JAPAN: Healthcare Protests & more – 19th Mar 2024

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

Healthcare workers across Japan went on strike on Thursday the 14th to protest against hospitals’ refusal to raise wages. Staff at Yoyogi Hospital in Tokyo asked management to increase base wages by 40,000 yen or 268 dollars per month. The Management offered a two percent salary increase and lowered bonuses, so sixty union members held a one-hour strike, saying they should be getting wage increases on par with other industries.

146 unions from the Japan Federation of Medical Workers' Unions went on similar strikes at hospitals all over the country. The protests led to longer wait times for many patients. Union leaders said it was important to raise salaries if they wanted to keep healthcare workers.

Hopefully, hospitals get on that, because, considering the recent measles cases, now would be a very bad time to lose healthcare staff. Health officials are currently focusing on the cases linked to Kansai Airport in Osaka Prefecture, where a man from Kyoto tested positive after potentially coming into contact with infected passengers from the United Arab Emirates.

The World Health Organization confirmed in twenty fifteen that Japan was measles-free. Health officials connected all the recent outbreaks to overseas travelers. Vaccination is the best way to prevent measles, but officials are concerned that people on social media are spreading misinformation, saying either that measles is not a big deal or that people shouldn’t get vaccinated. Authorities suggest everyone listen to reliable sources.

Meanwhile on Friday the 15th, a magnitude five point eight earthquake hit just off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture. It was the biggest quake in the area since twenty twenty-two, though still not very severe.

The Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, which had gone back to releasing treated water into the ocean in late February, paused the release because of safety regulations. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, said they would inspect the plant to make sure the quake didn’t damage anything. If everything is clear, they will resume releasing the water.

TEPCO hasn’t released a report about quake damage yet, but they did find something unusual through an unrelated inspection. Last month, they began using drones to go inside the nuclear plant’s reactors and survey things. They used drones since humans can’t go inside the reactors due to the high levels of radiation. The drones took pictures, and one of the photos showed icicle-shaped objects hanging from some equipment.

Last year, the operators used a robot to survey the inside of the reactors and found nuclear fuel debris inside the water, but this was the first time they had found anything outside the water. They think the icicle-shaped objects are made of fuel debris.

TEPCO plans to collect the debris so they can study it and figure out what measures they need to take.

In other news, on Monday the 18th, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles at the Sea of Japan. Both missiles fell into the sea outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone and didn’t cause any damage. This marked the seventh time this year the country launched missiles as part of its arms development program, likely in hopes of gaining political power on the global stage.

Speaking of politics, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party held its annual convention at a Tokyo hotel on Sunday the 17th. At the convention, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida apologized to the public as the party’s former president and said that the party would look into punishing the lawmakers who accepted kickbacks. He said they would discuss things with the Party Ethics Committee and take into account the amount of money missing from the political funds reports, the lawmakers’ political and social media background, and whether the lawmakers, in Kishida’s words, “took any accountability.”

Kishida also said he wanted to lead political reformation, especially of the Liberal Democratic Party, and would travel around Japan asking the public for their opinions.

Maybe Kishida will end up using the new, extended Hokuriku bullet train line that East Japan Railway opened up on Saturday the 16th. The line connects Tokyo to Tsuruga in Fukui Prefecture, and the company held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate. Since the extended line goes through areas that the Noto Earthquake damaged, the president of the company made a speech acknowledging the hardships of the quake victims. He said he hopes the new route will help increase travel to the Hokuriku region and also make it easier for those in the region to get around.

The extension cost 1.7 trillion yen or eleven billion dollars. It ran into construction issues and labor shortages that delayed its opening by a year. However, now that it's here, it will help shorten travel times, and if things go well, the railway company may expand all the way to Osaka in the future.

On that note about business expansions, Japanese industrial firm Nippon Steel is set to acquire the company US Steel for fourteen billion dollars, but the United Steelworkers Union said they aren’t happy about it. The labor union represents the majority of employees from US Steel, and they said they want the company to be sold to another American company, such as Cleveland-Cliffs. On Thursday the 14th, US President Joe Biden agreed, saying that he wanted US Steel to remain domestically owned.

Nippon Steel responded on Friday the 15th by saying that the deal would benefit the US company, its employees, and national security. They promised increased investment, advanced technologies, and strengthened supply chains. They aren’t changing their minds about the acquisition.

Global Business Alliance President and CEO Nancy McLernon said that Biden’s statement might make non-US companies not want to invest in the US as much, which would not be good since America’s main strengths come from its ties with its allies.

Some science experiments end with a bang, much like the Kairos rocket that startup company Space One launched on Wednesday the 13th. The launch took place in Kushimoto Town, in Wakayama Prefecture, located in western Japan. Even though the company hoped to become the first private firm to put a government satellite into orbit, those hopes went up in a puff of smoke after their rocket exploded shortly after take-off.

Space One is not sure why it exploded, so they collected the rocket fragments to analyze them later. All they currently know is that a device to stop the rocket’s flight went off. They suspect there might have been a problem with the equipment, or maybe that something malfunctioned.

On a more positive note, Japan is sending a sea goddess statue to Taiwan to promote cultural exchange. The statue is of the sea goddess Mazu, whom many Asian countries revere and call upon to protect fishers and sailors. In nineteen ninety-six, Beigang Chao-Tian Temple in Taiwan helped enshrine the sixty-centimeter statue at Oma Inari Shrine, located in Oma Town, Aomori Prefecture. The town holds an annual procession every July in Mazu's honor.

Eight people from Oma, including members of the local tourism association, traveled to Taiwan with the statue, nicknamed Tenpi-sama in Japanese. The tourism association hopes to attract Taiwanese visitors by showcasing the statue at Beigang Chao-Tian, the main temple in Taiwan dedicated to Mazu.

Finally, the world of sports experienced a loss with the death of Kenjiro Shinozuka, Japan’s first race car driver to win the Paris-Dakar Rally. Shinozuka passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of seventy-five. He first began competing in the Paris-Dakar Rally in nineteen eighty-six. The rally is regarded as one of the world’s toughest endurance races and is mostly held in Africa. He finally won in nineteen ninety-seven.

He continued to take part in rallies even after turning seventy. The Japan Automotive Hall of Fame recognized his dedication in twenty twenty-two.

And that’s it for this week!

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