"This is truly an exciting time for us at Funai, " said Funai President and CEO, Tomonori Hayashi.

ENGADGET: Philips sells off its Hi-Fi and DVD business to Funai for $201 million

Keiichi Hayashi, the Japanese ambassador to the UK, was at Wednesday's unveiling ceremony.

BBC: England

Among the most well-known beneficiaries of such scientific advances is popular novelist Hayashi Mariko, who gave birth in her mid-40s.

CNN: AN HEIR OF CHANGE IN JAPAN

But Japan's fisheries minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, has said whaling is part of Japan's culture and that it will never give up hunting the animals.

BBC: US court brands whale activists Sea Shepherd 'pirates'

"I believe hide's death was an accident, " said X Japan leader Hayashi Yoshiki at a hastily called press conference the night before the funeral.

CNN: ISOLATED IN THEIR GRIEF

Japanese ambassador Keiichi Hayashi told those present the stone was a "symbol of human suffering during World War II and the ongoing quest for peace".

BBC: Hiroshima stone

Three other candidates contested the leadership - Nobuteru Ishihara, son of Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, Nobutaka Machimura, the former foreign minister, and Yoshimasa Hayashi, another former defence minister.

BBC: Japan ex-PM Shinzo Abe elected opposition leader

"The notion of pan-Asian community is still a work in progress, " said Dennis Hayashi, director of the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, who previously served in the Clinton administration.

CNN

Reform-minded upper-house LDP politicians like Mr Hayashi say they would be prepared to support the DPJ on issues such as the consumption tax if it scraps some of its more reckless public-spending proposals, such as universal child allowances.

ECONOMIST: Japan's upper-house elections

The LDP, which gave more detail on the need for higher consumption taxes in its manifesto, found the idea gained little momentum, said Yoshimasa Hayashi, a politician in the party who campaigned with upper-house candidates in rural areas.

ECONOMIST: Japan's upper-house elections