Mr Noda pointed to continued strong public support for the death penalty in Japan
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has defended the country's use of the death penalty, days after three death-row inmates were hanged.
"I have no plans to do away with the death penalty," Mr Noda said, according to the Kyodo news agency.
Thursday's executions were Japan's first since July 2010.
Japan is one of the few advanced industrialised nations to retain the death penalty. It is usually reserved for multiple murders.
"Taking into consideration a situation where the number of heinous crimes has not decreased, I find it difficult to abolish the death penalty immediately," Mr Noda said.
"We must carefully weigh the nature of the death penalty from various standpoints, while giving sufficient attention to public opinion," he continued, pointing out that in 2009, 85.6% of those polled in a government survey supported the measure.
Reports on Thursday said that the unnamed prisoners, hanged in separate prisons, had all been convicted of multiple murders.
There are currently more than 100 people on death row, including Shoko Asahara, the mastermind behind the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway. No executions were carried out in 2011.
Human rights groups say Japan's death row is particularly harsh.
Amnesty International has called for it to be abolished, saying the condemned have few visits, little exercise and are forced to spend almost all of their time sitting down in their cells.
Sometimes held for decades, they are not warned in advance of when they will be put to death, meaning they fear every day is their last, the BBC's Roland Buerk reports.
Sunday, 1 April 2012
Friday, 24 February 2012
Japanese authorities concerned about 'lonely deaths'
24 February 2012 Last updated at 12:11
The discovery of three bodies that lay unnoticed for up to two months in an apartment in Japan has raised concern over so-called "lonely deaths".
The three people, believed to be from the same family, were discovered on Tuesday in Saitama, north of Tokyo.
Electricity and gas to the house had been cut off, there was no food in the house and just a few one-yen coins.
Despite being the world's third richest country, Japan has seen a number of similar cases in recent years.
Such deaths are referred to as "kodokushi" - lonely deaths.
The BBC's Roland Buerk, in Tokyo, said when the police broke into the apartment in Saitama, they found the three bodies extremely thin.
It is believed they were a couple in their sixties and their son in his thirties who died of starvation. The alarm had been raised by the building's management company.
The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said that the family had asked a neighbour for help, but had been refused and instead advised to contact the welfare authorities.
The family did not do so, a move some local media outlets have put down to feelings of shame.
Asahi Shimbun quoted lawyer Takehiro Yoshida as saying: "Some people have a resistance to going on welfare and are reluctant to consult with authorities. Others are isolated in their communities."
Our correspondent says the case has prompted soul-searching in one of the most affluent societies on earth about whether the needy are falling through gaps in the welfare system.
Increasing numbers of poverty stricken elderly people are dying lonely and unnoticed deaths in Japan.
Last month two sisters in their forties were found dead in their freezing apartment on the snowbound northern island of Hokkaido.
In 2010 the authorities discovered that Tokyo's oldest man had actually been dead for some 30 years, which in turn triggered a hunt for "missing" centenarians around the country.
The discovery of three bodies that lay unnoticed for up to two months in an apartment in Japan has raised concern over so-called "lonely deaths".
The three people, believed to be from the same family, were discovered on Tuesday in Saitama, north of Tokyo.
Electricity and gas to the house had been cut off, there was no food in the house and just a few one-yen coins.
Despite being the world's third richest country, Japan has seen a number of similar cases in recent years.
Such deaths are referred to as "kodokushi" - lonely deaths.
The BBC's Roland Buerk, in Tokyo, said when the police broke into the apartment in Saitama, they found the three bodies extremely thin.
It is believed they were a couple in their sixties and their son in his thirties who died of starvation. The alarm had been raised by the building's management company.
The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said that the family had asked a neighbour for help, but had been refused and instead advised to contact the welfare authorities.
The family did not do so, a move some local media outlets have put down to feelings of shame.
Asahi Shimbun quoted lawyer Takehiro Yoshida as saying: "Some people have a resistance to going on welfare and are reluctant to consult with authorities. Others are isolated in their communities."
Our correspondent says the case has prompted soul-searching in one of the most affluent societies on earth about whether the needy are falling through gaps in the welfare system.
Increasing numbers of poverty stricken elderly people are dying lonely and unnoticed deaths in Japan.
