Governor accused of harassment in Japan’s Hyogo Pref. ‘furious’ over failed booking: survey

KOBE — A survey on harassment allegations against Hyogo Gov. Motohiko Saito has found he allegedly became furious after his staff were unable to book a reservation-only dinner at a hotel, exclaiming, “I’m the governor!”

Saito stands accused of power harassment and other allegations revealed via a whistleblower’s written statement sent to the press and prefectural assembly members. An assembly panel investigating the issue conducted a survey targeting all of the prefectural government’s approximately 9,700 employees, of whom about 6,700 responded. The panel released an interim report on Aug. 23 covering responses from 4,568 workers.

Some 2,100 employees submitted responses to the panel after the interim report, and some of those have been newly revealed. More than 50% of respondents had seen or heard about the governor’s power harassment allegations, and 71 said they had direct knowledge, having witnessed the actual harassment themselves.

Testimonies similar to ones in the interim report were written in the free answer section of the questionnaire, accusing the governor of “furiously pounding the desk” and “reprimanding staff members in front of outsiders.”

One respondent said that Saito had insisted on having a dinner at the hotel where a meeting he attended was held. However, dinners there required advance reservations and Saito only told his staff that he wanted to dine there the day of the meeting. When a government employee told him that this request had been refused, he reportedly became enraged, saying, “I’m the governor!”

At a regular news conference on Sept. 4, Saito explained, “I asked the staff to make arrangements so that I could have dinner, but I don’t recall being furious.”

Regarding the governor’s alleged receipt of numerous gifts, it was pointed out that he had received a large amount of green onions from a grower when he visited the prefectural city of Asago, where the production of the vegetable had been damaged by heavy snowfall.

Among all of those surveyed including those covered by the Aug. 23 interim report, roughly 40% of respondents said that they had seen or heard about the harassment allegations, and 20% said the same about the alleged gifts to the governor.

(Japanese original by Takuhide Nakao and Kosuke Yamamoto, Kobe Bureau)