Happy New Year 2012

It was a hell of a year. Literally, for the last surviving editor of this blog, at least. 2011 was the year that an earthquake devastated Japan, followed by a triple nuclear meltdown courtesy of the corrupt and possibly criminally negligent folks at TEPCO. Tadamasa Goto, the former yakuza boss allegedly turned Buddhist priest, was “lucky” enough to have one of his former henchmen shot to death in Thailand, thus basically destroying a five year investigation into him on murder charges. He united with the Kyushu Seido-kai and began working as a gangster again, prompting the police to reunite a “Goto Squad” and making me very uncomfortable.

Olympus, the optical equipment maker brought into focus the extent of corruption and lack of governance in Japan’s corporate world. Stephanie Nakajima, our chief editor took off to Occupy New York. Sarah Noorbaksh continued to be our tech support but began to focus on new projects.

On a personal level, I discovered that no natural disaster seems to trump the natural disaster that is my own body. Years of drinking and smoking too much probably took their toll and I came back to Japan after 3/11 to find a note from the doctor that no patient wants to read. I survived illness #1 only to get knocked down again with illness #2.  I got better. I got smarter. On October 1st, the same day the organized exclusionary clauses went on the books nation-wide, I quit smoking. Except for one binge, I’ve stayed nicotine free. I’m not expecting a pat on the back. As my daughter says, “Not smoking is no big deal. Do we congratulate people for not slamming their fingers in a door for six months or say ‘Hey, congratulations, it’s been two weeks since you walked into a wall!’”  She has a point.

This year we have a new staff, a bigger budget, and hopefully some guest contributors.  Look forward to more articles, more entries and more photos as well. Before burying 2011, I’d like to say a special thanks to Stephanie Nakajima, Sarah Noorbakhsh, Ikuru Kuwajima, Mari Kurisato, and everyone who wrote into this blog and has continued to read it. It is appreciated and hopefully edifying for you as well. If not edifying, at least entertaining. And if neither, hopefully a pleasant waste of time.

May 2012 bring you good fortune, happiness, health and contentment. May the wicked be punished, the just rewarded, TEPCO dismantled, Japan revitalized,  the corrupt imprisoned and may the 99% learn to share a little bit better with the 1%, may I be free from mild dyslexia and may the 1% share a little bet better with the 99%. 合掌！

Wishing you all the best for 2012!

Taro Kono, 2010, illustration by @marikurisato

“I’m really getting sick and tired of talking pessimistic about the future of Japan. Two years ago, I said, let me run the LDP, I can probably run it better than anyone else.”

And with that, Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) member Taro Kono began his press conference on August 9th at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan and simultaneously set up his announcement to seek the presidency of his party next year. Kono, who was first elected in 1996 and currently serves in the Lower House, won the 2nd largest number of votes for the presidency last year. He lost to former Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki, an old-school politician with no charisma but plenty of factional support.

Is it possible that Japan’s former ruling political party, the LDP, which ran the country for five decades and introduced nuclear power, could also be the same party to lead Japan out of the nuclear mire? Many people would argue this is unlikely. It was the LDP which created the nexus of bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, dysfunctional oversight agencies, and the monopolistic electrical power companies known as Japan’s “nuclear mafia”. It’s hard to conceive they could also be the one to break up the system and put Japan back on track; most people are justly dubious.  However, there is rising popular support for Mr. Kono both within his own party and the Japanese public. He has become a political celebrity, often interviewed in magazines and on television. The question remains: can he actually accomplish what he is setting out to do?

Kono speaks English fluently, a rarity among Japanese politicians. He attended university in the States and went on to work for two southern politicians in the 1980s, so it makes sense that his English is so fluent and natural. Pleasantly surprising, however, was his confident and even aggressive style–something he also must have picked up from the brash Americans. On the currently ruling DPJ, he comments, “Really,  they are just taking orders from the bureaucrats. They don’t know what the hell is going on”. And about the quarter of his party that threatens to leave if he wins the presidency? “That’s OK, we don’t need them. We can ask better members of the other parties to join us.” For an LDP politician, that voice of inclusion and sanity is widely different from the usual tribal politics that dominate the organization.

