2019 Rugby World Cup and nearby Shikoku Island. No city in the latter region were venues for games in the 2002 FIFA World Cup, but Hiroshima did host games in the 2006 FIBA World Championship. On 17 July 2015, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that plans to build the new National Stadium would be scrapped and rebid on amid public discontent over the stadium's building costs. As a result, the new stadium would not be ready until the 2020 Summer Olympics. World Rugby released a statement saying that they were extremely disappointed by the announcement "despite repeated assurances to contrary from the Japan
Whaling in Japan 15, 1976. Former president of the Japan Fisheries Association and former Director-General of the Japan Fisheries Agency, Iwao Fujita, became the first Managing Director by appointment. In April 1976, Shintaro Abe, the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, declared government support for the newly formed company. Nihon Kyodo Hogei Co. Ltd. was later renamed Kyodo Senpaku Co. Ltd. and merged with the Japan Whaling Association and Institute of Cetacean Research to create the modern Institute of Cetacean Research in 1987. In 1972, the United Nations Environmental Conference produced a 52–0 vote in favor of a 10-year global moratorium on commercial