Naruhito
108-686: Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Incorporated ( Japanese : 東京電力ホールディングス株式会社 , Tōkyō Denryoku Hōrudingusu kabushiki gaisha , TEPCO , also known as Tōden ( 東電 ) in Japan) is a Japanese electric utility holding company servicing Japan's Kantō region , Yamanashi Prefecture, and the eastern portion of Shizuoka Prefecture. This area includes Tokyo. Its headquarters are located in Uchisaiwaicho , Chiyoda, Tokyo , and international branch offices exist in Washington, D.C. , and London . It
216-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
324-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
432-561: A former atomic energy policy planner in Japan's Science and Technology Agency and Akira Omoto, a former TEPCO executive and a member of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission both questioned TEPCO's management's decisions in the crisis. Kazuma Yokota, a safety inspector with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency , or NISA, was at Fukushima I at the time of the earthquake and tsunami and provided details of
540-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
648-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
756-607: A local government. These other municipalities are located in the western part of the prefecture, as well as the outlying island chains of Izu and Ogasawara . The Metropolitan Assembly is the legislative organ of the whole prefecture of Tokyo . It consists of 127 members elected each four years. Regular sessions are held four times each year, in February, June, September and December. These sessions typically last for 30 days. Between these are plenary sessions where discussions on bills are held. As in other prefectures of Japan ,
864-479: A lot more to stabilise and decommission the reactors" at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, and: "It is impossible" to abandon the domestic task and promote exports. [REDACTED] Media related to Tokyo Electric Power Company at Wikimedia Commons Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by
972-570: A proposal to its shareholders for the company to be part-nationalized. The Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation later became the majority stockholder to oversee the damages and decommissioning of the power plant. The total cost of the disaster was estimated at $ 100 billion in May 2012. Japan's electricity sector, nationalized in 1939 in preparation of total war (the Pacific War ), were privatized in 1951 on behest of
1080-511: A public commitment that the company would take all the countermeasures necessary to prevent fraud and restore the nation's confidence. By the end of 2005, generation at suspended plants had been restarted, with government approval. In 2007, however, the company announced to the public that an internal investigation had revealed a large number of unreported incidents . These included an unexpected unit criticality in 1978 and additional systematic false reporting, which had not been uncovered during
1188-436: A result. TEPCO's chairman Hiroshi Araki, President Nobuya Minami, Vice-President Toshiaki Enomoto, as well as the advisers Shō Nasu and Gaishi Hiraiwa stepped-down by September 30, 2002. The utility "eventually admitted to two hundred occasions over more than two decades between 1977 and 2002, involving the submission of false technical data to authorities". Upon taking over leadership responsibilities, TEPCO's new president issued
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#17327733988841296-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
1404-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
1512-412: A year from the pay cuts. In July 2012 it was announced that annual salaries of managers would be reduced by at least 30%, with workers pay cut remaining at 20%. On average employees pay would be cut by 23.68%. In addition, the portion of the employee health insurance program that the company covers would be reduced from 60% to 50%, the standard in Japan. TEPCO is the largest electric utility in Japan and
1620-680: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
1728-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of
1836-596: Is a founding member of strategic consortiums related to energy innovation and research; such as JINED , INCJ and MAI. In 2007, TEPCO was forced to shut the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant after the Niigata-Chuetsu-Oki earthquake. That year, it posted its first loss in 28 years. Corporate losses continued until the plant reopened in 2009. Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , one of its power plants
1944-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
2052-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
2160-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
2268-647: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
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#17327733988842376-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
2484-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
2592-726: Is designed to transmit electricity at high-voltage (66-500kV) between power plants and substations. Normally transmission lines are strung between towers, but within the Tokyo metropolitan area high-voltage lines are located underground. From substations, electricity is transmitted via the distribution grid at low-voltage (22-66kV). For high-voltage supply to large buildings and factories, distribution lines are directly connected to customers' electricity systems. In this case, customers must purchase and set up transformers and other equipment to run electric appliances. For low voltage supply to houses and small shops, distribution lines are first connected to
