Shocking! The bureaucrat’s “Manual for New Secretary-General Mogi” is a disaster!

Meals

Food dislikes include boiled and seasoned foods in general, vinegared foods, sesame tofu, caviar, salmon sandwiches, hard bread (bagels, French bread, etc.), anything with red bean paste, shark’s fin, cold Chinese noodles, Nagasaki chanpon, watermelon, melon (except Yubari melon), Japanese sweets in general, and Western sweets in general.

This is a passage from a memo prepared by a bureaucrat at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2002, when Toshimitsu Motegi, 66, Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party, was serving as Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. See the photo above. The document is titled “Memo on Minister’s Business Trip, etc.” and consists of 22 sheets of A4 paper with a detailed “handling manual” for Mr. Mogi.

Mr. Mogi is an elite member of the Diet who graduated from the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Economics, completed Harvard University’s graduate school, and worked for McKinsey & Company before becoming a Diet member. On the other hand, he is known in Kasumigaseki as one of the best “instant water heaters” in Nagata-cho.

“There are plenty of officials who have fallen afoul of Mr. Mogi. Even so, he is able to work as a politician, so he has been appointed to key positions by successive prime ministers. So, in order to prevent more victims from being born, this manual was created and passed down from generation to generation.

Koichi Kakutani, a political journalist, also points out.

Mr. Koichi Kakutani, a political journalist, also points out, “It’s not uncommon for people to be asked whether they prefer coffee or tea, but I’ve never heard of anything as long as 22 pages. Mr. Mogi is a politician who does not hide his attitude that he is smarter than the officials. In order not to offend him, the memo must have been updated rapidly, and the number of pages must have increased when the memo was prepared to make it known to the ministry.

Reading the contents of the memo, the first thing that comes to mind is the four-page section on food. In addition to the dislikes mentioned at the beginning of the memo, there is also a detailed description of favorite foods.

Noodles and bread rather than rice.

He prefers orthodox hamburgers and dry curry.

[Dramaworld] “I am getting more and more requests for cup ramen or cup yakisoba (peyoung sauce yakisoba) for dinner.

There are more precautions to be taken when having a light meal in the hotel room on a business trip.

The snacks that are explicitly requested by the minister are sweet breads (such as Danish), yogurt and fruits (such as bananas). As for the sweet breads, since we don’t know which one the minister will actually choose (it depends on his mood that day), we should bring as many as possible of all kinds and ask him to choose one or two and take them on a separate plate.

In recent business trips, iced coffee is often requested, but even if we ask the hotel each time, they will not bring it right away, so the person in charge of logistics should order a pot of coffee in advance and keep it chilled in the refrigerator in the logistics room. When the Minister requests an iced coffee, he should be able to get ice from the hotel, make the iced coffee, and serve it to the Minister immediately.

When ordering noodles from room service, etc., it is necessary to pay close attention to the timing of serving them to the Minister. When ordering noodles from room service, etc., it is necessary to pay close attention to the timing of serving the noodles to the minister. In the case of warm noodles, it is necessary to serve them at just the right time so that they do not stretch, and in the case of cold noodles, so that they do not harden (become hard). (In Seoul, a transit destination on a business trip to China, the timing between the preparation of the cold noodles and serving them to the minister was off by about 20 minutes.

Just by reading this, you can feel the tense mood at the site. In addition, there are other items such as “drinks,” “cigarettes,” “transportation,” and “hotels. For more details, please see the image of the document in this article. No one would want to work under such a boss. I wonder how much Mr. Mogi is prone to losing his temper. ……

I asked the Public Relations Office of the Minister’s Secretariat of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to explain the purpose of creating this document, but they only replied, “The existence of the document you pointed out is not known to us.

“We have not been able to confirm the existence of the document you mentioned.

Mr. Kakutani said.

“From now on, LDP party officials will want this manual. Mr. Mogi said, ‘I’ll do everything. Mogi is the type of person who says, ‘I’ll do everything, and the credit goes to me. There are many people in Nagatacho and Kasumigaseki who have been agitated by Mr. Mogi, but how many of them are willing to work for him? The fact that the “secrets” that should never have come out are being leaked is itself a symbol of his lack of popularity.

What will really happen to the LDP with the birth of a new secretary general with a super short temper? ……

From the November 26, 2021 issue of FRIDAY