Many questions remain unanswered over the government's decision to allow a school operator headed by a close friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to open a new veterinary medicine department at a university it runs. A former top bureaucrat in the education ministry, which had not authorized opening of such a department for more than half a century on the grounds that the nation has enough veterinarians, says his ministry was pressured by senior officials citing "the prime minister's intention" to expedite approval for the project. The Abe administration flatly denies adding any such pressure and refuses to look any further into the allegations.

The Diet needs to step in to expose what really happened with the decision, over which Kihei Maekawa, a former administrative vice education minister, claims that the administrative process was "distorted" by intervention from the Cabinet Office. The administration is trying to discredit Maekawa, saying he had just resigned as vice minister to take the blame for the amakudari scandal, in which his ministry unlawfully arranged post-retirement jobs for its officials. The veracity of his words should be verified by summoning him to testify in the Diet, but Abe's ruling coalition is rejecting the opposition demands to do so, even though Maekawa says he is willing.

Kake Gakuen (Kake Education Institution), whose chairman, Kotaro Kake, is Abe's longtime friend, plans to open the veterinary medicine department at its Okayama University of Science next spring at a site in the government's special strategic zone in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture. The land for the site, which the city had bought for ¥3.68 billion, has been offered for free for the department, and the city and the prefecture will subsidize its construction for up to ¥9.6 billion. Last year, the Abe administration took the initiative to review the education ministry's long-standing restrictions on opening new veterinary medicine departments at universities as part of its regulatory reforms, and in January gave the go-ahead for the plan by Kake Gakuen.