TOKYO, Sept. 28, 2024—Voters are expressing disbelief, anger and frustration at Motohiko Saito, 46, the governor of Hyogo prefecture who announced that he will not resign after the prefecture assembly unanimously moved a no confidence motion against him, and instead seek reelection. Prefecture assembly members and voters also were puzzled as to why Saito had been maintaining his quiet, Noh-mask-like composure during the past few months of his scandal.
Saito is being criticized for power harassment and graft acceptance, and his acts led to the death of two senior prefecture officials.
I’ve been wondering why this guy looks so clean and statue-like and looking unwavering to loud criticisms. I now know the reason: His confidence that he’s an elite bureaucrat who prides himself as a much-needed doyen of public service administration for the prefecture’s citizens.
Contemporary Japanese bureaucrats — while some trace their roots to samurai clans — have been taught in post-WWII Japan to shed the sense of shame and embarrassment, the ethos that samurai so loftily respected (I think, by the way, it’s precisely what Clint Eastwood wanted to show to movie viewers in his ‘Letter from Iwojima’ epic).
So it must have been the reason – which was just for the sake of declaring his reelection bid – why he said at a Sept. 26 news conference that he had decided to run ‘at the urging of a junior high school student’ apparently to cover up his arrogance. In fact, he said ‘resignation was not my option… It fringes on my moral responsibility’ totally ignoring the fact that literally the entire prefecture populace was demanding his resignation. Saito is without a sense of shame and embarrassment.
Saito is a University of Tokyo School of Economics graduate. He joined the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications as a so-called ‘career’ officer, hop-skipped a number of municipalities, including Fukushima Prefecture for the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdown restoration support, before returning as a senior officer of the ministry’s tax bureau. He then went to the Osaka Prefecture office and after 3 years, while giving up returning to the ministry, run for the Hyogo gubernatorial race and was elected.
His career track underscores that he joined the ministry as a career officer but had lost the race to climb the bureaucracy promotion ladder and probably did not have posts in a governmental corporation or the private sector that was struggling for survival in the COVID-19 pandemic economic stagnation.
Saito now must be finding himself being cornered and no option other than to seek reelection because the private sector of course won’t hire him nor municipalities for a man who served as a governor.
The man has no place to go.
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