Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga s announcement on April 22 that Japan will aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 46 percent is noteworthy not just for the ambitious target but also for the unusual manner in which the figure was decided.
Suga himself played a key role in arriving at the figure, which Japan aims to achieve by 2030, sources said.
The 46-percent figure he announced to other world leaders participating in the April 22 online climate change summit had not been decided on even as of April 21, according to government sources.
Bureaucrats from different ministries calculated how much reduction was possible in various sectors, including energy that releases large volumes of greenhouse gases.
Eggs produced by Akita Foods Co. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
The farm ministry has disciplined six bureaucrats who were wined and dined by an egg industry official involved in a separate bribery scandal that has ensnared a former agriculture minister.
Masaaki Edamoto, the top career bureaucrat in the ministry, was among the six who received pay cuts or warnings.
On two separate occasions, the bureaucrats had dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Tokyo that cost more than 20,000 yen ($190) each. Yoshiki Akita, the former head of Akita Foods Co., an egg producer based in Hiroshima Prefecture, picked up the tabs each time.