Last month two sisters in their forties were found dead in their freezing apartment on the snowbound northern island of Hokkaido.
In 2010 the authorities discovered that Tokyo's oldest man had actually been dead for some 30 years, which in turn triggered a hunt for "missing" centenarians around the country.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Japan population to shrink by one-third by 2060
30 January 2012 Last updated at 12:46
The Japanese population is expected to shrink by one third in the next half century, a government report says.
The Health and Welfare ministry estimates that 40% of the population will be of retirement age by 2060.
It says that life expectancy - already one of the highest in the world - will continue to rise.
Correspondents say the report presents a grim picture for Japan at a time when it urgently needs to overhaul its social security and tax systems.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has pledged to push through a reform programme this year.
But his political opponents say his plan requires higher taxes than are currently proposed.
JAPAN'S DWINDLING POPULATION
Ageing at the fastest pace among developed countries
Expected to fall below 100 million in 2048
By 2060, the number of people aged 14 or younger is forecast to fall by more than half
By 2060, the population of those aged 65 or older is expected to rise by 18%
The government report says that by 2060, Japan will have 87 million people, down from today's 128 million.
The proportion aged 65 or older is expected to double to 40%.
At the same time the national workforce - comprising people aged between 15 to 65 - will shrink to about half of the total population, estimates released by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research say.
The research says that Japan's population will keep declining by one million people every year in coming decades.
The research also suggests that the average life expectancy will have risen by more than four years by 2060 to 84.19 for men and 90.93 for women.
The population estimate is compiled about once every five years and is based on demographic data used by the government when formulating its social security policy.
The Japanese population is expected to shrink by one third in the next half century, a government report says.
The Health and Welfare ministry estimates that 40% of the population will be of retirement age by 2060.
It says that life expectancy - already one of the highest in the world - will continue to rise.
Correspondents say the report presents a grim picture for Japan at a time when it urgently needs to overhaul its social security and tax systems.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has pledged to push through a reform programme this year.
But his political opponents say his plan requires higher taxes than are currently proposed.
JAPAN'S DWINDLING POPULATION
Ageing at the fastest pace among developed countries
Expected to fall below 100 million in 2048
By 2060, the number of people aged 14 or younger is forecast to fall by more than half
By 2060, the population of those aged 65 or older is expected to rise by 18%
The government report says that by 2060, Japan will have 87 million people, down from today's 128 million.
The proportion aged 65 or older is expected to double to 40%.
At the same time the national workforce - comprising people aged between 15 to 65 - will shrink to about half of the total population, estimates released by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research say.
The research says that Japan's population will keep declining by one million people every year in coming decades.
The research also suggests that the average life expectancy will have risen by more than four years by 2060 to 84.19 for men and 90.93 for women.
The population estimate is compiled about once every five years and is based on demographic data used by the government when formulating its social security policy.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Shoichi Yokoi, the Japanese soldier who held out in Guam
24 January 2012 Last updated at 00:30
By Mike Lanchin BBC World Service
It's exactly 40 years since a Japanese soldier was found in the jungles of Guam, having survived there for nearly three decades after the end of WWII. He was given a hero's welcome on his return to Japan - but never quite felt at home in modern society.
For most of the 28 years that Shoichi Yokoi, a World War II Lance Corporal in the Japanese Army, was hiding in the jungles of Guam, he firmly believed his former comrades would one day return for him.
And even when he was eventually discovered by local hunters on the Pacific island, on 24 January 1972, the 57-year-old former soldier still clung to the notion that his life was in danger.
"He really panicked," says Omi Hatashin, Yokoi's nephew.
Startled by the sight of other humans after so many years on his own, Yokoi tried to grab one of the hunter's rifles, but weakened by years of poor diet, he was no match for the local men.
Shoichi's story
Born in 1915 and conscripted in 1941 to serve in Manchuria, before being sent to Guam in 1944
On his return to Japan he expressed embarrassment at having returned alive, rather than dying in the service of the emperor
Japan had changed utterly during his three-decade absence - some found his stoicism and loyalty inspiring, others found it absurd
He married in 1972, within months of his return and died in 1997, aged 82
He longed to meet Emperor Hirohito - in the end he was granted Emperor Akihito in 1991
"He feared they would take him as a prisoner of war - that would have been the greatest shame for a Japanese soldier and for his family back home," Hatashin says.
