TOKYO, March 4, 2021—There’s no need trying to find old black and white Japanese films to watch the shady transactions between samurai and merchants on Netflix or Amazon Prime: The scene was remade on March 3 – in 4K precision full-color television live! – in parliament sessions.
Rich merchants bribing samurai to gain favors was as ubiquitous as commoners presenting small gifts to landlords and relatives during the 270 year Edo period through 1840, though theTokugawa shogunate discouraged and dissuaded over time – unsuccessfully.
‘Echigoya (a highly successful Edo period garment and loan merchant)! You also are a rascal,’ so would growl a samurai domain lord on a detachment room tatami floor of a posh restaurant as he opens a box of sweets with a grin. He would examine it to make sure that what’s hidden under the top tier of the gift box he was presented are glittering fresh gold coins tightly squeezed in. The domain lord would exemp the merchant from a cobwebt of red tape, relax strict business zoning rules for store expansion, and other accommodative measures.
On the Diet (parliament) floor March 4, the modern transactions among prime minister Yoshihide Suga, his spokesperson, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC) minister and the ministry’s bureaucrats, his son, Seigo, who had worked as Suga’s secretary and currently is employed by Tohoku Shinsha Film Corp. production of Tokyo. The former national telecom, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. CEO and top officials also were involved in separate yet related transactions.
Nitty-gritty details aside, the big picture is the remake of the old samurai films: The domain lord (the MIC senior officials on behalf of prime minister Suga and the MIC minister) and spokeswoman Makiko Yamada (resigned in response to the scandal) – politicians and bureacrats – were invited in several ooccasions October-December 2020 to expensive dinners at an exclusive Tokyo restaurant and other places by Suga’s son and TFC executives (merchants), and given gifts and tax coupons (though probably no gold and silver coins stashed underneath the gifts). NTT CEO Jun Sawada and other NTT officials also invited MIC executives to posh dinner over the past few years, including 2020 summer.
TFC said in a Feb. 26 statement that its CEO had resigned and it relieved the executives involved and transferred Suga’s son to the Personnel Department – a pat on the shoulder reprimand.
By law, public servants are banned accepting mealsand grafts exceeding $90 per time.
At stake: Preferential licensing and deregulations for 5G radio signal spectrums to deliver next-gen broadcasting and telecom services, as well as numerous other domestic and cross-border communications services.
Suga’s son, reportedly 40 years old, had joined TFC afer working as his father’s secretary while Suga was MICminister.
Starting spring 2021, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI (au), Yahoo (Softbank), and Rakuten would revise smart phone subscriber data services, some of them involving lower fees, at Suga’s executive ‘order’ issued last year. They all need MIC approval for revising fees that they charge consumers and businesses, so obtaining information about government policies and thinking – especially of Suga, who servied as MIC minister earlier – is vital.
TFC, though it’s a content producer, has a high stake in government telecom and broadcasting policy for its broadcasting channels for Japanese chess and Go games, TV drams, foreign films and others broadcast via its Start Channel, now being transmitted over Broadcast Satellite (BS) 4K technology that requires high-speed spectrum.
Those ‘merchants’ all need Shogun and domain lord patronage for their businesses. It’s same act having been played for decades and centuries amost since the beginning of the Edo period in the early 1600s. During Japan’s go-go era of the 1970s to 1980s, bureaucrats were pampered even more profusely: Top officials of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Posts and Telecom (and probably other ministries) were given special accounts by commercial banks and securities companies at traditional Japanese restaurants and Ginza bars. They would invite their subordinates to those places, some of them nightly, and the restaurants would send bills to the banks and brokerages.
In the 1990s, the Ministry of Finance was rocked by a major scandal known as the ‘No Pan Shabu-shabu’ (beef stew served by waitresses wearing no underwear). Senior and mid-level bureaucrats, including some I used to know, were reprimanded. They were invited by commercial banks and brokerages to the occasions, costing them far more than what the current bureaucrats were given.
But unlike now – when Japan has become far poorer than back then – senior bureaucrats below top levels have to go home by public transportation unless they are given limo treats or tax coupons.
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