Actor Yoshizumi Ishihara (63) appeared on the station’s “Hatori Shinichi Morning Show” (Monday-Friday, 8:00 AM) as a commentator on January 1. He mentioned that a series of Japanese performances in China have been canceled. On November 29, former member of “SUPER☆GiRLS,” actress and voice actress Ami Maejima (28) announced on her official website that her fan meeting scheduled for December 20 in Shanghai would be canceled . On the same day, she also announced the cancellation of the fan meeting for the anime “ONE PIECE”. On the same day, singer Maki Ootsuki (52), known for the theme song of the anime “One Piece,” also “stopped” singing during an event in Shanghai, an unusual situation. As the Chinese government has been increasingly opposed to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments regarding the Taiwan emergency, there has been a series of cancellations of Japanese entertainment-related events in China, and the impact has been spreading. On the same day, on her Instagram page, Ayumi Hamasaki announced the cancellation of her Shanghai concert scheduled to be held on the 29th of this month. She apologized, expressing her grief, “I still can’t believe that I have to just dismantle this stage without having the chance to meet and apologize in person to the ‾14,000 TAs who had gathered from all over China and Japan as well as various other countries, and I can’t put it into words right now. Ishihara prefaced his apology by saying, “I don’t know if this was an unintentional comment by Prime Minister Takaichi or if he had a strategy, but there is no doubt that that is where we started. Ishihara then added, “In the midst of this, I wondered if it was partly for show, given that the Japan-China relationship has turned out this way. It may be that it is not the top that is saying this, but the bottom that is giving credit to the top by saying, “I did my best to exclude Japan in this way. The cause of this may be domestic. Then, when there is economic instability or various scandals, it is the CCP’s practice to protect the CCP,” he commented. He added, “But, after all, the power of China is different from that of the Tiananmen Square incident in the 1980s. So, we have to keep a cool head because the influence of the Chinese Communist Party is huge,” he pointed out. At the same time, there is power, but the power to disseminate information is different now than it was during the Tiananmen Square protests. So, with this social networking site, I don’t know how big the volume is, but there are people who say, “Why stop? This was not the case in the past. This kind of information that raises the question, “Why on earth?” There was no information that raised the question, “What on earth is this for? This is a domestic situation, but China is a powerful country, after all. We must not forget that. I think we have no choice but to accept the situation calmly.
