The resignation of the Cabinet minister in charge of reconstruction from the March 2011 disasters — over inappropriate remarks about the calamities — appears to be yet another sign of the loosening discipline among members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet at a time when it basks in steady popular support and the opposition remains weak. Reconstruction minister Masahiro Imamura's second gaffe over similar topics in just a few weeks raises doubts over his personal qualifications as a lawmaker, which in turn raises questions about Abe's decision to tap him for the Cabinet position as well as his administration's commitment to the job of rebuilding the areas hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Imamura, a 70-year-old veteran Lower House member of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, came under sharp criticism early this month for stating that people in Fukushima who had voluntarily evacuated from their homes around Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 plant following the three reactor meltdowns at the plant should bear "self-responsibility for their decision" to stay away. He made the remark in response to questions in a news conference about the cutoff of public housing aid for those evacuees at the end of March and the government's responsibility for their plight.
On Tuesday — with the repercussions from his earlier remark still in the air — Imamura said at an evening party of his LDP faction that it was "rather good" that the 2011 tsunami-quake disaster hit the Tohoku region and "not somewhere near the Tokyo area," because it would have caused an "enormous amount of (financial) damage" to the country. Abe, who later attended the same party, immediately offered an apology himself, stating that "there has just been an extremely inappropriate remark that hurts the sentiments of people in Tohoku." It is believed that Imamura, who tendered his resignation Wednesday morning, was effectively sacked by the administration.