As they led him away through the jungle's tall foxtail grass, Yokoi cried for them to kill him there and then.
Using Yokoi's own memoirs, published in Japanese two years after his discovery, as well as the testimony of those who found him that day, Hatashin spent years piecing together his uncle's dramatic story.
His book, Private Yokoi's War and Life on Guam, 1944-1972, was published in English in 2009.
"I am very proud of him, he was a shy and quiet person, but with a great presence," he says.
Underground shelter
Yokoi's long ordeal began in July 1944 when US forces stormed Guam as part of their offensive against the Japanese in the Pacific.
Yokoi's eel trap Yokoi's eel trap was one of his prize possessions
The fighting was fierce, casualties were high on both sides, but once the Japanese command was disrupted, soldiers such as Yokoi and others in his platoon, were left to fend for themselves.
"From the outset they took enormous care not to be detected, erasing their footprints as they moved through the undergrowth," Hatashin said.
In the early years the Japanese soldiers, soon reduced to a few dozen in number, caught and killed local cattle to feed off.
The last holdouts
Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda led a guerrilla task- force on the Philippine island of Lubang for many years after the end of the war. He doggedly refused to lay down his arms until formally ordered to surrender. Repatriated March 1974.
Private Teruo Nakamura, a conscript from Taiwan, was found growing crops alone on the Indonesian island of Morotai in December 1974. He was repatriated to Taiwan where he died in 1979.
But fearing detection from US patrols and later from local hunters, they gradually withdrew deeper into the jungle.
There they ate poisonous toads, river eels and rats.
Yokoi made a trap from wild reeds for catching the eels. He also dug himself an underground shelter, supported with strong bamboos.
"He was an extremely resourceful man," Hatashin says.
Keeping himself busy also kept him from thinking too much about his predicament, or his family back home, he said.
Return to Guam
Yokoi's own memoirs of his time in hiding reveal his desperation not to give up hope, especially in the last eight years when he was totally alone - his last surviving two companions died in flooding in 1964.
Yokoi and his handmade loom Yokoi demonstrating the handmade loom he used in the jungle
Turning his thoughts to his ageing mother back home, he at one point writes: "It was pointless to cause my heart pain by dwelling on such things."
And of another occasion, when he was desperately sick in the jungle, he writes: "No! I cannot die here. I cannot expose my corpse to the enemy. I must go back to my hole to die. I have so far managed to survive but all is coming to nothing now."
Two weeks after his discovery in the jungle, Yokoi returned home to Japan to a hero's welcome.
He was besieged by the media, interviewed on radio and television, and was regularly invited to speak at universities and in schools across the country.
Hatashin, who was six when Yokoi married his aunt, said that the former soldier never really settled back into life in modern Japan.
He was unimpressed by the country's rapid post-war economic development and once commented on seeing a new 10,000 Yen bank note that the the currency had now become "valueless".
According to Hatashin, his uncle grew increasingly nostalgic about the past as he grew older, and before his death in 1997 he went back to Guam on several occasions with his wife.
Some of his prize possessions from those years in the jungle, including his eel traps, are still on show in a small museum on the island.
By Mike Lanchin BBC World Service
It's exactly 40 years since a Japanese soldier was found in the jungles of Guam, having survived there for nearly three decades after the end of WWII. He was given a hero's welcome on his return to Japan - but never quite felt at home in modern society.
For most of the 28 years that Shoichi Yokoi, a World War II Lance Corporal in the Japanese Army, was hiding in the jungles of Guam, he firmly believed his former comrades would one day return for him.
And even when he was eventually discovered by local hunters on the Pacific island, on 24 January 1972, the 57-year-old former soldier still clung to the notion that his life was in danger.
"He really panicked," says Omi Hatashin, Yokoi's nephew.
Startled by the sight of other humans after so many years on his own, Yokoi tried to grab one of the hunter's rifles, but weakened by years of poor diet, he was no match for the local men.
