Kamikawa, Wang to Discuss Safety of Japanese in China

Jiji Press

14:36 JST, September 23, 2024

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said Monday that she plans to hold a meeting with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in New York on Monday afternoon local time.

She made the remark in talks with reporters at Haneda Airport in Tokyo just before leaving for the United States.

Kamikawa said that she will take up in the talks with Wang last week’s fatal stabbing of a schoolboy attending a Japanese school in Shenzhen, southern China. “I will strongly urge the Chinese side to fully explain the facts [about the incident] and to ensure the safety of Japanese people (in China), especially children,” she said.

On an agreement between the Japanese and Chinese governments announced last week that China will ease its blanket import ban on Japanese fisheries products, Kamikawa said, “We hope to further deepen discussions so that the import restrictions will be fully removed.”

China introduced the ban in August 2023, soon after Japan started to release treated water containing tritium, a radioactive substance, into the sea from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s disaster-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station in northeastern Japan.

During the U.S. trip, Kamikawa is also slated to hold meetings with the foreign ministers of Iran and Ukraine.

She is also expected to have a tripartite meeting with the foreign chiefs of the United States and South Korea, and attend a gathering of foreign ministers of the Group of Seven advanced countries. The G-7 groups Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States plus the European Union.

Kamikawa is slated to return home Wednesday. She is one of the nine candidates in Friday’s leadership election of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.