Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori filed a libel suit with the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday against a magazine that published an article and photographs allegedly linking him to a rightwing gangster, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Wednesday.
Mori is demanding that the publisher of the Weekly Gendai pay 30 million yen in damages and print an apology, the top government spokesman said at a news conference.
The magazine "severely damaged the prime minister's honor and public trust by providing wrongful information that the prime minister had close exchanges with the person in the pictures," Fukuda said.
In its Monday issue, the Weekly Gendai published an article and two photographs depicting Mori sharing a meal with a man the magazine claims is an official of a violent rightwing organization. The man's identity is not given and his face is concealed in the pictures.
The man is suspected of having close links with organized crime groups, it said.
The weekly said the pictures were taken in Osaka around October 1998, when Mori was secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Mori, who is aware of the identity of the individual in question, denied having personal ties with him. Mori had warned the Weekly Gendai through his lawyer that he would take legal action if an article incriminating him or suggesting that he had a special relationship with the man were published.
The weekly responded to the warning by saying, "For the prime minister of a country to censor the contents of a magazine before publication and to apply pressure in this way is an abuse of power."