Earthquakes Hit Ishikawa & more – 9th Jan 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 9th of January twenty twenty-four A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Saturday the 6th, two more earthquakes hit Ishikawa Prefecture, an area still reeling from the New Year's quake. The Meteorological Agency reported that the quakes measured five and four on Japan’s Seismic Intensity Scale, which measures earthquakes on a scale of one to seven.

Magnitudes four and five can cause light damage, but not like the New Year’s magnitude seven quake, where the severe shaking cracked the ground open and toppled buildings and power lines.

As of Tuesday the 9th, officials reported that the earthquake and resulting disasters, such as tsunamis and fires, tragically killed 168 people. 323 more are still missing since the massive earthquake on Monday the 1st. Rescuers are still trying to find survivors in collapsed buildings.

Meanwhile, 20,000 households don’t have electricity and 66,000 don’t have water. The Japan Pharmaceutical Association sent a “mobile pharmacy” to Suzu City, which the quake hit hard. The truck carries medicine, shelves for storing pills, packaging devices, and a pharmacist to aid the people.

The snowfall over the weekend has made things harder for those still reeling from the disaster, particularly the 30,000 people in evacuation shelters. Government-designated shelters such as community centers and schools are packed to the brim, with some people forced to sleep in chairs because there are not enough beds or room to lie down. Officials have advised everyone to be careful about infectious diseases since COVID-19 and the flu can spread easily in such conditions.

However, the shelters still provide first-aid, water, and decent protection against the cold. The same can’t be said for disaster victims staying in one of 213 voluntary evacuation shelters, many consisting of structures like plastic greenhouses, either because there’s not enough room in the designated areas or because the victims could not reach them due to damaged roads.

Given the damage and lives lost, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida plans to designate the earthquake as a "disaster of extreme severity" within a week, allowing bigger state subsidies for reconstruction efforts. He said he’d speed up the process for state support in Ishikawa Prefecture, which suffered the most damage.

Families with completely destroyed or severely damaged houses will be able to receive up to 3 million yen or 20,000 dollars in aid. The government will work with local cities to use hotels and inns to house people.

The assistance will also include repair work on damaged roads. Officials asked the public to avoid using private vehicles as much as possible so that the roads would be open for emergency aid.

After looking at the data and satellite imagery, the Geospatial Information Authority said the land has moved as much as three meters or almost ten feet due to the quake on Monday the 1st.

A team of researchers from Hiroshima University also studied the data. They said that the land shift expanded the coastline in the area by up to 175 meters or 574 feet since it raised the ground from the seabed all along the Noto Peninsula, the region along Ishikawa’s coast. The researchers also said that massive earthquakes with ground uplift have struck this area several times for thousands of years.

If any good has come from the quake, it's the unexpected message of sympathy that North Korean leader Kim Jung Un sent to Kishida via telegram despite tensions between the two nations. He said that he hoped people recovered from the damage quickly.

Radiopress, a news agency that keeps tabs on North Korea’s media, said that it was the first time Kim sent a message to a Japanese prime minister about a natural disaster, and this was also his first ever message to Kishida.

In a follow-up of a story we covered on previous shows… On Sunday the 7th, Tokyo prosecutors arrested Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Yoshitaka Ikeda for violating the Political Funds Control Law. He was a part of the Abe Faction, which prosecutors believe hid money to create a slush fund for faction members. They suspect that Ikeda conspired with his secretary to falsify the political funds' reports and give members kickbacks. They said that Ikeda’s office received kickbacks worth about 48 million yen or 331,000 dollars from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty-two.

Moving on, a fire raged in Kitakyushu City in Fukuoka Prefecture from Wednesday the 3rd until Thursday the 4th. It took the fire department thirteen hours to fully put out the flames. The fire started in Kokurakita Ward and spread to a famous historic area known as Torimachi Shokudogai. The fire started at a restaurant and destroyed many buildings but thankfully, didn’t seem to cause any injuries.

This was not the first fire in the area. Two twenty twenty-two fires damaged a major food market not too far away. The Kitakyushu mayor said that they had put in fire prevention methods since then, so it was a shame that it got so bad.

In an update to a story from a previous show, the transport ministry has been investigating why two planes, a Coast Guard plane and Japan Airlines Flight five-one-six, collided at Haneda Airport on Tuesday the 2nd. They believe that the pilot of the Coast Guard plane misunderstood the air traffic controller’s words. The air traffic controller had told the Coast Guard to go to a specific holding point, and that they were “number one” in the line of planes to take off. However, the Coast Guard pilot thought that it meant they were also clear to enter the runway, which he did, though air traffic control didn’t give him those explicit instructions.

Air traffic control didn’t know that the Coast Guard plane had entered the runway. The ministry has managed to recover data from Flight five-one-six and is currently looking it over.

The transport ministry also put together new safety measures to improve pilot training, to stop using the term “number one,” and for air traffic control to watch the runway more carefully.

Despite the tragedy, on Monday the 8th, Haneda Airport reopened the runway where the crash took place. They finished clearing the wreckage and the repair work. However, some of the runway lamps are still damaged and won’t be fixed for about a month. The transport ministry directed aircraft to fly at lower altitudes until repairs are fully done.

This follows the hundreds of flights canceled every day since the collision, amounting to roughly a thousand cancellations over the week.

In international news, Yoko Kamikawa, the Foreign Minister, began her diplomatic visit to the US, Canada, and five European countries on Friday the 5th. On Monday the 8th, she met with the Ukrainian foreign minister. She promised to send five power generators to help the country through the winter, offer education and healthcare assistance, and donate 37 million dollars to help Ukraine with a drone detection system. The 37 million dollars will come from a NATO fund.

Kamikawa also plans to meet with other senior government officials to prepare for the Japan-Ukraine Conference for the Promotion of Economic Reconstruction, which will take place in Japan in February.

And to close this edition, some entertainment news. Legendary filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki won a Golden Globe Award on Sunday the 7th for his latest animated movie, The Boy and the Heron. It was the first time the Golden Globes awarded a Japanese movie in the best-animated film category. However, Miyazaki didn’t attend the award ceremony.

Aaand that's it for this week!

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Mata Ne!