Tokyo Governor Inose Naoki today announced that he has informed the head of the municipal assembly of his intention to resign his office. Inose's move comes at the end of weeks of nearly incessant calls for his resignation. Inose accepted and never declared a personal no-interest, no-expiration-date loan of 50 million yen from the family owners of the Tokushukai medical empire, currently under investigation for massive violations of the nation's voting laws in last December's House of Representatives election. (Link)
Inose has, as yet, not been charged with any impropriety in accepting the private loan -- or for having returned the money in haste after the executives of the Tokushukai were rounded up and arrested. A citizens group has filed an official complaint with the Tokyo Prosecutors' Office asking for an investigation into Inose's possibly failing to declare the loan as a political donation. The prosecutors are obliged to look into the case but are unlikely to file charges. With Inose no longer in office it is possible the matter will end there. However, the citizens group can continue to hound Inose for years via the out-of-control Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system of citizens' indictments.
We have seen this movie too many times. An individual bubbles up from out of the murk, offering a chance to shake up the way the country operates. He then makes a mistake, or pushes too hard in trying overturn the Establishment -- and the investigators suddenly arrive. A credulous and craven media complex rushes in, broadcasting or publishing every rumor as fact, as though it were damning evidence of a criminal enterprise -- camouflaging all the while the sources whose assertions would not pass the smell test if their identities were known. The public, confused by the reporting and by inculcated and reinforced biases against rabble rousers, or desiring only that everything in life be quiet and unthreatening, abandons the previous crowd darling. Horie Takafumi, Murakami Yoshiaki, Ozawa Ichiro -- all toppled by nonsense accusations or perjured testimony. Now Inose Naoki, the most assiduous administrator the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has ever had and likely will ever have, joins the list.
That Inose's political position had become untenable became crystal clear when the Democratic Party of Japan came out against him. If there were any party or group that had a philosophical or ethical reason to call a timeout on the scrum against governor, it would be the party whose own term in power was hobbled and then cut short by the obscenely thin charges filed against the secretaries of its leader Ozawa and against Ozawa himself in 2009-11. In what is evidence of the DPJ's total lack of sense of what it stands for, the party jumped into the fray with both feet, with Assembly Member for Fuchu City Koyama Kunihiko turning in an almost hysterical performance at Tuesday's committee meeting. Party Leader Kaieda Banri, who as a protégé of Ozawa should know better, responded to news of Inose's plan to resign by saying, "Those voters who supported Inose are now forced to grasping at huge disappointment. Given that he came under a cloud of doubt, he should have resigned sooner." (Link - J)
The monumental stupidity of Kaeda's statement -- repudiating due process of law and the presumption of innocence -- reinforces the belief that the DPJ is doomed failure as long as he is the head of it.
As to why the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito, which supported Inose's candidature in 2012, should so suddenly turn against him, the answer is two-fold. First, by going after Inose for accepting Tokushukai money the LDP is making a bold bid to have the public forget that the money men in this affair, Tokuda Torao and Tokuda Takeshi -- were both LDP members of the House of Representatives. It is insane to believe that skewering Inose would cover up the LDP's fingerprints on the 50 million yen -- but goodness, it seems to have worked.
The other reason why the LDP wanted Inose gone is, unsurprisingly, money. Not paltry 50 million sums from the Tokudas -- real money. The hundreds of billions of yen that will be spent on Olympics-related construction and events preparations over the next six years. Inose rose to influence though penning books on the horrible waste inflicted by government budgets and the countryside by the construction industry, working at that time hand-in-glove with the LDP. If there is an eminence grise or noire in this drama, it is the members and supporters of the LDP's Road Tribe, who have long sought a means of wreaking vengeance on Inose for having turned the country against them.
With Inose the skeptic and critic out of the way, replaced with a more pliant successor, the Olympics can become the cover story for a thousand sins and abuses.
As for who will run in the by-election to elect a new governor, several names are being bandied about. Media types and Nagata-cho hallways rats have been flogging former Health Minister Masuzoe Yo'ichi as one likely to toss his hat in the ring. The resignation of Higashikokubaru Hideo from the Diet a week ago already initiated a burst of predictions he would be in the race.
