Key Points
ใปOn September 23, 2026, the voice actress Megumi Ogata quoted a 7.2 billion yen budget request by the Japanese prime minister’s public relations office and wrote, “There is so much that budget could save.” On September 25, in a long post, she wondered whether some of her critics came from a smartphone “farm” and wrote that she might be “erased.”
ใปHer point was a feeling anyone thinking of rising prices or disaster areas could share, and many people agreed with it. The combined figure of more than 35 billion yen at the request stage also matches government documents.
ใปThe backlash was aimed not at the substance of her criticism but at the unchecked claims she added to support it, and at the fact that a person with a huge reach stated them flatly in an anti-government mood. Once that backlash mixed with arguments about her right to speak, the debate over how 35 billion yen would be spent disappeared.
Megumi Ogata’s “7.2 Billion Yen” Posts and Where the Criticism Went
Megumi Ogata, the voice actress best known as Shinji Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion, posted on X in the early hours of September 23, 2026, sharing a news summary that said the Cabinet Public Relations Office had requested 7.23 billion yen for fiscal 2027, about ten times this year’s budget. “There is so much that budget could save, and yet, why?” she wrote.
On September 24, she added that the government should hold press conferences “as usual throughout the year,” and that if it worried about remarks being taken out of context, it could film them itself and stream them “uncut,” a method she described as needing no budget. She asked to be allowed to trust the government through the sight of it answering questions rather than broadcasting one way.
Replies pointing out that the press conferences of the prime minister and the chief cabinet secretary are already published in full spread quickly, and one such post drew more than 10,000 likes. In a postscript the same day, Ogata wrote that she was also uneasy about how rarely, in her view, the prime minister took part in Diet sessions and debates between party leaders.
On September 25, Ogata published a post of about 2,000 Japanese characters. She wrote that she was shocked by the combined figure of “more than 35 billion yen” for the Cabinet Public Relations Office and the Cabinet Office’s government PR budget, that the limits on what she may say at work had been widening, and that she felt calls on social media to “silence” people had multiplied.
Referring to a report that inflammatory videos had come from the prime minister’s camp in the election at the start of the year, and to what she called “the word ‘farm,'” widely read as a reference to so-called smartphone farms, she asked whether it was only her imagination that “some share” of the people directing frightening words at her might be that. She wrote that she herself might be “erased.”
The criticism that spread widely was aimed at an influential person posting without checking the facts and adding speculation with no evidence behind it, and some critics called it a conspiracy theory. Supporters rallied under a hashtag of solidarity. For the government’s part, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said at a press conference on September 11 that the request was meant to communicate key policies to a wide range of generations. As of the evening of September 26, Ogata had issued no correction or clarification.
Related Articles
“That Budget Could Save So Much” Is True as a Feeling, and Another Task Lies Beyond It
A gaisan yokyu, or budget request, is the estimate each Japanese ministry submits to the Ministry of Finance at the end of August for the next fiscal year’s spending. The ministry reviews the requests, the government compiles its draft budget in December, and the Diet passes it the following year. Every figure in this story comes from that first stage.
The 7.2 billion and 35 billion yen figures are requests, and it is true that cutting them could save something
The numbers Ogata cited match what the government has published. According to the Cabinet Secretariat’s August 2026 budget request document, the Cabinet Public Relations Office, which handles communications for the prime minister’s office, including running press conferences and the office’s website and social media accounts, requested about 7.2 billion yen, against a current budget of about 0.7 billion yen.
The Cabinet Office’s Government Public Relations Office is a separate body that handles newspaper, television and online advertising for the government, public opinion surveys and international publicity. According to the Cabinet Office’s August 2026 budget request document, it requested about 28 billion yen, up sharply from this year’s roughly 7.9 billion yen. Added together, the two requests exceed 35 billion yen, so Ogata’s arithmetic holds.
The feeling that 7.2 billion yen could go to disaster areas or to help with prices is also sound. In her long post, Ogata listed recovery in Chiba, Kumamoto, Noto and Fukushima and wrote that “protecting people’s lives” was the urgent task. That ordering of priorities is a value judgment, and one many people find easy to share. Her posts drew tens of thousands of likes because that feeling was widely held.
