43% of people responding to a weekend opinion poll found the move problematic, well over the 12% who saw it as not a problem after a recent revelations that an aide to then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe demanded the communications ministry change the interpretation of political fairness in Japan's Broadcast Act.
The Mainichi Shimbun poll conducted on March 18 and 19 asked people across the country about the recently released public documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications that Yosuke Isozaki, a special adviser to Abe, to change the legal provision. Some 24% of respondents said the authenticity of the papers was questionable. Among respondents who supported the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, a little under 20% said the PM aide's move was problematic, while nearly 30% said they found it not an issue, while a little under 30% questioned the authenticity of the documents.
The ministry papers also refer to a briefing by a senior ministry official to then communications minister Sanae Takaichi on political fairness of broadcasts in February 2015. Takaichi, currently Minister of State for Economic Security, denies she received such staff briefings.
The approval ratings for prime minister Fumio Kishida's cabinet climbed to 33% in the latest poll, up 7 percentage points from the previous survey conducted on February 18 and 19. The Cabinet support rate has surpassed 30% for the first time in four months. The Cabinet disapproval rate dropped by 5 points to 59%.
54% of the respondents enjoyed the solution to the wartime labor issue that was recently unveiled by the South Korean government, well over 26% who disapproved it. Under the solution, a Seoul-affiliated foundation would shoulder compensation for former forced laborers on behalf of Japanese firms ordered to pay reparations to them.
On March 16th, Kishida met South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in Tokyo. In relation to the summit talks, 64% of respondents said they expected bilateral relations to improve, while 28% said they didn't.
As for former House of Councillors member GaaSyy, who was recently expelled from the chamber after not attended the Diet sessions once since being elected in July 2022, 89% of respondents said his expulsion was appropriate, while only 7% said the punishment was unnecessary. During a plenary session on March 15 the upper house voted by majority to expel GaaSyy, whose real name is Yoshikazu Higashitani from the Seijika Joshi 48 Party, formerly the NHK Party.
In the phone-based Mainichi survey, valid responses were received via text from 500 mobile phones and automated calls to 534 landlines.