2700-481: Is expected to play a key role in achieving Japan's targets for reduced carbon dioxide emissions under the Kyoto Protocol . It also faces difficulties related to the trend towards deregulation in Japan's electric industry as well as low power demand growth. In light of these circumstances, TEPCO launched an extensive sales promotion campaign called 'Switch!', promoting all-electric housing in order to both achieve
2808-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
2916-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
3024-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
3132-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
3240-616: Is the government of the Tokyo Metropolis . One of the 47 prefectures of Japan , the government consists of a popularly elected governor and assembly. The headquarters building is located in the ward of Shinjuku . The metropolitan government administers the special wards , cities, towns and villages that constitute part of the Tokyo Metropolis. With a population closing in on 14 million living within its boundaries, and many more commuting from neighbouring prefectures,
3348-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
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3456-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
3564-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
3672-524: Is working for or against the workers and soldiers struggling to re-establish cooling at the crippled plant." One report noted that defense minister, Toshimi Kitazawa , on 21 March had committed "military firefighters to spray water around the clock on an overheated storage pool at Reactor No. 3." The report concluded with "a senior nuclear executive who insisted on anonymity but has many contacts in Japan sa[ying that] ... caution ... [as] plant operators have been struggling to reduce workers’ risk ... had increased
3780-469: The 2007 Chūetsu offshore earthquake . To meet demand, the company purchased electricity from competitors and restarted thermal power plants, resulting in significant additional oil and gas consumption. These activities caused the company to post its first loss in 28 years. On 11 March 2011, several nuclear reactors in Japan were badly damaged by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami . The Tōkai Nuclear Power Plant lost external electric power, experienced
3888-570: The Fukushima Daiichi plant would now enter commercial operation in October 2014 and October 2015, respectively. However, following the nuclear crisis of 2011, these plans have been cancelled. According to TEPCO's official regulatory paper, starting operation of Higashidori is expressed as 'Not yet determined'. TEPCO has a total of 160 hydroelectric stations with a total capacity of 8,520 MW. The largest pumped-storage plants are: Under
3996-690: The Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and
4104-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
4212-607: The Liberal Democratic Party , Kōmeitō and Japan Restoration Party , won roughly two-thirds of the vote in the 2012 Tokyo gubernatorial election . Inose resigned in December 2013 and his successor Yoichi Masuzoe was elected in the 2014 Tokyo gubernatorial election . Masuzoe resigned in June 2016 and a new election was held on 31 July 2016. Yuriko Koike , former LDP defense minister but running as an independent,
4320-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
4428-431: The U.S./Allied occupation forces , creating nine privately owned government-granted monopolies , one in a certain region; this included TEPCO. Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc. was established by reorganizing Kanto Haiden and Nippon Shuden, which were established through wartime integration. In the 1950s, the company's primary goal was to facilitate a rapid recovery from the infrastructure devastation of World War II . After
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4536-738: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
4644-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
4752-560: The earthquake , but the subsequent tsunami flooded the plant, knocking out emergency generators needed to run pumps which cool and control the reactors. The flooding and earthquake damage prevented assistance being brought from elsewhere. Over the following days there was evidence of partial nuclear meltdowns in reactors 1, 2 and 3; hydrogen explosions destroyed the upper cladding of the building housing reactors 1 and 3; an explosion damaged reactor 2's containment; and severe fires broke out at reactor 4. The Fukushima nuclear disaster revealed
4860-432: The "official" expected height of 5.7 meters was studied on the performance of the reactors. This was done after the large Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The conclusion from the simulation in 2006 was, that a 13.5 meter wave would cause a complete loss of all power and would make it impossible to inject water into reactor No.5. The costs to protect the plant for such an event was estimated to be about 25 million dollars. In 2008,
4968-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
5076-403: The 2002 inquiry. Along with scandals at other Japanese electric companies, this failure to ensure corporate compliance resulted in strong public criticism of Japan's electric power industry and the nation's nuclear energy policy . Again, the company made no effort to identify those responsible. In 2008, Tokyo Electric was forced to shut down the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant following
5184-770: The 4th largest electric utility in the world after German RWE , French Électricité de France and Germany 's E.ON . As TEPCO stands in a leading position in this industry, they have relatively a strong effect for Japanese economics, environment, and energy industry. For the fiscal years ending in 2011, 2012 the company had a pretax loss, in 2013 the deficit was 377.6 billion yen. In the following year 2014 red figures were expected too. The company's power generation consists of two main networks. Fossil fuel power plants around Tokyo Bay are used for peak load supply and nuclear reactors in Fukushima and Niigata Prefecture provide base load supply. Additionally, hydroelectric plants in
