Japan Abe Admits 19 Meetings with School Group Leader Kake

May 24, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Wednesday that he has met with Kotaro Kake, head of Kake Educational Institution, 19 times since his second administration started in December 2012.

He gave the figure in a reply to Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan member Akira Nagatsuma at a meeting of the Health, Labor and Welfare Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, the country's parliament.

Abe reiterated that he did not meet with Kake, an old friend, on Feb. 25, 2015. A document Ehime Prefecture submitted to the Diet on Monday says that the two met and talked about the Kake group's veterinary school plan that day.

Kake has appeared in daily reports on the prime minister's moves by media outlets 14 times since December 2012. Aside from the 14 occasions, photographs and other records confirmed they had met five other times, Abe said.

He explained that daily reports provided by the media do not necessarily name all participants to meetings.

Regarding the five meetings, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga declined to comment because they were not related to Abe's official duties.

Kake Educational Institution is at the center of a cronyism scandal. It opened a university veterinary medicine faculty in a national strategic special deregulation zone in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, western Japan, last month, launching the country's first such department in more than 50 years.

Abe claims that he learned about the Kake group's veterinary school plan for the first time on Jan. 20, 2017. Jiji Press