TOKYO, March 18, 2023—Katsuhiko Tokita, 77, served as the CEO of Tokai Co., a publicly traded company, for more than 10 years after retiring as the head of the Small and Medium-size Enterprise (SME) Agency, one of top government bureaucrats that supposedly set the nation’s course. He liked women, good sake and wine (probably), theater and sumo, among numerous trades of pleasure.
After retiring as the director-general of the SME Agency, in a typical path laid for bureaucrats, Tokita was appointed in 1999 as a director of the now-defunct Japan Petroleum public corporation, a Ministry of Economy Trade Industry arm, which was consolidated into Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security Corporation (JOGMEC), a governmental entity, in 2014. In 2002, he joined a regional gas utility,Tokai as an advisor, the post that many Japanese companies reserve for retired bureaucrats to grease connections with the government, in its case with METI that administers oil and gas business. In 2003, Tokita became an executive VP, and in 2005, CEO.
Tokita must have demonstrated his self-proclaimed business acumen and ambitions during those years, convincing the stuffy Tokai board that he can help the gas company to widen its business areas further into cable television, telecom, housing, insurance and others. Tokai’s share price, which had been meandering low, doubled and tripled.
Importing the entertainment culture he was given by businesses during his times as the head of the SME Agency to Tokai, he treated himself and a small group of people, including his relatives, to naked coed hot bath with female companions at the company’s resort facility in Tateshina, Nagano Prefecture, kabuki theater, sumo tournament viewing and many other treats – all with Tokai’s travel and entertainment expenses, according to an online version of a Japanese magazine, President, Dec. 20, 2022. In 6-1/2 years, Tokita engaged in as many as 253 entertainment experiences, the magazine said.
Tokita was demoted to a Tokai director in September 2022 but remains on the Tokai board as the only director.
Eijiro Katsu, 72, CEO of a second-tier telecom carrier, Internet Initiative Japan and a former vice administrative finance minister, was implicated in the 1998 ‘No-pan (no panty) shabu-shabu (hot pot stew) Incident’.
Katsu was exonerated from the incident and served in the No. 2 Ministry of Finance post for an unusually long two years, recommending successfully raising the consumption tax rate to the current 10 percent from 5 percent and introducing the My Number’ national taxpayer ID card system by prevailing over the then prime minister Yoshihiko Noda.
Katsu has been heading IIJ for as long as 10 years and, like Tokita, is known as a domineering figure among IIJ employees. He has picked a former senior bureaucrat of the Ministry of Communications as IIJ executive vice president, effectively surrounding him with ex-bureaucrats.
Katsu services as auditor of Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, Japan’s largest print daily, and a member of the ANA Holdings management advisory committee.
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