JAPAN: Shady Campaign Strategy & more – 2nd Oct 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 2nd of October twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

Kicking off this week, Shinjiro Koizumi, the agriculture minister, one of two top candidates to become the Liberal Democratic Party’s next leader, began to lose support when the magazine Weekly Bunshun exposed him for using shady campaign tactics.

The magazine revealed on Thursday the 25th of September that his staff had sent emails to other lawmakers linked to Koizumi’s campaign about online comments they should make praising Koizumi and smearing his rival, Sanae Takaichi. The staff admitted to it the next day, and Koizumi's PR manager resigned two days later.

After this came to light, people began badmouthing and making threats against the PR manager. Some ruling party officials also raised concerns about fairness under party election rules.

In the imperial family, a minor leadership shift has taken place. On Tuesday the 30th, a special council appointed Princess Akiko as the new head of the Mikasa family, marking her as the first female royal born into the imperial family to lead a princely house since nineteen forty-seven. The decision followed the death of Princess Yuriko last year.

Akiko is a great-granddaughter of Emperor Taisho and cousin to Emperor Naruhito, and will receive an increased annual allowance of over ten million yen, which is 70,000 dollars. Other branch heads receive anywhere from thirty million to 320 million yen, which is from 200,000 to two million dollars, but that’s because Akiko was only recently appointed.

Her seventy-year-old mother, Princess Nobuko, will leave the Mikasa family to start a new princely house—the first one since eighteen eighty-nine—increasing the number of imperial branches from four to five.

In business news, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp said that from October, it has implemented new policies to encourage employees with children under the age of two to take at least one month of paternity leave. The company said it hopes this move will help normalize men participating in childcare since much of Japanese society still sees women as the ones who do most of the child-rearing while men take a backseat.

The bank achieved a 100 percent paternity leave rate in twenty twenty-three but with an average of twelve days. Still, that itself is already much longer than most Japanese men take off for paternity leave. The bank will now also provide a 50,000 yen bonus, which is 340 dollars, to both employees on leave and their coworkers if operations remain stable.

The policy seeks to strengthen teamwork, reduce gender stereotypes, and improve workplace culture.

In a shocking report, a fifty-seven-year-old house in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward collapsed on Tuesday the 30th after its aging retaining wall gave way, despite both owners and ward officials warning the house’s owner for years that the wall needed to be reinforced. In fact, the owner told officials that he found a contractor to fix the wall last week.

The homeowner and his son were at home when the wall collapsed, but they evacuated safely. Debris pressed against a neighboring apartment building, forcing some families to evacuate, but thankfully, the collapse didn’t hurt anyone. Residents described loud crunching sounds as the wall crumbled and wreckage piled up against balconies.

Suginami Ward said that there were more places where disasters might occur, and would conduct emergency inspections where needed. Officials will also work with the homeowner to remove debris.

That wasn’t the only localized disaster this week. A fire broke out on Monday the 29th at an aircraft hangar at Haneda Airport in Tokyo’s Ota Ward. Workers were cutting steel with a burner near the roof of an airport hangar when the blaze started. Firefighters put out the fire in about two hours. Thankfully, no one was injured.

Police are still investigating what actually caused the fire.

Speaking of police investigations, in previous episodes, we talked about the case of Takeshi Niinami, the former chairman of Suntory Holdings, who resigned after the police started looking into his purchase of supplements that likely contained marijuana, which is illegal in Japan.

Niinami was also the Japan Association of Corporate Executives chairperson, but he resigned from that position too because others on the association’s board weren’t happy about the marijuana incident.

Niinami’s term was originally supposed to run until April twenty twenty-seven, but now, the board of the association has already taken over his decision-making duties. Mutsuo Iwai, the Senior Vice Chairperson, will serve as the temporary head until they choose a new successor.

On that note about suspensions, Asahi Group Holdings has postponed the October launch of twelve new food and drink items after a cyberattack hit their system, stopping production at many of its thirty factories in Japan. The cyberattack happened on Monday the 29th and temporarily halted order processing, shipping, and call center operations, so that employees had to handle data manually.

The company said that the cyberattack didn’t steal any personal or customer data, but they can’t receive external emails right now. Authorities are investigating the attack.

Meanwhile, Ryosuke Takashima, the twenty-eight-year-old mayor of Ashiya in Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan, was named in Time magazine’s twenty twenty-five TIME100 Next list of rising global leaders. He was born in the western city of Osaka, went to Harvard in the US, and became Japan’s youngest mayor in twenty twenty-three. The magazine praised him for breaking the mold in a country where almost all of the politicians are in their fifties or older.

Takashima ran as an independent and defeated the then-mayor and two other challengers.

In other news, a government survey released on Thursday the 2nd of October found that over 1,000 foreign children aged between twelve and fifteen were not enrolled in school as of May twenty twenty-four, up from 970 in twenty twenty-three and 630 in twenty nineteen. Of over 160,000 school-age foreign children, more than 7,000 had unknown enrollment status, putting the total potentially out of school at almost 8,500—down from about 19,000 in twenty nineteen.

Foreign children can attend public schools for free, like Japanese students, but enrollment is not mandatory. The education ministry pledged stronger efforts to ensure access, urging cities to contact families through calls, visits, or admission guides.

In entertainment updates, a news article came out this week about the rise of VTubers. VTubers are YouTubers who use a computer-generated avatar for the online entertainment they specialize in, such as singing, streaming games, or just talking.

Even though it used to be a niche subculture in Japan, it is now a mainstream international entertainment industry, with a market size of around 100 billion yen, which is 680 million dollars, in twenty twenty-four. Cover Corp, home to eighty-nine VTubers, draws millions of fans through live concerts, merchandise, and corporate tie-ups, with nearly thirty percent of fans overseas.

Online, those who aren’t fans of the VTuber subculture had mixed reactions, with some calling it weird or even an insult to art. The more positive side argued that it really wasn’t that different from animated television or even regular pop music concerts.

Want to read the full article? Check out the link in the show notes.

On that note about music, Satoshi Yoneda from Okayama Prefecture, western Japan, won the top prize at the Besancon International Competition for Young Conductors on Saturday the 27th. This competition takes place in France every two years, and is a renowned gateway to success. Yoneda is the eleventh Japanese conductor to claim the honor, following Nodoka Okisawa in twenty nineteen. He impressed the audience in the final round with his baton work and expressive body movements.

In the past, this same competition helped launch the careers of figures like the late Ozawa Seiji, who won in nineteen fifty-nine. This year, there were twenty finalists, three of whom were Japanese. Yoneda said he was surprised that he managed to win, and called the demanding week-long contest tough but rewarding.

That wasn’t the only win this week. In sports, Onosato won his fifth sumo championship on Sunday the 28th by defeating fellow grand champion Hoshoryu from Mongolia in a rare playoff. It was the first match between grand champions, known as yokozuna in Japanese, in sixteen years.

The victory marks his first title since being promoted to grand champion after the May tournament and his first championship in two tournaments.

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

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Mata Ne!