The News Caravan

Tag: Japan

  • Britain secures agreement to join Indo-Pacific trade bloc

    Britain secures agreement to join Indo-Pacific trade bloc

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    LONDON — Britain will be welcomed into an Indo-Pacific trade bloc late Thursday as ministers from the soon-to-be 12-nation trade pact meet in a virtual ceremony across multiple time zones.

    Chief negotiators and senior officials from member countries agreed Wednesday that Britain has met the high bar to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), four people familiar with the talks told POLITICO.

    Negotiations are “done” and Britain’s accession is “all agreed [and] confirmed,” said a diplomat from one member nation. They were granted anonymity as they were unauthorized to discuss deliberations.

    The U.K. will be the first new nation to join the pact since it was set up in 2018. Its existing members are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Canada.

    Britain’s accession means it has met the high standards of the deal’s market access requirements and that it will align with the bloc’s sanitary and phytosanitary standards as well as provisions like investor-state dispute settlement. The resolution of a spat between the U.K. and Canada over agricultural market access earlier this month smoothed the way to joining up.

    Member states have been “wary” of the “precedent-setting nature” of Britain’s accession, a government official from a member nation said, as China’s application to join is next in the queue. That makes it in the U.K.’s interests to ensure acceding parties provide ambitious market access offers, they added.

    Trade ministers from the bloc will meet late Thursday in Britain, or early Friday for some member nations in Asia, “to put the seal on it all,” said the diplomat quoted at the top. The deal will be signed at a later time as the text needs to be legally verified and translated into various languages — including French in Canada. “That takes time,” they said.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

  • Japan PM Kishida’s visit to Ukraine overshadows Xi’s talks with Putin, upsets China

    Japan PM Kishida’s visit to Ukraine overshadows Xi’s talks with Putin, upsets China

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    Beijing: China on Tuesday hit out at Japan after its Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a surprise visit to Ukraine and overshadowed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow, saying Tokyo should do more to de-escalate the situation rather than aggravating it.

    Beijing was caught by surprise as Kishida, who was on an official visit to New Delhi from March 19-21, entered Poland from India using a secretly chartered plane instead of the standard government aircraft, Japanese TV channel NHK reported.

    The chartered plane left Tokyo’s Haneda Airport at around 8 pm on Sunday, about three hours before a government plane carrying Kishida departed for India.

    After wrapping up his scheduled events in India, the prime minister secretly boarded the waiting plane in the early morning hours of Tuesday, the Japan Times daily quoted an NHK report.

    Kishida’s visit to Ukraine and his scheduled meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv stole the limelight of Xi’s Moscow visit aimed at projecting himself as a global peacemaker after Beijing successfully brokered a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to end their hostilities.

    In a statement on Kishida’s visit to Ukraine, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said he will express to President Zelenskyy his respect for the courage and perseverance of the Ukrainian people standing up to defend their homeland under Zelenskyy’s leadership.

    “At a summit meeting with President Zelenskyy, Prime Minister Kishida will resolutely reject Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and unilateral changing of the status quo by force, and reconfirm his determination to uphold the international order based on the rule of law,” it said.

    Kishida will “directly convey our solidarity and unwavering support for Ukraine” as Prime Minister of Japan and the current chair of G7 countries, it said.

    Asked about Kishida’s visit, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the international community “should keep to the right direction to promote the peace talks and create conditions for a political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis”.

    “We hope the Japanese side will do more to de-escalate the situation instead of the opposite,” he told a media briefing here.

    “China’s position boils down to promoting peace talks and China will continue to uphold an objective, just position and work with the world to play a constructive role in the political settlement,” he said.

    On whether Xi will speak to Zelenskyy, he said: “Our position is consistent and clear. We keep communication with all parties”.

    He shot back when asked whether China will work with the US to stop the war, saying the US should be asked whether it would like to promote peace talks and stop the war.

    “China would like to work with the international community to play a constructive role in the Ukraine crisis,” he said.

    On US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s assertion that the world should not be fooled by the Russian-Chinese peace plan for Ukraine, Wang said China’s peace plan covers all aspects including respect for sovereignty, ceasefire and stopping of unilateral sanctions.

