Politics in Bars with Girls

Two lawmakers affiliated with Japan Innovation Party (JIP) have spent political fund for payment to cabaret club, where young girls serve drinks and have conversation with customers. It is not to be criticized that an adult individual goes to a club with women’s service with payment from his or her pocket money. However, JIP lawmakers spent political funds, which were made of tax payers’ money. This is what the politics of coalition partner of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is about.

Takemitsu Okushita is a member of House of Representatives with two terms, elected from Osaka 7th single-seat district. An organization for controlling political funds topped by him has paid 36,300 yen for a cabaret club in Akasaka, Tokyo, and 57,200 yen for a “lounge”, another type of bar with service of girls, in Osaka between March and April, 2023. The organization also spent 33,000 to a pub with stage show in Roppongi, Tokyo, in October, 2023.

 

Those spendings were revealed with disclosure of political funds report of Okishita. They were recorded in a category of “entertainment expenses.” He visited those bars and clubs with someone in business sectors and Okushita paid for the payment for his share. “He went there with introduction of business people. Okushita always pays his payment for himself when he is with business people and the spendings was appropriately reported,” said the office of Okushita.

 

Another JIP lawmaker, Kenta Aoshima, one-term member of the House of Councillors elected from proportional district, also spent his political fund for entertainment. His political funds control organization spent 117,400 yen for cabaret club and girls’ bar between January and November 2024. The organization also disbursed 14,600 yen to 41,140 yen to three pubs in Kochi city in the same period of the year. Those payments were recorded as “organizational activities spendings.” Aoshima explained that the spendings were falsely paid from political funds.

 

Those spendings indicated JIP’s recognition of politics, in which drinking beer, whiskey or sake, or singing loud in karaoke, with woman hostesses is a kind of political activities and the tax payers accordingly have to pay for that. “Going to a club with girls’ service is not appropriate, but there would be various locations (circumstances). I cannot say that it is necessarily be inappropriate,” said JIP Secretary General, Fumitake Fujita.

 

Later, it was found that at least five prefectural branches of the LDP, in Mie, Osaka, Yamaguchi, Nagasaki and Kagoshima, have spent 1.11 million yen to bars with hostesses in 2023. Those prefectural organizations had received grants for political parties. It was also reported that an organization of Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, Ken-ichiro Ueno, had paid for bars. “Correctness of spendings of political funds is something what voters would decide,” said Takaichi in her discussion at the Diet. The prime minister of Japan did not decide whether the spendings of political funds are correct or not.

 

The LDP faced harsh criticisms on their management of political funds which were distributed to lawmakers by factions. JIP had been one of the critics on the lack of transparency before joining the coalition with the LDP. Now, those two parties became to be known as doubted as using political funds for their own entertainment.

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