5292-514: The Fukushima Dai-ichi (Fukushima I) nuclear power plant began operational generation on March 26, 1971. During the 1980s and 1990s, the widespread use of air-conditioners and IT/OA appliances resulted a gap between day and night electricity demand. In order to reduce surplus generation capacity and increase capacity utilization, TEPCO developed pumped storage hydroelectric power plants and promoted thermal storage units. Recently, TEPCO
5400-666: The Fukushima plant. On July 31, 2012, TEPCO was substantially nationalized by receiving a capital injection of 1 trillion yen ($ 12.5bn) from the Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund (currently Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation ), a government-backed support body. The Fund holds the majority (50.11%) of voting rights with an option to raise that figure to 88.69% by converting preferred stocks into common stocks. This Japan's biggest utility had received by
5508-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
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#17327733988845616-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
5724-539: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
5832-485: The Tokyo District Court on September 19, 2019. On 30 March 2011, the president of TEPCO, Masataka Shimizu, was hospitalized with symptoms of dizziness and high blood pressure in the wake of an increasingly serious outlook for the Fukushima plant and increasing levels of radiation from the stricken plant, as well as media reports of TEPCO's imminent nationalization or bankruptcy triggered by the situation at
5940-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
6048-498: The company's transformers (seen on utility poles and utility boxes), converted to 100/200V, and finally connected to end users. Under normal conditions, TEPCO's transmission and distribution infrastructure is notable as one of the most reliable electricity networks in the world. Blackout frequency and average recovery time compares favorably with other electric companies in Japan as well as within other developed countries. The company instituted its first-ever rolling blackouts following
6156-469: The company. The two life insurance companies had lost their interest in TEPCO after the shares had lost almost all their value at the stock market. At the next shareholders meeting of TEPCO in June 2012, Tokyo hoped to put a halt to TEPCO's plans raising the price of electricity. This position was changed by later ownership changes. Tokyo Electric Power could face 2 trillion yen ($ 23.6 bln) in special losses in
6264-555: The current business year to March 2012 to compensate communities near its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, according to JP Morgan . The company workers agreed to a management proposal to cut their pay as a sense of responsibility for the world's worst nuclear disaster. Annual remuneration for board members would be reduced by 50 percent since April 2011, while payment for managers would be cut by 25 percent and workers by 20 percent both since July 2011 and bonuses since June 2011. The company expects to save about 54 billion yen ($ 659 million)
6372-438: The dangers of building multiple nuclear reactor units close to one another. This proximity triggered the parallel, chain-reaction accidents that led to hydrogen explosions blowing the roofs off reactor buildings and water draining from open-air spent fuel pools —a situation that was potentially more dangerous than the loss of reactor cooling itself. Because of the proximity of the reactors, Plant Director Masao Yoshida "was put in
6480-658: The early elections for the Metropolitan Assembly in 1965 due to a corruption scandal, Tokyo became the first prefecture not to hold its assembly elections during the unified local elections ( tōitsu chihō senkyo ), which typically take place in prefectures and municipalities throughout the country every four years. By 2011 , it was one of six prefectures not to do so, the others being Iwate , Miyagi , Fukushima , Ibaraki and Okinawa . Following Shintarō Ishihara's resignation in October 2012, Tokyo held an early gubernatorial election in December 2012 and completely left
6588-412: The early progression of the crisis. The Fukushima disaster displaced 50,000 households in the evacuation zone because of radioactivity releases into the air, soil and sea. In 2012, it was reported that 8.5 tonnes of radioactive water had leaked from Fukushima Daiichi No.4. In June 2012, TEPCO revealed, that in 2006 and 2008 TEPCO-employees made two studies in which the effect of tsunami-waves higher than
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#17327733988846696-597: The effect of a 10 meter high tsunami was calculated. TEPCO failed in both cases to take advantage of this knowledge, and nothing was done to prevent such an event to happen, because the study sessions were conducted only as a training for junior employees, and the company did not really expect such large tsunamis. TEPCO subsequently signed a partnership with French company Areva to treat the contaminated water. In 2016, three former TEPCO executives, chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and two vice presidents, were indicted for negligence resulting in death and injury. All were acquitted by
6804-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
6912-430: The end of February 2016 at least 5.7609 trillion yen in state support since the tsunami. The total cost of the disaster was estimated at $ 100bn in May 2012. In April, all Japanese nuclear reactors were closed. In March 2008, Tokyo Electric announced that the start of operation of four new nuclear power reactors would be postponed by one year due to the incorporation of new earthquake resistance assessments. Units 7 and 8 of
