JAPAN: Takaichi on North Korean Abductions & more – 6th Nov 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 6th of November twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

The hot topic of the week is the speed at which Sanae Takaichi, the new prime minister, is getting things done. At a rally in Tokyo on Monday the 3rd of November, Takaichi said she requested a summit with Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader, to talk about the kidnapping of Japanese citizens that took place in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. Recall from previous shows that while North Korea returned a few of the citizens to Japan, saying most had died, they did not provide proper documentation of those missing citizens’ deaths.

Takaichi said Japan has to be proactive in either getting the citizens back or proper proof of what happened to them, and that she’s ready to consider all possible measures to find the truth.

Takaichi also had her first meeting with Lee Jae-myung, the South Korean President, in Gyeongju, on Thursday the 30th of October, the day before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation two-day summit began. Their talks had a friendly tone, and they agreed to keep a good relationship between Japan and South Korea.

They also talked about maintaining strong ties with the US, likely because North Korea has recently ramped up its nuclear and missile program, firing test missiles toward the Yellow Sea last week after pausing for several months.

In an update to a story from previous shows, bear sightings soared to over 20,000 in the first half of the fiscal year, from April to September, for the first time since records started in two thousand nine. The Tohoku region in northern Japan accounted for over sixty percent of the total sightings. It’s also a huge increase compared to last year, when sightings were fewer than 16,000.

Between April and September, authorities and hunters captured over 6,000 bears and killed almost all of them. Officials said the increase is likely due to more bears entering populated areas, rather than a surge in the bear population itself.

One of the more notable bear attacks took place on Friday the 31st of October, when a bear went into a construction company building in Agano City, Niigata Prefecture, central Japan. Authorities used Japan’s new emergency shooting measure, which, among other things, allows tranquilizer guns to be used indoors, to sedate, capture, and kill the bear.

This marked the first case where someone fired a tranquilizer indoors under the revised law.

The incident followed recent bear sightings and attacks in the region, including one close to an elementary school in nearby Gosen City that led to class cancellations.

Meanwhile, a recent government survey found that foreign residents made up over ten percent of the population in twenty-seven Japanese municipalities in January this year. This is very unexpected because most experts thought that the foreign population wouldn’t reach such levels until twenty seventy.

Shimukappu, in Hokkaido Prefecture, northern Japan, had the highest proportion of foreigners at almost thirty-seven percent, while other areas with a high percentage were closer to twenty percent.

Officials note that many communities are adapting well, with foreign residents filling key jobs in hospitality, manufacturing, and research.

In business news, Nintendo’s net profit went up eighty-five percent between April and September to almost 200 billion yen, which is over one billion dollars, mostly because of the strong sales of its new Switch 2 console launched in June. After selling over ten million by September, the company raised its full-year profit forecast to 350 billion yen (about two billion dollars) and its Switch 2 sales target to nineteen million units.

With the console’s popularity, it naturally became a big topic online, with people talking about how difficult it is to obtain. Both Amazon and Nintendo are selling Switches, but there’s more demand than there are Switches. So, people who want to buy have to participate in lotteries to try to get it.

They weren’t the only company to make profits. Toyota said on Wednesday the 5th of November that it raised its full-year forecasts despite US tariffs,for this fiscal year, now expecting a net profit of 2.9 trillion yen, about nineteen billion dollars — a billion dollars more than they originally estimated. However, a lot of investors and stock market experts said that it’s still less than they would have expected.

Toyota said that the US is currently taxing its cars at fifteen percent, but that the rate had been twenty-seven percent for several months. The impact of the tariffs is likely around one and a half trillion yen, about nine billion dollars, but Toyota said it would change its prices gradually instead of jacking them up all at once.

Unfortunately, Nissan Motor Corporation hasn’t been doing so well. The company will sell its Yokohama headquarters for ninety-seven billion yen, which is 630 million dollars, to MJI Godo Kaisha, a trust owned by a Hong Kong firm. MJI will then rent the building to Nissan so the car company can keep using it. Nissan plans to use 480 million dollars from the sale to fund AI and digital modernization.

The move is part of the new CEO’s plan after losing 670 billion yen, about four billion dollars, last fiscal year. Nissan is cutting fifteen percent of its global workforce and closing its Oppama plant as it seeks to boost efficiency and profits.

Some online are glad that Nissan is still hanging in there, saying it makes good cars and is worth keeping around. However, many are not surprised by its recent losses, saying it has had poor management for a while and has always been behind trends.

Speaking of finances, the stock index hit yet another record for the third time in two weeks. The Nikkei 225 scored over 52,000 points on Friday the 31st of October.

However, in a case of financial whiplash, Japan’s stocks dropped seven percent on Wednesday the 5th of November because many investors started worrying that various tech and AI stocks had been overvalued.

In sports news, newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Thursday the 6th that organizers for the Tokyo twenty twenty-five Deaflympics, which start on the 15th of November, said preparations are going well. About 3,000 athletes from eighty countries will compete in twenty-one events across Tokyo, Shizuoka, and Fukushima.

The organizers said they are doing their best to learn from incidents of past Olympic corruption, securing 160 sponsors directly without going through ad agencies and recruiting 3,500 volunteers—half fluent in sign language. So far, the Deaflympics has cost about thirteen billion yen, which is eighty-four million dollars, mostly covered by public funds. Tickets to the event will be free.

To learn more, check out the official website! Link in the show notes!

In imperial news, the Imperial Household Agency announced on Sunday the 2nd that Crown Prince Akishino will serve as Honorary President of the International Horticultural Expo twenty twenty-seven in Yokohama, eastern Japan. His term will begin Tuesday the 4th and continue until the expo concludes on the 26th of September, twenty twenty-seven.

Wrapping up this edition, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese-born British author, received the Companion of Honour from King Charles on Tuesday the 4th at Windsor Castle for his long-standing contributions to literature.

Born in Nagasaki and raised in Britain, Ishiguro is celebrated for works like The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, and won the twenty seventeen Nobel Prize in Literature. He was also knighted in twenty nineteen.

After the ceremony, Ishiguro said he and the king talked about artificial intelligence and how it might impact creativity.

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

We have some new t-shirts coming out soon, just in time for Christmas! Stay tuned!

Mata Ne!