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Fourth member of scandal-hit Japanese cabinet resigns | Japan
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has ended the year facing fierce political headwinds after his reconstruction minister became the fourth member of his scandal-hit cabinet to resign in two months.
Kenya Akiba announced his resignation on Tuesday after opposition MPs accused him of election law violations and of having ties to the Unification church, a controversial religious group whose connections to the ruling party have sent Kishida’s approval ratings to record lows.
“I take my responsibility very seriously as the person who makes appointments,” Kishida told reporters after Akiba had quit. “By rising to my political responsibilities, I hope to be fulfilling my duties as prime minister.”
Kishida effectively ordered Akiba to resign, according to Japanese media reports, in part to prevent the scandal from interfering with upcoming parliamentary debates over a budget bill, which includes a dramatic rise in defence spending that Kishida has argued is essential to counter growing threats to Japan’s security from China and North Korea.
Akiba has denied allegations of mishandling political and election funds and of having ties to the Unification church – more commonly known as the Moonies.
Revelations that the ultra-conservative religious group has connections with large numbers of Liberal Democratic party (LDP) politicians have dogged Kishida since the assassination in July of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Tetsuya Yamagami, who is suspected of shooting Abe as he made an election speech in the western city of Nara, has told investigators that he targeted the politician because he believed he had ties to the church, which he blamed for bankrupting his family.
Akiba has denied any links with the church but acknowledged that the LDP branch he leads paid ¥48,000 (£299) to two entities associated with the group that he claimed were magazine subscriptions, according to Kyodo news agency.
Kishida has ordered an investigation into the Unification church’s finances and organisation, and this month backed a new law to help victims of its controversial fundraising methods, but Akiba’s resignation has prompted renewed criticism of his political judgment.
The economic revitalisation minister, Daishiro Yamagiwa, resigned in October after failing to explain his ties to the church. Last month, the justice minister, Yasuhiro Hanashi, quit after making a poorly judged joke about the death penalty, while the internal affairs minister, Minoru Terada, was effectively sacked over a political funds scandal.
The continuing controversy over the Unification church is expected to continue into next year, just as the cabinet’s approval ratings approach the “danger level” of 30% and with Kishida’s party facing potentially damaging local elections in the spring.
Support for the cabinet has slumped to 33.1%, according to a Kyodo poll conducted last week – its lowest level since Kishida became prime minister in October last year.
Third Japanese cabinet minister in a month resigns in blow to PM
TOKYO, Nov 21 (Reuters) – Japan’s internal affairs minister resigned on Sunday in connection with a funding scandal, becoming the third cabinet member to leave in less than a month in a severe blow to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s already shaky support.
Kishida’s approval ratings have sunk after the July assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe revealed deep and longstanding ties between ruling Liberal Democratic Party politicians and the Unification Church, a group that critics say is a cult.
Internal affairs minister Minoru Terada tendered his resignation to Kishida after media reports the premier was preparing to sack him. Kishida on Monday appointed Takeaki Matsumoto, a former foreign minister, to succeed Terada.
“The foundation of political commitment is the trust of the public,” Kishida told reporters after appointing Matsumoto. “As a politician I must secure the public trust by bracing up and inspecting my surroundings”.
A poll conducted over the weekend, before Terada’s resignation, found that only 30.5% of respondents approved of Kishida, down 2.6 points from a survey in October, Asahi TV said on Monday.
Just over half, 51%, disapproved of how he had handled the resignation of two previous ministers, Economic Revitalisation Minister Daishiro Yamagiwa and Justice Minister Yasuhiro Hanashi.
Terada, under fire for several funding scandals, has acknowledged that one of his support groups had submitted funding documentation ostensibly signed by a dead person.
Kishida said he had accepted Terada’s resignation in order to prioritise parliamentary debate, including discussions on a second extra budget for the fiscal year ending in March.
Asked about the fact that three ministers have resigned since Oct. 24, Kishida said he would like to apologise.
“I feel a heavy responsibility,” he told reporters on Sunday.
Terada’s departure could further weaken the embattled premier, whose support ratings have remained below 30% in several recent opinion polls, a level that may make it difficult for him to carry out his political agenda.
After leading the LDP to an election victory days after Abe was gunned down on the campaign trail, Kishida had been widely expected to enjoy a “golden three years” with no national elections required until 2025.
