Latest news with #Diet
Asahi Shimbun
2 hours ago
- Health
- Asahi Shimbun
38 teachers died from overwork in 9 years through fiscal 2023
Overwork remains a potentially deadly health hazard for many Japanese public school teachers, as long hours and excessive workloads continue to push them beyond safe limits, recent data shows. Thirty-eight public elementary and junior high school teachers died from overwork-related causes, known as "karoshi," between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2023. The data was compiled by the Fund for Local Government Employees' Accident Compensation in Tokyo, which provides compensation and support to local government workers injured on the job or during commuting Even after fiscal 2018, when the education ministry introduced a monthly overtime cap of 45 hours, 26 such cases were recorded. Deaths are classified as karoshi when they result from work-related cardiovascular or cerebrovascular diseases, or from suicides linked to work-related mental health disorders. According to the fund, public elementary and junior high school teachers accounted for 31 percent of all local government employees recognized as karoshi cases in fiscal 2022 and 23 percent in fiscal 2023. Sachiko Kudo, 58, head of a support group for families of karoshi victims in Kanagawa Prefecture, is calling for more effective policy responses to address the problem. Kudo, who lost her husband, a Yokohama public junior high school teacher, to a subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by overwork, stressed the need for government measures to prevent similar cases, including detailed investigations of each incident. 'There are many common factors in teachers' deaths from overwork,' she said. 'Examining each case thoroughly could help prevent further tragedies.' SPECIAL OVERTIME SYSTEM FOR TEACHERS A FACTOR One underlying cause of teachers' karoshi is the prevalence of excessive working hours. Some observers point to the law governing teacher compensation as a key reason why proper management of working hours has been lacking. Under this law, teachers do not receive standard overtime pay. Instead, they are given a fixed-percentage supplement added to their base salaries. Critics argue that this arrangement discourages school administrators from taking steps to limit working hours. The system has even been described as 'unlimited work for a fixed sum.' This year, the law was amended during the regular Diet session. To improve working conditions, the revision will gradually increase the supplemental salary portion from the current 4 percent of base pay to 10 percent. It also introduces mandatory requirements for local boards of education to develop and publicly disclose plans detailing targets and initiatives to reduce overtime. During the Diet deliberations, lawmakers submitted additional amendments and the revised bill was ultimately passed into law. Among the new provisions are explicit goals to reduce average monthly overtime to about 30 hours and to implement measures aimed at achieving class sizes of 35 students in public junior high schools. These measures were included as supplementary provisions. However, throughout the Diet debate, some legislators questioned whether the compensation framework established under the law could effectively address the problem of excessive working hours, expressing skepticism about its potential to bring meaningful change. CALLS FOR ABOLISHING THE LAW PERSIST Yuji Nishimura, a teacher at a Gifu prefectural high school and a member of the volunteer group of citizens considering the future of the law on teachers' compensation, argues, 'Unless the law is abolished and replaced with a system that provides proper overtime pay, school administrators will have no incentive to reduce teachers' working hours or rein in rising personnel costs.' By contrast, the education ministry continues to defend the system, citing reports from the Central Council for Education, an advisory body to the education minister, which describe the current framework as reasonable and respectful of teachers' professional discretion. 'We are not considering abolishing this system,' the ministry states. (This article was written by Yukihito Takahama and Mayumi Ujioka, a senior staff writer.)
Yomiuri Shimbun
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Exoneree Calls for Retrial System Reform After Acquittal; Help Sought from Sister of Acquitted Death Row Inmate
A man acquitted on Friday of the 1986 murder of a teenage girl in a retrial expressed a strong commitment to reforming Japan's retrial system. Shoshi Maekawa, 60, was sentenced to seven years in prison for the murder of a junior high school student, a crime for which he consistently asserted his innocence. He is now appealing for help from Hideko Hakamata, the 92-year-old sister of 89-year-old Iwao Hakamata, who in a retrial was acquitted of the 1966 murder of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture. Maekawa spoke with Hideko in an online call from his home in Fukui on Monday. He reported the news of his acquittal and asked for her 'cooperation in bringing about a review of the retrial system.' In January, Maekawa visited Hideko's home in Hamamatsu and was given a blue hat belonging to Iwao. Maekawa wore that hat on the day of his verdict at the Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court. 'Thanks to the hat's protection, I was acquitted,' Maekawa told Hideko during the online call. Hideko happily responded, 'That's truly wonderful.' Issues remain in Japan's retrial system, including a lack of legal obligation to disclose evidence. 'We can't let this end here,' Maekawa stressed. 'We need to connect it to a review of the system.' Referring to a draft to revise the Criminal Procedure Code jointly submitted to the House of Representatives by six opposition parties, Hideko said, 'I want to see the debate gain serious momentum and [the law] enacted in the Diet session in autumn.' 'Hideko is a close companion; we both share the same aspirations,' Maekawa told reporters after the online call. 'I'm glad I could report this news to her.'
