Claims that Japan’s administration was “distorted” collapse when examined against the Constitution and the Prime Minister’s authority.
This article exposes how bureaucratic resistance and vested interests fueled a manufactured scandal.

2017-07-31

The following continues from the previous section.
“Was the administration distorted?”
In the first place, Article 72 of the Constitution, which defines the duties of the Prime Minister, states the following.
“The Prime Minister shall represent the Cabinet, submit bills to the Diet, report to the Diet on general state affairs and foreign relations, and exercise control and supervision over the administrative branches.”
In other words, as a matter of course, the Prime Minister, as the head of the executive branch, is originally meant to “control and supervise” administrative organs.
Furthermore, the head of the Japan Economic Revitalization Headquarters, which proposed National Strategic Special Zones as a breakthrough to reform the bureaucratic system’s “bedrock regulations,” is the Prime Minister, and the chair of the National Strategic Special Zone Advisory Council is also the Prime Minister.
Despite this, the very fact that criticism arises claiming it is outrageous if the Prime Minister’s intentions influenced administrative procedures, or that “the administration was distorted” (as stated by former Vice Minister of Education Kihei Maekawa), is incomprehensible and difficult to understand.
Prime Minister Abe himself, when asked by those around him about the Kake Educational Institution issue in early March, casually remarked as follows.
“There’s absolutely no problem. There are as many as twenty-five cases in which local governments have provided land free of charge to school corporations.”
Because he had no recollection whatsoever of having given any special favors to Kake Educational Institution or issuing instructions to bureaucrats, he likely never imagined that “suspicions” would be fabricated merely because the chairman happened to be a long-time friend.
Around the end of May, Prime Minister Abe also vented the following to those around him.
“If I were to give instructions to the Ministry of Education, I would tell the minister, not bureaucrats.”
“Mr. Maekawa was a vice minister, so instead of saying he was told something by a Cabinet Office councilor, he could have come to see me directly. If anyone ‘distorted the administration,’ it was the veterinary association.”
This is entirely reasonable.
Of course, if there had been illegal exchanges of money between Prime Minister Abe and the chairman, that would be a different matter.
However, even Yuichiro Tamaki, a Diet member of the Democratic Party who pursued the allegations, acknowledged on a television program that “there is no illegality.”
To be continued.