Shoichi's story
Born in 1915 and conscripted in 1941 to serve in Manchuria, before being sent to Guam in 1944
On his return to Japan he expressed embarrassment at having returned alive, rather than dying in the service of the emperor
Japan had changed utterly during his three-decade absence - some found his stoicism and loyalty inspiring, others found it absurd
He married in 1972, within months of his return and died in 1997, aged 82
He longed to meet Emperor Hirohito - in the end he was granted Emperor Akihito in 1991
"He feared they would take him as a prisoner of war - that would have been the greatest shame for a Japanese soldier and for his family back home," Hatashin says.
As they led him away through the jungle's tall foxtail grass, Yokoi cried for them to kill him there and then.
Using Yokoi's own memoirs, published in Japanese two years after his discovery, as well as the testimony of those who found him that day, Hatashin spent years piecing together his uncle's dramatic story.
His book, Private Yokoi's War and Life on Guam, 1944-1972, was published in English in 2009.
"I am very proud of him, he was a shy and quiet person, but with a great presence," he says.
Underground shelter
Yokoi's long ordeal began in July 1944 when US forces stormed Guam as part of their offensive against the Japanese in the Pacific.
Yokoi's eel trap Yokoi's eel trap was one of his prize possessions
The fighting was fierce, casualties were high on both sides, but once the Japanese command was disrupted, soldiers such as Yokoi and others in his platoon, were left to fend for themselves.
"From the outset they took enormous care not to be detected, erasing their footprints as they moved through the undergrowth," Hatashin said.
In the early years the Japanese soldiers, soon reduced to a few dozen in number, caught and killed local cattle to feed off.
The last holdouts
Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda led a guerrilla task- force on the Philippine island of Lubang for many years after the end of the war. He doggedly refused to lay down his arms until formally ordered to surrender. Repatriated March 1974.
Private Teruo Nakamura, a conscript from Taiwan, was found growing crops alone on the Indonesian island of Morotai in December 1974. He was repatriated to Taiwan where he died in 1979.
But fearing detection from US patrols and later from local hunters, they gradually withdrew deeper into the jungle.
There they ate poisonous toads, river eels and rats.
Yokoi made a trap from wild reeds for catching the eels. He also dug himself an underground shelter, supported with strong bamboos.
"He was an extremely resourceful man," Hatashin says.
Keeping himself busy also kept him from thinking too much about his predicament, or his family back home, he said.
Return to Guam
Yokoi's own memoirs of his time in hiding reveal his desperation not to give up hope, especially in the last eight years when he was totally alone - his last surviving two companions died in flooding in 1964.
Yokoi and his handmade loom Yokoi demonstrating the handmade loom he used in the jungle
Turning his thoughts to his ageing mother back home, he at one point writes: "It was pointless to cause my heart pain by dwelling on such things."
And of another occasion, when he was desperately sick in the jungle, he writes: "No! I cannot die here. I cannot expose my corpse to the enemy. I must go back to my hole to die. I have so far managed to survive but all is coming to nothing now."
Two weeks after his discovery in the jungle, Yokoi returned home to Japan to a hero's welcome.
He was besieged by the media, interviewed on radio and television, and was regularly invited to speak at universities and in schools across the country.
Hatashin, who was six when Yokoi married his aunt, said that the former soldier never really settled back into life in modern Japan.
He was unimpressed by the country's rapid post-war economic development and once commented on seeing a new 10,000 Yen bank note that the the currency had now become "valueless".
According to Hatashin, his uncle grew increasingly nostalgic about the past as he grew older, and before his death in 1997 he went back to Guam on several occasions with his wife.
Some of his prize possessions from those years in the jungle, including his eel traps, are still on show in a small museum on the island.
Monday, 23 January 2012
Big Tokyo earthquake likely 'within the next few years'
23rd January 2012 from the BBC
A big earthquake is much more likely to hit the Japanese capital, Tokyo, in the next few years than the government has predicted, researchers say.
The team, from the University of Tokyo, said there was a 75% probability that a magnitude 7 quake would strike the region in the next four years.
The government says the chances of such an event are 70% in the next 30 years.
The warning comes less than a year after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan's north-eastern coast.
The last time Tokyo was hit by a big earthquake was in 1923, when a 7.9 magnitude quake killed more than 100,000 people, many of them in fires.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo's earthquake research institute based their figures on data from the growing number of tremors in the capital since the 11 March 2011 quake.
