Ninja News Japan! I was gonna be like, coming back at you! I should have an opening phrase.
Maybe that’s the next step to make Ninja News Japan the greatest podcast it’s ever podcasted,
is to come up with an opening phrase that I use every week. It’s not going to be like and
subscribe. I know that. You don’t care about that. You care about the news from Japan,
which is why you’re here talking or listening to me and I’m talking to you. So let’s get to it.
The Japan Fair Trade Commission wanted to announce guidelines for ensuring fair transactions between
anime and manga creators. And so they did what every company does. They made a pamphlet.
The pamphlet’s gonna be explaining like here’s how contracts should be laid out. We don’t want the
artist getting ripped off. We don’t want the company getting ripped off. Manga is a traditionally
very abusive industry. Like the hours are long. The pay is very low. It seems very unfair. It seems
like the kind of thing you might not want to actually do. What they’re focusing on is fair compensation,
working conditions, contracts. And they’re saying like, the problem is we’re finance people.
We’re lawyers and that kind of stuff. We have to make this appeal to the artistic types because
that’s who we’re talking to. This needs to go towards manga people. So we should have some maybe
manga characters explaining the issues we’re talking about. That’s a really good idea.
So they found a company and they went to this company like, hey, can you make the art for this
pamphlet? And that company’s like, yes, we can. And then they were like, we don’t want to do that.
Let’s sublet it out, subcontract it out to another company. And that other company getting way less
money. They’re like, well, we’re going to use AI to create the manga for the pamphlet and sell it
back to these people. The secondary company is like, we don’t care. We just want to get paid.
So they pass it on without checking it. The people at the finance ministry, they’re in this situation.
We’re like, we can’t tell the difference. We’re all lawyers and stuff. We don’t read manga or we’re not
going to look at it that closely because we’re not artistic enough to be able to tell the difference
between something that was hand -drawn and AI generated. And then they put it out and everyone’s
like, hey, douchebags, this is an AI generated pamphlet. You’re talking about treating artists
fairly. And one of the first things you do to treat artists fairly is use an artist and don’t use AI.
So the Japan Fair Trade Commission claimed that they reviewed the pamphlet, but didn’t have the
knowledge to recognize AR. And I actually, to be honest, I kind of believe that, but they should be
very angry at that company they contracted to because that company subcontracted out and they
probably didn’t tell them they were going to do that. So they, it’s already getting shady. Like the
more levels of subcontracting they are, the worse the product is. And if you’re paying a company to do
it, my expectation would be that company does it. They don’t like shunt it off to someone else. So the Fair
Trade Commission in Japan actually got kind of scammed, which makes me wonder if they’re actually
very good at their job. The Japan Finance Ministry, we’re getting very big into the Japan finance
areas, is considering minting commemorative coins with anime and manga characters. So this very much
relates to our last thing. Like here you have financial institutions saying like manga and anime, they are
the money makers for Japan right now. We got tourism, we got anime and manga. That’s where this country is
making our money more than anything else. We have to encourage it. We have to like bring it up. But
there are actually laws in Japan about what you can put on bills and coins, which I didn’t know about.
That was the interesting part of this. Them wanting to make a commemorative coin for one piece or
Naruto or something. Okay, that actually makes perfect sense and it doesn’t surprise me. It actually
is weird that it hasn’t happened already. This is why it hasn’t happened already. Currently, the law only
permits the use of images pertaining to national interest, like imperial events or the Olympics.
But I don’t see how the Olympics are more valuable to Japan than manga or anime. I think it’s because
again, manga anime is seen as entertainment. The Olympics is seen as national pride kind of thing.
Do I have any money? That’s a good question. They have the thousand yen bill at the moment and the
10 ,000 yen bill and they are both just old Japanese dudes on them. And then if you on the back of the
1000 yen has that big famous wave. That’s pretty cool. On the back of 10 ,000, it’s some sort of
building or structure that I’m assuming is relatively important to someone, not me.
I don’t see how that’s better than anime characters. And these aren’t coins that are going into circulation
forever or like the standard coin. These are just commemorative things that people will collect.
So I don’t see why that law would apply to that, but they’re going to mint it. It’s an official
piece of currency. I guess you could then use it at stores and stuff. But I think the thing is,
if they do a limited run, that makes it valuable and anything that becomes valuable, that’s when you
get into scalpers and scammers and stuff. And that’s going to end up causing trouble.
Six major ice cream makers have been accused of price fixing. Meiji, Morinaga, Lotte, Ezaki, and Agaki
are all big, big ice cream companies. Like if you come to Japan and you buy ice cream, you’re buying
ice cream probably from one of these companies. That’s fine. They have apparently gotten together
and they’re in violation of the anti -monopoly law, colluding to raise retail prices. Their offices
were rated. So imagine you work in ice cream. Like, I mean, what more innocent job could you get?
