The Dark Side Of the Moon

"The Association of Those Seeking the Truth" (Shinjitsu o Motomeru Kai).

No one seems want to say much about who they are -- or if there is even a "they" there.

On February 5, the Asahi Shimbun printed the most extensive description of them so far:

Gyōseishoshi ya motoshinbunkishara de tsukuru Tōkyō no shimin dantai...

"A citizen's group of the Tokyo Metropolitan District composed of administrative scriveners, former journalists and the like..."

That's it.

That is all we know about the citizen's organization that filed the first request last year for an investigation of the relationship between the Rikuzankai and the Nishimatsu Construction Company...and that is filing a request to have a citizen's inquest into the decision by the Public Prosecutor's Office to not indict Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ozawa Ichiro over the misleading accounting of a loan Ozawa extended to the Rikuzankai, an accounting sleight of hand that has led to the indictments of three of Ozawa's former secretaries.

An organization that has plunged Japan into political crisis twice in the last ten months and is set to do so again, taking advantage of legal reforms whose intent had been to give citizens the ability to prod prosecutors into taking on the politically powerful.

Who are these activists seeking truth on the behalf of the citizens from out of the shadows? Cat's paws for the Liberal Democratic Party, trying to undo the via the Prosecutors Office what cannot be undone at the ballot box? A front for regressive elements of the bureaucracy, attacking the government throught the Trojan Horse of a concerned citizenry, forcing prosecutors into investigations without merit?

Would you not feel better if the Shinjitsu o Motomeru Kai had a website? A published interview of one of its main members? A press conference?

Until such time as it turns out to be a handful of crochety, gray-haired former Waseda university graduates with too much time on their hands, permit me to feel scared out of my mind.

Kudos to Isabel Reynolds for bringing this group to world's attention.

Later - Many thanks to reader WA for pointing out the spelling and word usage errors.