Emperor Akihito's address on the one-year anniversary of the Tohoku Earthquake has been making waves in Japan after it was apparently censored on television networks for its direct reference to the nuclear disaster. more ›

Ayumi Yanagisawa, a correspondent for the Japanese broadcaster NHK, was working in a tiny seaside town when the earthquake hit. Her first instinct was to pick up her camera. [The Daily Telegraph] more ›

"I can absolutely understand why the mayor of Nagoya would deny the Nanjing Massacre. All of your history is propaganda. There's no credibility and no historical evidence. 300,000 victims, you say, but the number looks like it was plucked out of thin air anyhow you turn it. And let's not forget how you're so ready to greet your own countrymen with the knife, gun, sword, halberd, ax, hook, fork and other weapons. Up till now, you still haven't owned up to the small massacre in 1989. What right do you have to demand that the Japanese mayor acknowledge the big massacre?" more ›

Nagoya mayor Takashi Kawamura recently kicked up a storm by denying that the Rape of Nanking ever took place. Despite strong protests lodged by China -- albeit somewhat belatedly -- Kawamura did not apologize, but even repeated what he said yesterday. Nanjing has since suspended its sister-city ties with Nagoya. Now, Global Times continues to bay for blood, calling for China to sanction the mayor. In an editorial, the paper said Kawamura "must pay for arrogance": more ›

Nanjing has suspended its sister-city relationship with Nagoya in response to the denial of the Nanjing Massacre by its mayor. more ›

A young Japanese globetrotter attempting to cycle around the world recently became famous online, after he had his bike stolen in the Hubei capital of Wuhan. After making an appeal on Sina Weibo, Keiichiro's bike was returned to him Monday night, after a man surnamed Wang bought the bike for over 1000 RMB from a black market reseller, and recognized it as belonging to the bicycling traveler. more ›

Makoto Sakurai, leader of the Japanese fascist group Zaitokukai, taunts visitors to the campus of the Korea University in Kodaira, Tokyo in a protest held on the 50th anniversary of the university earlier this winter. "I will kill you! I'm not joking!" he says, "We came here to kill North Koreans!" Established in 1956 by the de-facto North Korean embassy in Japan, Chongryon, the university receives funding directly from the DPRK government, and its graduates are often sent to teach at North Korean schools across Japan. While the full name of Zaitokukai means "Citizens against Special Privilege of Zainichi (Koreans)," the group has also been known to protest against Filipinos, Chinese and even Halloween. more ›

The mayor of Nagoya Takashi Kawamura recently denied that the Rape of Nanking ever took place in front of Liu Zhiwei, a member of the Nanjing Communist Party Committee. more ›

The Jigokudani Monkey Park in Nagano, Japan is the only place in the world where you can watch Japanese macaques, or snow monkeys, soak in natural hot springs. more ›

The above infographic, provided by the Gravity Group, is a brief summary of the hits and percentages that make up the Chinese box office totals for last year. more ›

A weib currently making the rumor mill rounds has it that Sister Feng (凤姐), a woman remarkable for the severity of her delusional demands on husbands-to-be being matched only by the severity of her overbite, is going to star in a Japanese AV film. more ›

For now, it appears as if Shanghai's powdered milk stock is safe from the radiation that has tainted Meiji co. powdered baby milk. Earlier this week the powdered formula produced by Japan's premier dairy company was found to contain traces of radioactive cesium 137 and 139, prompting widespread panic in Japan and China. more ›

When news first sprung up about the planned resumption of the Shanghai-Nagasake ferry, it was painted more as a bargain boat designed to get you there and back on the cheap. Which made the unveiling of a new(ish) cruise ship on the route's inaugural run last weekend very exciting indeed. Beginning in January, for only around 800RMB (one way) you can travel over to Nagasaki on a second-hand Greek cruise ship called the Ocean Rose. more ›

• Wen Jiabao spooked everyone out recently by telling a story that isn't heard very often, of how his own family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.
• A group of university professors at Yangtze University in Hubei recently got on their knees for NIMBY protests against a steel processing plant near their campus.
• Chongqing's leadership is all about giving to the 99%, while Guangdong's bigwigs would prefer to keep it amongst the 1%. A bit simplistic an explanation, but that's apparently all anybody understands these days.

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Just as Europe is hoping for China to be its sugar daddy financial savior, tourism industries throughout the Asia Pacific region are bending over backwards to court Chinese tourists and the revenue boost they represent. We thought a special round-up on the subject was in order. more ›

Sohu Vice-President Liu Chun (刘春) laments in a post on his Sohu Weibo profile about the anti-Japanese propaganda productions that are shown every September 18, anniversary of the Mukden Incident in 1931, which subsequently led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria:

September 18 -- I'd like to plead with China's film industry workers. Please stop making those obscene, mythological anti-Japanese films where a child destroys a dozen (Japanese) devils, a farmer hundreds, and a guerilla thousands. Are the (Japanese) short-legged or brain-damaged? Each scene requires hordes of cameos to act as (Japanese) corpses. Please, pay a bit of attention to history. Stop turning a 14-year-long brutal war which caused the death of tens of millions into a game. more ›

