TOKYO, June 22—As a journalist, I have interviewed hundreds of Japanese government officials, from just-off graduates to very top bureaucrats, observing that somewhere in their mid-careers, most of them morph into robot-like characters that miss humanity – Kozo Iizuka, a former top Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry official who killed a young mother and her daughter on a Tokyo street with his Prius – represents the arrogant, mentally distorted, regulations-obsessed bunch.
Akin to Japanese bureaucrats in terms of their psyche and behaviors may be Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party cadres, not surpring given that Japan has followed the Chinese footsteps for politics abd administration for many centuries. That aside, Japanese bureaucrats cut a unique mold among global bureaucrats, even including Russian, in that their top priority is the sustanability of their organizations, not their personal objectives or nation-state.
(That was an integral part of the reason behind Japan’s decision to go to World War II: The Hideki Tojo’s Imperial Army prevailed over not only Isoroku Yamamoto’s Navy but also other government offices back in the early 1940s thanks to the Army’s organizational power.)
At the June 21, 2021 court hearing, the 90-year-old Iizuka was asked by Takuya Matsunaga, the plaintiff and the husband whose was died in the fatal accident, that his previous hearing testimonies did not match what was recorded by the in-board drive recorder of Iizuka’s Prius car. Iizuka replied, ‘Uh, my descriptions may not have been accurate but the basic lines were as they were,’ according to the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper’s web edition June 21.
‘Electronic control (systems of automobiles) sometimes develop defects, and as we often experience, they resume normal when rebooted. I believe that my case is one of those,’ Iizuka
emphasized in denying that he stepped on the gas pedal to drive his Prius at a dangerous speed and killed the two.
Police-submitted evidence showed the vehicle did not develop defects but Iizuka said the police evidence was ‘mostly inaccurate’ and that he stepped on the brake, not the gas pedal. When he was asked to confirm that during hospitalization he told his son that he stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake, Iizuka replied, ‘I don’t remember,’ a very S.O.P. that bureaucrats use in Diet (parliament) interpellation. He then said that as the Prius gained speed, he saw the gas pedal to see what’s wrong, then stepped on the brake. He also said his brain was not functioning well but that his physical functions were sound.
Iizuka was asked by plaintiff lawyers whether he had human emotions and whether he would take responsibility, but he suggested that he would appeal his case if found guilty, as well as that his family is ‘very concerned’ about him and that he hoped that the accident won’t affect his family members.
Iizuka left the courtroom without a bow and words of apology, according to the newspaper.
Mr. Masunaga, the plaintiff, later told a news conference that he submitted photos of his wife and daughter to the court and asked Iizuka whether be had a chance to see the photos. Iizuka replied, according to Matsunaga, that he saw the photo of the daughter at Christmas time. Matsunaga castigated Iizuka that there was no such photo submitted to the court.
Iizuka represents Japanese bureaucrats, especially so-called career bureaucrats, in handling day to day work of issuing regulations and administering law to the private-sector. His is the method that Nobuhisa Sagawa, a Ministry of Finance bureaucrat who lost his job as the DG of the Treasury Bureau, and numerous – in fact most other – senior bureaucrats employed in fielding questions in the Diet and from the media, in other words, never admit, make up stories, and never apologize.
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Insight Into the Future