JAPAN: Military exports & more – 12th Mar 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 12th of March twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Wednesday the 6th, in the Diet session, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida argued in favor of easing up laws to make it easier to export military equipment to other countries. Japan has been working on creating fighter jets with Italy and the UK, and Kishida said that international joint development would be much simpler with new legal frameworks in place.

The Chief Cabinet Secretary backed him up, saying that a new framework could lower costs and strengthen Japan’s overall defense. Kenta Izumi, an opposition party leader, said they shouldn't be too gung-ho about it and must steer clear of arms exports that may lead to global conflict.

Speaking of arms, Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force and the Indian Army finished a two-week joint drill on Saturday the 9th. The training took place in the desert at a facility in Rajasthan, located in western India, with forty members from each military force. A commander from the Self-Defense Force said that they hoped to keep the Indo-Pacific region free and open.

India has been having a border dispute with China for many years, which led to a battle just four years ago. Japan has also had a lot of tensions with China in recent years, so its decision to hold the joint drill was likely a way to show China that Japan and India are working together.

Still on global news, Keizo Takemi, the Health Minister confirmed on Friday the 8th that five people flying in from the United Arab Emirates had measles. Takemi said that several countries in Europe, Southeast Asia, and other areas have had measles outbreaks and that increased international travel means there’s a chance it could spread to Japan, too. He advised the public to take precautions, such as checking the news for where outbreaks are happening, seeing a doctor if you get any symptoms, and vaccinating if needed.

Moving on, Monday the 11th marked the thirteenth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The disasters killed thousands of people and damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which resulted in a meltdown that the government is still dealing with. Many people gathered in different areas in remembrance of those who were lost.

Kishida spoke at a ceremony in Fukushima Prefecture for the occasion. He observed a moment of silence and then gave a speech about making the country more resilient against future disasters. He also said that the government would keep making sure the power plant is safely decommissioned and that he would keep talking to China to lift their import bans on Japanese seafood.

Despite Kishida’s best efforts, though, public opinion about him and his Cabinet hasn’t changed much from last month. His approval rating is still only twenty-five percent and his disapproval rating has only gone down by one percent, from fifty-eight to fifty-seven percent.

News organization NHK collected these ratings through a telephone survey and got opinions from over 1,200 people. Many of the respondents had low expectations for the Cabinet’s policies, and twelve percent said they outright didn’t trust Kishida.

Even including those who approved of Kishida, only one percent said that the Cabinet was doing a good job, and fifty percent said they weren’t fulfilling their responsibilities at all. Meanwhile, seventy-five percent of people said that the Liberal Democratic Party needed to discipline the lawmakers who received kickbacks.

In domestic affairs, six couples have filed lawsuits against the Japanese government, saying laws preventing married individuals from having a different surname from their spouse violate the Constitution. The couples reside in Tokyo, Hokkaido, and other areas, and filed lawsuits in their respective courts seeking damages.

They argued that making couples change surnames upon marriage undermines their credibility as individuals and can lead to a sense of loss or confusion about who they are as a person. But if a couple decides not to marry, they run into a lot of disadvantages, especially concerning inheritance. One of the plaintiffs didn't marry, so his partner could keep her last name, and now he can't receive legal benefits for his daughter.

The Supreme Court has faced similar cases before and dismissed them, but the plaintiffs have hope since other judges have ruled the laws unconstitutional.

That’s not the only legal hoo-hah going on. On Wednesday the 6th, a culture ministry advisory panel decided to change the Unification Church’s status from a religious organization to a religious corporation. This will allow the government to keep a much stricter eye on the church’s assets. The panel also said that according to a court ruling, the church should compensate the former members who said they were pressured into giving large donations.

Once the change goes through and the church officially becomes a religious corporation, it will have to report to the government a month in advance if it wants to get rid of any real estate and must also provide a list of assets every three months.

After the panel’s decision, the church responded that the laws for religious corporations were unconstitutional and violated religious freedom.

Meanwhile, in science, Tokyo-based startup Space One is scheduled to launch a small rocket, which will put a small government satellite into orbit. They originally planned the launch for Saturday the 9th, but delayed it for safety reasons when they detected a ship in the area near the launch pad. Then they postponed it again because they didn’t want to launch too close to the date that Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa planned to return to Earth from the International Space Station.

Despite delays, there are no problems with the rocket or launch pad, so Space One hopes to launch the rocket on Wednesday the 13th. If they’re successful, they’ll become the first private Japanese company to launch a satellite into space on their own.

Moving on to entertainment news, legendary manga artist Akira Toriyama died last week at the age of sixty-eight. He was best known for his series, Dragon Ball, but sold another bestseller called Dr. Slump in nineteen seventy eight and also helped with character designs in the popular video game Dragon Quest.

Fans worldwide reacted to Toriyama’s death, ranging from sadness at his passing to gratitude for the impact his work made in their lives. Even the Chinese government acknowledged Toriyama's passing, saying how popular he was in China. Fellow manga artist Eiichiro Oda, the creator of the world-famous series One Piece, said Toriyama was an inspiration whose legacy transcends generations and genres.

On a brighter note, this year’s Japan Academy Awards gave the Best Picture prize to the movie Godzilla Minus One on Friday the 8th. The ceremony took place in Tokyo, where Director Takashi Yamazaki said the win was all thanks to the staff, cast, and of course, Godzilla.

The Japan Academy passed out other awards, too, such as the Best Director prize given to Wim Wenders, a German who became the first foreigner to win the prize.

Even the US Academy Awards, held in Los Angeles on Sunday the 10th, acknowledged Godzilla Minus One by giving it an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. It was the first time a Japanese or any Asian-made film won that prize.

They also gave an Oscar to Hayao Miyazaki for Best Animated Feature Film for his movie, The Boy and the Heron. This marked the second time Miyazaki won the award, the first being Spirited Away in two thousand and three.

It was a busy week for prizes - and not just for movies. On Tuesday the 5th, the US-based Hyatt Foundation awarded architect Riken Yamamoto this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize. This prize can be compared to the Nobel Prize in the sense that many in the industry consider it the highest honor an architect can get. Yamamoto is the ninth Japanese person to receive the award. He has designed many incredible and avant-garde buildings, including the Yokosuka Museum of Art in Kanagawa Prefecture and a multipurpose complex called the Circle in Zurich, Switzerland.

You can see pictures of some of Yamamoto’s most famous designs on his Laureates page on the Pritzker Architecture Prize website.

And.. that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

Are you a long time listener? Did you ever want to participate on the show? Well, this is the chance you were hoping for! We want to launch a new series of interviews by our community for our community. Want more information? Email us to info@rorshok.com with the subject line "Interviews".

Mata Ne!