JAPAN: Student Attacker Reveals Motive & more – 15th May 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 15th of May twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

In an update to a story from last week’s show, Yoshitaka Toda, the man who stabbed a university student at a Tokyo station on Wednesday the 7th, revealed his motive behind the attack. Despite refusing to say anything to the police at first, the next day he said that he had attacked the student because he wanted to protest parents’ obsession with education. Toda said he targeted a place near the University of Tokyo, one of the best universities in Japan, and also one of the hardest to get into because of its high testing standards, to link the act to academic stress.

The victim, a twenty-year-old student, was seriously injured but survived. Toda admitted he chose the victim randomly and didn’t care if he lived or died. Police charged him with attempted murder and a weapons violation.

Speaking of crimes, police in Misato City, Saitama Prefecture, eastern Japan, are searching for the driver of an SUV that hit a group of elementary school children on Wednesday the 14th, seriously injuring four sixth-grade boys. Dashcam footage showed two men briefly checking on the victims before fleeing. Surveillance cameras also recorded the SUV leaving the scene.

It attracted quite a bit of attention online, perhaps because this incident resembles another from a few weeks ago. Recall from a previous show that a man plowed into a group of school children with his car, saying that he was angry at the world and wanted to take it out on someone. However, in the present case, most commenting on social media speculated that the drivers were simply not paying attention to the road.

In imperial news, Emperor Emeritus Akihito returned home from a Tokyo hospital on Saturday the 10th after being hospitalized last week on Tuesday the 6th. Tests confirmed he had asymptomatic myocardial ischemia, which means that even though he suffers from a condition that reduces blood flow to the heart, he doesn’t have any typical symptoms like arm pain, shortness of breath, and fatigue.

The Imperial Household Agency said that he will be taking medication, but shouldn’t have any issues with daily activities.

In more imperial news, Princess Aiko visited the World Expo in Osaka to learn about global cultures and international aid efforts. During her two-day visit, which started on Thursday the 8th, she toured various pavilions, including the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Pavilion, where she said the organizations’ displays showcased their humanitarian work and their desire to help with global conflicts and disasters. She also visited the Singapore Pavilion, where Singapore’s ambassador acted as her guide.

In business, Japan’s six major automakers will likely have a combined operating profit loss of over two trillion yen, which is almost fourteen billion dollars, by March twenty twenty-six, largely due to new US tariffs. Honda projects up to 650 billion yen in losses (around four and a half million dollars), while Toyota anticipates a drop of one trillion yen (about twelve billion dollars). Even Suzuki, which doesn’t sell cars in the US, expects a forty billion yen hit, which is 270,000 dollars, because of the ripple effect the tariffs will have on the global economy.

Companies are planning to change their strategies, such as shifting production or exports, to try and lessen the impact of the tariffs. The broader impact could hurt auto parts suppliers and even cool down Japan’s economy.

On a related note, Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s designated trade negotiator, will fly to the US for the third time in the span of two months to continue tariff talks. The exact dates haven’t been decided yet, and Japan still hasn’t been able to lower the proposed tariff rate of twenty-four percent. The tariffs will start in July if the trade talks are not successful.

That’s not the only business news. Aeon, a retail giant, announced on Tuesday the 13th that it will start selling US-grown Calrose rice in Japan from the 6th of June in light of domestic rice shortages. The imported rice will cost about ten percent less than Japanese rice. Sales will continue until autumn, when local rice becomes available. Aeon plans to import 14,000 tons of rice, paying required tariffs.

While Aeon plans to sell US rice, a supermarket in Nagasaki has already started selling Taiwanese rice, which is slightly cheaper than domestic rice.

The agriculture minister said that Japan should be careful about relying too much on rice imports from overseas since rice is a huge staple food in the country. He worried that this trend might hurt Japan’s future.

Shifting gears, Kyoto police in western Japan sent papers to prosecutors for two of their police officers who were secretly spying on women's restrooms. One officer in his twenties placed a camera in a restroom in Nakagyo Police Station, while another in his forties used a smartphone at Shimogamo Police Station from January to April. Both confessed to the crime.

A T-Four Air Self-Defense Force training aircraft crashed on Wednesday the 14th after taking off from Komaki Air Base in central Japan. It disappeared from radar near Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture, and someone reported to the local fire department that they saw an object resembling an aircraft crashing into a nearby lake.

As of Thursday the 15th, the Self-Defense Force found parts of the plane, a helmet, and a few other items in the lake. The Force said the plane didn’t have anything odd in its pre-flight checks and the weather was fine, so no one knows why it crashed.

The plane had two people on board, but they did not send out any calls for help before the crash. They are still missing.

Speaking of military matters, workers at a construction site in Hiroshima Prefecture, western Japan, found a suspected World War II-era unexploded bomb on Tuesday the 13th. The construction site was at Hiroshima University’s Kasumi campus, which had military armories during the war, though it’s unclear if the bomb is a leftover from that. Hiroshima police are currently investigating it. The suspected bomb is about ninety centimeters or three feet long and twenty-five centimeters or ten inches in diameter.

Police have closed off the area since there’s a risk it could explode, and called in the Ground Self-Defense Force for support. The university cancelled all afternoon classes for the day after the bomb was found in the morning.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba congratulated Pope Leo the Fourteenth on his election, saying he hoped that Japan and the Vatican could have a good relationship. Atomic bomb survivors welcomed the first American-born pope and urged him to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese government may send Taro Aso, a former Prime Minister and a Catholic, to the Pope’s inaugural Mass on the 18th of May.

A-bomb survivors said that it would be very symbolic if a US-born pope called for nuclear disarmament. This would also follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis, who visited the bombed cities in twenty nineteen.

And to wrap up this edition, Sanja Matsuri, one of the biggest annual festivals in Tokyo, will start on Friday the 16th, lasting for three days until Sunday the 18th. It will take place at Sensoji Temple grounds, and over its three-day period, it might draw as many as two million people.

The festival’s main feature is the 100 portable shrines, or mikoshi, created by local neighborhoods and carried around for all to see. There will also be food stalls, a parade, and a competition for the right to carry the Temple’s three holy portable shrines. The event is free to attend and is a short walk from Asakusa Station.

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

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Mata Ne!