The autumn extraordinary Diet session, shaken by the suspicion and scandal surrounding the annual sakura-viewing party hosted by the Japanese prime minister at public expense, closed up shop on Dec. 9.
Opposition parties made an unusual request to extend the session but this was denied by the ruling bloc -- a move undoubtedly rooted in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s desire to shut down the public airing of sakura party suspicions. What's more, Abe did not refer to the issue once at the outset of his end-of-session speech to the media. When pressed by reporters, the PM simply recycled explanations we have all heard before. If Abe believes that he can win public understanding with these tactics, he is dreaming of the impossible.
The government has resorted to a string of stopgap excuses ever since questions about the sakura party were first raised, resulting in an expanding tangle of contradictory statements and failing to resolve even one of the doubts hovering around the event.
The LDP has promised to compel the government to explain the situation to the Diet down the road. In that case, out-of-session meetings of both Diet chambers' budget committees -- which the prime minister attends -- should be convened right away to function as transparent investigative committees.
The last Diet session left a great deal of unfinished business, led by continued debate on the Japan-U.S. trade agreement and addressing gridlocked Tokyo-Seoul relations. However, that the sakura party scandal devoured much of the legislature's valuable time is due in great part to Prime Minister Abe and the ruling parties. This could have been avoided had Abe simply ordered the Cabinet Office to conduct a rigorous investigation of the affair and provided explanations to the budget committees.
The sakura party is officially a public event, paid for from the state purse, and there are now severe doubts about whether it has been corrupted. It is very difficult for us to understand Abe, the LDP and their dismissive attitude to the very foundations of democratic politics.
Revelations that the party guest list was shredded also highlighted once more the Abe administration's penchant for destroying any public document it deems politically inconvenient. That happened in May, right at the time Diet members officially requested to see the list. It turned out that there was a digital backup of the list still extant at the time, a fact confirmed recently by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga. However, the top government spokesman insisted that a backup is not a public document, and the administration therefore had no duty to turn it over. This backup is also now, apparently, gone.
Faced with Abe administration stonewalling, the Japanese Communist Party launched its own investigation, which some other opposition parties are also cooperating with. Along with their role in the eventual postponement of new private English tests as part of a revamped university entrance exam system, we must congratulate the opposition parties for their vigorous checks on government policy to a certain degree.
During the recently concluded Diet session, the latest iteration of the Abe Cabinet lost two top members to scandal and resignation; trade minister Isshu Sugawara, and justice minister Katsuyuki Kawai. And yet, even as the ugly problem of money intertwined with politics once more raised its head, both ministers never delivered their promised explanations. This we cannot countenance.
In sum we are forced to conclude that the Abe administration, so long in power, has become yet more twisted and arrogant.

Rulings have been handed down on all 16 lawsuits filed with high courts in which the constitutionality of vote-value disparities in the July 2019 House of Councillors election were contested. In the election, the value of one vote in the less populated constituencies was up to three times that of the more densely populated electoral districts.
In 14 of the 16 cases, high courts ruled that the election was constitutional while the poll was deemed to be in a state of unconstitutionality in the two other suits. A state of unconstitutionality means that the election cannot be immediately deemed unconstitutional but can be recognized as such unless vote-value disparity is rectified within a reasonable timeframe.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the previous upper house election in 2016 was constitutional even though the value of one vote in the most sparsely populated constituency was 3.08 times that in the most densely populated district. In that case, the top court appreciated the fact that the Tottori and Shimane prefectural constituencies and the Tokushima and Kochi prefectural electoral districts, all in western Japan, were merged respectively and reduced the maximum disparity from 4.77 times.
High court rulings in the 14 cases that the 2019 poll was constitutional were based on the top court ruling.
In the most recent reform of the upper chamber electoral system, the number of seats allocated to the constituency in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, was increased by just two. However, courts that tried these 14 suits expressed their understanding of the Diet's efforts to reduce vote-value disparity. The Okayama branch of the Hiroshima High Court pointed out that the legislature "chose a realistic option to rectify the disparity."
However, a supplementary clause to the Public Offices Election Act that set the framework for the 2016 election states that the Diet must fundamentally review the electoral system for the next election and draw a conclusion by then. The Supreme Court cited this supplementary provision as one of the factors based on which it ruled that the 2016 poll was constitutional.
