Fukushima Evacuees Face End Of Housing Subsidy

Fukushima residents protests end of evacuee subsidies

Saturday will mark six years since the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.  It marks as well the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster which caused the evacuation of over 150,000 residents of not only Fukushima City, but Fukushima Prefecture residents also.

At the end of this month, housing subsidies run out for those who fled the Fukushima nuclear disaster from areas other than the government-designated evacuation zones, and as the clock ticks down, evacuees have had to decide whether to return or move once again.

Many of these so-called voluntary evacuees are mothers seeking to avoid risking their children’s health while their husbands remain in radiation-hit Fukushima Prefecture, according to freelance journalist Chia Yoshida.

This is why the term “voluntary evacuee” is misleading, as it gives the impression that they fled Fukushima for selfish reasons, Yoshida told a news conference in January in Tokyo.

At the same news conference, another journalist proposed using the term “domestic refugee” to describe them.

The Fukushima Prefectural Government has been paying the cost of public and private housing for voluntary evacuees under the Disaster Relief Act since the reactors melted down at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The number of evacuees from the disaster, including those from mandatory evacuation areas, peaked at 164,865 as of May 2012, according to the prefectural government.

Its latest tally, conducted earlier this year, shows that 11,321 out of the 12,239 voluntary evacuee households had already decided where to live after April, while 250 had not.

It was back in June 2015 when Fukushima announced the plan to end the rent subsidy this month, saying that decontamination work in the prefecture had advanced and food safety had been achieved.

Still, the central government’s evacuation orders have not been lifted in “difficult-to-return zones,” which include the towns of Futaba and Okuma, home to the crippled nuclear facility.

Those no-entry areas are subject to radiation of over 50 millisieverts per year, compared with the government’s long-term annual target of less than 1 millisievert after decontamination work.

Rika Mashiko, 46, is a voluntary evacuee living in Tokyo. She has decided to rent a house near the Fukushima-paid apartment where she and her daughter, now in elementary school, are currently living so that her daughter will not miss her friends.

Mashiko and her daughter fled Fukushima about two months after the nuclear crisis started, leaving behind her husband in their house in Miharu, located in the center of the prefecture.

Mashiko said many women evacuated from Fukushima with their children, compelled by their instinct as mothers to avoid danger.

“Maybe nothing might have happened, but if it had, it would have been too late,” she said.

Mashiko, who first moved to a house in Higashiyamato in eastern Tokyo that was leased for free, said mothers like her who fled the nuclear disaster feel they shouldn’t have to pay their housing costs and are angry at being “victims of the state’s nuclear policy.”

Many voluntary evacuees are financially struggling as they have to cover the double living costs in their hometowns, where typically the fathers remain, and the new places where the mothers and children moved.

In that sense, the free housing has been a “lifeline” for them, particularly in the Tokyo metropolitan area where housing costs are high, according to journalist Yoshida.

In an attempt to extend support to those families, Makoto Yamada, a veteran pediatrician in Tokyo, established a fund with ¥3 million out of his own pocket to help them rent new houses, for example by covering the deposit.

The initiative was the latest example of the support he has been providing to evacuees. Three months after the disaster, he held a counseling session in the city of Fukushima that attracted some 400 people concerned about radiation exposure. He has continued to hold similar sessions in Tokyo.

Yamada, 75, says poor understanding of the plight of voluntary evacuees has also played a role in bullying cases involving evacuee children that have been reported across Japan since last year.

In one high-profile case, a first-year junior high school student in Yokohama was called a “germ” at school, in reference to his supposed exposure to radiation.

Society appears to generally feel that voluntary evacuees have received a lot of money on top of the one-time compensation payment made by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., the operator of Fukushima No. 1.

Yamada says if people understood that voluntary evacuees had no wish to leave but felt they had to, such bullying would disappear.

The first financial support from Yamada’s fund went to 10 mothers and their children on Jan. 15. He was surprised to see the recipients shed tears of joy upon receiving ¥200,000 or ¥300,000 each.

Yamada said the government has tried to reduce the number of evacuees from Fukushima in order to claim that their ranks have decreased and that the disaster has been overcome.

