Key Points
ใปOn September 23, 2026, the voice actress Megumi Ogata questioned a 7.2 billion yen budget request by the Japanese prime minister’s public relations office. Two days later, in a long post, she wondered whether some of her critics were driven by a “farm” and wrote that she might be “erased.”
ใปThe combined figure of more than 35 billion yen is accurate as a budget request, and full videos of the prime minister’s press conferences are already published. At the same time, according to J-CAST News and Nikkei, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has held six formal press conferences in 11 months and her Budget Committee attendance was half the five-year average, so Ogata’s concern about opportunities for dialogue has grounds.
ใปWhen an accurate number, an incomplete picture and an unsupported guess arrive in the same tone, criticism gathers on the weakest part and mixes with pressure of the “voice actors should stay out of politics” kind. The one question that could be checked, whether the PR budget is justified, drops out of the conversation.
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.
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What Each of the Three Claims Rested On
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 the breakdown is public
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 same document breaks the request into about 6.6 billion yen for domestic communication and about 0.5 billion yen for overseas communication, citing stronger video production and distribution at home and a response to “cognitive warfare” abroad. Cognitive warfare refers to efforts to shift how people in another country perceive events through disinformation and opinion manipulation, and here it means countering influence operations from abroad.
The Cabinet Office’s Government Public Relations Office is a separate body that handles publicity for the government as a whole, including newspaper, television and online advertising, 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.
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.
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.” According to the Cabinet Office’s document, the aim is to deepen public understanding of key policies and strengthen communication to the international community.
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.
What cannot be confirmed in the documents published so far is the next layer. Neither the request documents nor the press conferences say how much will go to which media or how effectiveness will be measured. Whether that will be shown during the budget review or the Diet deliberations, or will remain undisclosed, is the question ahead. 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.
Advertising experts say the size of the figure alone settles little. 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. Even when a number is accurate, whether the amount is justified can only be tested once that explanation exists.
Full press conference videos already exist, and they run on the government’s existing PR infrastructure
The method of having the government film its press conferences and stream them uncut is already in use. 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, and the video player embedded on the prime minister’s office pages comes from the same site. The approach Ogata called “budget-free” is already provided on publicity infrastructure the government operates, so it is not a method that costs nothing.
Ogata’s post also contained a separate request: that the government hold press conferences “as usual throughout the year” and show itself answering questions. After replies pointing out that full videos already existed spread widely, she shifted the point in her postscript to the prime minister’s low participation, as she saw it, in the Diet and in party leaders’ debates.
There are numbers on how often the prime minister holds press conferences. 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.
She has held many short press conferences abroad or after phone calls with foreign leaders. Even so, whether there are enough regular occasions for a wide range of reporters to ask questions is a separate question from whether videos are posted, and it remains open.
There are also numbers on the Diet. 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, on November 26, 2025, and on May 20 and July 15, 2026, and in May the prime minister faced the leaders of six opposition parties, a record number, according to Jiji Press.
On the other hand, the prime minister attended 33 hours of intensive Budget Committee deliberations in the special Diet session that closed in July, half the five-year average of 68 hours, Nikkei reported. The Speaker of the House of Representatives asked the ruling parties to make efforts to secure her attendance, and the prime minister said in July that she had attended and answered sincerely whenever asked.
The fact that three party leaders’ debates were held does not by itself refute Ogata’s concern that there are few chances for the prime minister to answer in the Diet. That would require knowing how many possible occasions she accepted and how she compares with her predecessors. The reduced Budget Committee hours are confirmed in reporting, and on that point her postscript is supported by numbers.
Smartphone farms are a real business, and whether one was used here is another matter
The smartphone farm Ogata alluded to 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 widely reported.
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’s critics or on her. 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 the appearance of individual accounts, not evidence. Commentators examining the reporting have also pointed out that inflating impressions and actually moving people’s opinions are two different things.
Why the Same Facts Stopped Producing a Shared Debate
Why did the criticism land on the weakest claim?
Ogata’s posts put three claims of very different evidential weight side by side in the same tone. The figure of 35 billion yen can be checked against government documents. The idea that streaming conferences uncut would need no budget could be tested by visiting the prime minister’s office website, where the videos already sit. The question of whether “some share” of her critics came from a farm cannot be checked by her or by her readers.
Readers will not necessarily weigh the three separately. Someone who learns that the number is correct becomes more inclined to believe the speculation that follows. Someone who spots the mistake about uncut videos starts to doubt the numbers too. In the widely shared posts we checked, the weakest part ended up setting the judgment of the whole.
The result was that criticism gathered not on the easily checked number but on the parts an influential person had asserted without checking: the overlooked full videos and the farm speculation. The core complaint was that she was saying careless things in an anti-government mood.
On September 24, the dispute was about whether conferences were already published. After the long post of September 25, it became about whether she was spreading a conspiracy theory, and posts examining what the 35 billion yen would buy only began to stand out on September 26. The most verifiable claim became the least verified one.
“That money could save so much” is an understandable value judgment, and the budget debate starts there
The feeling that 7.2 billion yen could go to disaster areas or to help with prices is hard to dismiss. 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.
