JAPAN: Party Leader Election & more – 20th Aug 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 20th of August twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Wednesday the 14th, Fumio Kishida, the prime minister, announced that he wouldn’t run for the president’s spot in the Liberal Democratic Party or LDP during the party’s election in September. The people who will vote in this election include the one million party members who pay dues to the LDP and current elected LDP lawmakers.

Kishida’s announcement is very big since the LDP is the current majority party, and in Japan, the majority party's leader almost always becomes the prime minister.

Even though many officials think Kishida could win the election, the PM said he doesn’t want to push LDP’s policies on the people when public support for the party is so low, roughly twenty-five percent for the past nine months.

Several politicians have announced their intention to run, including Shinjiro Koizumi, a former environment minister, Yoko Kamikawa, the foreign minister, Taro Kono, the digital minister, and Takayuki Kobayashi, a former economic security minister.

In other news, Osaka had a huge blackout on Thursday the 15th that knocked out power for almost 250,000 homes, 140 traffic lights, and two railway lines. The power outage made some trains up to ninety-five minutes late, which affected around 55,000 passengers. It also meant that many houses’ air conditioning stopped working, which was rough since the morning's lowest temperature was twenty-eight degrees Celsius or eighty-three degrees Fahrenheit.

Kansai Transmission and Distribution, the power operator, fixed the outage a few hours later, but is still investigating what caused it in the first place.

Osaka wasn’t the only place that had blackouts. Over the weekend, Typhoon Ampil passed by Tokyo and the Kanto region in northeastern Japan. Over 7,700 households didn’t have power on Friday the 16th, but fortunately, they restored power the next day.

Central Japan Railway stopped all bullet trains between Tokyo and Nagoya on Friday the 16th, and airlines canceled at least sixty-eight domestic flights on Saturday the 17th. This affected popular tourist spots in the area and meant that many travelers had to change their vacation plans.

Authorities issued evacuation orders in parts of Chiba and Fukushima Prefectures, and warned of landslides, flooding, and strong winds throughout the Kanto region.

Moving on, authorities in Aikawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, just south of Tokyo, created a volunteer firefighting squad to help out foreign, non-Japanese-speaking residents during disasters. The squad will help interpret and translate both during evacuation and support foreign residents in temporary shelters. The brigade is called a functional fire brigade of multilingualism. It has members from Brazil, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Peru, who speak various languages including English, Portuguese, Tagalog, and more.

Aikawa has a fairly large foreign population, with over forty-five ethnicities. Officials hope this squad will help improve local disaster management and even inspire similar efforts across Japan.

Speaking of multinational efforts, on Thursday the 15th, Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior U.S. official, said that leaders from the US, Japan, and South Korea plan to hold another trilateral summit before the end of the year. Last August, they agreed to meet every year to keep the relationship between the three nations strong. Rapp-Hooper said these meetings are even more important when there are big political changes, like Kishida’s decision not to run in the upcoming election.

The US administration hopes to keep the partnership strong, especially when it comes to issues like North Korea's nuclear and missile development.

In an update to a previous story, the Meteorological Agency lifted its megaquake advisory on Thursday the 15th but told people to stay alert just in case. They initially issued the advisory because they were worried that a recent quake in Miyazaki Prefecture might trigger a megaquake in the Nankai Trough. The government called on 707 municipalities in twenty-nine prefectures to prepare for possible evacuation. However, since the agency didn’t detect any major seismic activity in the subsequent week, they said the immediate danger had probably passed.

That doesn’t mean Japan was quake-free this week. A magnitude five and magnitude four point seven quake hit Ibaraki Prefecture, located in eastern Japan, on Monday the 19th. The Meteorological Agency said it wouldn’t cause a tsunami, but warned people to be alert for aftershocks later in the week.

Magnitude five means that the shaking is enough to cause minor property damage or temporarily interrupt power or water supplies, but won’t cause severe structural damage to modern, earthquake-resistant buildings.

In other news, police reported a huge increase in traffic accidents involving foreign drivers in rental cars near Mount Fuji. In twenty twenty-two, there were only forty-six car accidents with foreign drivers, but in twenty twenty-three, there were 417. This year, there were 340 accidents by the end of June, double the amount from the same time last year.

Fortunately, most accidents were fairly minor and involved cars hitting curbstones, fences, or other structures. Police said the rise is probably because there are a lot more tourists with foreign driver's licenses renting cars in Japan now that the government has lifted pandemic restrictions.

Police are asking rental car companies in the area to pass out flyers with Japanese traffic rules to promote safer driving.

In health news, officials issued a level one alert for mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, on Friday the 16th. Japan has a four-level scale for health emergencies. Level one is the lowest and simply asks people to be careful about getting infected if they are traveling to the countries listed in the alert. In this case, the countries listed are: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, the Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.

On a more positive note, a team of researchers from the National Cancer Center Japan and Juntendo University said they’re starting clinical trials to see if improving gut bacteria will help cancer patients who aren't responding well to immunotherapy.

Immunotherapy is used to treat cancer patients, especially those with stomach or throat cancer, but it doesn't work well for everyone. Some studies showed it doesn't work on patients who had unbalanced gut bacteria. These new trials aim to find out if transplanting healthy gut bacteria into a patient's unbalanced gut bacteria will make immunotherapy treatment more effective.

Moving on to business news, Alimentation Couche-Tard, a Canadian convenience store operator, sent a takeover offer to Seven and I Holdings, the Japanese retail chain. The chain created a special committee of independent third-party directors to look at the proposal.

Seven and I hasn’t yet decided what to do about the proposal, whether they will accept, reject, or negotiate. If they accept, the Canadian company will likely need to pay at least five trillion yen or thirty-four billion dollars.

Seven and I is currently trying to focus on its main convenience store operations and put its supermarket business to the side.

Meanwhile, the government is thinking of changing its sales tax exemption system for foreigners. Currently, most goods come with a ten percent consumption tax, but stores waive this tax for foreign travelers on purchases over 5,000 yen or thirty-four dollars as long as the traveler shows their passport. This system is easier than in other countries where tourists pay the tax upfront and can later claim a refund as they’re leaving Japan.

However, after investigations found mega-retailers like Takashimaya and Kintetsu had been waiving the tax for foreign residents as well, who should be paying consumption tax, officials think they may have to change the system to prevent further abuse.

Officials may change the system so it’s similar to other countries where everyone pays the tax and simply gets a refund at the airport. If they do, the changes will likely be included in the twenty twenty-five tax reform.

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

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Mata Ne!