Time Magazine
8 hours ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
Coca-Cola to Launch Trump-Approved Version of Drink in U.S.
Coca-Cola has announced that it will be introducing a cane sugar version of its leading soda product to the U.S. market this fall, confirming President Donald Trump's pre-emptive announcement made days earlier. The new offering of Coca-Cola will be available in the U.S. alongside the iconic version, which uses high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener and will remain unchanged. (Diet and Coke Zero products use aspartame and other artificial sweeteners.) The soda company said that the upcoming availability of the cane sugar product is part of its 'ongoing innovation agenda.' 'This addition is designed to complement the company's strong core portfolio and offer more choices across occasions and preferences,' Coca-Cola said on Tuesday in its second quarterly update of the year. The company's chairman and CEO James Quincey elaborated further on a conference call with investors, during which he referenced Trump's recent comments and praised his interest in the matter. 'We appreciate the President's enthusiasm for our Coca-Cola brand,' he said. 'We are definitely looking to use the whole tool kit of available sweetening options.' Read More: Here's What the New Coke Tasted Like in the 1980s Trump, who reportedly has a button at his desk in the Oval Office to request Diet Coke, had pre-emptively announced the ingredient change on July 16. 'I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL cane sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. This will be a very good move by them. You'll see. It's just better,' he said on Truth Social. Coca-Cola produced in Mexico contains cane sugar. It's sold in the U.S. and is widely referred to as 'Mexican Coke' and is known for its long-neck glass bottle presentation. Cane sugar is also used in Coca-Cola produced in other countries across the rest of the world. The U.S. began importing the Mexican version of the beverage in 2005, and it is preferred by some in the U.S. over the domestic product. Corn syrup has been used in the production of Coca-Cola in the U.S. since 1984, when the soda company announced a switch from traditional sugar cane and sugar beet. Analysts suggested that the change was due to the lower costs of the corn alternative, and the decline of the sugar market as artificial sweeteners become increasingly popular. Whilst corn syrup has traditionally been produced more than other sweeteners in the United States, cane and beet sugar has become more readily available for U.S. consumers over the last decade. The United States Department of Agriculture has not published exact recent figures on corn syrup production, but it said in 2016 that domestic production had fallen almost 20% in the previous decade. There continues to be a debate over the use of cane sugar vs. corn syrup in Coca-Cola and whether one is healthier than the other. Read More: RFK Jr. Says Ultra-Processed Foods Are 'Poison'—But That He Won't Ban Them Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April said that 'sugar is poison.' Amid his campaign to 'Make America Healthy Again,' Kennedy has referred to high-fructose corn syrup as "a formula for making you obese and diabetic." Over the weekend, Kennedy celebrated the Steak 'n Shake restaurant chain after it announced it would start offering Coca-Cola with real cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. 'MAHA is winning,' Kennedy said of the news. However, some nutritionists are not convinced the switch will make too much difference, if any at all. "For all practical purposes, they're the same. I find the switch to be nutritionally hilarious," nutritionist and professor of food studies at New York University Marion Nestle told Associated Press last week. "They taste the same. They have the same number of calories. They do exactly the same things in the body. Everybody would be healthier eating less of both of them."
