JAPAN: Distrust in Mainstream Media & more – 30th Jan 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 30th of January twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

In a follow-up to last week’s show, Koichi Minato, now former president of Fuji TV, resigned on Monday the 27th in response to the public backlash for how it handled an alleged sexual misconduct incident of one of its employees, Masahiro Nakai, an ex-member of the boy band SMAP. Kenji Shimizu, an executive from Fuji TV’s parent company, Fuji Media, will replace him as president, and pledged to prioritize human rights and implement preventive measures.

It may be too little, too late, though. This incident fueled the distrust of mainstream media growing in many Japanese people, especially the younger generation. Many believe that this incident with Fuji TV is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption in big media companies.

Fuji TV has been around since nineteen fifty-seven and has shown many beloved anime and shows over the years. For some, this makes the betrayal and disappointment even worse.

Building off of public opinion regarding Fuji TV, Shiori Ito, a key figure in Japan's MeToo movement, spoke up after Fuji TV’s president resigned, criticizing Japanese media for failing to properly report sexual assault cases. She pointed out that when the story on Nakai first came out, the media downplayed the allegations by using terms like trouble, a word that implies both sides have some blame, including the victim of the assault.

She also talked about how survivors of sexual assault face severe online harassment, and that the media and justice system try to protect those in positions of money or power instead of victims.

Ito has been calling out media hypocrisy and their tendency to victim blame and shame for years. In twenty nineteen, she won a civil case against a TV reporter who raped her. She also has a documentary, Black Box Diaries, that analyzes the system’s failures in handling sexual violence cases.

The media isn’t the only one downplaying crimes. On Monday the 27th, Hands, a Japanese retailer, announced that it experienced a data breach, where an unknown group of hackers stole the data of over 120,000 customers through its Hands Club App, used for rewards and coupons. Stolen data included names, home and email addresses, phone numbers, and passwords.

However, the company first discovered the data breach on the 2nd of December, twenty twenty-four, and did not inform customers until this week, when they sent out a blanket email and asked them to change their passwords, followed by a small announcement. Many users on Twitter criticized this, asking why they are only hearing about this now when so much important data was stolen.

Hands said that they have since improved security measures and are working with the police to find out who is behind the data breach.

On a more positive note in tech, Japan will conduct its first trial of an electric aircraft for cargo transportation this summer. Four entities, including two Japanese companies, one US startup, and Kitakyushu’s city government, partnered for this venture, hoping to decarbonize the shipping industry and get this technology commercialized by twenty twenty-six.

The airplane can fly more than 400 kilometers or 250 miles before needing to recharge. The transport ministry has already approved the upcoming trial, during which the plane will make a round trip between Kitakyushu and Miyazaki airports, both in southern Japan. The trip is 280 kilometers or 170 miles and will take roughly two hours each way.

Let’s move our attention northeast to Yashio, Saitama Prefecture, since a truck and its driver fell into a sinkhole ten meters (or thirty-three feet) deep on Tuesday the 28th. As of Wednesday the 29th, rescue operations are still ongoing. While they managed to lift out the truck’s back, the cab is still trapped, and the flooding from groundwater and sewage is only making things more difficult.

That same day on Wednesday, a second sinkhole opened up nearby, roughly the same length and width but not as deep, and it may have damaged underground gas pipes. Authorities issued an evacuation advisory to around 200 nearby households because they were worried there might be a gas leak.

On Thursday the 30th, the ground between the two sinkholes collapsed, making it one giant hole. Officials said there could be more cave-ins, and that it will take a while to repair the broken sewage pipe.

In an update to a business-related story from previous shows, Ancora Holdings Group, a financial management firm with a zero point eighteen percent stake in US Steel, is trying to block Nippon Steel’s fifteen billion dollar takeover of the American company. The firm said that the CEO and the board of US Steel only wanted the sale for personal financial gain, and then nominated nine independent directors to replace the CEO and board. Ancora also wanted to focus on improving US Steel instead of selling it.

The Biden administration previously blocked the deal, and Donald Trump, the new US President, also opposes the sale. US Steel and Nippon are currently challenging the decision in court while US Steel accuses Cleveland-Cliffs, a rival company, of sabotaging the merger through anticompetitive actions.

Despite the opposition, US Steel insists the Nippon deal is beneficial for the industry and workers.

Speaking of US business, Nissan Motor plans to cut nearly 2,000 manufacturing jobs in the US and reduce vehicle production by twenty-five percent to restructure business before possibly merging with Honda.

The automaker will shut down one assembly line at a Tennessee plant in April and another line at a Mississippi plant in the fall. Nissan will also be changing its electric vehicle plans, and will make four models instead of five, aiming to finish production by twenty twenty-eight or later instead of twenty twenty-six.

Nissan’s North American sales have declined by forty percent since twenty seventeen, and its operating profit turned negative in late twenty twenty-four. Additionally, if President Trump imposes twenty-five percent tariffs on Mexico like he proposed, it could severely impact Nissan, which exports 200,000 vehicles annually from Mexico to the US.

While Nissan lags behind on electric cars, Daihatsu, Toyota, and Suzuki just announced that they would be rolling out new mini-commercial electric vehicles in fiscal twenty twenty-five. The three Japanese car makers developed these vehicles together. Daihatsu and Suzuki pooled their expertise on making small cars and Toyota threw in their electric vehicle technology.

Daihatsu will manufacture the new mini-cars, but all three companies will sell them under their own names.

For a bit of cultural news, the Mekari Jinja shrine in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, southern Japan, held a centuries-old ritual on Wednesday the 29th, the Lunar New Year Day, praying for safe sailing and a plentiful catch of fish. The tradition is over 1,800 years old, and has Shinto priests collecting a type of seaweed called wakame, which is believed to bring good luck, from the nearby Kanmon Straits before dawn.

The priests wore traditional attire and used sickles to cut the seaweed, which they put in a pail to offer at the shrine’s altar.

Many people came to watch the ritual, as Fukuoka Prefecture has deemed it an intangible folk cultural asset.

And to close this edition, Yuji Suzuki, a thirty-four-year-old Japanese adventurer nicknamed Gump, completed a 6,000-kilometer or nearly 4,000-mile journey on foot from Kenya to South Africa, pulling a 100-kilogram or 220-pound rickshaw. He started his journey in July and arrived in Cape Town on Sunday the 26th and thanked his supporters, saying their encouragement fuels his nine-year global travels.

Suzuki has undertaken similar feats over the years, including pulling his cart from China to India, across Europe, and the United States.

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

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Mata Ne!