... will inevitably collapse."
(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A12)(AP, 8/29/98)
1997 Sep 8, Prime Minister Hashimoto won re-election as head of the Liberal Democrats.
(WSJ, 9/9/97, p.A1)
1997 Oct 3, In Japan an experimental magnetically levitated train, the MLX01, set a world speed record when it reached 279.6 mph on a test track.
(SFC, 10/6/97, p.B8)
1997 Sep 22, Shoichi Yokoi (b.1915), Japanese WW II fighter who only surrendered in 1972, died. For 28 years he had hid in an underground jungle cave on Guam, fearing to come out of hiding even after finding leaflets declaring that World War II had ended.
(www.wanpela.com/holdouts/profiles/yokoi.html)
1997 Oct 15, The US set a deadline for three Japanese shipping companies to pay some $4 million in fines. The fines were imposed based on discriminatory Japanese harbor policies. The deadline was missed and the US threatened to block Japanese shipping from US ports. An agreement was later reached. The problem was with the Japan Harbor Transportation Association (JHTA), which was said to have ties with the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate. A settlement was approved on Oct 27.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/21/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/28/97, p.A1)
1997 Nov 1, Russia's Pres. Boris Yeltsin met with Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto at Krasnoyarsk to discuss economic cooperation.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A22)
1997 Nov 7, Shoichiro Toyoda (72), chairman of Toyota, planned to address the captains of Japanese industry and urge the severing of ties with the extortionists known as "sokaiya."
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A18)
1997 Nov 17, Authorities announced that the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank Ltd., the country's 11th largest bank, would be dissolved due to bad loans and that its operations would be transferred to a regional bank. The news sent the Tokyo stock exchange soaring.
(SFC,11/17/97, p.A17)
1997 Nov 24, In Japan the Yamaichi Securities firm, the nation's 4th largest, announced a shutdown due to debts totaling $24 billion. It was the third, after Sanyo Securities and Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, Japanese financial company to collapse in a month.
(SFC,11/24/97, p.A1)(AP, 11/24/98)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.66)
1997 Nov 26, In Japan Nomura Securities admitted funneling $2.9 million in profits to Ryuichi Koike, a suspected racketeer.
(SFC,11/27/97, p.B5)
1997 Nov 27, Japan launched the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite (TRMM) in a joint venture with NASA. Funding ended in 2004 a controlled de-orbit was planned.
(SFC, 7/19/04, p.A4)
1997 Dec 1, In Japan international talks on global warming began in Kyoto.
(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A1)
1997 Dec 5, The WTO ruled against the US claim that Kodak Film was unfairly blocked from the Japanese market.
(SFC,12/5/97, p.C3)
1997 Dec 8, At the UN conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan, US Vice President Al Gore signaled a willingness on the part of the US to compromise and perhaps raise the amount of greenhouse gases it is willing to cut.
(SFC,12/897, p.A1)
1997 Dec 11, In Kyoto, Japan, negotiators at the conference on global warming reached a compromise with a commitment by some 38 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% from 1990 levels over the next 10-15 years. Over 160 nations endorsed the treaty that binds industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gases. It was signed by 171 nations. Int’l. aviation was excluded from the protocol on condition that by 2007 countries and airlines of the Int’l. Civil Aviation Organization (ICOA) come up with a way of reducing emissions through a trading scheme.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 12/11/97, p.A1)(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A2)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.67)
1997 Dec 12, Japanese train builders (Maglev) claimed world speed record at 332 MPH.
(www.rtri.or.jp/rd/maglev/html/english/maglev_introduction_E.html)
1997 Dec 16, Prime Minister Hashimoto proposed a one-time cut in the national income tax of about $15.38 billion.
(SFC,12/17/97, p.A18)
1997 Dec 16, Hundreds of Japanese children went to the hospital with spasms and nausea caused by a TV cartoon show, "Pokemon."
(SFC,12/17/97, p.A26)
1997 Dec 19, Masaru Ibuka (b.1908), co-founder of Japan’s Sony Corp), died at age 89.
(www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/addlbios/ibuka.html)
1997 Dec 20, Juzo Itami (64), film director, jumped in suicide from his 8th story office, just before a magazine report about an affair. He made 10 films in 13 years that included "A Taxing Woman" and "Tampopo," which was released in the US in 1987.
(SFC,12/22/97, p.A19)(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1997 Dec 24, Toshiro Mifune (77), actor, died in Mitaka. His career included more than 130 films and television dramas.
(SFC,12/25/97, p.A25)
1997 Dec 26, Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the opposition Shinshinto, New Freedom Party, announced that the party would be disbanded.
(SFC,12/27/97, p.A12)
1997 Dec, Toyota introduced its new hybrid car, the Prius, in Japan. The $17,000 car sold some 3,500 units in the first few weeks.
(SFEC, 7/21/98, p.A1,9)
1997 Richard Katz authored "Japan: The System That Soured."
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A14)
1997 Japanese author Natsuo Kirino (b.1951) authored her crime novel “Out." The book’s title clearly conveys the experience of being on the out-side of social groups. It became a bestseller.