A request is not a final budget. According to the Cabinet Office’s budget documents for each year, the government PR office requested between 9.2 and 9.5 billion yen in each of the past three years and ended up with about 7.9 billion yen each time. The Cabinet Public Relations Office received about 60% of its request this fiscal year. Most of the new increase, however, sits in a new “Strong and Prosperous Japan” investment framework for which the Ministry of Finance said it would set no upper limit on requests, so whether the cuts will follow past patterns will not be known until December.
| Fiscal year | Government PR (Cabinet Office) request | Initial budget |
|---|---|---|
| FY2024 | 9.50 billion yen | 7.91 billion yen |
| FY2025 | 9.26 billion yen | 7.87 billion yen |
| FY2026 | 9.20 billion yen | 7.89 billion yen |
| FY2027 | 28.05 billion yen | Decided in December |
Compiled from the Cabinet Office’s budget request summaries and draft budget summaries for each fiscal year, as of September 26, 2026.
“Cut it and redirect it” needs a comparison with what publicity delivers
Going from “that budget could save so much” to “cutting the PR budget and redirecting it would leave society better off” takes another step. Government publicity also informs people about public programs, carries disaster information and speaks to audiences abroad, and cutting it has costs. Saying that one use of money could help many people and deciding which use ranks higher within the whole budget are two different tasks.
The government has stated its reasons. According to the Cabinet Secretariat’s request document, more people, especially younger people, now gather information online, through video and with AI, so the office wants to strengthen its capacity to produce and distribute video that reaches every generation, and to increase direct communication by government officials abroad, partly to counter “cognitive warfare.” Cognitive warfare refers to efforts to shift how people in another country perceive events through disinformation and opinion manipulation.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara said on September 11 that the purpose was to communicate key policies widely, and a senior official at the prime minister’s office said the government wanted to make videos explaining its policies, according to TV Asahi. Some in the ruling party have also argued that advertising spending is the only way to push back against AI-driven disinformation.
The material needed for the comparison has not yet appeared in public documents. Neither the request documents nor the press conferences say how much will go to which media or how effectiveness will be measured.
At a Cabinet Office press conference on September 1, a reporter asked how the growth-strategy publicity, which accounts for 18.8 billion yen of the 28 billion yen request, would raise growth and how its effect would be measured, and the minister replied that the Government PR Office budget falls under the chief cabinet secretary and that details should be sought from that office.
Mamoru Nishiyama, an associate professor at J. F. Oberlin University, wrote in September 2026 that advertising costs divide into production and media buying, that media buying is where costs tend to swell, and that the key is whether the government can specify what the increase will be spent on, in which media and against which performance indicators.
That Ogata’s feeling has reasons behind it and that the government has not yet published the material for a comparison are both true at once.
How well checked were the claims she added to support that feeling?
On September 24, Ogata attached a condition, “if you want to communicate with the public,” and said there was a “budget-free” method: hold press conferences “as usual throughout the year” and, if clipping was a worry, have the government film them and stream them “uncut.” The second half of that was something a check would have shown already exists.
According to the prime minister’s office website, the full transcript and video of each prime ministerial press conference, questions included, are posted, and the September 17 press conference is available as a full video of about 44 minutes. The chief cabinet secretary holds press conferences twice every weekday, morning and afternoon, as a rule, and videos and summaries of those are published too.
The full videos are distributed through Gov-Online, the Cabinet Office’s government PR site, so they run on publicity infrastructure the government already operates. It is not a method that costs nothing.
The first half, a request to hold press conferences and show the government answering questions, does have checkable grounds. According to a tally by J-CAST News published in September 2026, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi held six formal press conferences in the press room of the prime minister’s office in the roughly 11 months from her inauguration in October 2025 to September 17, 2026. After the “they already do that” replies spread, Ogata turned in her postscript to attendance at the Diet and at party leaders’ debates.
The party leaders’ debate, Japan’s version of question time between the prime minister and opposition leaders, has been held three times under the Takaichi government, so the count alone does not settle the question. On the other hand, the prime minister attended 33 hours of intensive Budget Committee deliberations in the recent special Diet session, half the five-year average of 68 hours, Nikkei reported. Her concern about whether there are enough occasions to answer questions is supported by numbers.
The smartphone farm she mentioned in her September 25 post is a site where large numbers of smartphones or circuit boards are lined up and operated automatically to inflate video views, likes and impressions, which are then sold. The Asahi Shimbun reported on such a site near Tsukuba in April 2026, TBS’s investigative program Hodo Tokushu demonstrated one in June, and the Tokyo Shimbun interviewed a young broker in September, so the business is real and has been reported several times.
