Tetsuya Yamagami, who is standing trial for murdering former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, testified in court on Tuesday that he believed Abe was at the center of the relationship between politics and the Unification Church, explaining why he carried out the murder.
The Kobe District Public Prosecutors Office on Friday indicted Takashi Tachibana, leader of a political group criticizing Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, for defaming a former Hyogo prefectural assembly member who apparently committed suicide. Tachibana, 58, was arrested Nov. 9 for allegedly disseminating false information about the victim, Hideaki Takeuchi, then 50, who sat on the prefectural assembly’s special investigation committee on a scandal involving Governor Motohiko Saito. It is considered unusual for a trial in Japan to address posthumous libel. Proving defamation after death is difficult, as it requires demonstrating that the information was false. The focus of the trial will likely be whether Tachibana knew the information was false.
North Korea launched a ballistic missile Friday that apparently fell outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, the Japanese government said, warning of the possibility of further provocations from Pyongyang. The missile, the second of its kind to be launched since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took office on Oct. 21, was fired at around 12:34 p.m. eastward from North Korea’s west coast and flew more than 450 kilometers at an altitude of up to 50 km, the Defense Ministry said.
As of Tuesday 21st October, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s new Cabinet appointed Kenichiro Ueno as health, labor and welfare minister and Hitoshi Kikawada as minister for children and population issues, but did not include a minister specifically in charge of elderly or disabled affairs, leaving those areas under the health ministry’s broader welfare framework.
New Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi faces a difficult challenge in maintaining the quality of the country’s medical and nursing care services while lowering related expenses, amid an aging population. Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party), the new coalition partner to Takaichi’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has called for lowering social security premiums for working people. But this requires reforms that are expected to increase the burden on society, including the elderly, as a whole. Since medical and nursing care services are offered at fixed prices set by the state, many service providers are struggling to cope with rapid inflation and are operating at a loss.
Sanae Takaichi, president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was elected prime minister Tuesday in the House of Representatives to become Japan’s first female leader, backed by the party’s new coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, amid political flux caused by growing multiparty dynamics.
The pact, inked by LDP President Sanae Takaichi and Nippon Ishin chief Hirofumi Yoshimura at a meeting in the Diet, or the country’s parliament, on Monday night, features a plan to reduce the number of seats in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, by 10 pct during an extraordinary Diet session that begins Tuesday. Nippon Ishin will not hold a ministerial post and will instead support the LDP from outside the cabinet.
Tomiichi Murayama, Japan’s prime minister from 1994 to 1996 and the first socialist to lead the country in nearly half a century, died of old age Friday at a hospital in southwestern Japan, his party’s local chapter said. He was 101. Murayama is best remembered for issuing the landmark 1995 statement apologizing for Japan’s wartime aggression and colonial rule, a declaration upheld by successive governments. Leading an unlikely coalition of his Social Democratic Party with the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, he faced major crises including the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. His government also launched redress efforts for atomic bomb survivors and “comfort women” and sought solutions for Minamata disease victims. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba praised Murayama for confronting numerous challenges, while SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima mourned him as her “political father.”
Komeito leader Tetsuo Saito said Sunday that his party will not vote for an opposition candidate for prime minister fielded by other parties in the upcoming parliamentary election. “It’s my personal opinion, but I cannot think of writing the name of such an opposition member,” Saito said in a television program of public broadcaster NHK, or Japan Broadcasting Corp. Komeito on Friday ditched its 26-year-old coalition with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which had just elected new President Sanae Takaichi. The Diet will convene for an extraordinary session as early as Oct. 20 to pick the successor to outgoing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Komeito, the junior partner in Japan’s ruling coalition, will end its long-standing alliance with the Liberal Democratic Party, party leader Tetsuo Saito said Friday, signaling a major political shift after more than two decades of cooperation.
Barrier Free Japan