On January 15, 2020, Environment Minister Koizumi Shinjirō announced that he would take about two weeks of paternity leave in total over the three months after the birth of his first child. He said: Seido dake de naku, kūki mo kaete ikanakereba ikenai. Not only the system but also the air has to change.
He would take the leave flexibly, he said, on condition that official duties came first. J-Cast quoted an online critic who wrote that a minister’s pay comes from taxes and that his leave was different from that of a company employee.