On May 22, the Yomiuri Shimbun published a curious article about Kihei Maekawa, a former administrative vice education minister who has said that he is willing to testify under oath about the Kake Gakuen scandal dogging Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The Yomiuri Shimbun published its "expose" of Maekawa five days after the former bureaucrat told the Asahi Shimbun about the existence of eight documents that suggest Abe pressured the government to approve the opening of a veterinary medicine department at a university run by Kake Educational Institute, a school operator chaired by Abe's friend Kotaro Kake.
The story in the Yomiuri Shimbun alleged that Maekawa frequented a shady dating bar in the Kabukicho district in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward for a few years until around the end of last year. The article implied that many of the women who come to the bar often invite the men out and offer sex for money.