The Sankei Shimbun, which has few scruples as to accuracy or plausability, has floated the names of LDP communications director Koike Yuriko (a Shisaku favorite legislator), Abe Shinzo's body double Hagiuda Ko'ichi and dark lord Minister of Education Shimomura Hakubun as potential candidates. (Link - J)
The hapless DPJ, which has a real opportunity to score points against the LDP in the aftermath of the publicly scorned passage of the Special Secrets Protection bill, has no idea whom it might nominate (Why am I not surprised?). Some in the DPJ are reportedly thinking the party should nominate Ren Ho, the House of Councillors member who heretofore has always been the bridesmaid in all big time political post guessing games.
Having the half-Taiwanese, sharp-tongued, whippet smart, media savvy, gorgeous and still youthful Ren Ho as the governor of Tokyo would send a plethora of positive messages to the world. Domestically, however, it would be a recipe for disaster. Prime Minister Abe's most consistently applause line when in conservative circles is an sarcastic echo of Ren Ho's famous question to government-supported supercomputer scientists who worked for 10 years without building an actual machine because they could never guarantee the machine would be #1 in the world. Incredulous that the geeks had consumed hundreds of millions of yen in government subsidies without producing anything, Ren Ho asked the project administrators, "What was wrong with being #2?" [So whenever Abe talks rouses the faithful with a "Let us pledge to be #1 in the world!" he is not riffing on Ezra Vogel; he is mocking Ren Ho.]
If the DPJ was smart, which it is not, it would nominate former Tottori governor and former Minister of Internal Affairs Katayama Yoshiro. The good professor actually knows and cares about administration and has a decent respect for the people's intelligence. Admirable qualities, those.
Why the race for governor matters, of course, is not that Tokyo is the most populous city in the country, that it is host of the national government or even that it will host the Olympics in 2020. It is that Tokyo Metropolitan Government is a fabulously wealthy local government, second only in economic/political significance to the U.S. states of California and Texas.
To sit behind the governor's desk inside the Tocho is a hell of responsibility. It needs a hell of a person.
Showing posts with label Murakami Yoshiaki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Murakami Yoshiaki. Show all posts
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Horie Is Set Free And We Are Not
Internet entrepreneur turned target of prosecutors Horie Takafumi was released from prison yesterday after serving nearly three quarters of his sentence.
That Horie is now apologetic should not be read as his being accepting of his guilt. He is out on parole. He will, for as long as he is out on parole, keep quiet about the case brought against him.
We should not be surprised if Horie remains quiet about the actions of the judicial system even after his parole period ends. Horie fought hard against the law -- refusing to confess, even after his subordinates agreed to testify against him; asserting his innocence on all charges: appealing his guilty verdicts all the way to the Supreme Court.
Incarceration, however, brings a change in values. The primary one -- and it is particularly forgivable in those who never actually did anything wrong -- is the desire to never be incarcerated again. That Horie would never again want to be seen as challenging the status quo powers is understandable.
Rather than dwelling upon the injustice of his incarceration, Horie seems to have found a private liberty in serving as a caregiver to his fellow inmates. Whilst no substitute for real freedom, the right to care for others liberates the spirit, no matter the condition of the body. That Horie has expressed the desire that other inmates might enjoy the privilege of freedom he is enjoying indicates he has understood that behind the bars and the funny clothes, the imprisoned are human beings -- something he would have never known had himself not become one of them.
That Horie may no longer have the fire to fight for a more just judicial system does not let any of us off the hook. With recent reversals of false convictions and the of challenging of the Diet over the constitutionality of elections, it may seem that judges are waking up to their latent power to mete out justice, rather just impose penalties for supposed violations of the law. Unfortunately, none of the blatantly political cases of the 2000s -- the false accounting cases against Horie and his Livedoor subordinates, Murakami Yoshiaki's insider trading conviction (Link) and the cases against Ozawa Ichiro and his secretaries -- has been reversed on appeal (Ozawa managed to avoid all convictions in the cases brought against him by the controversial Committees for the Inquest of the Prosecution)
For all who dwell in this blessed land, doing anything, we must assume we are still at the mercy of the prosecutors, who need only to suddenly be told not to like us any more to go all Lavrenti Beria ("You bring me the man, I'll find you the crime.") on us.
The fight is not over.
