JAPAN: Natural disasters & more – 13th Aug 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 13th of August twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Thursday the 8th, a magnitude six earthquake hit Miyazaki Prefecture, located in southern Japan. It caused a fifty-centimeter, or twenty-inch-high, tsunami in Miyazaki and a thirty-centimeter, or one-foot-high, tsunami in Kochi, a nearby prefecture.

The Meteorological Agency also warned this earthquake might trigger a megaquake in the Nankai Trough, which scientists have been watching closely since the Noto Peninsula earthquake in January. Originally, they believed that there was an eighty percent chance of a megaquake in the next thirty years, but now they think there's a one in a hundred chance it could happen much sooner than expected.

Because of that warning, Fumio Kishida, the prime minister, canceled the trip he'd planned to central Asia and Mongolia on Friday the 9th. He said that people might be anxious since this is the first time the agency issued a megaquake warning without any clear idea of when exactly it will happen. He believed that he should stay in Japan for the next week to give directions in case a megaquake hit.

Since Kishida is no longer flying to Central Asia, the countries are likely to hold the planned meetings online instead.

In other news, Nagasaki held a Peace Memorial Ceremony on Friday the 9th, but both the US and British ambassadors decided to boycott the ceremony in protest because the city of Nagasaki did not invite Israel to attend.

Shiro Suzuki, the Nagasaki mayor, said on Thursday the 8th that they didn't have any political reasons for not inviting Israel, but they didn’t want to invite a country that has said that it might use nuclear weapons. They were also worried that people would start protesting against Israel during the ceremony, which would disrupt the memorial.

However, atomic bomb survivors also asked both Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which held its peace memorial ceremony on Tuesday the 6th, to not invite Israel because of its ongoing fight with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Both cities also did not invite Russia because of its war in Ukraine; however, Hiroshima did invite Israel’s ambassador.

The atomic bombings weren’t the only memorials this past week. Monday the 12th was the thirty-ninth anniversary of one of the worst plane crashes in the world, and many gathered at the site where, in nineteen eighty-five, a Japan Airlines plane crashed in the mountains of Gunma Prefecture on its way from Tokyo to Osaka, killing 520 passengers and crew. Only four people survived the crash.

Most of the people who gathered at the crash site on Osutaka Ridge were family members of the crash victims.

Not everyone had time to mourn. That same day, Typhoon Maria hit northeastern Japan. Authorities issued evacuation orders for parts of Iwate and Aomori Prefectures, both of which recently experienced heavy rains that put them at higher risk.

More than 450 millimeters, or nearly eighteen inches, of rain fell in Iwate within forty-eight hours, a new record that forced officials to release water from the Taki Dam in Kuji City. Both prefectures reported flooding and landslides.

Some trains, such as the Akita, Tohoku, and Yamagata bullet trains, paused or delayed services. Airlines also canceled flights to and from the region.

On Tuesday the 13th, the typhoon turned into a tropical depression, but officials said heavy rains would likely continue until Wednesday the 14th and warned that there could be more landslides, flooding in low-lying areas, swollen rivers, and strong winds.

Even before the typhoon hit, it stirred up waves along the coast on Sunday the 11th, which may be what swept two men in their twenties out to sea off the coast of Ibaraki Prefecture.

A group of eight friends went swimming at Hirai Beach, and two members of the group got swept away. Police and a Japan Coast Guard helicopter conducted a search but did not find them. They are currently still missing.

You’d think that would be enough natural disasters for one week, but unfortunately not. On Friday the 9th, one day after the Miyazaki quake, a magnitude five earthquake hit Tokyo and western Kanagawa Prefecture. Railway operators suspended bullet train services for around ten minutes.

A professor at the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute said that this event was likely unrelated to the potential Nankai Trough megaquake. Instead, it was the same kind of earthquake that Kanagawa experiences every few years.

In sports news, Japan's Rei Higuchi and Tsugumi Sakurai won gold in the freestyle wrestling category on Friday the 9th. Higuchi won in the fifty-seven-kilogram or 125-pound category, which is the lightest weight category in the sport. He was also the first Japanese man to win since nineteen eighty-eight.

That same day, Ami Yuasa, also known simply as Ami, won gold in the Olympic breaking competition. This was the first time the Olympics included a breaking competition.

The Olympics also came to a close, and Japan ended up with fewer medals than in twenty twenty-one, but the most medals it has ever won in an Olympics game in a foreign country, with twenty gold, twelve silver, and thirteen bronze. It came in third place as the country with the most medals, following the US and China, who won forty gold medals each.

In an update to a previous story, a Myanmar court sentenced Hiroshi Kasamatsu, a Japanese businessman working for Aeon, a retail giant, to a year in prison on the morning of Monday the 12th for selling rice at a higher price than the military said was acceptable. Then in a surprising twist, on that same night, on Monday the 12th, the military released Kasamatsu with no explanation as to why.

Aeon confirmed that Kasamatsu was free and seemed to be in good health. The company said they wanted to make sure he was safe and back home before making any more comments to the media.

Moving on, the Defense Ministry recently said it plans to create a new research center in October to develop advanced defense equipment. This follows countries like the US, Russia, and China trying to make weapons that they hope will make changes to the very nature of combat, like drones and hypersonic missiles.

The ministry’s Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency will manage the research center. They will focus on making self-driving vehicles that can use AI to drive even in pitch-black darkness, GPS, and a submarine detection system that uses electromagnetic waves. The center will recruit over ten experts for each area of research and will likely partner with other labs, including the U.S. Defense Department's research agency.

In a different sort of political news, recent government data showed that 177 national civil servants in career-track positions quit in fiscal year twenty twenty-two, less than ten years after being hired, a record high. Most of the former civil servants said they quit because of long working hours and low pay.

The previous record of 168 was just the year before, in fiscal year twenty twenty-one. The number of people applying for government jobs this spring was also at a record low of 13,600.

Since over 100 civil servants have been quitting every year since twenty eighteen, the government is trying to think of ways to keep these people. The National Personal Authority polled over 700 first-year career-track bureaucrats and found that 80% believed that raising wages would attract more people to public service, and almost seventy percent suggested reducing overtime and late-night work.

On a more positive note, the Perseid meteor shower will occur between Tuesday the 13th and Wednesday the 14th. It is in the top three biggest meteor showers of the year, and twenty twenty-four will be the first time in three years that people will be able to easily see it from Japan since it will only be a half-moon and the moonlight won’t be too bright.

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan partnered with a news company and the University of Tokyo to show a live stream of meteor shower images on YouTube. You can find the link in the show notes!

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

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Mata Ne!