ANN/YOMIURI SHIMBUN – Vibrant, stylish, and comfortable zori are showcased across an entire wall of a shop in Tokyo, Japan.

Zori, traditional Japanese sandals typically intended for outdoor use, are often made with a soft knit fabric called meriyasu, making them exceptionally comfortable.

While strolling through an old part of Tokyo, I discovered a store named Merikoti near Ryogoku Kokugikan in Sumida Ward. Merikoti specialises in fabric zori designed for indoor use.

The base of the zori is made by knitting strips of fabric into an oval shape. The zori come in various colours, including red, orange, dark green and lavender. Others are multicoloured, including one that is yellow and gray.

The colours, which are reminiscent of those used to decorate the interiors of Northern European homes, go well with Japanese traditional sandals.

The designs for the fabric used to make the zori straps, called hanao, include embroidered flowers and patterns of a loquat, or biwa in Japanese, and bats with their wings extended.

One pair is made using a strawberry sherbet coloured meriyasu for the base and fabric with a strawberry motif for the hanao.

The shop owner, Tsudoi Kodaka, 52, is a Tokyo native and the third-generation president of Kodaka Meriyasu Industrial Ltd, a 75-year-old local company with a factory that produces meriyasu knit fabric.

The company sells the material to apparel companies, but Kodaka decided to also make products that he could sell directly to consumers.

The decision led to the creation of zori made using meriyasu fabric. He opened the shop in 2014 and sells zori, socks and other items.

The material used for the zori base is woven from threads at his factory, and the company commissions craftspeople nationwide to weave the material into the zori shape. The processes of making the straps and connecting them to the base are also done by different craftspeople.

“The skills of many craftspeople are used to make our zori,” Kodaka said.

In the shop, there is an old weaving machine, which has been in use for about 80 years, to pass on the weaving technique to future generations.

The thick base of the fabric zori is soft and sturdy. It is also breathable and comfortable to wear. The store also sells tabi socks under the Tutumu brand, which can be worn with the zori.

Recently, the store has seen more foreign tourists than ever before.

TOKYO (AFP) – Campaigning began in Tokyo’s gubernatorial election yesterday, with veteran incumbent Yuriko Koike challenged by opposition figure Renho – two prominent women in Japan’s heavily male-dominated political sphere.

Both have pledged to expand support for child-rearing to address the perennially low birth rate in the capital, as Japan faces a looming demographic crisis.

Koike, 71, is seeking her third term as governor of the megacity of 14 million people in the July 7 vote.

Having taken office in 2016 as the first woman to hold the position, the former defence and environment minister managed the capital’s COVID-19 response and helped organise the pandemic-postponed Tokyo Olympics.

A record 56 people have so far filed their candidacy for the gubernatorial election, Japanese media reports said. The final number will be announced this afternoon.

One of Koike’s most serious challengers is Renho, 56, a former model and TV anchor who goes by one name. She is an experienced politician who has positioned herself as a liberal voice against the long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Koike is not an LDP member – both are running as independent candidates – but the party is broadly, if unofficially, supporting her candidacy.

Japan has never had a woman prime minister and 84 per cent of lawmakers are men, according to statistics published by the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP).

Among the top issues faced by Japan and other developed economies is a plunging birth rate, which Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called an urgent risk to society.

The average number of children a woman is expected to have in Japan hit a record low of 1.20 last year, and Tokyo’s figure was 0.99 – the first rate below one for any Japanese region.

“My goal is to create a Tokyo where money is not a factor for raising children and education,” Koike told reporters this week.

She pledged to expand funding for epidural pain relief in labour, and to increase rent support for families with children in addition to existing policies such as making public high schools free.

Renho has also pledged to build on Koike’s policies to ease the burden on parents, as well as wider measures to help young people and address labour inequality.

She was the minister in charge of administrative reforms from 2010-11 as part of the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan, and recently left the CDP.

“Anti-LDP politics, non-Koike governance – I want to take on the Tokyo gubernatorial election with this stance,” Renho said in May.

In a modern twist to campaigning, Koike has launched an official artificial intelligence version of herself, which speaks fluent English and delivers updates from the city government.

SYDNEY (XINHUA) – A male was charged yesterday after he fatally shot a woman and seriously injured one man in the Australian state of Queensland.

Police were called to the Robb Place address in South Mackay just after 4.30pm on Wednesday.

A woman was found deceased at the scene and a man suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

According to Queensland Police, the 34-year-old South Mackay woman was sitting in a parked vehicle, when she was approached by the 31-year-old South Mackay man armed with a firearm.

