{"id":21336,"date":"2026-05-13T03:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T03:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/21336\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T03:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T03:06:15","slug":"japans-takaichi-backs-aide-over-smear-claims-against-ldp-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/21336\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s Takaichi backs aide over smear claims against LDP rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan<\/a>\u2019s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi<\/a> appears to have sidestepped a potentially embarrassing political landmine by publicly backing a close aide accused in media reports of running a smear campaign against her rivals, while stopping short of flatly denying his possible role.The allegations, first reported in weekly tabloid news magazine Shukan Bunshun, claim that members of her own camp produced videos critical of rival candidates during last year\u2019s Liberal Democratic Party<\/a> leadership race, including Shinjiro Koizumi<\/a>, whom Takaichi subsequently appointed as defence minister.<\/p>\n

Whoever won the LDP leadership contest was all but guaranteed to become Japan\u2019s next prime minister, raising the stakes of any alleged dirty tricks operation well beyond routine internal party mudslinging.<\/p>\n

Takaichi was quizzed by opposition politicians in the Diet on Monday about the Shukan Bunshun reports, which emerged in late April.<\/p>\n

\"Japan\u2019sJapan\u2019s Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said he was aware of \u201cfalse posts\u201d about him that were circulated during the LDP leadership race. Photo: AFP<\/p>\n

The video clips at the heart of the smear campaign, which were posted to social media, described Koizumi as \u201cincapable\u201d and \u201ca puppet of hereditary politics\u201d, drawing attention to his use of cue cards in a debate as evidence of incompetence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi appears to have sidestepped a potentially embarrassing political landmine by publicly backing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2005,234,8,16908,2240,2244,33,358,2311,8686,16906,16907,2242,52,16905,16909],"class_list":["post-21336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-centrist-reform-alliance","tag-diet","tag-japan","tag-junichiro","tag-liberal-democratic-party","tag-michael-cucek","tag-nihon","tag-sanae-takaichi","tag-shinjiro-koizumi","tag-shukan-bunshun","tag-smear-campaign","tag-takeshi-kinoshita","tag-temple-university","tag-tokyo","tag-yoshimasa-hayashi","tag-yukio-edano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}