JAPAN: Murder on Livestream & more – 13th Mar 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 13th of March twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

In an update to a story from the past two shows, as the forest fires in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan, began to die down, the city lifted the evacuation orders for nine districts by Saturday the 8th, allowing 1,000 people to return home.

Firefighters managed to stamp out the last of the fires on Sunday the 9th. The next day, on Monday the 10th, the city lifted evacuation orders for the remaining 3,000 residents.

Even though many were relieved to finally be back home, not everyone had a house to return to. The wildfires damaged 210 buildings, including 102 houses. Seventy-six houses were completely destroyed. So officials said that they would keep evacuation shelters open and prepare temporary housing for those who lost their homes.

In a shocking incident, Airi Sato, a twenty-two-year-old live streamer, was stabbed on Tuesday the 11th during a live broadcast on a Tokyo street in eastern Japan. Sato later died from her injuries at a hospital.

Police arrested the perpetrator, forty-two-year-old Kenichi Takano, at the scene, and later charged him with murder. He had allegedly tracked Sato via her livestream as he recognized her location at a train station. Takano said that he had lent her over two million yen, which is 13,000 dollars, which she did not repay.

Investigators believe the crime was driven by one-sided resentment, though Takano said he didn’t mean to kill her.

Next up, the police arrested two Japanese men on Tuesday the 11th for overstaying their visas in Thailand. NHK, a news organization, reported that they are linked to a major scam operation in Myanmar. This is the same operation that kidnapped a teenage boy to scam people in Japan, which we reported on in a previous show.

Last month, the Japanese government requested assistance from Thai authorities because it suspected that the two men were involved in scams. The Japanese believed they had been working at the same facility where the teenage boy had previously been rescued.

The men admitted to staying in Thailand illegally for over a month. However, authorities are investigating whether they were willingly a part of the scams or if they were coerced.

Last week we reported that a pair of bullet trains that were connected with an electronic device suddenly decoupled mid-travel. Despite that, JR East, the train company, announced that it would resume coupling operations on Friday the 14th, just a week after the decoupling accident, using a mechanical locking device to keep the trains from separating.

On Twitter, this was put into question, with many wondering why the company was coupling trains again when they haven’t yet found out why the trains decoupled in the first place, questioning their safety. However, some were happy with the company’s solution, saying that a mechanical locking device is more secure than an electric one.

Meanwhile, Japan plans to export 350,000 tons of rice by twenty thirty, nearly eight times what it exported in twenty twenty-four. The government hopes to use exports as a reserve supply and support farmers through subsidies. Domestic rice demand is declining, while production costs remain high. Efforts to reduce costs include expanding farmland and promoting smart agriculture.

However, those online asked who, exactly, would be doing the farming, as most younger people don’t plan to be rice farmers. Another question was raised, asking why Japan wasn’t instead focusing on making current rice prices cheaper, given that costs have doubled compared to last year.

Speaking of exports, the US’s twenty-five percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports took effect on Wednesday the 12th. While many on social media have been upset at the US’ tariffs, this particular one is not likely to hit Japan hard. Only three percent of Japan’s steel exports last year went to the US. It also only shipped a small percentage of its aluminum to the country.

On the same day, the Marine Self-Defense Force or MSDF said that it recovered multiple bodies from the wreckage of two patrol helicopters that collided in April twenty twenty-four over the ocean near Torishima Island, several hundred miles south of Tokyo.

Last year, the MSDF only managed to find one body, although there had been a total of eight crew members on board. They signed a ten-million-dollar deal with the US Navy to salvage the helicopters, which had sunk to a depth of 5,500 meters or three and a half miles underwater.

The MSDF is in the process of identifying the recovered bodies.

In business news, Mainichi Shimbun, a news organization, analyzed data from a little bit over 2,000 companies and found that, on average, women are promoted to managerial positions at only a quarter of the rate of men.

Despite the twenty fifteen law requiring companies to be transparent about their gender wage gap information, some may have given small promotions to women to make it look like they were complying with the law.

While most support women’s careers in theory, the traditional norm in Japan is for women to become homemakers after having children. Some argue it’s only natural for them not to get a promotion if they cut back on hours to take care of their children, but more progressive voices say that women are forced to halt their careers due to a lack of support at home or at work.

At least not everyone is deprived of protection. The Cabinet recently approved an amended bill requiring companies to implement measures against abusive behavior from customers. The new bill lays out clear anti-harassment rules and complaint systems to handle any client or guest behavior that harms employees or the working environment.

Additionally, the bill will protect job-seeking students from sexual harassment, by having the companies create new policies. If a company doesn’t comply with the new bill, the government will offer guidance. And then, if the company ignores that guidance, its name will be disclosed, harming the company’s public image.

On a different professional note, Japanese startups are showcasing AI and emerging technologies at the twenty twenty-five South by Southwest tech show in Austin, Texas. The exhibition began on Sunday the 9th and will continue until Saturday the 15th.

This year, a record number of Japanese exhibitors are attending the show. Highlights include an AI system that recognizes emotions from voice and facial expressions, a wearable device that detects heat stroke risk by keeping track of a person’s pulse, and a compact flying robot that has better maneuverability than drones, but it can sometimes be a bit clumsy.

As cool as tech and AI are, in some sectors, it has a long way to go. The Children and Families Agency has been working on an AI system to help child welfare centers identify abuse cases. However, they recently announced they will have to delay the development because, despite pouring one billion yen, equivalent to seven million dollars, into the project, the system still has trouble figuring out hypothetical cases where a child has been severely abused, and is generally unreliable.

For now, the agency is shifting its focus to creating tools to transcribe and summarize interviews at child welfare centers. The tools will make record-keeping easier and hopefully might be useful to train the AI system.

Closing with imperial news, Prince Hisahito held his first press conference on Monday the 10th, speaking for thirty minutes without notes. He said that he wanted to gradually engage in public duties while focusing on academics. He will attend the University of Tsukuba, located in Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, known for its hands-on research opportunities, particularly in studying insects like dragonflies. Hisahito also shared a few family stories, like his father’s thorough and precise approach to cooking.

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

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Mata Ne!