The resignation of administrative vice education minister Kazuo Todani to take responsibility for the recent bribery cases involving senior ministry bureaucrats comes on the heels of the exit last year of his predecessor in the job, Kihei Maekawa, in the scandal over the ministry improperly arranging post-retirement jobs for its officials at universities. The fact that Todani himself was found to have been wined and dined by a consultant company executive who allegedly acted as a go-between for the bribed bureaucrats and the management of a medical university seeking favors from them points to the depth of the suspected collusion between the ministry and the education business. The extraordinary situation surrounding the education ministry should serve as an opportunity to expose the flawed structure that breeds such collusion and fix it.

In the bribery scandal, Futoshi Sano, former director of the ministry's Science and Technology Policy Bureau, was arrested in July on suspicion of enabling Tokyo Medical University to be designated as recipient of a government's research subsidy program in return for the university accepting his son last spring after padding his entrance exam scores. A probe by a third-party panel of lawyers commissioned by the school subsequently also showed that the university had for years been discriminating against female applicants by manipulating their entrance test scores.

Kazuaki Kawabata, former director of international affairs, was arrested later in the month on suspicion that he had been entertained by the consultant executive to the tune of ¥1.5 million — including repeated visits to expensive bars in Ginza — as a reward for other favors that he provided to the university. Suspicions have also surfaced that Sano had the consultant executive pay part of his son's overseas travel expenses. They have both been indicted over the alleged bribery.