They say that compared with normal years, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of quakes in the Tokyo metropolitan area since the March disaster.
Continue reading the main story
Japan quake victim in 2011
What chance of a 'big one' in Tokyo?
They based their calculations on data from Japan's Meteorological Agency, They said their results show that seismic activity had increased in the area around the capital, which in turn leads to a higher probability of a major quake.
The researchers say that while it is "hard to predict" the casualty impact of a major quake on Tokyo, the government and individuals should be prepared for it.
Correspondents say that while the university calculations take account of greater seismic activity since March, government calculations may use different or less up-to-date data and different modelling techniques.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake last year aksi crippled the cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear power station, causing meltdowns in some of its reactors.
Japan is located on a tectonic crossroads dubbed the "Pacific Ring of Fire" which is why its is commonly regarded as one of the world's most quake-prone countries, with Tokyo located in one of the most dangerous areas.
Tectonic plates (BBC)
A big earthquake is much more likely to hit the Japanese capital, Tokyo, in the next few years than the government has predicted, researchers say.
The team, from the University of Tokyo, said there was a 75% probability that a magnitude 7 quake would strike the region in the next four years.
The government says the chances of such an event are 70% in the next 30 years.
The warning comes less than a year after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan's north-eastern coast.
The last time Tokyo was hit by a big earthquake was in 1923, when a 7.9 magnitude quake killed more than 100,000 people, many of them in fires.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo's earthquake research institute based their figures on data from the growing number of tremors in the capital since the 11 March 2011 quake.
They say that compared with normal years, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of quakes in the Tokyo metropolitan area since the March disaster.
Continue reading the main story
Japan quake victim in 2011
What chance of a 'big one' in Tokyo?
They based their calculations on data from Japan's Meteorological Agency, They said their results show that seismic activity had increased in the area around the capital, which in turn leads to a higher probability of a major quake.
The researchers say that while it is "hard to predict" the casualty impact of a major quake on Tokyo, the government and individuals should be prepared for it.
Correspondents say that while the university calculations take account of greater seismic activity since March, government calculations may use different or less up-to-date data and different modelling techniques.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake last year aksi crippled the cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear power station, causing meltdowns in some of its reactors.
Japan is located on a tectonic crossroads dubbed the "Pacific Ring of Fire" which is why its is commonly regarded as one of the world's most quake-prone countries, with Tokyo located in one of the most dangerous areas.
Tectonic plates (BBC)
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Aum Shinrikyo cult fugitive surrenders to Japan police
1 January 2012 Last updated at 11:48
A former member of Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult has turned himself in to police after nearly 17 years on the run, one of three remaining fugitives.
Japanese police said Makoto Hirata gave himself up at a police station in Tokyo just before midnight on New Year's Eve.
He had been in hiding since the cult's sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, which killed 13 people.
He was immediately arrested on suspicion of conspiring to kidnap the brother of a follower of the cult.
The man he is accused of abducting died after being given an injection at Aum's main commune at the foot of Mount Fuji, officials said.
Only two other members of the cult are still being sought by police. They went on the run after the gas attack in Tokyo, which injured 6,000 people.
Nearly 200 Aum Shinrikyo members have been convicted of that attack and other crimes.
Thirteen are awaiting execution, after judges in November upheld the death sentence against the final member of the cult to be charged over the 1995 attack.
Reinvented
Aum Shinrikyo began as a spiritual group mixing Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, but developed into a paranoid doomsday cult obsessed with Armageddon.
Former cult leader Shoko Asahara, accused of masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway Cult leader Shoko Asahara is among those on death row
Former yoga teacher Shoko Asahara started the group in the mid-1980s, and later claimed to have reached enlightenment after a trip to India.
By the time of the Tokyo attack, the group was reputed to have thousands of members, including rich and powerful members of Japanese society.
But Asahara became obsessed with the idea that World War III was about to break out, and began ordering attacks on people he regarded as enemies.
Some 189 Aum cultists have been put on trial over the various attacks carried out by the cult, and 13 sentenced to death, including Asahara. None of the sentences has been carried out.
Aum Shinrikyo reinvented itself as the Aleph group, which continues to operate as a spiritual group.