    He claimed that many countries support China’s peace plan as they want de-escalation.

    “China is not a creator of the Ukraine crisis, not a party to the crisis and does not provide weapons to any side of the conflict and the US is in no position to point fingers at China and blame it,” he said in response to Blinken’s assertion that Beijing is providing a “diplomatic cover” for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    “The US should see China’s efforts more objectively than holding on to the Cold War mentality and stop escalating tensions,” he said.

    In Tokyo, US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel tweeted that Prime Minister Kishida is making a “historic visit” to Ukraine to protect the Ukrainian people and promote the universal values enshrined in the UN Charter.

    “Approximately 900 kilometres away, a different and more nefarious partnership is taking shape in Moscow,” Emanuel said.

    The coincidental timing of Xi and Kishida trips “does indeed create a stark contrast,” James D J Brown, said political science professor at Temple University in Japan.

    “It presents the image of two blocs, with Japan and Ukraine on the side of democracy, and Russia and China representing an axis of authoritarianism,” he told the Japan Times.

    In Moscow, Xi and Putin held a “restricted session” of talks on the second day of the Chinese leader’s three-day visit, following up on their four-hour talks on Monday. Xi said on Tuesday that he has invited Putin to travel to China for the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to be held this year.

    While meeting Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Xi said that the invitation was made in his informal meeting with Putin.

    It fits the historical logic that Chinese leaders take Russia as a primary choice for their overseas visits, Xi said, referring to his visit, his first overseas trip after getting endorsed for an unprecedented third term as president and head of the military by the Chinese Parliament this month.

    He said China and Russia are each other’s biggest neighbours and comprehensive strategic partners of coordination, and that such a relationship has withstood the test of the world’s profound changes.

    Xi also called for continuous regular meetings between the Chinese premier and Russian prime minister, and invited Mishustin to visit China, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Narendra Modi with Japan PM Fumio Kishida

    Narendra Modi with Japan PM Fumio Kishida

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    Narendra Modi with Japan PM Fumio Kishida



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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Germany, Japan pledge to boost cooperation on economic security

    Germany, Japan pledge to boost cooperation on economic security

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    Germany and Japan agreed on Saturday to strengthen cooperation on economic security in the aftermath of tensions over global supply chains and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine.

    In the first high-ministerial government consultations held between the two countries, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reached out to Tokyo to seek to reduce Germany’s dependence on China for imports of raw materials.

    “The current challenges of our time make it clear: It is important to expand cooperation with close partners and acquire new partners. We want to reduce dependencies and increase the resilience of our economies.” the German chancellor said in a tweet.

    Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said they believe the agreement will allow both countries to diversify value chains in order to be able to reduce economic risks.

    In a joint statement, the two countries said they will work on establishing “a legal framework for bilateral defense and security cooperation activities,” including ways to protect critical infrastructures, trade routes and to secure future supply of sustainable energy.

    Germany’s decision to prioritize consultations with Japan came after the Asian country put forward an economic security bill last year aimed at securing the uptake of technology and bolstering critical supply chains. 

    Japan is Germany’s second-largest trading partner in Asia after China, with a bilateral trade volume of €45.7 billion mainly based on the import and export of machinery, vehicles, electronics and chemical products.

    The two leaders also exchanged views on the situation in Ukraine, cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and the G7 meeting in Hiroshima scheduled for May.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

  • Why Xi Jinping is still Vladimir Putin’s best friend

    Why Xi Jinping is still Vladimir Putin’s best friend

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    As he jets off for a state visit to Moscow this week, China’s President Xi Jinping is doing so in defiance of massive international pressure. Vladimir Putin, the man Xi once called his “best, most intimate friend,” has just become the world’s most wanted alleged war criminal.

    The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on March 17 for his alleged role in illegally transferring Ukrainian civilians into Russian territories. But that isn’t deterring Xi, who broke Communist Party norms and formally secured a third term as Chinese leader this month.

    But why is China’s leader so determined to stand by Putin despite the inevitable backlash, at a time when the West is increasingly suspicious of Beijing’s military aims — and scrutinizing prized Chinese companies like TikTok — more closely than ever?

