The Ruling Party’s Kickbacks & more – 12th Dec 2023

Konnichiwa from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Japan Update from the 12th of December twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Japan.

According to news network NHK’s recent findings, factions from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, gave kickbacks of over 69,000 dollars each to at least ten members from unreported political funds. These include the Chief Cabinet Secretary, the Diet Affairs Chief, and the Upper House Secretary General. Many of the kickbacks were from the Abe Faction, which the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe once headed, and some sources suspect that nearly all 100 members got kickbacks.

However, sources also said that two other factions, including the faction that current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has headed since twenty twelve, probably underreported political funds as well, though not as much as the Abe Faction.

For those who don’t know, political party factions set quotas for their members to sell a certain number of tickets to fundraisers. If a member exceeds their quota, factions are allowed to give out bonuses, but they must report political funds from ticket sales over 200,000 yen or 1,380 dollars. Individual members also must report any bonuses they receive as income.

In this case, many members would separately sell tickets to the same organization, but wouldn’t record it because their individual amount of ticket sales was under 1,380 dollars. However, once the sales to the same organization were added together, they were well over the amount that needed to be reported. Tokyo prosecutors are investigating whether the faction intentionally exploited a loophole or if they just did a very bad job managing their political funds' reports.

Either way, individual members’ failure to report their extra income is illegal and can result in fines, jail time, and getting suspended from voting and running for office.

With all the noise over the kickbacks, Kishida said on Wednesday the 6th that he is leaving the LDP. He hopes that by doing this, he’ll be able to assume a more neutral, objective position and help restore the public’s trust in the political party’s policies. He also told all of the party’s factions not to hold any fundraisers for a while.

He may also be trying to create some distance between himself and the LDP to avoid coming under fire.

However, if that’s the case, it hasn’t helped much. Opposition parties spared no time questioning Kishida during a Diet session on Friday the 8th. Kishida initially refrained from commenting, saying it might hurt the investigation. As more information about the political funds' misuse poured in over the weeked, though, he changed his tune and said that he would replace the high-ranking officials involved in the kickback scheme.

Amidst the internal turmoil, the coast guard spotted two Chinese government ships in Japan’s territorial waters on Saturday the 9th. The two ships sailed twenty-one kilometers, or thirteen miles, southeast of the Senkaku Islands, Japan’s southernmost islands. The coast guard told the ships to leave. It was the thirty-third time this year that they’d seen Chinese government ships in that area.

Much of the issue is that although the Senkaku Islands are internationally recognized as part of Japan, China claims the islands as their own.

This will likely be a big subject during an upcoming summit between Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, on Saturday the 16th.

Japan recently drafted a statement for the summit about strengthening maritime security cooperation because of China’s increased activity in the South China Sea. In the statement, they said they wanted to resolve conflict through peaceful means in accordance with international law.

Moving on to the business world, Rakuten Group recently announced its plans to sell a fourteen percent stake in one of its companies, Rakuten Bank, to raise sixty billion yen, or 415 million dollars. After the sale, the group’s stake in Rakuten Bank will go from sixty-three percent to forty-nine percent.

The group is still trying to recover financially after bleeding money from twenty eighteen until twenty twenty-two on its mobile phone business. Selling stakes seems to be their new strategy. Last month, they also got Mizuho Financial Group to increase their stakes in Rakuten’s securities company, which earned them some hundreds of millions of dollars.

In economic news, the GDP shrank nearly three percent in the July to September quarter of twenty twenty-three. This is a much bigger drop than the two percent that experts had predicted. It’s also quite a dramatic change compared to the same quarter of twenty twenty-two, when the GDP only shrank by 0.1 percent. The decline was mainly because people are spending less.

According to government officials, households of two or more spent an average of 2,100 dollars in October, which is two percent less than last year. They also reported that people spent four percent less on food and thirteen percent less on household appliances and furniture compared to September.

Meanwhile, on Thursday the 7th, the Ground Self-Defense Force said that it would keep all its Osprey tilt-rotor aircrafts grounded for the time being. This decision follows the US military’s worldwide grounding of their Ospreys after a fatal crash on the 29th of November.

The Self-Defense Force Chief of Staff said that he didn’t know how long they would keep the aircrafts grounded since they’re relying on information from the US military. All that they know at this point is that the crash might have been caused by a design failure, such as using materials in the aircraft that weren’t up to the task. Apparently, this isn’t the first accident involving Ospreys, and the US even temporarily grounded the aircrafts in August twenty twenty-two due to a safety issue. However, it is the first time since twenty ten that anyone has died in an Osprey accident.

For the time being, the Self-Defense Force is making plans to move their Osprey fleet to a new base near Saga Airport in twenty twenty-five.

Speaking of the fatal Osprey crash, on Sunday the 10th, the US military found the remains of another crewmember from the crash. In total, they’ve found seven of the eight crewmembers' bodies.

In sports news, former spiker Terayama from the legendary volleyball team the Oriental Witches died on Thursday the 7th. Terayama joined a corporate team after graduating from high school in Wakayama City. Even after retiring from the sport, she continued to coach volleyball in Ibaraki Prefecture. She was the team’s ace spiker and helped the Oriental Witches win gold in the nineteen sixty-four Tokyo Olympics.

In more positive news… Tennis star Naomi Osaka told media outlets on Wednesday the 6th that she plans to make her comeback to the sport at an international tournament in Australia this month. She took a break starting in September twenty twenty-two after getting pregnant. She said that she continued weight training during pregnancy, but kept it pretty light due to frequent morning sickness. She gave birth to her first child in July twenty twenty-three and officially resumed tennis training in October. She hopes to win more Grand Slam titles at the Australian Open in January and the Paris Olympics twenty twenty-four.

Osaka isn’t the only one making a comeback. On Saturday the 9th, baseball star Shohei Ohtani announced on Instagram that he decided to join the Los Angeles Dodgers on a ten-year 700-million-dollar contract. According to the US media, that’s the biggest contract in sports history, and some think that by joining the Dodgers, he might be aiming to play and win in the World Series.

Aaand that's it for this week! So here's to a bit of holiday spirit. We wanted to thank you for listening, learning, thinking, and for joining us on this new thing called Rorshok we're all doing together. Really. Thank you.

Mata Ne!