A former member of Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult has turned himself in to police after nearly 17 years on the run, one of three remaining fugitives.
Japanese police said Makoto Hirata gave himself up at a police station in Tokyo just before midnight on New Year's Eve.
He had been in hiding since the cult's sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, which killed 13 people.
He was immediately arrested on suspicion of conspiring to kidnap the brother of a follower of the cult.
The man he is accused of abducting died after being given an injection at Aum's main commune at the foot of Mount Fuji, officials said.
Only two other members of the cult are still being sought by police. They went on the run after the gas attack in Tokyo, which injured 6,000 people.
Nearly 200 Aum Shinrikyo members have been convicted of that attack and other crimes.
Thirteen are awaiting execution, after judges in November upheld the death sentence against the final member of the cult to be charged over the 1995 attack.
Reinvented
Aum Shinrikyo began as a spiritual group mixing Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, but developed into a paranoid doomsday cult obsessed with Armageddon.
Former cult leader Shoko Asahara, accused of masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway Cult leader Shoko Asahara is among those on death row
Former yoga teacher Shoko Asahara started the group in the mid-1980s, and later claimed to have reached enlightenment after a trip to India.
By the time of the Tokyo attack, the group was reputed to have thousands of members, including rich and powerful members of Japanese society.
But Asahara became obsessed with the idea that World War III was about to break out, and began ordering attacks on people he regarded as enemies.
Some 189 Aum cultists have been put on trial over the various attacks carried out by the cult, and 13 sentenced to death, including Asahara. None of the sentences has been carried out.
Aum Shinrikyo reinvented itself as the Aleph group, which continues to operate as a spiritual group.
Friday, 23 December 2011
Japanese public chooses 'kizuna' as kanji of 2011
24 December 2011 Last updated at 02:04
The chief priest of Kyoto's Kiyomizu temple displays his calligraphy of "kizuna", meaning "bond"
The Japanese word "kizuna", meaning bonds or connections between people, has been chosen as Japan's kanji of 2011.
The kanji, or Chinese pictorial script, for "kizuna" emerged top of a public poll for the character that best summed up the year.
For Japan, 2011 was dominated by the earthquake and tsunami in March.
The disasters led to unprecedented numbers of Japanese helping one another.
After the tsunami smashed into Japan's north-east coast on 11 March, killing thousands and engulfing entire communities, people's stoicism and their determination to pull together won international praise.
In April the then prime minister Naoto Kan thanked the world for its help in a letter entitled "Kizuna - the Bonds of Friendship".
And when Japan unexpectedly beat the United States to win the women's football World Cup, "kizuna" forged by the players' teamwork was cited with pride.
Half a million people took part in the annual poll for the kanji character, conducted by Japan's Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation.
About 60,000 people nominated "kizuna", but the runner-up was much less optimistic: "wazawai" means disaster.
For some Japanese, 2011 brought the opposite of "kizuna".
A firm that specialised in divorce ceremonies said in July that they had tripled since the tsunami as people reassessed their lives.
The chief priest of Kyoto's Kiyomizu temple displays his calligraphy of "kizuna", meaning "bond"
The Japanese word "kizuna", meaning bonds or connections between people, has been chosen as Japan's kanji of 2011.
The kanji, or Chinese pictorial script, for "kizuna" emerged top of a public poll for the character that best summed up the year.
For Japan, 2011 was dominated by the earthquake and tsunami in March.
The disasters led to unprecedented numbers of Japanese helping one another.
After the tsunami smashed into Japan's north-east coast on 11 March, killing thousands and engulfing entire communities, people's stoicism and their determination to pull together won international praise.
In April the then prime minister Naoto Kan thanked the world for its help in a letter entitled "Kizuna - the Bonds of Friendship".
And when Japan unexpectedly beat the United States to win the women's football World Cup, "kizuna" forged by the players' teamwork was cited with pride.
Half a million people took part in the annual poll for the kanji character, conducted by Japan's Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation.
About 60,000 people nominated "kizuna", but the runner-up was much less optimistic: "wazawai" means disaster.
For some Japanese, 2011 brought the opposite of "kizuna".
A firm that specialised in divorce ceremonies said in July that they had tripled since the tsunami as people reassessed their lives.
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