Photo/Illutration Reconstruction minister Kenya Akiba listens to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida answering questions at the Lower House Budget Committee on Nov. 29. (Takeshi Iwashita)

“Kagemusha Sodo” (Brouhaha over body doubles), a kabuki playscript by contemporary author Yasutaka Tsutsui (1934-), opens with a funny list of characters.

It says farmer Takuan “turns out to be Hojo Tokimasa,” a warlord (1138-1215), but “he turns out to be Takuan after all.” His son-in-law Jusaku “turns out to be Sasaki Shiro-Zaemon Takatsuna,” a leading warrior (?-1214). Jusaku’s son Koshiro “turns out to be Takatsuna’s son by blood.”

The way they are presented is already a sign, even as the story has yet to unfold, that the play will end up as a slapstick comedy.

Reconstruction minister Kenya Akiba was expected to be replaced today, at the earliest.

Akiba was questioned during the extraordinary Diet session, which closed earlier this month, over a shady way he used his political funds and over his ties with the Unification Church.

Akiba’s second son, who wore a sash across his chest bearing the name of his father on the streets during the campaign for the Lower House election last year, earned the moniker of “body double.”

The father could thus be presented as the “reconstruction minister, who turns out to be his son, who turns out to be himself after all, but who then turns out to be the former reconstruction minister after being fired.”

The slapstick goings-on in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during the past two months are no laughing matter, however.

A pattern has been set: A scandal surfaces about a Cabinet member, he faces rising criticism, a decision is made to fire him, and he submits a pro-forma resignation. Akiba was to be the fourth to leave the Cabinet that way.

Mio Sugita, parliamentary vice minister for internal affairs and communications, has made so many discriminatory remarks about women and sexual minorities that I am hard-pressed to understand why Kishida appointed her in the first place and continued to defend her.

The responsibility lies with Kishida, who appointed them all.

His signature “ability to listen” is effective only when he is unwavering and strong enough to be able to objectively look at himself.

He is probably in this mess because he has picked members of his Cabinet only on the basis of how many times they were elected to the Diet and after taking into account the balance of power between intraparty factions.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca 4 B.C.-A.D. 65), a philosopher of Ancient Rome, discussed the qualities required for a political leader.

“Our duty will be, first, to examine our own selves, then, the matters that we shall undertake, and lastly, those for whose sake or in whose company we are undertaking them,” he wrote in his work “On the Tranquility of the Mind.”

The brouhaha over body doubles that I cited in the opening paragraph reaches its climax when nobody can tell who are the real warriors and who are their body doubles.

Things are much less complicated now. All Kishida should do, in my humble view, is to choose the right person for the right job.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 27

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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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