Shopping at a very expensive restaurant”, “Just a suspicion of sightseeing”… The fundamental reason why Prime Minister Kishida’s eldest son has not resigned as secretary even though he has been heavily bashed.

Bitter Explanation

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s eldest son and secretary to the prime minister, Shoutarou, 32, is under fire after the Weekly Shincho reported that he enjoyed “sightseeing” and “shopping” in Paris and London in an official car provided by the local Japanese embassy when he accompanied the prime minister on his January 9-15 visit to five Western countries.

In Paris, they visited tourist attractions and enjoyed dinner at a bistro. In London, they visited Big Ben and Buckingham Palace by car, took pictures, and bought souvenirs at Harrods, an ultra-luxury department store.

Criticisms poured in, and at press conferences held at the Prime Minister’s Office on March 26 and 27, Hitohiko Isozaki and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara were forced to make the painful explanation that the use of an official car was “within the necessary scope of operations” and that there was no inappropriate behavior other than official duties.

In the midst of the fierce international situation following the war in Ukraine, this outing to lay the groundwork for the presidency of the G7 summit in Hiroshima was an extremely important diplomatic schedule, in which Japan’s national interests were at stake. For Prime Minister Kishida, whose announcement of a defense tax hike has provoked a public outcry and whose administration’s approval rating has fallen below 30%, this was a mission that “must not fail” in order to recover through “diplomacy,” which is his forte.

Nevertheless, it would have been a problem if he had gone separately from the prime minister, visited tourist attractions to take pictures, and purchased “souvenirs from the prime minister” at a department store in a carefree manner, perhaps as PR material for his supporters’ association. The Prime Minister’s office is trying to get around this by saying that it was necessary ‘official business,’ but it is inevitable that the opposition parties will pursue this issue at the Budget Committee.

It is true that the secretary to the prime minister in charge of political affairs is the closest confidant of the prime minister. It is normal for the secretary of state to support the prime minister during his outings, never leaving his side even for a moment. In some cases, as was the case with Isao Iijima, who supported Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during his visit to North Korea, the prime minister’s every move is subject to scrutiny by the government of the other country while performing his duties. The tension between the two countries would normally be quite intense. Was he aware of this?

What is being whispered in Nagata-cho is who leaked the information. Since the information about Shoutarou’s stay in England was strangely more detailed than that in France, there are rumors that some Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials who were dissatisfied with the fact that he was sent on a “personal errand,” such as those from the British Embassy who accompanied him to London, complained to someone and those who heard the complaint may have leaked it to a weekly magazine. The opposition parties pursued this issue at the Budget Committee.

When the opposition parties pursue the issue at the Budget Committee, it is likely to be a question of “mixing public and private matters,” as if he might have used his official car for private purposes.

The Danish Embassy in Tokyo is not the only embassy in Denmark that has a responsibility to provide hospitality to politicians, especially when they visit their home country,” said Jun Kitajima, a professor at the Graduate School of Social Design.

In this case, the question is whether the actions of the secretary to the prime minister in charge of political affairs during the reception were “official business” or “personal business,” but to be precise, it is important to distinguish whether they were incidental to Prime Minister Kishida’s “official business as prime minister” or whether they were related to his “political business as a Diet member. The distinction between “official business as Prime Minister” and “political business as a member of the Diet” is important.

For example, I think it is often strictly divided in advance planning as to who bears the “cost” of vehicles and dinners at out-of-town destinations, the government or the individual politician.

Even so, that is not the only problem with Secretary Shoutarou. According to a report in Shukan Shincho, he was photographed with Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada and had been a passenger on government planes many times before becoming secretary to the prime minister.

Mr. Shoutarou was selected as secretary to the prime minister on October 4 last year. The timing of the appointment was more opportune, as the launch of a ballistic missile by North Korea triggered a J-Alert alert, which caused a commotion, but the appointment was criticized by the public as a “patronizing appointment” that would only give him the title of “secretary to the prime minister” as a future successor to the heir apparent.

In December of last year, the monthly magazine “FACTA” reported that Shoutarou may have leaked “confidential information” on the resignation of Minister of State for Economic Revitalization Dashiro Yamazaki and the Japan-China talks at APEC to a female Fuji Television reporter working for the prime minister (Fuji Television denied the information leak).

What happens twice may happen thrice,” but the situation continues to cause a stir. Even if it is difficult to determine whether this incident constitutes “official business” or whether there was a “mixture of public and private,” if he did not anticipate that he would be subject to so much criticism, his suitability as secretary to the prime minister would be questionable in the first place.

So what will happen to Mr. Shoutarou in the future?

Why he still has no choice but to continue as secretary to the prime minister

Shoutarou is an elite man who graduated from Keio University and joined Mitsui & Co.

When Prime Minister Kishida was criticized for appointing his eldest son as secretary to the prime minister, he responded that he had made a comprehensive judgment from the viewpoint of “the right person for the job,” but even within the ruling party there are now many questions as to whether a secretary who was caught shopping at the ultra-luxury Harrods department store while the world was suffering from seriously high prices is the right person for the job. The question of whether a secretary who was caught shopping at Harrods, a high-end department store, was the right person for the job began to be questioned by the ruling party.

Since there were also allegations of information leaks and the current turmoil, there is a possibility that he will be further removed from the line of succession within the Prime Minister’s Office. However, even if he were to offer his resignation, saying, ‘I can’t drag my parents down any further,’ Prime Minister Kishida has a stubborn streak, so I suspect he would not accept it so easily.

The current firestorm may make some people sympathetic to Shoutarou in that he may have been tipped off about his careless behavior in Paris and London, but in the world of politics, one can never be too sure. However, the biggest problem in the world of politics is not only his “laxity,” but also the fact that he has been exposed as a person who does not understand how severely the public scrutiny of him is being directed at him.