Among the things he is pushing: deregulation, pension reform (he rants: “2004 reform was a big failure. No one is talking about that right now. Where did it go? I am the only one talking about this.”), and of course, like all properly radical politicians, the eventual phasing out of Japan’s nuclear power program.

This, and his relative youth, distinguish him considerably from the old LDP guard. In a US cable dated October 27th, 2008 (courtesy of Wikileaks) Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer reports: “During this meeting, (Kono) voiced his strong opposition to the nuclear industry in Japan, especially nuclear fuel reprocessing, based on issues of cost, safety, and security. Kono claimed Japanese electric companies are hiding the costs and safety problems associated with nuclear energy, while successfully selling the idea of reprocessing to the Japanese public as ‘recycling uranium.’…He also accused METI of covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry.”

He jokingly suggests that this means no one was “actually listening to what [he’s] been saying”; but it is telling that the LDP politicians confused those two subjects. One might speculate that to the bribed politicians who willfully ignore concerns about nuclear safety, subversive types [like Kono] haunt a conscience that was long-ago smothered in the asphyxiating folds of TEPCO’s pocket; perhaps, any suggestion of genuine oversight seems like “the right choice”, and in the mind of these civil servants, Kono’s warnings occupy a space in their brain not specifically about “spent fuel” or “industry-government collusion”, but more broadly labeled “accountability”, “statesmanship”, or maybe “civic duty”.

This week posting may be a little sparse but bear with us. We have some good articles planned for next week, including an interview with the director of the Great Happiness Space. I’m off to a lecture on Asian Organized Crime and Casinos. Hopefully, I’ll hear some valuable tips to improve my blackjack game. (Not. I don’t gamble. Not for money, anyway. Luck is better spent on other things.)

–Jake, writing from Sin City, USA.

On March 30th, not only did TEPCO admit that the chairman had been taking Japanese mass media power brokers on the trip to China but also that TEPCO paid the majority of the travel fees for the participants. On April 7th, a reporter asked TEPCO to reveal the names of the mass media firms that had executives and/or former executives joining the chairman on his trip, but TEPCO dodged the question.

It’s well known that TEPCO pays huge advertising fees to most media outlets; it is one of the largest advertisers in Japan. It’s not as well known that the president of TEPCO, Masataka Shimizu, is also the chairman of  the Japan Society for Corporate Communication Studies (JSCCS), which includes among its members former and current top executives from Asahi Beer, Toyota, and Dentsu, Japan’s largest advertising agency. The board of directors also includes a representative of Nihon Television’s Reporting Bureau, Economic News section:

In a sense, the president of TEPCO is the chairman of what is whispered to be the equivalent of a lobby group that wields the power of advertising revenue over anyone who crosses their paths. It is ostensibly a group of scholars, executives, advertising agency bosses, mass media representatives, and businessmen who gather together to study more effective means of communications. Veteran Japanese reporters assert that the society also functions as powerful consortium of large corporations who know how to use the threat of taking away advertising dollars as a whip to keep the Japanese media muzzled.

You don’t have to be too bright to figure out that if TEPCO, Toyota, Asahi Beer and Dentsu somehow banded together and pulled advertising from your newspaper, television channel, or radio program, that it would be financially devastating. In the April edition of weekly magazine Asahi Geino, Noted journalist, Takashi Uesugi claims that on March 15th, after repeatedly lampooning and criticizing TEPCO on TBS Radio that the producer asked him to leave the show, claiming that the program was being “revamped.” TBS Radio refuses to comment on the issue at present.

Masataka Shimizu, the president of TEPCO, is still listed as the chairman of the JSCCS but on April 1st his “greetings” were taken down from the sight and replaced with the words of the vice-chairman. The current page expresses condolences to the victims of the recent disasters. There is no mention of the problems at the Fukushima reactor,  only that Chairman Shimizu is now too busy dealing with the disaster to fully devote himself to his duties for the organization.

