Nagoya Castle Keep Rebuild To Be Wooden

 

While many Japanese cities have a castle as their most iconic symbol and biggest tourism draw, the irony is that these salutes to their samurai past are often built out of modern materials. See traditional Japanese architecture was almost entirely wooden, and castles, being military strongholds, were prime targets during warfare, so a popular tactic for attacking armies was to burn the fortresses to the ground.

That scenario continued into the 20th century, such as when the Imperial Japanese army installed a regional headquarters and administrative facility in Nagoya Castle during World War II. In May of 1945, a U.S. air raid destroyed a large portion of the castle, including its main keep. After the war, the keep was rebuilt from reinforced concrete, reopening in 1959 and continuing to attract visitors to this day.

However, after decades of wear and tear, plus a need for further earthquake-proofing, the Nagoya City Council has decided to rebuild the castle keep. Moreover, to emphasize its historical value, the rebuilt keep will be made of wood, just as the original was.

Nagoya mayor Takashi Kawamura initially proposed the idea last June. The required budget of 50 billion yen (approximately US$451 million) set off a lengthy debate, but on March 23, the city council approved the plan in a majority vote.

An exact timetable for the project has yet to be set, as the city is still in talks with contractors and construction firms. If everything progresses smoothly, though, the council hopes the new, wooden Nagoya Castle keep will be ready to start receiving visitors in 2022. Demolition of the current keep could begin as early as the fall of 2019, which would leave the city without a castle keep for two to three years, so if you can’t wait until 2022, you’ll want to make those Nagoya travel plans before the concrete keep comes down.

NHK

Maria Ouchi Sentenced To Life In Prison

Ouchi In Photo From Nagoya University

A court on Friday sentenced Maria Ouchi, a 21-year-old former Nagoya University student to life in prison over the 2014 murder of an elderly woman and attempts to kill a boy and girl while she was in senior high school.

In handing down the sentence as sought by prosecutors, the Nagoya District Court said Ouchi was mentally competent given that she is deemed to have acted on her own volition when she committed the crimes.

The defense had sought acquittal, claiming Ouchi's developmental and bipolar disorders made her incapable of judging right and wrong as well as controlling her behavior.

In seeking a life term, prosecutors claimed the symptoms of Ouchi having bipolar disorder were not severe enough at the time of her actions, while admitting she was suffering from mental and developmental disorders.

The ruling found that the former student, whose name is being withheld because she was a minor when she committed the crimes, murdered Tomoko Mori, 77, with a hatchet at Ouchi's apartment in Nagoya in December 2014.

The former student was also convicted of trying to kill a girl who was a classmate in junior high school and a boy who was a classmate in senior high school, sometime between May and July in 2015 in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, by poisoning them with thallium.

“She committed the crimes because of self-centered motives,” said Presiding Judge Koji Yamada. “The murder of the woman was cruel and a cold-blooded act based on the strong intention to kill.”

Regarding the poisoning, the court acknowledged her intention, albeit a weak one, to kill the boy and girl on the grounds she had recognized the possibility that poisoning could kill them.

She was also found guilty of attempting to kill a resident in Sendai by setting fire to the person’s house.

In the trial by three professional judges and six citizen judges, the defendant had said she wanted to watch a person die and to observe the symptoms of poisoning.

“Even now I still get the urge to kill someone,” she said during a court session.

According to her statements, she began developing an interest in people’s death when she was a fifth or sixth grader, drawing pictures of guillotines and gallows almost every day.

In her junior high school days, she heard a story from her mother about the serial murders committed by a 14-year-old boy in Kobe in 1997 and “realized that there is a means to kill someone,” she testified, adding it was then that she started studying about horrifying murders that had happened.

She said that people she had felt driven to kill ranged from her sister and her mother, to a friend, a prosecutor and her lawyer. Medication has calmed her desire to kill but she still feels the urge once or twice a week.

When asked if she felt sorry for the victims or regretted her conduct, she said, “I do have such feelings but I don’t know how” to express them.

Three doctors who were involved in her mental evaluation provided split opinions on whether she could be held responsible for her actions, though all three determined she had a developmental disorder which made it difficult for her to understand other people’s feelings, as well as bipolar disorder.

The defense also called for her indictment to be dismissed on the grounds the decision by a family court to send her case back to prosecutors for possible indictment violated the principle of a law protecting the rights of minors. 

Chunichi

Wild Mushrooms Blamed For Cesium Spread In Fukushima

Radioactive cesium released after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's triple meltdown in 2011 is continuing to contaminate the environment through wild mushrooms, scientists say.

It turns out that the fungi absorb cesium and then release it through their spores after concentrating it.

But the amount of cesium in the environment is miniscule and poses no threat to human health, say the researchers, who are primarily with the Meteorological Research Institute of the Japan Meteorological Agency, Ibaraki University and Kanazawa University.