Like, I want to make ice cream. I want to make people happy. I want to, I want to jump into the
world and try to, you know, in those hot summer days, create great memories of people who just
have a sweet, sweet ice cream, the chocolate ice cream, the vanilla ice cream, the others. It makes
you just like, you’d think that people who make ice cream just sort of are weirdly good people,
but that’s of course not true. These aren’t people. These are corporations and corporations
are all about screwing over the consumer in some one way or another. You’re working for an ice
cream company. You’re at your desk. You’re trying to think of a new ice cream, maybe a new flavor.
You’re trying to think of a new brand or a new packaging or something with all the naphtha
stuff we had two weeks ago, with all the packages losing all the ink because they couldn’t get enough of
the ink product because of the straighter Hormuz and all these other issues. Then a whole bunch of cops run
in and start taking all your files. That has to be a rough day for an ice cream maker.
Last year in 2025 in sales, they made over $4 billion, not yen, $4 billion. So these guys are
making more than enough money and they’re just sitting around being awful businessmen saying
like, how can we screw people over another couple of yen and make even more money? Because that’s what
the world’s about. It’s not about making people happy. It’s not about making a good product.
It’s not about, you know, providing those memories. It’s about screwing the consumer as much as
possible to the point that the police actually get called up to our ice cream factory.
Mehanada. Now this Mehanada is famous if you’re into girl bands, idol bands. I’m not. AKB.
So I came to Japan in 2001. It was Morning Musume was the big girl band. I think it was seven.
And then they just kept adding members, adding members, adding members. Then their popularity kind of
went into decline a little bit and AKB started coming up. And so for the last decade, maybe 15
years, AKB, but they keep rotating out members. So a member will join, they’ll stay for X amount of
years and then they’ll move on. Maybe they move on to solo projects. Maybe they just disappear from
the entertainment industry. Who knows? I don’t pay attention to them. It’s not generally my kind
of music. So I don’t really care. But I was fascinated always about sort of the rules and
the contracts of the idol lifestyle. Because when you join a company that creates these like idol
groups, they have full control over your life from the time you’re like sometimes 12, 13, 14 years old,
like some of the really young ones are like in their early, early teens. And then they’ll live in this
path into their twenties and thirties. But a lot of times you’re not allowed to date. Now they’re
claiming that was never a rule, but it’s clearly been a rule. So May Hanada shaved her head and
apologized on X after having her contract terminated. She is the first member to be fully
terminated from the company. So they’ve had people and they’re like, we’re going to reduce your
contract type. We’re going to change you to another subgroup or we’re going to do something
else. They’ve been moved around. That kind of thing has happened before, but no one’s ever been
outright fired. This is the first outright firing of a member of AKB 48. The company says the reasons
were multiple rule violations, including unauthorized private contact with a fan.
Now, if they’re saying there is no rule about, you know, dating or falling in love with someone,
they call it the love band, which is why I keep thinking about that in the back of my head.
Then the fact that she had contact with a fan shouldn’t be unauthorized. If that was a dating
scenario, unless the scenario they’re talking about is something else, but they didn’t explain it any
other way. They just said unauthorized contact. So was she supposed to get permission to hang out
with this fan? Maybe they were just friends. We don’t know. We don’t actually know what happened.
She went online and made a nine minute apology video similar to 2013 when another member had been
photographed leaving her boyfriend’s apartment. So this became really famous because I don’t know if
she was told to do it or not, but she had long hair. A lot of these girls have long hair and that
this hair is very valued to them. It’s something they’ve spent a lot of time on. So it’s something really
important to them. So that’s why shaving it off is a show of contrition. In 2013, this girl had a
boyfriend. She was photographed leaving the guy’s apartment in the morning, which would imply that
there had been some nighttime activities. And so she shaved her head and apologized. She kept her job.
I don’t know. I think it actually increased her popularity overall later, but there was this like
big scandal that she had done this. And that was the first time I was introduced to the concept of
idols are not allowed to date because they have to keep the image of availability.
availability. So there is the fantasy of the fan actually dating the idol. That availability is
part of the fantasy they’re trying to create by creating these idol groups. She says, May Hamada,
so the recent one says, I was told if you want to continue with AKB, shave your head and show your
sincerity. So she thought if she shaved her head, she might actually keep her job. So she shaved her head,
went on X and made a nine minute apology video, still got fired. The company, to the
public is saying since December, 2025, she has been late and has had poor health. We suspended her
activity so she could get treatment. And then we discovered a connection with a specific fan. And
again, not saying what that connection is being very vague. So like if they were saying she was
meeting this fan and buying drugs, if she was meeting this fan and there was like something more
nefarious going on, I might actually be able to accept that. But they’re not actually saying that
they’re just saying she’s had contact with a fan. That’s unacceptable. So she’s getting fired.
