JAPAN: PM’s Controversial Gift Vouchers & more – 20th Mar 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 20th of March twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is in hot water after admitting on Friday the 14th that he gave gift vouchers, each worth almost 700 dollars, to Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers earlier this month. Political funds control laws forbid anyone from giving politicians monetary donations, including gift vouchers, for political activities.

It got even worse when Ishiba said that Fumio Kishida, his predecessor, also gave gift vouchers to other politicians while in office. However, he insisted that the way he did it complied with the law.

Members from opposing parties criticized this practice, calling it a breach of public trust. Ishiba apologized, and the lawmakers who received vouchers from Ishiba have since returned them. Currently, people are debating whether this incident counts as a violation, since technically it’s not illegal to give donations to politicians for non-political activities.

Ishiba also suffered a cyberattack on his personal website—but it looks like it didn’t have anything to do with the gift voucher incident. The website was temporarily inaccessible for several hours on Monday the 17th and difficult to access on Wednesday the 19th.

Police are still investigating, but a hacker group called Anonymous China said they were responsible. They said they launched the attack to protest the release of the water that has been treated from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

In a follow-up to a story from last week’s show, Tokyo police said that Kenichi Takano, the man who fatally stabbed live streamer Airi Sato, had lent Sato over two and a half million yen, which is 17,000 dollars, for rent and living expenses. On top of that, he tipped her 670 dollars per month.

However, when Sato did not pay back the 17,000 dollar loan, Takano filed a lawsuit demanding repayment. They met via a streaming app in August twenty twenty-two.

Takano told the police that he wanted to hurt her for not paying him back and for cutting off contact with him.

That’s not the only update we’ve got. Recall that last year in July, Belarus authorities arrested Japanese citizen Masatoshi Nakanishi for allegedly spying on Belarus when they found him taking photographs near a military installation. On Monday the 17th, Belarus courts sentenced Nakanishi to seven years in prison, saying that he took 9,000 photos of military airfields, railway lines, bridges, and more near the Belarus-Ukraine border. The court also fined him 6,700 dollars.

The trial took two months, and Belarus denied Japan's request to attend. The Viasna Human Rights Center in Belarus said that Nakanishi was a political prisoner. Many on social media agreed, accusing Belarus of being a puppet of Russia. Some even wondered whether Nakanishi had been framed, questioning exactly who would keep 9,000 incriminating photos on their device. However, most online thought he was likely a spy, and probably deserved his prison sentence.

Shifting gears, local labor authorities in Nara City, in central Japan, referred a private school and three staff members, including the principal, to prosecutors on Monday the 17th. The reason? The school allegedly failed to pay full overtime wages to thirty-six teachers.

Officials first noticed a problem in twenty twenty-three and issued a warning to the school to pay their teachers properly. However, an investigation in twenty twenty-four found continued violations, including over one million yen, around 8,700 dollars, in unpaid wages for October alone.

The school says that the supposed violations weren’t unpaid overtime but hours the teachers voluntarily gave for club activities, and that it has already paid them three years' worth of missed payments. It also said it would improve labor management practices moving forward.

On another note, this year marked the first time in thirty-three years that land prices went up in over half of surveyed rural areas. However, rising prices are not limited to the countryside: nationwide, land prices have been increasing since twenty twenty-two, driven by tourism and housing demand. The overall average rose almost three percent, with residential land up two percent and commercial land ballooning by four percent.

Furano in Hokkaido Prefecture, northern Japan, saw the highest residential increase at thirty-one percent, while Chitose, also in Hokkaido, had the most commercial growth at almost fifty percent. Tokyo's Ginza in eastern Japan kept the highest overall land price at sixty million yen, which is 400,000 dollars, per square meter. However, Ishikawa Prefecture in central Japan saw declines due to the twenty twenty-four Noto Peninsula earthquake.

Meanwhile, Chubu Electric Power has begun dismantling the Number Two reactor at Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan. This marks the country’s first dismantling of a commercial nuclear reactor.

Chubu has already removed the spent fuel, and will use special equipment to continue the dismantling process. They plan to fully dismantle both the Number One and the Number Two reactors by twenty thirty-five, and hope to complete site removal by twenty forty-two.

In tech, the twenty twenty-five Osaka Kansai Expo will be the first world expo accessible in virtual reality through a free app called Virtual Expo-Yumeshima Islands in the Sky. The app will launch in April, before the expo opens. It will allow users to explore a virtual, floating island version of the expo’s pavilions.

Organizers see the app as a way to get the word out and promote the expo. They also hope that it will help include people who can’t attend in person, and even plan to bring some devices, such as virtual reality goggles, to nursing facilities. The app, developed by an NTT group company, will be available worldwide.

In an interesting local story, a nine-year-old named Rei Shimada from Sakai, Osaka, western Japan, has passed the national second-class electrician exam. Needless to say, it’s an amazing accomplishment for a third-grader.

Rei’s father, who took the exam years prior, helped him study for the written test, which had a lot of Japanese that isn’t taught until well beyond third grade. Rei also practiced his electrical skills at a high school an hour and a half from his home.

He now shares his journey with others on YouTube under the name Denko Shonen, meaning electrician boy. You can check out his channel for yourself, link in the show notes!

However, he’s not the only young person in the news. On Tuesday the 18th, Prince Hisahito, the son of Crown Prince and Princess, graduated from high school. He will begin attending the University of Tsukuba’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences in April.

He shared some pictures of his participation in badminton. On Twitter, those who favor Princess Aiko to be the next Empress said that it was photoshopped and insisted Hisahito is too frail, based on rumors that he was physically disabled. However, most dismissed this as conspiracy theories, and that Aiko’s fans were just upset because Japanese law says that the next successor has to be male. Otherwise, Aiko would be next in line to the throne.

In sports news, Shohei Ohtani returned to Japan this week for a Major League Baseball Tokyo Series game. It took place in the Tokyo Dome on Wednesday the 19th with the Los Angeles Dodgers facing off against the Chicago Cubs. 42,000 fans attended the match, which the Dodgers won. Afterwards, Ohtani said he was happy to perform in front of his home fans.

Still in Tokyo, the city experienced unseasonal snowfall on Wednesday the 19th. The Meteorological Agency issued advisories for gales, thunderstorms, high waves, lightning, tornadoes, hail, and heavy rain across wide areas of Japan.

Consequently, the cold spell so late in the year may be the reason why plum blossoms are blooming at the same time as cherry blossoms in some parts, such as Gifu Prefecture, in central Japan. It’s an unusual phenomenon, since plum blossoms usually peak in February, and are gone by the time cherry blossoms bloom in late March or early April.

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

Did you know that you can send an episode as an MP3 file? You can download it directly from our website: www.rorshok.com/japan. The link’s also in the show notes.

Mata Ne!