Japan Press Weekly

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2017 May 24 - 30 [POLITICS]

Ex-Vice Minister of Education: Documents are genuine

Former administrative head of the Education Ministry admitted that the ministry drew up internal documents related to the “Kake Gakuen” scandal involving Prime Minister Abe and his close friend, saying “All the documents are genuine.”

Regarding these documents, the Prime Minister’s Office has been claiming that they are “anonymous.”

Maekawa Kihei, former Administrative Vice Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and who had handled this “Kake Gakuen” deal as the top bureaucrat of the ministry, on May 25 held a press conference in Tokyo.

He stated that the eight sheets of internal documents Akahata exclusively obtained were the exact documents that he had in his office when he had been receiving reports and consultation on the matter.”

He further affirmed that, based on “common understanding,” relevant ministries and offices had proceeded with a plan to launch a veterinary medicine institute run by “Kake Gakuen” in Imabari City under the program of national strategic special economic zones.

In other words, the Kake Gakuen plan relied on “unspoken common understandings.”

Maekawa confessed, “There was an atmosphere that every ministry and office could not refuse or deny requests that were ordered by the inner circle of government.”

He was ready to respond to a Diet summoning as a sworn witness, he added.

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Koike Akira in an Upper House Education Committee meeting on the same day demanded that former Administrative Vice Minister Maekawa Kihei, who was familiar with the process of this scandal, be summoned before the Diet and that intensive Diet deliberations with the attendance of PM Abe be held.