Yoshida echoed that view, describing the voluntary evacuees as “people who will be eliminated from history as the government seeks to trivialize the damage from radiation contamination and say their evacuation was unnecessary.”

As long as there are evacuees living outside Fukushima, they will remain a symbol showing the situation has yet to be solved, Yamada said.

“If you say ‘we will not forget about Fukushima,’ you should never forget the terror of radiation, bearing in mind that people will not live in safety as long as nuclear plants exist in the world,” he said. “So, I want to continue to think about the evacuees.”

Kyodo

Emperor Akihito Will Abdicate Januray 1, 2019

Crown Prince Naruhito and Emperor Akihito

The government has set the date of Crown Prince Naruhito’s accession to the Imperial Throne and the beginning of a new era for January 1, 2019, the Imperial Household Agency announced Wednesday.

The Emperor, who signaled his wish for abdication in a video message last August, will step down on Dec. 31, 2018, closing the current Heisei era of his reign at its 30th year.

The government considers it desirable to start the new era at the same time as a new calendar year to minimize the impact of the era change on people’s daily lives, the sources said.

Within the government, the end of 2018 had been widely regarded as a possible date for the 83-year-old Emperor’s abdication since he, in the closely watched video released on Aug. 8, noted that the Heisei era will reach the 30th year in 2018.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the government is “past consideration and is preparing for transition” the timing of Imperial succession at the moment.

The next era name will be announced before Emperor Akihito's birthday November 23, 2018 in order to facilitate preparations for the name change, if planned abdication legislation is enacted during the ordinary session of the Diet from Jan. 20, the sources said.

The government hopes to present the special legislation to enable the current Emperor’s abdication around a string of national holidays from late April to early May after upcoming talks between the ruling and opposition parties on the issue.

AP, Jiji Press, Daily Yomiuri

Why Japan Refuses Economic Refugees and Multiculturalism

Pokemon Go Release Delayed Again In Japan

Game-maker Niantic has postponed the scheduled launch of Pokémon Go in Japan following an email leak.

Yesterday it was reported that the game was due to go live in Japan but the companies behind Pokémon Go have canceled that plan, a source close to the launch told TechCrunch. One major reason for that change of heart is that internal communication from McDonalds Japan, the game’s sponsor, detailing the launch made its way to internet forums (including 2ch, “Japan’s Reddit”) and photo site Imgur.

An initial morning launch time was pushed back to early afternoon as the email went viral. Later, however, the companies decided to cancel today’s launch entirely due to concerns that the hype generated would overload the game, our source explained. We don’t have an immediate update on when the game will finally go live in Japan, but understand that the launch is “imminent” but unspecified.

The postponement will frustrate many in Japan who are still waiting but, on the positive side, Niantic, Nintendo and the Pokémon Company — the three firms behind the smash game — are confident that, if the game is launched right, their serves can handle the undoubtedly huge demand that Pokémon Go will generate in Japan. Ninatic CEO John Hanke previously cautioned that the company needed time to ensure it had enough servers to cope with a deluge of Pokémon addicts in Japan.

The delay means also that we will have to wait to see the impact of the first “sponsored location” in the game. McDonalds has agreed to become the first paying sponsor, turning its 3,000 stores in Japan into “gyms” where players can battle, adding a new source of revenue to the game beyond its already lucrative in-app purchases and potentially driving real-world traffic to McDonalds stores. That’ll be a partnership to watch since there are plans to offer sponsored locations in other parts of the world.

The success of Pokémon Go is unprecedented. Just two weeks after its U.S. debut, it has reportedly passed 30 million downloads and $35 million in revenue, and surpassed Twitter on active users and Facebook on engagement. That has doubled the valuation of Nintendo — yes, in just two weeks — and all without launching in Japan, the home of Pokémon, yet.

Pokémon Go is available in more than 30 countries right now thanks to a steady rollout across Europe last week. TechCrunch understands that Japan is planned as the first launch in Asia and, once the game is available there, it will be extended to other countries in the region.

Jon Russell, Techcrunch

NOAA Adds To The Lies Of AGW

Kimonori Ito - Science Contributor

Science is not about “consensus.” There was “consensus” about aether. There was “consensus” about the mass and age of the Sun, assuming it was made of pure coal.