Mint
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Mint
A populist party that began on YouTube helped disrupt Japan's ruling coalition
TOKYO—The surprising success story of Sunday's election in Japan was a political party born online during the pandemic that tapped into a wellspring of discontent over issues galvanizing voters worldwide: inflation, immigration and a political class dismissed as elitist and out of touch. Sanseito—which translates as the participate-in-politics party—is into organic farming and worshiping the Emperor, and isn't keen on vaccines or foreigners. It polled fourth in Sunday's parliamentary election, helping to deprive Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's ruling coalition of its majority in the Japanese Diet's upper house, an upset that complicates trade negotiations with the U.S. just days before sweeping new tariffs are due to come into force. The breakthrough marks yet another example of right-wing challenges to established political parties that have transformed politics in Europe and the U.S., such as Germany's AfD, Britain's Reform UK or Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement. Just as those groups have drawn on angst over immigration, Sanseito's anti-foreigner rhetoric has found fertile ground in a country that is slowly opening up to newcomers to fill jobs in its rapidly aging society and where worries over surging tourism abound. 'There is frustration there and they profited from that frustration," said Tobias Harris, founder of Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Japan Foresight. Sanseito didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Sanseito leader Sohei Kamiya has railed at shadowy globalists he says are keeping Japan down. Sanseito has its roots in a conservative YouTube channel started by its current secretary-general, a spiky-haired former teacher called Sohei Kamiya, and two other political junkies who have since left the party. Dissatisfied with Japan's political old guard, their channel was devoted to setting up a political party from scratch and Sanseito was founded in early 2020. Kamiya ran on a Sanseito ticket in 2022 in an upper house election, winning a seat that wasn't up for grabs this time around. Including Kamiya, Sanseito now has 15 lawmakers in the 248-member upper house and three in the 465-member lower house. That gives it some scope to put forward its own ideas as bills but no chance of seeing them pass without other parties' support. Sanseito advocates a bundle of policies similar to other right-wing populists, whose platforms are distinct from the free-market, small-government conservatism that dominated the electoral right for years. It supports expansionary fiscal policies including more spending on child care and tax cuts. In line with the pronatal policies of leaders such as Hungary's Viktor Orban, it wants women to be less career-focused and have more children. It also espouses antivaccine views that brought it to national attention during the Covid-19 pandemic and is hostile to chemical fertilizers, echoing some of the themes of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Make America Healthy Again program. Sanseito bemoans the fact that Japan imports food, saying its goal is for 100% self-sufficiency in food by 2050. In stump speeches, Kamiya frequently railed at shadowy globalists he says are keeping Japan down. The party wants to ditch Japan's pacifist constitution that was drafted largely by the U.S. in the wake of World War II, and create a new one that harks back to an earlier, more spiritual age when the Japanese emperor was the head of state and the focus of national reverence. Analysts say Sanseito's success in Sunday's vote owes much to two phenomena: immigration and inflation, as well as a general dissatisfaction with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the unpopular Ishiba, especially among right-leaning voters who feel the party has drifted too far from the conservatism of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Sanseito has pledged to limit immigration and curb the rights of foreigners living in Japan, whose numbers had grown to 3.5 million as of Feb. 1, according to Japan's statistics bureau, from 1.7 million a decade earlier. Such an increase, while small in terms of Japan's population of around 120 million, has been jarring for some Japanese, many of whom are also upset at high levels of tourism and foreign purchases pushing up real-estate prices, both of which Sanseito promised to rein in. Consumer prices in Japan, meantime, rose 3.3% year over year in June, outpacing wage growth and squeezing household incomes. After a long spell of low or no inflation, Japanese voters are extra sensitive to price increases, said David Boling, director of Japan and Asian trade at Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. The run-up in inflation after the pandemic proved fatal for incumbent governments in a run of elections around the world in 2024; in Japan the reckoning has just come a little later, he said. The question now is whether Sanseito can build on its gains and get a shot at real political power. It has only a marginal presence in the Japanese parliament's more-powerful lower house, and has shown little appetite to work with big parties to advance its agenda. Japan's political system frequently throws up new political groups that vanish quickly. 'New parties are cheap in Japan. They come and go," said Paul Sheard, an economist and author who followed Japan for years in senior positions at financial firms including S&P Global and Nomura. Still, he said Sanseito has identified a rich potential seam of voters who believe they aren't being catered to by the main parties, including a swath of younger, social-media savvy Japanese attracted to the party's do-it-yourself, antiestablishment ethos.
Wall Street Journal
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
A Populist Party That Began on YouTube Helped Disrupt Japan's Ruling Coalition
TOKYO—The surprising success story of Sunday's election in Japan was a political party born online during the pandemic that tapped into a wellspring of discontent over issues galvanizing voters worldwide: inflation, immigration and a political class dismissed as elitist and out of touch. Sanseito—which translates as the participate-in-politics party—is into organic farming and worshiping the Emperor, and isn't keen on vaccines or foreigners. It polled fourth in Sunday's parliamentary election, helping to deprive Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's ruling coalition of its majority in the Japanese Diet's upper house, an upset that complicates trade negotiations with the U.S. just days before sweeping new tariffs are due to come into force.