Courts that ruled the latest upper house race was in a state of unconstitutionality in the two cases pointed out that simply increasing the number of seats in the Saitama prefectural constituency by two was far from a fundamental review.
The Takamatsu High Court asserted that the reform "just temporarily covered up the problem," while the Sapporo High Court urged the legislature to review the current system under which each prefecture has one constituency in principle.
The minor reform of the upper house election system following the 2016 poll was carried out as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) maneuvered for its own interests. A special quota was established in the proportional representation system to help legislators, who lost their chances to run in their home constituencies because of the mergers, secure seats in the chamber. Two more seats were allocated to the Saitama electoral district partly to show consideration to Komeito, the LDP's junior coalition partner, as well as opposition parties.
As the brakes cannot be put on population concentration in urban areas, vote-value disparity will only widen if the election system remains as it is. Just changing the number of seats in densely and sparsely populated constituencies alone is not enough to reduce vote-value disparity, possibly sparking calls for further amalgamation of electoral districts.
However, the past mergers between prefectural constituencies have caused problems. Voter turnout declined to the lowest levels in three of the four prefectures that were subject to the merger. In Tokushima Prefecture it fell to 38.59%, the lowest of all upper house constituencies across Japan.
What is necessary is to fundamentally call into question the role that the upper house should play. It is necessary to increase the chamber's raison d'etre as a house of profound deliberations and clarify the division of roles between the two chambers.
The Supreme Court takes the position that equality in the value of votes should be achieved while considering the characteristics and functions of the upper house under the bicameral system. This is why the top court has tolerated wider vote-value disparity in upper house elections than in lower house polls.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule as early as next year on whether the latest upper house race was constitutional. The Diet needs to swiftly begin discussions aimed at fundamentally reforming the upper house electoral system before the top court hands down a ruling.

The Japanese government's highest legislative priority going into the present Diet session was passage of the trade deal recently negotiated with the United States. Following its Dec. 4 approval in a vote in the House of Councillors, the deal surmounted its final legislative hurdle. As the pact does not need to go before the U.S. Congress, it will take effect on New Year's Day.
The largest bone of contention during the Diet debate was whether Washington had bullied Japan into a lopsided deal, reason being that while Tokyo agreed to reduce tariffs on U.S. beef and pork imports, there are no provisions to drop duties on Japanese cars headed to the American market.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has insisted that the bilateral trade pact is a "win-win," because the deal is conditional on eliminating the tariffs on Japanese vehicles in the future. However, an examination of the agreement text reveals only a commitment to future negotiations on the issue, nothing more. And it is very difficult to imagine U.S. President Donald Trump, a man who has threatened to hike tariffs on Japanese cars, ever coming around to the idea of dropping them altogether. The onus was on the Abe administration to give the Diet a deeply compelling explanation for how this trade deal could be called a "win-win."
Abe and his allies have done nothing of the sort. They have failed to provide any solid proof at all of American commitments on auto tariffs, resorting instead to ad nauseam repetition of passages from the agreement. If the duties on Japanese cars are in fact slated to end, then at the very least the Abe government should be able to give the public a timeframe for that to occur, which it has not done. To shout from the rooftops that this deal is fair, then, pushes credibility to the breaking point.
The government's public estimates of the pact's economic effect on Japan are premised on the assumption that the U.S. will drop the auto tariffs. Opposition parties demanded that the administration also release figures assuming the duties stay in place, but it has refused to do so.
The Japan-U.S. trade agreement will have a direct impact on the lives of the Japanese people. The government is thus obligated to reveal all its figures relating to the deal, and to persuade the public of the agreement's merits.
Another point of concern is the scant time allotted to debate the deal in the Diet, despite its enormous implications for the Japanese economy and citizenry. Discussion in both houses of the national legislature amounted to less than 30 hours combined, or around 20% of the time given three years ago to the multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement -- which the U.S. was party to before Trump dumped it in the early days of his administration.
Trump is keen to get the Tokyo-Washington pact on the books as soon as possible, so that he can boast of the accomplishment in the 2020 U.S. presidential election campaign. It is simply outrageous that the Abe government would put Trump's political priorities ahead of giving the Japanese people a proper explanation of such an important pact.
