Kishida at the UN & more –26th Sep 2023

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 26th of September twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

On Wednesday the 20th, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida gave a speech during the UN General Assembly, which took place in New York. While speaking to the gathered leaders from around the world, he said that the UN requires a reform, specifically the UN Security Council, which hasn’t done much about Russia invading Ukraine because Russia is one of the council’s five permanent members. For reference, Japan and many other countries are temporary members that don’t have any veto power, unlike permanent countries. Kishida said that the Security Council needs to be switched up to focus on protecting all human dignity and “human-centered international cooperation.” He called on Russia to withdraw their troops and said that the UN has to work harder to actually do something about the aggression.

He also talked about Japan’s dedication to moving towards a world without nuclear weapons.

While Kishida dukes it out with the UN, China’s been stepping on Japan’s toes back home. On Tuesday the 19th, the government said that it lodged an official protest against China about a buoy they dumped in the Japanese exclusive economic zone near Japan’s southernmost Senkaku Islands. The Coast Guard found the buoy back on the 15th of July and told locals about it so they didn’t ram into it by accident. It really shouldn’t be there at all, though, and China putting it there broke some UN international marine laws. Japan told China to hurry up and get rid of it or they’d do whatever it takes in order to protect their territory.

The beef with China doesn’t end there. Ever since Beijing banned seafood imports from Japan, the country’s seafood industry has been struggling. The ban started when the Fukushima Daiichi power plant began releasing treated water into the ocean. The water used to be radioactive, but the plant owners diluted and treated it to make it safe, though it still contains a small amount of tritium that can’t be removed. China called the water released “nuclear-contaminated water” and demanded that Japan stop, despite also releasing their own treated water into the ocean in twenty twenty-one. Since the ban, China’s seafood imports from Japan in August have only brought in 3 billion yen in revenue, or 20 million dollars, which is a seventy percent drop compared to last year.

The seafood industry isn’t just battling import bans, but climate change itself. The ocean’s increased temperature has thrown off the fishing season, so fishermen haven’t been able to find as many seasonal autumn fish as they have in previous years. For example, the season’s first auction of blowfish took place on Monday the 25th and only had a third of blowfish compared to last year. Kelp farmers have also said that higher ocean temperatures make more sea critters cling to the kelp. Since critters make the kelp look weird, there’s less kelp to sell, as most people don’t want to buy weird-looking kelp.

On the other side of the globe, Japan, and three other countries met up to talk about the state of the Indo-Pacific region on Friday the 22nd. Diplomats from Japan, the US, Australia, and India all agreed to maintain the region’s current peace and stand up against anyone trying to shake things up. They didn’t say it explicitly, but they were all likely referring to both China’s continued military activity around Taiwan and North Korea’s numerous missile launches. The diplomats also urged UN members not to go around trading weapons with North Korea.

In domestic news, it’s no secret that the yen is at its weakest since nineteen ninety, with the dollar exchange rate at 148 yen as of Wednesday the 20th. In order to keep it from getting even weaker, the government recently began talking with other countries about finding ways to keep currencies more stable. Most of the talks have been with the US, which has been doing all sorts of crazy voo-doo to try and keep inflation in check.

The finance ministry said it’s keeping a close eye on the situation, but may have to start putting measures in place to bolster the yen before things go too far south. Even the US agreed that Japan propping up the yen would be understandable, so long as it was just to keep things stable.

In an effort to avoid going that direction, the government outlined an economic stimulus package on Monday the 25th. Although Prime Minister Kishida said they haven’t finished writing the measure-package yet, they plan to lower certain taxes, including social security, as a way to encourage businesses to increase wages. They also want to put in tax cuts for anyone investing in promising fields, like semiconductors. The government hopes to finish working out the details of the package by the end of October.

On a related note, on Friday the 22nd, the Bank of Japan decided to maintain its very low interest rates. The bank’s governor Kazuo Ueda said they’re going to stick with the low interest rates until inflation hits the 2% target. Japan’s inflation is currently just over three percent, which is down from January’s four percent.

On Monday the 25th, Ueda, the Governor of the Bank of Japan, said that businesses need to increase wages in order to help stabilize inflation. Some approved of the bank’s decision and said that the low-interest rate has improved the economy. Others said that the current sky-high prices and weak yen make things really hard on small businesses and that a different bank policy might help.

Moving on, tragedy struck on Tuesday the 19th, when a steel beam fell at a construction site near Tokyo Station and killed two workers. The workers were lifting the beam with a crane and trying to attach it to the seventh floor of a building. When police investigated, they said that it looked like the workers hadn’t properly bolted the beam in place before the crane let go of it. Since the workers’ safety belts were attached to the beam that fell, they didn’t do much to protect the workers.

Meanwhile, a lot has been going on in the business world. Probably the most notable was when Nippon TV bought over forty percent of Studio Ghibli's shares and announced it would make the studio a subsidiary on the 6th of October.

This move isn’t completely out of the blue, since Nippon TV has been airing Ghibli films since nineteen eighty-five, and the studio has been looking for new leaders for the past decade since their main director, Hayao Miyazaki, retired, and the head producer started looking to retire. Nippon TV said they want to preserve the studio’s brand, and the studio’s producer thought they would be a good fit since they’ve had a long relationship with the TV company. This way, the studio can focus on making movies while Nippon TV takes care of all that boring management stuff.

On Friday the 22nd, the trading firm Mitsui & Co. said it plans to invest 260 billion yen, or nearly two billion dollars, in an offshore wind power project in Taiwan. The project will build seventy-three wind turbines starting in twenty twenty-five and will sell electricity to Taiwan’s electric power company. Officials at Mitsui said they think this project will help them with future renewable energy businesses in Japan and other parts of Asia.

This is in contrast to Jera, Japan’s biggest thermal power company, which just backed out of a different offshore wind power project in Taiwan because it was getting too expensive.

Moving on to more local celebrations, Fukushima will host its annual Nihonmatsu Lantern Festival from the 7th to the 9th of October. The 370-year-old Shinto festival has been open to the public since it first began, featuring chanting, lots of dancing, and thirty-six-foot (or eleven meters)-tall floats, carrying hundreds of red paper lanterns.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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Mata Ne!