Both were complete fantasy because the data the models were based on were inaccurate.

Man Made Climate Change (or Man Made Global Warming) shills love to quote the UN Climate Agency survey of 2009, but important information is left out.   Of 1000 scientists asked, “Is there a human component to global warming?” 300 replied. 288 of them said “Yes.”  That’s 98%.  Actually it is only 98% of those who replied, and only 1/3 of those surveyed replied.  288 of 1000 is actually 28%.

What wasn’t asked was, “How much influence do humans have?”

As a climatologist with the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and a professor of Meteorology at Miyazaki University, I have a duty to report honestly on research that refutes pseudo-science.

In their “hottest year ever” press briefing, NOAA included this graph, which stated that they have a 58 year long radiosonde temperature record. But they only showed the last 37 years in the graph.

Here is why they are hiding the rest of the data. The earlier data showed as much pre-1979 cooling as the post-1979 warming.

I combined the two graphs at the same scale below, and put a horizontal red reference line in, which shows that the earth’s atmosphere has not warmed at all since the late 1950’s.

The omission of this data from the NOAA report, is just their latest attempt to defraud the public. NOAA’s best data shows no warming for 60 years. But it gets worse. The graph in the NOAA report shows about 0.5C warming from 1979 to 2010, but their original published data shows little warming during that period.

Due to Urban Heat Island Effects, the NOAA surface data shows nearly one degree warming from 1979 to 2010, but their original radiosonde data showed little warming during that time. Global warming theory is based on troposphere warming, which is why the radiosonde data should be used by modelers – instead of the UHI contaminated surface data.

NOAA’s original published radiosonde data showed little net troposphere warming from 1958 to 2010, when the data set ended.

The next graph shows how NOAA has altered their 850-300 mb temperature data since 2011. Another hockey stick of data tampering.

NOAA just lost its scientific credibility by posturing to political  interests rather than to honest science.

The collapse of the false "consensus" has been driven by reality. The fact of the matter is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Dr. Kiminori Ito is Meterological Professor and Climate Science Chair at Miyazaki University.  Dr. Ito is the author of the 2010 book, Lies and Traps in the Global Warming Affairs. 

How Abe Administration Lost Australian Submarine Deal

 

French flag flies in Sydney celebrating submarine deal

Japan, the onetime frontrunner for a $50 billion ($38.8 billion) contract to build Australia’s new submarine fleet in partnership with Australian industry under the so-called SEA 1000 Future Submarine Programme, failed in its bid to assemble the boats.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced yesterday that French shipbuilder Direction des Constructions Navales Services (DCNS) will be awarded the contract–Australia’s largest defense deal ever– to build 12 Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A  subs, a diesel-electric derivative of DCNS’ Barracuda-class nuclear attack submarine, for the Royal Australian Navy.

Japan’s Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani appeared bewildered over Australia’s decision yesterday. “We will ask Australia to explain why they didn’t pick our design,” he said, according to Reuters.

Japan with its 4,000-ton Soryu-class diesel-electric attack stealth submarine fitted with a new lithium-ion battery propulsion system was long considered to be both the Australian government’s and analysts’ favorite pick.

Why the dramatic reversal of fortune for Japan’s defense industry?

Like with any large defense deal, the reasons for picking the military hardware of one country over that of another are manifold and not only confined to technical and military considerations, but are also subject to political and geostrategic calculi.

There are five major reasons why France won.

First, Japan heavily betted on the close relationship between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who purportedly promised Tokyo a sweetheart deal in which the submarines would be domestically constructed in Japan in order to bolster the Australia-Japan strategic relationship–and ultimately lost. It was only reluctantly that Abbott eventually agreed to a competitive evaluation process in February 2015 inviting, next to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation (KSC), French shipbuilder DCNS and the German company ThyssenKrupp AG (TKMS) to compete.

Once Abbott was ousted from power, Japan was merely one of three bidders and no longer received the political support it was accustomed to from the new Australian government under Malcolm Turnbull and had to revamp its strategy to win the bid. Japanese defense industry representatives were simply outmaneuvered by their French and German counterparts. Australia’s Senate Economics Legislation References Committee already rejected the Soryu-class as a suitable Collins-class replacement option once before in November 2014.