We tried to discuss, but she refused. We would absolutely never issue an instruction to shave her
head. So they’re saying that we didn’t say shave your head. Although I could see it being an offhanded
comment because a throwback to 2013, when this other person did shave their head and did keep their job,
they might just throw that out in part of a conversation. They might not mean it. They might not. I don’t know
if they represent the company. I’m assuming these are managers. So technically they represent the
company all the time. The love ban rule is not a rule and is being discussed again online. It’s
become a big issue online. Should these 17, 18, 19, 20 year old women be allowed to have boyfriends?
Because you’re talking about controlling their life in a way where I would say like most people
sort of start dating in their teens. And that’s when they find out, you know, what do I want? What do I
like? What do I don’t like? This is where you kind of learn who you are and who you want your partner
to be. And maybe you don’t get married until later, whatever. I don’t know. But without that
experimental phase, it’s much more difficult to find someone you’re actually going to be satisfied
with. So this has brought up the discussion again. So back in 2010, Tomomi Itano said she wasn’t allowed
to pursue a relationship. So she had someone she wanted to date, probably spoke to management properly,
and they said, you’re not allowed to date anyone, which would imply that you’re being banned from dating.
In 2013, Minegishi shaved her head. So that was the one we actually just mentioned. She was caught
coming out of a boyfriend’s apartment by a magazine. They published the pictures. She had to shave her
head. She apologized. She got to keep her job. In 2022, Nana Okada, who was pro -rule. So this is the
problem. She said, I agree with the idea of idols not being allowed to date. And then she was found out
to have a relationship with an actor. She then had to apologize and graduated. But everyone was
calling her a hypocrite. Now graduated means you’ve gotten to this point where you’re going to quit
the group. So they have like a, it’s very weird. I don’t know why they call it graduated. I guess
because idols tend to be younger. They’re thinking like, you get to a certain age and you’re not an idol
anymore. And then you want to graduate this and then move on to the next part of life, which again,
would be maybe individual activities, things like that. She was like, I’m pro these people not dating,
but she was dating secretly. And then she got called out. And so then she had to quit
in the official way, I guess. One of the managers, Mukaiichi Mion, tweeted that he was reconsidering the
rule, but then came back and said, no such rule exists. So you can see that in their day -to -day lives,
everyone knows maybe this is an unwritten rule or maybe it’s an unspoken rule. And he’s like tweeting
like, Oh, Hey, yeah, we’re going to reconsider whether or not this is acceptable. This rule
that we have, the people aren’t allowed to date when they’re in their teens and stuff.
And then had to turn around and go like, Oh shit, there’s not supposed to be a rule like that.
So now I have to go back and go, Oh, there is no actual rule. So then what is she getting in
trouble for? Why does she, why does she get terminated? If she got terminated for dating a
fan, is it, you’re not allowed to date fans? Like maybe dating an actor is okay. Someone else in the
entertainment industry, dating someone else is okay. But then there’s still a ban on dating fans.
And maybe she meets a fan and the fan is the kind of person she wants to spend her life with or spend
her time with that should be allowed. But then if she’s not allowed to do that, that is a ban on
dating fans. So the love ban is clearly a very real thing, but no one wants to admit it because once
they admit it, then it has to be like a human’s rights issue. Because are you allowed to tell people
they’re not allowed to date or fall in love or have relationships? And we’re in a country that is
having like a massive decline in population. Is it really appropriate to have these people who
aren’t allowed to pursue relationships and maybe have babies and stuff? Because one of the idols,
a long time ago, again, I don’t remember what group or anything. She had like five kids with an
actor. I mean, she did her part. So the love ban is clearly actually a real thing, but it’s just not
written down because that would probably be illegal. So these companies are trying to get
around it. But if you actually try to date, you could lose your job, which is even if it’s not
written down, that is clearly just as much punishment. And man, these are just people
being like people and the fans, they get upset, but it’s like, I’m sorry, you’re not going to get
to date them if the love ban is in place. Like, let’s say that is your fantasy. Like this one fan,
he achieved the dream. He started dating his favorite idol. How is it you’re going to support
the love ban? Because that actually makes it impossible for you to end up achieving your dream.
