<figure id="attachment_387569" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-387569" style="width: 2775px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="9bdd0f39"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2024/08/95eea3f58aae5a9a71621c76721a76b4.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-387569" class="wp-caption-text">Some locals say his shaved head &#8220;looks like a Godaishi-sama&#8221; (from the August 6, &#8217;04 issue).</figcaption></figure>
<p> What did &#8220;FRIDAY&#8221; report 10, 20, and 30 years ago? In &#8220;Playback Friday,&#8221; we take a look back at the topics that were hot at the time. This time, we will look back at the <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;FRIDAY</span> &#8221; article from the August 6, 2004 issue, which was published 20 years ago, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;Our new female reporter will accompany you! Naoto Kan&#8217;s 200-kilometer Shikoku Pilgrimage,&#8221; which appeared in the</span> August 6, 2004 issue.</p>
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<p> In 2004, during the spring session of the Diet, the &#8220;pension non-payment problem&#8221; of then Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Taro Aso and three other members of the Koizumi Cabinet came to light. Naoto Kan, then 57, who had been the representative of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), pursued the issue vigorously, deriding them as the &#8220;three non-paying brothers,&#8221; was forced to resign as representative when it was revealed that he himself had not paid his pension for a period of time. Two months later, on July 15, Kan suddenly found himself on a &#8220;pilgrimage&#8221; to 88 sacred sites on the island of Shikoku. Our new reporter closely followed him along the way. We would like to report on his journey to the 88 sacred sites of Shikoku. (Descriptions in parentheses are quoted from previous articles.)</p>
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<h3><span class="strongInContent"> I don&#8217;t want to think, &#8220;That guy is so ungrateful.</span></h3>
<p> On his website, he <span class="strongInContent">wrote, &#8220;The past three months have been (omitted) a series of major events. Before doing anything else in the future, I need time to stop and look at myself.&#8221;</span>&#8230;&#8230; A new female reporter for this magazine, 22, who is no stranger to pilgrimages, having visited 88 pilgrimage sites as a student, flew to Shikoku to question Mr. Kan&#8217;s true intentions.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" She closely followed Mr. Kan!"></div>
<p><span class="strongInContent">At 4:00 p.m. on July 17, Kan arrived at Yakizanji Temple, the twelfth stop on the pilgrimage route. Mr. Suga crossed the most difficult part of the pilgrimage route and arrived at Yakeyama-ji Temple, the twelfth temple on the pilgrimage route. He looked very tired, but the crowd of ladies begged him for autographs and photos without regard to his fatigue. The reporter, who had secretly made reservations at the same inn as Mr. Kan, directly interviewed Mr. Kan after his bath.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8211;It&#8217;s Friday, isn&#8217;t it?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Friday?　That&#8217;s dangerous (laughs).</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8211;What are you thinking about?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I&#8217;m just mindless. I don&#8217;t want to think about all kinds of things, like, &#8220;I hate that guy.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> So there is someone you can&#8217;t stand to think about, huh? Hmmm.</span></p>
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<p> The next morning, reporters followed Mr. Kan as he left at 7:00 a.m.. Mr. Kan showed his dandy side by casually handing the reporter a glass of juice. As he walked along the road, houses along the way called out <span class="strongInContent">to</span> him <span class="strongInContent">, &#8220;Mr. Kan, have a cup of tea,</span> &#8221; and he was so popular with the ladies that it was a lie that he had been unpopular with them since the 1998 affair scandal with a former female news anchor. On the way to the venue, when he saw a poster of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), he said something like this.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> But it&#8217;s tough around here because Mr. Goto (Masazumi) is so strong. His wife (Maki Mizuno) is very popular. Oh, you are not allowed to speak ill of others during the pilgrimage, but I was just praising his wife, hahaha.</span></p>
<p> Mr. Suga, who is the only one to make a comment and the only one to follow up on it. His pilgrimage to sacred sites was influenced by Ryotaro Shiba&#8217;s &#8220;Kukai no fukei&#8221; (&#8220;Scenes from the Landscape of Kukai&#8221;). During the pilgrimage, he also heard some inappropriate but political talk.</p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" He said, &quot;&#39;Hang in there&#39; is not about me, is it?&quot;"></div>
<p>At the time, Kan reflected on the political situation this way.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> How is the new representative Katsuya Okada doing?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Mr. Kan said at the time: &#8220;I think he is doing very well. He supported me to the very end.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8211;After winning the Upper House election, will the next step be a change of government?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;I&#8217;ve already made my hand.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8211;What about your own future?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> During the pilgrimage, people say to me, &#8216;Good luck,&#8217; but they are not talking about me, but about the Democratic Party of Japan.</span></p>
<p> He plans to walk 200 kilometers to Cape Muroto in 10 days. He also appeared to be relaxed, <span class="strongInContent">saying, &#8220;If I&#8217;m not a representative, I don&#8217;t have an SP, and I like the freedom I have.</span></p>
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<p> Kan, who joined the cabinet of Ryutaro Hashimoto&#8217;s 1996 coalition government as minister of health and welfare from the New Party Sakigake, has acknowledged the government&#8217;s responsibility for the drug-related AIDS problem and apologized for his actions. He also became popular for his performances, such as eating kaiware daikon radish in front of the press during an outbreak of food poisoning caused by pathogenic E. coli O157. When the Democratic Party of Japan was launched in September of the same year, he caused a bit of a boom in the October lower house election in which he served as co-chairman with Yukio Hatoyama. For Kan, who had always had a strong presence in the political arena, his resignation in 2004 may be said to have been the first time he experienced a &#8220;rock bottom&#8221; period.</p>
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<p> In 2004, he made the 236-kilometer pilgrimage from Reizanji Temple in Tokushima Prefecture to Hotsumisaki Temple on Cape Muroto. The pilgrimage was continued seven times in between political activities, culminating in September 2001 with the completion of the 1,200-km walk to the 88th temple. During this time, the DPJ came to power and Kan became prime minister, but he was forced to step down a little over a year later after being criticized for his handling of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident at TEPCO&#8217;s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. What did Kan, who had dreamed of coming to power on his first pilgrimage, see when he completed his pilgrimage?</p>
<p> In November 2011, Kan announced that he would not run for the next lower house election and would retire from politics.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" &quot;Spontaneous?&quot; Mr. Kan in his pilgrimage"></div>
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<figure id="attachment_387568" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-387568" style="width: 2768px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="ea5f83c5"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2024/08/ac721c6c987178befd25f84b66fcac65.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-387568" class="wp-caption-text">After leaving the inn and walking for about two hours, we took a short break. He washed his sweat-soaked head in the river. He hadn&#8217;t had a shaved head since he was a high school student (from the August 6, &#8217;04 issue).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_387567" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-387567" style="width: 2816px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="04dfeb92"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2024/08/c6702f58ad5e970503f9dfb7d90b489e.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-387567" class="wp-caption-text"> After rinsing his head with cold water, Mr. Suga wrapped a hand towel around his head to get back into the swing of things (from the August 6, 2004 issue).</figcaption></figure>
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 Mayumi Jun

 In this issue of "Playback," we look back at what we were reporting 10, 20, and 30 years ago. This time, we will introduce a report on Naoto Kan, who was forced to resign as the representative of the Democratic Party of Japan in 2004, and suddenly embarked on a "Shikoku pilgrimage".

Playback ’04] “I Love My Freedom” – A New Reporter Reports on Naoto Kan’s Disappointing Pilgrimage

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