JAPAN: New LDP Head & more – 9th Oct 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 9th of October twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Saturday the 4th, Japan elected Sanae Takaichi as the new leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which means that she will likely become the country’s first-ever female prime minister. Her position as prime minister won’t become official until the Diet vote later this month, but it’s almost certain that she will become the country’s new leader.

Once she becomes prime minister, Takaichi will meet with US President Donald Trump on the 28th of October. She said she hopes to build trust with Trump through Shinzo Abe’s, the former prime minister’s, policies, since Trump and Abe had a good relationship during Trump’s first presidency.

Takaichi will also likely attend the upcoming Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summits.

Next up, on Monday the 6th, three scientists, Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi, won the twenty twenty-five Nobel Medicine Prize for their research on peripheral immune tolerance, which is the part of the immune system that stops the body from attacking itself, so that it only attacks harmful viruses and cells. This research is important because it can help develop new treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Sakaguchi is a Japanese professor at the University of Osaka. The university celebrated his accomplishment the following day on Tuesday the 7th.

You’d think that would be Japan’s only Nobel win this year, but no! On Wednesday the 8th, Susumu Kitagawa won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two other scientists in his team, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi. The three developed metal–organic frameworks, which are materials with porous structures that can store and filter gases. These materials are used in carbon capture, water harvesting, and toxin storage.

You may recall from previous shows that a number of battery fires have made the headlines. Media outlet NHK reported on Thursday the 2nd that at least 100 fires in Japan between early twenty twenty-one and August twenty twenty-four were caused by recalled products containing lithium-ion batteries. The Consumer Affairs Agency linked about 400 fires to this type of battery, which is used in devices like portable chargers, e-bike batteries, and laptops.

Some incidents caused injuries, including a July twenty twenty-four Tokyo train fire from a charger that had already been recalled. Masato Nakamura, a lawyer who deals with a lot of these types of cases, said that a lot of times recalls don’t actually reach the people who bought them. NHK said that either the makers or the sellers of products decide how to notify people about recalls, and they’re not necessarily good at it.

At least the organizers of the World Expo in Osaka, western Japan, seem to be good at their job. They announced on Tuesday the 7th that by the time the expo closes next week, it will likely have made a surplus of twenty-three to twenty-eight billion yen, which is about 150 to 185 million dollars.

Over twenty-four million people have visited the expo, boosting ticket sales and buying merchandise featuring the expo’s mascot, Myaku-Myaku.

Elsewhere in Osaka, police arrested Vietnamese business owner Tran Thi Thu Huyen and her husband, Tomoyuki Takeshige, on Monday the 6th. They allegedly hid about forty-five tons of Vietnamese rice as mung beans to get out of tariffs and inspections.

The couple reportedly sought to profit from Japan’s recent surge in rice prices by selling the imported Vietnamese rice, pretending it was made in Japan. Customs officers first uncovered the trick in June after finding rice hidden behind mung beans in two containers. Huyen’s company had falsely declared similar shipments over twenty times this year, so the police are investigating and conducting raids on the company.

Speaking of raids, police and hunters are currently looking into a bear attack that happened in central Japan. The incident occurred on Sunday the 5th at Shirakawa-go, a World Heritage village in Gifu Prefecture and a major tourist hotspot. The bear cub appeared near a bus stop and injured a forty-year-old Spanish tourist. It surprised many, first because it was so close to such a popular destination, but also because most bear attacks have taken place in the north, not in central Japan.

Authorities have closed walkways near the incident as police and hunters search for the animal.

In weather news, Typhoon Number 22 hit southern Japan on Thursday the 9th. It caused 207 millimeters or eight inches of rain, a record amount for the Izu islands, an island chain 170 miles (270 km) south of Tokyo.

Hundreds of people have fled to evacuation centers, but one person who was fishing near Oiso, Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo, died.

Also in Kanagawa, Tokyu Railways says a programming error in its automatic train control system likely caused the collision between two trains on Sunday the 5th in Kawasaki City, which disrupted service for about 650,000 passengers.

The system has a failsafe that should make the train brake automatically when it detects another train ahead. However, an error prevented the train from braking, which caused a train bound for Shibuya to hit an out-of-service train partially sticking out onto the main track.

The company is now checking similar systems in its other trains and has promised preventive measures after apologizing for the accident.

In business news, Mercari, an online flea market, held a press conference on Thursday the 9th, saying that it may restrict listings of certain high-demand products to stop malicious reselling. This move follows the recent incident where people bought McDonald’s Happy Sets just to get Pokémon cards and resell them, creating lots of food waste as resellers threw the meals away.

The policy update marks the first revision to the company’s basic terms since twenty twenty-one, when reselling of pandemic-related goods became an issue. The new rules will let Mercari forbid listings of items with unethical sales practices. Mercari also said it will continue updating its rules so that people can trust its online marketplace.

In other news, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which consists of thirty-eight countries, including Japan, Australia, the US, and many European nations, released a report on Tuesday the 7th that found that, in twenty twenty-four, Japanese teachers continued to work the longest hours among the organization’s countries.

Elementary teachers averaged fifty-two hours per week and junior high teachers fifty-five, both about thirteen hours above global averages. However, it is a slight improvement compared to twenty eighteen, when Japanese teachers worked an average of four hours longer, which may be partly thanks to government reforms capping overtime. Japan’s long teacher hours mostly come from paperwork and extracurricular activities like clubs.

Finishing off this edition on a lighter note, Shimada City in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, will be holding one of the most unique festivals in the country: the Shimada Obi Festival. For those who don’t know, Obi are traditional women’s belts worn with a kimono.

This festival, which has been going on for over 300 years, features a parade with performers, both men and women, wearing fancy robes and pulling huge decorative floats. One of the most distinctive parts of the parade is the men’s costumes, which have elaborate, colorful obi tied to wooden swords strapped to their backs and waist.

The parade is free for anyone to watch and will take place from Saturday, the 11th, to Monday, the 13th in the Hontori neighborhood, right around Shimada Station.

To learn more, check out the official website with the link in the show notes!

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

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Mata Ne!