Do we like Hideki Makihara?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Some hawkish online posts and unreported church-linked events sit against a thin record and no verified good deeds, so it lands in the middle-to-low range.
Hideki Makihara is a Liberal Democratic Party MP from Saitama who became Japan's Justice Minister in October 2024, his first cabinet post at 53. Shukan Bunshun describes him as a lawyer and former vice minister at the trade and health ministries. The same outlet says he had lost six lower-house contests to Yukio Edano in his home seat, so he was never a safe bet at the ballot box.
His first week in the job brought the story that stuck. He admitted that he and his secretary had attended Unification Church-related events 37 times in total, and that these were not in the LDP's 2022 survey. He said he told the party in February 2023 and that he could not prepare accurate information by the deadline. He said he has cut ties with the group.
On his first day in the job he also said abolishing the death penalty was not appropriate while heinous crimes continue, though he promised it would be applied carefully. That is a mainstream government line, and where you land depends on how you see capital punishment. It came just as an 88-year-old man was cleared after decades on death row, which is why it drew attention.
The harm check is where the paper trail gets uncomfortable. Bunshun reports that his past posts drew backlash for hawkish content, including a 2022 post suggesting many online leftists might be foreign agents posing as Japanese. In 2023 he posted that everyone who commits online defamation should be arrested, and journalist Shoko Egawa later called his framing of campaign criticism as defamation despicable. Those are his words and her criticism, and we found nothing on trans or LGBTQ+ people either way.
Nothing new on him lately. He lost his seat in the October 2024 election, and Arab News reported that he would be replaced as justice minister once the new Diet session started in November. We could not confirm any office or news since, so treat this card as a snapshot of a short, bumpy stint.
On the good stuff, honestly, the sources we could open gave us no charity work, no courageous stands and no stories of cruelty to staff. That is a thin record, not a clean one. He gets a middling score because there is not enough to cheer or to condemn.