A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
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A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
His grandfather was Kishi Nobusuke, also a former prime minister. He signed the declaration of war against the United States in 1941. He grew immensely wealthy, possibly (?) helping facilitate plunder, heroin money, etc. in wartime Manchuria, or at least working losely with shady characters involved in such acts.After the war he was put in Sugamo Prison as a suspected Class-A war criminal, but was mysteriously released without trial. He had deep connections with the Yakuza and was the central linchpin in the so-called "1955 system" of government-Mafia ties and corruption. You can read a bit about Kishi here; the rabbit hole is very deep and dirty:
Working Paper No. 83, December 2001
Kishi and Corruption: An Anatomy of the 1955 System
by Richard J. Samuels
The political choices of each contributed significantly and quite directly to the "structural corruption" (kozo oshoku) that came to be a central feature of Japanese politics and that sustained conservative power. Yoshida's contribution was made before the consolidation of the conservative camp, Kishi's came later. The system was not the result of their collusion, but of their vigorous political competition. Yoshida never belonged to the Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP was created by Kishi and his allies to take power away from Yoshida and to undo many of the reforms that they felt Yoshida had rashly acceded to under American pressure. Thus, it was Kishi who wove together the still disparate threads of conservatism in postwar Japan. He did not displace the Yoshida mainstream-- he widened conservative hegemony to accommodate the rest of its constituent parts.
While LDP dominance would not be fully consolidated until Kishi's revisionist platform had been rejected and after the LDP had moved back to the center, Kishi made the "golden age" of the LDP possible-- above all for men like Tanaka Kakuei, who later elaborated and transformed his model of money politics, and for maverick successors like Nakasone Yasuhiro and Ozawa Ichiro, who took up his ideas for constitutional reform. Kishi Nobusuke did not dictate the final terms of the conservative project or of LDP dominance, but he contributed more than any other to its main characteristics-- both respectable and disreputable. Nakasone has identified Kishi Nobusuke as Japan's greatest postwar political leader.1
Reinvention and Rediscovery
Even in a Cold War world of cynical opportunism and rapidly shifting alliances, Kishi's postwar "resurrection" was remarkable. Kishi had been General Tojo's closest deputy for nearly a decade, until the fall of Saipan. Yet, in June 1957, in the same U.S. Senate chamber where a decade and a half earlier a declaration of war against Japan had been approved, Vice President Richard Nixon banged the gavel to introduce Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, proclaiming him an "honored guest" who was "not only a great leader of the free world, but also a loyal and great friend of the people of the United States."
Kishi responded grandiloquently, testifying to his "honor of speaking in this citadel of democracy" and his "belie(f) in the lofty principles of democracy-- in the liberty and dignity of the individual." Many friends in high places-- both Japanese and American-- had facilitated his postwar ascent to power but most important was his ability to reinvent himself. Upon his release from prison in December 1948, for example, Kishi drove directly to the Prime Minister's residence, where he met his brother, Sato Eisaku, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, literally to exchange his prison uniform for a business suit. He recalled to his biographer that more than the clothing felt odd. "Strange, isn't it?" he asked his brother, "We're all democrats now."2
Kishi began building his political career long before the end of the war. He first ran for elective office in 1942, while serving as Minister of Commerce and Industry. The election, under the auspices of the corporatist Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Yokusan Seiji Taisei Kyogikai-- IRAA), was minimally competitive, as two-thirds of the successful candidates had been "approved" and subsidized by the state. Future LDP leaders Hatoyama Ichiro, Kono Ichiro, and Miki Bukichi were among the eighty-five successful independent candidates, as was the future political "fixer," Sasakawa Ryoichi.
The wartime campaign gave him considerable insight into the darker side of campaign financing. There were rumors that Kishi had already enriched himself and his political allies while serving as a bureaucrat in Manchuria. Connections to the opium trade through radical nationalists and to industrialists, combined with his personal control of the movement of capital in and out of the puppet state, made Kishi singularly influential-- and likely very rich. Indeed, while still in China Kishi became known for his consummate skill in laundering money. It was said that he could move as much money around as he wished "with a single telephone call," and that he did so both legally and illegally and for public and private purposes. By the time Kishi returned to Tokyo in 1939, he had built up an impressive network of political allies inside and outside government. He was already the prototypical LDP political elder.
In 1944, even before the war's end, Kishi began mobilizing this network. Once it became clear to him that the IRAA program of "one party in onecountry" would not work in an environment of competing interests, he created the "Kishi New Party" (Kishi Shinto). Building upon his ties to industry-- virtually none of which were old zaibatsu affiliates-- Kishi recruited thirty-two Dietmen. It was an eclectic mixture. Some, like his future Foreign Minister Fujiyama Aiichiro, were independent businessmen with whom he had collaborated in China. Others were ultranationalists who had planned the ill-fated coups d'état in 1931. Standing ready to help were senior executives of the "public policy companies" that Kishi had helped to create, independent (non-zaibatsu) businesses that Kishi had helped to nurture, and a large number of small and medium-sized businesses that had profited from his wartime control program.
Sorting out the Parties
The decade following the end of the war was a period of intense upheaval for Japanese political parties. The Japan Socialist Party (JSP), as the main opposition to the conservative parties, led a coalition government under Prime Minister Katayama for ten months from April 1947 to February 1948. Although some small splinter groups broke off during 1948, the bulk of the JSP remained together until October 1951, when the party split into separate Left and Right factions over the question of ratification of the Peace Treaty and the Security Treaty with the United States. The Communist Party, which had done well in the 1949 elections, veered off into a strategy of violent revolution that cost it popular support.
The conservative parties were more divided and underwent even more transformations than the Socialists. When parties were reestablished in 1945, there were three major conservative parties: the Liberals (Nihon Jiyuto), the Progressives (Nihon Shinpoto), and the Cooperative Party (Nihon Kyodoto). But their ranks were soon decimated by the purge of politicians who had ties to wartime politics. Their greatest loss was the Liberal Party leader, Hatoyama Ichiro, who was purged in 1946 when the Liberals had become largest party in Diet. In his place, Yoshida Shigeru became party leader and prime minister. By the early 1950s the conservatives had settled into the mainstream conservative party of Prime Minister Yoshida (the Liberal Party) and the Japan Reform Party (Nihon Kaishinto), but the conservative political landscape was still far from settled. Efforts to reconcile Yoshida and Hatoyama, after the latter was de-purged in 1951, failed. Yoshida refused to relinquish control of the party to Hatoyama, who had been instrumental in creating it. Prewar associations, personal enmities, and numerous debts were all in play, and no unified conservative solution seemed possible.