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.24)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natsuo_Kirino)
1997 The Japanese film "The Eel" was directed by Shohei Imamura and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, DB p.50)
1997 The Japanese film "Maborosi" was about a young woman who tries to recover from the death of her husband.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, DB p.53)
1997 The Japanese animated (anime) film "Princess Mononoke" was made with drawings by Hayao Miyazaki. In 1999 Helen McCarthy authored "Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation." Hyperion Press published "Princess Mononoke: The Art and Making of Japan's Most Popular Film of All Time."
(WSJ, 10/29/99, p.W9)(SFEC, 10/31/99, DB p.9)
1997 The Japanese film "Village of Dreams" was based on an autobiography of Kyoto-based artist Seizo Tashima: "The Village of My Paintings."
(SFC,11/26/97, p.E8)
1997 Japan under Ryutaro Hashimoto enacted the “big bang" financial reforms, which deregulated some financial services and introduced more competition in Japan’s capital markets.
(Econ, 9/17/05, p.23)
1997 Japan under Ryutaro Hashimoto increased consumption taxes.
(Econ, 9/17/05, p.24)
1997 In Japan the Nippon Kaigi, a nationalistic lobby group, was formed.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kaigi)(Econ, 6/6/15, p.33)
1997 Japan’s Sony Corp. launched the Vaio personal computer.
(WSJ, 3/7/05, p.A8)
1997 Kihoshi Saito (b.1907), Japanese woodblock artist, died.
(www.printdealers.com/artist_template.cfm?id=1330)
1998 Jan 12, Japan announced that the nation's banks carried only about $580 billion in bad or questionable loans.
(SFC, 1/13/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 26, Shinichi Suzuki (99), pioneer of the 1950s Suzuki method for teaching music to young children, died in Japan.
(SFC, 1/27/98, p.A20)(www.suzukiassociation.org/about/suzuki/)
1998 Jan 26, Public prosecutors raided the Ministry of Finance and arrested 2 bank regulators, Koichi Miyagawa (53) and Toshimi Taniuchi (48), on bribery charges.
(SFC, 1/27/98, p.A8)
1998 Jan 27, In Japan Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, the finance minister, announced that he will resign following the arrests of 2 senior officials on bribery charges.
(SFC, 1/28/98, p.A6)
1998 Jan 28, Two more finance ministry officials resigned and a 3rd committed suicide. Separately the lower house passed a $16 billion income tax cut.
(SFC, 1/29/98, p.A11)
1998 Jan 29, In Japan Finance Vice Minister Takeshi Komura stepped down in the bribery scandal and said "the responsibility is all mine."
(SFC, 1/30/98, p.A12)
1998 Jan 31, The XVIII Winter Olympic Games opened in Nagano.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.C3)
1998 Feb 3, A rocket attack on Tokyo's Narita Airport did no damage but slightly injured a cargo handler. Three rockets were involved. Later the leftist Revolutionary Workers Association claimed responsibility
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.C3)(SFC, 2/7/98, p.11)
1998 Feb 6, The Olympic Games began and for the first time curling was played as a medal sport.
(WSJ, 2/6/98, p.A20)
1998 Feb 8, Olga Danilova of Russia won the first gold medal of the Nagano Winter Games in 15-kilometer classical cross-country skiing.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1998 Feb 9, At the Nagano Games, German Georg Hackl won the men's luge for the third consecutive Olympics.
(AP, 2/9/99)
1998 Feb 10, Speedskater Hiroyasu Shimizu won Japan's first gold medal of the Nagano Olympics, in the 500-meter event.
(AP, 2/10/99)
1998 Feb 11, Skier Jonny Moseley won the first U.S. gold medal at Nagano, in men's moguls freestyle; Picabo Street won the women's super-G. Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for marijuana. His medal was later reinstated.
(AP, 2/11/99)
1998 Feb 14, Russia's Ilya Kulik won the men's figure skating gold medal at the Nagano Olympics.
(AP, 2/14/99)
1998 Feb 16, Skier Hermann Maier of Austria won the Super-G and Katja Seizinger of Germany won the women's downhill at the Nagano Olympics; Russia's Pasha Grishuk and Yeggeny Platov won the ice dancing event.
(AP, 2/16/08)
1998 Feb 17, The U.S. women's hockey team won the gold medal at Nagano, Japan, defeating Canada 3-1.
(AP, 2/17/99)
1988 Feb 18, The American hockey team in Nagano lost to the Czechs. Members of the team that night trashed their quarters in the Olympic Village, drained a fire extinguisher and tossed it out their 5th story window.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A1,16)
1998 Feb 22, The Czech Republic defeated Russia 1-0 to win men's hockey as the Nagano Winter Olympics came to a close.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A20)(AP, 2/22/99)
1998 Feb 26, Near Tokyo 3 businessmen hanged themselves in the suburban Le Piano hotel due to economic difficulties and the resulting loss of face. Masaaki Kobayashi, Masaru Sudo and Yoshimi Shoji were all presidents of auto parts companies.
(SFC, 2/27/98, p.D4)(SFC, 2/28/98, p.A8)
1998 Mar 5, Prosecutors raided the Finance Ministry and later arrested 2 officials, Takashi Sakakibara and Toshio Miyano for accepting bribes in exchange for approving new financial products.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.B3)
1998 Mar 11, The Tokyo Public Prosecutor's Office raided the offices of the Bank of Japan. Yasayuki Yoshizawa, director of the capital markets division, was arrested on suspicion of leaking market moving information.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.B2)
1998 Mar 12, Yoshio Sugiyama (46), a Finance Ministry official, hanged himself following a widening investigation in corruption.