The basic principle behind trade liberalization is that each party should open up even its most important economic sectors, and thus energize the economies of all. In that spirit, when Japanese and U.S. negotiators are expected to meet once more in spring next year or later for trade talks, Tokyo should demand that an end to the U.S. auto tariffs be made explicit.
When the U.S. dropped out of the TPP, there was some doubt that the remaining 11 nations would be able to hold it together. Japan led the way to getting it signed, sealed and delivered despite Washington's abrupt exit. That being the case, it is very strange indeed that Japan would then go ahead and ink a separate, bilateral agreement with the United States, the linchpin country of the entire Pacific area. Surely, it would damage American interests if instead the TPP had been expanded to more countries. Therefore, it is important to encourage Washington to rejoin the pact in the future.

Thirty years have passed since the Malta Summit where U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev declared an end to the Cold War between the Eastern and Western blocs.
The now defunct Soviet Union's policy of military expansion and the United States' efforts to contain the former split the world into the two alliances and brought it to the brink of a nuclear war at one point.
It was viewed as a historic milestone when the world believed that democratic politics and capitalism had won over dictatorship and communism, freeing the globe from animosity and terror and leading to permanent peace.
Then President Bush described a "new world order" to pursue following the end of the Cold War as "a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak."
One wonders whether we have achieved the lofted ideal of transforming conflict into cooperation.
Looking back, the principle of international cooperation was one of the pillars of the post-Cold War world order.
At the time of the Persian Gulf crisis, the United Nations Security Council countered Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 in unison, marking the first such move since the Korean War and performing its original function.
There are a growing number of opportunities for the United Nations to play a leading role in tackling global challenges, including peacekeeping operations in regional conflicts and efforts to combat global warming.

Another pillar of the post-Cold War world order is globalism. As people, goods, money and information cross national borders, international systems and organizations have been established to support these movements.
It had been believed that multicultural societies would be formed as a result of globalization, that the world economy would prosper thanks to free trade and that countries would become increasingly interdependent, leading to world peace.
The United States has led these moves as a superpower. The possibility of armed conflicts between major powers has become slim and poverty among developing countries has drastically improved since the Cold War period.
However, globalization's drawbacks have become more apparent 30 years after the end of the Cold War in contrast to these advantages.
The strain of globalization has caused economic disparities and created a climate of intolerance toward immigrants. A divide in the United States, which has the world's highest immigrant population, is particularly serious.
Nationalism is rising in many parts of the world as a reaction to globalism, shaking the framework for international cooperation.
Russia, which has been accepted by developed nations that share common values of freedom and democracy, has militarily seized Crimea and shown an increasingly authoritarian attitude.
Meanwhile in Asia, China, which has emerged as a major power since the end of the Cold War, has increased its economic and military might. The country's "digital dictatorship" using artificial intelligence is beginning to threaten the world.
Marked divisions have widened within the European Union, on which the international community had placed high expectations as a new form of merger between countries, because of currency and immigrant crises, resulting in Britain deciding to break away from the union.
While the United States has led the post-Cold War world, the superpower has leaned toward unilateralism since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and now prioritizes "America First" policies over international cooperation.
Liberal world order has been damaged and the fear of a nuclear arms race is spreading throughout the world again.
Some call new conflicts between major powers -- between the U.S. and China and the U.S. and Russia -- the "new cold war." However, Cold War-like formations of blocs and containment policies would not work in the globalized world.
If the highly interdependent global trade system were to be destroyed, it would adversely affect each economy's benefits. There is no room for "iron curtains" anywhere across the globe today.
Now we must realize that the world has reached a more dramatic historic milestone.
It is difficult to foresee a world order in the 21st century, but a situation in which major powers wield their own rules and throw the globe into chaos must be avoided by all means. Such concerns cannot be dispelled as U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin all exercise authoritarian leadership.
If major powers were to act self-righteously, the free and just world order would collapse and the weak would be at the mercy of the strong.
The origin of the current international order is World War I about 100 years ago. Europe, North American countries and Japan founded the League of Nations and established the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy as a framework for peace.