Second, picking DCNS over the MHI and KSC—both Japanese shipmakers building the Soryu-class boats—is also politically more opportune for Malcolm Turnbull at this stage. Australians are likely to head to the polls on July 2 in federal elections, in what is predicted to be a tight race between the governing Liberal-National Coalition and the Australian Labor Party. During the press conference yesterday, Turnbull said that the 12 submarines in their entirety (save some specialized parts) will be built in Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia and home base of the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC).

South Australia is facing deindustrialization with the state’s last auto plant to be shut down at the end of 2016. As a consequence, creating new jobs will be vital for the Liberal-National Coalition to retain seats in the state and the decision to go with DCNS, according to Turnbull, will create more than 2,800 jobs. “Australian built, Australian jobs, Australian steel, here right where we stand,” he emphasized. DCNS purportedly agreed that all major work on the submarines will be done in Adelaide using domestic materials. Japan, however, initially was reluctant to build the submarines in Australia, given Tokyo’s general reluctance to transfer sensitive military technology abroad. Japan softened its stance on this issue over the last few months, but, as I have written previously, somewhat unconvincingly.

Third, Japan’s defense industry was not enthusiastic about selling Soryu-class submarines overseas. The two companies producing the submarine, MHI and KSC, currently have only the capacity to meet the domestic demand for submarines. Overall, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force plans to induct a total of 11 Soryu-class submarines by 2020. As of now, seven Soryu-class subs have been commissioned.  Due to the Japanese defense industries inexperience in dealing with international clients, there was also a growing concern in Australia that this could lead to a work culture clash, which would make collaboration on the project unnecessarily difficult.

Also, as The Diplomat reported previously, Japan still lacks experience in selling its military hardware including transferring sensitive defense technology to another country. Furthermore, “the Australian Defense Department appears concerned that any deal signed with Japan could be negated by the powerful Japanese bureaucracy, which allegedly [according to defense department sources] also showed ‘less enthusiasm (…) for the deal and that would undo it in the long run’” as I wrote

last week.

Fourth, the United States has tacitly been supporting the Japanese bid, but recently signaled Turnbull that its opposition to a potential European submarine supplier has plummeted. “Quiet U.S. pressure to opt for the Japanese submarines–U.S. officials allegedly indicated that the United States would not allow its most advanced weapons systems to be installed on European-made subs–has also apparently been dropped. U.S. President Barack Obama made it clear to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that the submarine deal was a sovereign issue of Australia and that the selection of France or Germany would not in any way affect the Australia-U.S. alliance,” I wrote last week.

Given that the Australian evaluation team and an expert advisory panel included senior former U.S. Navy officers, it is fair to assume that the U.S. Navy will allow its submarine systems, including a tactical control system, a Raytheon combat system (if selected), as well as weapons systems (e.g., Mark-48 torpedoes, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles) to be installed on the Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A  subs.

Fifth, while it is difficult to assess any submarine bid on an unclassified level, there is a fair argument to be made that the new Barracuda-class better meets Australia’s needs than the Japanese stealth submarines, although it remains to be seen how difficult a swap from nuclear power to a conventional system will be for DCNS. “This decision was driven by DCNS’s ability to best meet all of our unique capability requirements,” said Malcom Turnbull and Australia’s Minister for Defense Marine Payne in a joint statement published yesterday.

“These included superior sensor performance and stealth characteristics, as well as range and endurance similar to the Collins Class submarine. The Government’s considerations also included cost, schedule, program execution, through-life support and Australian industry involvement.”  DCNS has built more than 100 submarines for nine different navies and its ships are sailing on all five oceans–a major advantage over Japan, which has no submarine export experience.

There were a number of very specific technical requirements outlined by the Australian government as I reported previously:

The requirements outlined in the bid including a 4,000-ton displacement, a range and endurance similar to the Collins-class submarines, sensor performance and stealth abilities better than the Collins, and a combat system and heavyweight torpedo developed jointly by the U.S. and Australia as the preferred combat system and armament, makes an off-the-shelf solution not an option.

As I outlined before, the Australian submariner community remained skeptical of the Soryu-class submarines throughout the bidding process:

Among other things, they point out that on average Japanese subs are constructed to last for around 19 years, whereas the Australian governments expects at least a 30-year active service life span. The Japanese boats also have much less accommodation space than Collins-class submarines.

