Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi speaks during a news conference at the prime minister's office in Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (Kiyoshi Ota/Pool Photo via AP)
TOKYO
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi drew criticism from opposition parties on Wednesday after admitting to distributing congratulatory gift catalogs to all of her party’s House of Representatives lawmakers elected in the Feb. 8 general election, while denying any illegality.
In a parliamentary session, Takaichi said her local chapter of the Liberal Democratic Party used its political funds to send to each of her party’s 315 lawmakers booklets listing gifts that they could order, with an allocation of around 30,000 yen ($190) per person.
“We donated the gifts as the (LDP) branch of the Nara Prefecture’s second constituency after the lower house election to praise their victories in the very tough election,” Takaichi said, responding to a question from an opposition lawmaker.
Takaichi, who represents the constituency, made a similar admission in a post on X late Tuesday after media reports on the matter, also saying government subsidies for the party were not used for the gifts.
In the election, the LDP secured 316 of the 465 seats in the lower house, including the one held by Takaichi, giving the party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, a three-quarters majority. She said the catalogs were sent to the party’s lawmakers elected in the election, excluding herself.
In March last year, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Takaichi’s predecessor, was criticized by opposition parties for distributing gift vouchers worth 100,000 yen to LDP lawmakers who won their first seats in the October 2024 lower house election.
Citing Ishiba’s case, Masayo Tanabu, who questioned Takaichi about the gift catalogs in the Diet session, said, “I should note that the issue of ‘money and politics’ has continued from then to this day, along with inflation.”
Opposition parties criticized Takaichi over the issue, with Junya Ogawa, leader of the Centrist Reform Alliance, saying at a party gathering, “The mindset of handing out gifts and the sense for how to use money reflect the old culture of the LDP, which we cannot overlook.”
Motohisa Furukawa, who heads the Diet affairs committee of the Democratic Party for the People, another major opposition party, told a press conference that Takaichi’s latest behavior “only deepens public distrust in politics” and that the LDP’s landslide election win might have made her “big-headed.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki told a separate news conference that he believes the government can gain public understanding over the catalog issue.
“We must continue to provide thorough explanations,” Ozaki, a senior government spokesman, added.
The latest revelation came amid lingering public distrust over money and politics, especially within the LDP, as many of the party’s lawmakers were involved in a high-profile slush fund scandal that came to light in late 2023.
At the center of the scandal was an intraparty faction formerly led by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose conservative political stance and hawkish security views are shared with his close ally Takaichi.
The scandal dealt a heavy blow to the LDP in national elections in 2024 and 2025, when it was led by Ishiba.
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