This essay, dated March 10, 2019, sharply denounces how Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s words and actions during the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster helped spread reputational damage against Fukushima.
Through testimony from inside and outside the Prime Minister’s Office, it depicts the absence of crisis-management ability and the fact that even within the government, voices were already calling for his replacement.

2019-03-10
On April 15, when a delegation from JA Fukushima visited the Prime Minister’s Office seeking to dispel reputational damage and offered him strawberries and cucumbers, he suddenly asked in front of the television cameras.
“Is it safe to eat these as they are?”

What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
“When he stands, he is a national crisis.
When he sits, he is a man-made disaster.
When he walks, he is reputational damage.”
Around that time, such mocking words about Mr. Kan were popular on the Internet.
In fact, it can be said that Mr. Kan took the lead in spreading reputational damage against Fukushima Prefecture.
“Does this mean that people will not be able to live there for ten years, or twenty years?”
Mr. Kan said this to Kenichi Matsumoto, then Special Adviser to the Cabinet, thereby spreading through society the image that Fukushima was dangerous.
On April 15, when a delegation from JA Fukushima visited the Prime Minister’s Office seeking to dispel reputational damage and offered him strawberries and cucumbers, he suddenly asked in front of the television cameras.
“Is it safe to eat these as they are?”
It made it appear as though the Prime Minister himself was trembling with fear over radioactive contamination in vegetables.
Far from dispelling reputational damage, this only aggravated it.
One senior official at a ministry spat out the following words.
“I really want Mr. Kan to resign as soon as possible.
If only the Prime Minister were replaced, after that it could be Sadakazu Tanigaki, then president of the Liberal Democratic Party, or even any Democratic Party lawmaker.
The ministers can stay exactly as they are, but Mr. Kan alone must be replaced.”
Senior government officials, too, spoke candidly in one voice.
“Even in this crisis, the Prime Minister should be replaced.
His successor could be Yoshihiko Noda, then Finance Minister, or anyone at all.
Precisely because this crisis will continue for some time, I seriously believe Mr. Kan should be replaced.”
To be continued.