JAPAN: Unification Church to Disband? & more – 25th Mar 2025

Konnichiwa from BA! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 27th of March twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

In an update to a story from last week’s show, it seems that the current Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and the former PM Fumio Kishida weren’t the only ones to give potentially illegal gift vouchers to lawmakers. On Friday the 21st, one Liberal Democratic Party or LDP member revealed that prime ministers have been giving gift vouchers to lawmakers for over a decade, dating back to Shinzo Abe’s term in twenty twelve. Other lawmakers also confirmed receiving gift vouchers.

Opposition parties questioned Ishiba, but he refused to confirm if it was a long-standing practice —even though a few days before this, he admitted that both he and Kishida gave out gift vouchers.

For many Twitter users, this was just another page in the book of reasons why Ishiba is terrible. It also raised questions about whether the LDP as a whole is too corrupt to be fixed. With last year’s slush fund issue, a few said the LDP should be dissolved.

Meanwhile, two more wildfires started up, this time in two different prefectures, Okayama and Ehime, in western Japan. Both started on Sunday the 23rd, and while firefighters managed to put out the Okayama blaze, Ehime’s is still ongoing despite their efforts. Local officials lifted Okayama’s evacuation orders, but Ehime’s are still in place for over 1,300 residents. On Monday the 24th, Self-Defense Force helicopters joined the battle against the fires.

In Okayama, the fire burned 250 hectares and destroyed six houses, while the Ehime fire has burned 171 hectares and injured one person so far.

Tokyo’s government in eastern Japan put together a response plan in case of a Mount Fuji eruption and presented it on Friday the 21st. The plan has four stages, each based on the amount of ash falling from a hypothetical eruption.

The first stage is when less than three centimeters or one inch of ash has fallen, while Stage Two is three centimeters to thirty centimeters (which is one foot). Both mean that Tokyo won’t need to evacuate. Stage Three is when less than thirty centimeters falls but causes a power outage that can’t be fixed quickly. Local officials may evacuate Tokyo residents at this point.

Stage Four, when there are over thirty centimeters of ash, calls for a definite evacuation. More than a foot of ash could be life-threatening and even cause buildings to collapse.

A different government plan is starting to unfold. With the cost of rice more than doubling compared to last year, the government released some of its emergency rice stockpiles to give people access to cheaper rice. It auctioned the first round earlier this month and recently sent out the rice.

Stores will likely start selling it sometime this week, and experts said that a five-kilogram or eleven-pound bag will probably sell for several hundred yen, which is several dollars, cheaper than current prices. It will still be more expensive than the beginning of last year, but hopefully it will make things easier for some.

In other news, Japan's National Police Agency recently announced it will no longer have skirts as a uniform option for female officers after March. Skirts aren’t practical anymore since so many female officers are taking on frontline roles, such as going to the scene of an incident. Instead, all officers will wear trousers. The updated policy will also allow breathable polo shirts for both male and female officers as part of the summer uniform because of how hot these past few summers have been.

Funnily enough, the skirt part was very uncontroversial, and hardly anyone cared. Many departments have stopped issuing skirts for a while now, and female officers in pants have been the norm for some time. People were a lot more interested in the cooler polo shirts, as it was the first time in thirty-one years that the police had officially changed the summer uniform.

In science news, Japanese researchers reported that two of four patients in a clinical study recovered some motor function after receiving induced pluripotent stem cell transplants for spinal cord injuries. One elderly patient regained the ability to stand, while another improved enough to eat independently. The other two showed no recovery, but none experienced serious health issues.

This marks the first documented case of this type of stem cell treatment improving spinal cord injury symptoms, which is a very exciting development.

We have a development on the legal front, as well. On Tuesday the 25th, a Tokyo District Court issued an order for the church once known as the Unification Church to disband as a religious corporation. This follows the Education and Culture Ministry’s request for the church’s dissolution two years ago. The church will likely appeal the court’s decision.

Some online cheered this decision, calling the Unification Church a cult that guilts its followers into paying ridiculous sums of money.

However, this raised questions about whether this decision violates religious freedom. All churches ask for donations from members. The only other time Japan has disbanded any religious groups was after those groups committed criminal acts. This is the first time Japan has disbanded a group under civil law.

On a different legal note, and an update to a story from previous shows, the courts awarded Iwao Hakamata, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, over 217 million yen, which is one and half million dollars, to compensate him for being wrongly convicted of a nineteen sixty-six quadruple murder. He spent more than four decades in prison before the court ruled in twenty twenty-four that police had tampered with evidence and forced a false confession.

In international news, Japan, South Korea, and China had a meeting on Saturday the 22nd to pretend they’re all totally in favor of peace and cooperation. However, most people online were not buying it on China’s part, saying that the country doesn’t have a great track record for keeping promises, like when it started cracking down on Hong Kong in recent years despite saying it was free to do as it liked before. Plus, its military activity near Taiwan in the past few years doesn’t scream peaceful.

However, China is sending Japan a special gift: yellow sand. This unfortunate phenomenon happens every year, when the wind carries small sand particles from China’s deserts across the sea to Japan. However, it was especially strong on Tuesday the 25th from western to eastern Japan, reducing visibility to less than eight kilometers or five miles in Osaka, in the west.

Officials said it would likely continue until Wednesday the 26th and urged people to wear masks, especially for those who had allergies, as yellow sand might make it worse. They also warned against hanging laundry out to dry since the sand might stick to it.

In sports, the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament ended on Sunday the 23rd with Ozeki Onosato winning his third Emperor’s Cup. If he also wins the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament in May, he might be promoted to sumo’s highest rank, yokozuna.

Many of his fans cheered him on, but a few felt bad for Takayasu, the thirty-five-year-old wrestler he defeated in the final match. Some wondered how the wrestlers’ trainer felt since they both trained in the same stable. It’s also a bit sad since given his age, Takayasu will likely retire soon, and he has never won a tournament in the top-ranking division, called the makuuchi division.

For some top-ranking bamboo, the Jochiji Temple in Kita-Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, eastern Japan, is hosting the second annual Bamboo Day on Saturday the 29th. The event includes bamboo handicraft workshops, art installations made from bamboo, a market, and a live evening performance. The event is free to attend during the day, but attending the evening show costs 1,500 yen, which is ten dollars, per adult. Children under eighteen years old can attend for free.

Jochiji Temple is a ten-minute walk from Kita-Kamakura Station. To learn more, check out the event’s website with the link in the show notes!

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

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Mata Ne!