Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a Lower House Budget Committee session on Feb. 4 (Takeshi Iwashita)

Actor Sakae Takita, who played Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) in the Japan Broadcasting Corp.'s (NHK) year-long "taiga" historical TV drama series in 1983, once explained that after a full year of portraying the first shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate and de-facto military dictator, he began to feel as if he himself had achieved that exalted status.

That was why he was quite irked when he was invited, right after completing his year-long NHK stint, to audition for a musical.

Recalling that time on a radio talk show, Takita said he felt deeply insulted to be treated as "just another actor." Utterly preposterous as it was, he felt like shooting back, "Who do you think I am? I am the shogun."

If playing the great Ieyasu for just one year could have that sort of effect on Takita, it is not difficult to imagine how being the prime minister of Japan for seven years in real life might have affected Shinzo Abe.

During a Diet session on Feb. 17 concerning the scandal-ridden annual cherry blossom viewing events hosted by the prime minister, an opposition lawmaker confronted Abe with a document obtained from a Tokyo hotel, asserting that it does not issue receipts to anonymous clients as a rule.

The hotel's claim contradicted what Abe had told the Diet before, but Abe remained unfazed.

Apparently, his defense is that the hotel treats his office differently from anyone else.

On the premise that he is accorded special treatment at all times, Abe breezed through further Q&A with no qualms whatsoever, proving himself to possess "shogun-level nerves." 

And he most likely never doubted for a moment that he was free to heckle all he wanted in the Diet. So, when he suddenly promised to stop heckling and start acting in a manner befitting his status as the prime minister, I cringed at his shamelessness.

Ieyasu ordered the populace to worship him as their god. But even he declared in his last will and testament something to the effect that, "Political power does not rest with the ruler alone. It exists for the benefit of all people."

This maxim states something that is all too obvious. But it cannot be stressed enough to our current political leader whose propensity toward self-righteousness is undeniable.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 18

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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