Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi refused to answer direct parliamentary questioning Monday over Sanae Token (SANAE), a memecoin issued in her name that briefly reached a market cap of ¥4.2bn ($28mn) before collapsing, asking the budget committee to accept a written statement from her secretary in lieu of testimony.
Japan's PM Refuses To Answer Parliament on Memecoin Bearing Her Name
22 June 2026 - 07:56 CEST
By Oihyun Kim
Takaichi reiterated that neither she nor her office had ever approved the issuance or trading of a crypto asset, but declined to confirm whether her chief publicly-funded secretary, Takeshi Kinoshita, had joined the LINE messaging group used to coordinate the project.
She also pledged to submit the sole proposal letter her office received from the token's operator, which she said contains no reference to crypto assets.
'A refusal to answer'
"You have not answered the questions. This is a refusal to answer," opposition lawmaker Yuichi Goto told the committee, adding a request that Kinoshita appear as a witness; the matter was referred for steering committee deliberation.
Denial, audio, then the FSA
Takaichi, who led the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to a landslide victory in February's general election and commands a strong personal following, became the target of a memecoin shortly after taking office.
Sanae Token debuted on the Solana blockchain on 25 Feb, issued by NoBorder DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization led by entrepreneur Yuji Mizoguchi. Her 2 Mar denial on X triggered a collapse to roughly ¥20mn ($130k) in market cap.
Weekly Bunshun, an investigative outlet, then published audio of Kinoshita describing the project favourably, contradicting the office's position.
Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) is investigating NoBorder DAO for suspected violations of the Payment Services Act. Under Japanese law, selling or exchanging crypto assets requires registration as a licensed operator; NoBorder DAO was not among the FSA's registered crypto asset exchange providers.
