Mizuho no Kuni Elementary School (瑞穂の國記念小學院, Mizuho no Kuni Kinenshōgakuin) was going to be a private elementary school to be opened in Toyonaka City,

Osaka Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture ...

. Its backing corporation has been described as ″ultra-nationalist″.

Akie Abe Akie Abe (, ''Abe Akie''; née Matsuzaki; born 10 June 1962) is a Japanese radio DJ and the widow of Shinzo Abe, who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. Early life Abe was born . She is from a wea ...

, wife of prime minister

Shinzō Abe Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍晋三, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 20 ...

, was honorary principal but resigned after it was revealed that the school had bought land from the government at only 14% of its real value.

Background

On October 31, 2014,

Moritomo Gakuen Moritomo Gakuen (学校法人森友学園, ''Gakkō hōjin Moritomo Gakuen'') is a Japanese private school operator, most known for its involvement in a 2017 political scandal implicating former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and his wife, Akie Ab ...

, a school corporation, applied to the Osaka prefecture for the establishment of an elementary school.http://kinki.mof.go.jp/content/000115032.pdf The school is about 8700 square meters, with a gymnasium and a three-storey building whose architecture was in meant to evocate the 1701 Shizutani School. The request was accepted on January 27, 2015. The school corporation, Moritomo Gakuen, bases its education on the 1890

Imperial Rescript on Education The , or IRE for short, was signed by Emperor Meiji of Japan on 30 October 1890 to articulate government policy on the guiding principles of education on the Empire of Japan. The 315 character document was read aloud at all important school events, ...

. Its president, , was in the past the Osaka branch leader of

Nippon Kaigi The Right side up ...

, an ultra-conservative political lobby group that includes Shinzō Abe and his wife in its membership as well as more than a dozen members of the

Japanese Cabinet The is the chief executive body of the government of Japan. It consists of the prime minister, who is appointed by the emperor after being designated by the National Diet, and up to nineteen other members, called Ministers of State. The prime ...

. It has been operating a kindergarten called Tsukamoto Yōchien since 1950, where children from three to five are required to sing the

Kimigayo is the national anthem of Japan. The lyrics are from a ' poem written by an unnamed author in the Heian period (794–1185), and the current melody was chosen in 1880, replacing an unpopular melody composed by John William Fenton eleven years e ...

every day. A sport event of the kindergarten had pupils with arms raised recitate a text calling

to do his best, calling Japan to not ″lose″ to other countries in territorial disputes, denouncing Korea and China for giving a bad image to Japan, calling for lies not to be taught in schoolbooks, and celebrating the

2015 Japanese military legislation In 2015, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party promoted legislation, passed on 19 September 2015, despite some public opposition, to allow the country's military to participate in foreign conflicts, overtur ...

. When raising funds for the school, Moritomo first called the school "Shinzō Abe Memorial Elementary School", but Abe objected to the use of his name, so the school was named ''Mizuho no Kuni'' (″land of fruitful rice ears″, an old name for Japan) instead. The school song was to be ″Aa, seishun no mune no chi wa″, theme of an eponymous 1964 movie by .

Controversy

In February 2017, Japanese media revealed that the school had bought its land for ¥134 million, which is only 14% of what the land's estimated value. An adjacent piece of land of similar size was sold at the same time for ¥1.423 billion, also by the government. It has been learned that the government is set to buy back the land, citing that since the school operator gave up on opening the school on March 10.{{cite news, url=https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170701/p2a/00m/0na/028000c, title=Gov't to buy back land sold to scandal-hit Moritomo Gakuen, date=1 July 2017, publisher=, newspaper=Mainichi Daily News

References

Private schools in Japan Education in Osaka Prefecture Toyonaka, Osaka 2017 in Japan