Japan's Defense Minister Inada Resigns Over Military Cover-Up

(Bloomberg) -- Defense Minister Tomomi Inada quit over a cover-up involving the military’s reports on Japan’s peacekeeping activities in South Sudan, a move that comes as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe prepares to reshuffle his cabinet amid a slump in his popularity.

"I feel deeply responsible for this as defense minister," Inada told reporters in Tokyo on Friday. "I have decided to step down." Abe said he had accepted her resignation.

Abe had stuck by Inada despite opinion polls indicating she was one reason for his sliding support rates. Still, her departure will probably have limited impact given Abe had been expected to replace her anyway in a cabinet reshuffle likely to come next week. Her exit came a day after the leader of the main opposition party stepped down, having failed to gain ground on the ruling coalition despite Abe’s woes.

"Japanese politics in enormous disarray," said Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. "The Abe government has been pushed into to a corner and is planning a reshuffle next week. The main opposition party is also leaderless."

Inada, who had little experience of security issues, had been a target of criticism since she was appointed minister in a reshuffle last year. An ensuing string of gaffes and scandals added to the pressure.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will double as defense minister for the time being, Abe told reporters.

‘Joan of Arc’

The last straw appears to have been the handling of a defense report that referred to fighting in South Sudan, which was controversial because Japan does not allow its peace keepers to be deployed to combat zones. Kyodo News said last week Inada had known of a GSDF decision to cover up the fact it still had the report, despite saying it had been destroyed. Inada denied the allegations.

She had also been criticized for a stump speech during the recent Tokyo local assembly election campaign, in which she appeared to tell voters the Self-Defense Forces wanted them to support the ruling Liberal Democratic Party candidate.

A former lawyer seen as a protege of Abe, who compared her to Joan of Arc, Inada shared his nationalist views on history and was caught up in one of the premier’s own scandals this year. She initially denied having acted in a legal capacity for the operator of a controversial educational foundation at the center of a furor over a suspicious land deal, but later admitted she had done so and apologized.

Inada, the second woman to serve as defense minister, had been a frequent visitor to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which is regarded by China and South Korea as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism. She was once refused entry to South Korea when she sought to visit islands close to a group of islets disputed between the countries.

Abe is considering appointing someone with experience of the post to replace Inada, Kyodo news reported Thursday. Candidates include Yasukazu Hamada, Yoshimasa Hayashi, Gen Nakatani and Itsunori Onodera, the agency said.

Opposition Disarray

Renho, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said Thursday she’d resign after less than a year in the job. The former newscaster, who goes by one name, didn’t fulfill high expectations, failing to smooth over intra-party clashes and overseeing a heavy defeat in the Tokyo election.

Her resignation looks like another step toward the collapse of Japan’s two-party system. A previous incarnation of the DP swept to a landslide win in 2009, but lost to Abe’s LDP in 2012 and has since failed to offer a coherent alternative.

The DP focused its energies on pursuing scandals surrounding Abe and his cabinet in recent months. While this strategy has been successful in undermining his support, the DP itself is also less popular than before. It received 5 percent backing from respondents to a Mainichi newspaper poll published Monday, compared with 25 percent for the LDP.

Given the opposition vacuum, populist Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike may seek to build on her Tokyo assembly victory and take her local party into the national arena, providing a fresh opponent for the LDP.

Michael Cucek, an adjunct fellow at Temple University’s Japan campus, sees the timing ripe for Abe to call a snap general election.

"The obvious decision for Abe, who faces declining poll numbers and obvious factional maneuvering against him, is dissolve the Diet," Cucek wrote on his Shisaku blog. "With the DP leaderless and no national Koike party as yet, the chances are fairly good that Abe’s LDP will march to another victory under his command."

--With assistance from Gearoid Reidy and Aya Takada

To contact the reporter on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net, Andy Sharp, Brett Miller