Additional objections where raised over the shorter patrol range of the Soryu-class sub in comparison to the current Collins-class and the Soryu’s lower transit speed. (Japan did issue a report claiming that concerns over the submarine’s limited cruising range were unfounded.) Furthermore, I explained: “[A]nother concern is the integration of a U.S. combat system and weapons (Mk 48 Mod 7 CBASS heavyweight torpedoes) into the Japanese hull.”

There has also been repeated safety concern over the use of advanced lithium-ion batteries. A former submarine engineer explained last week: “In the life of 100,000 [lithium-ion] cells and a fleet of 12 submarines there is likely to be a failure that cannot be stopped or controlled, with a catastrophic outcome. The Boeing 787 battery fires and the burning of the U.S. Navy’s Advanced Seal Delivery System are reminders that contemporary lithium-ion is not yet safe enough for submarines.”

It is important to understand that yesterday’s announcement was just a statement in principle and did not include the signing of a contract. The next few months will be crucial in figuring out the particulars including detailed technical specifications, construction schedules, technology transfer agreements, and what parts of the sub will in fact be build in Australia.

The botched bidding process was an important lesson for Japan. Its defense industry apparently still has a long way to go after lifting a self-imposed weapons export ban in April 2014, to become a major player in the global arms market. Given that the only customer of Japan’s defense industry has been its own government, it is not surprising that Japanese defense contractors lack experience in marketing, technology transfers or that they shrug off opportunities to expand their business abroad.

Franz-Stefan Gady, The Diplomat

LDP Delays TPP Vote

In a bid to guarantee passage, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party coalition notified opposition parties Saturday of its decision to push back ratification of a recently signed Pacific free trade deal beyond the current Diet session ending June 1.

The Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito party believe there is insufficient time for deliberations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact during the current parliamentary session after they failed to advance debate with the opposition camp.

The ruling parties were concerned that if they stuck to their initial plan of securing approval during the current session, they would have to push ahead with Diet deliberations without resolving their conflict with the opposition camp, a move that could negatively affect the House of Councillors election this summer.

The ruling parties will aim to have the pact and related bills approved during an extraordinary session in the fall, LDP Secretary General Sadakazu Tanigaki said.

Opposition parties boycotted a lower house panel session a few days after debate started on April 5, claiming the panel’s chairman conducted discussions unfairly and criticizing the government for not fully disclosing documents on negotiations for the deal.

An opposition lawmaker also raised a question about the chairman’s forthcoming book that contains inside information about the TPP trade talks, asking whether government officials had provided any details of the negotiations for the book.

In Tokyo, farmers staged a protest outside the Diet building against the TPP.  They are concerned that TPP provisions will allow cheap foreign agricultural products into Japan by bulk causing them to lose footing in competition.  The TPP will slash agricultural tariffs by 75% ending Japan's infamously highest in the world tariffs.  In Japan, provisions also call for ending many of the subsidies Japanese farmers have come to depend on.

Yukio Edano, secretary general of the main opposition Democratic Party, said the ruling parties should scrap the bill and start deliberations from scratch.

Ice Wall At Fukushima To Be 35 Billion Yen Fail

TEPCO Workers at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Palnt

 

Coping with the vast amounts of ground water flowing into the broken Fukushima nuclear plant — which then becomes radiated and seeps back out — has become such a problem that Japan is building a 35 billion yen “ice wall” into the earth around it.

But even if the frozen barrier built with taxpayers’ money works as envisioned, it won’t completely block all water from reaching the damaged reactors because of gaps in the wall and rainfall, creating as much as 50 tons of contaminated water each day, said Yuichi Okamura, a chief architect of the massive project.

“It’s not zero,” Okamura said of the amount of water reaching the reactors in an interview with The Associated Press earlier this week. He is a general manager at Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which operates the facility that melted down after it was hit by a tsunami in 2011, prompting 150,000 people to evacuate.

Workers have rigged pipes that constantly spray water into the reactors to keep the nuclear debris inside from overheating, but coping with what to do with the resulting radiated water has been a major headache. So far, the company has stored the water in nearly 1,000 huge tanks around the plant, with more being built each week.

