Although not directly related, the allegation that former Administrative Vice Minister Junichi Fukuda was a sexual harasser was initially reported as a sideshow to the ongoing Moritomo Gakuen influence scandal that is dogging both Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Finance Ministry. Fukuda was the top bureaucrat in the ministry and, thus, more intimately connected to its operations than Finance Minister Taro Aso, who responded to the story, broken by weekly magazine Shukan Shincho and denied by Fukuda, by saying he had scolded the vice minister but, pending concrete evidence of any harassment, wouldn’t fire him. Then Fukuda quit.

However, the damage was already done. The Finance Ministry has already admitted to falsifying documents that could indicate favoritism toward Moritomo for its proposed Osaka primary school in deference to Abe’s wife, Akie, because she was going to be the honorary head of the school. Fukuda was not in charge of the ministry at the time of the falsification, and the press wasn’t saying that Aso was trying to protect him or the ministry for anything related to Moritomo. What they were saying is that both scandals represent a sea change in the relationship between the Finance Ministry and the Cabinet.

As explained by former TV Asahi reporter Koji Kawamura during an April 13 discussion of the situation on the web channel Democracy Times, the bureaucratic head of the Finance Ministry was once the most powerful person in Japan. When Kawamura was covering the ministry in the late 1970s and early ’80s, it was still called the Okurasho in Japanese, and prime ministers would defer to the administrative vice minister on economic-related decisions. According to Kawamura, when then-Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone promised during a campaign speech that he would not introduce an "indirect tax," he was immediately warned by then-Administrative Vice Minister Yoshihiko Yoshino not to say such a thing in public ever again, since the Finance Ministry's goal was to implement an indirect tax. Journalist Kensuke Karube relates the same story in his new book about Abe's economic policies as a prelude to the power shift that came about when the Okurasho split into the current Zaimusho (Finance Ministry) and Kinyucho (Financial Services Agency) in 2000-01 after losing control of monetary policy to the Bank of Japan in 1998.