Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's instruction to arrange a meeting between the emperor and Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping against protocol has stirred criticism even from his Cabinet and ruling coalition parties.
On a TV Asahi Corp. program broadcast Sunday, Senior Vice Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Shu Watanabe criticized the arrangement of the meeting, which China requested on Nov. 26 and Japan has granted against a customary rule that such a meeting should be requested at least a month before.
"If we can still call it off now, we should," said Watanabe, adding that countries should always be treated equally regardless of their size, economic power or political power.
Xi, widely seen as the front-runner to succeed President Hu Jintao, is scheduled to meet with Emperor Akihito on Tuesday during his three-day visit to Japan from Monday. The government has said the special audience with the 76-year-old emperor was arranged in light of the importance of bilateral relations.
"There are many people, even within the Democratic Party of Japan, who regard it as a poor decision," Watanabe said, emphasizing that the meeting should kept to a one-time exception if it cannot be canceled.
Members of the two other parties in the ruling coalition — the Social Democratic Party and the People's New Party — also spoke out against the hastily arranged meeting.
"It shouldn't be granted even as an exception," SDP lawmaker Tomoko Abe said on the same program, while PNP lawmaker Akiko Kamei said she shared the Imperial Household Agency's concern over political manipulation of the throne.
Nobutaka Machimura, a former chief Cabinet secretary and a member of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, also said when he was asked to arrange a similar meeting by an ambassador he knew, he turned the request down "according to the rules."