Strange Cabinet Decisions

Backed by relatively high popularity of the administration, Cabinet topped by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been accumulating strange decisions, which twisted ordinary or traditional values. For Abe administration, the First Lady of Japan is a private person free from responsibility in public events, and Imperial Rescript on Education, which once was dismissed post-war Diet, can be used as a text in the classrooms. Unleashed Cabinet is driving the nation to unpredictable direction.

A Representative with Democratic Party, Seiji Osaka, submitted a question to the Cabinet early last month, which asked whether the wife of Prime Minister Abe, Akie Abe, was private or public person. Referring to Shinzo’s argument in a Committee of the House that indicated the First Lady did not have any appointment for her status, Osaka asked it with a notion that the First Lady would participate in official events with Prime Minister.

The answer, ordinarily made by bureaucratic staffs in charge, defined that “public person” would be a person in charge of public service and “private person” would be the opposite of public person. “In that point of view, the First Lady is not a public person, but private person,” concluded the answer.

Distinction between the status of public or private has been a resource of dispute in the Diet. Common definition on public person is someone who is responsible for public causes, and private person is free from that responsibility. Akie has been spending national budget for her official trips with Shinzo and she has a staff in Prime Minister’s Official Residence in charge of First Lady affairs. Can the First Lady of United States, for example, be free from public responsibility?

Akie’s staff dealt with exchange of information between Minister of Finance and Moritomo Gakuen, an ultra-nationalistic educational corporation which upheld Akie as Adviser. Abe Cabinet decided that the exchange was not the staff’s official job. The decision regarded a facsimile sheet from the staff to scandalous Chief Director of Moritomo, Yasunori Kagoike, as not an official document that had to be disclosed.

On Imperial Rescript on Education, the Cabinet decided that using of IRE in the classroom would not be denied as long as it would not violate Constitution of Japan or Fundamental Law of Education. IRE defined the people as the subordinate of the Emperor and required them to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the Imperial State. Turning down the long-time taboo in education indicates firm conviction of Prime Minister Abe for restoring obsolete and undemocratic causes in pre-war Japan.