JAPAN: Stolen Funds & more – 30th Jan 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 30th of January twenty twenty-four A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

The Diet’s first session of twenty twenty-four started up with the political funds debacle that we have been talking about in previous updates. Recall that three factions of the Liberal Democratic Party hid fundraising money and gave kickbacks to its members over the past five years. The three factions disbanded just last week. On Friday the 26th, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who led one of the factions, said that the party had to regain people’s trust. The Diet talked in-depth about the matter on Monday the 29th.

Instead of giving a policy speech —as that’s the norm for the first day of a Diet session— Kishida gave a more informal outline of his plans and said that he would give the official speech on Tuesday the 30th. In the informal outline, Kishida said he would create a “new capitalism” that focused on the fair distribution of wealth.

The Constitutional Democratic Party or CDP suggested funding reforms like banning fundraising events and laws to hold not just treasurers, but the politicians they worked for accountable - likely a jab at Kishida, whose treasurer was indicted while he got off scot-free. The CDP president also scolded Kishida for not focusing more on the Noto Peninsula earthquake’s recovery efforts.

Speaking of the earthquake, authorities warned those in Ishikawa Prefecture to stay alert for landslides. Aftershocks are still ongoing in the region, though there are not as many, and they’re not as big as they were earlier this month. However, they have loosened up the ground, and combined with the rain and snowfall, might cause landslides.

Officials have also cautioned people to avoid “economy-class syndrome” by not spending money on extra blankets and instead just exercising to keep warm. They emphasized that exercise alone is not enough to stave off hypothermia. Instead, evacuees should use blankets if they don’t have access to reliable heating yet. They shouldn’t skimp on blankets if they need them.

Recovery from the earthquake is ongoing. 238 people died and nineteen are missing. Almost 40,000 households in Ishikawa still don’t have power, but officials say that crews will fix the issues by Wednesday the 31st.

One volunteer group in Nanao City is helping out by doing laundry for those who don’t yet have access to water.

The earthquake also hurt a lot of traditional industries such as pottery, but local artists said that they won’t let the damage stop them from building back up.

In international news, North Korea fired a cruise missile off its eastern coast on Wednesday the 24th, and then several more on Sunday the 28th. They have been testing cruise missiles since last year, designing them to carry nuclear warheads and flying at a low height for a long time. It’s part of their five-year defense plan that started in twenty twenty-one to make medium- and long-range missiles.

North Korea’s state-run news agency blasted the United States and South Korea for their military exercises and said that they wouldn’t hesitate to fight back if war broke out. These comments were likely a response to the US, Japan, and South Korea making a diplomatic statement last week against North Korea.

That’s not the only country Japan has a beef with. On Thursday the 25th, the Japan-China Economic Association sent a delegation of Japanese business leaders to Beijing, China. There, they met with Premier Li Qiang and talked about China’s current business environment. The delegates asked the Premier to be more honest about China’s anti-spy law since it's discouraging many foreign companies from working with China.

He said they weren't doing anything out of line with international customs. Despite this stonewalling, he also said he wanted the two countries to build stronger relations.

Meanwhile, on Sunday the 28th, Japan decided not to send funds to an agency called UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East after finding out that some of the agency’s staff were involved in the 7th of October attack of the terrorist group Hamas against Israel. Other countries, including the US and Britain, made similar decisions.

Before this came out, Japan had planned to send thirty-five million dollars to the agency. The foreign ministry is also asking the agency to carry out an investigation.

Given Japan’s stance against Hamas, it’s no surprise that on Tuesday, the 30th, the Japanese government froze the assets of two individuals and four organizations that had ties with the terrorist group. Yoshimasa Hayashi, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, said that Japan wanted to make it clear that they don’t tolerate Hamas’ actions and want to ensure that no one in the country is funding a group that attacks and kidnaps civilians.

Moving onto domestic news, a suspected fugitive from fifty years ago died at a hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture on Monday the 29th.

Hospital staff admitted the man earlier this month and diagnosed him with stomach cancer. After he realized the cancer would kill him, he told staff that he was Satoshi Kirishima, a member of an extremist group called the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front that carried out twelve bombing attacks in nineteen seventy-four and nineteen seventy-five. He said he wanted to spend his last days under his real name.

Someone, possibly one of the hospital staff members, gave an anonymous tip to the police on Thursday the 25th, saying that Kirishima was at the hospital. The police placed the man under custody, though they didn’t move him from the clinic. The man told them details about one of the nineteen seventy-five bombings in Tokyo’s Ginza District before passing away. Police believe that he was, in fact, Kirishima, probably because of the details he gave about the bombing. However, they are in the process of testing his DNA to confirm his identity.

While we’re on the subject of fugitives, on Thursday the 25th, the courts gave the death penalty to the man who burned down the Kyoto Animation Studio and killed thirty-six people in twenty nineteen, injuring thirty-two more. It was the biggest mass killing in Japan in twenty years. Even though the police said that the man, Shinji Aoba, had some kind of mental health problems, the Kyoto District Court judge determined that he was mentally competent at the time he lit the studio on fire, and carried out the arson attack because of a grudge.

According to news organization NHK’s on-the-street interviews, most people felt that the death sentence was justified given the crime.

In science news, in a follow-up of a story from our last show, despite Japan’s success in landing a probe on the moon on Saturday the 20th, it immediately ran into problems. The probe, nicknamed Smart Lander for Investigating Moon or SLIM, landed with its solar panel facing west, which is the wrong direction to recharge its batteries. SLIM released a couple of smaller robot probes that took some pictures of the probe and sent them back to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Luckily, on Monday the 29th, the problem resolved itself. The moon rotated enough so that the sun hit SLIM’s solar panels and brought the probe back to life. The space agency began taking pictures with the probe and showing them off online, including a photo of a rock that users on social media nicknamed “Toy Poodle.”

Finally, the labor ministry conducted a survey among Japanese businesses and found that in October twenty twenty-three, there were a total of over two million foreign workers in Japan. That’s twelve percent more compared to October twenty twenty-two. It also marked the eleventh year in a row that the number of foreign workers in Japan hit a new record. A quarter of the workers were Vietnamese, followed by Chinese and Philippine nationals. Indonesian workers had the biggest growth, going up by fifty-six percent compared to twenty twenty-two, and Myanmar took second place with a fifty percent growth. 550,000 foreign workers - the biggest chunk - were in manufacturing, followed by 320,000 in the service industry.

Aaaaaand that's it for this week. So you listen to us, ideally almost every week, but we don't actually know each other. Here's a chance to fix that. On Monday the 8th of April there is a total eclipse of the sun in Dallas, Texas, in the US. There will be events organized the whole weekend before. So on the off chance you can get here, send us an email or check the show notes for more information.

Mata Ne!