Gov’t fails to show grounds for Kake school plan approval

December 8, 2017

Tokyo- The Japanese government on Thursday failed to show specific grounds for giving approval for Kake Educational Institution's controversial plan to open a veterinary medicine faculty in a national strategic special zone.

The government has four conditions for approving such a school, including that it must provide education that existing universities find difficult to offer.

Kake's plan was approved at a meeting "without objection," including in respect of the four conditions, said Regional Revitalization Minister Hiroshi Kajiyama, in charge of special zone issues.

But Kajiyama, who spoke at a joint meeting of the House of Councillors education and cabinet committees, failed to give specific reasons for the approval of the plan, at the center of a favoritism scandal involving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Tomoko Tamura, a Japanese Communist Party lawmaker, asked why the government judged that it would be difficult for existing colleges to offer education like the one planned by Kake, headed by a friend of Abe.

Such education would need a "thorough review of curricula and a significant change in teaching staff, and it was viewed as generally difficult to do so for existing organizations," education minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said.

Hayashi denied the involvement of Abe or anyone around him and maintained that the approval was given through appropriate procedures.

Yuko Mori of the opposition Liberal Party claimed that Kake made a false explanation about a plan to build a biosafety level 3 facility in the special zone that can handle avian influenza virus and other dangerous pathogens.

The health ministry received no detailed explanation on the plan at a meeting with the Kake side in summer this year, even though application documents hold that the group explained an outline of the plan to the ministry, a senior ministry official said.

Kake mentioned the plan to the ministry, Hayashi said, adding that the government does not think Kake made a false claim in the documents. Jiji Press