At a press conference on May 15, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga was asked for his view of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s remark that the government led by the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan was a “nightmare.” Suga said, “I don’t know exactly whether or not it was a nightmare, but economic conditions were bad with the strong yen and deflation and a prolonged economic downturn.” He added, “On the diplomatic front, it’s true that Japan’s relationship with the U.S. was the worst and some people even said that in a sense ‘Japan [was] nothing.’ ”