A month before the announcement of the House of Representatives election, a member of the Ishin Restoration Association who produced a suspicious document suddenly decided not to run for office.

At the end of September, Natsue Mori, a member of the House of Representatives affiliated with the Restoration Association, announced that she would not run for election to the House of Representatives, citing “poor health and illness in her family.

On May 6, immediately after the creation of the suspicious document was exposed, Mori apologized at a plenary meeting of the Kyoto Restoration Association, but showed her desire to run for the House of Representatives election scheduled for this fall, and held a press conference in Kyoto Prefecture at the end of July. At the press conference, however, Mr. Mori was subjected to harsh questions from local reporters, as well as shouts of anger.

“It makes me wonder about his humanity.

“I will not be running for the House of Representatives in the next election. I will not be running for the House of Representatives in the next election, mainly because of my poor health. My family’s illness is also one of the reasons. I’ve been thinking about it since August.”

On September 29, at a press conference held at the Kyoto Prefectural Government Office to announce his decision not to run, Mori gave a speech to this effect, and Hiroaki Inoue, a member of the Oyamazaki Town Council in the southern part of Kyoto Prefecture and a candidate to succeed Mori, was also present.

According to Mr. Mori and party officials, his father was diagnosed with an illness around July, and he became mentally unstable. Mr. Mori asked Mr. Inoue, a town councilor who had been working with him, to be his successor as he knew that Mr. Inoue had a desire to run for the House of Councillors. This was accepted by the party.

However, local voters who know the situation have a slightly different view.

“The local voters who know the situation, however, have a different view. But if you trace back the cause of the ‘past events,’ it turns out to be a seed that Senator Mori himself sowed.

Mori, who was born in Ehime Prefecture, ran for election repeatedly because his father was a city councilor in his hometown, and it took him about six years to win his first election in 2017. The Japan Restoration Association took the situation very seriously and suspended his party membership for three months from January 15.

Furthermore, in May, he admitted that he had prepared a slanderous document against another party member, Kyoto Prefecture assemblyman Yoshitaka Kamikura, and apologized at a plenary meeting of the Kyoto Restoration Association. However, Mr. Mori has never held a press conference or given any other explanation.

Mr. Mori, who had been approved by the Japan Restoration Association to run for the House of Representatives in the fall election, expressed his desire to run for office even after the apology and was making preparations. He also chose a campaign manager to support him in the election. It is customary to ask the director of the election campaign to be a member of the Diet who is capable of winning votes in the constituency, and in Kyoto’s 3rd district, Mr. Kamikura is a strong candidate. Mr. Uekura was the one who was responsible for disgracing Mr. Mori by creating a suspicious document. Mr. Kamikura recalls, “In June or July, I was asked to write a letter to Mr. Mori.

“In June or July, Mr. Mori asked me to be his campaign manager. However, about a week later, I received a refusal from Mr. Mori, saying, ‘I’m not in a position to ask you to be the director of the election campaign.

It is possible that the Kamikura prefectural assemblyman, who was exposed to the suspicious document, could not emotionally maintain his “support” for the Mori assemblyman and turned him down, asking him to stop. However, when Senator Mori declined, Kamikura could not help but be puzzled. After that, Mr. Mori asked Mr. Inoue to be the head of the election campaign to replace Mr. Kamikura.

At the end of July, Mr. Inoue held a press conference to announce his candidacy after Mr. Mori had rebuilt his campaign. It is said that the local media’s dissatisfaction with the fact that he had not held a press conference was immediately directed at him.

In particular, questions about the creation of the suspicious documents seemed to be concentrated. Mr. Mori’s response was to dodge the questions, saying that if he tried to tell everything, he would involve the family of Mr. Kamikura and that he had answered questions when asked directly. One reporter, frustrated by his attitude, angrily asked Mr. Mori a tough question to the effect that

One reporter, annoyed by his attitude, angrily asked him the following question: “You said that you have answered questions when you were asked directly, but not every voter has the opportunity to do so. I’m sure there are some people who might want to question his humanity when they hear such stories.

As a reason for not holding a press conference, Senator Mori has already clarified that the facts were disclosed to the media such as newspapers and weekly magazines before she could explain herself, and that if she were to tell the whole story herself, it might involve the general public who were involved at the time. I can’t say that I have fulfilled my accountability as a legislator.

When a candidate stands at a station to make a speech to appeal himself to the voters, it is called “ekidashi. It is likely that the harsh questioning at his press conference and his failure to run for office are not unrelated.

Forcing the party’s situation onto the voters

So how did a legislator who has been involved in a series of scandals and has not been able to fulfill his accountability become a member of the House of Representatives? As one party member put it.

“I heard that Mr. Mori’s past efforts for Restoration leading up to the 2017 House of Representatives election, as well as his evaluation of them, ranked him first in the proportional (ward) category.

What exactly are Senator Mori’s “past efforts for the Restoration”?

Two years later, he was preparing to run for the House of Representatives in Ehime’s 3rd district, but just before the election was to be held, he decided to run for the national office in Ehime’s 4th district, which is not his original constituency. Two years later, he was preparing for the election for the House of Representatives in Ehime’s 3rd district, but just before the announcement of the election, he was ordered to change his constituency to Ehime’s 4th district, which was not his original constituency.

“At that time, Mr. Fumiaki Sakurauchi, who ran for Ehime’s 4th district, was originally a member of the Japan Restoration Association, but he ran in this election as an official of the Next Generation Party. However, a senior member of the Restoration Party, who did not want to forgive the “betrayal” of Mr. Sakurauchi’s departure from another party without a greeting to the Restoration Party, sent Mr. Mori as an assassin to prevent Mr. Sakurauchi from winning the election.

In 2016, he also ran in a supplementary election for the Kyoto 3rd district in the House of Representatives. In 2016, he also ran for a seat in the House of Representatives in Kyoto’s 3rd district, an election that followed the resignation of LDP lawmaker Kensuke Miyazaki following the discovery of his infidelity.

He was also unsuccessful in this supplementary election, but just before the October 2017 House of Representatives election, he left the Restoration Party because Eikihito Ozawa, who had previously been the sole winner of the proportional representation Kinki block, was approved by the Party of Hope. Mr. Mori was chosen to replace him and was elected for the first time.

Osaka Mayor Ichiro Matsui, who also serves as the head of the Japan Restoration Association, said at the time that Mr. Mori was “a man who has fought tough elections as the spearhead of the party,” and sent him to national politics with high expectations.

In other words, the mayor of Osaka placed high value on Mori, who had “sacrificed” himself for the party. A voter who lives in Kyoto Prefecture, Mori’s constituency, told me, “There are many people who have worked for the party.

“It may make sense for an organization to take care of people who have worked for the party. But that’s the party’s business, not the voters’. Especially in the case of Diet members, they are in a very official position, so they should be able to work for their constituents, but I don’t think Mr. Mori had those qualities, at least.

It may just be a coincidence, but I have seen Diet members from other parties in Kyoto on weekends, but I have rarely seen Mr. Mori in the past four years. It’s annoying for voters to live under the thumb of a party member who is, so to speak, imposed on them by the party.

In late September, the local Kyoto Shimbun reported the first news of Natsue Mori’s decision not to run for office, and the article included a comment from Secretary General Baba, who admitted the fact: “I’m not sure why. The article was also posted on Yahoo for a while, and received more than 7,500 “likes” from readers who criticized the comments of Secretary General Baba, which seemed irresponsible depending on how they were taken.

In the end, the party may have been responsible for Mori’s last-minute “no-go” by focusing on the internal affairs of the organization and failing to assess the “qualifications” of the candidate.