News stories by Suvendrini Kakuchi, page 4

This April, a small rice paddy field in Minami Sanriku, destroyed by the massive earthquake and tsunami last year in Japan, provided one of its most fertile yields yet - bringing hope and joy to the devastated local community.

To meet the demands of a rapidly ageing population, Japan has loosened its notoriously strict immigration and nursing regulations to accept foreign caregivers. But new evidence indicates deep cracks in those piecemeal gestures.

For the past two decades Masao Ishiji (59), has been fighting tooth and nail to ban the operation of four nuclear reactors that dot the western coastline of Oi in the Fukui prefecture facing the Japan Sea.

The discovery of radioactive contamination in ‘shiitake’ mushrooms grown in Manazuru town, Kanagawa prefecture, some 300 km away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has raised public clamour for compensation.

Japan’s plan to resume official development assistance (ODA) to Myanmar, announced this week, is problematic for a country faced with a dauntingly large disaster recovery budget for areas hit by the earthquake and tsunami last year.

Devastating as the Tohoku earthquake was it gave the local women of the remote region an opportunity to come into their own and take on leadership roles in an essentially patriarchal country.

The arrest and release of a Dutch activist in Japan has put in bad light this country’s refusal to heed international calls to limit traditional dolphin and whale hunting practices in favour of conservation.

Kazuya Tarukawa, 36, left a secure job in the Japanese capital to tend to his family’s organic farm located 100 km away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor.

Yumi Goto, 60, lives with her husband in a temporary shelter on a windy hill that overlooks vast stretches of tsunami-devastated seacoast where her home was once located.

Japan plans to boost civilian nuclear exports even as it tries to appease its population angered at radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, crippled by an earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11, last year.