Moving from there to “cutting the PR budget and redirecting it would leave society better off” takes another comparison. Government publicity also informs people about public programs, carries disaster information and speaks to audiences abroad, and cutting it has costs. Within the ruling party, some argue that advertising is the only tool for pushing back against AI-driven disinformation.
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 real question is whether the government has shown that comparison. The requests cite “communication to all generations” and “responding to cognitive warfare,” but not how much will go to which media or what will count as success. Ogata’s value judgment can have good reasons behind it while the government’s explanation has yet to appear in its published documents.
Criticism and support both ranged widely, and the weakest claims collided
The criticism of Ogata split into two different things. Posts saying that full press conference videos already exist, or asking what evidence she had for a farm, were arguments about facts. Posts telling her to keep serious talk to anime and the voice acting business, or asking the people around her to take her social media away, were pressure aimed not at what she said but at her saying anything at all.
Within what could be checked, the reply that spread furthest was the factual rebuttal that conference videos were already public. “Voice actors should stay out of politics” posts did exist but spread less widely, and calls to remove her from roles did not visibly spread. The widely shared criticism cannot all be summed up as “shut up because you are a voice actor.”
Her supporters showed the same range. A post that checked her numbers against government documents and confirmed they were right, while adding that they were only requests, was a fact-based defense.
A post claiming that her critics were mostly low-follower accounts “typical of a smartphone farm,” on the other hand, amplified her speculation with no evidence offered. On social media, the moments when fact-based criticism meets fact-based defense tend to be less visible than the moments when one guess collides with another.
How fact checks and “stay out of politics” merged into “silencing”
Ogata’s long post begins with her experience that the range of words she is told are “sensitive” at work keeps widening, and with her sense that calls on social media to “silence” people have grown. She presents this as her own experience, and there is nothing from outside that can refute it.
On top of that experience, the September 24 fact check that full videos already exist and the “voice actors shouldn’t talk politics” pressure appeared on the same screen at the same time. The two are reactions of a different nature, but in her September 25 post, the constraints she felt at work and the calls on social media to “silence” people were placed within a single sense of crisis, and the words “silencing” and being “erased” came out of it.
A leap from outcome to intent adds to this. From “the PR budget has grown” to “the government wants to communicate” can be read in the documents. Going further, to “it wants to steer public opinion” or “it wants to silence the public,” needs other evidence. Her post warns that 35 billion yen is “a figure that could silence the public,” but she herself framed that as something “being covered in the news” in recent days, and that report could not be identified.
Where the fact-based criticism and the pressure merged, a discussion of what a policy does turned into speculation about the hidden motives of those who made it.
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.
Same right to speak, different reach
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, her 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 reach of the same words from someone with a few dozen followers is smaller by orders of magnitude. The greater the reach, the greater the expectation of fact-checking. That is a different demand from “don’t talk.” It is “if you talk, please check.”
In the controversy over Macklemore’s removal from Ed Sheeran’s US tour, which we covered on September 22, demands to declare “whose side are you on” 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. Both the freedom to speak and the freedom not to speak deserve protection, and this case, on the speaking side, raised the question of how what is said gets checked.
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Why updating a claim feels like losing on social media
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 question of where the prime minister answers questions, still concern me.” Her September 24 argument would then have been stronger than before, 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. The new point mixed a part backed by numbers, the reduced Budget Committee hours, with a part that cannot be judged by counting alone, such as the number of leaders’ debates.
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.
As of the evening of September 26, no correction about uncut videos had appeared, and why none has appeared is not known. As a result, the original factual picture has stayed unexamined while only the point of dispute moved. There is also the question of whether social media has any way to reward people for updating.
Visibility compounds it. On social media, posts that provoke anger or conflict tend to draw more reactions and so are shown more. In this case, too, measured posts suggesting a look at the breakdown of the 35 billion yen were drowned out by an exchange of strong words such as “a waste of taxes,” “voice actors, be quiet” and “suppression of speech.”
A world that looks more extreme may contain more extreme people, or it may simply show extreme posts more often. Within what could be checked, pressure-type posts were smaller than factual rebuttals, yet Ogata’s long post is built around her sense that calls to “silence” have grown. The order in which posts appear may be shaping the public mood that people feel.
Something similar happens with conversational AI. A partial agreement such as “you’re right about that point” can be taken as “even the AI accepted my conclusion.” Separating agreement on a specific fact from agreement with the whole hypothesis matters in social media debates and in conversations with AI alike.
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.
Being Right on One Point Does Not Make the Other Points Right
Ogata’s numbers were right: the 35 billion yen in requests can be confirmed in government documents. The “farm” speculation that followed needs separate evidence. She was mistaken about uncut videos, and the question of how 35 billion yen of publicity would be spent and judged still stands. And even without evidence of a farm, the pressure telling a voice actress not to talk about politics remains a separate problem in its own right.
Answer the checkable and the uncheckable parts of a post separately. Where people can say “you’re right on that point, but it doesn’t prove your original conclusion,” debate can connect. 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 the numbers were right, it is now the government’s turn to answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
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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
