Author: Toshio Aritake

TOKYO, July 3, 2021—As I Otani belted its 30th homer July 3, 2021, as a Japanese lone wolf ballplayer in the United States, I was drawned to a monthly periodical sent from a Buddhist temple. The cover was splashed by a photo of priests with an elderly one and his wife standing on the right side of the front row and a younger one and his wife on the other side of the same row. The junior priests and parish seniors stood behind. The gathering, according to the periodical, was the ceremony to report to the Buddha of the new bishop – one who stood next to the senior priest.
The senior priest was to retire and leave the temple 20 years ago or so according to the temple’s tradition but he dug in his heels and stayed on to date as the kingmaker forcing out at least two priests dispatched from the temple’s Kyoto head temple. He survived by building a bureaucracy structure demoting younger priests who refused to be yeomen and retaining those that do not threaten him. The old priest’s management policy is supported by senior parishioners who represent thousands of parishioners. This is a micro-cosmos of Japanese politicians and bureaucrats and gaining traction at other religious sects, notably Sokagakkai, which is Japan’s largest religious grouping and tied to the political party Komeito.

###

TOKYO, July 1, 2021—AkiTakada City in the western profecture of Hiroshima, an idyllic and rapidly aging farming municipality that was the domicil of one of famous samurai warlords centuries ago, publicly recruited candidates for a deputy mayor in early 2021. The reaction was swift and overwhelming, drawing as many as 4,115 applicants and far more than the city office had anticipated – and reflecting the Japanese people’s aspirations to enter bureaucracy that offers stability and security to public servants.

The city has barely 29,000 residents and 376 officials employed by the city office (2016 data). Like most other Japanese municipalities, it suffers a rapid population aging and decrease. Mayor Shinji Ishimaru, the 38-year-old former MUFJ bank analyst, won his seat in the July 2020 mayoral election.

Unshackled by tradition, Ishimaru in January 2021 publicly recruited a deputy mayor, one of two deputy mayor posts which was vacated, assigning EN Japan, a private recruiting agency, to accept applications, according to city announcements and media reports. The incumbent deputy mayor was sent from the prefecture office.

The post, according to EN Japan website, offers a humble 12,138,000 yen (approximately $110,000) a year and the is a 4-year, renewable job. It probably comes with a lot of perks, so the winner don’t have to di into the sum for living.

In March, the cityy assembly voted down the new deputy mayor candidate, a 34-year-old woman, Natsuki Shinobori, working for a nonprofit called RCF of Tokyo. Hints of nepotism lurk in Ishimaru’s pick of the woman. Putting that aside, the fact that as many as 4,100 people’s applications ultimately were accepted for consideration confirms the centuries-old Japanese people’s views about the public sector, a.k.a. bureaucracy (though the city’s deputy mayor post is a mix of political appointee and so-called non-career officer). 

The old dictum ‘Revere Okami (god, Edo-period Tokugawa shogun),’ is evoked as a distorted authority image for those applicants who probably want to flank Okami to impose heavy-handed policies on taxpayers. 

At a June 28 assembly, Ishimaru’s motion for the appointment was voted down for the third time. Whether he plans to refresh his recruitment or re-submit a motion for Shinobori was not clear at this time, but one thing is clear, according to a city official: public interest for the deputy mayor post remains hot, though may not want to join Japanese government ministries and toil 80 hours a week to draft documents for politicians.

###

TOKYO, June 29, 2021—Two ‘career bureaucrats’ of the Japanese trade ministry were arrested by Japanese police June 25 for allegedly fabricating documents to successfully swindling $50,000 of Covid-19 rescue money from the ministry’s subordinate agency in charge of the rescue program, a Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry spokeswoman confirmed Japanese media reports to The Prospect June 29. While the media reported the news factually as a top straight news story in newspapers, television and other media, none of them did a deep dive into the incident – despite the fact that it has potentially far-reaching, almost unfathomable ramifications.
In a nutshell, the latest and many other recent incidents involving bureaucrats can be summarized as ‘an unstoppable, Casandra Cross-like decline’ of the Japanese bureaucracy’ or an accelerated bureaucratization, diminishing sense of guilt in committing illegal and unethical acts, and growing childishness of Japanese society. And Japanese society, including politicians from far ago but also increasingly the private sector, is becoming numb to serious developments because of rapidly changing societal norms.
‘If you are bold enough that you won’t get caught, people commit murders and stealing properties more easily,’ is almost a new societal dictum. In fact, this is the thinking planted by the former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who committed several highly questionable transactions and quit his post just because prosecutors were zeroing in on him. Abe taught the play to the current PM, Suga, and people, especially young generations that saw what Abe did were clearly emboldened to follow through.