The term became tied to politics after the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun reported from the spring that the prime minister’s camp had mass-distributed videos attacking rival candidates during the party leadership race and the general election. The prime minister has denied this. The “election at the start of the year” that Ogata cited in her long post refers to this reported allegation.
There is a wide gap between such operations existing and their being used against Ogata. As of September 26, no study or report showed that the criticism of her had been organized or inflated. Some of her supporters have pointed to the small follower counts of accounts criticizing her as “typical of a farm,” but this too is an inference from appearances, not evidence.
Why a Personally Valid Criticism Failed to Land
The backlash was not a rebuttal of “too much”
Among the posts that spread widely, almost none directly argued against the substance of her criticism, that 7.2 billion yen is too much. Within what we checked, the post that spread furthest was a fact check: “She says they should just stream it uncut, but that is already being done.” From September 25 on, the backlash gathered on the “farm” speculation and on the phrase “isn’t this a conspiracy theory,” and posts examining the figures themselves only began to stand out on September 26.
The backlash, in other words, was aimed not at Ogata’s feeling but at the claims she added to support it: the overlooked full-length videos, and the “farm” she raised without offering evidence. Even when the substance of a criticism is right, if the material placed around it to reinforce it has not been checked, the backlash gathers there.
Readers do not necessarily take in the feeling and its supports separately. When one support collapses, the feeling itself starts to look doubtful. “That budget could save so much” would have been hard to argue with on its own, but because it arrived together with “there is a budget-free way” and “maybe some of them are a farm,” it was treated as a whole as the words of “someone who speaks without checking.”
What if she had used only material that could be checked?
The same criticism could have been built from checkable material alone. “The 35 billion yen is a request, but the Cabinet Public Relations Office asked for ten times its budget and government PR for more than three times, and no breakdown by media or measure of effect has been published.” “The prime minister has held six formal press conferences in 11 months, and her Budget Committee attendance was half the five-year average.” “Without that explanation, I cannot accept publicity taking priority over disaster relief.” Built that way, the critics would have had no choice but to argue about numbers.
The actual posts added “streaming uncut would need no budget” and “some share of the criticism may be a farm” to that frame. The first was material that a check would have removed, and the second was material that cannot be checked at all. In her September 24 post, Ogata had already written that page views can be “made” in any way one likes, so the suspicion of inflated numbers was there from that point. The long post of September 25 applied that suspicion to the criticism of herself.
What was needed was not to stop criticizing but to choose the supports. Stating a feeling alone draws little backlash. Delivering it as a policy argument requires checked material. Mixing in unchecked guesses stops even the feeling from getting through. On social media, those three different things travel as a single post.
The bigger the reach, the bigger the expectation to check first
Ogata’s long post was viewed more than 11 million times and received about 70,000 likes, according to the counts displayed on X on September 26. The same words from someone with a few dozen followers would reach an audience smaller by orders of magnitude. The argument that voice actors must not talk about politics does not hold. Ogata herself wrote in 2023 that “politics is daily life” and that everyone has the right to talk about it, and she quoted that post again this time. Celebrities have the same rights as any other user.
At the same time, the wider the reach, the greater the expectation that someone who speaks will check first. That is a different demand from “don’t talk.” The most widely shared backlash against Ogata took the form of that expectation.
In the controversy over Macklemore’s removal from Ed Sheeran’s US tour, which we covered on September 22, demands for explanation also converged on the named and visible performers. A celebrity who speaks about politics is told to keep it out, and one who stays silent is told that silence is complicity. This case sat on the speaking side, and what was questioned was the support behind what was said.
Related article
In an anti-government mood, fact checks and “be quiet” appeared on the same screen
Ogata’s posts resonated with people strongly critical of the Takaichi government, and solidarity spread under a hashtag. At the same time, some of those pushing back saw her as “saying careless things out of anti-government feeling,” so the criticism was aimed not only at the content but also at where the speaker stood. Fact checks and pressure such as “keep serious talk to anime and the voice acting business” or “someone take her social media away” appeared on the same screen in the same days.
The two are reactions of a different nature. The first is criticism that can be answered, and the second is pressure against speaking at all. Within what we checked, the first spread far more widely, and posts calling for her to be removed from roles did not visibly spread.
Even so, from the receiving end there is no partition between them. Ogata’s long post opens with her experience that limits on her words at work have been widening and her sense that calls on social media to “silence” people have grown, placing fact-based criticism and pressure within a single sense of crisis. The words “silencing” and being “erased” came out of that.
