Japan-China Meetings & more – 21st Nov 2023

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 21st of November twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Thursday the 16th, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, or APEC, in San Francisco. Kishida said he hoped to improve Japan-China relations, secure peace and security in the Taiwan Strait, and get rid of the import bans on Japanese seafood. He also asked China to remove the buoy they put in Japanese waters.

The Chinese president agreed that they needed to work toward a mutually beneficial relationship, but later said that the treated water that the Fukushima Daiichi power plant is releasing into the ocean “will hurt all mankind.” China’s foreign ministry also said that they wouldn’t tolerate any interference between them and Taiwan.

According to economist Willem Thorbecke, the fact that the meeting took place at all was a positive sign likely spurred by China’s flagging economy. However, progress between the two countries will be slow going.

Kishida had one more side meeting at the APEC. On Friday the 17th, one day after his meeting with President Xi, Kishida met with Taiwanese envoy Morris Chang, the founder of multinational semiconductor manufacturer TSMC. Kishida said he wanted to strengthen economic ties with Taiwan and hoped for a peaceful resolution to the China-Taiwan issue. Chang said he hoped to improve Japan-Taiwan relations as well.

A couple of days before Kishida spoke with the Chinese president, on Tuesday the 14th, another meeting took place between Yasutoshi Nishimura, the Japanese Economy, Trade, and Industry Minister, and Wang Wentao, China's Commerce Minister. Like Kishida, Nishimura emphasized lifting the seafood import ban, but the two ministers discussed other issues as well, like export controls on critical minerals. They agreed to arrange more talks to keep trade and business running smoothly between the two nations.

Nishimura also said he wanted to make sure Japanese businesspeople in China would be safe. This was likely in reference to China arresting seventeen Japanese nationals in the past decade under suspicions of spying.

At least China relations are better than North Korean ones. On Tuesday, the 21st, North Korea told Japan’s Coast Guard that it will attempt to launch a satellite into orbit between the 22nd and 30th of November. North Korea had said that it would try launching satellites earlier this year in May and August, but instead of satellites, they launched ballistic missiles.

The missiles, thankfully, have all landed in the ocean so far, but that doesn’t make the launches okay. As Kishida pointed out, even if North Korea is actually just trying to launch a satellite, using ballistic missile technology to do so goes against the UN Security Council’s resolutions and endangers the people of other countries.

Japan’s Self-Defense Force said that the missile could fly over Okinawa Prefecture. It is taking precautions to destroy anything that might fall into Japan’s territory before it causes any damage.

In other international news, the Houthi rebel group in Yemen seized a cargo ship on Sunday, the 19th. A British company owns the vessel, but Japanese company NYK Line operates it. The ship was supposed to go to India after sailing through the Suez Canal, but rebels took possession of the vessel in the Red Sea. The ship has twenty-five crew members from Ukraine, Bulgaria, and the Philippines, and their safety is currently unknown.

Iran backs the Houthis, who have been launching ballistic missiles at Israel. They apparently warned they would target Israeli ships in the Red Sea and said that the Japanese-operated ship they captured belonged to Israel. Israel, meanwhile, asserts that the ship isn’t theirs and that there are no Israeli nationals aboard.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, a weekly magazine released an article on Wednesday the 15th accusing the Vice-minister of Defense of sexual harassment. The article alleged that he groped an aide in a private karaoke room in twenty thirteen. The vice-minister denied the allegations. He said that he might have met her outside the office after she said she wanted to resign but that he couldn’t remember if he met her privately.

All this happened just a week after Kishida replaced a different member of his Cabinet for dodging his taxes. If this keeps up, there will be a new replacement for every Liberal Democratic Party member before Kishida’s term is up.

You’d think that would be the end of the controversy, but no! This past week, Tokyo prosecutors began questioning political groups from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party about failure to report political funds. An anonymous source alleged that the groups failed to report around forty million yen or 267,000 dollars, in revenue from fundraising parties. This is a big no-no since the law states that political organizations have to list the names of anyone paying over 1,300 dollars and the amount paid.

Kishida acknowledged the reports on Monday the 20th, but his only response was to say that political organizations should behave responsibly.

Outside of politics, there has been other concerning news, as well. Since early November, more than twenty people have gotten sick after eating gummies containing HHCH, an unregulated synthetic compound found in cannabis. HHCH was included on the label’s list of ingredients, but one person was selling them online, and other passing them out at a festival without disclosing all the ingredients. Sources traced the gummies to WWE, an Osaka-based company.

After news broke of people getting dizzy and vomiting after eating the gummies, WWE held a press conference on Friday the 17th and said that they got the HHCH from an importer licensed by the health ministry and started making the gummies in April. They said they never sold gummies to anyone under twenty and made it clear they were not for children.

On Monday the 20th, police raided one of WWE’s offices and are currently checking the factory to see whether the gummies have any harmful substances that caused people to get sick.

Moving onto business news, a Tokyo doctor is getting ready to sue tech giant Google. The doctor received some negative comments on the Google Maps page for his clinic, which he said were unfounded. He asked Google to remove the reviews since they were harming his business, but the tech giant said they could only do that with a court order.

The Tokyo doctor is now looking to file a class-action lawsuit with other doctors who have had similar problems. His lawyer said that Google needs to have clearer standards for deleting unfair or false reviews.

In a follow-up to a story we covered on a previous show, a judge gave kabuki actor Ennosuke Ichikawa a suspended sentence on Friday the 17th. After a magazine exposed Ichikawa for bullying his fellow actors and theater staff, the actor said that he and his parents planned to commit suicide to avoid the shame of his actions. His father was also a famous kabuki actor before his retirement. In the suicide attempt, his parents died, but Ichikawa survived. He was later arrested and put on trial for assisting in his parents’ suicide.

After receiving the sentence, Ichikawa apologized for his actions and deeply regretted hurting not just his parents but those in the world of kabuki.

Speaking of which, one kabuki theater is trying to reboot its image. Kabukiza, a prestigious kabuki theater built in eighteen eighty-nine, will launch a performance in December featuring the virtual idol Miku Hatsune. A virtual idol is an animated fictional character who sings and dances. Hatsune actually began as the mascot for a voice synthesis software but has grown a large fanbase and is even featured in concerts as a holographic singer.

Kabuki actor Shido Nakamura has been co-starring with Hatsune in shows since twenty sixteen, with Hatsune’s image projected onto a screen alongside Nakamura in live performances.

In a press conference, Nakamura said that although putting on a show that uses digital-age technology in such a historic and famous theater was controversial, he wanted to try something new while protecting kabuki’s traditional aspects.

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Mata Ne!