7020-510: The evacuation zone because of leaks of radioactive materials into the air, soil and sea. In July 2012, TEPCO received ¥1 trillion (US$ 12 billion) from the Japanese government in order to prevent collapse of the company to ensure electricity is still being supplied to Tokyo and its surrounding municipalities, and decommission the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant . TEPCO's management subsequently made
7128-473: The evening of 12 March, though executives had started considering it that morning. TEPCO didn't begin using seawater at other reactors until 13 March. Referring to that same early decision-making sequence, "Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at a Pennsylvania power plant with General Electric reactors similar to the troubled ones in Japan, said the crucial question is whether Japanese officials followed G.E.’s emergency operating procedures." Kuni Yogo,
7236-463: The failure of one of its two cooling pumps, and two of its three emergency power generators. External electric power could only be restored two days after the earthquake. The Japanese government declared an "atomic power emergency" and evacuated thousands of residents living close to TEPCO's Fukushima I plant . Reactors 4, 5 and 6 had been shut down prior to the earthquake for planned maintenance. The remaining reactors were shut down automatically after
7344-419: The first time that the nuclear complex — with heavy damage to reactors and buildings and with radioactive contamination throughout — would be closed once the crisis was over." At the same time, questions are being asked, looking back, about whether company management waited too long before pumping seawater into the plant, a measure that would ruin and has now ruined the reactors; and, looking forward, "whether time
7452-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure
7560-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
7668-484: The greatest influence among Japan's governors. In contrast to other prefectures, the governor of Tokyo has a relatively important role given the size of Tokyo's budget (13 trillion yen as of 2014, which is roughly equivalent to the government budget of Sweden ) . The Tokyo metropolitan government is also granted relative freedom in how it allocates the budget, as it is not subject to national government subsidies which other prefectures receive. The responsibility for approving
7776-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,
7884-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
7992-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
8100-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
8208-736: The lead of an organization affiliated with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Tokyo Electric Power Company is working out next-gen car battery norms. It has developed a specification for high-voltage DC automotive fast charging using a JARI Level 3 DC connector , and formed the CHΛdeMO (stands for Charge and Move) association with Japanese automakers Mitsubishi , Nissan and Subaru to promote it. Early June 2012 TEPCO announced that it would cancel all export of nuclear expertise abroad, because it needed to focus on
8316-817: The metropolitan budget lies with the governor and the assembly. The assembly may vote for no confidence in the governor and the governor may order the assembly to be dissolved. Karasumaru Mitsue served as the first prefectural governor of Edo Prefecture in 1868. Several months later, the prefecture was renamed to Tokyo and Karasumaru's tenure continued. From the Japanese Misplaced Pages Tokyo's population consists largely of swing voters who are not loyal to any one political party. Tokyoites tend to vote for independent candidates with name recognition or in response to hot-button issues , and have been less susceptible to pork-barrel spending and other "machine" style politics than voters elsewhere in Japan. With
8424-574: The metropolitan government wields significant political power within Japan. Under Japanese law , Tokyo is designated as a to ( 都 ), translated as metropolis . Within Tokyo Metropolis lie dozens of smaller entities, including twenty-three special wards (特別 区 -ku) which until 1943 made up Tokyo City but which now have individual local governments, each with a leader and a council. In addition to these 23 local governments, Tokyo also encompasses 26 cities ( 市 -shi), five towns ( 町 -chō or machi), and eight villages ( 村 -son or -mura), each of which has
8532-457: The more efficient use of its generation capacity as well as erode the market share of gas companies. As Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. is a holding company, there are several major wholly owned subsidiaries. In March 2010, the last year before 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, TEPCO listed 10 entities as its major shareholders, amounting to 27.35% of all shares. Five of the ten were Japanese banks, two were Japanese insurance companies,
8640-549: The mountainous areas outside the Kanto Plain , despite their relatively small capacity compared to fossil fuel and nuclear generation, remain important in providing peak load supply. The company also purchases electricity from other regional or wholesale electric power companies like Tohoku Electric Power , J-POWER , and Japan Atomic Power Company . The company has built a radiated and circular grid between power plants and urban/industrial demand areas. Each transmission line
8748-418: The now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered
8856-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
8964-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
9072-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