(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A12)
1998 Mar 26, The ruling Liberal Democratic Party announced a $124 billion economic stimulus package.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A13)
1998 Apr 1, The 3-year Big Bang process was begun to create more efficient investment markets.
(SFC, 3/31/98, p.B1)
1998 Apr 3, Pres. Clinton warned that Japanese officials "have to make a break" with their past policies. Moody's Investor's Services changed its outlook on Japan's government debt to "negative" from "stable."
(SFC, 4/4/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 5, The $3.8 billion, 12,906 foot Akashi Kaikyo Bridge linking the islands of Shikoku and Honshu was opened. It was built to withstand an 8.5 earthquake and took ten years to build.
(SFC, 4/6/98, p.A13)
1998 Apr 9, Japan abandoned austerity policies and Prime Minister Hashimoto announced a $30 billion temporary cut in taxes to encourage consumer spending. Pressure to change was exerted by the US, int'l. investors and elite Japanese business leaders.
(SFC, 4/10/98, p.A14)
1998 Apr 19, Pres. Yeltsin held a summit with Prime Minister Ryutaro Hasimoto at the Kawana resort. Yeltsin promised to hand over KGB documents of interrogations of captured Japanese generals from WW II.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, p.A14)
1998 Apr 20, The Goldman Environmental Awards were presented to six winners in SF. The prizes were increased to $100,000. Hirofumi Yamashita (64) won for his 25-year struggle against the conversion of tidal flats to farmland on Ishaya Bay on Kyushu.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A8)
1998 Apr 27, A court ruled that Japan must compensate 3 South Korean women forced into sexual slavery during WW II, and awarded the women $2,300 each.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A8)
1998 May 23, The film "Pride, the Fateful Moment," about Gen'. Tojo was produced. It glorified Tojo and portrayed the Japanese invasion of Asia as a just campaign to liberate its neighbors from Western colonial rule. The film was supported by conservative lawmakers.
(SFC, 5/12/98, p.A12)
1998 May 30, In Japan the 4-year-old governing coalition fractured and the Social Democratic Party announced it would go it alone. The Liberal Democratic Party continued to run the government.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, p.A26)
1998 Jun 4, A team of physicists from Japan reported that they had established that the subnuclear neutrino particles had mass. In an experiment called SuperKamiokande, they showed that muon neutrinos produced by cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere had gone missing by the time they should have reached an underground detector. This led them to suspect that the missing muon neutrinos had changed flavor through a process called oscillation, which required them to have mass. Their experiments showed that neutrinos spontaneously transform between three varieties (electron, muon and tau neutrinos) in a process known as oscillation.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A1)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.77)(Econ, 6/28/14, p.69)
1998 Jun 20, Suekiku Miyanaga (107), Japan's oldest person, died in Osumi.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A25)
1998 Jul 2, Japan announced that a string of bridge banks would be set up to run failed banks as bad loans are sold and lending is continued.
(SFC, 7/3/98, p.A14)
1998 Jul 4, Japan launched its Planet-B probe to Mars the Planet-B on its M-5 rocket, which is to begin beaming back photographs and data from the Red Planet in October 1999.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A10)(AP, 7/4/99)
1998 Jul 12, It was reported that Japan burns 38 million tons of garbage a year compared to 34 million for the US. Japan's air was reported to contain 10 times more dioxin that US air. Elections were held.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, Par p.16)(SFC, 7/13/98, p.A1)
1998 Jul 13, In Japan Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto resigned after voters rejected his Liberal Democratic Party.
(SFC, 7/13/98, p.A1)
1998 Jul 24, Keizo Obuchi, Japan's foreign minister, won the ruling party nomination for prime minister.
(SFC, 7/24/98, p.A14)
1998 Jul 25, In Japan some 60 people at a festival in the Wakayama prefecture were sickened after eating a curried rice dish. Four people died and police suspected that cyanide was mixed in the food. A district court convicted Masumi Hayashi in 2002 of deliberately lacing a pot of curry with arsenic and serving it to neighbors at the festival. In 2009 Japan's highest court upheld her death sentence.
(SFC, 7/27/98, p.A10)(AP, 4/21/09)
1998 Jul 29, In Japan the lower house of parliament approved Keizo Obuchi for prime minister. The upper house endorsed opposition leader Naoto Kan. The lower house had the power to overrule any upper house decision.
(SFC, 7/30/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 30, Japan's Parliament declared Keizo Obuchi the country's next prime minister.
(AP, 7/30/99)(SFC, 9/21/99, p.A10)
1998 Jul 31, Asa Takii, the oldest person in the country and a survivor of the Hiroshima blast, died at age 114.
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A19)
1998 Aug 4, Japan announced that it will begin a new nuclear power plant in Higashidori in Dec. 51 nuclear power plants currently supply about 1/3 of the nation's power.
