Embattled Japan PM faces ethics committee to save popularity and budget
Fumio Kishida will on Thursday become the first sitting Japanese prime minister to appear before a parliamentary ethics committee, as he seeks to draw a line under a funding scandal that has hurt his popularity and may delay next year's budget.
Kishida's attendance follows weeks of wrangling between the opposition and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) over the technicalities of how to hold the hearings, which will look into how some LDP factions failed to report tens of millions of yen from fundraising parties.