From The Highest Level of Prime Minister’s Residence

Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Hirokazu Matsuno, announced on Thursday that he found the documents that indicated political pressure from Cabinet Office to MEXT to choose Kake Kaguen, run by an old friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for establishing new veterinary faculty in Imabari, Ehime. Matsuno apologized on his insufficiency of investigation last month, in which he could not find the document. The documents indicates that the staff of Cabinet Office told MEXT staffs intention of Abe or “top level of Prime Minister’s Official Residence” to choose Kake Gakuen.

Matsuno announced last month that he could not find those documents after investigation in MEXT. But the investigation was made in only a few days after the scandal was revealed with the leak of former Vice-Minister of MEXT. Matsuno explained that he searched nineteen documents related to meeting with senior staff of Cabinet Office and found fourteen of them. They were in shred folders in a section, which were not touched in previous investigation.

It was found that a Vice-Director of Technical Education Division kept a document of answer from Cabinet Office on the issue. “On the schedule of establishment, this is the time of taking processes for “soonest deregulation” after registering a special district for Imabari city, and I heard this was the intention of Prime Minister,” described the document. In the document about a meeting with an officer of Cabinet Office, Yutaka Fujiwara, on September 26^th last year, MEXT received a request of making the shortest schedule for the opening of the faculty in April, 2018, as a message from “the highest level of Prime Minister’s Official Residence.”

The documents also revealed the involvement of Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, Koichi Hagiuda, in choosing Kake Gakuen for new veterinary faculty. In an e-mail from Cabinet Office to MEXT on November 1^st last year, Fujiwara indicated an order from Hagiuda to rewrite a sentence about the conditions for new faculty, which would exclude other schools from the candidacy. It means that the scandal is not only about bureaucrats who care about political intervention of Prime Minister’s Office, but a politician who is close to Abe and has power of supervising bureaucrats.

Newspapers focus on next investigation in Cabinet Office, which would be announced on Friday. While Fujiwara has been denying his involvement in putting pressure exploiting political power, the Vice-Director of MEXT Technical Education Division recognized the issue as having reached the level of Prime Minister. It is highly possible that the choice of Kake was made in accordance with preference of Prime Minister.