Later - For a less morose take on events, see the Wall Street Journal's coverage of Horie's release. (Link)
Fallen tycoon Horie freed from jail(Link)
The Japan Times
by Reiji Yoshida and Kazuaki Nagata, Staff Writers
Takafumi Horie, former president of the Internet firm Livedoor Co. and an entrepreneurial hero for young generations, was paroled Wednesday after spending 21 months behind bars.
In a news conference Wednesday night, an apologetic Horie, who lost 30 kg while incarcerated, expressed his intention to contribute to society by helping ex-prisoners get back on their feet. He also said he wants to reunite with his space rocket project and launch a website to critique how news is reported.
Horie walked out of a prison in Nagano Prefecture at around 7:40 a.m. He soon appeared live in video streamed by Nico Nico Douga, Japan’s leading online video service operator, while he was in a car headed for Tokyo to hold a news conference.
"I thank everybody who took care of me while in prison. Thank you very much. I received parole after serving 74 percent of my prison term," Horie said on Twitter.
In his later press conference, he said, "I caused trouble to many people in society and (Livedoor) shareholders over the Livedoor case and am deeply sorry."
That Horie is now apologetic should not be read as his being accepting of his guilt. He is out on parole. He will, for as long as he is out on parole, keep quiet about the case brought against him.
We should not be surprised if Horie remains quiet about the actions of the judicial system even after his parole period ends. Horie fought hard against the law -- refusing to confess, even after his subordinates agreed to testify against him; asserting his innocence on all charges: appealing his guilty verdicts all the way to the Supreme Court.
Incarceration, however, brings a change in values. The primary one -- and it is particularly forgivable in those who never actually did anything wrong -- is the desire to never be incarcerated again. That Horie would never again want to be seen as challenging the status quo powers is understandable.
Rather than dwelling upon the injustice of his incarceration, Horie seems to have found a private liberty in serving as a caregiver to his fellow inmates. Whilst no substitute for real freedom, the right to care for others liberates the spirit, no matter the condition of the body. That Horie has expressed the desire that other inmates might enjoy the privilege of freedom he is enjoying indicates he has understood that behind the bars and the funny clothes, the imprisoned are human beings -- something he would have never known had himself not become one of them.
That Horie may no longer have the fire to fight for a more just judicial system does not let any of us off the hook. With recent reversals of false convictions and the of challenging of the Diet over the constitutionality of elections, it may seem that judges are waking up to their latent power to mete out justice, rather just impose penalties for supposed violations of the law. Unfortunately, none of the blatantly political cases of the 2000s -- the false accounting cases against Horie and his Livedoor subordinates, Murakami Yoshiaki's insider trading conviction (Link) and the cases against Ozawa Ichiro and his secretaries -- has been reversed on appeal (Ozawa managed to avoid all convictions in the cases brought against him by the controversial Committees for the Inquest of the Prosecution)
For all who dwell in this blessed land, doing anything, we must assume we are still at the mercy of the prosecutors, who need only to suddenly be told not to like us any more to go all Lavrenti Beria ("You bring me the man, I'll find you the crime.") on us.
The fight is not over.
Later - For a less morose take on events, see the Wall Street Journal's coverage of Horie's release. (Link)
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The Age Of Innocence
With the Democratic Party of Japan under the leadership of Noda Yoshihiko rolling back many of the changes the party promised in the 2009 manifesto...
1) the elimination of the child allowance (kodomo teate) and the reinstitution of the child support payment system (jido teate)
2) the proposed restart of construction of the Yamba Dam
3) the raising of the consumption tax without calling an election
4) permitting bureaucrats, in particular the head of the Cabinet Legislative Office, to testify in Diet committee session
...one could come away with the impression that there is not a yen's worth of difference in between living under the rule of the DPJ and living under the rule of the Liberal Democratic Party.
However, there is one major difference in the way the machinery of government functions now and the way it did under the previous regime -- and it is of such vital importance that persons of conscience must pray that some way, somehow, the DPJ wins back the support of the voters in the months ahead:
Under the DPJ, the organs of the law have not been used to capriciously imprison those who buck the system.
Under the LDP, the prosecutors office sent former Livedoor president Horie Takafumi to prison on charges that, if they had been applied to Japan's banking community, would have sent hundreds, if not thousands, of bank executives to prison. The confessions that were the sole pieces of evidence of Horie's complicity in misstating the value of Livedoor assets were extracted from his subordinates by placing them in solitary confinement in unheated cells during one of the coldest winters in the last half-century and threatening them with lengthy prison sentences should they not identify their employer as a co-conspirator.
