The arrest of former Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai and his wife Anri, who is a House of Councillors member, dealt a major blow to the nerve center of the Abe administration given Katsuyuki is close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.
Prosecutors have arrested the two Diet members on suspicion of buying votes in a scandal related to Anri's election campaign.
Abe and Suga gave their full support to Anri in the upper house election in July last year.
"Elections are the basis of democracy, and must not be viewed with suspicion. As president of the Liberal Democratic Party, I will have to straighten up much more, and fulfill my accountability," Abe said with a grim expression at a press conference at the Prime Minister's Office on Thursday, while commenting on their arrest.
Katsuyuki was one of the party members who supported Abe when he ran for LDP president in September 2012.
He was appointed assistant to the prime minister in October 2015, and diplomacy assistant to the LDP president in August 2017, acting as a conduit between the Prime Minister's Office and various countries' governments and legislators.
He received his first cabinet post as justice minister when the Cabinet was reshuffled last September.
He is also close to Suga since they were both elected for the first time in 1996.
Katsuyuki has led an intraparty group of non-partisan lawmakers called Himawarikai (The sunflower group) and considered himself an aide to Suga.
Suga is said to have specially favored Katsuyuki and advised the prime minister to appoint him as justice minister.
The closeness of Katsuyuki and the Abe administration was conspicuous when last year's upper house election was held.
Under Abe's instruction, the LDP headquarters decided to field Anri and Kensei Mizote, former minister for disaster management, in the Hiroshima constituency with two seats up for grabs, despite opposition from the party's prefectural chapter.
The prime minister sent his secretary to Anri's campaign office, and Suga went there twice to support her in the election.
The LDP headquarters provided her with a total of 150 million yen in campaign funds, which is believed to be 10 times the funds the party usually provides a candidate for an election. Anri won, but Mizote failed.
LDP Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai said the massive amount of funds was used for the distribution of campaign flyers, and denied any connection to the alleged bribe.
At a meeting held Thursday by the Kishida faction, to which Mizote belonged, some members questioned the amount, with a lawmaker saying, "Such a thing [like the distribution of campaign flyers] shouldn't cost 150 million yen. Someone should properly explain what's going on."
In addition to the government's delay in taking action against the new coronavirus, as well as a scandal involving Hiromu Kurokawa, former superintending prosecutor of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office, the issue of the Kawais will inevitably lead to another headwind for the administration.
A high-ranking government official expressed a sense of urgency, saying, "More people could get an impression that the administration's heavy-handed patronage of the Kawai couple was a contributing factor to the problem this time."
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