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On May 27, DPJ President Banri Kaieda held his regular press conference at party headquarters, and explained the party preparations for the forthcoming Tokyo metropolitan assembly and House of Councillors elections.
At the start of the presser, Kaieda referred to the fact that the DPJ-backed candidate in the Chiba city mayoral election, incumbent Toshihito Kumagai, had been reelected following polling on May 26, saying, “Following on from the recent Saitama city mayoral election, I believe that it is an extremely welcome development that non-LDP backed mayors are being elected in the metropolitan area [surrounding Tokyo]. The Shizuoka gubernatorial is due to start shortly. After that, the Tokyo metropolitan assembly elections will get underway. We would like to fully communicate the DPJ’s position to the people.”
Kaieda also mentioned that on May 27, he had participated in a memorial ceremony at the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery, which houses the remains of the unknown Japanese soldiers who died overseas during WWII. He commented, “This is something that takes place every year, but during the year the remains of those who died in the past war are recovered, and those who have no one to receive them are interred at Chidorigafuchi. This year the remains of 1628 individuals were interred at Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery. Even though close on 70 years have passed since the end of the war, still the remains of many individuals are buried where they fell in countries far from their homes. Prime Minister Abe talks of whether WWII was a war of aggression or not and what is meant by aggression, but I felt that before getting in those kind of discussions, the government should first focus on recovering and repatriating the overseas remains of Japanese soldiers as soon as possible.”
With regard to the DPJ’s organization going into the forthcoming Tokyo Metropolitan and House of Councillors elections, Kaieda announced that the appointments of Deputy Secretary General Sumio Mabuchi, Chair of the Council for Comprehensive Social Security and Tax Reform Akira Nagatsuma, and Next Minister for Administrative Reform Renho as Acting Secretary General in addition to Masaharu Nakagawa had been announced and approved by the party executive committee that same day. He explained the reason behind the additional appointments as follows: “I would like Renho to strengthen our communications on child-rearing and administrative reform. Nagatsuma will play a key role in promoting DPJ policies relating to comprehensive social security and tax reform, in other words our social security policies…We will engage in an election organization in which the DPJ unites as a party to fight the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly and House of Councillors elections.” He said that Chief Vice Secretary General Hirofumi Ryu would be promoted to Deputy Secretary General in place of Mabuchi.
Kaieda was asked his opinion regarding comments made by the co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, Toru Hashimoto, who had held a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan that same day, and been lambasted in the press for his comments concerning the so-called “comfort women” issue. He responded, “I said several days ago that co-leader Hashimoto’s comments were not worth commenting on at each and every eventuality. My sentiments have not changed since then. There is an old Chinese proverb ‘A fire cannot be wrapped in paper.’ In other words if a fire is wrapped in paper it will burn even more strongly. Hashimoto is spouting a lot of nonsense, but that is just like wrapping fire in oilpaper.”
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