The prosecutors office sent activist investor Murakami Yoshiaki to prison based solely on a confession police tricked a naive Murakami into making. Livedoor executives, who testified against each other in their own trials, were united in stating that Murakami was innocent.
Just when it seemed predestined that Ozawa Ichiro was going to be prime minister of Japan after the next House of Representatives election, the prosecutors moved in on Ozawa Ichiro political secretary Okubo Takanori for campaign funding violations, ostensibly for knowingly accepting donations from a private organization founded and funded by a mid-sized construction company for the purpose of evading campaign finance rules. The Okubo arrest meant Ozawa had to resign as DPJ leader, robbing him of his rightful chance to become PM. He was able to engineer the election of his ally/puppet Hatoyama Yukio as his successor but this was a poor substitute for actually winning the top prize.
Prosecutors used the Okubo arrest as a pretext for seizing the records of Ozawa and his funding organization, the Rikuzankai. They then proceeded to go on a fishing expedition, trolling through the records for something, anything to send Ozawa to prison.
What they found was a mis-recording in the 2004, 2005 and 2007 (but strangely, not the 2006) Rikuzankai accounts of a personal loan Ozawa extended to the organization. The loaned sum was used as collateral (tampo) for a bank loan (in Japan, unless you borrow from the consumer finance companies, you can only borrow money if you can prove you can pay the full amount of the loan back, immediately). The recording mistakes were such that if that were they found in the accounts of any other politician, they would have earned the perpetrators a stern verbal warning. Instead member of the House of Representatives and former Ozawa secretary Ishikawa Tomohiro and Ozawa secretary Ikeda Mitsutomo were arrested and convicted of campaign finance violations.
With Ozawa as the party with fiduciary responsibility in the case, his name and seal appearing on the first page of the account books, the prosecutors could certainly have gone after him next. However, somehow in the interim, something has dulled the heretofore zealous prosecutors office. It certainly had the right target: the most unpopular, least-trusted politician in the country; a man who behaves like a complete jerk toward even his ostensible allies; a person disappears from public view, only to reappear wearing a surgical mask, whenever things heat up; and a man with a seemingly inexhaustible, to borrow an image from Okumura Jun, ATM located in his home.
Nevertheless, the prosecutors refused to indict Ozawa on anything. It was left up to the never-say-die mugwumps of the "The Association of Those Seeking the Truth" (Shinjitsu o motomeru kai) to force the courts into appointing a trio of lawyers from the Tokyo #2 Bar Association (and boy, did it take a long time to find three lawyers willing to sacrifice their time, potential income and reputations on the case) to file an indictment of Ozawa not on the provable charge of fiduciary negligence but on unprovable charges of conspiracy to file falsified campaign documents -- unprovable because the sole piece of evidence was a confession forced from Ishikawa that he had told Ozawa about the misleading records, evidence that the judge in Ishikawa's trial threw out as a product of prosecutorial misconduct.
That the judge in the Ozawa case would also throw out the confession was nearly guaranteed (judges in Japanese courts looooovvvve precedent). He did indeed throw it out, pretty much ending the chances of a guilty verdict (the judge's verdict will be delivered on April 26).
Anyway, since the election of a DPJ-led government, we have seen nothing of the "the nail that sticks up will be hammered down" miscarriages of justice of the kind that sent Horie and Murakami and may still send Okubo, Ishikawa and Ikeda to prison. With the DPJ in power it is the nose-thumbers, the outcasts and the misfits (and the occasional mostly harmless loony) who have control of the asylum.
That is the way it should have been years ago. For this blessed land's sake, that is the way it should remain.
1) the elimination of the child allowance (kodomo teate) and the reinstitution of the child support payment system (jido teate)
2) the proposed restart of construction of the Yamba Dam
3) the raising of the consumption tax without calling an election
4) permitting bureaucrats, in particular the head of the Cabinet Legislative Office, to testify in Diet committee session
...one could come away with the impression that there is not a yen's worth of difference in between living under the rule of the DPJ and living under the rule of the Liberal Democratic Party.