And by the looks of it, it's going to be pretty effing cheap too! Plans to resume the ferry after a 30-year hiatus were announced this week in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Revolution of 1911, because apparently Sun Yat-sen was real tight with a couple of Japanese friends from over there. more ›

• WSJ's Japan Real Time Report covers why Japan's new Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, is boring at home and controversial abroad, especially in regards to the touchy subject of Japanese war criminals. Also amusing is the seeming list of demands issued by Xinhua in English at the new leadership.
• WSJ goes over a paper by Harvard University's Dani Rodrik explaining why despite anxiety over the issue, he believes developing countries like China aren't going to overtake the US and Europe any time soon. Rodrik argues that they must first overcome the "convergence gap”, or the gap in productivity levels often determined by their ability to absorb new technologies.
• Andy Hoffman writes a fascinating 5-page portrait in The Globe and Mail of Andrew Dawrant, the Canadian largely considered to be the top English-Chinese interpreter in China today. He is the only Native English speaker ever to be accepted as a Chinese language interpreter in the UN. He started learning at age 8 on his own volition, and by 15 he was couch crashing his way through Hong Kong. What a badass.
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Er, this dog will probably help repair Sino-Japanese ties, or something. The pup has over 65,000 Weibo followers! No? Not buying it? It 's Friday, guys. A pomeranian born in 2002 named 'Shunsuke', this little guy is the highlight of our day so far, and is apparently also very active on Twitter. Enjoy! more ›

Many of the journalists working on the Wenzhou train crash story are finding it hard to believe the railway ministry's denials that it's burying train bodies and parts to hide the truth. more ›

Here's an old video from President Hu Jintao's trip to Japan last year that we missed earlier and is making the rounds again on Sina Weibo. more ›

China's flying hurdler, Liu Xiang (刘翔) has done it again. Yesterday in Kobe, Japan, Liu clocked 13.22 seconds in the 110-hurdles event, re-writing the Asian Athletics Championships record. The first Chinese athlete to achieve the "triple crown" of athletics (World Record Holder, World Champion and Olympic Champion), Liu has been making a steady comeback since his shocking pullout from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His world record of 12.88 seconds, set 2006 at the Super Grand Prix in Lausanne, was broken by Cuba's Dayron Robles two years later. Robles continues to hold the world record of 12.87 seconds today. more ›

A new maid-themed cafe has opened in the Hunan capital of Changsha, featuring a female-only waitstaff composed of adolescent-looking giggly schoolgirl types. Servers are outfitted in black and white French maid fetish cosplay outfits, and greet you at the door with a 'Is there anything I can do to serve you, master/husband?' (the term for husband is the same as master [主人] in Japanese). more ›

Uh-oh spaghetti-o's. Looks like it's time again for another round of harrumphing over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands: "China on Monday demanded Japan immediately withdraw its fishing ships out of the waters of the Diaoyu Islands. 'China has lodged solemn representation with the Japanese side,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei made the remarks in reply to a question saying some Japanese boats were sent to fish in the waters of the Diaoyu Islands. According to the Japanese media, about 10 fishing boats belonging to a fishery cooperative in Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture, left a local port Sunday to operate in the waters of the Diaoyu Islands, known as Senkaku in Japan. 'China has indisputable sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands that have been an inherent part of China since ancient times,' Hong said, stressing that any actions taken by Japan in the area were invalid. It is reported that the Japanese fishing boats have already withdrawn from the Diaoyu Islands waters, Hong said, without providing a time frame." [China Daily] more ›

In case you're like us and didn't believe that China would one day be bested by India for Heavyweight Population Champion of the World, this news graphic should put us doubters to rest. Then again, perhaps part of the disbelief stemmed from the difficulty of conceptualizing such a shifting of population rank, which we now understand to be a large circle becoming only a somewhat larger circle, with another circle usurping the other circle's diameter through a more substantial magical future expansion. more ›

Might we suggest that China or the United States dubs their future Japan-besting machine the OK Computer? "Japan now has the honor of being home to the world's fastest supercomputer, beating out China for the top spot on the list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers on the planet. The machine in question, called the K Computer, is capable of performing a whopping 8.2 quadrillion calculations per second, or 8.2 petaflops. By comparison, the K Computer has the equivalent power of about 1 million desktop PCs. It comprises 672 cabinets located at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. It's said to cost about $10 million a year to keep running, and consumes as much power as 10,000 homes. The title of fastest supercomputer previously belonged to the Chinese Tianhe-1A system at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, China. That system now moves to the No. 2 spot, with the U.S.A.'s Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee taking the bronze medal. Japan's K is about three times as powerful as the Chinese computer, and almost five times faster than the Jaguar." [PC Magazine] more ›

"Even though I've lost everything, it would be okay if she were still alive."
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The first Chinese fatality of the great earthquake in Japan has been confirmed by the Chinese embassy in Tokyo. No information on the victim was released at the request of the bereaved family. All we know is that he/she was killed in Ishinomaki city, Miyagi prefecture, when the quake-triggered tsunami hit the area. more ›