9180-489: The people of Tokyo directly elect the governor to four-year terms of office. There is no limit to the number of terms a person may serve. Unlike collegiate cabinet systems, where the decisions are made unanimously, the Governor has the authority to make policy decisions and enforce policy. As the chief executive of Tokyo, ruling an area encompassing 13 million inhabitants and a GDP comparable in size to some countries, they hold
9288-581: The position of trying to cope simultaneously with core meltdowns at three reactors and exposed fuel pools at three units". The Japanese authorities rated the events at reactors 1, 2 and 3 as a level 5 (Accident With Wider Consequences) on the International Nuclear Event Scale , while the events at reactor 4 were placed at level 3 (Serious Incident). The situation as a whole was rated as level 7 (Major Accident). On 20 March, Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano "confirmed for
9396-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
9504-501: The recovery period, the company had to expand its supply capacity to catch up with the country's rapid economic growth by developing fossil fuel power plants and a more efficient transmission network. In the 1960s and 1970s, the company faced the challenges of increased environmental pollution and oil shocks. TEPCO began addressing environmental concerns through expansion of its LNG fueled power plant network as well as greater reliance on nuclear power generation. The first nuclear unit at
9612-555: The remaining two were Tokyo Metropolitan Government and a group of TECPO employees. The largest shareholder was Japan Trustee Services Bank (4.47%). On 11 April 2012 TEPCO announced that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government had temporarily become the largest shareholder of the firm with 9.37 percent voting rights, after former largest share holders Dai-ichi Life Nippon Life Insurance Co. and Nippon Life Insurance Co. had sold their 3.42 and 3.29 percent stakes in
9720-461: The risk of a serious accident. He suggested that Japan's military assume primary responsibility. 'It's the same trade-off you have to make in war, and that is the sacrifice of a few for the safety of many,' he said. 'But a corporation just cannot do that.'" There has been considerable criticism to the way TEPCO handled the crisis. It was reported that seawater was used only after Prime Minister Naoto Kan ordered it following an explosion at one reactor
9828-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
9936-650: The shutdown of the Fukushima I and II plants which were close to the epicenter of the March 2011 earthquake. For example, on the morning of Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 700,000 households had no power for three hours. The company had to deal with a 10 million kW gap between demand and production on March 14, 2011. On August 29, 2002, the government of Japan revealed that TEPCO was guilty of false reporting in routine governmental inspection of its nuclear plants and systematic concealment of plant safety incidents. All seventeen of its boiling-water reactors were shut down for inspection as
10044-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
10152-537: The stabilisation of the damaged reactors in Fukushima. All participation in a program to supply and run two nuclear reactors at a plant in Vietnam would be cancelled. This project undertaken by International Nuclear Energy Development, a public company set up in 2010 by heavy machinery producers and power companies, including TEPCO, aims to promote Japanese nuclear expertise and exports. According to Naomi Hirose, director of TEPCO, "Our atomic power engineers still need to do
10260-817: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
10368-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
10476-947: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Tokyo Metropolitan Government [REDACTED] Fumihito [REDACTED] Shigeru Ishiba ( LDP ) Second Ishiba Cabinet ( LDP – Komeito coalition ) [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Fukushiro Nukaga Kōichirō Genba [REDACTED] Masakazu Sekiguchi Hiroyuki Nagahama Saburo Tokura Kazuo Ueda The Tokyo Metropolitan Government ( 東京都庁 , Tōkyōto-chō )
10584-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
10692-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
10800-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
10908-564: The unified election cycle. The four largest established national political parties of the past decade (Liberal Democrats, Democrats, Kōmeitō, Communists) are represented in the Tokyo Assembly. The Social Democratic Party , formerly the Japanese Socialist Party, which had been the second major party for much of the postwar era, lost its one remaining seat in the 2001 election . Governor Naoki Inose , endorsed by
11016-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
11124-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
11232-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
11340-464: Was elected with 44,49% of the popular vote. The last assembly election was held on July 27. The new party of the governor Yuriko Koike ( Tomin First no Kai ) won 49 seats with 33.68% of the vote. The LDP obtained 23 seats with 22.53% of the vote. The New Komeito Party , allied with Gov. Koike also obtained 23 seats, with 13.13% of the vote. The previous election was held in June 2013. The LDP won 36% of
11448-735: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
11556-474: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
11664-441: Was the site of one of the world's most serious ongoing nuclear disasters, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster . TEPCO could face ¥2 trillion (US$ 23.6 billion) in special losses in the current business year to March 2012, and the Japanese government plans to put TEPCO under effective state control to guarantee compensation payments to the people affected by the accident. The Fukushima disaster displaced 50,000 households in
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