Conservative disunity was not only personal. Much of it was substantive and policy-oriented-- and began with the Constitution itself. No politician was more outspoken and energetic on the need to revise the Constitution than Kishi. He worked relentlessly to gain political support for revision so that Japan could rearm, become an equal security partner of the United States, and enjoy an autonomous foreign policy. He captured the attention of most of Japan's postwar right when he wrote that in order for Japan to regain its status as a "respectable member (of) the community of nations it would first have to revise its constitution and rearm: If Japan is alone in renouncing war, . . . she will not be able to prevent others from invading her land. If, on the other hand, Japan could defend herself, there would be no further need of keeping United States garrison forces in Japan. . . .Japan should be strong enough to defend herself."3
Kishi was determined to lead the right-wing conservatives to power, and he considered a number of routes to that end. While still in prison he developed a plan for combining right-wing Socialists and conservatives into a "popular movement of national salvation" (kukoku kokumin undo) that would serve as a large umbrella for politicians and policymakers like himself who believed in the efficacy of an activist state that, working with a mobilized populace, could define and act in the national interest.
Kishi had a well-developed vision of a stable Japanese polity ruled by a dominant party. Upon his release from prison, he revived the model of his late wartime "Kishi New Party" and his prewar "Association for Defense of the Fatherland" (Gokoku Doshikai) in the form of a "Japan Reconstruction Federation" (Nippon Saiken Renmei). He built his federation party around a number of former Minseito (one of the two main prewar conservative parties) politicians and control bureaucrats, and made Shigemitsu Mamoru, the former Foreign Minister, its nominal leader. The party goals were anti-communism, promotion of small and medium-sized businesses, deepening of U.S.-Japan economic relations, and revision of the Constitution.
Kishi also tried to reach out to the moderate left, but when Socialist leaders Asanuma Inejiro and Nishio Suehiro rejected him, he resigned himself to building his party from within the conservative camp alone. Despite having raised hundreds of millions of yen from industrialists-- many in the defense industry-- Kishi's federation failed in its first (and only) electoral test. When Yoshida Shigeru called for elections in the autumn of 1952, Kishi was not prepared and his young party was crushed at the polls. Kishi, who had not run on his own ticket, had to consider other options.
He flirted with joining the Socialist Party but, at the urging of his brother, Sato Eisaku, he turned reluctantly to Yoshida's Liberal Party. Kishi rationalized cooperation with Yoshida as a way of getting inside the main conservative tent so that he might transform it from within. At first, Yoshida-- whose battles with Kishi dated from their opposing positions during the wartime mobilization-- wanted no part of him, so much so that he had intervened with the Occupation authorities to keep Kishi from being de-purged. But this was a time of fluid ideological borders and great political desperation. Kishi brought to the table considerable political resources. He had money and (not unrelatedly) a battalion of politicians, both of which made his partnership palatable, if not appealing, to Yoshida. In the event, Yoshida took him in and Kishi won his first postwar Diet seat in 1953.
Now a Liberal Party Diet member with his own faction, Kishi lost no time in denouncing his party's defects from within. He painted a picture of the party's leader, Japan's prime minister, as a collaborator with the Americans who was unable to defend Japanese interests. Kishi argued vigorously for Japanese rearmament and economic planning, based upon a "democratic" anti-communism. Constitutional revision was tougher. Yoshida tried to co-opt the issue by setting Kishi up as chairman of a Diet committee to study constitutional reform. But Kishi used the committee as a bully pulpit to undercut Yoshida's leadership. He pulled to his side several of Yoshida's most senior colleagues, including Ishibashi Tanzan, the future Prime Minister, as well as the Japan Federation of Employers (Nikkeiren), which announced its support for a strong, new government. "We Liberals," Kishi argued with extraordinary chutzpah, "must be prepared to make concessions to our fellow conservatives. We must not insist that Yoshida be returned as Prime Minister if this issue is a stumbling block to unity. We must be realistic."4
Kishi Nobusuke was surely the equal of any realist politician in history. There was no stratagem too cynical and no ally too close to betray in his pursuit of power. Unwilling to wait for the outcome of negotiations between Yoshida and Hatoyama to resolve their differences, Kishi forced the issue. He joined Ishibashi and Ashida Hitoshi in April 1954 to create a "New Party Formation Promotion Council" (Shinto Kessei Sokushin Kyogikai). Flashing "show money" (misegane) that seemed evidence of his close ties to deep corporate pockets, Kishi and his colleagues convinced two hundred politicians to join their call for a new conservative alternative to Yoshida's Liberal Party. Not surprisingly, Yoshida expelled him from the party after this open revolt.
In November 1954, Kishi took his faction and joined Hatoyama and others to form the Democratic Party. Hatoyama, the once purged prewar Seiyukai politician, became the party head. In Japanese parlance, he was the "omikoshi," the portable Shinto shrine carried (and steered) by Kishi Nobusuke, who reserved for himself the post of party secretary-general. Together they called for a conservative camp united against communism, for rearmament, for a more independent foreign policy, and for regaining control of Japanese security. Promising to call an early election, the Democrats gained the support of the Left and Right Wing Socialist Parties for a no confidence vote that ended the political career of Yoshida Shigeru and that brought Hatoyama to power. In the subsequent election, the Democrats took 185 of 467 seats, while the decimated Liberals lost nearly half their Diet strength. Kishi, now widely recognized as the king maker, saw his own faction triple in size. Aware that the DP would not be a stable solution, he immediately reached out to the rump Liberal Party to complete the conservative consolidation.5
Just one day after the Hatoyama government was installed, Kishi began negotiations with Ishii Mitsujiro, the Secretary General of the Liberal Partyand other powerful conservatives, such as Miki Bukichi. Hatoyama was not enthusiastic. He might, after all, have to step aside in the event of a merger. Once again the indefatigably ambitious Kishi was subverting his party leader. This time he got even more than he had sought. What had begun as a campaign to create a stable two-party system as a way to prevent the left from gaining power became a hegemonic "one and a half party system" in which the consolidated conservative camp, under the expansive Liberal Democratic Party, governed Japan for more than four decades across a broad ideological divide rigidified by the cold war.
The New Political System
While it is now recognized that "Kishi was the father of LDP dominance," and that he was "the central figure" in building the 1955 system, the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party in November 1955 must be one of the most over-determined events in Japanese political history.6 Not only had Kishi been maneuvering to achieve it for half a decade, but the Japanese business community and U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles each had openly demanded it. However, the clincher and proximate cause was the reunification of the Japan Socialist Party in October 1955.
Business leaders issued the first open call for consolidation of the conservative camp in late 1954 when they shifted support from Yoshida's Liberals to Hatoyama's Democrats. The business community had been vigorously criticized for their behavior in the corruption scandals of 1954 concerning subsidized shipbuilding, and Keidanren's Uemura Kogoro became convinced that unless order was restored to political finance, the conservatives would lose public trust and the left would be free to attack business from a position of great strength. Thus, in early 1955, in an effort to establish what he referred to as an "insurance policy for the maintenance of a free economy," Uemura inaugurated an "Economic Reconstruction Group" (Keizai Saiken Kondankai) "to clean up and consolidate" political funding.7 Keidanren would try to short circuit the direct links between firms and politicians that invited corruption by collecting and distributing funds centrally, through a single channel. Two contemporary journalists referred to Uemura's Keidanren fund as "Kishi's piggy bank."8 With the new, somewhat more transparent, distribution system in place, Keidanren reissued its appeal for consolidation of the conservative parties in May.
