Back in 2020, shortly before Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike ran for a second term, a journalist named Taeko Ishii came out with a book about Koike called Jotei (Empress) that became an instant best-seller. Ishii included an interview with a woman who said she was Koike’s roommate when she was attending Cairo University in the 1970s and claimed that Koike never graduated from the university, which was significant since much of Koike’s brand as a public figure has been tied to not only graduating from Cairo University, but graduating at the top of her department, as she said. This achievement led to her reputation as being an expert on the Middle East and a fluent speaker of Arabic, which in turn helped get her a job as a TV news announcer and then boosted her prospects in politics. For a short time after Ishii’s book came out, Koike’s c.v. came under suspicion, since lying about one’s educational history violates election laws (and, in fact, seems to be a common practice), but eventually a statement appeared on the Facebook page of the Egyptian Embassy in Japan stating that Koike had indeed graduated from Cairo University and the matter was forgotten; or, at least, it was forgotten by the mainstream media.

Earlier this month the matter came up again when an article appeared in the May issue of the monthly magazine Bungeishunju by Toshiro Kojima, a former Koike aide who wrote that he inadvertently assisted in the coverup of Koike’s allegedly fraudulent c.v. in 2020. There was also an essay by the former roommate, Momoyo Kitahara, who had been referred to pseudonymously in the initial editions of Jotei, but who allowed Ishii to use her real name in the subsequent paperback editions. Kojima says in his piece that Koike summoned him to her office in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building in June of 2020 after the book came out and asked him to help her get on top of the bad publicity it had stirred up. Kojima, who believed that she had graduated from Cairo University, said it was simple: Just call the university and get them to issue an official statement confirming that she had graduated. He assumed they would have to go through the Egyptian Embassy, which meant it might take time, so he was surprised when the desired statement appeared on the embassy’s FB page only three days later.

Kojima went into more detail in a video interview with Bungeishunju that was posted on the magazine’s website. He begins by explaining that he became acquainted with Koike when he was working for the Environment Ministry as the chief of the Global Environment Bureau. At the time, Koike was a Diet member in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and had been appointed environment minister. They worked together on several ideas and came up with the Cool Biz policy wherein men were encouraged to eschew jackets and neckties in the summer to reduce energy consumption in offices. Later, she decided to run for governor of Tokyo in order to “destroy” the LDP’s dominance of the prefectural assembly, and she asked Kojima to join her team. His main task was moving the wholesale fish market from Tsukiji to Toyosu. When Koike left the LDP to form the Tomin First party, she selected Kojima to head it. 

After Jotei was published and Koike summoned Kojima to talk about the c.v. problem, she showed him an invitation to a “Science Day” event being held by Cairo University. The invitation was for alumni, and Koike seemed to be showing it to him as proof she had graduated, which he didn’t need because he believed her. However, he thought it strange that the invitation included “unnecessary” information about the date she entered the university and the date she graduated. First, he told her just to get out her diploma and send copies to the media, but she seemed to think it wouldn’t be enough to convince people, and that’s when he suggested she contact the university to get proof from the source. The next day she called Kojima and asked what kind of information the statement from the university should include. 

Kojima recalls that time was of the essence, since the LDP was planning to use the c.v. controversy against Koike in the assembly as a means of getting back at her. Also, she was planning to announce that she would run for a second term as governor of Tokyo and wanted to get the matter out of the way before the press conference. So while Kojima was surprised at the speed with which Koike was able to produce the statement, it was just as well she did. 

In the posted statement, Cairo University affirms that Koike graduated from the Sociology Department in October 1976 and was issued a diploma. The statement also criticized the Japanese media for doubting Koike on the matter, since such doubt tacitly defamed the university and its alumni. The university said it would take legal action if it deemed such action was appropriate. Kojima told the Bungeishunju interviewer that the LDP immediately put a halt to their investigation of Koike and the media dropped the subject. Koike went on to win reelection easily. 

However, after the election was over, Kojima was visited by another Koike advisor, a journalist he refers to as “A.” The journalist told him that it was he who wrote the Japanese language version of the Cairo University statement that appeared on FB, and he showed Kojima the email correspondence between him and Koike related to the matter. He added that Koike herself wrote the English language version of the statement, which also appeared on the FB page.

