Whatever administration is in power should be able to disclose certain details of how the Cabinet Secretariat's discretionary funds have been used after a certain time has passed, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said Wednesday, proposing a level of transparency that has so far been elusive.
But Fujimura added that it would be "inappropriate" for the Cabinet Secretariat itself to identify the recipients of such payments or why the outlays were made because such information, as in other countries, is "highly confidential."
When the Democratic Party of Japan came to power in 2009, ousting the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the first DPJ prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, pledged to disclose how the funds were used, instead of being secretive like his LDP predecessors. But in the end he didn't.