More on Kickbacks & more – 28th Dec 2023

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 28th of December twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

In a follow-up of a story we covered on previous shows… On Tuesday the 19th, Tokyo prosecutors raided the offices of the Abe and Nikai factions of the Liberal Democratic Party on suspicion of systematically underreporting political funds and creating a slush fund for its members. Party members sold fundraising tickets, but if they exceeded their ticket sales quota, the faction didn’t record the extra money and instead gave their members kickbacks.

Prosecutors also began questioning those who received hefty kickbacks. According to an anonymous source, five senior officials, including Hirokazu Matsuno, the former Chief Cabinet Secretary, said that they knew that the money that went over the quota got refunded, but not that it wasn’t being reported.

The official in charge of the Abe faction’s accounting admitted to not reporting the kickbacks, despite knowing that he must report all political funds and “refunds.”

On Thursday the 28th, Tokyo prosecutors arrested Mito Kakizawa, the former state justice minister, and four of his secretaries for allegedly buying votes for Yayoi Kimura, who won Tokyo’s Koto Ward mayoral election back in April.

Kakizawa told his office staff to give money to the Koto Ward assembly members and Kimura’s campaign staff. He then suggested that Kimura buy online campaign ads to tell people to vote for her. This is illegal in Japan, where paid online ads can be used for political parties, but not for individual candidates. Kimura stepped down in November when all this came to light.

In international news, on Saturday the 23rd, a drone launched from Iran hit a Japanese-owned chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean. The attack occurred about 370 kilometers or 230 miles off the coast of India and caused a fire on the ship. Thankfully, the crew managed to extinguish the fire without suffering any casualties. A British maritime security company said the tanker was affiliated with Israel and traveling from Saudi Arabia to India.

The US Central Command reported that the Houthi rebels in Yemen fired two anti-ship missiles into the Red Sea on the same day, and the US military shot down four drones while receiving reports of attacks on two ships.

The incident was similar to another drone attack in November, which targeted a cargo ship owned by an Israeli billionaire.

This attack may be part of the reason why the Japanese government decided to freeze the assets of three members of Hamas on Tuesday, the 26th. The government believed these individuals were funding terrorist activities in the Middle East. They made a similar decision in October against nine Hamas members.

Yoshimasa Hayashi, the new Chief Cabinet Secretary, told reporters that the Cabinet wanted to close loopholes that people exploited to send money to terrorist organizations.

Meanwhile, in the business world, car manufacturer Daihatsu Motor revealed last week on Wednesday the 20th that it found 174 data irregularities for sixty-four different car models going back as far as nineteen ninety-eight. These irregularities first started coming to light in April, when the company admitted to rigging crash test results for nearly 90,000 cars made in Thailand and Malaysia.

TÜV Rheinland Japan, a company specializing in safety testing and certifications, led a third-party investigation into Daihatsu and discovered the data rigging in brake and collision tests.

The transport ministry then conducted an onsite inspection at Daihatsu’s head office in Osaka and told the company to stop all shipments until they confirmed that all of its models met government safety standards.

On Friday the 22nd, only a few days after the irregularities came to light, the company’s Indonesian subsidiary resumed shipments after local authorities gave the green light. Daihatsu’s parent company, Toyota Motor, also held a press conference that same day, apologizing for Daihatsu’s falsified data and vowing to help the company regain people’s trust.

In a continuing series of People Getting Exposed for Wrongdoing, industrial company Toshiba has been having problems since twenty fifteen, when an independent investigative panel revealed that they’d been cooking the books to make their finances look better to outsiders than they actually were. The investment fund Japan Industrial Partners recently bought out Toshiba and delisted them from the Japanese stock exchange for about two trillion yen or fourteen billion dollars. They also created a new management team on Friday the 22nd, to restore the company’s tarnished image.

CEO Taro Shimada said that delisting Toshiba was necessary because the shareholders kept rejecting plans to move the company forward. Shimada also said they’ll focus on power semiconductors used in electric cars and data industries but will likely have to reduce the company’s workforce.

Moving on, a Japanese high court ordered Okinawa Prefecture to approve the central government's revisions to a planned ground improvement project. The project is part of the polemic relocation of the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station to an offshore site at Henoko in Nago City. After discovering soft seabed conditions at the new site, the central government asked Okinawa if they could carry out reinforcement work. They said no, so the work stalled, and they had to go to court to duke it out.

On Wednesday, the 20th, the high court gave Okinawa until Monday the 25th, to approve the plan, or else the government could override them and go ahead with the project. Okinawa refused to give their approval, so on Thursday, the 28th, the land minister officially approved the ground reinforcement work. As such, the defense ministry has already started preparations for the work, signing contracts with construction companies. The construction work is set to begin in mid-January.

In sports news, boxing superstar Naoya Inoue made waves when he defeated Marlon Tapales on Tuesday the 26th and became the second person in boxing history to win all four major boxing titles in two weight divisions. Last year, Inoue won the four major bantamweight titles, but this year, he moved on to the heavier super bantamweight class.

Moving on to science, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced on Thursday the 28th, that it would attempt to launch the new flagship H3 rocket on the 15th of February. The launch will take place at Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture, in Japan’s southwest. The agency had tried to launch a rocket in March this year but failed. Now that the agency has gone over the data and figured out what the problems were, they’ve created a new and improved design that’s both bigger and cheaper.

Finally, if your spirits need a lift during the holiday season, consider joining the Oji Inari-Jinja Shrine’s fox parade in Tokyo. The parade begins on the evening of the 31st of December at Shojoku Inari-Jinja Shrine, which is a five-minute walk from Oji Station. At midnight, the hour-and-a-half-long procession toward Oji Inari-Jinja Shrine starts.

Those who want to participate in the parade have to apply ahead of time and pay a fee of 1,000 yen or seven dollars, but anyone can watch the parade for free. Those in the parade wear kimonos and fox masks and carry lanterns. The tradition of the fox parade comes from a folk tale about foxes disguising themselves as humans to get into the shrine.

Tired of Christmas movies and jingles? Don’t want to think about the awkward upcoming dinner with the fam? We’ve got the best solution. Stream the Rorshok Japan show on your favorite listening platform.

But seriously, we wanted to thank everyone who has been listening to us, you make these updates possible. Happy New Year from the Rorshok Team!

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Mata Ne!