TOKYO (UCAN): Pope Francis confirmed that he is to visit Japan in November when speaking to the press on the flight taking him to the World Youth Day gathering in Panama on January 23. “I will go to Japan in November. Get ready!” he told them.
 
“The pope will come to Japan in the second half of November and will visit Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Thomas Aquinas Manyo Cardinal Maeda of Osaka, confirmed on January 24.
 

SEOUL (UCAN): Bishops and activists from Japan and South Korea took part the Japan-Korea Anti-Nuclear Peace Pilgrimage, calling for an end to nuclear energy.
 
The pilgrimage, which began 2012, was held in Korea from September 13 to 16 and organised by the Korean bishops’ committee for ecology and environment.
 

SEOUL (UAN): A coalition made up of Catholic diocesan justice and peace committees, religious institutions and non-goernment organisiations in South Korea, has called on the Japanese government apologise for forcing Asian women—known as comfort women—to provide sexual services for its troops during World War II.
 

MANILA (UCAN): Bishop Renato Mayugba of Laoag wants an image of Blessed Justo Takayama Ukon, a Japanese candidate for sainthood, to be enshrined in his church in the town of Badoc in the northern Philippine province of Ilocos Norte. 
 
Blessed Takayama, who was a kirishitan daimyo and samurai, died in Manila in 1615 after fleeing the persecution of Christians in Japan.
 

TOKYO (SE): The newly appointed archbishop of Tokyo is to be a man with an international profile and vast experience of living and working in a foreign culture, as well as involvement in the social challenges that face both his own country and the whole of Asia.
 

VATICAN (SE): The Holy See and Japan are marking the 75th anniversary of the forging between the two states of full diplomatic relations in 1942.
 
In the Vatican, the celebrations revolved around a Mass celebrated at the Church of the Gesù in Rome by the Vatican secretary of state, Pietro Cardinal Parolin, on October 11, and a symposium at the Pontifical Gregorian University on the following day.
 

TOKYO (AsiaNews): The government in what is arguably the world’s capital for youth suicide is setting out to reduce the rate in under 20s by at least 30 per cent.
 
Japan’s youth suicide rate is the highest among the G7 nations and although the number has decreased slightly in recent years, Tokyo is calling for further efforts to stem the flow.
 

KYOTO (SE): Two days after stepping down as bishop of Hong Kong, John Cardinal Tong Hon travelled to Kyoto in Japan as a representative of Pope Francis at the 30th annual Prayer Meeting on Mount Hiei, a gathering that brings people from all religions together to pray and work for peace.
 
Cardinal Tong read a letter from Pope Francis, which opened with the words, “It is my pleasure to send my cordial greetings to you and to the distinguished representatives of the different religious traditions.”
 

TOKYO (UCAN): Michiko Inukai, a nationally-known Catholic author who supported refugees in Japan and abroad, died on July 24 due to advanced age. She was 96.
 
Inukai was a granddaughter of the prime minister, Tsuyoshi Inukai, whose assassination by young naval officers in 1932 marked the end of effective civilian control of the Japanese government until after World War II.
 

TOKYO (AsiaNews): Japan hanged two men on July 14, the more high profile of who was 61-year-old Masakatsu Nishikawa, who had been convicted of multiple murder but was seeking a retrial.
 
Nishikawa had been convicted of killing four female bar managers in Himeji, Hyogo prefecture, in 1991. The second one to dangle on the rope was 34-year-old Koichi Sumida, who was sentenced to death in February 2013 by the Okayama District Court for killing his 27-year-old former colleague, Misa Kato, a temporary staff, on 30 September 2011.