JAPAN: Atomic Survivors’ Nobel Prize & more – 17th Oct 2024

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

On Friday the 11th, a Japanese organization of atomic bomb survivors called Nihon Hidankyo won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The decision surprised some observers who expected the prize to focus on conflicts like those in Ukraine or Gaza.

On Saturday the 12th, the Norwegian Nobel Committee held an event in Oslo where they congratulated Nihon Hidankyo. Masako Wada, the group’s assistant secretary general, participated through an online video call. Wada said that their group was dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons, and that the Nobel Prize was a vital opportunity to raise awareness about their work.

The executive director of the Nobel Peace Center said that she believed their mission was very important and would hold an exhibition to support Nihon Hidankyo’s cause.

Meanwhile, campaigning for the general election started on Tuesday the 15th, and Kyodo News, a media organization, conducted a survey among potential voters. They found that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (or LDP) was the most popular party so far, with twenty-seven percent voter support.

The main opposition, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, was second most popular, with twelve percent support. Thirty-three percent were undecided, while the remaining twenty-eight percent said they supported other political parties.

However, since the LDP cabinet approval rating is down to forty-two percent compared to fifty percent earlier in October, undecided voters might choose a different party. In the survey, most respondents were concerned about economic issues, employment, and inflation.

As if the economy wasn’t enough to worry about, the Environment Ministry raised the bird flu alert to the highest level on Tuesday the 15th after detecting a highly pathogenic strain in Hokkaido Prefecture. Even though this means that the disease is more likely to be contagious to humans, the strain has only been found in wild birds so far, reducing the probability of getting infected. The bird flu virus rarely spreads to humans without having a lot of close contact.

Still, the level-three alert urges local governments to closely monitor wild birds and check if any might be infected. The ministry is advising people to wash hands and gargle if they touch bird droppings, avoid handling dead birds, and report any findings to local authorities.

In legal news, the Fukuoka High Court ruled on Thursday the 10th that Japan banning dual nationality is constitutional. Yuri Kondo, a seventy-seven-year-old Japanese-born US citizen living in Fukuoka Prefecture, brought the case. She argued that Article Eleven of the law, which says that any Japanese person who gets foreign citizenship loses their Japanese one, violates her right to self-determination.

The judge said that the law was reasonable and that there was no need to allow dual nationality. Kondo plans to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Other Japanese citizens living abroad made similar cases in the past but were unsuccessful. It’s also an issue for children with one Japanese and one foreign parent, who can get both nationalities at birth, but need to choose between one or the other by the time they turn twenty-two.

In an update to a story from our last show, after Tokyo passed an ordinance to combat customer harassment, NTT Communications Corp and SoftBank Corp, two major tech companies, said they were developing AI systems to assist call center workers with abusive clients. Customer harassment has become a growing issue in Japan the past few years, leading to job resignations and mental health issues in the service industry.

NTT Communications' system will monitor conversations between customers and workers and display suggested responses on the worker’s screen. This will help reduce the stress of dealing with difficult calls, and hopefully calm a customer’s anger with quick, appropriate responses.

SoftBank is developing AI that will artificially soften the customer's tone of voice when the worker answers. The company hopes to start selling the system to other businesses by the twenty twenty-five fiscal year.

On the subject of growing trends, Japan has recently been making a lot of efforts to attract digital nomads. There are around thirty-five million digital nomads globally, many of whom are high earners who travel to different countries and can boost the economy of wherever they’re staying.

Some government organizations, such as the Japan Tourism Agency, have introduced special visas and residency programs to attract digital nomads, particularly to rural areas with declining populations. Tokyo's S-TOKYO co-working space caters to such digital nomads, and events like Colive Fukuoka hope to create business opportunities through networking.

The biggest challenges to digital nomads from abroad staying in Japan include short visa durations and rising rental costs.

Speaking of international visitors, the Japan National Tourism Organization said on Wednesday the 16th that the number of foreign visitors to the country last month was up thirty-one percent compared to last year and twenty-six percent compared to pre-pandemic numbers. Japan received almost three million foreign visitors, a record high for September. Most of the visitors were from China and Malaysia.

About twenty-seven million foreign travelers have visited Japan in the first nine months of this year, which is already more than the twenty-five million visitors that came during all twelve months of twenty twenty-three.

The Japan Tourism Agency said that foreign visitors spent almost two trillion yen, which is thirteen billion dollars, from July to September. The agency estimated each visitor spent around 1,500 dollars.

While we’re still talking big numbers, the Health Ministry said that Japan had nearly five million tons of food waste in the twenty twenty-two fiscal year, half of which came from restaurants tossing out uneaten food. To help reduce waste, the ministry drafted a guideline on Wednesday the 16th for safely taking home leftovers from restaurants.

Currently, guests at Japanese restaurants who don’t finish their food aren’t allowed to bring the leftovers home. So, the restaurant has to throw out any uneaten food.

The draft said that customers can take leftovers home, but recommends they wash their hands or use gloves and drain any liquid from the food. The draft also advised restaurants to keep gloves for customers to handle leftovers and have clean containers on hand. The ministry will likely finish the guideline by the end of the year and implement it in April twenty twenty-five.

In business news, Toho Co, the creator of the Godzilla franchise, announced on Wednesday the 16th that it acquired GKIDS, a New York-based distributor of Studio Ghibli's animated films. Toho did this as part of its plan to expand internationally as Japanese entertainment becomes more and more popular.

GKIDS, which has distributed thirteen Oscar-nominated animated films, including Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toho.

This acquisition followed several other of Toho's recent successes, such as the Oscar-winning movie Godzilla Minus One and the Emmy-award-winning historical drama Shogun.

In entertainment news, on Monday the 14th, Kei Kanamori, a Japanese animation film creator, won the silver prize in the animation category at the fifty-first Student Academy Awards for his film Origami.

Kanamori created Origami as a graduation project for Tokyo's Digital Hollywood University. It featured computer graphics depicting a piece of paper folding into various living creatures, symbolizing life emerging from the earth. Kanamori was the first graduate of a Japanese film school to win this award. He expressed happiness and said he hoped it would inspire other students. Thanks to this award, the film will be eligible for the Oscars next year.

And to wrap up this edition, some updates from space. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which astronomers in China and South Africa discovered last year, made its closest approach to Earth on Sunday the 13th, coming within seventy-one million kilometers or forty-four million miles. Japan's National Astronomical Observatory said that people would be able to see the comet in the western sky after sundown between Monday the 14th and Sunday the 19th.

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

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Mata Ne!