Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks with reporters on Nov. 20 at his official residence. (Takeshi Iwashita)

Opposition lawmakers heightened their accusations of a cover-up after learning that the guest list for a cherry blossom viewing event hosted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shredded on the day the documents were requested.

Toru Miyamoto, a Lower House member from the Japanese Communist Party, said he asked for the documents on May 9, about a month after Abe hosted the sakura-viewing party at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden in central Tokyo on April 13.

Miyamoto said he wanted information about the number of participants attending the annual event between 2008 and 2019, the amount paid from the budget for the parties, as well as the reason for the increase in participants over that period. He said he planned to use that information to ask questions about the event during the Diet session on May 13.

On Nov. 20, when pressed for an explanation on why Miyamoto did not receive the documents, government officials at the Lower House Cabinet Committee said the roster of participants for the April 13 event was shredded on May 9.

Miyamoto said it could not be a pure coincidence that the guest list was shredded on the same day he submitted the request.

“Wasn’t the document destroyed so officials could say in the Diet that they did not know the details?” Miyamoto asked in the committee on Nov. 20.

Yukihiro Otsuka, director-general of the minister’s secretariat at the Cabinet Office, denied a cover-up and instead cited demand for the use of certain office equipment.

“There was a considerable volume of documents to dispose of, so we decided before the series of national holidays to use a larger shredder rather than the usual one in our office,” Otsuka said. “But other departments also wanted to use that same large shredder, so after coordinating the schedule, our turn came after the end of the holidays.”

The Golden Week of national holidays ran from April 29 until May 6.

Otsuka stressed that there was no connection between the shredding and Miyamoto’s request, adding that digital data was similarly deleted around the same time the papers were destroyed.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga was also asked about the document disposal at the same committee session.

He only said that he received a report after the fact that the document had been shredded.

The original purpose of the annual cherry blossom viewing events was to honor individuals for outstanding achievements in their fields. But opposition parties say Abe has used the publicly funded parties to reward supporters of the Liberal Democratic Party and bolster the campaigns of party lawmakers seeking re-election.

“The document was disposed of to hide evidence that participants to the cherry blossom viewing event kept increasing and that public funds were used,” Miyamoto said. “This represents a crisis of democracy and can never be allowed.”

Other opposition parties plan to further question the government about the destruction of documents.

Opposition lawmakers say the shredding of the party-related document is reminiscent of the Abe administration’s handling of information related to the dubious sale of state-owned land to Moritomo Gakuen, an educational institution that once had close ties with Abe’s wife, Akie.

When the scandal arose in 2017 over the low price paid for the land in Osaka Prefecture, Abe said he would resign as prime minister and a Diet member if either he or his wife were found to be involved in any wrongdoing over the sale.

A report compiled by the Finance Ministry concluded that the disposing and rewriting of documents related to Moritomo Gakuen began after Abe made that pledge in February 2017.

Nobuhisa Sagawa, then director-general of the Finance Ministry’s Financial Bureau, said in 2017 in the Diet that no documents about the sale remained. But it later turned out that some papers still existed.

The Financial Bureau oversees the sale of state assets.