Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda told fellow ASEAN trade ministers last Saturday that the Japanese economy was recovering from the catastrophic March 11 earthquake and tsunami at a faster rate than initially expected.
A long-lasting radioactive element has been measured at levels that pose a long-term danger
at one spot 25 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,
raising questions about whether Japan’s evacuation zone should be expanded,
and whether the land might need to be abandoned.
The isotope, cesium 137, was measured in one village by the International Atomic Energy Agency
at a level exceeding the standard that the Soviet Union used as a gauge to recommend abandoning land surrounding the Chernobyl reactor,
Japan’s vaunted “just in time” approach to business has become “wait and see.”
Much of Japan’s industry seems to be in a state of suspension,
as the devastation from an earthquake and tsunami,
combined with fear and uncertainty over the nuclear calamity,
made it difficult for corporate Japan to think about business as usual.
And that has left many overseas customers and trading partners in something of an information vacuum,
With Japan’s nuclear crisis showing no sign of ending, the yen strengthened against the dollar on Thursday,
compounding that country’s economic worries and raising expectations the central bank will soon have to intervene.
The financial aftershocks from the earthquake in Japan gathered force on Tuesday as
investors fled from riskier assets like stocks, oil and gold.
Unnerved by a 16 percent drop in Japanese shares in the first two trading days of the week,
stock markets slumped as investors sought havens like United States dollars and Treasury bonds, pushing interest rates lower.
“This was a very scary day for global stock markets,” said Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.
As the humanitarian and nuclear crises in Japan escalated after the devastating earthquake and tsunami,
the impact on the country’s economy appeared to be spreading as well.
While the nation’s industrial clusters in the south and west seemed to be spared the worst,
the crisis at damaged nuclear plants north of Tokyo was threatening to cause an energy squeeze that could set back all sectors of Japan’s economy.
To help bring electricity back to the devastated areas, utilities across Japan are cutting back and sharing power,
The Japanese central bank on Monday raced to shield the country’s economy
and plunging financial markets from the impact of the devastating earthquake and tsunami
by pumping cash into the financial system and easing monetary policy further through an expansion of asset purchases.
Economists at Credit Suisse in Tokyo projected that the total economic losses of the quake could amount to as much as 15 trillion yen.
Japan is looking to join the ranks of the US, China and Russia’s aviation industry with a stealth fighter that senior Japanese air force officials say can be ready for a prototype test flight 2014.
The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch.
The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies.
Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters’ entry.
