We are used to Japanese politicians, both male and female, having affairs with hostesses, party workers, foreign musicians, and even other lawmakers. But what about gravure idols?
In a case that recalls Kensuke Miyazaki, who had advocated for fathers to take paternity leave but was caught having an affair with a gravure model while his wife (another lawmaker) was giving birth, a tabloid has broken a scoop on Democratic Party for the People leader Yuichiro Tamaki, who is alleged to have been having an affair with a former gradol.
Flash has revealed that the 55-year-old Tamaki has been seeing a woman at a hotel in Takamatsu, Kagawa — his constituency. The hardworking tabloid then tracked down the pair at a Shinjuku wine bar.
The woman is 39-year-old Miyuki Koizumi (小泉みゆき — not to be confused with another Miyuki Koizumi, a fashion model who name has different characters, 小泉深雪). She has worked in gravure and is today a PR ambassador for Kagawa.
Tamaki today gave a press conference apologizing and admitting to the affair.
Tamaki’s party is one of the reasons why Japan didn’t have a working government until today, when Shigeru Ishiba was selected (again). In last month’s lower house election, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party did badly and lost its majority, and Tamaki’s moderate conservative party is likely to play an instrumental role in any official or de facto coalition that finally emerges from the protracted negotiations.
Though his party is still relatively small, Tamaki has been a very public figure in recent years.
Readers will also remember Tamaki as the head of the party that threw Mari Takahashi under the bus when the first whiff of scandal emerged about her past as a hostess. She was forced to withdraw her candidacy and suffered terrible online hounding. She very sadly later took her own life.
The story is also more than just a cut-and-dried case of adultery. Tamaki has previously asserted that politicians having extramarital affairs are bad because of potential security breaches. Netizens have been quick to dig up the video of him earlier this year talking about the risk of honey traps and how he’d once avoided one in a foreign country.
In general, though, most male politicos recover quickly from these adultery scandals. Female lawmakers, though, tend to struggle and often end up resigning or losing their next election.
