If you thought that the craze over Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba had reached incredible heights when the film adaptation topped the global box office during the October 16th-18th weekend, becoming the fastest film to earn 10 billion yen (within ten days), it would seem that the internationally popular manga and anime franchise has now reached the summit of Japanese government.

During a meeting of the House of Representatives Budget Committee today, November 2nd, 2020, Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan member Kenji Eda took the first question from the opposition. According to a report by Asahi Shimbun, at one point, he told Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who had once invited him to run for the House of Representatives how moved he was to be in his position, even though he was now Suga's political opponent, and that he never could have imagined this day would come. Then, he added: "I imagine you also feel the same way."

Laughter erupted from the hall, but what Suga said next quickly changed the mood. Bringing up the drama a notch, he told his old friend: "Since I am dealing with you, Mr. Eda, I will use 'total concentration breathing' in delivering my response.

As many of our readers will surely recognize, the Prime Minister of Japan had just quoted one of the most representative lines from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba protagonist Tanjiro Kamado.

Suga then pointed to the Prime Minister's seat, and, looking at Eda squarely in the eyes, he said: "I didn't think I would sit in this chair. I thought it would have been the other way around. I invited you to the Liberal Democratic Party with that in mind. I never dreamed that I would be in a position to debate you in the Diet."

When later asked by reporters to comment on the Prime Minster's sudden use of an anime character's lines in the middle of a cabinet meeting, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said: "I know that this 'total concentration breathing' is a breathing method used in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba but I don't know if the Prime Minister himself has read the manga."