However, there is one major difference in the way the machinery of government functions now and the way it did under the previous regime -- and it is of such vital importance that persons of conscience must pray that some way, somehow, the DPJ wins back the support of the voters in the months ahead:
Under the DPJ, the organs of the law have not been used to capriciously imprison those who buck the system.
Under the LDP, the prosecutors office sent former Livedoor president Horie Takafumi to prison on charges that, if they had been applied to Japan's banking community, would have sent hundreds, if not thousands, of bank executives to prison. The confessions that were the sole pieces of evidence of Horie's complicity in misstating the value of Livedoor assets were extracted from his subordinates by placing them in solitary confinement in unheated cells during one of the coldest winters in the last half-century and threatening them with lengthy prison sentences should they not identify their employer as a co-conspirator.
The prosecutors office sent activist investor Murakami Yoshiaki to prison based solely on a confession police tricked a naive Murakami into making. Livedoor executives, who testified against each other in their own trials, were united in stating that Murakami was innocent.
Just when it seemed predestined that Ozawa Ichiro was going to be prime minister of Japan after the next House of Representatives election, the prosecutors moved in on Ozawa Ichiro political secretary Okubo Takanori for campaign funding violations, ostensibly for knowingly accepting donations from a private organization founded and funded by a mid-sized construction company for the purpose of evading campaign finance rules. The Okubo arrest meant Ozawa had to resign as DPJ leader, robbing him of his rightful chance to become PM. He was able to engineer the election of his ally/puppet Hatoyama Yukio as his successor but this was a poor substitute for actually winning the top prize.
Prosecutors used the Okubo arrest as a pretext for seizing the records of Ozawa and his funding organization, the Rikuzankai. They then proceeded to go on a fishing expedition, trolling through the records for something, anything to send Ozawa to prison.
What they found was a mis-recording in the 2004, 2005 and 2007 (but strangely, not the 2006) Rikuzankai accounts of a personal loan Ozawa extended to the organization. The loaned sum was used as collateral (tampo) for a bank loan (in Japan, unless you borrow from the consumer finance companies, you can only borrow money if you can prove you can pay the full amount of the loan back, immediately). The recording mistakes were such that if that were they found in the accounts of any other politician, they would have earned the perpetrators a stern verbal warning. Instead member of the House of Representatives and former Ozawa secretary Ishikawa Tomohiro and Ozawa secretary Ikeda Mitsutomo were arrested and convicted of campaign finance violations.
With Ozawa as the party with fiduciary responsibility in the case, his name and seal appearing on the first page of the account books, the prosecutors could certainly have gone after him next. However, somehow in the interim, something has dulled the heretofore zealous prosecutors office. It certainly had the right target: the most unpopular, least-trusted politician in the country; a man who behaves like a complete jerk toward even his ostensible allies; a person disappears from public view, only to reappear wearing a surgical mask, whenever things heat up; and a man with a seemingly inexhaustible, to borrow an image from Okumura Jun, ATM located in his home.
Nevertheless, the prosecutors refused to indict Ozawa on anything. It was left up to the never-say-die mugwumps of the "The Association of Those Seeking the Truth" (Shinjitsu o motomeru kai) to force the courts into appointing a trio of lawyers from the Tokyo #2 Bar Association (and boy, did it take a long time to find three lawyers willing to sacrifice their time, potential income and reputations on the case) to file an indictment of Ozawa not on the provable charge of fiduciary negligence but on unprovable charges of conspiracy to file falsified campaign documents -- unprovable because the sole piece of evidence was a confession forced from Ishikawa that he had told Ozawa about the misleading records, evidence that the judge in Ishikawa's trial threw out as a product of prosecutorial misconduct.
That the judge in the Ozawa case would also throw out the confession was nearly guaranteed (judges in Japanese courts looooovvvve precedent). He did indeed throw it out, pretty much ending the chances of a guilty verdict (the judge's verdict will be delivered on April 26).
Anyway, since the election of a DPJ-led government, we have seen nothing of the "the nail that sticks up will be hammered down" miscarriages of justice of the kind that sent Horie and Murakami and may still send Okubo, Ishikawa and Ikeda to prison. With the DPJ in power it is the nose-thumbers, the outcasts and the misfits (and the occasional mostly harmless loony) who have control of the asylum.
That is the way it should have been years ago. For this blessed land's sake, that is the way it should remain.
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