An escalating scandal surrounding allegations of unreported kickbacks from ruling party fundraising claims key ministers.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is renewing his government after a major corruption scandal within the ruling party forced the resignation of several ministers, including close ally and government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno.
Matsuno, whose official title is chief of staff, announced his resignation on Thursday after Economy and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura also resigned.
Jiji Press and other Japanese media said Interior Minister Junji Suzuki and Agriculture Minister Ichiro Miyashita would also resign and five deputy ministers would be dismissed.
The ministers all come from the so-called Abe faction, named after assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the largest and most powerful faction in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Japanese prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the faction over allegations that they received about 500 million yen ($3.5 million) in fundraising proceeds missing from party accounts, news media reported.
“In light of the various allegations regarding political funds, which have shaken public confidence in politics, and the various allegations regarding my own political funds, I have submitted my resignation,” Matsuno said at a news conference . He will be replaced by Yoshimasa Hayashi, who served as foreign minister until September.
Kishida announced late Wednesday that he would renew his government as he struggles to contain the fallout from the scandal in the party that has led Japan almost continuously since the end of World War II.
He said he regretted that the scandal had increased political mistrust and insisted he would take urgent steps to address it.
“We will tackle the various issues surrounding political funds head-on… I will make efforts like a fireball and lead the LDP to restore public confidence,” he told reporters.
According to broadcaster NTV, investigators are expected to begin searching lawmakers’ offices for evidence as early as next week, and will look into whether other LDP factions – including one led by Kishida until last week – are involved, the reports said .
Nishimura told reporters on Thursday: “The public’s doubts surround me about political funds, leading to distrust in the government. While an investigation is ongoing, I thought I would set the record straight.”
Since news of the latest scandal broke a few weeks ago, Kishida has seen his public support drop to around 23 percent, the lowest since he came to power in October 2021, according to a recent poll by national broadcaster NHK.
Support for the LDP has also declined.
The prime minister, who has already reshuffled his cabinet twice, does not have to hold elections until October 2025, and a fractured and weak opposition has historically struggled to make sustained progress against the LDP.
Opposition groups led by Japan’s Constitutional Democratic Party (CDPJ) filed an unsuccessful vote of no-confidence against Kishida on Wednesday.
“The LDP has no self-cleaning capacity,” said CDPJ leader Kenta Izumi. “The question is whether they can choose someone who is not involved in slush funds.”
Japan’s Communist Party leader Kazuo Shii called the scandal “a bottomless, serious problem.”
Matsuno is alleged to have diverted more than 10 million yen ($70,600) from money raised through faction fundraising events into a slush fund over the past five years, while Nishimura allegedly kept 1 million yen ($7,000), according to reports in the media.
While most senior figures mentioned in the media remained silent, Deputy Defense Minister Hiroyuki Miyazawa said on Wednesday that the Abe faction had told him that “it is okay not to record his first bribe in 2020-2022 in the funds’ records take” and that he assumed it was a practice that had existed for years and was legal.
Miyazawa also said that even though he was told to keep quiet, he felt compelled to speak out. The amount he accepted was reportedly only 1.4 million yen ($9,800).
Collecting proceeds from party events and paying bribes to lawmakers is not illegal in Japan if properly registered under the Political Funds Law. Failure to report such payments carries a prison sentence of as much as five years, but prosecution is difficult because it requires evidence of a specific instruction to an accountant not to report the transfer.