Abe’s suspected killer said his mother was bankrupted by the Unification Church and blamed Abe for promoting it. The LDP has acknowledged many lawmakers have ties to the church but that there is no organisational link to the party.
A vast majority of voters also disapproved of Kishida’s decision to hold a state funeral for Abe, which took place at the end of September.
Yamagiwa resigned on Oct. 24 due to his ties to the religious group, and Kishida came under fire for what voters saw as his delayed and clumsy handling of the situation.
Further damage came from the resignation of justice minister YasuhiroHanashi in mid-November for comments seen as making light of his work responsibilities, specifically signing off on executions.
Hanashi and Terada’s resignations are likely to be especially painful because they were members of Kishida’s faction in the LDP.
Reporting by Elaine Lies and Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Stephen Coates
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Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities review – the horror series that’s perfect pre-Halloween viewing | Television & radio
There are few safer bets than being a Guillermo del Toro fan. Whether he’s breathing life into a wooden puppet, having Sally Hawkins fall in love with a fish, or defending Martin Scorsese online, he is a seemingly endless source of delight. In the run-up to Halloween, he continues to bear fruit with his Cabinet of Curiosities (Netflix), an eight-part series that is as elegant as it is grotesque. While it is assumed that in any anthology series there will be hits and misses, nothing in this cabinet is worth discarding.
Del Toro has written two of the episodes but “curated” them all, and assembled eight directors to create self-contained nightmares. He appears at the start of each, not unlike Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone. But Del Toro cuts a more sinister figure, with a firmly unsmiling expression as he ominously presents each episode as though it were a cursed object. The literal cabinet appears alongside him, an ornate wooden structure that resembles a many-tiered mansion; its contents, we are told, range from keys to bones to unicorn horns. Meanwhile, Del Toro’s cabinet is also brimming with some of the most exciting voices in horror, including Jennifer Kent of The Babadook, Ana Lily Amirpour of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and David Prior of The Empty Man. But each keeps their offering rooted in Guillermo’s signature style of the twisted fairytale, packed with stomach-churning effects and morbid morality. This is a cabinet in which hubris leads you to hell and cruelty comes back tenfold.
The series starts with Lot 36, directed by Del Toro’s long-term collaborator Guillermo Navarro– who won an Oscar as the cinematographer of the director’s finest film, Pan’s Labyrinth. There are similar threads of fascism and fantasy in Lot 36, in which Tim Blake Nelson plays a military veteran slowly being swallowed whole by “alt-right” talking points. He spends his days being chased by debt collectors and selling the contents of abandoned storage units. Blake Nelson is phenomenal, playing all the bitterness and selfishness of his fascist brainwashing but keeping enough tiny cracks of humanity to remain compelling, even when he inevitably comes across a storage unit with truly horrific contents.
The series then plunges into its tautest tale, Graveyard Rats, from Vincenzo Natali who was behind the cult-classic Kafkaesque nightmare Cube. Adapted from the Henry Kuttner short story, the premise is simple: a grave-robber digs up a wealthy corpse, only to see it dragged away by a pack of rats. Undeterred, he pursues the vermin through dark and twisted tunnels and discovers something far worse down there. The journey through the tunnels is utterly foul and heart-stoppingly stressful. Equally horrific moments and grisly body-horror populate the pitch-black tale of The Autopsy, where Prior as a coroner’s office doctor encounters a corpse in need of more than a “cause of death”.
Meanwhile, HP Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model is in the hands of The Vigil director Keith Thomas, who embraces the fantastical potential of Del Toro and the cosmic dread of Lovecraft with a cast led by the always intriguing Crispin Glover. But most fantastical of all is The Viewing from Panos Cosmatos, director of the avant garde Nicolas Cage revenge flick Mandy. This drug trip gone wrong fable builds to a demonic figure that feels plucked from Del Toro’s coterie.
Throughout the series the tone shifts, but it always keeps one foot in Del Toro’s filmography; the dark humour of the Hellboy films is present in makeover nightmare The Outside, where Stacey (a brilliantly awkward Kate Micucci) plays an amateur taxidermist longing to fit in with her glamorous colleagues at the bank. Despite her husband’s (Martin Starr) protestations, she cannot resist the lure of Alo Glo, sold on television infomercials by a deliciously camp Dan Stevens. It’s a classic tale of “be careful what you wish for” done with all the panache you would expect of Del Toro and director Amirpour.