(SFC, 8/5/98, p.A10)
1998 Aug 15, The week-long Festival of the Dead, called "O-bon," ended. The holiday is capped off with midnight visits to ancestral graves where incense and paper lanterns are burned.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A26)
1998 Aug 28, The money market interest rates were reported to be 0.5 % as compared to 7.5% in 1991.
(WSJ, 8/28/98, p.A10)
1998 Sep 6, Akira Kurosawa, film director, died at age 88.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1998 Sep 18, Japanese leaders agreed to a plan to take over some of the biggest and weakest banks and to use taxpayer money to dispose of some $606 billion in bad loans.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Sep 22, In Japan Typhoon Vicki killed 9 people and injured over 100.
(SFC, 9/23/98, p.A12)
1998 Sep 29, Japanese Leasing, a non-bank affiliate of the failed Long Term Credit Bank, announced that it is filing for bankruptcy with liabilities of 2.2 trillion yen or more than $16 billion. Two other affiliates of the LTCB are expected to suffer the same fate. This was the country's biggest-ever bankruptcy. LTCB was later renamed Shinsei.
(www.wsws.org/news/1998/sep1998/jap-s29.shtml)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.66)(Econ, 6/28/08, p.82)
1998 Oct 2, In Japan the parliament passed bills to provide $74 billion in taxpayer money to help banks recover from bad loans.
(SFC, 10/3/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 3, The G-7 finance ministers agreed to explore Pres. Clinton's proposed strategy for early IMF intervention to support weak economies. Masaru Hayami, governor of the Bank of Japan, said that capital supporting 19 major banks had dwindled to dangerously low levels.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 10/5/98, p.A3)
1998 Oct 7, In Japan Pres. Kim Dae Jung of South Korea urged the 2 countries to work together.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Oct 8, In Japan Prime Minister Obuchi issued an apology to the people of South Korea for 35 years of brutal colonial rule. Pres. Kim Dae-jung of South Korea accepted the written apology, the first ever issued by Japan to an individual country for its actions during WW II.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.13A)
1998 Oct 12, In Japan the parliament approved banking legislation that would allow the government to nationalize failing banks.
(SFC, 10/13/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct 14, In the Philippines Typhoon Zeb killed 21 people and forced some 31,000 from their homes. The death toll went up to 70. It moved on to Taiwan where 20 people were killed and Japan where 12 died.
(SFC, 10/15/98, p.C4)(WSJ, 10/19/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 16, In Japan the Diet approved laws to pump $517 billion in public money into the country's cash-strapped banks.
(SFC, 10/17/98, p.A14)
1998 Oct 30, David Bower (86) of the US and Mikhail Budyko of Russia won the $427,600 Blue Planet Prize, awarded by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan for their work in solving environmental problems.
(SFC, 10/31/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct, South Korea lifted its ban on importing Japanese comic books, magazines, and movies. It was the first phase of a gradual opening to Japanese pop culture.
(SFEC, 12/6/98, p.A15)
1998 Nov 7, Japan offered more than $9 million in aid to Cuba with most of the money as a direct donation to buy rice. A 5 month drought followed by Hurricane Georges caused heavy agricultural losses.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.A28)
1998 Nov 16, Japan announced a $195 billion economic stimulus package. This was the 17th month in a row that the number of bankruptcies increased.
(SFC, 11/16/98, p.A10)(SFC, 11/17/98, p.B3)
1998 Nov 19, Pres. Clinton began a 5-day trip to Asia and in Japan suggested that current efforts to end an 8-year economic downturn may not be enough.
(SFC, 11/20/98, p.A16)
1998 Nov 21, Isao Okawa, chairman of CSK Corp., and Sega Enterprises, donated $27 million to MIT for the creation of a center for children founded on the belief that new digital technology will drive fundamental changes in education. He was at the Junior Summit where children created "Nation 1.0" as a forum for expression: www.nation1.net.
(SFC, 11/23/98, p.A5)
1998 Nov 25, Pres. Jiang Zemin of China and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi decided not to sign a joint declaration on the relationship between their countries during the Jiang's 6-day visit, the first ever by a Chinese head of state. Zemin wanted a written apology from Japan for WW II atrocities that began with a 1931 Japanese invasion. Only verbal apologies were made.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B3)
1998 Nov 27, The World Heritage bureau of UNESCO began a meeting in Kyoto, Japan.
(SFC, 11/27/98, p.A16)
1998 Nov, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi of Japan in a summit with Pres. Yeltsin agreed to give Russia close to $1 billion with $100 earmarked for the Kuriles.
(SFC, 1/19/99, p.A8)
1998 Dec 3, In Japan it was reported that the Jul-Sep quarter fell 0.7%. It was the 4th consecutive decrease in GDP.
(WSJ, 12/3/98, p.A16)
1998 Dec 5, In South Korea the first Japanese film since 1945 was screened. "Hana Bi" (Fireworks) was the first film shown since a ban on Japanese work was lifted in Oct.
(SFEC, 12/6/98, p.A15)
1998 Dec 9, It was reported that scientist in Japan had cloned several calves from an adult cow. It was the 3rd mammal duplicated after mice and sheep.
(SFC, 12/9/98, p.A8)
1998 Dec 15, In Japan Nawaki Hashimoto was found dead from cyanide poisoning. He had peddled cyanide to suicidal Japanese over a web site and one Tokyo woman died the same day from his cyanide.
