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Japan: Years
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Japan's legislative organ is the National Diet, a bicameral parliament. The Diet consists of a House of Representatives, containing 480 seats, elected by popular vote every four years or when dissolved and a House of Councillors of 242 seats, whose popularly-elected members serve six-year terms. There is universal suffrage for adults over 20 years of age,[2] with a secret ballot for all elective offices.[26] The liberal conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been in power since 1955, except for a short-lived coalition government formed from opposition parties in 1993.[27] The largest opposition party is the social liberal Democratic Party of Japan.
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The most important and most celebrated part of the holiday season in Japan is New Year's day, known as O-Shogatsu. It's a very busy time between the 24th of December, when school gets out, and the first of January.
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Japan has two dominant religious traditions: Shinto (神道) is the ancient animist religion of traditional Japan. At just over twelve hundred years in Japan, Buddhism is the more recent imported faith. Christianity, introduced by European missionaries, was widely persecuted during the feudal era but is now accepted, and a small percentage of Japanese are Christian.
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During the occupation a major change in Japanese society occurred when Japan's educational system was completely restructured. Although a system of compulsory elementary education had been established in 1867, as late as 1935 less than 20 percent of Japan's youth went on to secondary school and less than three percent received a college education. The School Education Law of 1947 established an educational system patterned after America's 6334 system. All Japanese children 6 to 14 years of age were required to attend school. This typically took a student through six years of elementary school and 3 years of lower secondary school. By 1955 just over half of these students continued on to upper secondary school; in recent years this percentage has climbed to 94 percent.
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Japan lacks significant domestic sources of energy except coal and must import substantial amounts of crude oil, natural gas, and other energy resources, including uranium. Japan's nuclear output nearly doubled between 1985 and 1996, as Japan attempted to move away from dependence on oil following the 1973 Arab oil embargo. The Japanese Government is committed to nuclear power development, but several accidents in recent years have aroused public concern. During the past few years, public opposition to Japan's nuclear power program has increased in reaction to a series of accidents at Japanese nuclear plants, including a March 1997 fire and explosion at the Tokai-mura reprocessing plant. Other problems for Japan's nuclear power program have included rising costs of nuclear reactors and fuel, the huge investments necessary for fuel enrichment and reprocessing plants, several reactor failures, and the question of nuclear waste disposal. Regardless, Japan plans to increase the proportion of electricity generated from nuclear to 42% by 2010.
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The Thai Embassy in Japan helps hundreds of trafficked Thai women return to Thailand every year. Many of them were abducted or tricked into prostitution in Japan. (Supalak Ganjanakhundee, "Migrant workers booming as Asian economy declines," Kyodo News, 23 September 1998)
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