BBC News:
Four cabinet ministers in Japan quit on Thursday over a fundraising scandal involving the ruling party’s most powerful faction.
More than 500m yen (£2.8m; $3.4m) is alleged to have ended up in slush funds over a five-year period through 2022.
Tokyo prosecutors have also launched a corruption probe, Nikkei reported.
It is the latest blow to Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s increasingly unpopular government, whose approval ratings have plunged.
Public support for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power almost continuously since 1955, fell below 30% for the first time since 2012, an NHK survey on Tuesday showed.
Voters have been angered by inflation, as well as Mr Kishida’s handling of earlier scandals.
Chief Cabinet Secretary and top government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno, often seen as Mr Kishida’s right-hand man and the face of his government, was the most prominent of the four ministers. Economy and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, Internal Affairs Minister Junji Suzuki and Agriculture Minister Ichiro Miyashita also stepped down on Thursday.
Their replacements are expected to be announced by the end of the day.
In addition, five senior vice ministers and a parliamentary vice minister from the same faction, formerly led by the late PM Shinzo Abe, also quit.
The mass resignations now leave the LDP in the unusual situation of having no representatives from its largest and most powerful faction within the cabinet.
Mr Kishida, who took office in October 2021, said on Wednesday that he would deal with the allegations “head-on”.