The new findings indicate that cesium is released into the environment again by mushroom spores in mountains and forests in zones designated as difficult to return to because of high contamination levels after the nuclear accident triggered by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

Radiation levels in the air are measured at monitoring posts and disclosed to the public. Those measurements are taken at a designated height to measure radiation from the ground and in the atmosphere.

In a separate effort, a team of scientists from the Meteorological Research Institute and other bodies measured the radioactivity concentration of cesium-137 by collecting airborne particles 1 meter above ground in Fukushima Prefecture.

The team’s survey showed that cesium levels in a mountainous area in the northwestern part of the town of Namie rise five times in summer compared with winter. The region is part of the difficult-to-return zone.

The increased cesium level during summer is equivalent to less than one ten-thousandth of the radiation dose of 2.1 millisieverts, which the average individual is naturally exposed to each year.

The latest findings were in marked contrast to studies covering the prefectural capital of Fukushima and elsewhere that showed cesium levels were higher in winter than summer.

Initially, the researchers considered the possibility of cesium on the ground's surface being kicked up by clouds of dust. But they found no clear association between the cesium level and dust.

Teruya Maki, an associate professor of microorganism ecology at Kanazawa University, analyzed genes of airborne particles gathered in forests and mountains in the northwestern part of Namie from August to September 2015.

The results showed that many of the particles were derived from mushrooms.

Between June and October last year, more than 10 kinds of wild mushrooms were gathered on 10 occasions in the region’s forests and mountains. The radioactivity concentration levels in the spores measured up to 143 becquerels per gram.

When multiplying the cesium concentration per spore by the number of collected spores per cubic meter, the result roughly matched the measured cesium concentration for the area.

“Spores in which cesium was concentrated were likely released into the atmosphere, raising the airborne concentration,” said Kazuyuki Kita, an air environment science professor at Ibaraki University, who was involved in the analysis of cesium levels.

The amount of cesium contained in a spore of sampled mushrooms was extremely small.

“Even if people inhale the air in areas where mushroom spores containing cesium are spreading, that could never affect human health,” said Kazuhiko Ninomiya, a researcher of radiochemistry at Osaka University, who is a member of the research team.

The researchers are also trying to ascertain the extent to which the mushroom spores spread. They are planning more studies to figure out if the distances involved could be several kilometers.

Last summer, airborne cesium concentration levels for mountains and forests in Namie that have yet to be decontaminated were almost the same as those for an area 1 kilometer away that has been decontaminated on a trial basis.

That indicates cesium is likely spreading in the air, according to the scientists.

Asahi

Chubu Centrair International To Get 2nd Runway

Currently Centrair Has 1 Runway

The transport ministry and the Aichi prefectural government are among those currently arranging to build a second runway at Chubu Airport so the facility can help meet the future growth in demand stemming from increases in the number of foreign visitors to Japan, according to sources.

With the completion of the second runway, arrivals and departures at the airport in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture, would increase to about 200,000 in a year, or 1.6 times the current figure.

The aim is to start using the two runways together by 2027 when the Linear Chuo Shinkansen line is expected to begin operations, connecting Nagoya with Shinagawa in Tokyo in 40 minutes.

The airport was built on an offshore artificial island reclaimed from the sea and started operations to coincide with the opening of the 2005 World Exposition Aichi. 

Land for the new runway will be secured by reclaiming the west side of the airport with sand dredged at Nagoya Port. 

The Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry plans to release a preparatory document for environmental assessment as early as this autumn, on the assumption of building the new runway. Construction work will start as early as fiscal 2019 with an estimated total cost of about ¥300 billion.

The airport has routes connecting 57 cities in Japan and abroad. Among the international routes, the network has been expanded widely to connect with China, Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries.

For China alone, the airport connects to 23 cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xian, Tianjin and Harbin. 

Taking advantage of rapid increases in Chinese visitors to Japan, the number of incoming and outgoing passengers at the airport will likely exceed 11 million in fiscal 2016.

The number of arrivals and departures will match those at Kansai and Narita airports after the new runway is completed.

The government has set a goal of 40 million foreign visitors to Japan by 2020, or 1.6 times the level in 2016.

Woman Found Dead At Love Hotel

Police are searching for a man who left a love hotel after the death of the woman he entered with.

Miyabi Hanada, 21, was found dead in the room after a cleaning person entered the room.  Aichi Police say the woman had marks on her neck consistent with strangulation.  There were also injection marks found on her left arm.

Surveillance camera footage shows Hanada entering the elevator with a male around 10AM, March 8.  The male is seen exiting the elevator alone, paying at the desk, and leaving at 11:30AM.

After the two hour room rental, a cleaning person entered the room at 1PM, to prepare it for the next customers.  She found Hanada naked on the bed and unresponsive.  Mizuho Ward paramedics arrived and took Hanada to Nagoya City Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Police say the male is being sought for questioning and possibly could face charges of murder and leaving the scene of a crime.