Perhaps the most significant deviation from the pack is the least scary but most haunting entry. The Murmuring sees Kent reunite with its star Essie Davis for a mournful tale of a pair of ornithologists retreating to a secluded home to research bird migrations and recover from a terrible loss. The piece has all the gentle sorrow of Kent’s work and the tragedy of Del Toro’s orphanage horror The Devil’s Backbone. It also perfectly encapsulates what makes Cabinet of Curiosities an absolute triumph. It lets film-makers draw inspiration from the master without squashing their own spirit, giving Del Toro plenty of delectably nasty tales to present to the viewer. There seems no better way to countdown to Halloween than this assurance that the state of horror is in safe, if sinister, hands.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities is scary good
At the start of every episode of Netflix’s latest anthology horror series, Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities, audiences are greeted by the Oscar-winning director. Introducing each new tale in front of an actual cabinet of curiosities, the Pan’s Labyrinth filmmaker immediately evokes both Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. And the comparisons are apt, if readily welcomed. After all, del Toro’s first foray into television finds him playing host and tastemaker to a stellar roster of horror and thriller storytellers who remind us why this genre remains fertile ground for exploring today’s most relevant issues.
But maybe we should pause and explain why del Toro picked the “cabinet of curiosities” as both title and concept for the show. As he explains in the series’ opening episode (the Guillermo Navarro-directed “Lot 36,” written by Regina Corrado from an original del Toro story): “In centuries past, when the world was full of mystery and traveling was reserved for the very few, a new form of collection was born.” The cabinet of curiosities, which could be a building or an actual piece of furniture, housed any and all sorts of things. And tied to every one of its objects was a story. At the top of every installment, he opens up the titular wood-carved cabinet and offers us an object that will prove crucial to these stories (a set of keys, say, or a remote control).
These opening interludes help elucidate the way the series approaches its genre trappings. The cabinet of curiosities, after all, serves as much as a structural conceit as a metaphor for the anthology setup. Del Toro wants to remind us that scary stories can and do begin with the most mundane of objects—but also that the very act of storytelling, the craftsmanship of such narrative flair, lies on the filmmakers are the heart of this anthology series. It’s why every introduction places such objects next to carved figurines of the directors helming each episode.
Indeed, each installment, which boasts directors like Panos Cosmatos (Mandy), Jennifer Kent (The Babadook, The Nightingale), and Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Twilight), is, like the beautiful eponymous wooden cabinet, expertly crafted. The attention to detail in everything from thrill-inducing soundscapes that conjure dug-up graves to meticulously art-directed spaces that are truly haunting elevates these terrifying short horror tales about such timeless themes as greed, pride, and vanity, all while dredging up devilish takes on zombies, rat kings, vengeful demons, and, of course, the most horrific villain one can think of: capitalism itself.
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Any review of an anthology series—especially one as strong as this one—is bound to play favorites. And while I could focus on any one of the many standout episodes (actors Tim Blake Nelson and F. Murray Abraham, for example, make the entries they star in, “Lot 36” and “The Autopsy,” respectively, gripping performance showcases that double as meditations on what we owe the dead), we’d be remiss if we didn’t single out the one we’ve yet to shake off.
We’re talking about the Ana Lily Amirpour-directed installment “The Outside.” Written by Haley Z. Boston and based on a short story by comics author Emily Carroll, this horror-comedy take on the preyed insecurities of a young woman in a wintry nondescript suburban neighborhood is a knockout. The ’80s Christmas-set episode stars Kate Micucci (best known as one half of the musical comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates) as Stacey, an awkward bank teller whose love of taxidermy, not to mention her unfashionable sense of style, keeps her on the outs with her beautifully coiffed colleagues.
As with every other episode, the specifics of “The Outside” are best left unspoiled, but know that Micucci’s comedic sensibilities—as well as Dan Stevens’ penchant for playing outsized if alluring weirdos—are expertly deployed here once Stacey decides her betterment shall come in the shape of a beauty regimen that proves almost disastrously self-destructive … until it’s not. Just as she’s proven with her filmmaking credits, Amirpour is one of the most exciting voices working in horror today. With “The Outside” she manages to defamiliarize water-cooler gossip and office secret Santas with such skillful ease you’ll never believe anything is scarier than a gaggle of shoulder-pad-wearing women silently judging you while aggressively lotioning their arms with abandon. A darkly comedic fable about the impossible beauty standards women needlessly hold each other to, Amirpour’s directorial offering here is, above anything else, a fantastic chance to see Micucci shine. The extended shot that closes out the episode alone—which mocks and complicates an all-too-bleak ending—is a transfixing master class in the way comedy and horror make for perfect bedfellows.
