By Max Sato
(MaceNews) – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shuffled his cabinet Wednesday, seeking to shore up sagging voter support amid revelations that ruling party lawmakers have done little to counter what some lawyers say are illegal activities by the Unification Church, which has cultivated close ties with conservative politicians for over five decades.
The government also faces heightened geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S. and its allies over Taiwan, rising prices for daily necessities, a new spike in Covid cases in Japan to record highs and slowing global economic growth.
Of the 19-member cabinet, Kishida retained five including Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki and Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Daishiro Yamagiwa, while bringing back veteran politicians to portfolios they had held previously, including defense and labor.
“Amid the tense international situation, we will do our best to build up a new international order for the new post-Cold War era to protect the peace and security of our country,” Kishida told a news conference on Wednesday evening.
Kishida said he picked new ministers with both experience and the ability to deal with urgent issues while maintaining the basic structure of the cabinet he formed on taking office last October. Japanese prime ministers will often shuffle their cabinets to boost public approval ratings or redistribute portfolios to appease factions in their party.
Yasukazu Hamada, 66, has returned to take charge of national defense, a cabinet position that he held from 2008 to 2009 under Taro Aso, 81, who was prime minister for just one year but also served as deputy prime minister and finance minister from 2012 to 2021.
Katsunobu Kato, 66, was chief cabinet secretary from 2020 to 2021. He will now head up the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare for the third time in his career. Kato belongs to the second-largest faction in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party led by LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi.
Economic Minister Yamagiwa, 53, will continue to set policies on wealth redistribution under Kishida’s “new capitalism,” reopening the economy while minimizing the spread of the new coronavirus variant, and promoting startup companies, an area where Japan lags behind other major economies. Yamagiwa is in the Aso faction, the third largest in the party.
Kishida, 65, appointed his rival Taro Kono, 59, as digital affairs minister charged with advancing digitization of business and financial transactions and central and municipal government functions, another area where Japan has fallen behind. Kono, also from the Aso group, lost to Kishida in the party leadership race last year. He has held foreign affairs and defense portfolios in the past.
Yasutoshi Nishimura, 59, is now in charge of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Nishimura, a former economic minister, hails from the Abe faction, the largest in the LDP, headed by the late prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Abe was assassinated during a campaign speech on July 8 by a gunman who said he believed Abe was promoting the beliefs of the Unification Church. The suspect was reported to have said his mother had donated large amounts of money to the church, bankrupting the family.
Similar stories have emerged in the courts and news reports over the past 40 years from people claiming they were brainwashed by the church into buying expensive religious goods and marrying a stranger at mass weddings.
The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity was founded in Seoul in 1954 by the late Sun Myung Moon. The church’s Japan chapter was established in 1964. The children of church followers are often torn between their parents’ beliefs and Japanese social norms.
A weekend opinion poll by public broadcaster NHK reported on Monday suggested the approval rating of the Kishida government had slumped to 46% from 59% three weeks earlier, compared with 49% when the government was sworn in last October. The disapproval rating rose to 28% from 23%, the highest for the current administration.
Over 80% of those surveyed said they believed that LDP lawmakers had not given a full account of their relationship with the Unification Church.
About half of the respondents said they were not satisfied with the government decision to hold a state funeral for Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. Abe’s supporters have praised him for trying to end years of deflation and for cementing security ties with Washington, while critics charge that his nationalist views and tough security laws have divided the country and undermined freedom of speech.
Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was prime minister from 1957 to 1960 and is known to have cultivated ties with the Unification Church and the International Federation for Victory over Communism, the latter group also formed by South Korea’s Moon in 1968. Kishi had been imprisoned as a suspected Class A war criminal but was later released by U.S. occupation authorities in the interests of the U.S. government fight against communism.
The Unification Church penetrated the Japanese political system by sending volunteers to work mainly for LDP election campaigns. Many politicians were complacent about accepting donations from the church and gave speeches at church events billed as promoting “world peace.”
The church changed its name to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification in 1994 in a move criticized by lawyers and former followers as an attempt to whitewash its image.
In Japan, the church’s application for changing its registered name was rejected by the government in 1997 but was swiftly approved in 2015 under the Abe administration, allegedly under the influence of then education minister Hakubun Shimomura, according to Japanese news reports.
Contact this reporter: max@macenews.com
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