Nor was the government of the United States idle. In August 1955, with then Democratic Party Secretary-General Kishi Nobusuke present, Dulles told Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru that the U.S. had a strong interest in the consolidation of the conservative camp; he may even have made further U.S. support conditional on its coming to pass. Dulles reportedly told Shigemitsu that-- like the zaikai -- the U.S. government was constantly getting requests from Japanese politicians for financial assistance, and that it found it difficult to respond. "If, however," he reportedly said, "the Japanese government can unify, we will certainly be in a position to help even more than we have (to date)." Dulles explained that the United States wanted a strong Japan to help it contain communism and clearly thought that a strong Japan required a unified center-right political organization.
The mutually mistrustful conservative Japanese politicians were feeling the pressure from all sides, and it was Kishi who first moved to take it all in hand. He convened at least ten meetings, and the discussions frequently stalled over fundamentals: Were they aiming merely for cooperation? Or did they seek full consolidation? And on whose terms? Would the Liberals be humiliated and forced to join the Democratic Party, or would a new party be created? Kishi pressed for the latter. After a summer of protracted negotiations, the Socialists inadvertently broke the logjam. Their consolidation in October 1955 led to acceptance of Kishi's complicated "proxy system" (daiko iinsei) for selection of a new party president, and to the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party one month later, under the nominal leadership of Hatoyama Ichiro.
Kishi felt he could maximize his own chances at a future premiership by refusing a government post in the cabinet and instead reserving for himself the party position of secretary-general. He already had the knowledge, experience, and financial resources that a cabinet post would have bestowed, and now, as party secretary-general, he would be responsible for all decisions about formal party endorsements and campaign funding. He knew that he was distrusted by many former Liberals, and saw in this post the chance to circumvent their animosity by making each LDP candidate dependent on him. In its first test, the LDP won an absolute majority of seats in the Diet, a position it would maintain for two decades.
Revising the Security Treaty
The announcement in 1947 of the Truman Doctrine marked the turning point when the United States no longer cared as much about democratizing Japan as about anti-communism. Yoshida gave it his enthusiastic support, but Kishi would carry it even further, pressing for changes in education, police administration, and, above all, the Constitution. Once the LDP was returned to power in the June 1958 election, the Kishi government moved vigorously to amend laws related to national defense-- including the basic laws that established the Self-Defense Forces and the Defense Agency-- with the result that the number of Japanese uniformed soldiers increased by 10,000 men. Concerned that the teachers were too sympathetic to communism, the Kishi government also introduced legislation to force public schools to provide moral education and to implement a system to evaluate the teachers.
However, Kishi's efforts to revise the Police Law and amend the Constitution led to failure. The former-- submitted without prior notice-- was widely interpreted as giving the police prewar levels of power. The new legislation-- drafted after secret consultation with the Public Safety Commission-- would have enabled the police to conduct searches and seizures without warrants in order "to maintain public security and order" and to prevent crimes.9 Kishi's proposals had to be abandoned in face of protests by both the left (Sohyo called a general strike) and from within the LDP. Three members of Kishi's Cabinet resigned to protest his bill to increase and centralize police power. His effort to revise the Constitution, which he undertook even before the 1958 election, dragged on interminably, and was finally abandoned by Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato in favor of a "low posture" in the wake of the tumult over the Security Treaty revision in 1960.
The revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (known as the Ampo in its Japanese abbreviation) is widely understood as Kishi's greatest politicallegacy. For his supporters it stands as his "monument." For his detractors, it stands as evidence of his unreconstructed authoritarianism. Viewed either way, it clearly was a turning point in conservative hegemony, as the LDP rejected Kishi's leadership and turned away from a focus on foreign affairs toward high speed growth. Kishi's enemies on the left were no less determined than his enemies within the LDP itself, many of whom preferred to see the revision fail than to see him retain power.
To proud nationalists, Ampo was yet another "unequal treaty." While the United States expected Japan to increase its defense capabilities, it had also handcuffed it to an immensely popular Article Nine that renounced the use of force as a sovereign right of the state. U.S. troops were allowed to quell domestic disturbances even after the end of the Occupation, and could prevent the use of Japanese bases by any other power. The political right was encouraged by the establishment of the Self-Defense Forces in 1954, but it was not satisfied that this would suffice without Constitutional revision and a change in the terms of the treaty with the United States.
Once it was clear that the former was out of reach in the short term, revision of the treaty became the main item on Kishi's agenda. After securing agreement with the United States, Kishi battled forces within his own party, squared off against a popular left, and had to contend with the largest mass demonstrations in modern Japanese history. The Americans were easier to deal with. The United States was more than willing to change the terms of the treaty, and through secret side agreements was able to protect those privileges-- such as the transport and introduction of nuclear weapons-- that it most cared about. Nor did the United States even have to agree to return Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty for another decade. But the Japanese public was another matter. In June 1960, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators surrounded the national Diet building in central Tokyo. They forced Prime Minister Kishi to cancel a scheduled visit to Japan by President Eisenhower, for what he had hoped would be his crowning achievement as an international statesman. A week later, after forcing the treaty bill through the Diet without debate and without the opposition present, Kishi abruptly announced his resignation.
The Public Face of Political Finance
Business disillusionment with Kishi's leadership was already widespread by the time he was ramming the revised Security Treaty through Diet. Business leaders in Tokyo and in local LDP branches were calling for his resignation as a way to restore political stability. While Kishi claimed that "the business community was not divided" in its support for him, Keidanren (and Uemura) had abandoned him in favor of the less controversial Ikeda. Of the major business interest groups, only the Nikkeiren stood by him throughout the crisis.
Keidanren's political influence was threatened. By 1960 Uemura's "Economic Reconstruction Group" accounted for some sixty percent of all reported political contributions. He had assembled more than 120 firms and seventy industry groups to make contributions. While the Group gave funds to each of the other parties (except for the Communists), more than ninety percent went to the LDP.10 The problem from Uemura's perspective was that this was only a part of the total funds flowing from business to the LDP. He was clearly frustrated by how many uncoordinated requests came from politicians to businessmen. The bigger problem was that Keidanren's contributions were a declining part. Kishi had unleashed factional competition for funds and undermined Keidanren's efforts to consolidate the process by actively seeking to broaden the LDP's dependence beyond Keidanren.
Two tracks had developed for business support of conservative Japanese politicians. On the one hand, there was the formal track of Uemura's single channel and the "Hanamura List," i.e., the preferred recipients on the list maintained by Uemura's chief assistant. Uemura and the Keidanren wished to fund only the party, and insisted that their contributions be earmarked for election campaigns. These funds were fully legal and reported.This single channel also provided firms with an excuse to decline direct requests from the party and from politicians. They could claim they had given all they were capable of giving. On the other hand, internal campaigns among faction leaders to determine the party presidency were becoming even more critical to the politicians-- and ever more expensive. That the Keidanren did not want its funds to be used to support factional infighting was immaterial. Factional considerations came to dominate most LDP stratagems-- and the factions needed money.
