JAPAN: Kickbacks & more – 5th Mar 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 5th of March twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Friday the 1st, a Lower House ethics panel summoned four senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers, including former education minister Ryu Shionoya and the former chief cabinet secretary, to talk about the party giving kickbacks to its members.

The four lawmakers denied direct involvement in handling the money, but Shionoya admitted that the practice probably started over twenty years ago. He also said that former prime minister Shinzo Abe made the factions stop the kickbacks in twenty twenty-two, but after he died, many members wanted to start it back up again.

Opposition lawmakers asked if Abe knew about the improper fund handling, but Shionoya didn’t think most people knew that the funds weren’t being reported, including Abe.

Meanwhile, the former chief cabinet secretary denied any knowledge of the kickbacks.

In international news, it’s Japan’s turn to become the president of the UN Security Council for March. Countries take turns monthly for the presidency of the Council to keep things fair and balanced.

Japan’s Ambassador Kazuyuki Yamazaki spoke on the matter at a press conference in New York on Friday the 1st. She said that Japan wants to work with other countries in the UN to maintain international peace and security. Japan will host a meeting on nuclear disarmament on the 18th of March.

In regards to Gaza, Yamazaki said that it's important to respect international and humanitarian laws. The US is preparing a new resolution for a temporary ceasefire, so discussions will likely get heated.

On the homefront, a series of earthquakes have been rattling through Chiba Prefecture, located near Tokyo, since Tuesday the 27th of February, with a magnitude five quake on Friday the 1st of March. Researchers said a slow slip event has been causing the earthquakes. Slow slip events refer to when the tectonic plates shift the ground so gradually that seismographs don’t detect most of the movement.

This is not the first time there’s been a slow slip event in Japan, so scientists have a rough understanding of the phenomenon. According to a professor at Kyoto University, the slow slip event will probably last seven to ten days. However, he warned people to stay alert for about a month in case the earthquakes get worse.

Meanwhile, on Saturday the 2nd, the Lower House passed a budget bill for the next fiscal year. They did not have an easy time deciding. Many lawmakers argued over the size of the budget, which totaled about 746 billion dollars. One member of the Constitutional Democratic Party implied that the government’s financial situation would be in a better place if not for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s tax-evading kickbacks. She said that the ruling party was trying to force the budget through.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that the budget is also going toward helping the survivors of the Noto Peninsula earthquake, and they need the budget passed as soon as possible.

The budget committee voted to approve the budget, and the Lower House session later in the day also gave their approval.

In a tragic story, a fishing boat ran aground an island south of Tokyo in the Izu island chain. One of the crew members, a man in his sixties, died. The Coast Guard rescued the other twenty-four crew members, including five Japanese nationals, from the 379-ton tuna fishing boat. The boat reported that its engine stopped on Sunday the 3rd and started drifting, leading it to run aground. A few hours later, the boat tilted and one of the crew members fell overboard. The Coast Guard recovered the missing crew member’s body on Monday the 4th.

That wasn’t the only sad news to come out this week. Zhengqi, the daughter of Chinese human rights activist Tang Jitian, had a funeral in Tokyo on Saturday the 2nd. Zhengqi went to Japan to go to university in twenty nineteen but passed away from meningitis last month at the age of twenty-seven.

Her father Tang wanted to visit Japan to attend the funeral, but Chinese authorities stopped him from leaving the country. They said he couldn't leave because of national security concerns. Attendees included Zhengqi's mother and other supporters. They mourned her passing and wished that the Chinese government had allowed Tang to say goodbye.

Moving on to science, Kyoto University Hospital announced on Monday the 4th that it conducted the world’s first successful simultaneous lung and liver transplant from living donors. The eighteen-hour surgery took place last November on a ten-year-old boy with a serious congenital disease. Both of his parents donated part of their lungs and his grandfather donated part of his liver. The boy has since been in recovery, relearning to walk. The hospital released him this month.

There have been twenty other lung and liver transplants in the world, but this was the first time the donors were alive and not in a vegetative state. The professor in charge of the surgery said that this operation shows that it’s possible to successfully transplant into patients with many organs damaged.

Speaking of notable achievements, a team of botanists recently discovered a new plant genus. A genus is a taxonomic rank between family and species, which means it's a more notable discovery than a new plant species since one genus can branch into many species. It's been almost a century since Japan made such a discovery.

Someone first spotted the plant in twenty twenty-two in Kagoshima Prefecture. When botanists studied it, they initially thought it was similar to a species of fairy lanterns, but the flowers and the DNA of this new plant had some significant differences. They decided to call the plant mujina no shokudai or badger's candleholder, because large parts of the plant hide underground like badgers that burrow in the soil.

While botanists celebrated their discovery, former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama celebrated turning one hundred on Sunday the 3rd. As a sort of birthday present, alumni from the university he attended in nineteen forty-three compiled newspapers published on his birthday, the 3rd of March, for the past 100 years.

He became prime minister in nineteen ninety-four and was in charge in nineteen ninety-five when a massive earthquake killed 6,000 people. Then, two months later, a cult killed fourteen people on the Tokyo subway with sarin gas. Despite having such an eventful term as minister, he didn’t let it destroy his positive attitude. He told reporters the secret to a long life is to spend time with family and take things easy.

However, if your idea of taking things easy means hiking up Mt. Fuji, just be warned that you might have to pay more this year. On Monday the 4th, Yamanashi Prefecture's local assembly unanimously passed an ordinance requiring climbers on the Yoshida Trail to pay an extra fee of 2,000 yen or thirteen dollars starting from the 1st of July. That’s on top of the current seven-dollar fee, which will bring the total to twenty dollars.

In addition to the fee, Yamanashi officials will put up a gate at the trail’s fifth station to limit the number of climbers per day. Both the fee and the gate will hopefully help the environment and prevent accidents by ensuring the trail doesn’t get overly crowded.

Finally, with cherry blossom season just around the corner, many cities are preparing events to celebrate, such as the Fukui Cherry Blossom Festival in Fukui, the capital city of Fukui Prefecture. The city will set up lights along the Asuwa River and around JR Fukui Station from the 23rd of March until the 7th of April. There will also be food stands, performances, and more.

Aaaaand that’s it for this week.

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Mata Ne!