The Japan Times is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by The Japan Times, Ltd., a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc. It is headquartered in the Kioicho Building in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo.
Kenzaburō Ōe was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism. Ōe was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".
Racism in Japan comprises negative attitudes and views on race or ethnicity which are held by various people and groups in Japan, and have been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices and actions at various times in the history of Japan against racial or ethnic groups.
The Japanese National Railways abbreviated JNR or Kokutetsu (国鉄), was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987.
Eikaiwa kyōshitsu (英会話教室) or Eikaiwa gakkō (英会話学校) are English conversation schools, usually privately operated, in Japan. It is a combination of the word eikaiwa and gakkō or kyōshitsu.
Berlitz Corporation is a language education and leadership training company which is based in Princeton, New Jersey. The company was founded in 1878 by Maximilian Berlitz in Providence, Rhode Island in the United States. Berlitz Corporation is owned by Berlitz Holdings, a company established through a 100% investment by ILSC Holdings LP, with more than 547 company-owned and franchised locations in more than 70 countries.
Nova is a large eikaiwa school in Japan. It was by far the largest company of this type until its widely publicized collapse in October 2007. Before its bankruptcy, Nova employed approximately 15,000 people across a group of companies that supported the operations of and extended out from the "Intercultural Network" of its language schools. The scope of its business operations reached its peak in February 2007 following a rapid expansion of its chain to 924 Nova branches plus a Multimedia Center located in Osaka.
ECC Foreign Language Institute is one of the major private English teaching companies or eikaiwa in Japan. It is part of the ECC group.
Labour unions emerged in Japan in the second half of the Meiji period, after 1890, as the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization. Until 1945, however, the labour movement remained weak, impeded by a lack of legal rights, anti-union legislation, management-organized factory councils, and political divisions between “cooperative” and radical unionists.
The National Union of General Workers (NUGW) is the shortened, English title of the National Union of General Workers National Council, a national labour union council established in 1991. NUGW is affiliated to the National Trade Union Council , the smallest of the three national labour federations in Japan. As of September 2010 the NUGW had around 7000 members.
The Mohawk Valley formula is a plan for strikebreaking purportedly written by the president of the Remington Rand company James Rand, Jr. around the time of the Remington Rand strike at Ilion, New York in 1936/37.
Hitoshi Ono is a Japanese rugby player. He plays at lock for the Japan national rugby union team. He is nicknamed the "Iron Man".
Link Interac Inc. is a Japanese comprehensive educational consultation company, founded in 1972. The name is an acronym for International Education Research and Analysis Corporation, although the company has never operated under that name. Interac originally concentrated on teaching business English, then shifted focus to providing Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) to public elementary, middle, and high schools. Interac provides teachers to schools around Japan.
The General Union is a labor union founded in 1991 and headquartered in Osaka, Japan. Membership is open to all nationalities and all workers. It has members working in trading companies, factories and restaurants but the majority of members are teachers and staff who are employed in language education at private conversation schools, high schools and universities in the Kansai and Chubu regions of Japan. Union members work at universities such as Ritsumeikan University, and language schools such as ECC, Berlitz and Gaba. Recent years have also seen the union launching major organizing drives among South American workers in Japan, along with Filipino workers.
As the economy of China has rapidly developed, issues of labor relations have evolved. Prior to this reform, Chinese citizens were only allowed to work where they originated from. Since 1978, when China began labor force reforms, the overwhelming majority of the labor force were either working at State owned enterprises or as farm workers in the rural countryside. However, over time China began to reform and by the late 90's many had moved from the countryside into the cities in hopes of higher paying jobs and more opportunities. The only connection between the countryside and the city soon became that there was a huge floating population connecting them. Independent unions are illegal in China with only the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACTFU) permitted to operate. China has been the largest exporter of goods in the world since 2009. Not only that, in 2013 China became the largest trading nation in the world. As China moved away from their planned economy and more towards a market economy the government has brought on many reforms. The aim of this shift in economies was to match the international standards set by the World Trade Organization and other economic entities. The ACTFU that was established to protect the interests of national and local trade unions failed to represent the workers, but instead failed to do so leading to the 2010 crackdowns. However, these strikes were centered around foreign companies.
Zenkoku Ippan Tokyo General Union (全国一般東京ゼネラルユニオン), or Tozen Union (東ゼン労組), is a Japanese labour union. It was founded on April 25, 2010, by Louis Carlet, Tony Dolan, and David Ashton. It is a "godo roso" general amalgamated union, the first ever in Japan with foreigners holding all three top executive positions.
The Berlitz Japan 2007–2008 strike was a strike held by Berlitz Japan teachers of the Berlitz General Union Tokyo (Begunto), which was part of the National Union of General Workers (NUGW) before moving to Tozen Union in 2019. Beginning in December 2007 and continuing until November 2008, it grew into the longest and largest sustained strike among language teachers in Japan. Although the union had ceased strike action in November 2008, on December 3, 2008 Berlitz Japan sued the union and seven individual union officials for ¥110 million each (US$1,178,430) in the Tokyo District Court. The union took Berlitz to the Labor Commission for firing two teachers and several other complaints. Berlitz' suit against the union was dismissed by the Tokyo District Court on 27 February 2012, with "all claims rejected" but Berlitz decided within a week that it would appeal its loss to the High Court. After further negotiations and legal wrangling Berlitz's High Court case against the union was withdrawn on December 27, 2012.
The University Teachers Union was founded in January 1999 and represents the interests of tertiary-level teachers in the Kanto region of Japan. Membership is open to any teacher, regardless of nationality, who is employed at a university, college, or post-graduate institution in a non-management post. Under Japanese Trade Union Law, the University Teachers Union has the right to conduct collective bargaining with schools on behalf of its members. While negotiations with management are conducted in Japanese, internal business is mostly conducted in English.
Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社) is a chain of eikaiwa English conversation schools in Japan. It is a branch of Berlitz Corporation, a subsidiary of ILSC Holdings LP.
Nigerians in Japan form a significant immigrant community. There are around 3,700 Nigerians living in the country. They mostly belong to the Nigerian Union in Japan, which is divided into sub-unions based on states of origin. The vast majority of Nigerians arrived in Japan from the mid-1980s onwards.