    For a start, Beijing’s worldview requires it to stay strategically close to Russia: As Beijing’s leaders see it, the U.S. is blocking China’s path to global leadership, aided by European governments, while most of its own geographical neighbors — from Japan and South Korea to Vietnam and India — are increasingly skeptical rather than supportive.

    “The Chinese people are not prone to threats. Paper tigers such as the U.S. would definitely not be able to threaten China,” declared a commentary on Chinese state news agency Xinhua previewing Xi’s trip to Russia. The same article slammed Washington for threatening to sanction China if it provided Russia with weapons for its invasion of Ukraine. “The more the U.S. wants to crush the two superpowers, China and Russia, together … the closer China and Russia lean on each other.”

    It’s a view that chimes with the rhetoric from the Kremlin. “Washington does not want this war to end. Washington wants and is doing everything to continue this war. This is the visible hand,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month.

    10-year bromance

    To understand Xi’s preference for Putin even though China’s economy is so intertwined with the West, analysts say it’s not just important to factor in Beijing’s vision for the future, but also to grasp the history that the Chinese and Russian leaders share.

    “They’re just six months apart in terms of age. Their fathers both fought in World War II … Both men had hardships in their youths. Both have daughters,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank and an expert on Russo-Chinese relations. “And they are both increasingly like an emperor and a tsar, equally obsessed with Color Revolutions.”

    Their “bromance,” as Gabuev put it, began in 2013 when Xi met Putin toward the end of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali — on Putin’s birthday. Citing two people present at the impromptu birthday party, Gabuev said the occasion was “not a boozy night, but they opened up and there was a really functioning chemistry.”

    GettyImages 183503201
    Russian President Vladimir Putin with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Nusa Dua in 2013 | Mast Irham/AFP via Getty Images

    According to Putin himself, Xi presented him with a cake while the Russian leader pulled out a bottle of vodka for a toast. The pair then reminisced over shots and sandwiches. “I’ve never established such relations or made such arrangements with any other foreign colleague, but I did it with President Xi,” Putin told the Chinese CCTV broadcaster in 2018. “This might seem irrelevant, but to talk about President Xi, this is where I would like to start.”

    Those remarks were followed by a trip to Beijing, where Xi presented Putin with China’s first friendship medal. “He is my best, most intimate friend,” Xi said. “No matter what fluctuations there are in the international situation, China and Russia have always firmly taken the development of relations as a priority.”

    Xi has stuck to those words, even after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago. Less than three weeks beforehand, Putin visited Beijing and signed what China once referred to as a “no limits” partnership. Chinese officials have steered clear of criticizing Russia — and they wouldn’t even call it a war — while echoing Putin’s narrative that NATO expansion was to blame.

    Close but not equal

    Concerns are mounting over Beijing’s potential to provide Russia with weapons. Last week, POLITICO reported that Chinese companies, including one connected to the government in Beijing, have sent Russian entities 1,000 assault rifles and other equipment that could be used for military purposes, including drone parts and body armor, according to customs data.

    Chinese and Russian armed forces have also teamed up for joint exercises outside Europe. Most recently, they held naval drills together with Iran in the Gulf of Oman.

    During Xi’s visit this week, the two leaders are expected to conclude up to a dozen agreements, according to Russian media TASS. Experts say Xi and Putin are likely to sign further agreements to boost trade — especially in energy — as well as make more efforts to trade in their own currencies.

    Xi is also expected to reiterate China’s “position paper” with a view to settling what it calls the “Ukraine crisis.” The paper, released last month, mentions the need to respect sovereignty and resume peace talks, but also includes Russian talking points such as dissuading “expanding military blocs” — a veiled criticism of U.S. support for Ukraine to potentially join NATO. There are also reports that Xi could be talking by phone with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the Moscow visit.

    But Beijing’s overall top priority is to “lock Russia in for the long term as China’s junior partner,” wrote Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. “For Xi, cementing Russia as China’s junior partner is fundamental to his vision of national rejuvenation.”

    To achieve this, Putin’s stay in power is non-negotiable for Beijing, he wrote: “China’s … objective is to guard against Russia failing and Putin falling.”