According to a mainstream Japanese media reporter, the TEPCO tours of China have been going on for over ten year. “The trips have a token amount of study, such as visiting a factory, or whatever has been scheduled to justify the event for that year. In reality, most of the day is devoted to sight-seeing. At night the TEPCO executives wine and dine the reporters, editors, or  mass media representatives. And of course, the obligatory karaoke.”

It’s not surprising that much of the Japanese mainstream media has been less than critical of  TEPCO up until now. It’s very hard to raise your voice loud enough to be heard from inside the pocket of your sponsor.

The president of TEPCO also is chairman of the Japan Society For Corporate Communication Studies. Their motto: "Striving to create a new vision of society." It may be a myopic one.

When the ground started shaking, the students initially all ran to the 3rd floor of their school. However, when they saw the middle school students next door congregating in the playground, without waiting for instruction from their teachers, they ran down the stairs, met up with the 212 middle school students, and all together ran one kilometer to a nursing home on higher ground. From the safety of the hill, they watched the tsunami swallow their schools.

The site of both schools, approximately 130 miles (or 210 kilometers) north of Sendai

Both schools are situated on Ootsuchi Bay

Of the 3,000 junior high and elementary school students in the district, only five are missing, four of which were absent from school that day.

This school district had been particularly well-equipped for such an event. Teachers brought in hazard maps created using data from the 1993 Hokkaido tsunami and held disaster preparedness classes for the students. The principal of the elementary school credits the fortunate outcome to the young students’ understanding of both the gravity of the situation and the immediate action required.

Unosumai Elementary School students in a class on tsunami procedure

Although students go through emergency drills a few times a year, they are taught to remember three main things:

1. If the ground starts shaking, don’t go back to your house; run to high ground.

2. Don’t necessarily follow the hazard map; examine the current situation, consult with others, and make the best judgment.

3. Help others.

The Asahi article suggests one bear in mind two other qualities of tsunami: first, even if the tremors felt are relatively minor, a large tsunami can still develop; and secondly, that a tsunami can come in not just one large wave, but several phases; so even if the water does recede, one should never return to one’s house for supplies or possessions.

Jake’s note: These grade-schoolers were better prepared for disaster than the government of Japan. I wish we could replace Prime Minister Kan Naoto with the Unosumai School Principal.

Fox News Reveals Secret Nuclear Power Plant in Tokyo Disguised as Music Hall!

Eggman is an established music hall/night club in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo that is reopening tonight with a concert that should lift some spirits. I think I may go and offer a toast to the hard-working volunteers helping to provide relief to the survivors and a moment of silence in mourning for the loss of responsible journalism and so much more.

The Eggman official site lists a very touching tribute to the victims of the earthquake and in very small letters makes an amusing comment on the whole incident in English and Japanese.  The spelling of “powered” is slightly off but less so than the reporting of Fox News.

Shibuya Eggman has no nuclear plant. Our electricity's powered only by music.

Maybe Fox News should changed their slogan to: Fox News: Fairly Unbalanced News. We mis-report, you deride. Well, what can you expect from a company owned by News Corporation–except the finest in journalism. By the way, did you know News Corporation also own a controlling interest of National Geographic Television (the generally accurate documentary channel)? Just thought I’d mention that.

For the illumination of our readers, here is an English map of nuclear related facilities in Japan, provided courtesy of Kyushu Denryoku. Notice that Shibuya Eggman Reactor has been completely removed from the map after the devastating report by Fox news was broadcast to the world. While some claim that the reactor doesn’t exist there, there have been credible reports that it is behind the takoyaki (fried octopus) stand near the entrance.  Albeit, a very small nuclear reactor which also appears to be powering the takoyaki stand as well.

Media Matters was probably the first blog to pick up on this breaking story, although they seem to cast aspersions on the credibility of the Fox News report.

