TOKYO, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Japan's newly appointed Internal Affairs Minister Sanae Takaichi and two other ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) lawmakers were found to appear in photographs with a far-right figure, local media reported.
According to Kyodo News Agency, Takaichi was pictured posing alongside Kazunari Yamada, a 52-year-old leader of the National Socialist Japanese Workers Party (NSJAP).
The picture, showing the two people stood smiling in front of a Japanese flag, was appeared on the NSJAP's website alongside blog postings praising Adolf Hitler and the Sept. 11 attacks, which is now deleted.
The other photograph showed Yamada standing alongside Tomomi Inada, another close Abe ally who was given the powerful job of LDP policy chief.
According to the photo captions, Yamada met the two senior politicians in 2011 as he visited their offices "for talks." But both Takaichi and Inada argued that they were not aware he was the leader of a rightist group.
"He (Yamada) visited Takaichi at the Diet members' office building as an assistant to a magazine interviewer and asked her to be in a photograph with him," Takaichi's office said.
The group's website also posted a photograph of Yamada posing with another LDP lawmaker, Shoji Nishida.
Though Takaichi and Inada moved to distance themselves from the neo-Nazi leader after the photographs emerged, it is generally known the two women figures are right-wing lawmakers who shares Abe's attitudes on history and whose records suggest that, on certain issues, they may stand even further to the right.
Both Takaichi and Inada have paid frequent visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine that honors Japan's war dead, including 14 convicted Class-A war criminals.
After taking the current position last week, Inada said immediately that the Kono Statement should be revised.
The Kono Statement was made in 1993 by then-Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, and acknowledges the involvement of the Japanese military in the recruitment of the system of sexual slavery.
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