Even though the world subsequently experienced second world war and the Cold War, cooperation through the United Nations and multilateral cooperation have been strengthened in arms reductions and promoting free trade.
Maintaining international cooperation is also important for Japan, and Tokyo could play a significant role in such efforts.
Japan is trying to establish friendly ties with China and Russia while keeping its alliance with the U.S. as its core relationship. Tokyo can play a part in ensuring major powers peacefully coexist in the international community while competing with each other.
Japan also needs to take the initiative in addressing global challenges. Tokyo should join hands with European and other nations to bind major powers and smaller states while bolstering international cooperation.

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, who was in power from November 1982 to November 1987, died on Nov. 29 at 101. Nakasone, who transitioned from a bureaucrat to politician after the end of World War II, was the last surviving witness to Japan's postwar conservative politics.
When he became prime minister, Japan was the world's second largest economic power and had hit a postwar peak. Nevertheless, Nakasone launched his administration under the slogan, "comprehensive evaluation of postwar politics."
On the domestic front, he aimed for administrative, tax, and educational reforms, and achieved outstanding results in the first of these categories.
Especially notable was the reform of the state-owned Japanese National Railways (JNR), splitting the debt-ridden corporation into six regional passenger firms and a nationwide freight company. At the time, JNR was saddled with over 37 trillion yen (about $253.1 billion at contemporary exchange rates) in accumulated debts, placing an enormous financial burden on the state.
A bureaucrat-led system had bloated the administrative branch over the three-plus decades after the end of the war. Reform was the need of the day.
Neoliberalism, in which private-sector dynamism is used to spur growth, held sway in the United States and Britain. The Nakasone administration also prioritized the use of private-sector dynamism -- a policy continued by the cabinets of Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe. However, critics point out that the trend also opened the way for the speculation-driven, asset-inflating "bubble economy" of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Nakasone, who was elected to his first term as a member of the House of Representatives in 1947, was a staunch critic of former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida because he thought the Yoshida Cabinet's policies were excessively dependent on the United States.
Nakasone described himself as a "reformist conservative" as compared with Yoshida, who was regarded as the mainstream among conservatives. Nakasone was not satisfied with Japan as just a major economic power. As a reformist conservative, he sought to expand the country's international role, including into security.
His Cabinet treated Japan's supply of weapons technology to the United States as an exception to the Three Principles of Weapons Exports, and compared the Japanese archipelago to an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" to counter the now defunct Soviet Union, stirring controversy both in Japan and overseas. These examples also reflect his efforts to expand Japan's international role. Nakasone had criticized Japan's reliance on the United States, but also built a close "Ron-Yasu" relationship with then U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
In the meantime, Nakasone paid an official visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where Class A war criminals are enshrined along with Japan's war dead, in his capacity as prime minister for the first time in 1985. However, he abandoned doing so later to show consideration to China and other countries that had reacted sharply.
Since he was young, he had called for revisions to the Constitution to, as he saw it, restore Japan's complete independence from postwar occupation by the Allied Forces. The stance won him the nickname "young officer" -- a reference to radical nationalist army officers active in the prewar years. However, he turned out to be flexible on the Constitution while he was in power, saying that it was not the right time for an amendment push.
Nakasone was ridiculed as a "weathercock" because he often changed his stance in response to shifts in the political situation. However, it is certain that he established a new direction for Japan's postwar politics.

The No. 2 reactor at Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s Onagawa Nuclear Power Station in northeastern Japan's Miyagi Prefecture has passed the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA)'s pre-restart safety inspection. This paves the way for the reactor to go back online, which would be a notable development in itself. However, the power plant's history makes the move worthy of special scrutiny.
The Onagawa Nuclear Power Station buildings' walls were riddled with cracks by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. The No. 2 reactor is the second one in Japan that was damaged in the disaster to pass NRA inspections, following Japan Atomic Power Co.'s Tokai No. 2 Power Station in Ibaraki Prefecture north of Tokyo.
The Onagawa inspection took six years, as the operator met NRA demands to build up the plant's anti-tsunami breakwater, install measures to prevent the facility from losing power, and strengthen the structure against seismic shocks, among other requirements.
