JAPAN: Governor of Fukui Resigns & more – 27th Nov 2025

Konnichiwa from Islington! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 27th of November twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

Let’s kick off this edition with an update to the rising tensions between Japan and China that we have been covering these past two weeks. On Friday the 21st China sent a letter to the UN accusing Japan of violating international law by threatening armed intervention over Taiwan, referring to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remark from a couple of weeks ago. However, Japan responded on Monday the 24th, saying that its defense policy is strictly passive.

Many online supported Japan, saying that it has every right to choose who it wants to be allies with. Even though China has encouraged its citizens not to travel to Japan and has even banned some Japanese imports, many Japanese businesses and residents have pretty much shrugged their shoulders in response. Some have even said that they’d like it if there were fewer Chinese tourists because there has been too much overtourism lately anyway.

Other international relations are doing much better. Prime Minister Takaichi went to her first G20 Summit in Johannesburg over the weekend and met with fellow leaders, many for the first time. She shared photos online, including a warm greeting with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and spoke with eighteen leaders on the summit’s first day. Some of these included Britain’s Keir Starmer, plus Germany’s Friedrich Merz and India’s Narendra Modi.

Officials said Takaichi made a lot of progress in strengthening relationships with other countries.

While Takaichi rises, another political figure, Tatsuji Sugimoto, the governor of Fukui, falls. He said on Tuesday the 25th that he would resign after admitting he sent sexually harassing messages to multiple staff members. The sixty-three-year-old initially tried to downplay his actions while officials investigated, but he said he now accepts full responsibility for severely damaging public trust.

An independent lawyer surveyed about 6,000 staff on possible harassment, with results expected next year.

Tragically, on Monday the 24th, a man stole a car from a dealership and ran through a crosswalk, injuring ten people and killing one. Of those injured, one went to the hospital in critical condition. The car then crashed into a guardrail and the driver ran away.

Tokyo police detained a suspect. They are currently questioning him, but he has so far denied being the driver.

In a quick update to a story from last week, city officials in Oita City, southwestern Japan, confirmed on Saturday the 22nd that the fire that destroyed around 170 buildings had been put out.

And as if the city hadn’t suffered enough, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit Oita and nearby Kumamoto Prefecture on Tuesday the 25th. Magnitude five is strong enough to make it difficult for people to walk and may cause minor property damage. This time, a senior citizen fell down and got injured, but no property damage. The Meteorological Agency said that people should stay on alert for the next week or so since another quake could hit.

The last time the region had an earthquake that strong was back in January twenty nineteen, so it caught a lot of people off guard.

In tech news, JR Central, the railway company, recently said it will test an AI-based multilingual information service at JR Shinagawa Station in Tokyo from the 15th of December to mid-March. Foreign visitors can scan a QR code to access JRTok-AI, a chatbot that can help users learn about things like ticket purchases and large-luggage rules.

The system supports English, Chinese, Korean, French and Spanish, provides location-based information, and offers English commentary on regional history and culture along the route. JR Central said that, depending on how the test works out, they may expand the service.

Switching gears to a business, Vandana Hari, a global energy analyst, recently wrote that liquefied natural gas or LNG will likely experience a huge increase by twenty thirty, and Asian countries, including Japan, should try to take advantage of it. This may lead to lower prices and support cleaner energy, but it’ll be harder for some countries to afford in terms of infrastructure.

Places like Japan and South Korea should be fine, since they already have plenty of storage and pipeline infrastructure ready to use LNG, but that’s not really the case with many Southeast and South Asian countries. A lot of countries might also not have good contracts to buy LNG, which can be another problem.

Because of this, Hari said that even though there will be more supply of LNG, it may not lead to lower costs for the everyman.

Meanwhile, Asahi Group Holdings said on Thursday the 27th that almost a cyberattack back in September may have leaked two million pieces of personal data. The company said the stolen information could include addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of employees and customers.

In October, the hacker group Qilin said they were the ones behind it, allegedly using stolen passwords to repeatedly access Asahi’s computer system. The company said it has since improved its security. It also reported all of its findings on the cyberattack and potential data leaks to the government.

Order and shipment systems will resume gradually starting in December.

On that note about tightening security, Japan said on Wednesday the 26th that it plans to tighten screening of foreign residents by improving the government’s internal communication. To do this, they will include information on unpaid taxes and social insurance in the My Number system (the Japanese version of social security numbers). Starting in twenty twenty-seven, immigration authorities will be able to view this data directly, potentially denying residency renewals to those with nonpayment histories.

The government also hopes to stop foreign nationals who don’t have residence status from receiving childcare allowances. Officials are also thinking of creating other measures, like requiring foreign visitors to enroll in private medical insurance before entering the country.

In sports news, Sekiwake Aonishiki, a Ukrainian sumo wrestler, won the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament on Sunday the 23rd, beating out Hoshoryu, a grand champion. He will likely be promoted to the second-highest rank in sumo wrestling, called ozeki. Raised in western Ukraine, Aonishiki began sumo at age seven and moved to Japan in twenty twenty-two after Russia’s invasion. He trained at Kansai University and later joined the Ajigawa stable.

His fans praised his dedication, humble nature, and resilience, overcoming war-torn beginnings to get where he is today.

In science, on Friday the 21st, an employee of the Anan City Science Center in Tokushima Prefecture, western Japan, took a video of what looked like several shooting stars very close together, called a meteoroid cluster. He wasn’t the only one who saw it, as people across western Japan and even a security camera could see the cluster.

Meteoroid clusters happen when bits of space dust break apart just before entering the atmosphere, but since it’s so rare, scientists still don’t know a lot about them. This marks only the tenth or so case of meteoroid clusters recorded in the world.

Finishing off this edition with some entertainment news, the film Kokuho, directed by Lee Sang-il and centered on the life of an actor in a type of traditional Japanese theater called kabuki, has earned seventeen billion yen, which is 108 million dollars, until Monday the 24th. This makes it the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film ever. Distributor Toho announced that it has surpassed the previous record set by Bayside Shakedown 2 in two thousand three.

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

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