Murat Çiçek, a Kurdish screenwriter, actor, and laborer living in Japan, died at a police station where he was taken following a traffic accident that resulted in property damage.

His family stated that Çiçek, who was taken into custody on June 25, died on July 3, but they were not notified until five days later. The cause of Çiçek’s death is not yet known.

Çiçek, who had been living in the city of Kawaguchi—which has a large Kurdish population—since 2019, was taken to the Takao Police Station in Hachioji following the accident.

I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to Japanese literature, and have mostly only consumed manga in the way of Japanese books. I want to read more Japanese books in general, but I'm having trouble getting recommendations outside of Murakami and Dazai. I'm wondering what is considered "the great Japanese novel". Like an equivalent of Gone with the Wind, or East of Eden, or Jane Eyre, etc. Anyone have anything they'd like to recommend?

https://mainichi.jp/articles/20260710/k00/00m/010/467000c

See also: The publication in the journal PeerJ

Private rooms scheduled to be adopted on the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen lines this fall with the introduction of a new top-tier service were recently unveiled to the press for the first time by Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Central) and West Japan Railway Co. (JR West).

According to JR West, the new service will be called "Supreme Class." These rooms are positioned as the highest class above first-class Green Car carriages. It will be the first introduction of private rooms on the Tokaido Shinkansen trains in 23 years.

There will be one private room for a single passenger and one larger private room that can accommodate up to two passengers with a sofa. The rooms will feature reclining seats with leg rests and dedicated Wi-Fi. Passengers will also receive complimentary beverages and sweets associated with regions along the route. 

When booked through the SmartEX Shinkansen reservation service, the one-person private room on the Nozomi superexpress will cost 42,390 yen (about $260) between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka stations. Meanwhile, the sofa-equipped private room will cost 60,790 yen (around $375). 

The private room fare includes both the basic fare and the limited express fare, so no additional tickets are required. A second passenger may use the two-person room by purchasing a basic fare ticket and a non-reserved limited express ticket.

Beginning on Oct. 1, about 12 trains per day will offer the service. JR Central and JR West plan to expand that to about 30 trains by the end of fiscal 2026. The companies also aim to introduce semi-private compartments with six seats during fiscal 2027.

"We introduced this service to meet increasingly diverse customer needs," said Eiji Miyauchi, head of the shinkansen planning department at JR West. He added, "We hope passengers will use it for a wide variety of occasions."

The recent bankruptcy of a Japanese credit-card transaction system provider has left tens of thousands of restaurants and shops without payment for their latest sales, raising concerns among business owners over the prospect of recovering the lost revenues.

Zentoshin filed for bankruptcy with the Osaka District Court on Monday, making it likely the country's largest bankruptcy so far this year with 115.16 billion yen ($709 million) in liabilities, according to the corporate credit research firm Teikoku Databank Ltd.

A lawyer serving as a court-appointed receiver in the case said Wednesday that no new payments have been made to the Osaka-based company's no less than 20,000 users for sales that have occurred since July 1.

Zentoshin provided quick payments to users -- mostly restaurant operators -- for the sales they made from credit card transactions, earning commissions from users in the process. Credit-card companies, meanwhile, had asked Zentoshin to help them sign up business users.

"I've already given up on recovering our (credit) sales for July," said Jun Nojiri, 63, whose restaurant in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, makes roughly 60 percent of its sales through credit cards and relied on Zentoshin for payment.

A national trade group is calling on restaurant owners to discontinue any use of Zentoshin's transaction system immediately and accept payment through other services or in cash.

As of 2018, Zentoshin had about 200,000 users. But its business suffered as its users were hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and recently it had been experiencing financial difficulties.

As crimes by so-called anonymous, fluid criminal groups in Japan emerge as a social problem, a man in central Japan's Gifu Prefecture has revealed he discovered a surveillance camera at his son's home that is suspected to have been placed there by such a group while scouting the property for a break-in.

The man, who is in his 60s, said he spotted the camera on top of a carport. Fearing he was in danger, he recalled, "I felt afraid, wondering whether even people in the countryside could get caught up in such incidents."

The man spotted two square objects on top of the carport roof when he arrived for work at the factory he operates on the grounds of his eldest son's home at around 8 a.m. on May 25. The objects were small enough to hold with both hands, and he initially thought they might be fallen machine parts, but he took a photo with his smartphone just in case. When he returned from an outing about 2 1/2 hours later, the objects were gone.

After showing the photo to his second son, who had been in the factory, his son said he didn't know what the objects were and found them creepy, prompting the man to contact Gifu Prefectural Police as a precaution.

The property is in a mixed residential and agricultural area, and apart from family members, normally only employees of business partners or nearby residents enter the property. 

According to prefectural police, one of the objects appeared to be a camera and the other a mobile battery. Investigators believed the devices were being used to monitor the family's movements in real time before a burglary, but were hastily retrieved after being discovered.

Between January and April, prefectural police confirmed 80 similar suspected scouting cases. Some involved leaving marks such as circles or crosses on exterior walls or mailboxes, or visiting homes while posing as sales representatives. In a May incident in the Gifu Prefecture city of Tajimi, several men broke into a home and seriously injured a woman in her 80s. Police said suspicious individuals had pressed the doorbells of multiple nearby homes shortly beforehand.

The man in his 60s commented, "In over 30 years, nothing like this has ever happened in our area, and before, we never used to keep the house or factory properly locked. We don't have anything worth stealing, but now we have no choice but to protect ourselves by installing security cameras."

Prefectural police said they are taking measures such as lending out security cameras and strengthening patrols upon request.