The geographic features surrounding the power station are similar to those around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which suffered a triple-meltdown in the March 2011 quake and tsunami disaster. The Onagawa No. 2 reactor is also of the same boiling-water type as the ones at the Fukushima plant, and required more time to inspect than those used in western Japan.
The government apparently intends to use the reactor's passing grade as a major breakthrough to pave the way for more restarts of boiling-water reactors in northeastern Japan. However, just because the Onagawa unit passed the NRA inspection test does not mean that all its issues have been resolved.
First of all, Tohoku Electric must now seek approval for the reactor's restart from local governments around the power station, and residents remain deeply worried about the prospect of evacuation in case of a serious accident. The electricity producer has sunk some 340 billion yen (about $3.1 billion) into the plant's safety improvements, but it is possible that yet more will be needed.
The NRA re-evaluated Japan's nuclear safety standards in the wake of the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Every nuclear power plant in the country was shut down and required to pass the NRA's new inspection regime before going back online. Including the Onagawa No. 2 unit, 16 reactors have now received the NRA's imprimatur, only nine of which have been restarted so far.
The reason behind this relatively low restart rate is the additional safety measures being required for individual reactors, or "backfitting" in the jargon of the nuclear regulator sector. These supplementary requirements are intended to reflect the very latest in know-how and technology, to make sure a plant's safety regime is as up-to-date as it is possible to be.
So, can the Onagawa plant operate safely even in the face of the most conceivable disaster scenarios? Could it deal with a volcanic eruption in the area? What about a terror attack and an airplane crashing directly into the reactor building? Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Sendai Nuclear Power Station in southwestern Japan's Kagoshima Prefecture was restarted without answering these questions, and has in the end been slated to be taken offline again next year.
According to a Mainichi Shimbun study, 11 major Japanese power producers have already spent a total of more than 5 trillion yen (about $45.7 billion) on nuclear safety measures since the outbreak of the Fukushima disaster. In 2013, 10 firms had spent less than 1 trillion. As costs balloon, it is becoming increasingly difficult, even absurd, for the government and power companies to maintain the argument that nuclear power is "cheap."
The more thoroughly safe the plants become, the more time and money is needed. We must ask, then: is it realistic to press on with the safety upgrade and reactor restart policy? We cannot dispel our suspicions that the answer is, in fact, "no."
Japan's energy future is premised to a great extent on the reduction of high-risk nuclear power. To dismiss consequential discussion on leaving atomic energy behind and instead rush on with reactor restarts is facile thinking, and it cannot be countenanced.

Pro-democracy parties scored a landslide victory in Nov. 24 district council elections in Hong Kong, securing over 80% of the seats following unrest over an extradition bill. Their victory marked a rejection of the hard-line stance taken by the Hong Kong government, which has thoroughly cracked down on protests while retracting the controversial bill, and dealt a major blow to mainland China that has backed Hong Kong's intensifying suppression.
Carrie Lam, chief executive of Hong Kong, needs to take the will of the people seriously and accept the demands that citizens have presented. It will be the best way to solve the ongoing turmoil that has lasted nearly half a year.
The main function of the 18 councils is to deliver the opinions of their respective districts on public services and projects to the Hong Kong government. Council members hold a certain amount of power over the selection of the chief executive and the region's legislative council elections.
The pro-Beijing camp, which had occupied roughly 70% of the council seats and had a majority in every district, was handed a devastating defeat in the latest elections, with pro-democracy parties winning a majority in most of the district councils.
The pro-democracy camp has laid out "five key demands," including launching an independent commission of inquiry into abuse of power by Hong Kong police and universal suffrage, and considered the election a de facto referendum.
The total number of votes cast doubled from the previous elections and the turnout reached 71%, proving that the will of the Hong Kong people who responded to the pro-democracy camp's appeals and set out to polling stations helped bring the drastic result. Although it was at one point feared that the elections might not be held due to intensifying clashes between police and student protesters, the students prioritized the polls and restrained from radical actions.
Now is the biggest opportunity for Lam to defuse the turmoil. She should listen to what people have to say and comply with their demands. If she disappoints the people, Hong Kong will be met again with mass protests.
The months-long unrest has highlighted the Hong Kong people's deep-rooted mistrust of the chief executive, who is believed to have been appointed to effectively reflect Beijing's intentions, as well as administrative bodies such as police that take orders from the leader.
