Japan's Justice Minister Resigns After Calling His Job Too Easy

Japan's justice minister, Minoru Yanagida, resigned on Monday morning after joking that his job was so easy he only needed to remember two phrases.

Speaking earlier in the month at a private gathering in his home constituency in Hiroshima Prefecture, Yanagida told supporters that in parliament he merely had to say: "I won't comment on individual cases," and "I'm acting in accordance with the law and the evidence." The remarks, once reported, were seized on by the opposition as an insult to the legislature. Prime Minister Naoto Kan issued Yanagida a severe warning — and when the opposition began preparing a censure motion, the minister's position became untenable.

Yanagida announced his resignation at a press conference in Tokyo, becoming the latest Japanese minister felled by a loose remark. The timing was bad for Kan: public support was already falling amid a struggling economy, and analysts warned the episode could make it harder for the government to steer key budget legislation through a divided parliament.

The episode was a small illustration of a larger Japanese political pattern — ministers undone not by policy failures but by the gap between the private candor of a constituency gathering and the unforgiving arithmetic of parliamentary politics.