(SFC, 1/9/99, p.A11)
1998 Risa Ishihara authored "Give Me A Break: Full-Time Housewife." She said that stay-at-home wives were "parasites" feeding on their husbands.
(WSJ, 3/26/00, p.A1)
1998 Richard Katz published "Japan: The System That Soured." It was about the rise and fall of Japan's economics following WW II.
(WSJ, 8/4/98, p.A16)
1998 Taichi Sakaiya published his serialized novel "Japan: 2018," that describes a Japanese economic decline beginning in the 1990s.
(WSJ, 5/4/98, p.A1)
1998 The Japanese film "Deep River" starred Toshiro Mifune and was directed by Kei Kumai, based on the novel by Shusaku Endo. It was about a group of Japanese tourists visiting Benares, India.
(SFC, 5/20/98, p.E3)
1998 The Japanese film "Gonin" starred Koichi Sato and was directed by Takashi Ishii.
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.B3)
1998 The Japanese film "Mr. Nice Guy" starred Jackie Chan and was directed by Samo Hung.
(SFC, 3/20/98, p.D3)
1998 The Japanese film "Sonatine" was written and directed by Takeshi "Beat" Kitano. he also starred in the film of a gangster who helps another gang fight a rival mob. The Japanese film "Fireworks" was the first film by director Takeshi Kitano. He starred in the film under the name Beat Takeshi.
(SFC, 3/20/98, p.D3)(SFEC, 4/12/98, DB p.10)
1998 The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was created from former LDP members, former socialists and young liberal newcomers. Yukio Hatoyama (b.1947) was one of the co-founders of the DPJ.
(www.dpj.or.jp/english/about_us/dpj_profile.html)(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.11)(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A3)
1998 By this year a new location for Japan’s capital could be determined.
(WSJ, 9/24/96, p.B12)
1998 In Japan private certifying firms were allowed to sign off on new buildings to supplement public inspectors.
(Econ, 12/10/05, p.46)
1998 In Japan workers’ pay equaled about 73% of corporate earnings.
(Econ, 10/8/05, Survey p.4)
1998 Suicides attributable to karoshi, death from over-work, rose from 32 in 1994 to 90 in 1998.
(SFC, 8/22/00, p.A10)
1998 USGS officials agreed to allow Japan to drill 2 prototype wells on the hydrate-rich north slope of Alaska.
(NH, 5/97, p.31)
1999 Jan 14, In Japan the ruling Liberal Democrats under prime Minister Keizo Obuchi formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a conservative rival.
(SFC, 1/15/99, p.A15)
1999 Jan 20, It was reported that the TV show Denpa Shonen (Don't Go for It, Electric Boy!) was the top rated variety show for the last 17 weeks. It featured Nasubi (eggplant), a 23-year-old comedian, confined to a one-room apartment without food or clothing working to win 1 million yen ($8,300) worth of prizes in magazine competitions.
(SFC, 1/20/99, p.E4)
1999 Jan 27, From Japan it was reported that thousands of fans welcomed back a hitchhiking duo who traveled from the Cape of Good Hope to a lighthouse in Norway along with a TV cameraman. The exploits began in 1998 and were aired weekly on the show "Susunu."
(WSJ, 1/27/99, p.A1)
1999 Jan 27, The Health Ministry approved Viagra in 6 months but still held back approval for the birth control pill, which has been waiting 9 years.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.A16)
1999 Feb 19, In Japan the lower house passed a record $682.5 billion budget with huge spending increases and tax cuts.
(SFC, 2/20/99, p.B1)
1999 Feb 28, Japanese doctors performed their first legal organ transplant from a brain-dead patient. A 1997 law allowed the standard for death to be the cessation of brain activity. The last heart transplant was done in 1968.
(SFC, 3/1/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/1/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 3, In Japan the short term interest rate fell to .02% as the central bank flooded the interbank market with cash.
(WSJ, 3/4/99, p.A9)
1999 Mar 23, Japanese navy ships fired warning shots at 2 suspected North Korean spy vessels that entered its waters 180 miles northwest of Tokyo.
(WSJ, 3/24/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 28, It was reported that Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi was preparing legislation to rehabilitate the flag, hinomaru, and national song, "Kimigayo," to national emblem status.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A23)
1999 Mar 28, In Japan the exploits of Nasubi, a 23-year-old comedian, came to an end as his producers revealed him naked to a studio audience. For over a year he had been shown on weekly TV, without his knowledge, trying to survive on prizes from magazine competitions. He never won any clothes.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.E5)
1999 Mar, In Tokyo the Showa Hall museum opened after being transformed from a war memorial to an exhibition of war time life.
(SFC, 7/1/99, p.A14)
1999 Apr 11, In Japan a gubernatorial election in Tokyo showed conservative author Shintaro Isihara (66) in the lead. Ishihara won with 29.6% of the total vote.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A10)(SFC, 4/12/99, p.A12)
1999 Apr 14, In western Japan Takayuki Otsuki (18) raped and killed Yayoi Motomura (23) before strangling to death her 11-month-old daughter Yuka in Yamaguchi. In 2000 Otsuki was convicted and jailed for life, but in 2008 he was sentenced to death. In 2012 Japan’s Supreme Court upheld the ruling.