Kishi creatively turned to the non-Keidanren business class. Theoretically, Keidanren became the source of "clean" funds and other sources were found for factional support.
Kishi's strength was that he knew how to suck money from both pipes. He was undeterred by complaints from Keidanren about the escalating demands of LDP politicians. One of Kishi's political secretaries explains: "Individual politicians and individual faction leaders were all going to the same businessmen for money. The competition got so intense that some of them made direct promises to the businessmen. It wasn't `dirty' money exactly, but the business leaders did want to avoid giving `inconvenient' (guai ga warui) and `strange' (henna) money."11
Under Kishi's leadership, LDP factions were first institutionalized as separate entities to compete for seats in Diet, for party endorsements, for the presidency of the party, as well as for the business funds that would make each possible. They became the leading object of political fund-raising. Kishi resorted to the frequent reshuffling of his cabinet as a way to balance factions and to rotate needy politicians through the high rent district of ministerial real estate. Rather than replacing individual ministers, as Yoshida had done, Kishi changed entire cabinets in order to spread the wealth. His successors, starting with Ikeda Hayato, took the idea even further, and routinely changed cabinets on an annual basis. As a result, Keidanren was not the only organized business group being hit up by politicians in search of, in Hanamura Nihachiro's words, "the money from which sprout the wings that let us fly."
There was little Uemura and the Keidanren could do. Uemura explained that:
"It takes money to run a party-- staff, meetings, study. But parties do not have their own source of funds. Someone has to give it to them. The same is true at election time. There are fees for filing for candidacy, costs for speech meetings, publications, and so forth. . . . Instead of giving separately to each faction member, we think it better to give to the party headquarters. Then again, there are still a number of businessmen who give funds directly to individual politicians; we cannot control this."12
But Uemura certainly tried. Under pressure from the other business interest groups, especially the Keizai Doyukai, which protested the misuse of their funds for factional purposes, Uemura abolished the Economic Reconstruction Council and replaced it, in March 1961, with a higher sounding "Citizens' Association" (Kokumin Kyokai). The purpose of the reorganization was to broaden the sources of conservative party support to include money from small and middle size companies and individuals as well as large companies.
Kishi was not invited to speak at the inauguration of this group, while his successors-- and rivals-- displayed the LDP's "kinder, gentler" face to the Japanese public. Ikeda Hayato, the new prime minister delivered a speech at the inauguration of the new Citizens' Association in which his references to-- and disdain for-- Kishi's practices were barely veiled: "Ever since I became Prime Minister in the midst of the uproar surrounding the Security Treaty crisis, I have not been able to keep the issue of `correct political posture' out of my mind. . . . Our LDP, on its own, has reflected about political finance and factional problems, as well as about the way in which we connect to the people. We have come up with a major new program-- shedding our old practices in name and in fact, as a modern party." But skins are not so easily "shed," certainly not this one.
As Jacob Schlesinger puts it, "Two distinct classes of leadership evolved in the LDP in the 1950s and 1960s, the bagmen and the statesmen."13 Kishi wanted to be recognized as one of the latter, but was not averse to playing the former. Kishi himself offered the bluntest assessment of Japanese money politics. A half decade earlier, during the battle for control of the party in 1957, he had been attacked by Ishii Mitsujiro, formerly of the Liberal Party, for raising dirty money. Ishii remarked of Kishi that "no matter how tightly you seal a bucket of shit, you still can't put it in the tokonoma (place of honor in a Japanese home)." Years later Kishi commented on the charge that "there are plenty of buckets of shit to go around."14
There was a sharp increase in funds consumed by the LDP after Kishi became Prime Minister. Kishi recalls confidently (and with decided understatement) that he was not without resources and contacts upon which he could call during his rise to power: "Among business leaders at that time, I was closest to Fujiyama Aichiro, the Chairman of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and to Uemura Kogoro at Keidanren. Because I was at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry for so long, I had connections with businessmen in Osaka, Nagoya, other local areas, and was relatively well known all around." Kishi's power to collect political money resulted from his experience in MCI, especially when he was in Manchuria. The staffs at Keidanren and at the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nissho) were filled with retired officials of MCI and the wartime control companies that Kishi had organized and supervised. Collectively they were called "Kishi's savings banks" (Kishi no chokinbako).
Those who did not go to these business interest groups remained in industry where they were also in a position to help him. In particular, a great many former bureaucratic subordinates of his had "descended from heaven" (amakudari) into the steel industry, which was under strong governmental control both before and after war. Yawata and Fuji Steel donated much more political money to Kishi than did any other companies. It was only after Kishi formed his first cabinet that he began to attract funds from some of the more elite trading companies, such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui, and from manufacturing firms such as Sumitomo Chemicals. But even then, his relationships to them were dwarfed by his relationships to the non-zaibatsu companies such as Nissan, Marubeni, and Ito Chu, relationships that had been cemented in Manchuria two decades earlier.
The nature of these connections-- and others-- nurtured so long and so diligently, allowed Kishi to exploit a number of alternative sources of political funding. Realizing that official Keidanren money could not be used to support either his faction or other factions during party presidential elections, he devised different means of raising money. He moved closer to small and medium sized firms (SMEs) through his former Manchukuo ally, Ayukawa Gisuke, who had been made head of the leading SME association upon his release from jail.
While Tanaka Kakuei, Kishi's successor as the party's greatest "bagman," elaborated broadly on this basic model, it was Kishi who opened the door to alternative sources of political funds and who originated the most sophisticated money laundering operation in Japanese politics. His "filtering apparatus" (roka sochi) has attracted a great deal of attention, but it is more important to understand how Kishi built what one of his biographers, Hara Shinsuke, has called an "exquisitely institutionalized" system of money politics in Japan. This system took at least three forms, each of which is close to impossible to document adequately but each of which also had important institutional ramifications for Japanese politics. Each is associated with the less reputable aspects of LDP dominance, which were nonetheless as real and as important as any of those pioneered by Yoshida Shigeru. Some of them, of course, intersected repeatedly and deeply with Yoshida's mainstream. Together they constituted important and only dimly understood resources of the "1955 System."
Using American Money
Kishi brilliantly exploited American paranoia about communism during the Cold War. The historian Michael Schaller reports that Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II convinced Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that the United States had to support Kishi or risk losing the alliance. Kishi returned triumphant from his June 1957 visit to Washington with promises that the security treaty would be revised and, possibly, with promises of secret funding from the Central Intelligence Agency. There have been rumors for decades about a secret "M-Fund" that was constructed out of surplus military materiel that came under allied control at the war's end in 1945. These stockpiles allegedly included rare metals and diamonds, proceeds from the sale of which were used by General Marquat, chief of SCAP's Economic and Science Section (hence "M"-Fund) as a sort of Japan-specific secret Marshall Plan to stimulate the postwar Japanese economy. The Fund was probably also used to underwrite the sudden (and unbudgeted) formation of the National Police Reserve at the start of the Korean War and to buy conservative politicalsupport for the alliance with the United States.
