Tokyo Governor Steps Down

Even trivial errors bring a fatal consequence. In the midst of scandal over irrelevant spending of political money, Governor of Tokyo, Yoichi Masuzoe, announced to be stepping down, having been unable to explain his behavior. Masuzoe looked self-confident on his management of the scandal at the beginning. However, he did not know what the politics is all about, in spite of his carrier as a scholar of international politics.

Any of doubts on Masuzoe did not have great significance in terms of managing policies of Tokyo Metropolitan Government. He reported his family trip as unofficial conference with someone important. It must not be impossible that he had a meeting for his job, leaving his family in another room in the hotel. But, it must have been possible for him to reveal the name of whom he had the meeting with, if it had been an important meeting. As a result, Masuzoe refused naming the man. He explained that revealing the name was politically inappropriate.

Masuzoe also tried to reason his purchase of silky China clothes to be necessary for calligraphy. “Because I am a judo player and have muscular shoulder, smooth clothes were needed for the practice of calligraphy,” Masuzoe seriously told. He tried to say that he needed the clothes for political activity and buying them with political donation was correct. How could he say that writing letters on a paper was political activity?

Masuzoe must have thought that his argument would stand, because no one would contradict his reasoning with hard evidences. By covering the name over, people could not determine whether he really met the man or not. The man who was suspected to have met with Masuzoe in the hotel died last year. No one can actually argue Masuzoe’s personal feeling of wearing Chinese clothes. In those ways, Masuzoe tried to drop those doubts from the table of argument.

However, politics is not about theoretical correctness of explanation, but satisfaction of the people. It is obvious that the people in Tokyo have not been satisfied with the naïve explanations. They realized that Masuzoe has been lying with a great certainty. For the supporters of Masuzoe, namely Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, Masuzoe scandal was becoming fatal element for their election of House of Councillors, because they looked to be the colleagues of the liar. The greatest miscalculation of Maszue was that LDP and Komeito finally abandoned him. Lying will be a fatal injury for a politician, even though it is not proved to be a lie.