Her supporters showed the same mix. A post that checked her numbers against government documents and showed they were right was a fact-based defense. A post claiming her critics were mostly low-follower accounts “typical of a farm” amplified her speculation with no evidence offered. On both sides, the checking kind and the guessing kind were mixed, and the moments when one guess collided with another stood out more.
The point that uncut videos already exist and the demand that voice actors not talk politics are separate criticisms. Answering the first and resisting the second can go together.
Updating would have made the criticism stronger, but on social media updating looks like losing
Suppose Ogata had written: “I didn’t know full videos were already available, and I take that back. But six formal press conferences in 11 months, and the drop in Budget Committee attendance, still concern me.” Her criticism would then have been stronger than at the start, because the easy target would be gone and only points checkable against records would remain.
What happened instead was not an update but a shift. The postscript that followed the “they already do that” replies moved from press conferences to attendance at the Diet and party leaders’ debates, without touching the original mistake. As of the evening of September 26, no correction about uncut videos had appeared, and why none has appeared is not known.
On social media, that kind of update tends to be rare. Correcting part of a claim made in front of tens of thousands of people is likely to draw “don’t apologize” from supporters and “finally, she admits it” from opponents, and updating the facts is often read not as moving the debate forward but as a sign of defeat. The absence of any way to reward people for updating narrows the path by which a valid feeling can grow into a policy argument.
What disappeared was the debate over how 35 billion yen would be spent
Over four days, the focus moved from whether the PR budget was justified, to whether uncut videos already existed, to the farm speculation, to whether she was being silenced. What remained at the end was a judgment of a person, “Is Ogata right?” The question at the start, what 35 billion yen would be spent on and what would count as success, disappeared without being examined by either side.
The government has not published the material to answer that question. Its reasons for the request are stated, but a breakdown by media and performance indicators are not in the public documents. If Ogata’s feeling was valid, this is where the debate should have gone. As the backlash gathered on the supports, the defense answered with arguments about rights, and both sides traded guesses, only the checkable part was left behind.
Criticism stated flatly in an anti-government mood tends to be rejected together with that mood, and those who share the feeling tend to accept it together with the mood. Neither touches the substance of the criticism. For a valid personal feeling to land as a policy argument, it has to be offered with the feeling and its supports separated, and the other side has to answer the substance and the supports separately too.
What a Japanese-language Reddit community discussed
We found no English-language Reddit thread that dealt directly with Ogata’s posts. The related discussion took place on r/newsokur, a Japanese-language community whose posts lean strongly critical of the government, so it should be read as a record of how one online group talked, not as a cross-section of Japanese opinion.
In a thread started on the afternoon of September 25 about a magazine report on smartphone farms, a handful of comments moved from surprise at the scale described, to worry that online surveys and elections cannot function unless platforms detect inflated activity, to the guess that a political party or quasi-state body might own a farm. Within a few exchanges, the weight of evidence fell one step at a time, the same sequence of reasoning that appeared in Ogata’s long post that day. A larger thread from September 17 on the 7.2 billion yen request focused on complaints about government PR videos and mockery of the prime minister, with almost no discussion of the breakdown or the need for publicity.
Japanese Reactions to Megumi Ogata’s Government PR Budget Posts
These are posts on X, not a measure of Japanese public opinion. The translations are by Sekahan, handles are omitted, and like counts are rounded figures displayed on September 26, 2026 (JST).
The exchange began with a single line. Ogata’s first post, attached to a screenshot of X’s own news summary of the 7.2 billion yen request, drew roughly 26,000 likes.
ใใฎไบ็ฎใงๆใใใใฎใใใใใใใใฎใซใผใผใชใใ#ๅ ้ฃ #ๅบๅ ฑๅฎคไบ็ฎ#่ฒงๅฐ #ไธๆณ #่ขซ็ฝๅฐๆๆธ pic.twitter.com/Fnxv4hPUjD
— ็ทๆนๆต็พ (@Megumi_Ogata) September 22, 2026
There is so much that budget could save, and yet, why?
#Cabinet #PRbudget #Poverty #Recession #DisasterRelief
Megumi Ogata, September 23, 2026 (translated by Sekahan)
The most widely shared criticism did not attack her right to speak. It went after a factual claim in her September 24 post, and it drew roughly 16,000 likes.
