Photo/Illutration Telecommunications minister Ryota Takeda, left, stares at Shinya Suzuki, the ministry’s director-general of the radio department, as he responds to a question during a session of the Lower House Committee on Internal Affairs and Communications on March 18. (Kotaro Ebara)

Telecommunications minister Ryota Takeda said he may have told a ministry official to reply that he had “no recollection” to questions in the Diet seeking to get to the bottom of a scandal.

But the minister insists he was not instructing the official on what to say in his response.

During a March 16 Lower House Budget Committee session, Shinya Suzuki, the ministry’s director-general of the radio department, answered a question from a lawmaker about Tohokushinsha Film Corp. violating foreign ownership rules in the company. 

The company had said it reported the violation to Suzuki, but the ministry has denied knowing it was aware of the breach. 

When Suzuki stood up from his seat and walked toward a podium in the Diet, he passed in front of Takeda.

Then a voice was heard, saying, “Say, ‘I have no recollection.’”

“I have no recollection of receiving such a report,” Suzuki then said at the podium.

Ikuo Yamahana, a lawmaker of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, demanded on March 18 that Takeda explain the exchange between him and Suzuki.  

Takeda said he saw a video of the interaction.

“The words may have come out of my mouth,” Takeda said at a session of the Lower House Committee on Internal Affairs and Communications.

But, he added, “I did not mean to instruct him on how to answer.”

Suzuki said that he was “so extremely nervous that I did not hear the voices around me.”

Takeda reiterated during an Upper House Budget Committee session on March 19 that it “came out of my mouth unconsciously” and was not an order.

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