Japan’s Minister of Justice, Yasuhiro Hanashi, resigned on Friday over the controversy he sparked by declaring last Wednesday during a rally that the media only realized he existed when he signed permits to execute prisoners, in what has been interpreted as a trivialization of capital punishment and a gesture of contempt for the importance of the portfolio he headed.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida appeared before the media to confirm that he had accepted Hanashi’s resignation, a headache that led him to postpone his trip to Cambodia to participate in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) forum.
Kishida, whose approval rating is at the lowest levels since coming to power in October last year, has been weathering political storms for months, such as the scandal of links between his Liberal Democratic Party deputies with the influential Unification Church cult in the wake of the September assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Before confirming hitherto Agriculture Minister Ken Saito as the new Justice Minister, the prime minister apologized to the country for Hanashi’s remarks. «I take seriously the responsibility of having appointed him to the post,» he said.
After Hanashi assured during the rally that his position was «most mundane» except when he had to sign execution orders, the Japanese public broadcaster NHK and the official news agency Kyodo reported other statements by the former minister, who had said on several occasions that his was a position that gave «neither money nor votes».
In fact, Kishida himself admonished the minister in private at the time, given the sensitivity of the issue. Japan is one of the developed countries that still has the death penalty and, since Prime Minister Kishida took office last year, has executed four inmates.
Hanashi’s dismissal follows the resignation of Daishiro Yamagiwa last month as Minister of Economic Revitalization precisely because of his ties to the Unification Church, which former Prime Minister Abe’s self-confessed perpetrator accused of defrauding his mother.
