TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio will not attend the award ceremony for the Order of Culture recipients scheduled for Wednesday due to an overseas trip.

It will be only the second time since the start of Japan’s Heisei era in 1989 that a prime minister has not attended the ceremony at the Imperial Palace.

Usually, the Emperor awards the order to recipients while the prime minister hands them the certificates for decoration.

The Order of Culture for fiscal 2021 will be awarded to nine people, including former baseball superstar Shigeo Nagashima, 85.

Kishida is scheduled to attend some sessions of a two-day summit meeting from Monday of the 26th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, who is the first acting prime minister, will attend the award ceremony on Kishida’s behalf.

Since records began in 1966, only three prime ministers have skipped the award ceremony–Kakuei Tanaka in 1974, Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1984 and Yoshihiko Noda in 2011. Noda was also on an overseas trip.