{"id":11079,"date":"2019-11-14T10:54:15","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T01:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/nov\/14\/japans-pm-cancels-cherry-blossom-parties-after-outcry-over-florid-spending"},"modified":"2019-11-14T10:54:15","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T01:54:15","slug":"japans-pm-cancels-cherry-blossom-party-after-outcry-over-florid-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=11079","title":{"rendered":"Japan&#8217;s PM cancels cherry blossom party after outcry over florid spending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Taxpayer-funded festivities are meant to honour praiseworthy citizens but critics say they have turned into an exercise in political patronage<\/p>\n<p>In a bid to contain a blossoming scandal over lavish flower-viewing parties, Japan\u2019s prime minister has cancelled next year\u2019s annual taxpayer-funded festivity.<\/p>\n<p>Shinzo Abe\u2019s move to shut down the 2020 party comes after criticism that the cost of the cherry blossom event had spiralled and has been misused for political purposes.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/nov\/14\/japans-pm-cancels-cherry-blossom-parties-after-outcry-over-florid-spending\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taxpayer-funded festivities are meant to honour praiseworthy citizens but critics say they have turned into an exercise in political patronageIn a bid to contain a blossoming scandal over lavish flower-viewing parties, Japan\u2019s prime minister has cancel&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":688,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,88,638,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-japan","category-shinzo-abe","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/688"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11080,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11079\/revisions\/11080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}