Putting his foot on the table… Justice Minister Hanashi, who intends to resign, has “too awful a reputation.”

Once again, he has retracted his …… appalling statement, which has been widely criticized.

The Minister of Justice is a humble position that only makes the headlines in the afternoon news when he stamps the death penalty (execution) in the morning.

Yasuhiro Hanashi, who joined the Kishida cabinet for the first time as minister of justice, told young LDP lawmakers at a Kishida faction party on August 9. Since it was a party of his own people, he probably thought he was being self-deprecating with a bit of goofiness. However, not a single person laughed at such a “joke” involving “human life.

Justice Minister Banashi is the chief executor of the death penalty. He was talking as if a person in such a position would be useless in an election for a low-profile, politically unremarkable job. I wondered if he could not imagine that after he had put his stamp on the death penalty, human lives would be taken in the name of the law. I wonder what kind of nerve he had in making such a statement.

What he wants is “TV exposure, money, and votes.

In fact, there was more to this statement.

This time, he was embraced by the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (the former Unification Church), which gave him more opportunities to appear on TV, but even if he becomes minister of justice, he will not be able to raise money. But even if I become minister of justice, I can’t raise money, and I can’t get votes.

What he wants is “TV exposure, money, and votes,” according to ……. Initially, he did not apologize or retract his statement when interviewed by the media, but he easily apologized and retracted his statement at a meeting of the House of Councillors Legal Affairs Committee immediately after being summoned to the Prime Minister’s Office by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and given a stern warning.

Minister of Justice Banashi entered the National Police Agency after graduating from Komaba High School attached to the University of Education (now Chikkoma High School) and the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo. While in the police bureaucracy, he married the daughter of Nobuyuki Hanashi, a member of the House of Representatives, and even adopted a child with Nobuyuki, thus assuming the family name of Hanashi. In 2003, he was elected for the first time in Ibaraki’s 3rd district, becoming the third member of the Hanashi family to win a seat in the House of Representatives.

Currently, there are only two House of Representatives members with the same background, including former reconstruction minister Katsuei Hirasawa. Some say that he overestimates his power and misunderstands his position because of his rare “National Police Agency background. A leading figure in Ibaraki Prefecture politics said, “Mr. Hanashi is a member of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department.

When Mr. Hanashi comes to the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Commissioner’s office, he puts his feet up on the reception table. He raises his legs and bends over to talk with the prefectural police commissioner and other senior police officials. The prefectural police executives may have some reservations about Hanashi, who is a senior member of the National Police Agency, but I cannot watch. The national government is above and the prefecture is below. I felt as if the people of Ibaraki Prefecture were being looked down upon. I thought that his comments this time also stemmed from his mistaken arrogance of his position and his attitude of disrespect for the citizens of the prefecture.”

In the 2009 general election, he unexpectedly lost the election in the conservative kingdom of Ibaraki.

Even in Ibaraki’s 3rd Constituency, Hanashi is unpopular in the southern part of the prefecture near the city center, such as Toride, Ushiku, and Moriya, and he cannot get any votes. When it comes to elections, he is a typical hereditary LDP politician who only visits the supporters of the three generations of the Hanashi family. His local reputation is not high at all. But to say that the Minister of Justice is worthless is appalling, as if he thinks the title of minister is nothing more than a tool for political business.

The local community was also appalled by the statement and then the retraction, and Mr. Hanashi’s reputation has been further downgraded by this latest incident. The responsibility for this lies squarely with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Under Kishida’s administration, “politics without principles,” in which any number of statements can be reversed in order to stay in power, has become the norm. The Minister of Justice has stated flatly that ministerial posts are not worth the money. Former Minister of State for Economic Revitalization Dashiro Yamaguchi, who, when pointed out his ties to the former Unification Church, continued to say, “I don’t know” or “I forgot. Minoru Terada, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, and Kenya Akiba, Minister of Reconstruction, who are both under suspicion of office expense fraud. Administrative Vice-Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Mizuna Sugita, who has made a series of discriminatory remarks. ……

Shortly after noon on November 11, it was reported that Mr. Hanashi intended to resign. However, this is not a problem that can be solved by his resignation alone.