According to journalists, M-Fund disbursements went to two channels. One was to mainstream conservatives led by Yoshida Shigeru. A separate channel was purportedly opened to Kishi Nobusuke to help sustain the anti-mainstream group. Both were allegedly managed jointly with U.S. officials. Former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Norbert Schlei alleges that Vice President Nixon turned over exclusive control of the M-Fund to Kishi (presumably during their 1957 Washington meeting) and that this was when things changed: "Beginning with Prime Minister Kishi, the Fund has been treated as a private preserve of the individuals into whose control it has fallen. Those individuals have felt able to appropriate huge sums from the Fund for their own personal and political purposes. . . . The litany of abuses begins with Kishi who, after obtaining control of the fund from (then Vice President Richard) Nixon, helped himself to a fortune of one trillion yen. . . . Kakuei Tanaka, who dominated the Fund for longer than any other individual, took from it personally some ten trillion yen. . . . Others who are said to have obtained personal fortunes from the Fund include Mrs. Eisaku Sato . . . and Masaharu Gotoda, a Nakasone ally and former chief cabinet secretary."15
All, some, or none of this may be true, but we know for certain that Kishi and his brother Sato Eisaku frequently approached Ambassador MacArthur to play the anti-communist card in the hope of securing financial support. According to Kishi's own account, he frequently used the good offices of his friend, Harry Kern, a former Newsweek Bureau Chief, to make arrangements for him at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo.16 Declassified U.S. State Department records note efforts by Sato, then Kishi's Finance Minister, to seek U.S. funds "to combat extremist forces." In July 1958, Sato met secretly with one S. S. Carpenter, the First Secretary of the U.S. Embassy. According to Carpenter's declassified memorandum of a conversation on July 25, 1958, Sato explained that a "secret organization (of) top business and financial leaders" had been established by the LDP and that this group had "contributed heavily" to the recent electoral campaign. Sato explained that they would shortly have to return to these business leaders for an expensive upper house campaign and felt that the LDP and the zaikai could not "combat communism" alone. If there was already an M-Fund to cover these requests, Carpenter did not let on. He told Sato that the Ambassador "had always tried to help Mr. Kishi and the Conservatives in every way possible,"but he declined to authorize the funds Sato was seeking. In short, it is plausible but not yet demonstrable that Kishi Nobusuke played a central role in establishing a financial relationship between conservative Japanese politicians and the government of the United States.
Public Resources
Now that the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been opened for this period, we have a better understanding of how Kishi pioneered an equally intriguing-- and equally corrupt-- alternative source of political funds. He systematically employed government programs to generate business for political supporters and that, in turn, probably generated substantial kickbacks for himself and his faction. This "public resources" model opened a new and lucrative avenue for political finance.
Tanaka Kakuei significantly expanded and deepened it to the point that it became the archetypal form of structural corruption in the 1955 system. Tanaka actually once bragged that he got his first cabinet post by giving Kishi a backpack stuffed with three million yen in cash.17
Kishi saw and seized a splendid opportunity that Yoshida had dismissed out of hand by addressing the demands of Japan's Southeast Asian neighbors for reparations after the Pacific War. At first acting on behalf of the Hatoyama government and then on his own account, Kishi negotiated reparations agreements with Burma, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Yoshida had stalled all negotiations over reparations and criticized foreign aid, saying, "You have to trade with rich men; you can't trade with beggars."18 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had followed Yoshida's lead, promising little and dragging out negotiations interminably.
Kishi was far more creative. He showed Japanese politicians that one could not only trade with beggars but also enrich oneself and one's allies at the same time. His innovation was deceptively simple. Kishi noted the language in the various peace treaties allowing reparations to be paid "in the form of capital and consumer goods produced by the Japanese industries and services of the Japanese people," and he made sure that his business supporters would be the companies that supplied the goods and services. Kishi also increased the amounts being offered in reparations to the southeast Asian countries as a way to direct even more public resources toward Japanese industry. Kishi's pioneering use of Indonesian and Korean aid seems to have inspired Tanaka Kakuei, who later took up the technique and applied it to China, as well as Nakasone Yasuhiro, who expanded the practice elsewhere in the region.
The most visible and controversial example of the early use of reparations for political finance was a contract let in February 1958 to the KinoshitaTrading Company for providing ships to the Sukarno government in Indonesia. Kinoshita Trading was run by Kinoshita Shigeru, who had been a metals broker in Manchuria before the war, where he had forged close ties to Kishi. When Kishi returned to Japan in the late 1930s, Kinoshita also did so and was placed in the Iron and Steel Control Company, where he established close relationships with Nagano Shigeo of Fuji Iron and Steel and Inayama Yoshihiro of Yawata Steel, both of whom became enormously influential business leaders in the postwar zaikai.
There was nothing subtle about these relationships. When Kishi was released from prison in December 1948, Kinoshita promptly made him president of his trading company, a nominal post Kishi held until he was de-purged and could return to politics. Much to the chagrin of the established firms in the industry, Kinoshita Trading won the first reparations-based contract for Indonesia even though it had never dealt in ships before. According to the declassified records, when Indonesian Foreign Minister Soebandrio visited Japan in April 1958, Kishi told him that he would appreciate the Indonesian government's awarding ship contracts to Kinoshita Trading. The deal was investigated and roundly criticized in the Diet and the press, but Kishi escaped unscathed. In addition, Kinoshita won overseas contracts for office buildings, machinery factories, and hotels, making it the largest recipient of reparations contracts among Japanese firms. By 1964, when it went bankrupt, Kinoshita Trading was Japan's seventh largest trading firm.
The large and prestigious trading houses were shut out of this early business in Southeast Asia using reparations funds. The winners were all non-zaibatsu independents like Kinoshita that had special Manchurian ties to Kishi and to other non-"mainstream" factions. The two other businessmen of the so-called "Indonesia trio"-- Ayukawa Gisuke and Matsunaga Yasuzaemon-- who went there in the mid-1950s to examine the prospects for resource development also were linked to Kishi's Manchurian program. No complete list of contracts for reparations has ever been published, but a 1968 MITI report showed that Kinoshita Trading had the largest share, followed by Nippon Koei, run by a former Manchurian economic planner under Kishi, and Ito Cho (C. Ito), in which a former Kwantung Army officer, Sejima Ryuzo, was a rising star (he later became chairman of Ito Chu).19 A fourth major winner was an unknown firm called Tonichi Trading, whose board members included Kishi's factional rival, Kono Ichiro, as well as their mutual ally, the mob-connected Kodama Yoshio.
The system worked in much the same way as it did with domestic contractors for local projects but involved many fewer competitors for use of the funds. Also, because there was no open bidding, it required less widespread domestic collusion and cartellization (dango) and fewer compensating transfer payments. In 1957, Kishi institutionalized the program by establishing an "Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund" to distribute reparations and, later, foreign aid (i.e., official development assistance or ODA) through contracts let to favored trading companies. The system involved collusion among LDP politicians, the aid recipients, and conservative business interests in Japan. Nishihara reports that the reparations payments involved "large sums of money," much of which ended in the pockets of high ranking Indonesian officials who "were given a cut from (inflated) profits." The Diet never enacted a basic law to establish guidelines and regulate either the reparations programs or the larger ODA program that derived from it. Each time legislation was proposed, the bureaucracy and segments of the LDP strongly opposed it.
