やな大臣いなす国交省 中間選挙とアメリカのだるさ 2題でお届けします #191

The Leaked Audio — What Is the Problem?

Audio from a May gathering of local LDP figures in Tochigi's 3rd district, where Agriculture Minister Yanagi Kazuo was speaking to party insiders, was published by Shūkan Bunshun and the Shimotsuke Shimbun. Yanagi won his seat this election cycle via proportional-representation revival after losing the district race outright. In the recording he acknowledges that he cut the FY2026 road budget for Nasugawa-Yayama City by 64% year-on-year — reducing it to roughly one-third — and Nakagawa Town's by 54%, because the mayors of those municipalities had backed an independent rival, Watanabe, during a split-conservative contest.

Yanagi's stated reasoning was that the mayors had "taken the action of saying a Liberal Democratic Party Diet member is unnecessary" and that "many residents made that kind of judgment." He also noted that he would not make these remarks before ordinary members of the public because they could be interpreted in various ways, suggesting he understood the audience was a closed leadership circle. He added that he had not touched budgets directly tied to people's lives, such as river-management funds.

The Decisive Difference from Traditional Pork-Barrel Politics

Funakoshi prefaced his analysis by acknowledging that Diet members seeking budget access for their regions is not itself wrong. Since Tanaka Kakuei, road budgets have sat at the core of LDP politics — a competitive scramble for resources. Politicians such as Nikai Toshihiro openly declared pulling roads to their hometowns to be their mission. Even after the Koizumi government slashed public works spending from around ¥10 trillion and the Democratic Party's "from concrete to people" policy pushed it further down to around ¥4 trillion, the second Abe government's national resilience agenda locked the initial budget back at roughly ¥6 trillion, and the competition for shares within that envelope continued.

What struck Funakoshi as genuinely new was that Yanagi's logic ran in the opposite direction: not "I will increase your allocation" but "I will cut yours." More troubling still, the cuts fell on municipalities within his own constituency, meaning residents who voted for him were inevitably among those penalized. Funakoshi contrasted this with figures like Nikai, who pursued their version of justice openly and on behalf of the whole district. He argued that having two Diet members working together to improve a region would be the natural expectation, and that retaliating against parts of one's own constituency represents a categorically different kind of misconduct.

MLIT's Response — Two Hours on Camera

On the evening of October 6, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism held an approximately two-hour online press conference. According to Funakoshi's account, the ministry's central position was that while it acknowledged receiving requests and inquiries from the minister regarding cuts, it denied that those contacts had actually controlled the final budget distribution. Funakoshi described the Roads Bureau as a historically battle-hardened office that has spent decades navigating political pressure, adding that it is "not such a soft place" — meaning it has the institutional backbone to resist. He noted that the bureau's legacy includes figures such as former director-general Satō Nobuaki, nicknamed the "God of Roads," who served as bureau chief in the early 2000s and later spent three terms as an LDP upper-house senator from Niigata — illustrating the long and complex relationship between the ministry and the political world. The awkward structural reality is that the minister at the center of the scandal sits at Agriculture, not MLIT, yet it is MLIT that has borne the collateral damage and must now publicly demonstrate its independence.

How Will the Takaichi Government Handle This?

By the time of recording on October 7, Bunshun had already published a second story alleging that Yanagi had organized bus transportation for supporters during the campaign — conduct that could constitute vote-buying under the Public Offices Election Law. Funakoshi speculated that audio leaks of this nature do not emerge without someone inside nursing a serious grievance.

Prime Minister Takaichi (高市) has not reshuffled a single cabinet member over a scandal in the year since her government launched last October. Funakoshi observed that having never yet made a hard call of that kind, she may believe she can survive this one too. At the same time, he noted the structural problem: as long as Yanagi remains Agriculture Minister, MLIT continues to absorb the fallout. Funakoshi also referenced footage of Takaichi calling Yanagi "my Yana-chan" on the campaign trail, suggesting that the question of her appointment responsibility could escalate into a broader political crisis.

Guest: Mochizuki Hirotsugu

The episode's guest is former Asahi Shimbun Washington bureau chief Mochizuki Hirotsugu — who explained the unusual characters in his given name himself during the broadcast. He joined the paper in 1993, making him a senior to both hosts Kanda and Funakoshi. His foreign postings include Nairobi (2004–2007), a first Washington stint (2009–2013, covering the Obama administration), and a second term as Washington bureau chief from 2021 to 2025 during the Biden administration — eight and a half years in the United States in total. In his bureau-chief role he also took on diplomatic functions, briefing a cross-party delegation of female Japanese lawmakers — including Noda Seiko and Tsujimoto Kiyomi — on the state of U.S. politics. He admitted to feeling nervous during the recording, saying he could picture the faces of the people who would be listening, though Funakoshi predicted he would loosen up by the end.