    What better way, then, to show support than attending a state banquet when your notorious friend needs you most?



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

  • From Estonia to Japan: The transnational roots of CCTVs, electronic policing in Hyderabad

    From Estonia to Japan: The transnational roots of CCTVs, electronic policing in Hyderabad

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    Hyderabad: Policing here has changed over the last few years after the formation of Telangana. Technology based practices have completely taken over the traditional beat policing. This project of modernization of policing has been long and co-ercive, with a never ending list of human rights violations carried out by the police in the region.

    But these violations are no more rooted in the feudal and nation state structures that were the primary cause of violence in the region post independence. Since the 1990s, it is the transnational demands of globalisation that determined how policing practices are carried out in Hyderabad.

    The background

    Modernization of policing in India has been a long pending project for the Ministry for Home Affairs (MHA). After the Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11, the MHA along with National Crime Records Bureau began working on several new surveillance projects along with modernization and digitization of policing. The MHA promoted and funded several experiments of policing across the country as part of this exercise.

    As a developed region in India, Hyderabad became the testing ground for many of the experiments for digitization. Everything from CCTNS, Automatic Fingerprint Recognition System, Facial Recognition Systems, Operation Chabutra, Stop and Scan searches, cordon searches were all piloted first in Hyderabad before they were expanded across the country.

    If you have seen the Hyderabad Police go around with android tablets with the TSCOP application in it, taking photos, imposing fines and verifying your identity details with their 360 degree profile databases, these are not original ideas. The present practices of electronic policing in Hyderabad were borrowed from a tiny eastern european nation Estonia. The Estonian story of IT development is very similar to that of Hyderabad; both regions digitised their economies during Y2K (turn of the millenium) and continued to supply information technology solutions to global markets.

    The policing projects along with several other systems like digital identity, land registries, population registries were all ideas that were first experimented in Estonia and then later in Hyderabad in India. Both places have become grounds of experimentation networked via the same investor – World Bank, that promoted these experiments. 

    Like every year this year too, the Information Technology and Industries Minister of Telangana, KT Rama Rao made his pilgrimage to the World Economic Forum to attract investments into Hyderabad. Investments continue to pour into the region and they are not just because KT Rama Rao is articulate, but because of what he promises the investors in return for the investment – continuous growth with no interruptions from anyone in economic activity and safety for investments.

    No bureaucratic hurdles, no union protests, business friendly changes to laws and rules, no local political leaders interrupting infrastructure projects, and complete cooperation of the state make it easy for business activity. A trend that started with the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 90s has pretty much continued.

    Policing in Hyderabad pre and post formation of Telangana

    While the investments into the region are important for improving economic and social development, they often come at hidden costs that are not fairly obvious. Many people believe the new policing practices of Indian police like elsewhere in the country are a result of the totalitarian turn of the policing force due to right wing politics, which does not hold true for Hyderabad.

    These practices have been imposed on us by various investors and have been continuously confirmed by various commissioners of the Hyderabad Police, who continue to say they are doing their “smart policing” to attract investments into the region. Their goal of a safe Hyderabad is rather a demand for a “brand Hyderabad” to the police department as well. The branding of Hyderabad Police as a “people friendly police” also comes from this demand to meet the global standards, to be equally compared with the likes of New York Police Department, London Metropolitan Police etc.

    These interests for CCTVs by the police had multiple applications to it beyond the traditional security angle. The Outer Ring Road project being supported by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency(JICA) in 2009 also supported implementation of Intelligent Transportation Systems which included Electronic Toll Collection Systems, CCTVs and Automatic Traffic Counters for Traffic Management.

    apan was offering us low interest rate loans to help us build the Outer Ring Road and also give Japanese technology assistance to install various technology systems from Japanese firms. Several companies demonstrated these technologies to the Hyderabad team that visited Japan. In doing this JICA has ensured we buy electronic equipment from Japanese companies with “yen” loans provided by them, essentially helping find new customers for japanese firms and Hyderabad was getting “developed”. 