Kishi's exploitation of public resources was a prototype for the even more aggressive Tanaka Kakuei. During the decade of Japan's phenomenal high-speed growth in the 1960s, Tanaka built what he called a "general hospital" to take care of his constituents, faction members, and himself. Resources were generated in a variety of ways. One he developed when he was the Minister of Finance in the Ikeda cabinet was to confiscate unclaimed property, which he would then arrange to sell to associates for a consideration. Another was so-called "land flipping" whereby a dummy corporation controlled by Tanaka or his family would buy under-priced stock to be resold at market prices for a large profit.
The firms they bought and sold would incur large paper losses due to inflated expenses while they were stripped of cash. More important were those firms, much like those that cooperated with Kishi's reparations program, that benefited from Tanaka's inside knowledge of (and control over) the location of new public works projects.
Construction and real estate companies associated with Tanaka made vast fortunes from public spending on railroads, schools, and other infrastructure. They exchanged privileged access to government contracts in return for kickbacks based on the value of contracts received. Tanaka's famous "Plan for Remodeling the Japanese Archipelago," was essentially a blueprint for personal and factional enrichment once he took office and controlled the Construction and Transportation Ministries. Eventually, Masumi argues, in the process of amassing a personal and factional fortune, Tanaka even emptied the LDP's safe.20 This may help explain why he was the only senior postwar Japanese politician to be prosecuted without political intervention.
The man who could have intervened to block the Lockheed bribery case (in which Tanaka was indicted) but chose not to, was Miki Takeo. Miki had been anointed prime minister by Kishi's former disciple and comrade, Shiina Etsusaburo. It was widely expected that, like Yoshida before him, Miki would invoke Article 14 of the Public Prosecutor's law and put an end to Tanaka's prosecution. But the irascible Miki refused to accommodate the LDP elders. Instead, he proposed to abolish all corporate contributions to politicians. Although the leaders of the LDP were unable to force him to block Tanaka's prosecution (assuming that they wished to do so), they did succeed in eviscerating his reform proposals. The reform, which shifted from a system of "a few sources of large sums" to "lots of sources of small sums" had as many loopholes as it had teeth-- and even legalized some formerly illegal conduits of funds. So it remained business as usual under the "1955 System."
Keidanren was dismayed by the failure of its efforts to introduce reforms. At his first press conference in May 1974 as he took office as Keidanren Chairman, Doko Toshio made a startling announcement to an unsuspecting audience: "The LDP should be based on its party members and supporters, and it is strange for it to be based on commercial firms. If firm managers wish to support the LDP, they should join a citizens' association on an individual basis. In general, there is something wrong with Keidanren's having the role of collecting political funds. In the course of time, I want to go about correcting this somehow.21
Doko correctly anticipated what was ahead. In the July 1974 upper house elections, after Keidanren had provided Tanaka and the LDP with a 30-billion-yen war chest, an LDP majority was barely achieved. Doko was so annoyed by Tanaka's profligacy that he demanded political reform. The electric power and gas utilities refused further political donations as well. It looked as if the 1955 system of political finance-- or at least the visible Keidanren track-- had hit the wall. Doko announced that Keidanren was ceasing immediately to collect political funds for the Citizens' Association, and that it was firmly in support of political reform. He declared that the LDP's faction system was the source of much of the problem; firms would have to make contributions to political parties directly, and Keidanren would exclude from its ranks any firm that was found to have contributed to a faction.
It sounded good, and it played well in the press and the court of public opinion, but, "the system" still had legs. Doko ran into stiff opposition from within the business and political communities. Nagano Shigeo, head of the rival Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (and a former close associate of Kishi Nobusuke), called him a "damn fool" and refused to cooperate. Within the LDP, anger at Doko was so great that no one from the Miki cabinet (despite the "clean Miki" image) attended Keidanren's 1974 annual councilors' meeting-- an unprecedented snub.
Doko gamely pressed on. Keidanren formed a committee to study the "modernization" of political funding, but advocates of reform were worn down by demands from the politicians. After a year, the committee's two main recommendations were a gradual transition from Keidanren's collection of political contribution to firms' making their own contributions and an "increased transparency" by renaming the Citizens' Association the Citizens' Political Association (Kokumin Seiji Kyokai) and publishing the amounts of funds distributed to political organizations. The best they could do was to return to a Kishi-era common pool of funds. A year after his remarkable press conference, Doko was out making the rounds of companies and collecting political contributions. Despite severe cost-saving measures adopted after the drop off in contributions during 1974, the LDP had accumulated an operating debt of ´5 billion. Keidanren managing director Hanamura Nihachiro quietly collected contributions from members and paid off the debt.
Thus, after a short interlude of withheld contributions, Keidanren's support for the LDP was stronger than ever. Even the reported contributions tripled over the next decade, and the number of political organizations receiving donations increased from under 2,000 to nearly 5,000. There was no increased mobilization of the electorate, just a new set of rules that allowed politicians to establish as many as fifty separate paper organizations as recipients of funds.
Two important consequences of this failure were that factional competition grew more intense and the locus of competition for funds devolved to the level of individual politicians. By the late 1980s, every conservative politician with national aspirations was desperate to secure a corporate backer. As significant as they were, "public resources" alone were not sufficient. There was thus a return to the use of inside information, but at a much higher price than in the days of the shipbuilding scandal.
Voracious parvenu businessmen embraced equally voracious politicians. Hanamura Nihachiro, who ought to know as well as any other principal, estimates that at a minimum it now took three times more money than Keidanren distributed to run a political campaign. Japan was in the midst of its "bubble economy," and money was demanded by and flowing to politicians from every direction.
This came to a head in the "Recruit Scandal" of 1989 in which more than forty politicians-- including virtually every ranking LDP official from Prime Minister Takeshita to former prime Minister Nakasone, Finance Minister Miyazawa, and Party Secretary-General Abe-- were named by prosecutors as having received and profited from "pre-floated" shares of stock in a new company, Recruit Cosmos. The president of the upstart firm, Ezoe Hiromasa, leaving no political stone unturned, also provided shares to the chairman of the Democratic Socialist Party, to several Socialist Party members, and to the president of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, the chairman of NTT, and senior bureaucrats in the Education and Transport Ministries. Kishi's "filtering apparatus" had been supplanted by recklessness. There were twelve indictments, but only two were politicians. The others fell from power but climbed back up in short order. Miyazawa became prime minister, Takeshita became king-maker within the party's largest faction, and Nakasone resumed his role as respected party elder. Once again the political world was under pressure to reform politics, and once again, the institutions of the "1955 System" would prove resistant to change. Recruit ended with a whimper, the prosecutors backing away, indicating that they still feared political intervention more than public anger.22
Kuromaku and the Underworld
As poorly documented as the M-Fund and its transformation into "public resources" are, there is still an even more difficult (and likely more consequential) aspect of Kishi's political activities-- his relationships with ultra-nationalists and the underworld. His connection to them is through two of the most controversial figures in twentieth century Japanese politics-- the political "fixers" (kuromaku) Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio. Kishi, Sasakawa, and Kodama are tied together by their prewar and wartime activities and, most directly, by the fact that they were cellmates for three years in Sugamo Prison, where they allegedly concocted a plan for mutual assistance.
