The Speaker of the House of Representatives, the &#8220;head of the three branches of government,&#8221; has been accused of sexual harassment.　This information was circulating in Nagata-cho on the afternoon of August 18.
<figure id="attachment_244788" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 4000px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-244788"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="93da0ab0"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/05/aflo_174196528.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-244788" class="wp-caption-text">As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hiroyuki Hosoda declares the opening of the Diet with the Emperor in the background. His remarks have caused quite a stir. Behind his public and private &#8220;outbursts,&#8221; some are concerned about his &#8220;declining judgment.</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Late at night&#8230;?</h2>
 Why don&#8217;t you come over to my house now?&#8221;
On the evening of August 18, Bunshun Online reported that Hiroyuki Hosoda, 78, the 78th Speaker of the House of Representatives, invited a female reporter to his house late at night.
Hosoda was in charge of the Seiwakai Kenkyukai, the largest faction of the LDP under the administration of Shinzo Abe, and as the leader of the faction, he boasted an immense voice within the party. He became chairman last November and is a &#8220;major politician&#8221; who has risen to the head of the three branches of government.
A female reporter in the political section of a national newspaper said, &#8220;The Seiwa Kenkyukai is the faction in charge of the administration.
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 The Seiwa Kenkyukai is the faction in charge of the administration, so not only the Hirakawa Club, the Diet Press Club, and the Prime Minister&#8217;s Office Press Club, but also reporters from the ministry press clubs were in contact with Hosoda. At the time. It was only natural that reporters would flock around Chairman Hosoda if they wanted to find out what was going on in the Abe administration. The company honestly believed that Mr. Hosoda would be more relaxed if they had a young female journalist on their payroll.
 After the meeting, a tipsy Mr. Hosoda drove away without answering any questions, and immediately afterward, he called his favorite female reporter on her cell phone and said, &#8220;I&#8217;ll talk to you off the record, but do you want to come? I&#8217;ll tell you off the record, but do you want to come? The female reporter, wanting information, immediately went to the designated place, but she got nothing, and was angry that she had only been forced to drink with him.
I wonder about the newspaper&#8217;s intention to &#8220;assign a female reporter&#8221; to a male politician with such potential, and the feeling on the ground is also a bit bizarre. However, it seems to be a fact that such rumors have been around for some time.
Hosoda himself refuted the allegations on March 20, stating that they are &#8220;completely different from the facts&#8221; and sternly protesting against them. However, this is not the only problem. Recently, there has been a concentration of media coverage of Mr. Hosoda.
<h2>The True Meaning of the &#8220;One Million Yen a Month&#8221; Comment</h2>
 The speaker of the House of Representatives is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the salary of a Diet member is only 1 million yen.
It was on May 10 that the speaker of the House of Representatives made this remark, which is hard to believe. It was not a mere remark. Behind this &#8220;one million pittance&#8221; comment was a bill to review the number of seats in the House of Representatives in order to correct the disparity in the number of votes in the lower house.
 It is a formula calculated in one&#8217;s head. I am of the opinion that it is not just a matter of reducing the number of local legislators and increasing the number of urban legislators.&#8221;
Ostensibly, he seems to be saying, &#8220;If we reduce the number of local elected officials, the voices of the rural areas will not be heard. Sounds reasonable. But.
 But this is a flattery and favoritism toward former Prime Minister Abe, and moreover, it is a power struggle within the party,&#8221; said a senior LDP official.
According to this LDP heavyweight, Hosoda&#8217;s intentions are clear.
 Hosoda was able to become Speaker of the House of Representatives under the influence of Abe&#8217;s one-power administration. If former Prime Minister Abe&#8217;s constituency, to which he owes a debt of gratitude, is reduced by 10 to 10, Hosoda&#8217;s opponent in the election will be Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, the hope of the Kishida administration. The election campaign for former Prime Minister Abe, who has left the public eye, will become tougher. If this is the case, we would like to protect former Prime Minister Abe&#8217;s constituency and provide logistical support as a &#8220;three-increase, three-decrease&#8221; plan. With the Kishida administration seen as short-lived, Abe&#8217;s reappointment is not out of the question. For his own protection, he wants to maintain the power of the Abe faction, a large faction of 94 members.
It is said that politicians only think about elections, and that is exactly true. Moreover, once they have experienced the pleasure of walking at the front of the red carpet, political activities that don&#8217;t get any sunlight must be nothing but pain for them.
<h2>The reason why the &#8220;ranting&#8221; never stops</h2>
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Fumiaki Ibuki, who serves as the top advisor to the LDP&#8217;s Nikai faction, did not hide his annoyance at Speaker Hosoda&#8217;s &#8220;three increases and three reductions&#8221; comment.
 If the Speaker openly criticizes a bill decided by the Diet, the authority of the Diet will be crushed. There are things that a person in the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives should not say. What do you think the Diet is?
He is a harsh critic of the House of Representatives. Complaints against Speaker Hosoda have come from various quarters within the party in the past. However, Hosoda &#8220;became&#8221; the chairperson by the logic of numbers. Hosoda himself has recently expressed his own feelings about the carelessness and thoughtlessness of his words, saying, &#8220;From now on, I will be the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
 He has recently admonished himself for his own indiscretion, saying, &#8220;From now on, I will be aware of my position (as the Speaker of the House of Representatives) and refrain from making statements that might cause a stir in the world.
He has since repeatedly said, &#8220;I will refrain from making any comments that will cause a stir in the world.
Since then, he has refrained from making reference to the &#8220;increase in the number of Diet members&#8221; and &#8220;rejection of the bill to correct the disparity in the number of votes,&#8221; which he has said repeatedly in the past, but his &#8220;ranting&#8221; has come to an end.
Last week, at a meeting of the Liberal Democratic Party in his hometown of Matsue City, he said.
 &#8220;I have been advocating the elimination of the practice of combining districts of neighboring prefectures into one electoral district for the Upper House election. But we have not been able to amend the law or the constitution in time.&#8221;
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He &#8220;developed a pet theory&#8221; that directly contradicts the decision made by the Diet. This shows the disregard for the Diet and the privatization of politics by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. What is the reason why Mr. Hosoda &#8220;cannot stop&#8221; his &#8220;outspokenness&#8221; and disregard for the Diet? We are also concerned about Hosoda&#8217;s health, given his advanced age. We are concerned about the &#8220;whereabouts&#8221; of the Speaker, who reigns over the Diet as one of the LDP&#8217;s most powerful figures.

 Shutaro Iwashiro

 Yoshio Tsunoda/Afro

 The Speaker of the House of Representatives, who is the "head of the three branches of government," has been accused of sexual harassment.　On the afternoon of the 18th, information that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the "head of the three branches of government," is sexually harassing the public was circulating in Nagatacho. Late at night...? In the evening of the 18th, Bunshun Online reported that Hiroyuki Hosoda, 78, the 78th Speaker of the House of Representatives, had been sexually harassed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

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