JAPAN: Possible New Party Heads & more – 10th Sep 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 10th of September twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

At least two of Japan’s biggest political parties will change leadership this month.

As mentioned in previous shows, Fumio Kishida, the prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, said he wasn’t going to run again.

On Thursday the 5th, sources from Komeito, the fourth biggest party, said that Natsuo Yamaguchi, the party’s leader since two thousand nine, plans to step down in late September. Keiichi Ishii, the secretary general, is mostly likely to succeed him. Yamaguchi is Komeito’s longest-serving leader since the party first started in nineteen ninety-eight. His supporters hoped he would stay through the upcoming party elections, but the party lawmakers want to change their image in hopes of attracting more voters.

The Constitutional Democratic Party or CDP, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s largest opposition, will hold a party election on the 23rd of September. Members of the Diet, the local assembly, and the general CDP party will be able to vote.

The four most notable candidates are Kenta Izumi, the current president; Yoshihiko Noda, a former prime minister; Yukio Edano, a former CDP president; and Harumi Yoshida, a new up-and-coming lawmaker.

Moving onto foreign policy, Fumio Kishida met with Yoon Suk-yeol, the president of South Korea, at a two-day summit in Seoul that began on Friday the 6th. The leaders discussed the best way to improve relations between the two nations, and agreed to strengthen trilateral cooperation with the US to help keep the region secure, particularly in light of North Korea’s weapons development program. They also discussed trying to make travel between the two countries easier.

By the end of the meeting, Kishida and Yoon signed a memorandum for joint emergency responses, such as evacuation from other countries during disasters and wartime. They likely brought it up because last year, each country helped the other evacuate Japanese and South Korean nationals when Hamas, the terrorist organization, attacked Israel.

In an update to a previous show, on Monday the 9th, the Hyogo prefectural assembly called for Motohiko Saito, the Hyogo Governor, to resign over accusations of power harassment and corruption.

In March, a senior prefectural official accused Saito and his aides of misconduct. Saito denied all accusations and suspended the official, but a prefectural whistleblower unit began investigating and asked the official to be a witness. Just a few days before the official was going to give his testimony at a hearing, he died by apparent suicide.

Since then, many officials have not been happy with how Saito handled the incident, suspending the official and making fairly dismissive comments about the accusations. The Liberal Democratic Party and other political groups plan to request his resignation, with potential no-confidence motions if he refuses. Saito has hinted at defiance, stating his intent to continue addressing the issue through official channels.

In business, police send documents to prosecutors on Thursday the 5th, likely to help build a case against a firm in Saitama Prefecture. Police suspect the firm illegally imported clams from North Korea in twenty twenty.

In twenty twenty, the firm bought almost 18,000 kilograms or 40,000 pounds of clams and lied to customs by saying they came from Russia. Investigators raided the companies involved in December twenty twenty-two. Police are still looking into the companies’ other suspicious activity, such as telling customers that the imported clams were local to Japan.

The Japanese government banned imports from North Korea in two thousand six as a way to show its disapproval of the country's nuclear weapons development program.

Speaking of development, Sharp, a major electronics maker, announced on Friday the 6th that it’s going to start making electric vehicles or EVs within the next few years. They will show off their new EV model plans for a minivan at a tech event in Tokyo starting on the 17th of September.

Sharp intends to use a variety of different technologies inspired by other gadgets like LCD panels and home appliances and also hopes to use AI-assisted devices. The company will work together with Hon Hai Precision Industry, its parent company in Taiwan.

In another update to a story we covered in a previous show, Seven and i Holdings said on Friday the 6th that they will reject the bid that Alimentation Couche-Tard, a Canadian convenience store operator, sent last month.

Couche-Tard offered just under fifteen dollars per share, valuing the whole deal at five and a half trillion yen or thirty-nine billion dollars. Everyone on Seven and i’s board agreed that the offer was too low. They were also worried there might be some problems under US anti-monopoly laws if the two biggest convenience store operators in North America merged and said it might hurt their shareholders.

Seven and i operates over 100,000 stores worldwide. They said they might reconsider if Couche-Tard upped the price, but they would also have to talk about how to make sure the merger complies with US law.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the 10th, Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO resumed collecting melted fuel from Reactor Number Two at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. TEPCO plans to fully decommission the plant by twenty fifty-one, but they are behind by about three years.

However, collecting the melted fuel marks an important step in decommissioning. TEPCO is currently aiming to retrieve a sample of up to three grams of nuclear debris, which they will analyze to figure out the best way to remove all of the debris.

Moving onto the Paris Paralympics, Tokito Oda won gold in men's wheelchair tennis on Saturday the 7th. It was the first time the eighteen-year-old tennis player won a Paralympic gold medal.

That same day, Keiko Sugiura won gold in women’s road cycling, making the fifty-three-year-old Japan’s oldest Paralympic gold medalist.

In the men's wheelchair marathon T54, Tomoki Suzuki won bronze, marking the first time in sixteen years that Japan had won in the T54 category.

The Paralympics ended on Sunday the 8th. Japan won a total of forty-one medals: fourteen gold, ten silver, and seventeen bronze.

In other sports news, the third round of the twenty twenty-six World Cup Asian qualifiers has begun. On Thursday the 5th, Japan started off strong by winning against China.

There are three Asian groups in total, and the top two from each will get to compete in the World Cup, set to take place in the US, Mexico, and Canada.

Japan had another big win in one of the world’s biggest international Go competitions. For those who don’t know, Go is a strategy board game invented over 2,500 years ago in China, somewhat like an ancient Chinese chess. On Sunday the 8th, Ryo Ichiriki won the prestigious Ing Cup World Professional Weiqi Championship, defeating China's Xie Ke three times in a row in a best-of-five series.

This marks the first time in nineteen years that a Japanese player won a major international Go tournament.

For our last story, the Hanamaki Festival, one of the biggest events in Iwate Prefecture, will begin on Friday the 13th. It will take place in Kamicho, the downtown area of Hanamaki, and last until Sunday the 15th. The festival’s biggest draw is the parade of lavishly decorated papier-mâché floats representing folklore and past events. Some floats even spout fire to make for an extra-special spectacle.

And that’s it for this week!

Thanks for tuning into the Rorshok Japan update. You can connect with us on social media as @RorshokJapan on twitter and @rorshokjapan on Instagram.

Mata Ne!