Photo/Illutration Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga prepares to begin his Sept. 11 news conference. (Kotaro Ebara)

Yoshihide Suga, likely the next prime minister, was forced to backtrack Sept. 11 on remarks he made concerning raising the consumption tax rate beyond the current 10 percent. 

Suga, who as chief Cabinet secretary is the government's most senior spokesman, was appearing on a TV program Sept. 10 with two other candidates in the race to select a new president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party: Fumio Kishida, the party policy chief, and Shigeru Ishiba, a former secretary-general and defense minister.

The three were asked to respond either “yes,” “no” or “not sure” to various policy questions.

One question asked was, “Will there be a need in the future to raise the consumption tax rate above 10 percent?”

Suga, the hot favorite to replace Abe, was the only one who said yes. The other two candidates were uncertain.

Suga explained that Japan, plagued by declining birthrates and the graying of the population, cannot avoid a decline in population in the future.

“When thinking about the future, a time will come when we will have to ask the public to go along with a hike in the consumption tax rate after thoroughly reforming the administrative branch,” he said.

Suga was asked about his response at his daily news conference on Sept. 11 and he said his remark was made about a point in time in the future.

“Prime Minister Shinzo Abe once said that there would be no need to raise the tax rate in the next 10 years,” Suga said. “I hold the same thinking.”

But Suga’s remark was already reverberating among the ruling coalition and opposition parties.

One veteran LDP lawmaker who supports Suga in the presidential race to be decided Sept. 14 said about his apology: “That means the tax rate cannot be touched for 10 years and he himself has narrowed the policy options available to him. The opposition will attack him for making a remark that was not clearly thought out.”

A former Cabinet minister said, “I am concerned that Suga has not yet made up his own mind about the issue.”

Opposition lawmakers made clear they would use the remark as a key point in the next Lower House election.

Jun Azumi, the chairman of the Diet Affairs Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, said Sept. 11: “The stance of the opposition parties is to lower the consumption tax rate for the time being. This will become a major issue of the next Lower House election.”

Tomoko Tamura, policy chair of the Japanese Communist Party, agreed and said, “During the COVID-19 crisis, there is a need to reduce the consumption tax rate to 5 percent as an emergency measure.”

(This article was written by Ryutaro Abe and Sachiko Miwa.)

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