Former health minister Shigeyuki Goto was on Tuesday tapped as economic revitalization minister to replace Daishiro Yamagiwa, who stepped down from the post the day before over his ties with the controversial Unification Church.

But whether the latest move will help Prime Minister Fumio Kishida put an end to mounting criticism over his handling of issues related to the Unification Church and focus instead on pressing matters such as rising prices remains to be seen.

Goto, a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat who has a masters degree in economics from Brown University in Rhode Island, will immediately be busy with an economic stimulus package to be compiled by the end of this week, as well as an extra budget to finance it.

“He can hit the ground running,” Kishida told reporters after meeting with Goto on Tuesday morning. “His abundant political experience, skill at explaining (policies) and passion for economic and social reform are the three reasons why I’ve appointed him.”

Asked whether Goto has had ties with the Unification Church, the prime minister said he expects all ministers to explain past relationships with the religious group and sever any ties. Goto says he has had no connections with the Unification Church.

Goto, 66, was health minister until August, when he lost the post in a Cabinet reshuffle. When Kishida was the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s policy chief from 2017 to 2020, Goto worked as his deputy.

“It is a sudden replacement,” Goto said. “Important topics are piling up, so I will tackle them as soon as possible, at top speed.”

In addition to being responsible for coronavirus measures and startup policies, Goto is also tasked with hammering out the details of Kishida’s “new capitalism” agenda.

With Goto as the new minister, Kishida hopes to stifle growing criticism over the scandal involving the Unification Church, which is formally called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, with this having been a key factor behind his declining support rate.

In a Jiji poll conducted earlier this month, Kishida’s support rate hit the lowest level since he took office a year ago, at 27.4%. The figure was worse than the low seen for his predecessor Yoshihide Suga in his last days in office in August 2021, when it stood at 29%.

Masato Kamikubo, a political science professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, said Yamagiwa’s resignation is unlikely to boost support for Kishida because of the public’s wider distrust of the LDP and how the party has handled its ties with the Unification Church.

“In short, his resignation came too late,” Kamikubo said, adding that the problem is that ministers and the LDP have not been forthcoming over their relations with the religious group.

“Unless they reveal the problems themselves, apologize and demonstrate that they are willing to solve the problems, (media outlets) will continue to chase one scandal after another.”

In the case of Yamagiwa, he admitted to having interacted with the Unification Church on seven occasions between 2011 and 2019, but only after he was asked by reporters.

After initially only saying he attended a 2018 meeting hosted by the group, Yamagiwa later admitted that he met with Hak Ja Han Moon — widow of the Unification Church’s founder, Sun Myung Moon — during the meeting.

To make matters worse, it came to light that he took a group photo with Han Moon in 2019 in Aichi Prefecture. When Yamagiwa was confronted by reporters on Friday, he said that he did not remember the meeting and that “there was no document at his office” to confirm it.

Then on Monday evening, news broke that Yamagiwa was resigning from his post, with the minister tendering his resignation to Kishida soon after. As the minister in charge of the economic stimulus package due to come out later this month, Yamagiwa said he wanted to resign before it was compiled.

Questions have been raised over why Kishida didn’t replace Yamagiwa earlier.

One LDP executive reportedly said that the prime minister was afraid of a domino effect. If Yamagiwa were to be replaced over his past ties with the religious group, other ministers and party executives could face the same fate, which would be disastrous for Kishida.

Lower House Speaker Hiroyuki Hosoda — who is technically nonpartisan due to his position, but who was a long-standing LDP lawmaker — has admitted that he participated in four events hosted by the church or affiliated groups and received support during election campaigning.

In September, the LDP revealed in a survey that 180 lawmakers have had links to the Unification Church amid mounting calls for the party to investigate its members’ ties.

Seiji Osaka, deputy chief of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, criticized Kishida on Tuesday for not sacking Yamagiwa earlier.

“The latest chaos was caused by Kishida, who couldn’t decide (early on) to replace Yamagiwa,” Osaka said during a parliamentary session.

Osaka urged the LDP to conduct a thorough investigation into its ties with the Unification Church given that some of its members signed a policy accord with the group in exchange for receiving election campaign support.

The LDP’s Hiroaki Saito admitted last week that he signed an "endorsement confirmation" document for the 2021 Lower House election. The religious group’s volunteers made telephone calls during the election to drum up support for Saito.

Information from Kyodo added