JAPAN: Next LDP President & more – 28th Aug 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 28th of August twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

With Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s popularity at an all-time low, newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun conducted a survey and found that the public liked Sanae Takaichi, a former economic security minister, as the top choice for the next president of the Liberal Democratic Party or LDP. Twenty-four percent of people who voted in the survey picked Takaichi, while twenty-one percent chose Shinjiro Koizumi, the current Agriculture Minister, and only fourteen percent preferred Ishiba.

Most of the people who voted for Takaichi were younger, while older voters preferred Koizumi. Interestingly, it also tended to be men who backed Takaichi (the female candidate), while women favored Koizumi.

Overall, over half of the people surveyed wanted to hold the LDP leadership election early. Just another sign of how much people want to toss out Ishiba.

Speaking of unpopularity contests, Toyoake in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, recently proposed a very unpopular ordinance to limit residents’ leisure use of smartphones and tablets to two hours daily. If the ordinance passes, it would go into effect on the 1st of October. It wouldn’t actually punish anyone for not keeping to the two-hour restriction. The city would simply encourage healthy screen time habits, particularly for children. Toyoake’s mayor said that the ordinance recognizes smartphones as important tools but hopes to promote balanced use rather than restrict rights.

No surprise, this went semi-viral on Twitter, with many users commenting on what a bizarre proposal this was, and the city would be better off restricting overtime or saying people need to get a minimum of eight hours of sleep. However, it also raised questions about how much screen time is healthy, especially when it comes to children, as some studies suggest that too much of it can harm their development.

In unrelated news, prosecutors raided the offices of Akira Ishii, an Upper House member, on Wednesday the 27th over allegations that he fraudulently collected an aide’s state-paid salary. Investigators searched his offices in Tokyo and Ibaraki, north of Tokyo, for evidence.

Ishii is a member of the Japan Innovation Party and has served in politics since two thousand nine. Japan has a history of similar salary fraud cases despite two thousand four reforms aimed at preventing fraud in lawmakers’ aides’ wages.

There was another salary fraud case not too long ago, so many online had a similar reaction: Here we go again. Many seem quite jaded about the whole situation.

In a tragic turn, Mio Takeuchi, a three-year-old girl, died in Fukuoka City, southwestern Japan, after falling from her family’s sixth-floor apartment balcony on Sunday the 24th. Her parents and older sister were home at the time. Police believe she climbed over a one-meter or four-foot railing before landing on the building’s entrance roof. Her father, who heard a sliding window open, discovered her and called an ambulance. She suffered a severe head injury and hospital staff pronounced her dead soon after.

Though far from the same level of tragedy, a shock took place in Nagoya, central Japan, when locals found that someone had beheaded a statue of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a famous sixteenth-century warlord. A local businessman had donated the statue to the city in twenty thirteen, and it was placed on a popular shopping street.

Other statues of warlords have also been damaged in the past. The Hideyoshi statue’s neck is temporarily covered with duct tape, while the shopping street association keeps the head, which was found nearby, safe.

In business news, Mercedes-Benz’s pension trust sold its entire nearly four percent stake in Nissan Motor for almost forty-eight billion yen, which is 325 million dollars. Right after that, Nissan’s stock fell nearly six percent, its worst drop since July, reflecting investor doubts over the company’s turnaround amid weak US and China sales and recent quarterly losses of 535 million dollars.

Mercedes-Benz said it had sold the stake as part of a portfolio cleanup and not for any strategic reasons. Nissan, led by a new CEO, is trying to think of ways to cut costs, but he only recently took over, so it’s too soon to say how that will turn out.

That wasn’t all in business. Mitsubishi Corporation said on Wednesday the 27th that it wasn’t going to be a part of Japan’s domestic offshore wind projects anymore. The company said construction costs more than doubled compared with the original estimates and it just couldn’t afford it anymore. They said the main reasons for increased costs were inflation, supply chain problems, the Ukraine war, and rising rates.

The government started the project to meet renewable energy goals, and many companies placed their bids for different areas to build wind turbines. Mitsubishi had won the bid for two prefectures in twenty twenty-one, promising to build 134 wind turbines in Chiba in the east and Akita in the north.

Officials and local leaders said they were disappointed, and that cancelling like this hurt trust in the company, industry development, and job creation.

On another note, JPYC, a Tokyo startup, recently said it would launch Japan’s first yen-pegged stablecoin later this year after completing registration. The company said the coins will make it easy to have low-cost international transfers and instant payments without banks.

Next up, Mount Shinmoedake, an active volcano in Kagoshima Prefecture in the southwest, erupted on Thursday the 28th. The volcano sent ash 5,500 meters or 18,000 feet into the sky. No one saw any large rocks or lava flows, but the Meteorological Agency kept the alert at Level Three, which warns people to stay away from the crater.

Nearby towns reported heavy ash falls. Experts warned that rainfall on the ash could cause disasters like landslides or flooding — so it would be best to clean up the ash as soon as possible.

Volcanoes aren’t all that’s hot this week. Tokyo logged a record ten straight days of the temperature being thirty-five degrees Celsius (ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit) or higher, the first such streak since records began 150 years ago. This follows Japan having its hottest ever June and July.

Officials warn of rising heatstroke risks, especially for the elderly, with over 8,400 hospitalized last week. Scientists link intensifying heatwaves to climate change, which is also disrupting cherry blossom cycles and delaying Mount Fuji’s snowcap.

Meanwhile, 180 people gathered at a memorial in Tokyo on Saturday the 23rd marking eighty years since Japan’s World War Two internees were sent to Soviet labor camps. Around 55,000 died in the labor camps, but only about half of the remains have been uncovered, and Russia stopped the collection a few years ago when it first started attacking Ukraine.

Some of the memorial’s attendees said the government should fully investigate the scale and suffering of those in the labor camps because a lot was still unknown.

Closing this edition with travel news, a Kyodo News survey found that ninety-two municipalities are thinking of adding lodging taxes on hotels and traditional Japanese inns called ryokan. In total, Kyodo News surveyed around 1,700 local governments about lodging taxes. While around 500 said they’re not interested, 700 were, but hadn’t started any official processes. Ninety-two are seriously considering it. Thirty-five gained approval, and twelve of those have already implemented the tax, while the other twenty-three will do so by twenty twenty-six.

Most intend to use revenue for promotion of local tourist spots, to build facilities for tourism, preserve historical sites, and develop infrastructure for foreign visitors. Many set the tax at around 200 yen, which is just over a dollar, per night, though luxury hotels and inns may charge 1,000 yen, about seven dollars, or more.

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

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Mata Ne!