    The CCTVs installation didn’t really progress at the pace it probably should have because of various reasons including uncertainty within day to day governance with the death of the then (late AP) Chief Minister YS Rajashekar Reddy. By Feb 21st, 2013, another bomb blast in public shopping areas of Dilsukhnagar had forced the police to push for amendments to the Public Safety Act of 2013.

    The Public Safety Act mandated every shop establishment to install a CCTV camera and every police commissionerate to maintain a CCTV unit to monitor them. The plan to implement Intelligent Transportation Systems for Hyderabad traffic was also going nowhere, so JICA was asked for further assistance in 2014 for implementing Intelligent Transportation Systems across Hyderabad Metropolitan Area and not just ORR. 

    Multiple projects

    Even though the Public Safety Act was amended in 2013 and plans for implementation of CCTVs across Hyderabad were being made for traffic management, these were nowhere close enough for what Hyderabad Police wanted. To their rescue came another Japanese company NEC Japan which offered to create Safer Cities, by providing facial recognition cameras. NEC Corporation is a global giant when it comes to biometrics, they have been involved with every major policing organisation to provide them tools for fingerprint scanning to facial recognition systems. Hyderabad Police also used their “Nenu Saitam/Community CCTV” scheme to force CCTVs in every apartment and neighbourhood citing the Public Safety Act of 2013, even though the Act makes it only for shops and establishments to mandatorily install CCTVs. 

    It is important to understand the global economic relations that have forced intrusive forms of technologies on us, but beyond economics there is also the geopolitics component. India is not only importing models from the west, but also the east specially from countries like Singapore which was always our “model state”. The India-Japan cooperation is also strategically important with the Indian security establishment’s security risks to procure CCTV or any electronic equipment from China. This has also been an important issue with the tendering process around the National Facial Recognition System, where foreign institutions were being favoured and domestic companies were opposing the move. 

    The problem with the current setup of CCTVs, facial recognition and other intrusive technologies that have been imported from these countries is, we have not imported their laws and accountability mechanisms. The lack of accountability mechanisms with proliferation of these technologies is resulting in various problems, which neither the police establishment nor the political establishment wants to address. These technologies are being abused to do preventive detentions, extra legal surveillance, wrongly target marginalised people and more than anything, they are being experimented on Hyderabadis before they become national systems

    Srinivas Kodali is a researcher with interests in cities, data and the internet.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Japan struck with 6.1 earthquake, no tsunami warnings issued

    Japan struck with 6.1 earthquake, no tsunami warnings issued

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    Hokkaido, Japan’s second-largest island, witnessed an earthquake of 6.1 magnitudes on the Richter scale on Saturday night, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

    The earthquake shook the coastal cities of Kushiro and Nemuro struck at 10:27 p.m. (6:57 pm IST) at a depth of around 43 kilometers (27 miles). No tsunami warnings were issued by the USGS.

    According to Japanese media, no immediate reports of loss of life or property damage have been reported so far.

    Earthquakes are very common in Japan. In 2004, the world’s deadliest tsunami rocked Japan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives, and Thailand claiming 227,898 dead or missing and a damage of $227,898 million.

    Because of experiencing frequent earthquakes, Japan has strict construction regulations enabling buildings to withstand strong earthquakes. The country also holds routine emergency drills to prepare for a major jolt.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Japan struck with 6.1 magnitude quake, no tsunami warnings issued

    Japan struck with 6.1 magnitude quake, no tsunami warnings issued

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    Hokkaido, Japan’s second-largest island, witnessed an earthquake of 6.1 magnitude on the Richter scale on Saturday night, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

    The earthquake shook the coastal cities of Kushiro and Nemuro struck at 10:27 p.m. (6:57 pm IST) at a depth of around 43 kilometers (27 miles). No tsunami warnings were issued by the USGS.

    According to Japanese media, no immediate reports of loss of life or property damage have been reported so far.

    Earthquakes are very common in Japan. In 2004, the world’s deadliest tsunami rocked Japan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives, and Thailand claiming 227,898 dead or missing and a damage of $227,898 million.

