Agriculture minister Shin Takebe is facing fresh scrutiny after about ¥850,000 in discrepancies turned up between what his Liberal Democratic Party branch reported paying out and what the local branches it funded reported receiving, Weekly Bunshun reported on October 28.
Takebe took over the farm ministry after his predecessor, Norihiko Yanma, resigned over allegations that included vote-buying. The ministry has now produced a second money scandal in quick succession, with the same party branch structure at its center.
The branch Takebe heads, the LDP's Hokkaido No. 12 electoral district branch, donates to the party's regional branches every year. Comparing its income and expenditure reports for 2022, 2023 and 2024 with the sums the regional branches recorded receiving showed gaps totaling roughly ¥850,000, according to the report.
The law governing political funds — the Political Funds Control Act — requires branches to report donations paid and received. Discrepancies between the two sides of a transfer are treated as a possible violation.
Takebe's office points to the receiving branches
Asked about the gaps, Takebe's side told Weekly Bunshun that the No. 12 branch's own records contained no errors, and that it would ask each branch that received money to check its books and correct its report where necessary.
“After checking, there were no misstatements by the No. 12 branch, the statement said. The branch said it had asked the other branches that received grants from it to verify their records and correct their reports where necessary.”Takebe's office, in a response to Weekly Bunshun, written reply
Commenters on Yahoo! News, where the report was carried, argued the sums were too large to dismiss as clerical error. One wrote that if unrecorded grants and mismatched amounts recurred across several regional branches and reached about ¥850,000 in total, it could not be written off as a simple filing mistake, and that asking recipients to check and correct their reports did not amount to accountability.
Others called for the money trail to be traced and the destination of the missing sums established, and warned against leaving the political funds law in the state that has led critics to call it full of holes. One commenter proposed a stricter audit rule requiring that cash actually exist, not merely that the paperwork add up.
A pattern that outlasts reshuffles
The discrepancies follow two earlier allegations against Takebe: that he received donations from companies holding public works contracts, reported on October 20, and a suspected violation of the Political Funds Control Act over grants to a party branch. Weekly Bunshun's current issue and its October 29 print edition report a fourth allegation.
Yanma's resignation over the vote-buying claims and Takebe's arrival did not change the branch networks or the donors behind them, and the questions now facing the minister concern the same party funding machinery that undid his predecessor.