When the interviewer asks Kojima why he wrote the article for Bungeishunju, Kojima replied that he felt responsible for the coverup, especially after Kitahara had the courage to allow her real name to be used in subsequent editions of Jotei. He mentions that when he was in the Environment Ministry he was involved in the Minamata pollution matter, and was dismayed that those responsible for the widespread poisoning tried so hard to cover it up. It was one man, a doctor for Chisso, the company that caused the pollution, who made a difference by coming forward, just as Kitahara did. “So I felt that I had to come forward too,” says Kojima. Moreover, he had admired Koike because of her stated determination to break up the hidebound nature of Tokyo government, where all decisions were made by a handful of leaders in the LDP and some top bureaucrats. But during her second term she seemed to abandon this stance, since the same group of men are still running the show without any regard for the needs and desires of Tokyo residents. He now sees Koike as being the kind of politician who seeks office only for their own personal gain. 

In that regard, she relies fully on the complacent nature of the mainstream media, according to journalist Hiroshi Samejima in his April 12 newsletter, which addressed the Bungeishunju articles. After pointing out that Koike’s lawyers have said that their client has neither the obligation nor the need to answer questions about the latest claims, Samejima essentially says that the mainstream media isn’t going to ask these questions anyway. Of course, if it were anybody’s job to do that it would be the press club attached to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which is made up of reporters from the major TV stations and national newspapers, and all of these people have a “cozy” relationship with Koike. After all, they didn’t bring up the c.v. issue during the last election, so there’s no reason to think they will this time. Attorney Nobuo Gohara and author Ryo Kuroki, who had written at length about Koike’s c.v. controversy, held a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan to talk about the matter on the same day the FB statement appeared. All the news organizations that attended the event obviously felt that the statement had put the controversy to rest, because there was no coverage of the press conference in the mainstream press. The only journalists who paid attention were those working for magazines and internet news outlets. 

Samejima knows intimately about these things because he was a reporter for the shakai-bu (literally “social department,” but usually translated as “city desk”) of the Asahi Shimbun for 27 years. It is the shakai-bu, not the politics desk, that handles the goings-on in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and in his experience shakai-bu reporters tend to lean more favorably toward the people and organizations they cover than does any other division at a news organization. Most of their work, in fact, is to get on friendly terms with their subjects, which would also include the police and prosecutors. It’s why the shakai-bu reporters who cover the Kansai region invariably boost the fortunes of Ishin no Kai, the party that now runs Osaka city and prefecture. Media companies have vested interests in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Tokyo Olympics being a prime example. Just as the mainstream press didn’t cover the sexual abuse going on at entertainment company Johnny & Associates until a foreign news organization broke it open, the reporters who cover the Tokyo Metropolitan Government won’t pursue these suspicions regarding Koike’s education, says Samejima. Actually, Koike was asked about Kojima’s revelations at an April 12 press conference and she dismissed them; and most mainstream news outlets covered her response. In addition, Tokyo Shimbun, a daily newspaper, has covered the topic in slightly more detail, but it remains to be seen if there is any followup outside of Bungeishunju and its weekly affiliate, Shukan Bunshun. 

Still, this further interest in Koike’s educational background may have affected her more immediate plans. Tokyo District 15 is one of the three lower house seats up for grabs in the supplemental election scheduled for April 28, and there was a buzz among political insiders that Koike had her eye on it. Reportedly, she would quit the governorship and run for the seat as a member of the LDP, since her long term goal is to be Japan’s first female prime minister and this could be the perfect chance. As it stands, the LDP, thanks to the party fundraising scandal that won’t go away, is looking to get rid of Kishida and replace him with a woman, which they think would distract and excite the electorate. That means, of course, that Koike would have to quit Tomin First, the party she started in order to wreck the LDP’s stranglehold on the Tokyo assembly, and rejoin the LDP. She probably assumed she could win the seat easily and then run for president of the LDP in the next election, which is slated for September. 

However, things haven’t worked out as planned, but more than the resurgence of unwelcome interest in her diploma, it may have more to do with the fact that her main ally in the LDP, party heavyweight Toshihiro Nikai, announced his retirement last month, likely due to the fundraising scandal, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the LDP of similar standing who’s willing to support her. That’s supposedly why she talked author Hirotade Ototake, who ran for office successfully in the past until his political career was derailed by a sex scandal, to run for the empty Tokyo seat with the help of an offshoot of Tomin First, hoping it would curry favor with the LDP, since he used to belong to the LDP. But then Ototake was asked by reporters if indeed he was being endorsed by the LDP and he said it wasn’t something he was thinking about. As a result, the LDP said it wasn’t planning to endorse him. They have yet to announce their own candidate for the seat and have until Wednesday to do so. 

For that matter, Koike hasn’t yet formally announced she’s running for reelection in this summer’s Tokyo gubernatorial race, so there’s still time and oppurtunity for the press to hammer away at the c.v. question, but nobody seems to be holding their breath.