JAPAN: New prime minister & more – 3rd Oct 2024

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 3rd of October twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Friday the 27th of September, Shigeru Ishiba, the former defense minister, won the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, presidential election. On Tuesday the 1st of October, he became the new prime minister of Japan and the old Cabinet resigned.

Shortly after becoming elected, Ishiba announced his new Cabinet, which included some former members, such as Yoshimasa Hayashi as Chief Cabinet Secretary, and new ones like Takeshi Iwaya, a former defense minister, as the foreign minister.

Ishida also said that he would call a snap election on the 27th of October, the first since twenty twenty-one. Twelve days before the election begins, the Diet will dissolve, and citizens will vote for new or incumbent lawmakers for all 465 seats in their local regions.

Ishida said he wanted the public to choose their new administration. He likely did so because after the political slush fund issue, many people don’t trust the lawmakers in office. So, essentially, he implied this is the best way to clean house.

In international news, China launched an intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday the 25th of September, but told Japan’s Defense Ministry on Monday the 23rd that there would be falling “space debris.” They did not specifically mention a missile launch in their message to Japan.

This followed China and Russia’s recent airspace breaches and military activities. On Monday the 23rd of September, a Russian military patrol plane flew over the Sea of Japan near Hokkaido, prompting Japan's Air Self-Defense Force to fire a signal flare. Additionally, in August, a Chinese military spy plane intruded into Japanese airspace near Nagasaki. China and Russia have also been doing joint naval drills near Japan.

The defense ministry said it does not feel safe since these incidents happened very close together. Japan is working with the US to monitor these military activities.

If you are interested in this story, you can check out the Rorshok Ocean Update, where we cover all things Ocean. The link is in the shownotes!

On that note about working with the US, Shigeru Ishiba, the new prime minister, criticized security deals Japan has with the US, particularly the Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA.

During his campaign, Ishiba talked about a two thousand four U.S. military helicopter crash in Okinawa, where SOFA prevented Japanese authorities from investigating. After winning the election on Friday the 27th of September, Ishiba informally published a document on a US research firm’s website saying he wanted to change SOFA and the Japan-US Security Treaty. Currently, the treaty says that the US must defend Japan but Japan doesn’t have to defend them. In exchange, Japan provides the US with military bases. This is different to treaties the US has with South Korea and the Philippines, which are about mutual defense.

Ishiba argued that the treaty was not fair to Japan, but he has faced criticism for putting out an informal publication that might hurt Japan-US relations.

Ishiba’s goals involve more than just treaty revision. Before he was elected, he said he wanted to create an Asian NATO where Asian countries could make political and military alliances to improve security in the Indo-Pacific region. However, on Wednesday the 2nd, Japan’s foreign and defense ministers said they were not working on any Asian NATO proposal after both the US and India rejected the idea.

India’s foreign minister expressed doubts, and US officials also said it was too soon to discuss such an idea. Japan's foreign minister noted that creating a mutual defense system in Asia would be challenging. The defense minister said that the prime minister hadn’t told the Cabinet to prepare such a proposal.

In an update to a story from previous shows, Motohiko Saito lost his post as the Hyogo governor on Monday the 30th of September, but said that he will run for re-election. He did not voluntarily resign, but his job ended after the prefectural assembly passed a unanimous no-confidence motion against him, following accusations of power abuse and the death of a whistleblower.

If Saito had resigned and then was re-elected, he would only have been able to stay in office until July twenty twenty-five. However, since he did not resign, if he is re-elected, he will get a new four-year term.

He insists that he wants to work for the younger generation, but many people commenting on the matter online criticized his past corruption, with some even saying the police should lock him in prison.

Speaking of prison, the Shizuoka District Court retried a murder case from nineteen sixty-six on Thursday the 26th of September, for Iwao Hakamada, a former professional boxer who holds the world record for longest death row sentence at fifty-six years. They found him not guilty.

In the original case, someone killed four people, Hakamada’s then-boss, his wife, and two children. Hakamada found them and told the police. The police tortured Hakamada for twenty-three days and forced him to sign a confession.

In two thousand eight, new DNA evidence emerged showing that the blood found at the scene of the crime was not Hakamada’s,as the police had previously stated. It took several appeals and retrials between two thousand eight and twenty twenty-four before the Shizuoka District Court finally found him not guilty.

In other news, a 500-pound US-made bomb went off at the Miyazaki Airport on Wednesday the 2nd of October. The explosion left a 23-foot-long, 13-foot-wide, and 3-foot-deep hole on a taxiway. Fortunately, the explosion did not injure anyone or damage any airplanes.

The airport canceled or rerouted over eighty flights as they had to close the runway to investigate.

Meanwhile, on Friday the 27th of September, the Justice Ministry granted special stay permission to over eighty percent of the foreign children born and raised in Japan but not eligible for resident status. As of June, 263 children qualified, with 212 children receiving permission. This included those of elementary to high school age whose families had no criminal history and did not enter the country illegally.

Ryuji Koizumi, the justice minister, emphasized this was a one-time measure and said people had to make sure foreign children had legal status. However, there are citizens who want the government to have fewer restrictions so more people can apply and get special stay permission.

In business news, Toyota Motor announced that they would no longer sponsor the Olympics or Paralympics, deciding not to renew its contract with the International Olympic Committee when it expires at the end of the year. Additionally, later in the week, Panasonic and Bridgestone, two more major Olympic sponsors in Japan, also said they would not renew their sponsorships.

Bridgestone said they wanted to change strategies, while Panasonic didn’t give a reason at all. However, Toyota’s chairman said he was concerned about the increasing political undertone of the games. Both Toyota and Bridgestone had been sponsors since the mid-twenty tens, but Panasonic had sponsored the Olympics since nineteen eighty seven.

Despite ending the sponsorship, Toyota plans to continue supporting individual athletes and para-sports development through the Toyota Mobility Foundation.

In domestic news, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture delivered spent fuel to Recyclable-Fuel Storage Company in Aomori on Thursday the 26th of September. It was the first time Japan stored such fuel outside a nuclear power plant.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant plans to send ninety-six tons of spent fuel to the storage facility by twenty twenty-seven. The plant has been offline since twenty twenty-one because of safety violations and is almost out of room to store its fuel on-site.

The plant operators made a deal to store the fuel for fifty years, but there are concerns as they might decide to store it there permanently.

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

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