One week after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet with an eye to the future, the past is coming back to haunt him: Revelations of controversial past statements and actions by his newly appointed ministers are drawing criticism abroad.
In a photo that appeared online Wednesday, new Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi is pictured with other politicians in a full-color ad in the magazine Tokyo Seikei Tsushin endorsing a 1994 book titled "Hitler's Election Strategy." Takaichi had only the year before been elected to the Diet as an independent.
A spokesman for Takaichi's office confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that the photo was of her, but said she had no recollection of the book or of promoting it. The spokesman added that neither does she remember meeting the book's author, Yoshio Ogai, then a public relations official with the Tokyo chapter of the Liberal Democratic Party.