[...] Japan has lots of issues and scandals. We have only covered history books, wartime apologies, beef imports, gender relations, whaling, Article 9, so-called foreign criminals, and the beloved Jenkins. Above and beyond those are milk scandals, management crises, iron-triangle problems, mercury poisoning and a horde of other topics. But today we have the return of something that has been on the back burner for a while, and that is asbestos: The Economist … Although the World Health Organisation declared in 1980 that asbestos was a carcinogen, its use in construction was not banned in Japan until 2004, and a ban on all asbestos—introduced in July—will not come into effect until 2008. ... The country lags decades behind other industrialised nations when it comes to containing the harmfulness of asbestos. All six regional Japan Railway (JR) companies created after privatisation in 1987 still use carriages insulated with asbestos. JR East has announced that it will decommission 90 of its 250 asbestos-containing carriages by 2006. [...]