    Because of experiencing frequent earthquakes, Japan has strict construction regulations enabling buildings to withstand strong earthquakes. The country also holds routine emergency drills to prepare for a major jolt.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • UK slams ‘protectionist’ Biden

    UK slams ‘protectionist’ Biden

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    LONDON — Joe Biden’s “protectionist” Inflation Reduction Act won’t help the U.S. counter the rise of China and could create a “single point of failure” in key supply chains, Britain’s trade chief Kemi Badenoch warned.

    Speaking at a POLITICO event Tuesday night, Badenoch — recently promoted to head up the U.K.’s new Department for Business and Trade — predicted the flagship law would not achieve its key aims, and insisted the U.K. is not sitting on the sidelines in the transatlantic tussle over the plan.

    The comments came just minutes after the U.S. ambassador to the U.K. mounted a spirited defense of the IRA at the same event.

    The Inflation Reduction Act offers billions in subsidies and tax credits to try and incentivize take-up of electric vehicles and build up green infrastructure. But European and British carmakers are particularly concerned about the impact on their own industries of massive help for U.S. firms.

    Speaking on Tuesday night, Badenoch said Britain — which has been lobbying against the plan but is not prepping its own subsidies — is “working very well with a group of like-minded countries who are worried about the Inflation Reduction Act.”

    “The EU is very worried and we’re working jointly with them on it,” she said. “It’s not just the EU doing stuff and we’re not in the room. Japan is worried. South Korea is worried. Switzerland is worried.”

    Many countries, Badenoch contended, are now “looking at what the U.S. is doing” with concern.

    “It is onshoring in a way that could actually create problems with the supply chain for everybody else,” she said.

    “And that will not have the impact that it wants to have when it’s looking at the economic challenge that China presents. So no, I don’t think it’s a good idea, not just because it’s protectionist. But it also creates a single point of failure in a different place, when actually what we want is diversification and strengthening of supply chains across the board.”

    Speaking earlier Tuesday night, U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. Jane Hartley argued that the plan could have major positive implications for countries beyond the U.S.

    “One of the things I would say is there’s going to be a huge amount of money, R&D — the technology is going to improve, the technology is going to be cheaper,” she said. “The technology is going to be used by everyone in the world — not just the U.S.”

    Hartley stressed that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is “looking pretty hard” at the act during its so-called comment period, when U.S. agencies take feedback on a plan. Both President Biden and U.S. Trade Secretary Katherine Tai had, she said, stressed that their country “didn’t do this to hurt our allies — we want to protect our allies.”

    CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated Janet Yellen’s job title. She is the treasury secretary.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

  • Japan sees its number of islands double after recount

    Japan sees its number of islands double after recount

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    It can’t be easy keeping count of the number of islands scattered around an area of more than 370,000 square kilometres, in a country that is regularly subjected to volcanic activity and extreme weather.

    While Japan has seen the formation of new islands, and the quiet disappearance of another, geographers have said official statistics showing it is made up of around 6,000 islands are way off the mark.

    Using digital mapping technology, geographers will soon announce that Japan’s island count is actually double the previously recognised number, according to media reports.

    In the first survey of its kind for 35 years, the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan has totted up a total of 14,125 islands – 7,273 more than previously thought.

    The government body, which is due to release its findings within the next few weeks, said the new information was unlikely to change the size of Japan’s territory or territorial waters, according to the Kyodo news agency.

    The authority launched the new study following criticism that the previous data were out of date, meaning the actual number of islands could be dramatically higher.

    An MP from the ruling Liberal Democratic party called for a recount, telling parliament in 2021 that “an accurate understanding of the number of islands … was in the national interest”.

    In the last survey, released in 1987 by the coast guard, paper maps were used to tally islands – defined as land masses with a circumference of at least 100 metres – resulting in the previously accepted figure of 6,852.

    In the most recent study, officials used the same size criterion, but counted islands using digitised maps and cross-referenced the information with past aerial photographs and other data to exclude artificially reclaimed land, Kyodo said.

    Some of Japan’s 47 prefectures comprise huge numbers of islands. The northern prefecture of Hokkaido – one of the four main islands, along with Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu – has 1,473, according to the new survey, while Nagasaki in the south-west has 1,479.

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    ( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )