The Sankei Shimbun reported that Yasunori Kagoike and his wife Junko, who were indicted in connection with the Moritomo Gakuen subsidy fraud case, have begun distancing themselves from opposition parties and anti-government forces with whom they had previously acted in step. Kagoike stated that “Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was not the only one at fault; many people moved for the purpose of bringing down the administration,” and reflected that he had been surrounded by people who spoke with double and triple tongues. This essay examines how the Moritomo issue was shaped into a structure for attacking the administration.

May 9, 2020

There were many people around me who spoke with double and triple tongues.
There were also people who tried to keep me under control, but now that control has collapsed, and they have moved away.

The Sankei Shimbun is now the most decent newspaper not only in Japan, but in the world.
Those who subscribe to it must have read this morning’s Sankei Shimbun and deeply realized the correctness of my evaluation.
The emphases within the text, apart from the headline, are mine.

Kagoike Defendant Distances Himself from the Opposition.

In the subsidy fraud case concerning the construction of an elementary school by the school corporation Moritomo Gakuen, over which the Shinzo Abe administration was criticized, former chairman Yasunori Kagoike and his wife Junko, both charged with fraud and other crimes, have attracted attention by sending messages through videos and SNS, social networking services, that appear to distance themselves from the opposition parties and anti-government people with whom they had until recently acted in step.

On the 1st, Yasunori confessed on the video-sharing site YouTube:
“It was not only Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who was at fault.
There were many people who moved for the purpose of bringing down the administration.”
He also reflected:
“There were many people around me who spoke with double and triple tongues.
There were also people who tried to keep me under control, but now that control has collapsed, and they have moved away.”

Junko stated:
“When I think back suddenly, something feels strange.
I was riding along with people who claimed things like ‘Abe’s crime’ or said this and that about Abe.”

Furthermore, on Twitter, the Kagoike couple also looked back on the visit of four opposition lawmakers to their home and expressed regret:
“In front of the house, the media were overflowing.
That was where the structure of picking a fight with the administration was created in the first place.
It had been set up without our knowing it.”

On the other hand, in the video on the 1st, Yasunori pointed out that left-wing forces had moved to obstruct the plan he had advanced to build an elementary school with a conservative educational policy.
Junko also named the person directly, saying:
“It was obstruction by those who did not want us to build the elementary school.
The first person to rush over was Kiyomi Tsujimoto, a member of the House of Representatives from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.”

What, in the end, was the Moritomo issue?
Was it not an incident in which the opposition parties and anti-government media leapt upon it, inflated it, paralyzed the Diet, and damaged Japanese politics in order to bring down the Abe administration?
The words of the Kagoike couple testify from within to precisely that structure.
The Japanese media, led by the Asahi Shimbun and NHK, have a duty to report such testimony head-on.
But they will never report it prominently.
That is because this testimony destroys, from the foundation, their own reporting posture and the structure of attacking the administration that they themselves created.