Already facing a tough Upper House election, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent attempts to woo voters will almost certainly come to naught amid the uproar over Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma's controversial statement, experts say.
Beset by voter anger over the pension fiasco and the political funds scandals of various Cabinet ministers, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner New Komeito recently responded by extending the Diet session to ram through a series of key bills.
These bills reforming the pension system, the public servant system and the management of lawmakers' funds would have improved public support for Abe were it not for the flap over his defense minister's comments seemingly justifying the U.S. atomic bombings, said Kazuhisa Kawakami, a political science professor at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.