JAPAN: Kaneda Air Base & more – 2nd July 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 2nd of July twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Friday the 28th, around 100 people protested in front of the US Kadena Air Base in Okinawa after two sexual abuse cases involving US military personnel came to light last week. Flower Demo Okinawa, a local group that advocates against sexual violence, organized the rally.

Part of the outrage sparked because the US military took too long to tell the Japanese government about the two cases. The first happened in December and the court indicted the perpetrator in March. The second happened in May. Both victims were Japanese residents.

On Monday the 1st, Hitoshi Asato, the chief of criminal investigations at Okinawa police headquarters, said that the US military had told the local police and central Japanese government about the cases, but not the local government. The police also did not want to make public statements or share too much information with Okinawa officials to protect the victims’ privacy.

However, Asato said that the police would rethink how to share information with prefectural officials since it’s important to tell local residents about US military arrests. Currently, the police give information to the governor if the governor asks for it.

Moving on, earlier this year, a fermented red rice supplement called beni-koji seemed to cause kidney disease and other health issues in consumers across Japan. When this news first broke, the media reported that five people died because of the supplement. However, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical, the company that created beni-koji, found that one of those deaths was unrelated to the supplement. Since then, families of 170 patients who died after taking the supplement contacted the company. Kobayashi Pharmaceutical told the health ministry that it is investigating sixty-five cases out of the 170 to figure out if their supplement led to the patients’ deaths.

The health ministry has directed Kobayashi on the investigation and will oversee its progress. Keizo Takemi, the Health Minister, criticized the company for only reporting the deaths after being prompted. He said that the ministry would be directly involved because of the seriousness of the situation.

Beni-koji isn’t the only drug off the market. On Friday the 28th, the health ministry banned fourteen products containing HHCPM, which is a cannabis-like substance. The ministry made this decision after an incident in April where two individuals in their twenties used the products and had to go to the hospital.

The ministry had previously banned forty-four other products because of similar incidents, with the total number of banned products reaching fifty-eight. The ministry is now thinking about regulating HHCPM to control its production and distribution more effectively.

There is some positive news. This past week, a group of researchers at the National Cancer Center Japan published a study in the Lancet medical journal about a three-drug treatment that increases the chances of survival for patients with esophageal cancer. Their study, which took over ten years from twenty twelve to twenty twenty-two and involved over 600 patients, found that adding docetaxel to the standard two-drug treatment increased the three-year survival rate from sixty-two to seventy-two percent. The two-drug treatment also had a higher rate of non-cancer-related deaths. Since twenty twenty-two, this method has been used as a standard treatment in Japan.

The US and Europe are now reviewing this treatment in their own studies. If they have similar findings, treatment for esophageal cancer may change all over the world.

On the domestic front, police found three climbers at separate locations near Mount Fuji’s crater while searching for a missing person. On Wednesday the 26th of June, they confirmed the climbers were dead. They are still investigating who they are and how they died.

The hiking trails for Mount Fuji only open in July, but some still attempt to climb before that. Shunji Takekawa, a mountain guide, said that even in June, there’s snow on the peak. So, anyone climbing the mountain needs to be prepared for winter conditions.

Officials are urging people not to climb Mount Fuji out of season. They said it’s dangerous because they can’t properly maintain the trails while they’re closed, and many lodges and aid stations are shut down off-season.

Meanwhile, on Monday the 1st, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles northeast toward the Sea of Japan. The South Korean military officials said that one crashed to the ground while the other fell into the ocean within North Korea’s territory.

The launch follows Pyongyang’s statement on Sunday the 30th, criticizing the joint military exercises between Japan, South Korea, and the US, saying they were just showing off their military strength.

That same day, Japan had a different type of launch - one for science. The Tanegashima Space Center launched its flagship H3 rocket and put an Earth observation satellite called Daichi-Four into orbit. The Daichi-Four will use radar technology to find disaster-related damage and detect volcanic activity. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries worked together to develop the H3 rocket. The agency hopes to launch six H3 rockets every year.

In financial news, the Bank of Japan will put three new banknote designs into circulation for the first time in twenty years on Wednesday the 3rd. The three banknotes are the 1,000 yen bill (which is worth around six dollars), 5,000 yen (which is, thirty-one dollars), and 10,000 yen (which is sixty-two dollars). The finance ministry warned people not to believe scammers who say the old design can no longer be used and try to take them.

However, buses’ change-counting machines don’t yet recognize the new design, so passengers will have to get change from the driver until the bus companies update their machines. Ticket vending machines have a similar problem, and the companies in charge of the machines are stressing over not being able to fix it before the design officially comes out.

Later this month, West Japan Railway will start using a robot to maintain railways. The robot has two arms that can carry up to forty kilograms or eighty-eight pounds. It can also reach up to twelve meters or thirty-nine feet high, replace parts, and trim trees. An operator will control the robot using a headset and control levers.

The company says that the robot will help improve safety in dangerous jobs, like when dealing with electric cables, and will reduce workloads for maintenance staff by about thirty percent.

In other news, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines released new guidelines on passenger harassment and abuse on Friday the 28th. The guidelines talk about nine types of unacceptable behavior, including physical assault, verbal abuse, and unreasonable demands. The airlines hope the guidelines will protect employees' rights and make it easier for them to do their jobs.

Airline employees filed 600 harassment reports last year because of customers demanding endless apologies, taking up all their time with complaints, using abusive language, and so on. An official from All Nippon Airways said the harassment can cause so much stress that staff need to take extended medical leave or resign entirely.

The airlines plan to respond strictly to future passenger harassment, even involving police, and hope other airlines will adopt similar guidelines.

And to end this show on a lighter note, Bandai Namco Holdings, a popular video game and entertainment company, said that they would put up a replica of a giant robot from the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam at the twenty twenty-five World Expo in Osaka. They showed a picture of the Gundam, which is sixteen meters or fifty-two feet tall. They said they would make the new statue from materials they took from another life-size Gundam robot that used to be on display in Yokohama.

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

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Mata Ne!