The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday defended its actions in not informing the Prime Minister's office about the 2004 suicide of a Japanese diplomat in Shanghai.
Yoshinori Katori, the ministry's press secretary, told a press conference the ministry did not report the case to the Prime Minister's office because it judged it was responsible for handling it.
The matter was reported to the office only after it came to light last month when Japanese media reported that a diplomat at the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai had committed suicide, he said. The victim was reportedly in charge of encrypted communications and, reports said, was being blackmailed, over his affair with a hostess, into providing classified intelligence to Chinese agents.
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