The Japan paradox - honest people, corrupt leaders

TOKYO — One of the central paradoxes of modern Japan is that individual Japanese are so honest and trusting while their leaders are so crooked. Random muggings may be almost non-existent and used car salesmen honest, while citizens turn in millions of dollars in lost cash every year.

In 2018, for example, ¥3.8 billion ($32 million dollars) in cash was turned handed over at Tokyo police boxes and Lost and Found Centers, 75% of which was returned to the original owners. This is thanks to an early education system that stresses respect for others and lost property laws. Unlike in most other major world capitals, you can leave your laptop computer on your table when you visit the restroom at any Tokyo Starbucks with 100% assurance it will still be there when you get back.

On the other hand, however, institutional robbery is routine and the country had some of the most crooked politicians in the civilized world. Hardly a year goes by without a major political or business scandal, forcing the resignation of important figures in government and industry. In annual surveys conducted by Transparency International,  Japan has routinely led all other developed nations, except Italy, in terms of perceived corruption, and a term, “Kozo Oshoku” (Structural Corruption) has even been coined to describe the Japanese system.

One reason for that is that it is so expensive to be a politician. Politicians have to dispense several multiples of their salaries each year to their constituents — be it cash envelopes for weddings, funerals and festivals or campaign funds for party-affiliated local candidates.

Some observers blame Confucius, for this state of affairs, for preaching a philosophy that demanded both honesty and unquestioning obeisance to the state in a meticulously defined hierarchical order, albeit one based on a competitive hierarchy. Others cite Japan’s long history of repressive feudal rule for inducing a mindless docility. Japan still boasts some of the best educated people in the world but rarely questions authority.

Whatever the reason, the political, bureaucratic and financial worlds of Japan are filled with individuals who fraudulently use public or corporate funds — a fact that has been all too evident to any observer of the Japanese scene over the years, given the major scandals that annually break. In the postwar era, one automatically thinks of the shady contractors and the bosses of the ruling LDP who have conspired to rig construction bids and build highways and tunnels and other public works the citizenry often never wanted and seldom use, in return for kickbacks at election time.

Then there were the government and business officials who shook down the aircraft industry, soliciting bribes for airplane contracts, as seen in the Lockheed Aircraft Scandal of the 1970’s. In the 1980’s, there were the golf club developers who were selling million-dollar memberships in non-existent-yet-to-be-built clubs, the keizai yakuza  (financial gangsters) who borrowed billions of yen from financial institutions which they never intended to pay back.

What was perhaps the biggest swindling operation in the history of Japan took place in the mid-80’s when a company named Toyota Shoji, relieved unsuspecting elderly Japanese investors out of roughly 200 billion yen worth of their retirement savings by convincing them to buy dividend bearing gold certificates, which proved to be worthless. The exposure in June 1985, of the corrupt activities of the company's founder, Kazuo Nagano, caused such a public uproar that he barricaded himself inside his Tokyo apartment as a horde of TV news reporters and photographers camped outside, waiting for the moment of his impending arrest. Before the authorities could draw a warrant up, Nagano was assassinated by sword-wielding Japanese right-wingers who broke into his apartment and stabbed him to death — a grisly event captured for a horrified nation by the waiting TV cameramen and photographers,  none of whom lifted a finger to prevent the murder.

During the 90’s, the onslaught of such corruption continued. Among the numerous examples was the indictment of a cabinet minister for bribery, the suicide of a Diet member who was under a similar cloud of suspicions, and the investigation of Foreign Ministry officials who bought racing horses and secret stores of expensive imported wine on public money. Interestingly, the general reaction of those who were caught was typified by one arrested Parliamentarian who said, “Why are you picking on me? Everybody does it.” Also in the 1990’s were the unpaid bank loans of organized crime groups that helped drive the country into a recession and resulted in the murder of more than one bank official who tried to collect them.

The 21st century was greeted by a company named G. Cosmos, Japan, which, police say, collected 48 billion yen from some 12,000 people seeking to invest in the advertising business, namely, an advertising venture for a mail order business. The company said the investment money would buy TV and newspapers ads for this particular product and promised returns of 150 to 180 percent within four months, as sales rose.

The head of the group, a 39 year-old name Ogami Genta, also produced and starred in the 2001 movie, “Blade of the Sun,” set in the Philippines,  which was financed with the investors money. The company sold poster calendars featuring Ogami in various poses and was described in company ads as the “coolest guy in Japan.”  Police apparently did not agree, and launched a fraud investigation. As the case headed for the prosecutor’s office, the company was at least 20 billion yen behind in its payments.

In 2021, the year of Japan’s Summer Olympics, (postponed one year by the Covid pandemic), which reached new heights of absurdity, when Japan’s former Justice Minister, of all people, was sentenced to prison for vote buying, an LDP Diet member was convicted of accepting a bribe by Chinese businessmen related to a planned casino in Japan, and the Japanese government agreed to pay damages to a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat’s wife whose husband committed suicide after being ordered to tamper with documents related to favoritism allegations against then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

In 2022 there were the arrests of several prominent figures involved in bribery related to the recent Olympics held in Tokyo. They included one Haruyuki Takahashi, 78, a former member of the Tokyo Organizing Committee, on suspicion of receiving bribes totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of yen in cash from various individuals including executives from toymaker Sun Arrow that sold officially licensed stuffed toys of the Games' mascots, the president of the advertising firm ADK Holdings, and two other associates, as well as the chairman of Kadokawa  Corporation, a major publishing and media firm, Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, suspected giving 69 million yen ($481,000) in bribes.

As Japan heads into its second post-Olympic era, one thing seemed certain, this aspect of Japanese society is not destined to change.