Following the Democratic Party’s defeat, Prime Minister Noda apologised to the cabinet.
However, as this article demonstrates, many of the cabinet members who lost their seats in the election harbour some resentment towards Noda for the loss, including education minister Tanaka Makiko, known to japanCRUSH readers for her suggestion that Nobel Prize winner Professor Yamanaka Shinya be given a washing machine as a gift from the government.
The article below atrracted thousands of netizen comments when it was posted on Yahoo! Japan. A selection of these comments are also translated below.
From Yahoo! Japan:
‘Suicide Bomb Dissolution’ ‘There Wasn’t Enough Time’: Resentful Complaints From Cabinet Members Who Lost Their Seats, Prime Minister Noda Apologises.
On the morning of December 18, after the Democratic party lost the general election, the Noda Cabinet held their first cabinet meeting. The eight cabinet members who lost their seats were also in attendance. During the cabinet round-table meeting, Prime Minister Noda Yoshiko expressed his regret with a pensive expression on his face, ‘I feel responsible for the crushing defeat the party has suffered. Please accept my apologies’. The cabinet expressed the opinion that ‘Until such a time as we resign our posts, let’s just do our jobs’ but there were also resentful complaints to the Prime Minister from the cabinet members who had lost their seats.
In a press conference after the cabinet meeting, education Minister Tanaka Makiko, who lost her seat in the election, stated that ‘The atmosphere [of the meeting] was like a wake’, and criticised the Prime Minister’s decision to dissolve the Diet on November 16, ‘It was a self-important move. (When the decision was made) I instantly thought “This dissolution is a suicide bomb. And that’s what it became.”‘
Furthermore, other cabinet members who had lost their seats made their feelings known, with finance minister Jojima Koriki statement was tinged with regret, ‘There was the face that the timing of the dissolution was a little early, and that there was not enough time for the party to understand the decision. Honestly, I’d been thinking of doing things in my constituency from the end of this year until the beginning of the new year.’
Comments from Yahoo! Japan:
big*ama**ndk（big…）さん:
The dissolution suicide bomb was Prime Minister Noda’s greatest success.
m**（mjg…）さん:
Even if they’d had more time it would have been the same. Crushing defeat.
ふっかつの呪文がまちがっています（har…）さん:
Tanaka Makiko didn’t lose because the timing of the dissolution was bad. She lost because of everything she did up to that point; she was exposed as someone who didn’t deserve to be an assembly member. Don’t blame it on someone else.
dx_matso（dx_…）さん:
Had the voter turnout been low, wouldn’t the Democratic Party have been saved once again? Still, I can’t understand the reason people voted for the Democratic Party.
ちょりーっす！（tob…）さん:
Makiko is awful but her husband is more awful. She I guess she did a pretty good job as an assembly member compared to him.
DBS（don…）さん:
You just don’t get it. You would have lost no matter how late or early the election was.
全力中年！！！（beg…）さん:
Wasn’t it that your own abilities fell short? That’s why you lost in the election.
俺流ドラ党（tak…）さん:
The howl of a losing dog [ie being a bad loser.]
seiwa♪can♪（sei…）さん:
It’s a good job that the Democratic Party administration didn’t get to see in the new year, it was Prime Minister Noda’s earnest judgement, since it was him who dissolved the parliament. On that point at least, he was successful.
sou*an*8w（sou…）さん:
Who wants to hear the comments of civilians who lost their election seats?
テトラドミナント（tet…）さん:
It wasn’t Noda’s fault that the DPJ lost so spectacularly! Rather, Noda was a man who took on a job that anyone would have been reluctant to do it, and did his best with it. Those people who complained still don’t get it. I think that perhaps the DPJ thought that they could take out the LDP, but the LDP survived. So don’t be such bad losers.
hir*k*04*95（hir…）さん:
Makiko, you were also one of the ‘suicide bombs’.
jet（jet…）さん:
I think that the timing of the dissolution of the Diet was to the DPJ’s advantage. It’s just that they had a lot of bad DPJ assembly members, that’s all.
yafukomeranyou（yaf…）さん:
To say that Noda shouldn’t have dissolved the Diet when they knew that they had no support ww It’s because these bastards have such a skewed way of thinking that they got no votes, idiots www
かーぷ０１（ntv…）さん:
They say that they didn’t have enough time, but had they routinely done their best, the result would probably have been different. That’s not something that’s limited to politics; it can also be said about them as people.
haru（bra…）さん:
The timing of the dissolution is irrelevant. No matter when they’d done it, it wouldn’t change the fact that they’d have majorly lost.
kao**400*010（kao…）さん:
It’s because they didn’t do what they were supposed to that it was a ‘suicide bomb’, duh!
ちょりーっす！（tob…）さん:
I think that no matter had it been later or earlier, the result wouldn’t have changed.
経済自由人（cce…）さん:
The result would have been the same regardless.
愛と絆なんてウソっぱちの世の中（tuk…）さん:
The whining of those who lost is ultimately just the howl of a losing dog…bad losers.