(www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120220x1.html)
1999 Apr 29, In Japan Honda announced that its last EV Plus electric car was built in March.
(SFC, 4/30/99, p.A1)
1999 Apr 30, The government issued a report that said unemployment had reached a record 4.8% in March and that spending by wage earners had declined by 3.6%.
(WSJ, 4/30/99, p.A13)
1999 Apr, The government announced that it had allowed cloned beef to be sold unmarked for the last 2 years. The news sparked a nationwide beef boycott.
(SFC, 1/25/00, p.A7)
1999 May 7, In Japan the parliament passed the country's first freedom of information act. Requests would not be honored for at least 2 years.
(SFC, 5/12/99, p.C2)
1999 May 18, In Japan the parliament enacted a law to ban child prostitution and child pornography.
(SFC, 5/19/99, p.A14)
1999 May 24, Japan's upper house voted to expand the country's military alliance with the US.
(SFC, 5/25/99, p.A8)
1999 Jun 2, In Japan the government agreed to make the birth control pill available by prescription.
(SFC, 6/3/99, p.A13)
1999 Jun, In Japan a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurred for 15 minutes at the No. 1 reactor of Shika Nuclear Power Plant in Ishikawa prefecture. Hokuriku Electric Power Co. failed to report the reaction to authorities. In 2007 the company agreed to shut down the reactor for inspection.
(AP, 3/15/07)
1999 Jul 3, It was reported that 29 people had died and 16 were missing over the past week following flash flooding and landslides in southwestern Japan.
(SFC, 7/3/99, p.A5)
1999 Jul 23, In Japan Yuzi Nishizawa (b.1970) attempted to hijack flight 61 from Tokyo and stabbed to death pilot Naoyuki Nagashima (51). The hijacker was overcome and the plane landed safely with 516 passengers. On March 23, 2005, Nishizawa was found to be guilty, but of unsound mind and thus only partly responsible for his actions. Presiding judge Hisaharu Yasui handed Nishizawa a life sentence in 2005.
(SFC, 7/24/99, p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANA_Flight_61)
1999 Jul 26, Japanese government officials and US Sec. of State Madeleine Albright issued a threat of economic and diplomatic consequences to North Korea if it fires another rocket over Japanese territory.
(SFC, 8/3/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 9, In Japan the parliament adopted the Rising Sun flag as the national symbol and an ode to the emperor.
(WSJ, 8/10/99, p.A1)
1999 Aug 12, In Japan lawmakers gave police the power to use wiretaps against crime suspects.
(SFC, 8/13/99, p.D3)
1999 Aug 19, Japan and Russia agreed to establish a military hotline.
(SFC, 8/20/99, p.A19)
1999 Sep 17, Japan inaugurated its $400 million Subaru telescope on Mount Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Subaru is the Japanese word for the constellation Pleiades.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.A21)
1999 Sep 21, Japan’s PM Keizo Obuchi easily won re-election as head of his party. This ensured that public money would continue to be used to spur economic recovery.
(SFC, 9/22/99, p.A14)
1999 Sep 24, In Japan typhoon Bart hit wreaked havoc in the south and killed at least 26 people.
(SFC, 9/25/99, p.A14)
1999 Sep 25, G7 leaders issued a joint statement that said it was up to the Japanese to drive down the value of the yen which had been strengthening against the dollar and threatened Japanese economic recovery.
(SFEC, 9/26/99, p.A14)
1999 Sep 30, In Japan 3 workers were hospitalized with radiation poisoning following an accidental 20-hour nuclear reaction at the JCO Co. nuclear processing plant in Tokaimura, 80 miles northeast of Tokyo. Area residents were told they could resume normal activity the next day. Production pressure was later cited as the cause of the accident. Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., the owner of JCO, promised to pay damages to victims of the accident. The number of people exposed was later raised to 69. Hisashi Ouchi (30), one of the 3 workers, died from radiation exposure on Dec 21. Masato Shinohara (40) died Apr 27, 2000.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A1)(SFC, 10/2/99, p.A1)(SFC, 10/4/99, p.A12)(SFC, 10/6/99, p.C16)(SFC, 10/16/99, p.A14)(SFC, 12/4/99, p.C1)(SFC, 12/22/99, p.C11)(SFC, 4/28/00, p.D6)
1999 Oct 3, Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony Corp., died in Tokyo at age 78.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.C7)
1999 Oct 14, Japan’s Sumitomo and Sakura Banks announced merger plans. In 2001 they fused into Sumitomo Mitsui.
(WSJ, 10/15/99, p.A10)(Econ, 5/20/06, Survey p.22)
1999 Oct, The magazine Shukan Bunshun began a 10-part series that accused Johnny Kitagawa, president of the talent agency Johnny's Jimusho, of sexual liaisons with teenage boys that he groomed for stardom.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.A26)
1999 Nov 15, In Japan the $95 million MTSAT satellite on the No. 8 H-2 rocket was aborted after takeoff from the Tanegashima Space Center. A launch in Feb. had also failed. In Dec. Japan announced that it would abandon the $4.14 billion H-2 rocket project.