UPDATE: Apparently, it was actually a mistake and there is allegedly no nuclear reactor at the Shibuya Eggman dance hall/music hall/night club/entertainment venue. As I was tweeting away today, I was very surprised to see Andy Levy, of Fox News actually tweet me. Good god, this must mean someone other than my little sister reads the tweet feed. He was a little upset and I can understand why. I was less than fair and balanced although generally accurate in covering this minor screw-up. However, it’s not like I don’t screw up news stories either, although admittedly, the JSRC staff is pretty small without the luxury of several fact checkers. (Although, sometimes Sarah and Stephanie check my atrocious grammar.)

I might not like the political leanings of FOX news and I do feel that their news coverage is not fair and balanced at times, but I also know there are journalists there striving to do their best. So jokes aside, I wish them luck and hope they find some capable Japanese journalists to help them out. Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku.com also has a nice piece on this story and  how the desertion of Japan by the foreign press has sown the seeds of misinformation.

Andy Levy From FOX on the Shibuya Eggman reactor story. Read from the bottom up.

Nuclear power plants and facilities in Japan. Redacted by Japanese corporation, clearly. Shibuya Eggman Nuclear Power Station conspicuous in its absence.

For those in the New York area, Jake Adelstein will be appearing at the Japan Society’s event, “Yakuza in Popular Media & Real Life: Cracks & Chasms”, on March 10 at 6:30pm.

From popular films to games and comic books, yakuza culture has been portrayed and discussed in many media. Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice–one of the rare books revealing real yakuza culture in Japan–discusses the differences between the image the yakuza want to project and how the major groups really function, and what the taboos are of depicting yakuza in Japan.

Followed by the film:
Onibi–The Fire Within
Thurs., Mar. 10 at 8:15 pm
Often regarded as Rokuro Mochizuki’s masterpiece, Onibi injects both sexual passion and subdued sentiment into the macho world of yakuza cinema. Jake Adelstein introduces the film.

Check out the Web site for more details, and keep an eye out for ticket information! Looking forward to seeing some JSRC readers there!

“In life, we only encounter the injustices we were meant to correct.”

Igari Toshiro, ex-prosecutor, leading lawyer in the anti-organized crime movement in Japan. 1949-2010.

Igari Toshiro, was my lawyer, my mentor, and my friend. In the sixteen years I’ve been covering organized crime in Japan, I’ve never met anyone more courageous or inspiring–or anyone who actually looked as much like a pit-bull in human form. Igari-san was a legend in the law enforcement world, the author of several books on dealing with organized crime and preventing their incursion into the business world. He was the father of the “organized crime exclusion clause”, a simple but brilliant idea that is now embedded into most contracts in Japan and requires the signer to pledge that he is not a member of an organized crime group. It’s already been used to arrest one high-ranking yakuza boss, and is the basis for the legislation being adapted prefecture-by-prefecture that will make it a crime to pay off gangs or provide them with capital. He was rather disliked in the underworld.

The last time I spoke face-to-face with Igari was on August 8 this year.  It was a Sunday; he had come back from Brazil and went directly from Narita Airport to his office to meet me. I asked him if he would cooperate in a documentary I am working on as consultant and a reporter for National Geographic Television on the yakuza.

I also had a problem.

It’s rather simple: In 2008, I angered a yakuza boss named Goto Tadamasa, who was head of a 1,000-member strong faction of the country’s largest gang, the Yamaguchi-gumi. In an article published in the Washington Post, I wrote how he had sold out his own group to the FBI in order to get a visa for the United States so he could receive a liver transplant at UCLA. The article along with a subsequent book I helped write for Takarajima Publishing resulted in him being kicked out of the Yamaguchi-gumi on October 14, 2008. Takarijma, without bothering to warn me, published his biography this May. It’s a great book–except for a bit of subtle language that amounts to a yakuza-style fatwa on my life.

I asked Igari to help me deal with the fallout from the book. After much discussion, he and his two colleagues came up with a plan. His parting words were: “It’ll be a long battle. It’ll take money and courage, and you’ll have to come up with those on your own. But we’ll fight.”

On August 28th, his body was found in his vacation home in Manila, wrists slashed. Time of death unknown. It’s been ruled a suicide. Personally, I believe he was killed. I probably will never be able to prove it.