As both a survey of contemporary horror and an ode to the timeless nature of its many concerns, Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities is a welcome addition to the filmmaker’s oeuvre. Just as he’s proven time and time again, the Oscar-winning director is just as much a student as a master of horror, and here he is once more allowing audiences to revel in its many possibilities with a slew of entrancing and an times all too timely stories—and just in time for spooky season, no less.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities premieres October 25 on Netflix.
Liz Truss’s cabinet may be first without a White man in high office
She named Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor of the exchequer, or finance chief, a role that will be pivotal as the country grapples with a cost-of-living crisis. On Tuesday evening, he tweeted that it was “the honour of a lifetime” to be appointed and promised to announce a “package of urgent support to help with energy bills.”
Kwarteng, whose parents migrated to Britain from Ghana, is the first Black Briton to hold the role. A decade ago, he wrote a book examining the British Empire’s rule in the former colonies of Iraq, Kashmir, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria and Hong Kong.
Truss’s new foreign secretary is James Cleverly, a mixed-race army reservist whose mother hails from Sierra Leone and whose father is from Wiltshire, about 90 miles outside London. He has spoken publicly about being bullied as a mixed-race child and has given talks at Conservative Party conferences about how the party can win the support of Black voters.
Cleverly will serve as Britain’s top diplomat at a time of rocky relations between it and the 27-nation E.U. bloc.
The new home secretary is Suella Braverman, whose parents came to Britain in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius.
The three names had been leaked in recent days and didn’t come as a surprise, in part because each person was a staunch Truss ally during her winning leadership campaign.
The diversity of the ministerial appointments won praise from some quarters, in a nation where Conservative Party members — about 0.3 percent of Britain’s population — are generally older, wealthier, 95 percent White and politically further to the right than Britain as a whole. (Nearly 85 percent of people living in England and Wales identify as White, government data shows.)
“The new cabinet is another reminder that people from all backgrounds can go far within the Tory party,” Samuel Kasumu, a former race affairs adviser to Johnson, told the Guardian newspaper.
Not everyone appeared convinced. A headline in Britain’s right-wing Daily Mail tabloid declared ruefully: “Liz Truss puts finishing touches to diverse new government: No place for white men in great offices of state.”
Her predecessor, Johnson, also had a fairly diverse senior ministerial lineup. Home Secretary Priti Patel was the first British member of Parliament of Indian origin to take up that appointment, while the three chancellors during Johnson’s premiership included two men of South Asian origin and one of Kurdish background. Truss was Johnson’s foreign secretary.
Some pointed out that although ethnically diverse, Truss’s probable top appointees are in the party’s right wing. Kwarteng had pushed for Britain to quickly leave the European Union, while Braverman has said that schools may be able legally to ignore the preferred pronouns of gender-nonconforming and transgender pupils.
The 47-year-old Truss promises to cut taxes and bolster borrowing to fund spending, even as inflation soars past 10 percent and the Bank of England forecasts a protracted recession by year’s end. Truss also has promised to make reducing illegal migration a key priority, ensuring the continuation of a policy to deport to Rwanda asylum seekers who enter Britain on small boats.
The left-of-center opposition Labour Party has more ethnically and gender-diverse lawmakers, but they occupy a smaller proportion of the party’s highest posts. Labour has never elected a woman as its party leader; the Conservatives, by contrast, have had three female prime ministers.
Labour politician Shaista Aziz said on Twitter in response to news of Truss’s potential appointees that it is “not enough to be a Black or ethnic minority politician in this country or a cabinet member. That’s not what representation is about. That’s actually tokenism.”
In the run-up to the leadership vote, Aziz wrote an article panning the Conservatives as failing to represent the concerns of ordinary people.
“Despite all the talk of diversity and inclusion, the Tory candidates of colour and all those who entered the race support the party’s right-wing immigration policies, which include removing asylum seekers from the UK and flying them to Rwanda while their asylum applications are processed,” she wrote last month.