TEPCO resorted to devising the 1.5-kilometer-long ice wall around the facility after it became clear it had to do something drastic to stem the flow of groundwater into the facility’s basement and keep contaminated water from flowing back out.

“It’s a vicious cycle, like a cat-and-mouse game,” Okamura said of the water-related issues. “We have come up against many unexpected problems.”

The water woes are just part of the many obstacles involved in controlling and dismantling the Fukushima Dai-chi plant, a huge task that will take 40 years. No one has even seen the nuclear debris. Robots are being created to capture images of the debris. The radiation is so high no human being can do that job.

The ice wall, built by construction company Kajima Corp., is being turned on in sections for tests, and the entire freezing process will take eight months since it was first switched on in late March. The entire wall requires as much electricity as would power 13,000 Japanese households.

Edward Yarmak, president of Arctic Foundations, based in Anchorage, Alaska, which designs and installs ground freezing systems and made an ice wall for the Oak Ridge reactor site, says the solution should work at Fukushima.

“The refrigeration system has just been turned on, and it takes time to form the wall. First, the soil freezes concentrically around the pipes and when the frozen cylinders are large enough, they coalesce and form a continuous wall. After time, the wall increases in thickness,” he said in an email.

But critics say the problem of the groundwater reaching the reactors was a no-brainer that should have been projected.

Building a concrete wall into the hill near the plant right after the disaster would have minimized the contaminated water problem considerably, says Shigeaki Tsunoyama, honorary professor and former president of University of Aizu in Fukushima.

Even at the reduced amount of 50 tons a day, the contaminated water produced at Fukushima will equal what came out of Three Mile Island’s total in just eight months because of the prevalence of groundwater in Fukushima, he said.

Although TEPCO has set 2020 as the goal for ending the water problems, Tsunoyama believes that’s too optimistic.

“The groundwater coming up from below can never become zero,” he said in a telephone interview. “There is no perfect answer.”

Okamura acknowledged the option to build a barrier in the higher elevation near the plant was considered in the early days after the disaster. But he defended his company’s actions.

The priority was on preventing contaminated water from escaping into the Pacific Ocean, he said. Various walls were built along the coastline, and radiation monitors show leaks have tapered off over the last five years.

Opponents of nuclear power say the ice wall is a waste of taxpayers’ money and that it may not work.

“From the perspective of regular people, we have serious questions about this piece of research that’s awarded a construction giant,” says Kanna Mitsuta, director of ecology group Friends of the Earth Japan. “Our reaction is: Why an ice wall?” 

AP

Children Victimized In Child Porn Rises In Japan

Justice Minister Iwaki Adresses 2015 Crime Statistics

The number of children under 18 who have become victims of child pornography in Japan rose to a record-high 905 in 2015, up 159 from the year before, a police report showed Thursday.

Most of the victims were girls, with about 40% having been tricked or coerced into photographing themselves naked, according to the National Police Agency.

The number of investigated child pornography cases totaled 1,938, up 110 from the previous year and a record-high, including possession of pornographic images that became punishable last year under a revised law to protect children from sexual exploitation.

Facing criticism over its loose regulations compared with other industrialized nations, Japan began punishing the production of child pornography through the use of spy cameras in July 2014 and the possession of child pornography for the purpose of satisfying sexual curiosity in July 2015.

In 2015, police investigated 1,063 cases over the production of child pornography, of which 110 involved spy cameras. Seventeen cases were investigated in connection with the simple possession of pornographic images.

Most of the victims were either junior high school or high school students, but the youngest victim was an 8-month-old boy who was photographed by a male babysitter, according to the report.

Among the 144 victims under the age of 13, some 45% were victims of rape or molestation.

The police have collected the data on child pornography from 2000.

In separate data released the same day, the National Police Agency said it confirmed 2,051 cases of unauthorized computer system access in 2015, down 1,494 from the year before and marking the first decrease since 2012.

The police attributed the fall to a sharp drop in spoofing, including cases in which free mobile messaging app Line account was taken over by an unknown person. After many users saw their accounts stolen, Line Corp stepped up cybersecurity measures.

Kyodo

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