This passage criticizes former Prime Minister Naoto Kan for continuing to interfere in the affairs of the Constitutional Democratic Party and the Democratic Party for the People, while recalling the suffering of Iitate Village, which was forced into total evacuation after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Through the words of the Iitate mayor, who asked whether Kan should have walked through temporary housing in the disaster area rather than going on a Shikoku pilgrimage after leaving office, it sharply questions the irresponsibility of politicians and their insensitivity toward disaster victims.

2019-04-14
I cannot forget the words spoken by Mayor Norio Kanno of Iitate Village in Fukushima Prefecture, whose entire village was forced to evacuate by the Kan administration.
“…Mr. Kan, once you had finished being prime minister, would it not have been natural to walk through the temporary housing in the disaster areas rather than go on a pilgrimage?”

The following is from yesterday’s Sankei Shō.

There are incorrigible people who, paying no heed to the trouble they cause others, keep repeating the same sort of behavior.

On the 6th, this column introduced how former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, now Supreme Adviser to the Constitutional Democratic Party, was meddling in other parties through his blog and other means.

It was the matter of his urging the Democratic Party for the People to dissolve itself and of encouraging its members, by their own judgment, to join parties closer to their political ideals.

▼ “I protested Mr. Kan’s remarks about our party.”

Kazuhiko Haraguchi, chairman of Diet affairs for the Democratic Party for the People, expressed his displeasure at a press conference on the 11th.

That was because Mr. Kan had continued even afterward to call for the dissolution of the party.

According to Mr. Haraguchi, Kiyomi Tsujimoto, chair of Diet affairs for the Constitutional Democratic Party, had also meekly said, “I will tell him personally. I will raise the issue at the executive meeting as well.”

▼ In the House of Councillors election of July 2013, Mr. Kan rebelled against the then Democratic Party leadership, which had unified the candidate in the Tokyo electoral district, and supported an independent candidate, bringing about mutual defeat.

For this, he was punished with a three-month suspension of party membership, but he showed no sign of reflection.

The way he went his own way as he pleased was so very characteristic of Mr. Kan.

▼ This time as well, not only was the backlash from the Democratic Party for the People natural, but even the political scientist Jirō Yamaguchi, once a supporter of the Democratic Party, expressed criticism on Twitter on the 10th.

“This kind of condescending remark makes opposition cooperation even more difficult. I want him to think carefully before he speaks.”

Does Mr. Kan’s very existence end up helping the ruling parties?

▼ “He should go on another pilgrimage. His worldly desires have not been stripped away.”

An executive of the Democratic Party for the People says this in exasperation, but even this is questionable.

What I cannot forget are the words spoken by Mayor Norio Kanno of Iitate Village in Fukushima Prefecture, whose entire village was forced to evacuate by the Kan administration, at the time when Mr. Kan, immediately after stepping down as prime minister in October 2011, resumed his hobby of visiting the eighty-eight sacred sites of Shikoku.

▼ “Mr. Kan, once you had finished being prime minister, would it not have been natural to walk through the temporary housing in the disaster areas rather than go on a pilgrimage?”

Even such a cry of anguish does not reach the ears of a man who never learns.