ๅฃฐๅชใฎ็ทๆนๆต็พใใใๆฟๅบๅบๅ ฑใฎไบ็ฎใๅขใใใชใ่จ่ ไผ่ฆใใใฃใใใใฃใฆใใผใซใใใงๆตใใฐใใใฟใใใซ่จใฃใฆใใพใใใใใใใฏใใใใฃใฆใใใใจใงใใ
— ้ชไน (@blance_neige7) September 24, 2026
่ชๅใฎ้ ญใง่ใใใใจใๅคงไบใจ่จใใชใใใ่ชๅใ่จใใใจใใฆใใใใจใไบๅฎใจใใฆๆใ็ซใคใฎใ่ใใฆใชใใฎใฏ่ฏใใชใใโฆ
The voice actress Megumi Ogata said that if the government is going to raise its PR budget, it should just hold proper press conferences and stream them uncut, but that is already being done.
It isn’t good to say that thinking for yourself matters and then not think about whether what you are about to say holds up as fact.
Yukino, September 24, 2026 (translated by Sekahan)
Support came in more than one form. The simplest was gratitude that someone well known was speaking up, as in this post with roughly 7,000 likes that quoted her call for uncut conferences.
ๅฃฐๅชใฎ็ทๆนๆต็พใใใๆฟๆฒปใฎใใใใใไผใใฆใใใฆใใฎๆ้ฃใใ https://t.co/JQs4BdkaH3
— ใจใก (@yome1110) September 23, 2026
I’m grateful that the voice actress Megumi Ogata is telling people what is wrong with politics.
Yome, September 24, 2026 (translated by Sekahan)
The post that did what the debate had skipped arrived only on September 26. Responding to claims that Ogata had her facts wrong, one user checked her figures against the government’s own documents and added that they were requests, not final budgets. It drew roughly 14,000 likes.
็ทๆนๆต็พใใใฎๆ็จฟใซใไบๅฎ่ช่ญใ่ชคใฃใฆใใใใจใใๆนๅคใๅบใฆใใใฎใงใๆฟๅบ่ณๆใ็ขบ่ชใใพใใใ
— ็ซใทใผใซ (@akasa_tanashin) September 26, 2026
ใปๅ ้ฃๅบๅ ฑๅฎค 72ๅๅใฎ่ฆๆฑ๏ผไปๅนดๅบฆ7ๅๅใฎ็ด10ๅ๏ผ
ใปๆฟๅบๅบๅ ฑ 280ๅๅใฎ่ฆๆฑ๏ผไปๅนดๅบฆ79ๅๅใใๅข้ก๏ผ
ใปๅ่จ 350ๅๅไปฅไธ
็ทๆนใใใๆใใๆฐๅญใฏใโฆ https://t.co/bvUkjtTO7X
There has been criticism that Megumi Ogata’s post “gets the facts wrong,” so I checked the government documents.
Cabinet Public Relations Office: a request for 7.2 billion yen (about ten times this year’s 0.7 billion yen). Government PR: a request for 28 billion yen (up from this year’s 7.9 billion yen). Total: more than 35 billion yen.
The figures Ms. Ogata cited all matched the budget request documents published by the Cabinet Secretariat and the Cabinet Office. (…) All of them are still at the “request” stage and may be cut when the budget is drafted in December.
Neko Seal, September 26, 2026 (translated by Sekahan)
The same morning, a supporter turned Ogata’s speculation back on her critics. The post, with roughly 9,000 likes, offers no evidence beyond the appearance of accounts, and is shown here as an example of unsupported speculation, not as a finding.
็ทๆนๆต็พใซ็ตกใใงใใขใซใฆใณใใ็ฐๆงใซใใฉใญใฏใผใๅฐใชใใฎใๅคใใใใใใใในใใ่พฒๅ ดใฎๅ ธๅ็ใชใใฟใผใณใชใใ ใ
— ็ซใฎใชใฅใใฏใใ (@nekoruck) September 26, 2026
A lot of the accounts going after Megumi Ogata have strangely few followers. That’s exactly the typical pattern of a smartphone farm.
Neko no Rukku-kun, September 26, 2026 (translated by Sekahan)
Posts telling Ogata to stick to anime and voice acting, or asking the people around her to take her social media away, did exist, but they spread less widely than the factual rebuttals, and we have not embedded them. Over four days, the focus moved from the PR budget itself, to whether uncut videos already existed, to the farm and conspiracy theory accusations, and finally to whether she was being silenced. The like counts above compare posts found in searches at one point in time and do not measure the overall balance of opinion.
