Olympic Erodes Administration

After a series of scandals that caused broad skepticisms over handling of preparation for Tokyo Olympic 2020, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Hakubun Shimomura, offered his resignation to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday. Abe accepted it and decided to replace Shimomura in the shuffle of Cabinet members early October. Abe will lose one of his close colleagues in his Cabinet, marking visible decline of his administration.

In his press conference on Friday, Shimomura reported that he told Abe to be stepping down as a Minister, taking responsibility of swollen spending for construction of new stadium in Tokyo. Although Abe said that the problem would not worth stepping down, he hoped Shimomura to continue his job until already planned shuffle of the Cabinet.

At the competition for New National Stadium for Tokyo Olympic was ¥130 billion in 2012. But, with introduction of brand-new architecture designed by Zaha Hadid or inflation in materials for construction, estimated cost got accumulated as high as ¥252 billion. Receiving booing from the public, frustrated with centralized development in capital area in Japan, the government discounted the cost to ¥155 with Abe’s initiative. A third party committee for investigation reported that Shimomura was responsible for the confusing process of determining cost for the stadium.

Abe and Shimomura have been close colleagues in a fraction in Liberal Democratic Party, called Seiwa Policy Study Group, established by former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda. To raise Jun-ichiro Koizumi for the president of LDP, Abe and Shimomura worked as leaders of the campaign office, asking LDP lawmakers and related organizations support for Koizumi. From the beginning of Abe administration, Shimomura has been supporting Abe as Secretary or Minister. Abe must have hesitated in approving Shimomura’s offer to stepping down.

But, Shimomura had too many scandals to remain in the Cabinet. Earlier this year, illegal donation from some educational organizations to Shimomura was reported. Although Shimomura denied its illegality, the opposite parties targeted him as unworthy for Minister on Education. He also made controversial speech or policy, such as supporting a decision of local government to remove a comic book critical against atomic tragedy in Hiroshima from libraries or considering abolition of liberal art division in national colleges.

It may be fair to say that Abe wanted to remove uncertainty from his Cabinet. But, firing his close supporter apparently indicated decline of political power of Abe. People are watching who can compensate the loss of Shimomura in Abe Cabinet.