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School group scandal entangles two women close to Abe

TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has staked a significant part of his governing agenda on his plans to empower women.

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TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has staked a significant part of his governing agenda on his plans to empower women.

But an unrelenting scandal over allegations that a right-wing education group received improper political favours has ensnared two of the most prominent women in his life: His wife Akie Abe, and his Defence Minister Tomomi Inada.

The scandal has dented Mr Abe’s popularity, and his feminist credentials have been especially hard hit.

As the scandal began to dominate headlines last month, Mrs Abe resigned as honorary principal of a new school planned by the right-wing group in Osaka.

The group, Moritomo Gakuen, promotes elements from Japan’s prewar patriotic school curriculum and bought land from the government at a steep discount.

Last week, the leader of the group said the premier’s wife gave him an envelope of cash two years ago as a donation from the Prime Minister, a claim Mr Abe has vociferously denied.

Ms Inada, Japan’s second female Defence Minister, whom Mr Abe has been grooming to be his successor, is fighting calls for her resignation after she retracted a statement that she had never represented the school group in a lawsuit.

In fact, she had appeared in court on its behalf in 2004. She said she had initially forgotten and apologised in the National Diet, Japan’s parliament.

High-profile women are often scrutinised in Japan, which ranks the lowest among advanced industrial countries for female representation in parliament.

But the emergence of Mrs Abe and Ms Inada as key figures in the school scandal has emboldened critics who have long portrayed them as problematic advocates for women’s rights.

Mrs Abe’s feminism is “quite shallow,” said Mr Jiro Yamaguchi, a professor of political science at Hosei University. He added that although she appeared occasionally at events that campaigned for women in agriculture or innovation in women’s work-life balance, the First Lady had not been seen as committed to real, systemic change.

She has supported women’s causes in Iran and is a patron of the Asian University for Women, a school in Bangladesh whose mission is to provide a college education to women from deprived backgrounds.

In her memoir, I Live My Own Life, she said she supported her husband’s efforts to create a society in which “women can shine”, writing that “women don’t need to work just like men do”.

The Japanese news media sometimes describes Mrs Abe as the Prime Minister’s “at-home opposition party”, because she has expressed more progressive views on issues such as lesbian and gay rights and nuclear power in addition to supporting women’s causes. But the disclosure of her ties to the right-wing school group has undermined that reputation.

Moritomo Gakuen already operates a kindergarten that requires students to recite the Imperial Rescript on Education, a 19th-century royal decree that prescribes that subjects be “ever united in loyalty and filial piety” and that “husbands and wives be harmonious”. Its leader, Mr Yasunori Kagoike, has been accused of bigotry against Chinese and Koreans.

In response to questions for Mrs Abe, the Office of the Prime Minister referred to his comments in Parliament on Friday, when he defended his wife, saying that she had never given money to the school group and that neither of them was involved in selling public land to the proposed school.

Moritomo Gakuen has decided it will not build the school and has been ordered to return the land to the government. Mr Kagoike is expected to testify in the Diet today.

Women who want to see more female representation in positions of power say they are even more disappointed by Ms Inada.

“Inada is anti-feminist,” said Ms Mari Miura, a professor of political science at Sophia University, pointing to the Defence Minister’s membership in an ultra-conservative activist group that believes women belong in the home. She added that Ms Inada had resisted calls to push legislation that would allow married women to use different surnames from those of their husbands, a cause important to Japanese feminists.

Prof Miura said the Prime Minister had chosen Ms Inada because she shared his revisionist view that Japan has been unfairly accused of atrocities in World War II. “The women chosen by him are just symbolic or a cosmetic way of conveying women’s advancement,” Prof Miura said. “And that doesn’t really empower women at all.”

Ms Inada was one of three women to assume a political leadership position in Japan last summer, but from the moment she was appointed, critics have questioned her qualifications.

Even in her own Liberal Democratic Party, some lawmakers have asked why a lawyer who had never been a vice-minister in either the defence or foreign affairs ministries would be selected for such a significant post, particularly as tensions in the region escalate, with North Korea developing nuclear missiles and China pushing territorial claims.

At times, the commentary has strayed to her appearance. Observers on social media complained about the casual outfit and oversize sunglasses she wore on a plane to Djibouti in eastern Africa over the summer, when she met Japanese troops on a counter-piracy mission.

On another occasion, after she visited a Japanese naval ship, a popular tabloid magazine disapproved of the high heels she wore.

Questions about her competence have intensified after disclosures that the Ground Self-Defence Force, Japan’s army, had withheld reports on the activities of peacekeeping units in South Sudan.

While both Ms Inada and Mr Abe had portrayed the operation as safe, the reports, which surfaced in the Japanese news media last month, described several incidents of “combat” between warring factions in South Sudan. The law forbids Japanese troops to participate in missions where active conflict is involved.

In a faxed statement, Ms Inada said that she had not seen the leader of the Moritomo Gakuen group for 10 years.

And she said that she had ordered a special investigation into the South Sudan reports. If any problems emerged, she wrote: “I will try to improve it under the Defence Minister’s responsibility.”

In the Diet last week,Mr Abe defended his Defence Minister, saying he wanted her to “continue to perform her duties with sincerity”.

For now, critics say Ms Inada may survive the scandal.

“If Abe throws her under the bus, he’s likely to get spattered because he’s her career mentor,” said Mr Jeff Kingston, the director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo.

On the other hand, Mr Kingston added, “he needs a scapegoat so he can change the channel”.

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