A Valid Concern Gets Rejected Along With Its Unchecked Supports
Ogata’s “that budget could save so much” was valid as a personal feeling, and many people agreed with it. What drew the backlash was not that feeling but the unchecked claims she added to support it, and the fact that a person with a huge reach stated them flatly in an anti-government mood. When one support collapses, the feeling itself is doubted, and when the backlash mixes with arguments about rights, the policy question that was there at the start disappears.
To get a valid feeling across, say the checked parts and the guessed parts separately, and update when something is pointed out. Those receiving it can answer the substance and the supports separately. Where people can say “you’re right on that point, but it doesn’t prove your original conclusion,” debate can continue. What was missing this time was that partition.
The debate about the PR budget has not yet begun. How much will go to which media, and what will count as success? How will the increase, placed in a framework with no upper limit on requests, be assessed in December? Since Ogata’s feeling has reasons behind it, it is now the government’s turn to answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Megumi Ogata’s criticism of the PR budget draw a backlash?
The backlash was aimed mostly at her supporting claims, not at her point that the money could be better spent. The most widely shared criticism, posted on September 24, 2026, pointed out that full videos of the prime minister’s press conferences are already published, contrary to her suggestion, and later criticism focused on her unsupported speculation that some critics came from a smartphone “farm.”
Was Megumi Ogata’s 7.2 billion yen figure accurate?
Yes. According to the Cabinet Secretariat’s August 2026 budget request document, the Cabinet Public Relations Office requested about 7.2 billion yen for fiscal 2027, roughly ten times its current budget, and the Cabinet Office’s document shows a separate government PR request of about 28 billion yen, so her combined figure of more than 35 billion yen is also correct. Both are requests that the Ministry of Finance will review before the draft budget is set in December.
Are the Japanese prime minister’s press conferences already streamed in full?
Yes. The prime minister’s office website posts the full transcript and video of each prime ministerial press conference, and the full videos are distributed through Gov-Online, the Cabinet Office’s government PR site. How often formal press conferences are held is a separate question: J-CAST News counted six formal ones between October 2025 and September 17, 2026.
Is there evidence that smartphone farms were used against her?
No evidence has been presented. Smartphone farms that sell inflated views and likes are a real business reported by the Asahi Shimbun, TBS and the Tokyo Shimbun in 2026, but as of September 26, 2026, no study or report showed that the criticism of Ogata was organized or inflated, and claims by her supporters that low-follower critics were “farm” accounts are also unsupported.
How did Japanese social media react to Megumi Ogata’s posts?
Reactions on X were split between support and criticism, and the most widely shared criticism was the factual point that full press conference videos already exist, not an attack on her right to speak. As the debate moved to “farms” and “silencing,” a post that checked her numbers against government documents and found them correct appeared only on September 26.
Sekahan on YouTube
We publish video summaries of articles like this one, along with short clips built around Japanese reactions.
Reference Links
- FY2027 Budget Request Summary (Japanese)๏ฝCabinet Secretariat
- FY2027 Budget Request Summary (Japanese)๏ฝCabinet Office
- Approach to Budgeting Under the “Strong and Prosperous Japan” Investment Framework (Japanese)๏ฝMinistry of Finance
- Press Conference by Prime Minister Takaichi, September 17, 2026 (Japanese)๏ฝPrime Minister’s Office of Japan
- First Party Leaders’ Debate on the 20th: Takaichi Faces a Record Six Opposition Parties (Japanese)๏ฝJiji Press
- Prime Minister’s Budget Committee Attendance Halved Compared With the Past Five Years (Japanese)๏ฝNikkei
- Takaichi Cabinet Requests 7.2 Billion Yen for Cabinet PR, Ten Times the Current Budget (Japanese)๏ฝTV Asahi (Yahoo! News Japan)
- Press Conference by Minister Kiuchi, September 1, 2026 (Japanese)๏ฝCabinet Office
- Prime Minister Takaichi Has Held Only Six Formal Press Conferences Since Taking Office (Japanese)๏ฝJ-CAST News
- “I Might Be Erased”: Voice Actress Megumi Ogata (Japanese)๏ฝJ-CAST News
- The Cabinet PR Office’s 7.2 Billion Yen Request and What the Amount Alone Does Not Show (Japanese)๏ฝYahoo! News Japan Expert (Mamoru Nishiyama)
- How “Smartphone Farms” Manufacture Buzz (Japanese)๏ฝTokyo Shimbun