METI Bureaucrats Arrested
Makoto Sakurai, 28, the deputy manager of the Industry Finance Division of MEI’I’s Industrial Policy Bureau, the ministry’s most powerful bureau, and Yuichiro Arai, also 28, deputy manager of the same bureau’s Industry Organization Division, told police that the pair conspired to swindle taxpayer money, according to Japanese media reports.
The two career bureaucrats had founded and registeed a permanent establishment, a paper company on trademarks, designs, and intellectual property, in Tokyo, Shin Sakura Shoji in November 2019. They then fabricated bogus housing rent contracts that said the company had been paying $20,000 a month in rents to three ‘rental’ houses – Arai’s Tokyo home and his relative’s home as well as Sakurai’s parents’ home in Kanagawa, south of Tokyo – all of them false rental transactions, according to media reports quoting police investigators.
Sakurai had purchased luxury brand watches, drove two foreign luxury cars, and was living in a condominium for monthly rental fees estimated at no less than $5,000, which is high by Tokyo standards.
Whether those reports are accurate aside and police charges yet to be leveled against them, it was clear that the two bureaucrats deviated from core bureaucracy work codes and ethics – that government officials are banned from moonlighting and working for private-sector businesses during their active duty as officers. Their acts sharply contravened with centuries-long core Samurai ethos that they must remain bleached clean in character and deeds.
That they successfully swindled Covid-19 rescue funds from METI’s Small and Medium Size Enterprise Agency, the ministry’s subdivision, despite the fact that they do not belong to the agency, also suggested that career bureaucrats can prevail over non-careers and crush any protests and doubts expressed by non-careers.
That the two founded and registered Shin Sakura Shoji in November 2019 – before the Covid-19 pandemic – without drawing METI’s peer reviews and doubts also suggested that they were planning a business for a long-time and possibly generated income even before the outbreak. What they were able to do showed a total lack of intra governance in the ministry deferring to individual ‘career’ bureaucrats to exercise their ethics in decision-making.

Women’s Toilet Photo Shooting
On April 23, a METI official, whose name was not disclosed, sneaked into a women’s toilet in the Diet (parliament) building and took smart phone photos of a lady, according to Japanese media. He was nabbed by Diet security guards, the reports said.

###

TOKYO, June 29, 2021—The truck driver, apparently intoxicated from daytime drinking, slammed into a group of school children on their return home June 28 in a suburban road near Tokyo killing two of them, a disaster repeated time and again in Japan.
Police arrested the 60-year-old driver for negligence of duty, and the drunken man is solely responsible for the accident. The rig he was driving looked like at least a two generations old vehicle, according to Japanese television video footage. Presumably, the vehicle was not properly maintained and/or had mechanical failures resulting from evading compulsory inspections and maintenance.
But the accident, poring closely, reveal more than that: Bureaucracy apathy and neglect of resident calls for pedestrial safety. The two-lane road was wide enough to enable vehicles to run at high speed, yet had no guard rails to protect pedestrians who had no choice but to walk the road to reach their destinations, including school children. The road is believed to be administered by either the state or the local government, Chiba Prefecture.
Residents have been repeatedly asking the city of Yachimata and the prefecture to put up guard rails, according to media reports. What’s likely to have resulted, in my guestimation, was no action after their consultations with police failed to produce an agreement as police traditionally demands that it be in charge of road traffic, not the city, prefecture or the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. So, no guardrails and the deaths of the two school children and serious injuries to another kid.

Recently, driving through downtown Tokyo for the first time in many months, I was annoyed by bad manners of other drivers if not all that sped through other cars at dangerous speed and tailgate others that keep distance from the vehicle ahead, and jump red lights.
In fact, reckless driving is soaring in Japan. No matter whether vehicles are increasingly equipped with advanced safety features, including automatic emergency brake, lane-keeping, sudden acceleration prevention, traction controls and so on, the number of accidents is not necessarily decreasing in lockstep with a decline in the number of drivers and gross miles driven.

