Following his visit to Tokyo’s largest fish market, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Thursday, August 31st, that he intends to formulate initiatives aimed at providing assistance to the fishing sector, which has been negatively impacted by China’s prohibition on Japanese seafood.
To fund the measures, the government will inject additional funds of approximately several tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) from the government’s budget reserves for the current fiscal year, the Nikkei reported on Thursday.

“I will put together measures given the variety of opinions I heard from the fishing industry today,” Kishida said to reporters following a visit to the Toyosu fish market on Thursday, adding that requests included support to help fishing companies develop new sales avenues and holding discussions with China.
On Wednesday (August 30), Kishida consumed what he called “safe and delicious” fish from Fukushima.

He also invited his ministers to his office for a sashimi lunch made up of seafood caught from the Fukushima Prefecture.
A video clip of Kishida enjoying the meal was published on social media by his office.

The clip featuring cheery music shows the Japanese PM saying, “This is very good,” as he chews on a slice of flounder sashimi.
The move was aimed at pacifying concerns over the safety of seafood from Fukushima Prefecture, and promoting products from the area that 12 years earlier was devastated by a huge earthquake and a Tsunami.

The release of the treated water, which has undergone filtration to remove most radioactive elements except for tritium, is part of the decommissioning process of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. This process, as per AFP, will happen over decades and will release water equivalent to more than 500 Olympic swimming pools.