In Hong Kong, the sense of dissatisfaction has been swirling especially among youths over income inequality and Beijing's increasing influence. Unless the people get to elect a chief executive or legislative council members, the feeling of mistrust will linger and political stability cannot be achieved.
Mainland China claims "conspiracy theories" such as foreign interference and a color revolution, but that only suggests that Beijing is failing to reflect on its mismanagement of policies regarding Hong Kong.
The majority of the pro-democracy camp does not reject the "one-country, two-system" principle of Hong Kong. By respecting the people's wishes, their trust of the Hong Kong government and Beijing can be restored. That is the only way forward for a stable Hong Kong.

The worst-case scenario has been averted. On Nov. 22, the South Korean government notified Japan that it would, for now, maintain the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), an intelligence-sharing pact among the two countries. The move followed the eleventh-hour negotiations between the two countries. Tokyo and Seoul have also agreed to hold talks on bilateral trade.
Concerns had been raised that if the Japan-South Korea GSOMIA arrangements were scrapped, it would intensify discord among the two countries and the United States, and eventually affect regional stability. We are relieved that the security cooperation framework will be sustained at least in the short term.
The South Korean government announced that it has retracted its notification to Tokyo that the country would terminate the pact, and that it will not file a petition with the World Trade Organization against Japan as long as talks on Japan's export controls against South Korea are ongoing. Reading between the lines, Seoul is saying that it will officially renew GSOMIA once negotiations have produced an easing of those export controls.
It remains unclear to what degree Japan and South Korea have reached a compromise, and it is evident that the agreement was largely intended to mollify Washington.
South Korea notified Japan in August this year that it would terminate bilateral intelligence sharing. However, Seoul later declared that it would reconsider the decision if Japan reviewed its intensified export control against South Korea. This is because its ally the United States voiced stiff opposition to ending the pact on the grounds that such a move would only benefit North Korea and China.
North Korea has been test-firing short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting targets in Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang also appears to be developing a new weapon capable of slipping through Japanese, U.S. and South Korean missile defense systems.
The outlook for U.S.-North Korea negotiations is growing murky. Pyongyang, which has set a unilateral end-of-year deadline for the talks with Washington, is intensifying its demands, including urging that U.S.-South Korea military drills be called off. The U.S. had already postponed the war games.
Japan, the United States and South Korea should strengthen their alliance to respond to the regional situation. Emotional conflicts that heighten local tensions must be averted.
Japan had found no clue to settling its dispute with South Korea, after Seoul reacted to the increased export controls far more harshly that Tokyo expected and the U.S. expressed concerns over the situation.
Meanwhile, exchange between the peoples of the two Asian nations has also diminished, as demonstrated by the sharp decline in South Korean visitors to Japan. Public sentiment among the peoples of both countries toward each other has also been worsening. It is premature to expect bilateral relations will improve immediately following Seoul's latest move.
South Korea has proposed various ways to settle a dispute over the wartime forced labor issue, which is the current source of strained of bilateral ties. Both countries share the view that the disposal of concerned Japanese companies' assets to pay compensation to former forced workers must be averted.
Both Japan and South Korea must take the opportunity of the latest agreement to move toward restoring mutual trust.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe testified at a House of Councillors plenary session on Nov. 20 over a controversial cherry blossom-viewing party the premier hosts every spring. Attention was focused on his explanation of how the function, which critics accuse the prime minister and other ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) legislators of exploiting for their personal gain, is organized.
There are two key questions. Firstly, why have the number of attendees and the cost of organizing the event increased year-by-year? Abe explained to the session that, "The event was organized in accordance with long-standing customary practices, but the criteria for selecting guests was obscure, and the number of attendees snowballed as a result."
Although the number of participants and the cost have swelled since Abe returned to power in late 2012, he attributed the increase to customary practices and vague criteria, and failed to provide a convincing explanation.
The government has disclosed that of some 15,000 attendees in this year's sakura party, about 1,000 were recommended by the prime minister, roughly 1,000 others were suggested by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and other high-ranking officials of the prime minister's office and approximately 6,000 more were nominated by those linked to the LDP.