Igari had been working on his final book, Gekitotsu (Collision). It’s an amazing work that pulls no punches, using the real names of the yakuza and the politicians and individuals connected to them. He wrote, “Wherever it was possible, I made it a point to use the real names here. I’m aware that poses a huge risk for myself. I took that risk because I wanted to honestly write about my battles with the injustices hidden in our society and the results of those struggles. It’s proper to write the name of those you’ve fought.”

Ex-prosecutor and lawyer, Igari Toshiro, was a famous crusader in the war against organized crime. These are some of the book he authored.

Igari has been probably more influential than any individual in the anti-organized crime movement in Japan. As discussed above, he was the lawyer who first came up with the idea of the “organized crime member exclusionary clause” (暴力団排除条項). It was inspired by problems the Westin Hotel had when Goto-gumi and his posse stayed there and refused to leave, pointing out, “there’s nothing that says yakuza can’t stay at a hotel.”  Igari realized that legally that could be accomplished since the Japanese government does designate organized crime groups and members officially. All it would take was adding a clause to any contract in which the individual signing has to clarify whether or not they are a yakuza, and if they are, the establishment reserves the right to unilaterally nullify the contract. It’s now part of almost any standard contract in Japan, even Sports Clubs. It has been used effectively by the police. A yakuza boss opening a bank account this year was later arrested for fraud because he lied about his yakuza affiliation on the contractual agreement with the bank.  The organized crime exclusionary ordinances （暴力団排除条例）which are sweeping the country, prefecture by prefecture, were also his brain child.  This year I met up with a high-ranking member of the National Police Agency, who had a copy of Igari’s book on his desk, and said, “In the war on organized crime, Igari-sensei was the equivalent of a five star general. He will be sorely missed.”  The current head of the National Centre For The Elimination of Boryokudan was also very vocally supportive of Igari, adding, “the organized crime exclusionary ordinances would have never made into legislation if it hadn’t been for the man.”  (There are now more than ten local governments in Japan with these ordinances on the book, which differ from prefecture to prefecture, but generally ban pay-offs to the yakuza or providing them with capital. Violators can be fined or jailed. Corporations that do business with yakuza will be publicly named. The ordinances have the potential of being a huge body blow to all organized crime groups, depriving them of protection money and capital. By punishing the individual or firm that capitulates to organized crime, it may have the same efficacy the change in the Commerce Laws had in eliminating racketeers-総会屋.)

Before leaving for Manila on vacation, he told his editor, “I’m nosing around in dangerous places. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. Let me sign the publishing contract now.”

In September, my best source in the Yamaguchi-gumi told me point blank: “Igari-san was murdered by the yakuza. It wasn’t Goto’s direct order. He was exposing yakuza ties to Sumo and professional baseball. It angered people. You should be careful too. The yakuza don’t warn people anymore, they just act.”

It’s a dangerous thing to expose the worst of the yakuza for what they are. Itami Juzo, directed the first realistic film about the yakuza, Minbo, in 1992. Goto-gumi members attacked him for doing it, slashing his face open. He would later tell the New York Times in an interview, “They cut very slowly, they took their time. They could have killed me if they wanted to.” Eventually they did. On December 20, 1997, after a weekly magazine wrote about his extra-marital affair, he allegedly killed himself. A former member of the Goto-gumi told me in 2008, “We set it up to stage his murder as a suicide. We dragged him up to the rooftop and put a gun in his face. We gave him a choice: jump and you might live or stay and we’ll blow your face off. He jumped. He didn’t live.”

In 2005, yakuza fan magazine writer Suzuki T wrote an article that poked fun at a yakuza group. They broke into his office and beat him to a pulp. In 2006, Yamaguchi-gumi thugs stabbed the son of non-fiction writer Mizoguchi Atsushi, because their boss was unhappy with one of his articles. Two members were arrested. Their boss was not. On April 17, 2007, the mayor of Nagasaki was gunned down after refusing local yakuza involvement in public works projects.

I try to be very careful when writing about the yakuza, and mindful of my sources, some of whom are members. I hate to admit it, but there are still those in the organizations that do follow a code of honor.

