“Death penalty stamp”, “I’ve never bought rice”… Japanese ministers blown away by a single word

In Japanese politics, cabinet ministers are repeatedly expelled from office due to their inappropriate words, actions, and outrageous remarks.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun on the 15th, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Kazuo Yana was dismissed the day before, 28 days after taking office, due to remarks about reducing regional budgets and suspicions of violating the Public Official Election Act.

Yana, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, has recently been under strong pressure to resign from the opposition party as well as the ruling party due to a series of comments such as her saying that she "cut" the road budgets of local governments that did not support her and allegations of illegal payment of compensation to election campaign workers.

To prevent a breakdown in the National Assembly, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi virtually dismissed Yana Nongsang's resignation in the form of an acceptance, saying, "I take the responsibility of appointment seriously."

This is not the first case in Japan where ministers' inappropriate words, actions, and outrageous comments have led to their midterm resignation.

In May of last year, then-Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Taku Eto was dismissed at a Liberal Democratic Party political fund-raising event when he said, "I have never bought rice. We have so much to sell because so many applicants came in," sparking public outrage and his dismissal.

At a time when the suffering of the people was increasing due to the high price of rice, the head of the relevant ministry ignited public sentiment.

In August 2023, then-Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Tetsuro Nomura described treated water discharged into the ocean from Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant as 'polluted water', sparking a strong backlash from residents of the Fukushima region, and he was eventually forced to resign in a cabinet reshuffle the following month.

The Japanese government is officially using the term 'treated water' for water purified from contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in order to minimize the negative image it gives to the region and agricultural and marine products.

Previously, in November 2022, Justice Minister Yasuhiro Hanashi was dismissed after being criticized for downplaying the serious job of executing the death penalty by saying, "The Minister of Justice is a simple position that only gets attention when stamping death sentences in the morning and decorating the main news at noon."

In April 2019, then-Olympic Minister Yoshitaka Sakurada said, "Rep. Takahashi is more important than disaster recovery," to the effect that certain politicians were more important than disaster recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake, and was dismissed as the scandal spread.

Takahashi is a former member of the Liberal Democratic Party, Hinako Takahashi, who was based in Iwate Prefecture, one of the major areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.