It was believed that the duo were not known to each other but resided on the same street.

There were two children inside the vehicle when the incident occurred. They ran away from the scene on foot and were not physically harmed.

Police noted that a 66-year-old man, who lived nearby, approached the man a short time later and was also shot.

He sustained non-life-threatening wounds to the hand and sternum, before being taken to a hospital in serious but stable condition.

At approximately 5.20pm on Wednesday, police made an emergency declaration under the Public Safety Preservation Act (PSPA), as the shooter fled the scene in a car.

He was later taken into custody at a service station along the Bruce Highway near Hilton Street, with the PSPA revoked on Wednesday evening.

BUCHAREST (AFP) – Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte yesterday clinched the race to become the next head of NATO at a pivotal time for the alliance, after sole challenger Romanian President Klaus Iohannis pulled out.

The veteran politician, 57, is expected to be formally named by NATO’s 32 nations in the coming days and should take over when current chief Jens Stoltenberg’s term ends on October 1.

Rutte will come in at a perilous moment for the Western allies as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on and Donald Trump battles to reclaim the presidency in the United States come November.

After staking his claim for the job last year following the collapse of his coalition, staunch Ukraine backer Rutte quickly won the support of heavyweights the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

But he had to use all the diplomatic skills gleaned during almost 14 years in charge of the Netherlands to win over hold-outs led by Turkiye and Hungary.

Rutte overcame Turkish reticence with an April visit to Istanbul, before finally sealing a deal with Hungary’s Viktor Orban at a European Union summit this week.

That left the last sticking point as Iohannis, whose surprise bid had ruffled feathers among allies banking on a smooth appointment for Rutte ahead of a NATO summit in Washington next month.

Romania’s security council yesterday announced Iohannis had formally withdrawn and that the country backed Rutte.

Rutte will have a lot on his plate when he assumes the reins from Norway’s former premier Stoltenberg, who led the alliance through its most consequential decades since the end of the Cold War.

Just weeks after his four-year term is expected to start, voters in the United States will go to the polls in a crunch vote to chose between incumbent Joe Biden and Trump.

The prospect of the volatile former president returning to the Oval office has rattled allies fearful that he could weaken superpower Washington’s role as Europe’s ultimate security guarantor.

Trump fuelled those fears on the campaign trail by saying he would encourage an attack on NATO countries not spending enough on their own defence. Like Stoltenberg, Rutte won plaudits for his careful handling of Trump during his first term in power – when the ex-reality TV star reportedly even mulled pulling the United States out of NATO.

“I think Mark Rutte is a very strong candidate,” Stoltenberg said on a visit to Washington on Tuesday. “He has a lot of experience as prime minister. He’s a close friend and colleague.”

Dubbed “Teflon Mark” for his ability to remain in power for so long in the Netherlands, Rutte will become the fourth Dutchman to lead NATO since it emerged from the ashes of World War II.

BARCELONA (AFP) – Five migrants were found dead on a crowded boat that was spotted adrift south of Spain’s Canary Islands in the Atlantic, the country’s maritime rescue service said yesterday.

Rescuers were alerted on Wednesday afternoon to the vessel drifting some 800 kilometres south of the island of Tenerife, and a boat dispatched to the area rescued 68 people and found five bodies on board, the service said in a statement.

The boat also retrieved three bodies from the migrant vessel but had to leave it adrift with the other two bodies “due to bad weather conditions in the area,” the statement said.

Spain is one of the main gateways for migrants seeking a better life in Europe, with the vast majority making the perilous journey to try and reach the Canary Islands which lie off the northwestern coast of Africa.

The Atlantic route is particularly dangerous due to strong currents, with migrants travelling in overloaded, often unseaworthy, boats without enough drinking water.

But it has grown in popularity due to increased vigilance in the Mediterranean. At their closest point, the islands lie 100 kilometres off the coast of North Africa.

But many boats – often long wooden vessels known as pirogues – leave from much further away, setting sail from Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania.

Increasingly they are coming from countries further south such as Gambia and Senegal which lie about 1,500 kilometres from the Spanish islands.

More than 5,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain by sea in the first five months of this year, or the equivalent of 33 deaths per day, according to Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish charity which alerts the maritime authorities to migrant boats in distress.

That is the highest daily number of deaths since it began collating figures in 2007.

The vast majority were on the Atlantic route, where 4,800 migrants died while trying to reach the Canaries, the charity said.