###

TOKYO, June 24, 2021—It’s all about government publicity that Japan is taking appropriate safety measures to restart nuclear power reactors: On June 23, 2021, Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced that it had commenced the decommissioning work of Fukushima Daini nuclear power station, which houses four boilining water reactors that suffered accidents one after another over the past four decades forcing the company to decide disposal in 2019.
The TEPCO announcement coincided with Kansai Electric Power Co.’s announcement that it restated No. 3 reactor at its Mihama nuclear power station located on the Sea of Japan coast. The two announcements, presumably by the prodding of the PM Suga cabinet and the trade ministry, are meant to send a message to the Japanesse public that the government is managing Japan’s 59 nuclear power reactors safely and securely, disposing of what it considers not safe and keeping others determined as safe to operate. (see Prospect 6/23/21)
Plus, the government timed the two announcements to coincide with its June 22 final decision to go ahead with the Tokyo Olympic games regardless of whether Covid-19 infections soar as warned by scientists and the government’s infectious disease commission. Effectively, the power reactor announcements are intended to tell the public about the government’s muscles.
In March 2011, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station’s reactors exploded and triggered a meltdown, forcing residents of npot only Fukushima but also of wider areas. TEPCO has been working to dispose of the reactors there but to this day it has been hampered by difficulty of pulling out red-hot fuel rods. Many Fukushima residents who had been living near the power stations can not return home even more than 10 years later because of high radiation levels.
Fukushima Daini reactors would be disposed of over the next 44 to 45 years, TEPCO said earlier. It plans to spend the first 10 years for decontamination of radiation and disposing of fuel rods kept in storage pools.

###

TOKYO, June 23, 2021—One day after PM Suga’s government made a final decision to hold the Tokyo Olympic Games no matter how seriously the Covid-19 pandemic may become, Kansai Electric Power Co. restarted a nuclear power reactor, the oldest reactor that’s more than 40 years old and having been idled since May 2011, contravening an international understanding to decommission antiquated nuclear reactors in phases and positioning nuclear power as a core policy to achieve Japan’s greenhouse gas emission reducion – and with it, helping sustaining the Japanese trade ministry bureaucracy’s authority.

The common denominator of bulldozing the Olympic games and the restart of the nuclear reactor is poltical dynamics that Suga’s ruling LDP deploys with the backing of the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry. Directly and indirectly, METI is behind the games, and of course, it is in charge of nuclear power upfront. That’s why both are important for the ministry and for LDP politicians that rely on the ministry as power base not only for doling out government money to local economies as well as as their electoprate voter support.

The Osaka-based power company said in a news release that it has restarted the Mihama Power Station No. 3 reactor at 10:00 a.m. , June 23, 2021, the oressure water-type reactor that had been frequently developing accidents and killing at least five workers.

The restart was authorized by the Japanese nuclear safety comission earlier this year as an exception to law that prohibits operating nuclear reactors older than 40 years. It has brought to 10 reactors at 6 nuclear power stations the number of reactors that resumed operations. All Japanese nuclear power reactors, totaling 59, were suspented after the March 2011 earthquake-tsunami disaster. Addionally, there are 3 realtors under construction.

At the time, dominant arguments were to shut down all nuclear power reactors in phases, yet as years elapsed and Suga’s Liberal Democratic Party recaptured a majority of the Diet (parliament) from opposition, Japan changed its energy policy to one that positions nuclear power at its core.

While promoting renewable energy, LDP lawmakers prioritize nuclear power by sustaining the Ministry of Economy Trade and Indusry’s long-term policy of nuclear power generation as a core energy source even though the overall cost, notably the cost of spent fuel and nuclear waste disposal, is much higher than renewable energy.The Japanese government was forced to abandon coal power in response to the UNFCCC decision and now is in the process of phasing out coal generators.

But for lawmakers, many of them former METI bureaucrats, and the ministry, nuclear power is almost their lifeline. To win resident consent for the restart, the Suga government gave 5 billion yen ($50 million) to Fukui Prefecture, which Mihama Nuclear Power Station is located. The money will be used for creating jobs relating to the power station as well as other local undertakings.

By 2030, Japan has additional 15 nuclear reactors that will become older than 40 years and most of them located in areas prone to earthquakes and tsunami.