Kodama Yoshio (1911-1984) cast a ubiquitous shadow over many of the less pleasant aspects of pre- and postwar Japanese politics. After serving time in jail for plotting the assassination of leading prewar business and party leaders, he spent the war years in China where he procured strategic materials for the military. The activities of his "Kodama Agency" reportedly included drug trafficking, smuggling, and black marketeering. War profits made Kodama a personal fortune, which he was quick to turn to political advantage. He was said to have been released from Sugamo prison after making a deal with the occupation authorities to work for U.S. intelligence. Upon his release he served on the board of the National Council of Patriotic Societies, an umbrella group for more than 400 rightwing and underworld groups, some of which he mobilized to assist the Occupation in combatting labor demonstrations. He is also credited with providing the funds to create Hatoyama's Liberal and Democratic Parties.
Kishi first called upon Kodama, whose modus operandi, according to Jacob Schlesinger, "was blackmail, intimidation, and violence," to provide protection for Indonesian president Sukarno during the latter's visit to Tokyo in early 1958. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police had refused to help on grounds that it was a personal, rather than an official visit. Kishi again called upon Kodama in 1960 to use his gangland connections to battle student demonstrators and to help the government protect President Eisenhower during his aborted Ampo visit. Kodama's connections with U.S. intelligence also may have provided his entrZ&Mac255;e to the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, which used him twice as its "representative"-- once in the successful effort to convince Prime Minister Kishi to select the Lockheed F-104 over the Grumman F-11 fighter favored by the Air Staff of the Defense Agency and again in the successful effort to convince Prime Minister Tanaka to intervene with All Nippon Airways to buy the Lockheed 1011 jumbojet. In the first instance, the charge of bribery was never proven-- or even prosecuted-- while the second brought down the Tanaka government.
Sasakawa Ryoichi (1899-1995) was the more complex of the two Kishi-era kuromaku. Drafted into the Imperial Navy as a pilot in 1918, Sasakawa returned home after two years of service to expand the family fortune by speculating in rice futures. He later turned his energies to rightwing politics, possibly including membership in the violent Black Dragon Society. In 1931, Sasakawa used his own resources to establish the National Essence Mass Party (Kokusui Taishuto). His 15,000 party members, one of whom was Kodama Yoshio, wore black shirts and modeled themselves on the Italian fascists. Sasakawa was a maverick. He controlled a small independent air force of twenty-two airplanes, which he made available to the Navy for training, and took it upon himself to airlift supplies to the Japanese troops after the 1931 Manchurian incident. Later he was arrested for alleged plans for "patriotic violence," including plots against the prime minister and other government officials. After spending two and a half years in jail (1935-1938), he flew one of his planes to Rome to meet Mussolini. On the eve of the Pacific War, Sasakawa introduced Kodama to Imperial Navy officers seeking a private organ for materiel procurement in China. Sasakawa claimed credit for the creating the "Kodama Agency."23 During this period, he spent considerable time in Shanghai with Kodama where they bought mines and sold minerals to the military. They are alleged to have plundered millions of dollars worth of Chinese gold, diamonds, and other rare minerals. According to one account, Kodama shipped vast quantities of precious metals to Japan at the war's end, a portion of which was stored in warehouses rented by Sasakawa.
Sasakawa formally entered politics with a successful run for the Diet as an independent in the 1942 Yokusankai election. Although a vigorous critic of the Tojo Cabinet, in which his postwar ally, Kishi Nobusuke, served, Sasakawa was an ardent supporter of Kishi throughout his tenure in the wartime Diet. He joined the Gokoku Doshikai, the group of Diet members organized to try to make Kishi prime minister. After Japan's surrender, Sasakawa continued to be active in politics. Alarmed at the prospect of the collapse of the Emperor system and the advance of communism, Sasakawa entered into negotiations with a wide cross section of leading politicians in an attempt to create a new "Japan Mass Party." Various accounts trace the seed money for this effort to funds generated from the sale of Kodama Agency loot. When this effort failed, Sasakawa threw his support behind Hatoyama's Liberal Party, but his postwar political career was cut short by his arrest and imprisonment as a war criminal.
Sasakawa ultimately proved adept at building and wielding financial and political influence under the changed conditions of the postwar period. After his release from prison in 1948, he began to promote motorboat racing as a form of legal gambling in Japan. Working with cellmates Kishi and Kodama to cultivate political support-- some of which came from former Taishuto comrades now in the postwar Diet-- Sasakawa in 1951 won Diet approval of a Motorboat Racing Law. This law granted him monopoly control over this form of legalized gambling throughout Japan. Seventy-five percent of all the gambling revenue was to be returned as pari-mutuel winnings to gamblers, ten percent would go to the local governments where the race courses were located, 11.7 percent was earmarked for the Motorboat Racing Association, and 3.3 percent went to Sasakawa's Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation. By 1962, when Sasakawa effectively became the permanent chairman of the Foundation-- once again with Kishi's help-- he personally controlled both the Association and the Foundation. He installed Kodama as head of the Tokyo Motorboat Racing Association and used the revenues-- more than $8 billion annually by the early 1980s (as estimated by Forbes, June 20, 1983)-- to build a financial and philanthropic empire rivaling the greatest foundations in the world.
In addition to directing the flow of vast sums legally earmarked for philanthropic endeavors to organizations controlled by himself and his family, Sasakawa expanded his personal fortune by leveraging his gambling monopoly to gain control of virtually all businesses associated with the motorboat racing circuits. In later years, he also began to cultivate foreign charities, many associated with the United Nations, in order to bolster his openly aggressive bid to win a Nobel Peace Prize-- a pursuit that, in the end, eluded him. In 1990, the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation changed its name to the Sasakawa Foundation, and after his death in 1995, to the Nippon Foundation. In 1978, the Emperor of Japan awarded Sasakawa the nation's highest honor, the "First Class Order of the Sacred Treasure."24
Needless to say, Sasakawa Ryoichi continued to use his financial weight to pursue a political agenda, much of it involving the nurture of conservative politicians. By the late 1980s, his foundation listed some fifty-five Diet representatives who had received "support for their districts," most notably including the once and future prime ministers Nakasone Yasuhiro, Hashimoto Ryutaro, and LDP faction head, Kato Koichi.