(SFC, 11/16/99, p.E4)
1999 Nov 22, In Japan a T-33 jet crashed and killed 2 crewmen. The crash severed a 275,000-volt power line and some 800,000 homes lost power in the Tokyo area.
(SFC, 11/23/99, p.A16)
1999 Dec 1, In Japan Tatsuko Muraoka, acting leader of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult, took responsibility for the 1995 gassing of Tokyo subways, led by former guru Shoko Asahara, and promised some compensation to the victims.
(SFC, 12/2/99, p.D2)
1999 Dec, Parliament passed a law placing restrictions on Aum Shinri Kyo.
(WSJ, 9/28/01, p.A12)
1999 Dec, Japan executed 2 death row inmates, Teruo Ono and Kazuo Sagawa. This made 32 prisoners executed in the last 10 years with 50 still on death row. Executions in Japan were unannounced and held 2 times a year.
(SFC, 12/21/99, p.C7)
1999 Ryu Murakami authored "Bubble Fantasy – What Japan Could Have Done With That Money."
(WSJ, 8/23/01, p.A6)
1999 John Nathan authored "Sony: The Private Life," a history of the 53-year-old Sony Corporation.
(WSJ, 9/30/99, p.A24)
1999 The book "Katte wa Ikenai" (Don't Buy This ) was an ecological manifesto questioning the safety of household goods.
(SFC, 11/5/99, p.A15)
1999 The Japanese film "Dr. Akagi" was directed by Shohei Imamura. It was about Japan during the last days of WW II.
(SFC, 3/5/99, p.C3)
1999 The Japanese film "Jubaku: The Archipelago of Rotten Money" was based on a 1997 government investigation of bank corruption.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.A8)
1999 The Bank of Japan pioneered the tactic of forward guidance when it promised to leave its interest rate at zero until deflationary concerns subside.
(Econ, 6/11/16, p.77)
1999 Japan enacted corporate law that enabled the use of shares to buy firms.
(Econ, 12/1/07, SR p.7)
1999 Electronic trading replaced the floor auction on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
(WSJ, 4/6/06, p.C1)
1999 Masayoshi Son, the boss of Softbank, agreed for Softbank to buy a 30% stake in the Hangzhou-based Alibaba website founded by Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, for $20 million. In 2017 Alibaba was valued at $270 billion and Softbank still owned 28%.
(Econ, 4/1/17, p.58)
1999 The Japan National Large Telescope (Subaru) and the Gemini Northern Telescope were scheduled for completion on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. A twin of the latter was under construction in Chile.
(Hem., 7/95, p.115)
1999 NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s top mobile phone operator, pioneered internet access through its i-mode service. In 2001 it pioneered 3G technology and in 2005 embedded a credit card into a wireless chip enabling consumer financial payments.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.71)
1999 Japan’s Sony Corp. began selling the robotic dog AIBO. Production of the robot dog was cancelled in 2006 as part of a restructure program.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.59)(SFC, 2/2/06, p.C3)
1999 The Japan National Large Telescope (Subaru) and the Gemini Northern Telescope were scheduled for completion on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. A twin of the latter was under construction in Chile.
(Hem., 7/95, p.115)
1999 The Institute of space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS) planned to launch its Lunar-A to measure seismic activity on the Moon.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A10)
2000 Jan 21, In Japan 6 people that included the daughter (16) of Shoko Asahara broke into the Aum cult's Asashimura facility and kidnapped the 7-year-old son of Asahara. Two of the kidnappers were arrested over the next 2 days. The boy was found Jan 23 in the resort town of Hakone.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, p.A22)(SFC, 1/24/00, p.A7)
2000 Jan 23, Residents of Tokushina on Shikoku Island voted against a $980 million dam proposed by the government for the Yoshino River by a 10-1 margin. Prime Minister Obuchi later said the decision was up to the construction minister.
(SFC, 2/1/00, p.B1)
2000 Feb 6, In Japan Fusae Ota was elected governor of Osaka, and the 1st woman governor in Japan.
(SFC, 2/7/00, p.A14)
2000 Mar 1, In Japan police officials reported that the Aum Shinri Kyo sect had developed software for at least 10 government agencies and for more than 80 major companies in recent years. The sect had recently changed its name to Aleph and denounced its violent past.
(SFC, 3/2/00, p.A10)
2000 Mar 13, In Japan the government reported that the economy swung back into recession at the end of 1999.
(SFC, 3/13/00, p.A11)
2000 Mar 30, Mount Usu erupted on Hokaido following 22 years of dormancy. Evacuations from Date, Sobetsu and Abuta preceded the eruption.
(SFC, 3/31/00, p.A17)(WSJ, 4/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 2, In Japan Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi suffered a stroke and Mikio Aoki took over as Acting Premier.
(SFC, 4/3/00, p.A8)
2000 Apr 4, In Japan the cabinet resigned and allowed the Parliament to elect Yoshiro Mori as the new Prime Minister. The former trade minister was elected as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party earlier the same day.
(SFC, 4/5/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 21, The Russian Coast Guard fired on a Japanese fishing boat near the disputed Kurile Islands and took it back to Yuzhno-Kurilsk island.
(SFC, 4/22/00, p.A8)
2000 May 6, The Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) was set up to help East Asian cash strapped countries defend their currencies in times of trouble. The initiative came in response to the 1997 East Asian financial crises. ASEAN, China, Japan, and South Korea launched the multilateral arrangement of currency swaps (CMI).