Labour lawmaker Marsha de Cordova said that although Truss’s cabinet is expected to be diverse, “it will be the most right-wing in living memory, embracing a political agenda that will attack the rights of working people, especially minorities.”
William Booth and Karla Adam contributed to this report.
Japan PM purges Cabinet after support falls over church ties
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reshuffled his Cabinet on Wednesday in an apparent bid to distance his administration from the conservative Unification Church over its ties to the assassinated leader Shinzo Abe and senior ruling party members.
The reshuffle, second in just 10 months since Kishida took office, followed his July election victory that had been expected to ensure long-term stability until 2025. But Abe’s shocking assassination on July 8 and its impact on politics increased uncertainty as public support for Kishida’s Cabinet plunged.
Kishida said it was important to gain people’s trust and that the new Cabinet included only those who agreed to strictly review their ties to the church and help the victims of the allegedly fraudulent religious businesses.
“We have to be careful about our relationship with an organization that has known social problems so that they won’t raise suspicions among the public,” Kishida said.
A survey released Monday by the NHK public television showed support for Kishida’s Cabinet fell to 46% from 59%.
Most of the respondents said they think politicians have not sufficiently explained their ties to the Unification Church. Kishida’s plan to hold a state funeral for Abe has also split public opinion because of Abe’s archconservative stance on national security and wartime history.
“The Cabinet reshuffle was damage control” to divert the public’s attention from the Unification Church scandal, political analyst Atsuo Ito told a TBS talk show.
Abe was fatally shot while giving a campaign speech two days before the parliamentary election. Police and media reports say the suspect targeted Abe over suspected ties to the Unification Church, which the man hated because his mother’s massive financial donations to the church ruined his family.
Abe, in his video message to the church affiliate the Universal Peace Foundation, in September 2021, praised its work toward peace on the Korean Peninsula and its focus on family values. Some experts say Abe’s video appearance may have motived the suspect.
The ties between the church and Japan’s governing party go back to Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who served as prime minister and shared U.S. concerns over the spread of communism in Japan in the 1960s.
The church since the 1980s has faced accusations of devious recruitment and brainwashing of its adherents into making huge donations. Critics say the church has contributed votes to lift borderline candidates to election victories, while allegedly pushing their opposition to equal rights for women and sexual minorities to be reflected on government policies.
On Wednesday, Tomihiro Tanaka, president of the church, which now calls itself the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, told a news conference that one of its church-related groups, which he called “peace federation,” is more politically active and involved in election campaigns.
But he denied any “political interference” with specific parties and said that Kishida’s call for his party members to distance themselves from the church was “regrettable.”
Tanaka said the church and its affiliate groups have naturally developed closer ties with the Liberal Democratic Party conservatives than others because of their shared anti-communist stance.
“We’ve worked together with politicians who have clear views against communism in order to build a better country,” Tanaka said. “We are pursuing the activity not only in Japan but as part of our global network against communism.”
Kishida denied the church’s “inappropriate influence” on government policies.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, who retained his post, announced the new Cabinet, including five ministers who kept their posts, another five who were brought back and nine first-timers.
Seven ministers who acknowledged their ties to the church were removed. They include Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, Abe’s younger brother, who said that church followers were volunteers in his past election campaigns, and Public Safety Commission Chairman Satoshi Ninoyu, who attended an event organized by a church-related organization.
Several newly appointed ministers said they had given donations and had others links to the church in the past, triggering criticism from opposition leaders.
Japanese Communist Party senior lawmaker Akira Koike said the reshuffle failed to cover up the Unification Church ties. “It only showed the LDP’s deep ties to the church because they cannot form a Cabinet if they exclude lawmakers linked to the church.”
Kishida said the main purpose of the reshuffle was to “break through one of biggest postwar crises” such as the coronavirus pandemic, inflation, growing tensions between China and self-ruled Taiwan and Russia’s war on Ukraine. He said that bolstering Japan’s military capability and spending was a top priority.
Kishi was replaced by former Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada, and Taro Kono, who previously served as a vaccination tsar during the pandemic as well as foreign and defense minister, returned to the Cabinet as digital minister.
Along with Matsuno, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, Economy Minister Daishiro Yamagiwa, Transportation Minister Tetsuo Saito, Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki also kept their jobs.
