What Japan Thinks

A hunter won a court ruling ordering the return of his confiscated rifle, only to learn the prosecution had already destroyed it. The 300-reply thread is a case study in public fury at prosecutorial impunity, with commenters demanding personal accountability for the officials involved and questioning whether the gun was illegally sold rather than disposed of.

TV Asahi commentator Tamagawa Toru told a live audience that Jared Kushner, “being Jewish,” should be excluded from Iran negotiations. The remark went global, and Japanese social media responded with near-unanimous condemnation, calls to pressure sponsors, and demands that the Simon Wiesenthal Center be notified.

When Nikkei reported that the government’s freeze on new “Tokutei Gino” foreign worker visas was hammering the restaurant industry, Japanese social media responded not with concern but with approval. The overwhelming sentiment: if an industry can’t survive without foreign labor, let it shrink. The top two comments, each with nearly 2,000 likes, argued that late-night convenience stores and chain restaurants should simply scale back rather than depend on imported workers.

Japan’s national federation of medical practitioners issued a scathing public letter to PM Takaichi, backed by over 300,000 petition signatures, protesting healthcare cost increases that critics say will force patients to forgo treatment. The thread exploded with 48,000 likes, driven by outrage over a system where civil servants are exempt from the very burden increases imposed on the public.

A Mainichi Shimbun poll found that 61% of Japanese respondents support a female emperor, with only 9% opposed. But the replies did not celebrate the result. Instead, they erupted into a three-front war: critics attacking the poll itself, supporters rallying behind Princess Aiko, and a vocal faction demanding the public understand the difference between a female emperor and female-line succession.

A Mainichi Shimbun poll found that 61% of Japanese respondents support a female emperor, with only 9% opposed. But the replies did not celebrate the result. Instead, they erupted into a three-front war: critics attacking the poll itself, supporters rallying behind Princess Aiko, and a vocal faction demanding the public understand the difference between a female emperor and female-line succession.