Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged an additional 20.7 billion yen ($141 million) to help the fishing industry cope with China’s blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports, but the plan was immediately met with skepticism.
Japanese government officials expected a reaction from China but were caught off-guard by the severity of Beijing’s response to the Aug. 24 discharge of treated radioactive water into the ocean.
The government pledged to slash the pollen count in half over the next 30 years to make life more tolerable for the millions of people in Japan who suffer from hay fever each spring.