On June 15, DPJ Secretary General Goshi Hosono answered reporters’ questions regarding comments made by Prime Minister Abe on his Facebook page. Abe was critical of statements made by former top diplomat Hitoshi Tanaka in a Mainichi Shimbun interview, saying that Tanaka was “not qualified to talk about diplomacy”.

Hosono said, “The Prime Minister is the most powerful person in our nation, and as such I believe that he should think very carefully about making personal attacks on private citizens. If he holds a different opinion then I do not deny him the right to make a refutation [of Tanaka’s argument]. However, on Facebook he goes as far as to end his comment by concluding ‘[Tanaka] is not qualified to talk about diplomacy.’ If things get to this stage then I wonder whether Tanaka himself will really be able to make comments about foreign policy in the future, or indeed whether the media will run such comments. Since these are comments made by the most powerful person in Japan, who knows how things will turn out. Therefore, I would like the Prime Minister to respond more carefully in such cases. Person with power are called upon to make very careful judgements with regard to the use of such power, and so I am concerned that the expressions [the Prime Minister] used on Facebook deviate somewhat from that.”

Hosono was asked whether he thought that the Prime Minister’s actions on this occasion shared common roots with the lines in the LDP’s draft proposal for revising the Constitution which enable freedom of speech to be limited. He answered, “When you are in charge of the administration and try to take on difficult challenges it is natural that critics of such actions will appear. Whether such criticism is responded to in a broadminded way is I think indicative of the degree of tolerance possessed by the administration itself. The LDP draft proposal states that freedom of speech can be limited for the public good and for public order, and I am also concerned about this. When it furthermore seems that the people who are proposing to create this kind of Constitution do not as part of their nature show concern for freedom of speech, I feel an even greater sense of unease.”