But I guess the idea is they shouldn’t be allowed to date anyone else, only me. And of course,
that is a kind of weird, pathetic thing idol fans do. Yokohama City was terrorized by its own
supervillain. This is actually weirdly true. You don’t get to talk about this. They called him the
black masked bumping grandpa. In Japanese, it was the Kuro Masuku no Butsukari Oji -san.
And so this is a real guy who did real awful things. So he was targeting elementary students
who were walking to school. So kids in Japan, they meet sort of on the corner of roads, and then they
will walk together to school in little groups. But sometimes you have to walk on your own to get to
the corner. Part of my job when my kids were in elementary school is like once a month or
once every two or three months, I would have to be sort of an escort. I wasn’t guiding the kids.
I just had to be there in case something happened. If something happened, I was supposed to step in
as the responsible adult. This was shared among all the parents. I don’t think anyone minded because
it was like a five, 10 minute walk to the school and you just be like, hey kids, all right, bye -bye,
when you actually have the school in sight. May 26th at 724 a .m., a seven -year -old girl
was walking to school. He ran up and body slammed the child. Now, I really want to know if he really
body slammed the child. Like did he jump in the air and land on a child? Because in my image,
he’s an adult male. He’s supposed to be in his 50s or 60s. I actually don’t remember what it was.
But he’s, you know, in that weird zone, weirdo zone that we have on Injuni News of Japan.
You could kill a child. Like if I body slammed a seven -year -old, I absolutely could kill them.
Did he pick the child up and then like slammed him to the ground? That could kill a child. Like
kids are springy and bouncy and stuff. But when you apply a certain amount of weight to them,
they are crushed. It is one of the scary things about children is how easily they could be crushed.
So if he’s body slamming them, I actually kind of want to know like without any sort of flavor
to the writing. What did he actually do? Did he pick the child up and throw them? Did he jump on
them? Did he hit them? Did he slam them? On June 12th, a girl was waiting at a traffic light and it
says she was tackled. Now, again, what does that mean? He just ran up and like slammed his body into
hers? Because that seems like what he’s doing. If I’m taking this as accurate reporting, he like ran
full speed into a child on the road. So this is on the road. It’s on the sidewalk. So that’s on concrete.
That is doing real damage to a child. And as a parent, I can tell you he would not have the
opportunity to do it twice if I was involved. Now, when he tackled the kid on June 12th,
teachers saw it and they called the police. Now, the fact that the teachers did not chase this dude
down, did not follow him, did not get him really upsets me. Because as an adult in that situation,
if I saw someone attack a child, I would step in. Now, I know it’s really dangerous for a foreign
person to step into a Japanese situation, but I could at least stop them. I could stand in between
them. And if he tried to take off, I could follow him while speaking to the police. But the fact that
they just like kind of saw this and called the cops and just let it go, that bothers me because it
seems like those teachers didn’t actually do anything. Police increased patrols around the area.
They saw a man loitering in the area and then they went up and spoke to him and that led to his arrest.
He admitted it. He said, there is no doubt about what I did and I have no objections. Now,
I don’t know if he means he has no objections to the way he behaved or if he has no objections to
being arrested or denying the charges or whatnot. But looking at bengoshi .com, this came up and it was
talking about like, what is the crime? So it’s assault. There’s two kinds of assault because
there’s assault where you just like push someone and they don’t get hurt. And then there’s grievous
assault basically where if someone gets hurt. So that first kid who was body slammed said he hurt her
knees. But again, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if it’s like you had to spend time
at home in bed because you couldn’t walk. You had scrapes because you just kind of fell down
because again, body slammed is actually really vague as a descriptor of what the person was doing.
But all I know is that an adult man attacking, and it seemed primarily little girls. I think there
should be like a new thing. I think someone is assault, but attacking children has to be a new
worst crime because dude, I would wreck that guy. Toritetsu is another. So we’re learning some
Japanese today. We learned Kuro Mask no Butsukari Ojisan, the black masked bumping grandpa.
And Toritetsu. Toritetsu are the people who are super into trains. They love trains. They’re super
train nerds. And they take pictures of them. So their main hobby would actually be taking pictures of
trains. I’m sure they ride them and try to find all the special ones. There have been stories in
the past about these guys just like going way too far is the only way you can say it. They
kind of fight with each other when they’re trying to get the right picture. They want to like, I’m in
the right spot. And then someone else wants to move into the same spot because they want the same
picture from the same angle. So they fight amongst themselves. An innocent bystander will walk by
and they’ll all get really angry at him because he’s ruining their picture. There is a fairly famous meme of a
guy on a bicycle. So there was a train and it came around this one specific corner and all the train
nerds were out taking their pictures. And this guy just rode past on a bicycle and they were all
shouting at him. He didn’t speak Japanese. We started waving. And so that’s actually a meme. I don’t
think I’d be like more than five, eight years ago. So this is it. They get violent in a way. The thing is
these are all train nerds. So they’re not like guys who are physical. So they’ll shout and they’ll say
like, I will kill you. But then they don’t actually like do anything. This seems to be a case of they
decided to get a little more bold. This was the final run of the Cassiopeia connecting Ueno and
Sapporo. So this is a very special train. It’s like a sleeper train. You’ll be on it for like a night.
