Raw Japan

Police, media get their suspect

Japan’s police can finally tear down the wanted posters for Tetsuya Ichihashi, after two-and-a-half years spent chasing down the 30-year-old suspected in the death of Briton Lindsay Hawker, whose body was found buried in a bath filled with sand.

Ichihashi is in custody, but Japan’s media are far from finished with the case, which has dominated news reports and daytime chat shows since police discovered recently he had changed his appearance with plastic surgery.

Video footage showed shouting police struggling through crowds of photographers to put Ichihashi on a train to Tokyo from Osaka, where he had been spotted waiting for a ferry to the southern island of Okinawa.

Media had already been hunting down details of Ichihashi’s life on the run, during which he concealed himself so effectively that many had speculated he must be dead. A TV Asahi news programme showed the tiny dormitory room where he had lived for 14 months while working as a building labourer, interviewing a colleague who noted that he focused on saving money and spent all his free time holed up in his room, we may well find out soon.

from MacroScope:

Vote here on Japan’s economy and its election

Jeremy Gaunt

Aug 27, 2009 10:46 UTC

Britain's Association of Investment Companies has UK investors who run Japanese equity funds whether they think the general election on Sunday will have a positive impact on the country, which is slowly emerging from recession.

Their answers can be found here, but the consensus was that the Democratic Party of Japan would defeat the ruling Liberal Democrat Party and that this would result in more consumer friendly policy or economic revival through higher living standards.