In Japan, April is far from the cruellest month and perhaps rather the most optimistic, not least because it heralds the cherry blossom and the start of the new fiscal and academic year. I recently had the somewhat unnerving experience of ploughing through a scrum of undergraduates on a crowded campus in central Tokyo that […]
Although Japan can appear very safe and there is undeniably little petty crime, the calm exterior masks two key conditions: that Yakuza control over sections of society is rampant and it is likely in part this network of organised crime that keeps street crime low; and that the police maintain a close watch on citizens […]
The man identified by police as Masaaki Ōsaka and standing trial for his alleged part in the death of a police officer during the Shibuya Riot Incident in 1971 has broken his silence. Since his apprehension last year after over four decades on the run, Ōsaka — or the man presumed to be him, identified […]