You sleep on the train. You get a nice bed. All this other stuff. And there is one place where there
is a very scenic photo spot. And the Toritetsu value it a lot because I guess I would assume it’s
coming around an angle or something. And you get to see it come around a mountain and there’s like maybe
some ocean behind you. Like I’m just guessing. But it’s something like that. Maybe it comes out
of a forest. It comes out of a tunnel. It goes into a tunnel. Something like that that’s really
important to the train nerds. So a lot of them turned up for this very special day because it’s
the last run of this train. So if you can get a picture of the last run of this train in this
very scenic spot, that best picture, it’s going to be a dream come true for these guys.
One of the guys came back to find his rental car had been vandalized. The windshield had been
shattered and the body of the car had been kicked. I mean, they must have known it was this guy’s
rental because they didn’t know it was his car unless he rents the exact same car every time.
But that is absolutely crazy. They found that this guy was in the same place taking pictures. They
must have hated him for some reason previously. And while he was out taking pictures, they went back
and started booting the crap out of his car. And one 23 -year -old was arrested, but police suspect it
might’ve been like a party or a group that was involved and they are still investigating.
So they have crossed the sort of Rubicon, the border, the line, the event horizon of violence,
where they’ve gone from, we’re going to shout stuff at people to we’re actually going to do stuff,
which is a little scary because these guys do travel in packs and they are incredibly passionate.
There is a temple in Asakusa and a man saw another man and he went up and accused him of trying to
to tori tetsu, which is no, no, that’s not right. He saw another man. He went up and said, Hey,
I saw you were trying to take illicit pictures. So maybe he was trying to put his smartphone under
someone’s skirt. He had a weird angles. He was trying to take pictures of to get pictures of ladies,
but he was taking illicit pictures. And he said, you were filming, weren’t you? The money,
1 million yen. So basically he’s saying, give me a million yen, or I’m going to report you to the
police. This last couple of weeks, there were a lot of people trying to blackmail other people.
There was a guy who had had sex with a 19 year old and then posted it online. And then two friends
of the 19 year old came up and said, like, you have to give us 4 million yen, or we’re going to
like expose you to everybody or something. It was weird. That was interesting because it was like,
who was wrong? The guy who did essentially revenge porn by posting stuff online or the guys who then
turned it into a blackmail opportunity. The internet was discussing who was right and who
was wrong in that, which was very interesting. But this one, it’s the same problem. So you have
one guy who’s taking illicit photos, like upskirt photos and stuff like that. And then you have
another guy who comes, tries to blackmail him. They’re both bad in their own way. Well, the guy who
was trying to do the blackmailing was also extra bad because he was able to recognize the first man
is taking the illicit photos, I guess, technique wise, because he was the same kind of dude.
He had actually been arrested for something similar. So our hero was arrested for something else. And
then when they got on his phone, because they always search his phone, there were a bunch of
pictures of women bathing. So I’m assuming in a hot spring, he had got his camera over the top of the
fence or found some crack or something. And he was taking pictures of the women bathing, which he was
not supposed to be taking. So police suspect he was also doing, oh, to Satsu. I had just gotten my
Japanese mixed up from the previous story. So Satsu at the shrine and recognized one of his own. So
he’s like, oh, I recognize what that guy’s doing. That guy’s doing what I’m doing. His technique’s
not as good as mine because I recognize what he’s doing. So here’s an opportunity for me to be
extra bad. Not only am I trying to take upskirt photos, maybe I can get a million out of this guy
to blackmail him. So he claims he made the accusation. Like I walked up to him and said, you’re taking
illicit photos. But then he claims he did not ask for money, which is absolutely not true. 100%. If you
were going to make the accusation and you’re the guy who does this kind of thing, like he didn’t go,
hey, brother, you and me should team up and take extra dirty pictures. That just made me immediately
think like of each other, which would be safer. It’s consensual. But no, you and I team up and we’ll like
take dirty pictures together. No, he saw an opportunity to try to extort someone because
he knew what he was doing and messed it up because these kind of people are losers.