Drawing on Masayuki Takayama’s column in Shukan Shincho, this article examines GHQ’s dismantling of the Justice Ministry, collusion between prosecutors and judges, the Zaitagawa case, the Lockheed scandal, the Atsuko Muraki case, and the hypocrisy of former prosecutors and the Asahi Shimbun over the Hiromu Kurokawa retirement-extension issue.
June 10, 2020
It is quite laughable to see those who have smeared Japan’s judiciary now posing as men of justice.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s regular column, which closes this week’s issue of Shukan Shincho.
This essay also proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
The notes marked with asterisks are mine.
Are they men of justice?
GHQ dismantled the Home Ministry, which was responsible for public order and epidemic prevention, and turned it into the National Police Agency and the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare, having lost its power, came to be called the Kasumigaseki nursing home, and in the present Wuhan coronavirus turmoil, it performed in a manner worthy of that name.
GHQ dismantled one more ministry.
It was the Ministry of Justice.
This ministry had jointly overseen the courts and the public prosecutors’ office.
From the standpoint of the separation of powers, this was strange, but Japan had a good old tradition.
In the Edo town magistrate’s office, yoriki officers served as prosecutors and judges, and sometimes even as lawyers, and judged cases.
They handed down judgments with which most people were satisfied.
Carl Thunberg, a botanist who came from Sweden, was impressed and thought it was remarkable.
But GHQ was stupid, so it did not know Thunberg.
The Ministry of Justice was dismantled, the Supreme Court was placed in charge of the judiciary, and the prosecutors were placed under the Ministry of Justice.
However, even after the war, the two continued to move back and forth through what was called personnel exchange between judges and prosecutors, and they colluded and cozied up to each other.
If prosecutors indicted someone, judges did not easily hand down a not-guilty verdict.
This escalated, and now the going rate for a sentence has become eighty percent of what prosecutors demand.
The problem, however, is that after the war, prosecutors forgot the spirit of the yoriki and wielded power as they pleased.
In 1950, when the Zaitagawa case occurred, in which a black-market rice dealer was murdered, prosecutors arrested a delinquent from the neighborhood and indicted him on the basis of a confession and bloodstains on his trousers.
The judge, just as the prosecutors said, handed down a death sentence.
However, in a retrial 34 years later, it became clear that both the confession and the blood on the trousers had been fabricated by the prosecutors.
At the same time, in the bloodstain analysis, suspicions also emerged that the prosecutors had drawn in Tanemoto Furuhata of the forensic medicine department of the University of Tokyo, and two other people sentenced to death on the basis of Furuhata’s analysis were also found in retrials to have been falsely accused.
The Lockheed scandal, which put Kakuei Tanaka in chains, was also an unforgivable erroneous judgment born from collusion between prosecutors and judges.
It began when a U.S. Senate subcommittee produced Lockheed’s “peanut” receipts.
But because their source was unknown, they could not even serve as evidence.
Nevertheless, the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office created a story that “Lockheed gave Tanaka 500 million yen and made All Nippon Airways buy Lockheed-made Airbuses,” and in accordance with that story, arrested the people concerned and pressed them to confess.
Tokuji Wakasa of All Nippon Airways spoke of the tyranny of arrogant legal bandits, saying, “I was made to stand facing the wall for half a day.”
However, even if airbuses were sold, the profit would have been limited.
By contrast, Lockheed’s P-3C anti-submarine patrol aircraft deal would bring one trillion yen in profit.
When newspapers grew suspicious of the Special Investigation Department’s story, Deputy Director Yusuke Yoshinaga threatened them, saying, “Any newspaper that writes P-3C will be barred from entry.”
The Special Investigation Department begged the Supreme Court to have Lockheed executives testify according to its story as the decisive factor in arresting Tanaka.
However, testimony without cross-examination cannot be evidence.
By forcing that principle to be bent, the Supreme Court issued a written declaration that “no matter how much the Lockheed executives lie, it will be treated as evidence.”
It was an illegal collusion between the Supreme Court and the prosecutors that will remain for posterity.
When a reporter pressed Yoshinaga on the dubiousness of admitting testimony without cross-examination as evidence, he answered with a straight face, “Americans testify by swearing on the Bible. Americans do not lie.”
Those who made names for themselves by arresting Tanaka through such fraud included Tsutomu Hottā and Kunihiro Matsuo.
Hottā later rose to become director of the Minister’s Secretariat at the Ministry of Justice, and Matsuo rose to become prosecutor-general.
The Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office Special Investigation Department also arrested Atsuko Muraki of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare using this same method of starting with a predetermined story.
The seized floppy disk that did not fit the story was, as a matter of course, tampered with.
When that was exposed, both the chief and deputy chief of the Special Investigation Department were arrested.
Mamoru Norisada did not forcibly fabricate a case, but instead charged his Ginza entertainment expenses to a pachinko parlor, traveled on public funds with hostesses, and impregnated one of them.
The prosecutors tacitly condoned it, but Uwasa no Shinso exposed it.
Prosecutors have done wrong both while working and while sitting idle.
Tsutomu Hottā and other former prosecutors from the Lockheed case strongly opposed the personnel decision to extend the retirement age of Hiromu Kurokawa of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office.
The Asahi Shimbun, which made them dance, wrote that it “would lead to the denial of the separation of powers.”
Without knowing either the intention of the Asahi Shimbun or the intention of those who control NHK, which is in step with the Asahi, we watched reports that portrayed them as messengers of justice.
It makes no sense.
It is only natural for the executive branch to intervene in personnel affairs concerning prosecutors, which it oversees.
I did not know that prosecutors were not only arrogant and unrestrained, but also this ignorant.
It is quite laughable to see those who have smeared Japan’s judiciary now posing as men of justice.