JAPAN: Back Tax Penalty & more – 10th April 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 10th of April twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

In an update to a story from a previous show, the Osaka Regional Taxation Bureau hit Kawasaki Heavy Industries with a one-billion-yen penalty, which is seven million dollars, in back taxes. Several weeks back, we reported that news outlets revealed that the company had been pretending to do repair work for the Maritime Self-Defense Force, but instead conspired with defense force members to create a slush fund for entertainment and gifts.

Kawasaki didn’t report over one billion yen for six years. The company lied on invoices for the expenses, partially taken from taxpayer-funded defense budgets, to make officials think that the expenses were tax-exempt.

Apparently, the company’s Kobe shipyard had been doing this for forty years. The bureau also found Kawasaki didn’t declare taxes related to its US subsidiary, amounting to four billion yen, which is 27,000 dollars. The company has since paid the back taxes.

In more updates to stories from previous shows, rice prices are still going up despite the government releasing rice stockpiles. As of late March, a five-kilogram or eleven-pound bag averaged 4,200 yen, which is twenty-eight dollars, an increase compared to the 3,800 yen average, which is twenty-six dollars, in February. This marked the thirteenth straight week of increases, and sales have dropped three percent compared to last year.

Experts said the amount of stockpiled rice released was too small to significantly impact the supply shortage. Things likely won’t change until the next harvest, which typically happens in September and October.

In a spot of somewhat good news, Donald Trump, the US president, said on Wednesday the 9th he would back down on most of his tariffs for ninety days. This included Japan, where Trump reduced the tariffs from twenty-four percent to ten percent, except for cars, which remain at twenty-five percent. For China, however, he raised tariffs to 125 percent.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary said this was a good sign, and that the Japanese government would take this chance to talk further with Trump. The prime minister will likely send Ryosei Akazawa, a minister in charge of economic revitalization, to the US sometime this month for proper negotiations.

In other news, on Sunday the 6th, a medical helicopter with six people aboard, including a patient, went missing off the coast of Tsushima, Nagasaki Prefecture, southwestern Japan. The Coast Guard rescued three people—a pilot, a mechanic, and a nurse—and brought them to the hospital for hypothermia. The other three, including the patient, died.

The Coast Guard found the helicopter floating upside down in the sea with the emergency flotation device deployed. The pilot told the Coast Guard that he set off the helicopter's flotation device before the copter hit the sea, but officials are still investigating what went wrong.

Onto the pileup of disasters that is the Osaka Expo, on Monday the 7th, during a rehearsal, the organizers said that they detected methane gas levels of over five percent concentration in an underground area. That much methane gas is dangerous because it can easily explode if there’s a spark or too much heat.

There was an incident last year when methane levels were high and a worker welding caused an explosion. The area used to be a landfill for garbage, which naturally produces methane gas. To prevent any issues, the organizers said they would monitor gas three times a day instead of just once at the seven high-risk spots. They will also create barriers around manholes to keep visitors safe.

Meanwhile, seven prefectures, including Tokyo and Kanagawa in eastern Japan, had some serious traffic jams when an electronic system failure on Sunday the 6th caused some expressway toll gates to close. The failure affected about eighty toll gates that worked through electronic toll collection or ETC. When they’re working correctly, these toll gates scan pre-paid ETC cards, making paying for the tolls quick and convenient.

Regular lanes remained open, and staff raised ETC barriers to allow vehicles to pass, telling drivers to pay the tolls later using a QR code.

Traffic jams led to three reported rear-end collisions on the Chuo Expressway, which connects eastern and central Japan. Officials don’t know what caused the system failure, but many online speculated it was a cyberattack from China or North Korea, similar to how other infrastructure like banks and airlines have been targeted since December.

In the world of academia, the University of Tokyo said on Friday the 4th that it plans to create its first new faculty in nearly seventy years, the College of Design, hoping to boost foreign student enrollment.

Set to open in September twenty twenty-seven, it will be led by Miles Pennington, a British professor and the first non-Japanese person to head one of the university’s faculties. The program will offer a five-year master's degree with an emphasis on interdisciplinary learning, climate change, and global issues. Half of the 100 students per class will be international. The university hopes that by twenty forty-nine, thirty percent of its students will be foreign, which will help create an international learning environment.

Speaking of new ventures, Lifehub Inc., a Japanese startup, is launching a new all-terrain electric wheelchair in twenty twenty-six. They showed off a prototype at a press event that climbs stairs, which the company hopes to improve even further so it will be able to handle escalators as well.

The new model uses wheels on flat surfaces and caterpillar tracks for stairs and rough terrain. It adjusts the seat angle on slopes and has a forty-kilometer or twenty-five-mile range per charge. The initial model will cost one and a half million yen, which is 10,000 dollars, and will be tax-exempt. Lifehub aims to help the disabled, elderly, and injured, before expanding to bigger mobility markets.

Shifting gears, lawmakers who were elected in last October’s general election reported an average of twenty-seven million yen, which is 180,000 dollars, in financial assets and real estate, excluding stocks. This is the lowest average since records began in nineteen ninety-three, and marks a drop of about two million yen, which is 14,000 dollars, from twenty twenty-two. Taro Aso, a former prime minister, topped the list with four million dollars.

The reaction from most people was: good! Civil servants should be focused on serving the people, not on filling up their own wallets. However, this news also raised questions of how much these politicians’ assets would be worth if stocks were included in the numbers. After all, stocks can be worth thousands or even millions of dollars.

In entertainment news, police arrested Ryoko Hirosue, a forty-four-year-old actress, on Tuesday the 8th for attacking a nurse at a hospital in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan. The previous evening, she rear-ended a truck and suffered minor injuries.

Her agency stated she panicked at the hospital and apologized to the victim. Hirosue is known for her award-winning roles in the nineteen ninety-nine film The Railroad Man, or Poppoya in Japanese, and the two thousand eight film Departures, or Okuribito. After this incident, she said she would temporarily pause her entertainment roles.

In sports news, Max Verstappen, a four-time world champion race car driver, won the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday the 6th, securing his first victory of the twenty twenty-five season. He finished one point five seconds ahead of the runner-up, Lando Norris.

While racers are busy burning rubber, Tejikarao Shrine will be holding its annual Tejikara Fire Festival on Saturday the 12th. The event will take place from noon until evening, featuring food stalls, a parade with floats full of gunpowder, and lots of fire and explosions.

You can visit Tejikarao Shrine in Gifu City, central Japan. The shrine is a four-minute walk from the Tejikara Meitetsu Station or a fourteen-minute walk from the Nagamori JR Station.

To see pictures from festivals of past years, check out the festival’s official website. Link in the show notes!

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

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Mata Ne!