I understand the unwritten rules in Japan. Yakuza fan magazines are sold here in the open: three weeklies, three monthlies. They do interviews with current yakuza bosses, but the questions are limited and there is an implicit understanding that even after the interview is done, the boss reserves the right to edit or scrap it. As one veteran detective explained to me, “if you violate that rule, there will be harassment and often retaliation.”

I probably didn’t communicate that fact well enough to the National Geographic production crew that came to Japan. Through the sources I introduced they interviewed three current yakuza members, but didn’t alert me that they ran into trouble. The best I could do was warn the local National Geographic offices about it and talk to the head office in Washington DC. They were very responsive and hopefully nothing will come of it. But if it does, it will be my sources and the local Japanese staff who take the hit. I’m not an easy target because I’m under police protection. The staff are not.

The yakuza don’t have much pull in the US. They harass whoever will give them leverage. It’s why I don’t move my family back to Japan and why leaving Japan is not an option for me. I have to take care of my sources. It’s my responsibility.

I went to Igari’s offices in September to pay my respects; there was no funeral. There was a little shrine for him in his office, but everything was pretty much as he’d left it. On his desk, was an article about the Sumo Association and match rigging, heavily noted. His secretary told me, “Igari-san was really happy to take your case. He laughingly bragged to everyone, ‘I’m representing a reporter for National Geographic–that makes me an international lawyer!’ ” I could visualize him saying that with his deep, rolling laugh.

Grief is a funny thing. Seeing his empty desk, for the first time I got a little misty-eyed. Not too much, because there were people around, you know. It wasn’t very manly, but I didn’t cry.

You may wonder why I keep doing a job that is increasingly dangerous. I wonder myself. Partly, it’s because Japan is my home. I’ve lived here for more than twenty years. I’d like it to be a better place. In the old days, we’d call that civic duty.

I once asked Igari-san over wine, “Have you ever been threatened?  Do you ever fear for your life?” He didn’t answer my question directly.

“I became a prosecutor because I wanted to see justice done in this world. When I quit and became a lawyer, I didn’t go to work for the yakuza like many ex-prosecutors do. I continued to fight them. Not all yakuza are bad guys, but 95 percent of them are leeches on society: they exploit the weak, they prey on the innocent, they cause great suffering. If you capitulate, if you run away, you’ll be chased for the rest of your life. And if you’re being chased, eventually what is chasing you will catch up. Step back and you’re dead already. You can only stand your ground and pursue. Because that’s not only the right thing to do, that’s the only thing to do.”

And so I stay. Igari-san wasn’t an investigative journalist and he wasn’t a saint. But he fought for justice and for truth, and as an investigative journalist, I’ve always believed that’s what our job entailed. Forgive me if that sounds naive. I believe that, if no one stands up to the anti-social forces in the world, then we all lose.

When I called Igari’s editor, he knew who I was. He told me, “Igari said you’re the most trustworthy, crazy, and courageous journalist he knew.” It’s the first time I’ve ever been praised by the dead, and more than I deserve. But it made me feel an obligation to live up to those words. Sometimes, the only way to honor the dead is to fight for what they died for. It’s the only way I know how to mourn.

An abbreviated version of this article was originally published on the Committee to Protect Journalists blog.

Memo: Autopsies are only done for 4% of the suicides in Japan. In the last two years several cases ruled to be suicides later turned out to be murder. Check out this excellent investigative article translated from the Yomiuri Shinbun. I would imagine staging a murder as suicide in the Phillipines is even easier than doing it in Japan.

Read “Touring the Tokyo Underworld“

WARNING: To be expected from Penthouse magazine, but ads on the page are very NSFW.

Date: Saturday, September 25 from 7-9pm

Location: JICA Chikyu Hiroba Seminar Room 301 (Map)
(One-minute walk from Exit 3, Hiroo Station, Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line)

Admission: 1,000 yen, 500 yen for students with ID

To register for the seminar, please fill out this form (Japanese only),

For more information, contact:
Polaris Project Japan Office
TEL：050-3496-7615
E-mail: info@polarisproject.jp