Economy and Trade Minister Koici Hagiuda, who also had church ties, was shifted to head the party policy research committee and replaced by former Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura. Katsunobu Kato was appointed health minister for the third time, tasked with coronavirus measures.
The new Cabinet suggested Kishida tasked veterans with key portfolios such as diplomacy, defense, economic security and pandemic measures while carefully keeping a power balance among party wings to solidify unity amid growing speculation of a power struggle within Abe’s faction.
Despite criticism that Japanese politics is dominated by older men, the majority of the Cabinet members are still men older than 60, with only two women.
They include Sanae Takaichi, an ultra-conservative close to Abe who was appointed economic security minister, and Keiko Nagaoka, a first-timer who became education minister and replaced Shinsuke Suematsu, who also acknowledged his Unification Church links.
Gender Minister Seiko Noda, who admitted to sending a message to a church-related group’s event in 2001 that was attended by her aide, was replaced by Masanobu Ogura in his first Cabinet post.
Japan PM shuffles cabinet as anger deepens over ties to Unification Church
TOKYO, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reshuffled his cabinet on Wednesday amid growing public anger about the ruling party’s ties to the controversial Unification Church, saying the group had held no sway over party policy.
The Liberal Democratic Party’s longstanding links to the Unification Church, which critics call a cult, has become a major liability for Kishida in the month following the killing of former premier Shinzo Abe, helping send Kishida’s approval ratings to the lowest since he took office in October.
Abe’s suspected killer has said his mother, a member of the church, was bankrupted by it and blamed the politician for supporting it. Founded in South Korea in the 1950s and known for its mass weddings, the group has come under criticism for its fundraising and other issues.
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Since then, a dozen or so politicians from the conservative LDP have disclosed links to the church or affiliated organisations – such as speaking at events – highlighting a relationship with the fiercely anti-communist church that stretches back to the Cold War. read more
“We need to respect freedom of religion but it’s only natural that these groups need to obey laws and be dealt with if they veer from them,” Kishida told a news conference, adding he did not believe he had any connection with the church.
“I don’t think the Unification Church’s policies have unjustly influenced party policies,” he said.
Key cabinet members, such as the foreign and finance ministers, retained their posts, but some seven ministers who had disclosed links to the church were moved out of the cabinet.
Among those was Abe’s younger brother, Nobuo Kishi, who had been defence minister, although many had expected him to leave for health reasons.
The cabinet shake-up came earlier than analysts had expected, underscoring how quickly the issue has spun into a crisis for Kishida. read more
“Criticism over the Unification Church caused a big drop in public support for the administration and stopping that decline was a big reason for bringing forward the reshuffle of the cabinet and major party positions,” said Shigenobu Tamura, a political commentator who previously worked for the LDP.
DAMAGE CONTROL
Kishida’s support had fallen to 46% from 59% just three weeks ago, public broadcaster NHK said on Monday, his lowest rating since becoming prime minister in October.
“He’s basically doing damage control,” said political commentator Atsuo Ito.
Even as the LDP has sought to distance itself from the church, with a top party official recently saying it would sever ties, the church defended its right to participate in politics, and highlighted its relationship with LDP lawmakers in a rare news conference. read more
Tomihiro Tanaka, head of the Unification Church in Japan, said it was “extremely unfortunate” if Kishida was directing lawmakers to break ties with the group.
It was the duty and right of religious organisations to be involved in political activity, he said, noting his church and its affiliates had more interaction with LDP lawmakers than those from other parties.
DELICATE BALANCE
Kishida said he chose experienced ministers to deal with crises he termed some of the toughest in decades, including surging tensions with China over Taiwan, but only those who had agreed to “review” their ties with the church.
Analysts said that while Kishida sought to limit fall-out from the controversy, he also had to keep a delicate balance in appeasing powerful factions within the LDP, particularly the largest, to which Abe had belonged.
For example, Kishida removed industry minister Koichi Hagiuda, giving him a key party position instead. Hagiuda is a member of Abe’s faction and was close to the former premier.
Abe’s brother Kishi was replaced as defence minister by Yasukazu Hamada, reprising his former role, and likely to help push for the increased defence budget and stronger defence posture Kishida has promised, a vow the premier repeated on Wednesday.
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Reporting by Elaine Lies, Yoshifumi Takemoto, Sakura Murakami, Tetsushi Kajimoto and Tim Kelly; Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by David Dolan, Clarence Fernandez and Nick Macfie
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.