Evacuation of Citizens from Israel & more–17th Oct 2023

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 17th of October twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Saturday the 14th, both Japan and South Korea were evacuating their citizens from Israel. Japan chartered a flight and sent three military airplanes as backup in case they ran into any problems. The chartered plane flew eight Japanese citizens from Israel’s capital Tel Aviv to Dubai. The South Korean plane had some empty seats left after 163 South Koreans boarded, so they let fifty-one Japanese and six Singaporean citizens on as well. The plane later made a safe landing in Seoul.

Japan's foreign minister Yoko Kamikawa thanked South Korea’s foreign minister for his country’s help and promised to work together to ensure their citizens’ safety. On Sunday the 15th, Kamikawa said she’ll send a peace envoy to the region. She also suggested any Japanese nationals in Israel or the Gaza Strip who want to escape the conflict should jump on a commercial flight ASAP because the number of casualties is only getting bigger.

The Israel-Hamas fight has had a ripple effect in the market, as well. On Monday the 16th, the price of Middle Eastern crude oil rose to almost 79,000 yen per kiloliter or eighty-three dollars per barrel, which is almost four percent higher than Friday. Gold also hit a record high on Saturday the 14th since many investors are worried about the market going crazy.

And that’s not all that’s happening on the international front. On Monday the 16th, the Japan Coast Guard spotted two Chinese government ships near the Senkaku Islands, Japan’s southernmost islands near Taiwan. This marked the twenty-sixth time this year that Chinese government ships trespassed onto Japan’s territorial waters.

As if to rub salt in the wound, Russia announced on Monday the 16th that it was joining China in banning Japanese seafood imports. The head of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Disarmament, Non-Proliferation, and Science Department met with the current head of the Russian Embassy in Tokyo. He urged Russia to walk back the decision, said that it wasn’t based in science and that they’d already provided Russia with data related to the release of treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Moving onto health news, here’s a friendly reminder to get your flu shots. The flu is spreading like wildfire in Japan, with nearly 50,000 cases in the last week of September alone. That's 12,000 more than the previous week, and especially shocking compared to the same time last year when there were fewer than fifty cases. Part of that was because of the pandemic, and everyone was sick with COVID instead of the flu. However, flu season doesn't usually start until November.

Hospitals and clinics in Tokyo say they're getting flooded with flu patients and are running low on medications to treat it. Health officials worry that Japan might be facing a flu epidemic like never before, and it’s keeping hospital workers on their toes.

They’re not the only ones on their toes. On Saturday the 14th, the Japanese and US military started large-scale joint drills to practice defending remote Japanese islands. The drills took place in the southern islands of Kyushu and Okinawa and the northern island of Hokkaido to best simulate island defense tactics. The drills involve 6,400 soldiers from both forces and will go on until the end of October. They’ll practice deploying US troops to Ishigaki, an island south of Okinawa’s main island, and have live-fire drills in Hokkaido. The hope is that this will help tighten up security in those remote island areas, which are vulnerable by nature. The militaries also said they’ll make sure to minimize the drills’ impact on Okinawa’s locals.

In the business world, the well-known clothing chain Uniqlo expects to earn over three trillion yen or twenty billion dollars in revenue for the current fiscal year. For the last fiscal year that ended in August, they earned nearly eighteen billion dollars in revenue. That was already a new record for the company. Its overseas business boomed as well thanks to the post-pandemic crowd flooding the stores and buying up what they couldn’t get when they were stuck indoors. Overall, the international side accounted for over half of Uniqlo’s total sales. The CEO said their goal is to hit five trillion yen or thirty billion dollars in the next several years. To do this, they plan to open flagship stores in key major cities around the world.

While Uniqlo’s on the up, Toyota Motor had a bit of an upset. On Monday the 16th, a piece of equipment on a production line in their Fujioka Plant in Aichi Prefecture exploded. The explosion damaged some nearby buildings and injured two workers. Toyota shut down the plant to fix things, but because this plant made parts that other factories needed, they had to suspend six different plants in Aichi and Mie Prefecture. They hope to resume production by Wednesday the 18th.

On the cultural side of things, pop music legend and singer-songwriter Shinji Tanimura died at the age of seventy-four earlier this month on the 8th of October. He debuted as part of a three-man band in nineteen seventy-two but shined as a soloist as well. Some of his best-known songs include Champion and Subaru, which translates to “Star.” He was famous throughout Asia, so much so that the Japanese government awarded him a medal in twenty fifteen for helping to develop art and culture in both Japan and abroad. His official website didn’t say his exact cause of death, only that he had surgery in March due to enteritis.

Though the passing of any cultural icon is tragic, we can honor their memory by pursuing greater heights of creativity. Speaking of which, on Sunday the 15th, the five thousand and five Project opened a new cultural center in Tokyo designed with hearing disabilities in mind. The center will let people who can’t speak or hear showcase their work, including things like movies and plays. The building has curtains inside that will make it easier for people to have private conversations in sign language. It also has light switches at one spot in each room so that a presenter can grab everyone’s attention by switching the lights on and off all at once. Although it’s designed for those with hearing impairments, anyone can visit.

Moving onto legal news, a local court in Hamamatsu City found that a requirement for changing one's gender in their family registry is unconstitutional. Currently, if a trans person wants to change their gender on paper, the law requires them to meet certain criteria. For instance, the person has to undergo surgery to change their genitals to the gender they identify with. When transman Gen Suzuki went to court to argue this was a human rights violation, the Hamamatsu court agreed and deemed the law unconstitutional.

In some cool tech news, doctors used a robot to successfully perform surgery all the way from Singapore. For the experiment, the doctors prepared an artificial stomach with a cancerous tumor in Japan. The surgeon then went to Singapore where he remotely directed the robot to remove the tumor. The robot is nicknamed Hinotori and has four arms equipped with surgical tools and an endoscopic camera. The surgeon said there was a slight delay between his directions and the robot’s actions, but the surgery was smooth sailing once he got used to it. He hopes that one day they can use the robot to teach surgery remotely.

And that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Mata Ne!