JAPAN: An Election Law Violation & more – 27th Feb 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 27th of February twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

Hiroshi Kamiwaki, the professor who filed complaints last year against government officials for creating a slush fund, said on Tuesday the 25th that he filed a criminal complaint against Shinji Ishimaru, the runner-up in Tokyo's twenty twenty-four gubernatorial race, for allegedly violating election laws.

He accused Ishimaru of conspiring with aides to pay nearly one million yen, which is almost 7,000 dollars, to a production company to livestream a campaign rally. In Japan, it’s illegal to offer money or goods to anyone participating in campaigns.

Ishimaru denies wrongdoing, saying the payment was a cancellation fee, because he canceled when he realized it might violate election laws. On social media, even though he has some diehard fans, many criticize him for being condescending or hypocritical. They say that his lies about the cancellation fee are obvious and hope he gets punished for breaking election laws.

In an update to an ongoing story from previous shows, a lot of people have been discussing Seven & i Holdings’ refusal to accept Alimentation Couche-Tard’s buyout offer. Recall that Seven & i said it wanted the company to remain Japanese-owned.

However, this issue was put into question online, with many wondering why the company had such a big problem selling to a Canadian firm, and accusing Seven & i of xenophobia.

This talk was only fueled when Japan's economy minister said on Wednesday the 26th that a potential foreign acquisition of Seven & i is a matter of national security… much like how the US government said Nippon Steel acquiring US Steel was a matter of national security, something that the Japanese government protested a lot about. The irony!

On the subject of investments, on Saturday the 22nd, Warren Buffett said that Berkshire Hathaway plans to increase its stakes in five Japanese trading houses—Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Sumitomo—after they agreed to relax ownership limits. Berkshire's investments in these firms totaled twenty-three billion dollars by the end of twenty twenty-four.

Meanwhile, forest fires broke out on Wednesday the 26th in Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan, and firefighters still haven’t been able to put them out. So far, they have spread across multiple districts—including Attari, Koji, and Tahama—and have damaged at least eighty-four buildings. Authorities issued evacuation orders for over 2,000 residents, and almost 600 people have taken shelter.

Residents talked about how quickly the fires spread, some fleeing barely in time to escape.

Firefighting efforts continue, with Self-Defense Forces helicopters making aerial water drops on Thursday the 27th. Police are blocking off traffic in some places to keep people away from the fires. The only good news is that so far no one has reported any injuries.

Elsewhere, disaster was thankfully avoided when a construction worker found an unexploded World War II bomb on Tuesday the 25th while demolishing a building in Nagoya’s Naka Ward, central Japan, near where another bomb was found earlier this month.

Police arrived and safely removed the bomb, which was about a meter, or four feet long, and took it to some other place where they detonated it.

This marked the third war-era bomb discovery in the area, following a 250-kilogram or 550-pound American-made incendiary bomb found nearby in October twenty twenty-three and another in February twenty twenty-four.

Going back to business news for a bit, Toyota held a press conference on Saturday the 22nd showcasing a place called Woven City. It is a ten billion-dollar hub that the company created for robotics, AI, and self-driving, hydrogen-powered transportation, located near Mount Fuji, eastern Japan. Unlike a traditional smart city, it’s currently more of a test course for mobility than a real estate project.

Toyota built the city on a former Toyota plant. At the moment, it spans 47,000 square meters or 506,000 square feet, but the company has plans to expand it even further to 294,000 square meters or three million square feet. The city has underground passageways, where the autonomous deliveries go through, but no one is living there yet.

Speaking of a robotic city, Hiroshi Ishiguro, a robotics expert, announced on Wednesday the 19th that he would hold a discussion on the future coexistence of humans and androids at the Osaka Kansai Expo twenty twenty-five. He will have a pavilion using the theme amplification of lives, which will showcase humankind’s historical efforts to create life-like figures and envision a future where androids are part of daily life.

Ishiguro said the exhibit will feature humanoid robots that will interact with visitors, along with nature-inspired mobile robots. Ishiguro hopes the pavilion will encourage people to think about the kind of future they want to create.

Other car makers in Japan are also thinking of the future. Many are looking for more IT workers to develop self-driving and AI software, such as Subaru, which opened a new facility in Tokyo, eastern Japan, earlier this month, specifically for making software that can control vehicles.

Mazda Motor and Honda Motor are also looking to open up new centers for software development. Competition for hiring programmers is about to get heated!

In other news, All Nippon Airlines, or ANA, one of Japan’s biggest airline operators, plans to buy seventy-seven new aircraft between fiscal twenty twenty-eight and twenty thirty-three because they’re hoping to expand internationally. Their plans include buying up thirty planes from the US, twenty-seven from Europe, and twenty from Brazil.

ANA didn’t say exactly how much it would cost, but it could be as much as fourteen billion dollars, making it the largest single order in ANA’s history. All new planes will have high fuel efficiency to reduce carbon emissions.

If only there was something to reduce the hate. Viral Twitter posts have stirred up anti-Kurd sentiment in Japan, especially in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, eastern Japan. It seems to have started when a Turkish IT worker pretended to be a Kurdish resident in Japan, tweeting that Japan is actually the Kurds’ homeland and the official language should be Kurdish. This IT worker had never actually been to Japan, and posted all this while living in Istanbul.

Many Japanese people on Twitter took the rage bait, saying how Kurds were scary and even going so far as to debate refugee deportation. The growing online hate has led to real-world consequences, including protests, harassment, and threats against Kurds.

While some defend discussing Kurdish-related issues, critics argue that social media has rapidly created fear.

There are much bigger things to be afraid of—like nuclear weapons. On Wednesday the 26th, eight members of the Network for Nuclear Weapons Abolition visited the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo to protest the government’s decision not to send any representatives to a UN nuclear weapons ban treaty conference.

The ministry told the network members that they understood Japan could offer a unique perspective to the treaty meeting. However, they also said that the country is in a difficult position because of the current international political climate, but did not go into any details about why, exactly, they wanted to abstain.

A group of atomic bomb survivors also commented on the matter, saying that Japan should participate as it’s the only country that has ever experienced a nuclear bombing first-hand.

Ending this edition on a lighter note, Emperor Naruhito celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday on Sunday the 23rd with a public gathering at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. He wished for a peaceful spring and expressed sympathy for those affected by heavy snow.

Joined by Empress Masako, Princess Aiko, and other royals, he greeted visitors from the palace balcony. Over 23,000 people attended, with many signing a congratulatory book.

The emperor also held a birthday luncheon, called Enkai no Gi, for the first time in five years, and about 100 dignitaries attended.

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

In case you didn’t know, besides the Rorshok Japan Update, we also do others! We’ve got many country updates from Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe. But we also have non-country updates, including the Arctic Update, about the area north of the Arctic Circle, the Multilateral Update, about the world’s major multilateral institutions, and the Ocean Update, about the 70% of the world covered in salt water,

If you want to check out the full list of updates, go to https://rorshok.com/updates/. The link is in the show notes.

Mata Ne!