JAPAN: Vice governor resignation & more – 16th July 2024

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 16th of July twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Friday the 12th, Yasutaka Katayama, the Hyogo Prefecture Vice Governor, announced his resignation.

The issue began earlier this year when a sixty-year-old government official distributed a letter accusing Motokiko Saito, the Hyogo governor, of harassment and corruption. In response, Saito punished the official, which upset many in the prefectural office. A committee began looking into the accusations and asked the official to testify on Friday the 19th, but he was found dead in his home on the 7th of July, apparently of suicide.

Because many are upset over this incident, Katayama, the vice governor who has supported Saito since twenty twenty-one, will leave office at the end of the month. He apologized for the situation and said someone had to take accountability for the current unrest. He asked Saito if he would also resign, but Saito said that he would finish his term and that he would implement policies, but did not give specific details.

Meanwhile, on Friday the 12th, heavy rains in western Japan caused a landslide in a residential area near Matsuyama Castle City, a popular tourist destination. Three people went missing and authorities in Matsuyama City, in Ehime Prefecture, began searching for them. No reports have come out on whether they have found them yet.

Several people reported gas leaks, and officials are working to locate them. The city issued the highest level evacuation alert for the 13,000 households in the Shimizu District and told people to seek safety in sturdy buildings and upper floors. 213 millimeters of rain fell in the area between Wednesday the 10th and Friday the 12th, which is normally the average rainfall for the entire month of July.

While the sky cleared a bit over the weekend, heavy rain pounded down again on Monday the 15th in central and southern Japan. The Meteorological Agency issued landslide alerts for parts of Kagoshima and Fukuoka Prefectures and warned that rivers may overflow in Saga Prefecture. They also told residents in those areas to stay alert for lightning strikes, floods, gusts, and hail.

In Gunma Prefecture, in central Japan, twenty-two tourists were stranded after a river overflowed near Fukiware Falls, a local tourist attraction. Security guards were supposed to guide them to a safe place, but couldn’t because the river overflowed so suddenly. Fortunately, the local fire department rescued the tourists within about an hour.

In an update to a previous show, Rahm Emanuel, a US Ambassador, and Roger Turner, a US general, made a joint statement on Friday the 12th regarding the recent cases in Okinawa where US military personnel sexually assaulted local Japanese residents. They apologized for the incidents and said they would introduce new measures to prevent more cases from happening in the future.

One of the new measures is increased patrols outside US bases for better surveillance. They have also changed the military’s internal policy for off-base activities and will be changing their sexual violence prevention sessions so that superior officers will directly instruct each service member.

In international news, the three-day Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting began in Tokyo on Tuesday the 16th. The attendees include leaders from South Pacific Island nations and other countries. Fumio Kishida, the prime minister, has already said he hopes to strengthen ties with Pacific Island nations, and will likely try to make deals regarding climate change and maritime security. He will also ask for others’ understanding regarding Japan releasing water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which is treated and diluted according to international safety regulations.

Moving on, an unknown person stole a bronze statue in Seattle, USA, dedicated to Sadako Sasaki, a famous victim of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In the nineteen-fourties, she got leukemia from the nuclear fallout and folded over a thousand paper cranes from her hospital bed because of the Japanese belief that if you fold a thousand paper cranes, your wish will come true. The statue was life-sized, standing 150 centimeters or five feet tall, and depicted the twelve-year-old Japanese girl. It had been in Seattle’s Peace Park since nineteen ninety.

Authorities discovered the theft on Friday the 12th, and experts believe the thief hopes to sell the statue’s bronze cast, which is very valuable. Police are still investigating who took it and have told local metal scrap dealers to be on the lookout in case someone tries to sell it.

On the other side of the world, Myanmar indicted Hiroshi Kasamatsu, a Japanese businessman, for allegedly violating the country's Essential Supplies and Services Law by selling rice above government-set prices on Thursday the 11th. The ruling military party in Myanmar put the law in place in an attempt to control food prices since they’ve been struggling since the twenty twenty-one coup. They have been using the law to target merchants for alleged pricing violations.

Myanmar’s ruling party arrested Kasamatsu, a 53-year-old employee of Japanese retailer Aeon Orange, in Yangon on the 30th of June. The Japanese Embassy asked Myanmar to release him, but now that Myanmar has indicted him, the embassy doesn’t know how long he’ll be detained. If the court finds Kasamatsu guilty, he faces anywhere from six months to three years in prison.

That’s not the only punishment being handed out. In an update to last week’s show, the defense ministry reprimanded 218 members of the ministry and the Self-Defense Force or SDF on Friday the 12th. It was an unusually large disciplinary action for the ministry. The members committed violations that included mishandling national security secrets, fraudulent diving allowances, unauthorized free meals, and power harassment.

There were fifty-eight cases that involved mishandling confidential information against members from all three branches of the SDF - Ground, Maritime, and Air. The ministry also found that between April twenty seventeen and October twenty twenty-two, sixty-two Maritime SDF members fraudulently received around forty-three million yen or 270,000 dollars in diving allowances without engaging in any actual diving.

Minoru Kihara, the defense minister, said they needed to reform the SDF and that Ryo Sakai, the chief of staff who recently resigned, would be replaced by Friday the 19th.

Speaking of the military, on Friday the 12th, the government put out its annual Defense White Paper, saying that China’s increased military drills in the Taiwan Strait suggest that they might be getting ready to invade Taiwan. Since Taiwan is only 110 kilometers or sixty-eight miles away from Japan’s westernmost island, any war or invasion could seriously affect Japan as well.

This warning follows NATO saying that China is helping Russia's war in Ukraine and making things difficult for Europe and international security.

The Defense White Paper also noted many other defense and security issues, including China's plan to double its nuclear weapons by twenty-thirty, North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and growing military ties between Russia, China, and North Korea and their recent agreements for mutual defense and military aid.

In financial news, the Japanese yen hit a nearly four-week high against the US dollar on Thursday the 11th, which continued on Friday the 12th. Some analysts believe that the Bank of Japan intervened to prop the yen up because it has been very weak lately. The bank’s daily operations data suggested that it spent as much as three and a half trillion yen or twenty billion dollars buying yen in order to strengthen it on the international market. Masato Kanda, Tokyo's top currency diplomat, did not confirm any interventions.

Finally, Osaka will host its annual God of the Sky Festival, or Tenjin Matsuri, from the 24th to the 25th of July. However, the main festival day is on Thursday the 25th. This thousand-year-old festival will take place at the Osaka Tenmangu Shrine, which is a short walk from the Osaka Tenmangu Station, and will be free to enter. It will include drum performances, boat-mounted floats, fireworks, and much more. You can find out more at the Japan Starts Here website, linked in the show notes!

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

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Mata Ne!