###

TOKYO, June 22, 2021—It’s peanuts but still taxpayer money wasted to host the former U.S. president who arbitrarily demanded that Japan pa more to fund the U.S. troops stationed in the host country.
On June 22, 2021, the cabinet of PM Suga affirmed that former PM Shinzo Abe wasted nearly $400,000 for hosting Trump in May 2019: A golf play for two; informal dinner with Abe; the cost for a bilateral summit; and Trump’s accommodations at a Tokyo hotel.
Those costs did not include security, which must have been double or triple the $400,000.
Trump demanded that Abe agree to foot more costs for keeping U.S. troops in Japan during his stay, in return for pampering him with Kobe beef dinner and other treats.

###

TOKYO, June 22, 2021—Medical pros and lobbies June 22 warned that if the Japanese government railroads the Tokyo Olympic games, Covid-19 infections woould surge during and after the event, yet PM Suga declared that the games will be held as scheduled and more than 10,000 spectators can attend per game.
That would mean that, if not full, most games could draw 70-80 percent of capacity, and some could be fully seated because that number, 10,000 does not include Olympic Games-related ‘officials’ and school children and students to be invited by the Japan Olympic Committee are not included.
Worse, the opening ceremony attendanc is being adjusted to be as many as 20,000 or even 30,000, committee sources were quoted as saying to Japanese media entities, as the committee is considering admitting sponsor entity guests. The Olympics are ‘a special event,’ some media quoted an official as explaining.
Kabun Muto, a former administrative vice finance minister and director-general of the Olymic committee, said June 21 that officials concerned about the games such as sponsors and school childrend should not be counted as part of the 10,000 threshold. He confirmed that the number of spectators at each event would exceed 10,000, accordinng to the Japanese media.
A barrage of Olympic committee and government officials’ comments came on the heels of a statement of Shigeru Omi, the head of the government’s infectious disease committee, that, if to hold the games, it should be held without spectators.
At a June 22 news conferenc aired for public perusal, Tokyo Medical Association officials warned that if the games are to be held as the government plans, infections would surge.
Why the government is so adamant about holding the games? It’s a great money machine engineered by Heizo Takenaka, a former minister, when PM Suga was reporting to him as Takenaka’s deputy. Takenaka crafted the money machine and presented it to the former Tokyo governor, Shintaro Ishihara, without telling him details. The machine later had come to embrace the former PM Shinzo Abe, other Liberal Democratic Party brass. It has morphed into embracing Covid-19 vaccination operations as well.

###

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.

###

TOKYO, June 22, 2021—It has taken more than two years for Toyota Motor Corp. to deny mechanical defects since a top former Japanese government bureaucrat’ drove his Prius at a dizzing speed in a busy Tokyo entertainment district and killed a young mother and her daughter crossing the green traffic light.
When the Prospect contacted Toyota’s public relations office on Oct. 29, 2020, asking for comments about the allegations of Kozo Iizuka, 90, former director-general of the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology of the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, a spokeswoman curtly said the company had no comment.
In an article published on that day, The Prospect said:
‘Toyota keeps its lips zipped tightly toward the allegation saying that the automaker is watching the court proceedings. The automaker’s silence against the allegation is sparking speculation that it weighs its relationship with the ministry and the Japanese government at large as vitally important for its business.
‘The accident drew national attention not only for its ghastly scene of the bodies of the 31-year-old mother and her 3-year-old daughter, who were crossing the green traffic light when Iizuka’s Prius hit and run over them at extraordinary high speed but because the driver was the head of the powerful ministry’s top science and technology institute and was not arrested, sparking a barrage of public criticisms of the government to have handled the case for ‘a high-class Japanese.’
On June 21, 2021, Japanese public attention was rivetted to the Tokyo District Court’s hearing. Iizuka, the defendant of the case brought by the husband of the victims, reiterated his testimony that the sudden acceleration of his Prius was caused by mechanical defects, not his driving mistakes. ‘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 was quoted as testifying June 21 to the ourt by the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, the unit of the pro-Toyota Chunichi Shimbun of Nagoya City.
The courroom and the Japanese public’s mood has been steadily shifting against the former top METI bureaucrat. It appears to be the reason why Toyota on Oct. 21 released a press comment that said the company’s investigations confirmed that no unusual conditions or mechanical defects in Iizuka’s Prius. Prius has an onboard memory that records driving data. This was the first time that Toyota made comments on the case publicly.
Toyota’s press comment, which was not released as a press release, also appeared to have been intended to dispel concerns about Prius’ safety sparked by U.S. accidents in the 2000s and 2010s, as well as future accidents that could occur as the automaker and the auto industry as a whole install more advanced technologies for autonomous driving and other artificial intelligence-based functions.

###