Kishida’s Meetings in COP28 & more – 5th Dec 2023

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 5th of December twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

Last week, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attended the COP28 climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, and had side meetings with the leaders from Qatar and Turkey about the Israel-Hamas conflict. He thanked Qatar’s Sheikh for working to cool the fighting and spoke of how Japan was thinking of sending sixty-five million dollars in aid to the region in addition to the ten million already delivered.

With the Turkish president, both agreed that even though the cease-fire was a good first step, the two biggest priorities should be preventing civilian casualties and sticking to international laws.

Kishida also spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi over the phone on Wednesday the 29th. He thanked Egypt for helping to evacuate Japanese nationals from Israel, and commended the part the country played in helping Israel and Hamas to pause the fighting. Sisi also said he was grateful for Japan’s humanitarian aid.

Two earlier incidents in the area likely influenced Kishida’s willingness to help ease the Middle Eastern conflict. The first was in November when Houthi rebels captured a Japanese-operated ship in the Red Sea.

The second happened on Monday the 27th, when a missile - possibly from the rebel group - nearly hit a Maritime Self-Defense Force ship nicknamed Akebono. Akebono was on an anti-piracy mission in the area, trying to rescue a tanker from pirates’ hands, when the US military warned them about ballistic missiles going toward their location. Thankfully, Akebono lit out of there at full speed and got out unharmed.

In a follow-up to a story from a previous show, news organization NHK found out that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, gave kickbacks amounting to several million dollars to dozens of its members. The law requires parties to report political funds they receive, but since at least twenty seventeen, the LDP has left a portion of money from fundraising party tickets off the books. Tokyo prosecutors suspect they pooled these secret funds to give kickbacks to members who did a good job selling fundraising tickets. Some of these lawmakers might have gotten over ten million yen or 68,000 dollars in kickbacks, with none reported as income.

With all this corruption, it’s no wonder that Seiji Maehara, the former foreign minister, left the Democratic Party for the People on Thursday the 30th to start a new political party with four other members of the Diet. Maehara wasn’t happy with the Democratic Party’s willingness to bend to the ruling LDP. His aim is to force the current ruling party out of power and unite opposing parties to introduce free education and student loan debt forgiveness to Japan.

Meanwhile, the Kyoto Animation arson-murder trial began last week. As a refresher, back in July twenty nineteen, Shinji Aoba set the Kyoto Animation Studio on fire, killing thirty-six people and injuring thirty-two.

One mother of a victim originally hoped that Aoba might show remorse, but his half-hearted comments that he “went too far,” not showing true regret for the people he killed, convinced her that Aoba should get the maximum sentence. In this case, the death penalty.

Lawyers began their arguments on Monday the 27th. Prosecutors said that Aoba carried out a gruesome mass murder and pointed the attention toward the victims and the devastation Aoba wrought. The defense simply focused on ensuring that their client didn’t get the death sentence.

Moving on, the Environment Ministry said that bear attacks have reached a new record, with 212 victims in the twenty twenty-three fiscal year. This number is considerably higher than the previous record of 158 from twenty twenty. Most of the attacks were in northeastern Japan, with seventy in Akita Prefecture and forty-five in Iwate. In the thirty attacks that took place in November, six people died.

Even though bears usually start hibernating in December, officials advised people to be careful since there could still be more attacks before the bear population is well and truly asleep. The ministry also sent experts to Iwate and Toyoma Prefectures to capture and study the animals.

In a recent tragedy, a CV-22 Osprey US military aircraft crashed off Japan’s southern coast on Wednesday the 29th. Before the crash, the aircraft contacted the Japanese Self-Defense Force and requested an emergency landing at an airport in Yakushima, one in a chain of islands in Kagoshima Prefecture. The aircraft then vanished from the Self-Defense Force’s radar.

The coast guard later found wreckage from the aircraft and the body of one of the eight crewmembers. On Monday the 4th, the US Air Force found the remains of five other crewmembers.

In response, the Okinawa prefectural assembly put together a special committee on US military bases. They said that the US Air Force has stopped using the CV-22 Ospreys, pending an investigation into what happened.

The economic sector isn’t looking so hot, either. Recently, the Bank of Japan reported its biggest-ever loss on paper on government bonds, amounting to ten trillion yen, or seventy billion dollars, at the end of September. That’s 150 times more than what it was in March. Experts believe the staggering hike is due to the increase in long-term interest rates after the Bank of Japan loosened policies on ten-year bond yields in July.

The bank insisted that this wouldn’t hurt short-term profits, but some analysts thought that it could affect currency and interest rates.

Worries over the economy might be one of the reasons why Japan has decided to revise its tax-free policy for foreign shoppers. The other reason is that people have been abusing the policy to high heavens. Under the current policy, foreigners visiting from abroad don’t need to pay the consumption tax at certain stores, with the understanding that the stores will verify that the foreigners have a short-term tourist visa. Some have abused this policy by reselling the untaxed goods in Japan. Moreover, stores might not be checking if the buyer is a visitor or a long-term resident. As a result, some department stores have had to pay a heaping ton of back taxes.

The government is now planning a new system where visitors will pay the consumption tax upfront, but get a refund for the tax upon departure. Lawmakers said they’ll figure out the details in fiscal year twenty twenty-four.

In other news, a major earthquake in the Philippines on Saturday the 2nd set off tsunami warnings for all prefectures along Japan’s southern and eastern coasts, including Kagoshima, Wakayama, and Tokyo. For Hachijojima Island, which is south of Tokyo and closest to the Philippines, the tsunami was forty centimeters or sixteen inches high. Everywhere else, the tsunami was twenty centimeters or eight inches high. Although small, officials still advised people to be cautious since authorities spotted a sixty-four-centimeter tsunami near the Philippines’ second-largest island Mindanao.

In sports news, Major League Baseball executives and agents started the annual Winter Meetings on Monday the 4th in Nashville, Tennessee. Many are hoping to recruit Shohei Ohtani, the first player in history to be awarded Most Valuable Player twice. Ohtani hasn’t said anything about his next plans, but some think he’ll join the Los Angeles Angels, and might even get a 600 million-dollar contract.

Another Japanese player, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, may also win a contract in the US worth 200 million dollars or more. He was a huge player in Japan’s Pacific League, and made his mark pitching wins and strikeouts.

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Mata Ne!