JAPAN: Fatal Stabbing & more – 19th Dec 2024

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 19th of December twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Saturday the 14th, a man fatally stabbed Saaya Nakashima, a fifteen-year-old girl, and injured her male classmate at a McDonald’s in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, southern Japan. The attacker stabbed each victim once before fleeing on foot. The incident lasted less than thirty seconds, and the suspect did not speak during the attack.

Nakashima, stabbed in the abdomen, died later at a hospital, while the boy remains hospitalized. He said the attacker was a complete stranger. The victims were heading home from cram school when they stopped at the restaurant.

Police were still searching for the suspect on Monday the 16th, and over 4,000 elementary, middle, and high school students stayed home for fear of being attacked.

On Thursday the 19th, police arrested the suspect, Masanori Hirabaru, a local forty-three-year-old, who admitted to the stabbings.

Speaking of assault, we have an update to a story from a previous show regarding Brennon Washington, a US Air Force member, who sexually assaulted an underage Japanese girl in Okinawa Prefecture, south Japan. An Okinawa court found him guilty and sentenced Washington to five years in prison.

Recall that Washington kidnapped a sixteen-year-old local and brought her to his home, where he sexually assaulted her. In court, he said it was consensual. However, security camera footage showed that even though the man couldn’t speak Japanese, the girl gestured in a way to clearly communicate she was only sixteen. She also told him to stop in English. The judge said there was no way he didn’t know she refused, and that this was evidently a malicious act.

It was this and other sexual assault cases that pushed the Japanese government to finally move the majority of US personnel from Okinawa to Guam, a US territory in Oceania, about halfway between Japan and Australia. This is something that the US and Japan had been planning to do since two thousand six.

Part of the plan to move US personnel is to relocate the US Futenma Air Station from Ginowan, a crowded urban center, to the less-populated Henoko district of Nago, both in Okinawa. Recall from shows last year that Nago had protested this relocation, saying that it would burden the locals, but the central government approved it anyway. Nago continued to fight it, but the case is almost wrapped up in the central government’s favor.

This brings us to Saturday the 14th, when the Japanese Defense Minister met with the Nago City mayor in hopes of speeding up the relocation of Futenma Air Station while assuring locals that their living conditions won’t be affected.

Not all Japan–US relations are sour, though. On Sunday the 15th, Donald Trump, the US President-elect, and his wife, Melania Trump, hosted Akie Abe, the widow of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for a private dinner at his Florida resort. Akie Abe has remained in regular contact with Trump since her husband's assassination in twenty twenty-two. During Trump’s first presidency, he and the former prime minister were rather close, playing golf together occasionally.

This is the first time Trump has met with a Japanese individual since he was elected in November. Shigeru Ishiba, the current Japanese Prime Minister and someone who often criticized Shinzo Abe, tried to have a meeting with the President-elect last month. However, Trump’s team said that he wasn’t legally allowed to meet foreign leaders before assuming office on the 20th of January. Despite that, Trump has already met with the leaders of Canada and France.

In an update to a story from previous shows, Denmark said on Tuesday the 17th that it will not extradite Paul Watson to Japan. The anti-whaling activist was wanted for breaking into a Japanese whaling ship ten years ago and was captured in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, in July. However, authorities took until now to decide what to do about Japan’s extradition request.

In an ironic twist, just as Watson got his freedom, Belarus, a country bordering both Russia and Ukraine, detained a Japanese national on suspicion of spying. The Japanese Embassy in Belarus said that Belarusian authorities told them on Monday the 16th that a train conductor saw the Japanese national filming a bridge over a railroad in the Gomel Region, which is right next to Ukraine, and reported it.

The embassy said they will not release any information about the national at this time to protect the individual’s identity, but that they are working to find out more and will do what they can to protect Japan’s citizens.

In a final bit of international news, a fiery object broke apart in the predawn sky over Kagoshima Prefecture, southern Japan, on Thursday the 19th. Experts believe it was China's Shenzhou Seventeen spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere and burning up. The spacecraft had remained in orbit after separating from the return capsule that brought astronauts back from a Chinese space station.

One person caught the sight on video near Mount Sakurajima, showing the glowing object disintegrating over several seconds. They then shared the video on social media, and you can see it for yourself on Asahi Shimbun’s website, link in the show notes!

In business news, Honda Motor and Nissan Motor are thinking about merging into a single holding company to compete with electric vehicle or EV leaders like Tesla and Chinese carmakers such as BYD. The integration may also involve Mitsubishi Motors, of which Nissan is the top shareholder, turning it into one of the world’s largest auto groups. Both companies have said they are thinking of working together but didn’t give any details about the merger.

Honda plans to invest sixty-five billion dollars in EVs by twenty thirty, targeting 100 percent EV sales by twenty forty, while Nissan aims to launch sixteen new electric models within three years. Japan’s EV sales are far behind Western markets, with less than two percent of domestic car sales in twenty twenty-two being electric.

The insurance industry is also in for some big changes. Nippon Life Insurance Company recently announced plans to buy Resolution Life Group Holdings for eight billion dollars. It will mark the biggest-ever buyout by a Japanese insurance company.

Resolution Life is based in Bermuda and operates in countries such as the US and Australia, specializing in combining insurance policies from other providers. Nippon Life plans to fully acquire the company by twenty twenty-five, hoping to boost overseas revenue since domestic sales are hurting amid Japan’s declining population.

Additionally, Nippon Life will also buy its Australian insurance unit, MLC Limited, from National Australia Bank for 500 million Australian dollars, which is 319 million US dollars, to gain full ownership.

Meanwhile, Rapidus, a semiconductor maker, is advancing toward its goal of producing advanced microchips for AI and autonomous vehicles by twenty twenty-seven. The company recently held a ceremony accepting the delivery of a state-of-the-art EUV lithography machine, essential for creating advanced semiconductors, at a plant under construction in Chitose, Hokkaido Prefecture, northern Japan.

Rapidus plans to begin trial production in April twenty twenty-five, and hopes to compete with Taiwan’s TSMC, South Korea’s Samsung, and the US-based Intel, which aim to mass-produce similar chips next year. The Rapidus CEO called this milestone a significant step toward delivering cutting-edge semiconductors globally.

Finally, Tsuneo Watanabe, a prominent figure in Japanese politics and sports, passed away at ninety-eight from pneumonia in Tokyo. Watanabe was the editor-in-chief and the chairman of the Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers. He was closely connected to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and leaders like Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former prime minister.

Watanabe also owned the Yomiuri Giants baseball team, played a key role in revising Japan’s baseball draft system, and contributed to the Japan Sumo Association’s Yokozuna Deliberation Council. He also chaired the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association from nineteen ninety-nine to two thousand three.

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

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Mata Ne!