(WSJ, 5/5/05, p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Mai_Initiative)
2000 May 8, In Japan Hogen Fukunaga, founder of the Hono Hana Sampogyo, cult was arrested on fraud charges. Members were told that they would get cancer or die if their feet were not inspected by Fukunaga.
(SFC, 5/9/00, p.A12)
2000 May 11, In Japan the Aum Shinri Kyo cult, renamed Aleph, agreed to pay $37.4 million in compensation to victims of the 1995 gas attack in Tokyo.
(SFC, 5/12/00, p.D2)
2000 May 14, Former prime minister Keizo Obuchi died at age 62.
(SFC, 5/15/00, p.A12)
2000 Jun 1, Stores across Japan emptied beer vending machines to comply with a voluntary ban on beer vending to help reduce alcoholism.
(SFC, 6/2/00, p.B11)
2000 Jun 16, Empress Dowager Nagako died at age 97.
(SFC, 6/17/00, p.A20)
2000 Jun 19, Noboro Takeshita, former leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party and premier from 1987-1989, died at age 76.
(SFC, 6/19/00, p.E2)
2000 Jun 25, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's LDP lost power to its coalition partners in parliamentary elections. The coalition won 271 of 480 seats in the lower house.
(SFC, 6/26/00, p.A1)
2000 Jul 1, Lucie Blackman (21), a British citizen working in Tokyo, became the 8th Western woman to disappear in the last 5 years. In 2001 police found her remains encased in concrete near the residence of Joji Obara, a wealthy businessman and prime suspect. Obara was formally accused Apr 6, 2001. Some 4,800 tapes were found that linked Obara to some 400 rapes over 25 years [see April 24, 2007]. On Dec 16, 2008, Obara was convicted for the abduction and dismemberment of Blackman, but acquitted of her murder. The court also upheld an earlier conviction for the rapes of 9 other women. In 2011 Richard Lloyd Parry authored “People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman."
(SFC, 10/17/00, p.A13)(SFC, 2/10/01, p.A11)(SSFC, 2/11/01, p.C2)(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A11)(SFC, 4/9/01, p.A7)(AP, 12/16/08)(Econ, 2/26/11, p.90)
2000 Jul 19, In Okinawa over 25,000 demonstrators formed a chain around a US Air Base to protest American presence ahead of the G-8 meeting.
(SFC, 7/21/00, p.A8)
2000 Jul 20, In Japan Prime Minister Mori presided in informal discussions between G-8 leaders and 4 leaders from poor nations. Pres. Clinton arrived in Okinawa and went directly to the Cornerstone of peace Memorial where the names of 237,318 people, who died in the battle of Okinawa, are inscribed.
(SFC, 7/20/00, p.A12)(SFC, 7/21/00, p.A8)
2000 Aug 18, The Mount Oyama volcano erupted for a 5th time on the island of Miyake. The eruptions began July 9 after 17 years of dormancy.
(SFC, 8/19/00, p.A9)
2000 Aug 22, In Japan Mitsubishi Motors admitted that it had concealed tens of thousands customer complaints about automobile defects since 1977.
(SFC, 8/23/00, p.A10)
2000 Sep 11, In central and southern Japan torrential rains left 7 people dead. In Nagoya the Shinkawa River overflowed.
(SFC, 9/13/00, p.A14)
2000 Oct 5, In western Japan a 7.3 earthquake struck and at least 106 people were injured.
(SFC, 10/6/00, p.D6)(SFC, 10/7/00, p.A8)(SFEC, 10/8/00, p.A18)
2000 Oct 20, In Japan the Kyoei Life Insurance Co. filed for bankruptcy. The failure of the 11th-largest Japanese live insurer marked the biggest corporate failure since WW II.
(SFC, 10/21/00, p.D1)
2000 Nov 8, Fusako Shigenobu, founder of the Japanese Red Army, was arrested in Osaka after 20 years underground.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)
2000 Dec 5, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori appointed a new Cabinet that included 2 former prime ministers, Miyazawa and Hashimoto.
(SFC, 12/5/00, p.A16)
2000 Dec 8, A 5-day mock trial was organized by women's groups against forced sexual slavery during WW II.
(SFC, 12/8/00, p.D7)
2000 Dec 12, Tokyo opened its 12th municipal subway, the Oedo Line.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.T3)
2000 Ryu Murakami authored his novel "Exodus From Hopeless Japan." It was about renegade schoolchildren who loose hope in the economic future of Japan and take matters into their own hands.
(WSJ, 8/23/01, p.A6)
2000 Japan launched the “Project X" TV documentary series. It was about engineers and other overachievers who succeeded against the odds.
(Econ, 3/12/05, p.63)
2000 The Bank of Japan raised the key interest rate from zero to .25% and lowered it after 6 months when the increase made deflation worse.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.109)
2000 Japan recorded the 1st known case of two or more people using the Internet to form a suicide pact. Hundreds of suicides, if not more, from various countries copied that pattern in the following years.
(Econ, 6/23/07, p.66)
2000 Toyota released its Prius in the US, the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle.
(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
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Subject = Japan
Go to Japan 2001
