Abe’s refusal came after the main opposition Democratic Party on Friday released copies of an email message that showed the document in question being sent to eight senior education ministry officials as an attachment.

The leak of the email, dated Sept. 27, has given the opposition fresh ammunition to demand that the government launch another search. The government previously denied the authenticity of the document, citing its unknown origin.

Addressing a Lower House committee, DP lawmaker Masato Imai listed the names of the education officials who received the email and asked whether any of them were working there.

“It is true employees with the same first and last names you just mentioned do exist in our ministry,” education official Yutaka Tokiwa answered.

Abe, for his part, stood by education minister Hirokazu Matsuno’s assertion that re-examining the document implicating Abe is unnecessary.

“Our basic policy is that we don’t usually investigate emails or documents of dubious origins unless there is obvious malpractice or a court order involved,” Matsuno said.

Abe, too, repeated that “there was no room” for his intent to be taken into consideration regarding the government’s January decision to let Kake Gakuen — an Okayama-based school operator run by Abe’s friend Kotaro Kake — open a new animal medicine department at Okayama University of Science. The school, run by Kake Gakuen, is situated in a special deregulation zone in nearby Imabari, Ehime Prefecture.

Meanwhile, more details emerged of Abe’s friendship with Kake.

Foreign Ministry official Fumio Shimizu admitted to the committee that Kake was allowed to board a state-chartered jet to accompany Abe on a trip to Myanmar in 2013 — ostensibly as part of his institution’s effort to broaden business ties with the Southeast Asian nation.

The grilling has had a noticeable effect on Abe, who has at times appeared to get emotional during questioning.

This was on full display Monday, when DP lawmaker Takeshi Miyazaki displayed a picture uploaded by the prime minister’s wife, Akie, showing her husband and Kake holding a toast with what appeared to be a glass of wine.

This clearly irritated Abe, who said it represented an attempt to manipulate public opinion against him.

“Just because Mr. Kake and I are friends doesn’t mean that I would let him get involved in policymaking,” Abe said.

The picture was uploaded to Facebook on Christmas Eve 2015, with a joking caption that said: “The boys are up to no good …”

Still, Abe was resolute in trying to defend himself from his latest school scandal.

“If I was truly up to something bad, she never would’ve posted a picture like that in the first place,” Abe told Miyazaki. “It takes three seconds to realize that.”

 

The enactment of the revised anti-organized crime law was a triumphant moment for Abe, who has spent the bulk of this ordinary Diet session touting the bill as a much-needed boost to Japan’s counterterrorism capability as the nation gears up for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The expedited pace with which the bill was passed, however, suggested Abe wanted to wrap up the Diet session as soon as possible to avoid being grilled by the opposition over allegations of favoritism involving the Okayama-based Kake Gakuen school operator run by his close friend.

“What’s the rush? You didn’t want us to bring up the Kake Gakuen scandal anymore? I cannot help but think the way the bill is being steamrolled represents the government’s wish to hurry up and end the Diet session,” Renho, leader of the main opposition force, the Democratic Party, told a plenary session of the Upper House before the vote.

“It is unforgivable that the ruling coalition has become a yes man of Prime Minister Abe and abandoned its responsibility to supervise the government,” she said.

Unconvinced of the government assertion the bill will only target suspected terrorists, opposition lawmakers argue it could in reality be abused by law enforcement to crack down on ordinary citizens suspected of allegedly plotting crimes, turning Japan into a surveillance society.

It will also upend a traditional principle of Japan’s criminal law that one can only be punished after crimes have been committed, they say.

Joseph Cannataci, a U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, has expressed his concern over “the risks of arbitrary application of this legislation.”

Among 277 types of crimes subject to the revised anti-organized crime law are those seemingly unrelated to organized crime and terrorism, including laws criminalizing theft of forestry products and those against violating copyrights, the expert pointed out.

Justice Minister Katsutoshi Kaneda, however, stood by the position that the law is legitimate.

“The scope of the bill is limited to organized crime syndicates, and it’s only after preparations for crimes are made that one becomes punishable. In this sense, we believe criteria for what would constitute a crime under the revised law is clear,” he told the Upper House plenary session Thursday morning.

Tensions soared after Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner, Komeito, notified the opposition Wednesday noon of their intention to skip a vote on the bill by the Upper House Committee on Judicial Affairs that was originally planned for Thursday, and send the bill straight to the chamber’s plenary session for passage.

Enraged, the opposition camp mounted a last-minute effort to thwart the contentious bill by submitting a series of motions against Abe’s ruling bloc.

Four opposition parties jointly submitted to the Lower House a no-confidence motion against Abe’s Cabinet.

“There is absolutely no way we can tolerate such a forcible attempt to pass the legislation,” said Kazunori Yamanoi, Diet affairs chief of the Democratic Party.

The education ministry is reportedly set to disclose as early as Thursday the outcome of a recently reopened investigation into the existence of internal documents suggesting Abe exerted influence to help his close confidant open a new veterinary department in his university.

“Prime Minister Abe cannot conclude the Diet session before fulfilling his responsibility to explain to the public his involvement in the (Kake Gakuen) scandal,” Yamanoi said.

“That would be extremely insincere of him.”

The motion was struck down by the LDP-Komeito coalition after Wednesday midnight.

Prior to this, the prospect of the bill being steamrollered through the Diet swiftly prompted opposition lawmakers to ask Upper House President Chuichi Date to dismiss what they called the “heavy-handed” maneuvering of the ruling camp that sought to skip deliberations at the judicial affairs committee.

“If the chairman allowed such a move, it would be tantamount to the Upper House committing suicide,” Yoshiki Yamashita, a senior Upper House member of the Japanese Communist Party, told reporters.

Although not illegal, the tactics adopted by the LDP are out of keeping with standard Diet protocol.

Such maneuvering is typically reserved for when the ruling party wants to pass an important bill that, despite an adequate amount of time for it to be discussed at the committee level, faces stonewalling in a committee chaired by an opposition lawmaker who wants to delay the vote.

But this principle, opposition lawmakers said Wednesday, should not apply to the conspiracy bill, which has so far been deliberated in the Upper House for less than 20 hours and is being discussed in a committee chaired by a Komeito lawmaker. The Lower House passed the bill after 30 hours of deliberation.

“The ruling coalition is in a situation where it can easily call a vote on the bill at the committee. And yet, the pair threatened to unilaterally terminate committee-level deliberations and propel the bill straight to a plenary session. … That’s crazy,” said Toshio Ogawa, head of theDemocratic Party’s caucus in the chamber.

The DP, the JCP, the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party had pledged to take “all possible measures” to postpone the revised law’s enactment.

The opposition camp submitted to the Upper House on Tuesday a nonbinding censure motion against Justice Minister Katsutoshi Kaneda, only to see it voted down.

The DP also submitted a similar motion against Junzo Yamamoto from the LDP as head of the Upper House’s steering committee.

Separately, the four parties submitted to the Lower House a no-confidence motion against education minister Hirokazu Matsuno over his reluctance to reinvestigate the Kake Gakuen scandal.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga sought to defend the bill as a much-needed boost to Japan’s ability to fight global terrorism as the nation gears up to host the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The government argues the revised anti-organized crime law’s enactment is a prerequisite for Japan’s participation in the U.N.-designated convention against transnational organized crime.