The way the party is organized has deviated from the function's original purpose of inviting those who made major achievements and contributions in various fields. The event deserves criticism for being abused by LDP politicians to entertain their supporters. A quota for guests was given to LDP legislators who sought re-election in the July 2019 upper house race. The function was effectively used for their election campaigns.
In particular, the number of guests recommended by Prime Minister Abe's personal office is extraordinarily high. These include those suggested by his wife Akie. The prime minister admitted in the Nov. 20 session that he was involved in the selection of guests at the cherry blossom-viewing party, saying, "I occasionally expressed my opinions on who should be recommended to attend when my personal office consulted with me."
He thus corrected his earlier explanation that he was never involved in the guest selection process. His remarks suggest that it is only natural for him to give preferential treatment to supporters in his home constituency. The prime minister should take it seriously as someone in power that his actions have given rise to suspicions that he mixed his public and private affairs.
The other question is how the dinner party, which was held at a luxurious hotel in Tokyo for Abe supporters on the eve of the sakura party, was managed. While admitting that the pre-party event was organized by his supporters' association, he denied that the group collected or paid any money for the function. The prime minister should provide a more detailed explanation if he meant that the organizer and those responsible for its accounting were separate.
Some 850 people paid 5,000 yen each as a participation fee for the pre-party this year, totaling over 4 million yen. The actual sum should be clarified.
The refusal of Abe's office to show bills it had received from the hotel that hosted the pre-party event has aroused suspicions that the accounting was managed in an inappropriate manner.
The ruling camp has refused to open intensive deliberations on the matter at budget committees at both chambers of the Diet while the prime minister has stated that he will fulfill his accountability if demanded by the legislature.
Since Abe is behind all these suspicions about the sakura party and the hotel gathering, the matter cannot be settled unless the prime minister provides an explanation to the budget panels.

The Japan-South Korea General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) is feared to expire this weekend. The expiration of the bilateral pact could hurt security cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in earlier suggested to U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper that sharing military information with Japan, which imposed export controls on South Korea on the basis that Tokyo did not trust Seoul over security issues, was "difficult," emphasizing that Japan is at fault for the anticipated expiration of GSOMIA.
According to various opinion polls conducted in South Korea, those who support their government's decision to scrap the bilateral accord outnumber those who oppose it. The dominant view among South Koreans is that the export restrictions imposed by Japan were "illegitimate" and that it is only natural for their government to take countermeasures against Tokyo's action.
Such a view is at odds with Japan's position that export controls and GSOMIA are separate issues. The Moon administration appears to believe that the South Korean people will understand if Seoul scraps the security pact with Tokyo.
However, the expiration of the bilateral agreement will deal a major blow to both countries.
Both Tokyo and Washington have strongly demanded that Seoul maintains the pact. GSOMIA not only allows smooth cooperation between military authorities, it is also a framework that displays -- on the domestic and global stages -- Japan, U.S. and South Korea uniting together to counter North Korea.
The Moon administration seeks to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula through easing tensions between the South and North and has adopted policies accordingly. Pyongyang, however, has not taken any concrete actions toward denuclearization, and Seoul's conciliatory attitude has not yet paid off.
If South Korea goes ahead and scraps the bilateral accord despite these circumstances, it will send a message to the North that Tokyo, Washington and Seoul are walking out of step. It could also work in favor of China, which seeks to weaken the tri-party cooperation.
South Korea had been wary of forming a security partnership with Japan and it took several years before Seoul signed the agreement. Once expired, it will not be easy for the two neighboring countries to seal the pact again.
South Korean experts including those on foreign policy as well as security are calling for the withdrawal of Seoul's decision, in order to prevent the expiration of GSOMIA from negatively affecting the South Korea-U.S. alliance. Continuous efforts should be made toward keeping the agreement intact until the very end.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has emphasized that intelligence that can be acquired from South Korea through GSOMIA is only "supplementary." That being said, information from the neighboring country should be welcomed in times Japan needs to quickly counter North Korea's provocative actions and for in-depth analysis of Pyongyang.
A mountain of issues lies between Tokyo and Seoul, including Japan's compensation for wartime labor exploitation. The only path toward resolving these issues is continuous dialogue between the two neighbors.