Is former Japanese Minister Heizo Takenaka an ethnic Korean with connections to the Chinese Communist Party? No, that's not true: According to Heizo Takenaka's family tree, he is of full Japanese descent, not Korean. Takenaka's political career and education also oppose CCP beliefs and values as he was a hawkish orthodox economist who privatized the Japanese postal service and adopted neoliberal economic reforms under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The claim appeared on TikTok (archived here) on January 13, 2024. In the video, Tetsunobu Ishihama, the founder of a right-wing civil defense organization called the Japan Defense Force (archived here), explains that former Japanese Minister of Communications and Internal Affairs Heizo Takenaka is collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to make the Japanese islands from Hokkaido down to the Aichi Prefecture a special administrative region of China. The caption, which summarizes the basic narrative of the video, reads (translated from Japanese to English by Lead Stories staff):
This is how Osaka's land is getting bought up by China. We won't forgive the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Innovation Party.
At the 01:32 mark, Ishihama calls Takenaka "Lee Heizo," claiming that he's actually of Korean descent (translated from Japanese to English by Lead Stories staff):
When he [Heizo Takenaka] was in Wakayama, he was called 'Lee Heizo' [...] He ordered and planned for Japan to become a special administrative region of China by creating the Japan Innovation Party
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Jan 18 02:14:00 2024 UTC)
When searching "Lee Heizo" on Google (archived here), the name does not come up in any direct result, nor does any proof that Heizo Takenaka is Korean. The first few results are forums on Chiebukuro (archived here), a Japanese question-and-answer forum, asking if it's true that Heizo Takenaka's real name is Heizo Lee. Replies in the forum ranged from people saying he's Japanese to people speculating whether he's either of Korean descent or an American passport holder. When looking at Takenaka's family tree (archived here), there are no traces of Korean descent or permanent American migration. Takenaka's father, Nazo Takenaka, was born into a family that crafted traditional Japanese shoes called geta. Takenaka went to the United States for academic research in economics at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania in 1981 (archived here), but he never relocated to the US and opted instead to return to Tokyo to become a civil servant.
Regarding Takenaka's political career, he was also appointed Minister of Finance under Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's administration (archived here) and privatized Japan's national postal service (archived here), as well as advocated for further deregulation, proposing to treat R&D investments in the same manner as capital investments (archived here). This approach to economics is closer to the American neoliberal model (archived here) rather than China's current socialist market economy (archived here), making it impossible for Takenaka to sympathize with the CCP or conjure a plan to make Japan a SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China.
