JAPAN: Agriculture Minister’s Dismissal & more – 22nd May 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 22nd of May twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba dismissed Taku Eto, the Agriculture Minister, on Wednesday the 21st after public backlash over a comment Eto made on Sunday the 18th. During a speech about government efforts to reduce rice prices, he said that he had never bought rice because his supporters gave him so much that he could sell it.

Eto later admitted his comments were inappropriate considering how expensive rice has become, more than double on average compared to last year. Shinjiro Koizumi, the former Environment Minister, will replace him. Ishiba didn’t do anything at first, but caved when the criticism didn’t let up.

Koizumi is best known for pushing a law that made people pay an extra three yen, which is a penny, for plastic shopping bags. So, even though Koizumi said he would work to fix increasing rice prices, most of the online reaction to him taking on the job was jokes about how now he would make people pay extra for the bags that the rice came in.

In an update to a story from last week’s show, on Saturday the 17th, defense officials recovered the body of one of two missing crew members after a T-Four training aircraft crashed into a reservoir near Komaki Air Base on Wednesday the 14th. The thirty-six-year-old plane didn’t have a voice or flight data recorder and went down shortly after takeoff. The Air Self-Defense Force grounded all of its nearly 200 T-Four aircraft for emergency inspection.

The crash adds to a series of military aircraft accidents amid Japan’s ongoing defense buildup, raising concerns that the government is pouring money into weapons and defense without carrying out proper safety measures.

Speaking of accidents, a train in Suzaka City, Nagano Prefecture, central Japan, collided with a shed blown onto the tracks by strong winds on Wednesday the 21st, killing one passenger and injuring two others. Those hurt were all in the train’s first car.

At the time of the accident, Suzaka City had very harsh winds and unstable weather conditions, for which local officials had issued a tornado advisory. Police believe the shed, which had a metal pipe frame, came from a nearby field, blown by the strong wind.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only accident. On Monday the 19th, an explosion at a restaurant in Sapporo’s Susukino entertainment district, located in Hokkaido Prefecture, northern Japan, injured four people.

The blast occurred on the building's second floor while three women were preparing to open the restaurant and a man was working outside. It shattered windows and damaged the building, which is located on a busy national road lined with restaurants. Rescuers took all four victims to the hospital..

Authorities suspect a gas leak was behind the explosion, but they are still investigating.

Back at the World Expo in Osaka, covered in previous stories, a new controversy has come up, this time regarding the restrooms designed for toddlers and preschool-aged children. The design doesn’t use any stalls, but has an open layout, with the idea that it makes it easier for parents to help their young children if needed.

However, it raised questions about whether this type of layout, which doesn’t offer any privacy for the children, violates children's rights. While this kind of restroom design is common for daycares and preschools, some argued that it’s not okay for such a public place. There are also private stalls for children at the Expo, but people still said that there shouldn’t be any open layout at all because children deserve privacy.

Meanwhile, the Diet passed a revised law aimed at curbing abusive practices in host clubs, particularly those that try to convince female customers into doing sex work to repay debts. The new law bans emotional manipulation, such as denying contact with a host, to pressure customers into buying more alcohol. It also prohibits forcing indebted women into prostitution, sex-related jobs, or pornography, and bans payments for introducing women to such work. Violators face up to six months in prison or a one-million yen fine, which is seven thousand dollars.

The law also increased penalties for illicit club operators, with potential five-year prison terms and fines up to ten million yen, about 70,000 dollars. For companies, the fine could go as high as 300 million yen, about two million dollars.

In more legal news, Uber Eats settled with two Japanese delivery couriers who sued after their accounts were suspended without a clear explanation, leaving them unable to work. The company kept the amount of money paid to the couriers private, but it is likely the first time it has given compensation for this kind of suspension.

The company reinstated one courier’s account but not the other’s. It raised questions about gig worker rights and the need for platforms that host gig and freelance workers to be more transparent. The lawyers representing the couriers said the settlement was a step toward holding companies accountable for unjustified deactivations.

In business news, Nippon Steel told the US government that it plans to invest billions of dollars more in US Steel if the government approves its acquisition bid. The US government under Joe Biden, the former US president, had previously blocked the deal saying that it might harm national security. However, Donald Trump, the current US president, told the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to review the deal again. They made a decision on Wednesday the 21st, but have not announced it to the public, and instead simply sent their report to Trump.

Nippon Steel told the US government it would invest an extra three billion dollars to create jobs at US Steel, so the total bid is now almost fifteen billion dollars. Once the committee finishes its review, President Trump will make a final decision by the 5th of June.

Honda made its own decision about scaling back its electric vehicle goals because of slowing sales in the US and market uncertainty. It scrapped its target of making electric vehicles thirty percent of their global sales by twenty thirty and cut planned electrification investment from ten trillion yen, which is sixty-nine billion dollars, to seven trillion yen, about forty-nine billion dollars.

Honda’s CEO said that they were just slowing down their electric vehicle goals, not throwing them out entirely. For now, Honda will focus more on hybrid vehicles, adapting plants like Marysville, Ohio, in the US, for hybrid production.

Some online users criticized Honda for backing off of electric vehicles, saying that the auto maker is not going to have a future if it focuses only on hybrid and combustion engine cars.

In entertainment news, Netflix will start streaming Grave of the Fireflies, the nineteen eighty-eight Studio Ghibli film, on the 15th of July. The movie follows the tragic story of two siblings during World War II, partly inspired by a semi-autobiographical short story by Akiyuki Nosaka. TV stations in Japan used to regularly air the film, but it hasn’t been broadcast since a twenty eighteen memorial screening, possibly because of its graphic content about the war. However, with twenty twenty-five marking the eightieth anniversary of the Kobe air raid, Nippon Television is considering a new broadcast.

Closing this edition with some travel news, Japan hit a new record of nearly three point nine million foreign visitors in April twenty twenty-five, up almost thirty percent compared to the previous year, driven by the cherry blossom season and Easter holiday travel. This marks the highest monthly total ever, surpassing the previous record of three point seventy-eight million in January. The cherry blossom season alone made an estimated one trillion yen, which is seven billion dollars, in the tourism industry this year.

A weak yen continues to fuel the tourism boom, with Japan aiming for 60 million annual visitors by twenty thirty. However, tourism puts a strain on some Japanese residents, as some hotels get so packed that it makes business travel for locals difficult. Some also argue that it contributes to rising rice prices because foreign travelers are eating a lot, though there isn’t much solid evidence to back this up.

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

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Mata Ne!