Sasakawa built "sports clubs" and other facilities in the districts of friendly politicians. He gave "gift vouchers" to Transport Ministry bureaucrats for golf outings, and it is widely assumed that Sasakawa's influence was routinely used to shield favored public officials and politicians from the law. Sasakawa never again ran for public office himself but pursued his political ambitions vicariously, promoting the political careers of Sasakawa Takashi, his second son, and Itoyama Eitaro, his business associate and a former secretary to Nakasone Yasuhiro. Although the junior Sasakawa originally ran unsuccessfully as an independent, backed by Sasakawa's immense financial resources, both Takashi and Itoyama went on to serve in the Diet as members of the LDP. In 1993, financial disclosure documents revealed that Sasakawa Takashi was the wealthiest member of the Japanese Diet (Mainichi Shimbun, June 14, 1993). Thus equipped with several levers of political influence, Sasakawa publicly boasted of his role as a powerful political insider and key figure in the succession struggles that led to the governments of Kishi Nobusuke, Sato Eisaku, and Tanaka Kakuei.
Another aspect of Sasakawa's postwar political agenda, anti-communism, dovetailed neatly with his efforts in conservative politics. Working closely with Kishi, he cultivated relationships with other anti-communists throughout Asia. In the mid-1960s, this brought him into contact with the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church.25 In 1967, Sasakawa invited the Unification Church to use his motorboat racing center in Yamanashi prefecture for its first rally in Japan. The following year, three months after the Reverend Moon established his "Federation for Victory over Communism" (Shokyo Rengo) in Korea, Sasakawa agreed to become its honorary chairman in Japan.
Kishi was impressed by the Federation, suggesting that "If all younger people were like Shokyo Rengo members, Japan would have a bright future." In this way, Sasakawa and Kishi shielded what would become one of the most widely distrusted groups in contemporary Japan.
Although loathed and feared for its alleged kidnappings and mind control of young Japanese, the Unification Church proved (and may still prove) to be of incalculable benefit to many Japanese politicians. It built its Japan headquarters on land in Tokyo once owned by Kishi. By the early 1970s, a number of LDP politicians were using Unification Church members as campaign workers. While the politicians were required to pledge to visit the Church's headquarters in Korea and receive Reverend Moon's lectures on theology, it did not matter whether they were members of the Church.
Actual Church members -- so-called "Moonies" -- were sent by the Federation to serve without compensation as industrious and highly valued campaign workers. In return, for many years the Church enjoyed protection from prosecution by Japanese authorities for their often fraudulent and aggressive sales and conversion tactics. Not incidentally, by the 1980s, Japan reportedly provided some four-fifths of Unification Church revenues worldwide.26
Over time, the Kishi and allied factions transferred the Kishi-Sasakawa-Moon link to other party leaders. In 1974, Fukuda Takeo, the direct inheritor of the Kishi faction, praised Reverend Moon as "one of Asia's great leaders," while Nakasone Yasuhiro, the youngest member of the Kishi Cabinet and scion of the allied Kono faction, similarly honored Moon. Abe Shintaro, Kishi's son-in law and inheritor of the faction from Fukuda, also depended upon "Moonies" in his election campaigns. A list prepared by the Japan Communist Party of 126 LDP and DSP politicians who used "volunteers" from the Federation for Victory over Communism to staff their campaigns includes Ozawa Ichiro, Hashimoto Ryutaro, and other senior party leaders. In the 1990 general election, the Unification Church announced that it had provided financial and campaign support to more than one hundred Japanese Diet members. As a measure of the influence Moon enjoyed in Japan, in 1992 the government gave him special permission to enter the country even though Japanese law forbids entry to a foreign national who has served more than year in jail. Moon had served eighteen months in U.S. jail for tax evasion and had been barred from entering Japan on these grounds for nearly a decade. In March 1992, Kanemaru Shin, vice president of the LDP and the head of the largest faction within the party, intervened on Moon's behalf with the Minister of Justice.
Since the management of all other forms of legal gambling in Japan had been entrusted to public organizations, Sasakawa's private control of the gambling receipts from motor boat racing was difficult to justify and vulnerable to reform efforts. In addition, the "Sasakawa Empire" was a tempting target for political opportunists hoping to seize control of its abundant financial flows. To defend his gambling concession, Sasakawa mobilized his financial and political resources in a variety of ways. First, he cultivated strong personal and financial ties with conservative politicians in the ruling LDP and helped place his son and other political allies in the Diet. Second, to counter bureaucratic assertiveness, his Shipbuilding Industry Foundation provided trillions of yen to research institutes, training centers, community associations, sports clubs, and other non-profit organizations associated with government ministries. Recipient organizations also served as retirement havens (amakudarisaki) for more than one hundred former bureaucrats from the Ministry of Transportation, the government organ with jurisdiction over motor boat racing. Finally, Sasakawa defeated political challenges to his control of the state-granted gambling monopoly with ruthless efficiency.
The best example was his rebuff of then Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei's attempt to gain control over the Shipbuilding Industry Foundation. After rejecting the prime minister's request to install a Tanaka ally within the Foundation's leadership, Sasakawa became the subject of a police investigation that many thought was Tanaka's attempt to unseat him. Although the investigation, which focused on campaign finance irregularities in Itoyama's 1974 Diet election, ended with the arrest of Sasakawa's brother, he himself emerged unscathed. Now a vocal critic of Tanaka, Sasakawa contributed mightily to the storm of condemnation that followed revelations of Tanaka's own questionable financial practices and that led to his resignation as prime minister in late 1974. Sasakawa's counterattack against Tanaka is alleged to have included his being a key informer in the Lockheed bribery scandal that resulted in Tanaka's arrest and conviction.27 Although most of these allegations remain unconfirmed, Sasakawa's media campaign against Tanaka during the scandal is a matter of public record. While vociferously denying any personal involvement in the scandal, Sasakawa made public statements that both suggested an intimate knowledge of the details of the affair and pointed specifically to the culpability of Tanaka and his cohorts. Although Sasakawa was also investigated by the Lockheed prosecutors because of his personal involvement with the aircraft industry, he was never indicted.
Kishi and Sasakawa both seemed to be made of Teflon. Between 1955, when Kishi helped create the LDP, and 1960, when he resigned as prime minister, fourteen separate corruption cases involving politicians and bureaucrats swirled around the party and the government. Kishi's name never once appeared on the formal dockets of the prosecutors, but it was ubiquitously associated with them in the popular imagination. Many of these scandals, e.g., the "Lockheed Grumman Affair" of 1958 and the "Indonesian Kickback Problem" of 1959, are closely associated with the "alternative routes" that Kishi had developed for amassing political funds: the acceptance of U.S. support, the use of public resources, and reliance upon political fixers.
Before leaving his post in Manchuria in 1939, Kishi reportedly told his colleagues: "Political funds should be accepted only after they have passed through a `filter' and been `cleansed.' If a problem arises, the `filter' itself will then become the center of the affair, while the politician, who has consumed the `clean water,' will not be implicated. Political funds become the basis of corruption scandals only when they have not been sufficiently `filtered.'"28 More than fifty years later, when virtually the entire leadership of the LDP was tainted by the Recruit Scandal, when Kanemaru Shin, Tanaka Kakuei's disciple and Ozawa Ichiro's mentor, was prosecuted for accepting funds that had not been properly "filtered" (in this case, four million dollars from a gang-related trucking company), and when Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru was toppled for his ties to yakuza, Kishi's advice was still relevant. It was, after all, Kishi who first connected the discredited world of prewar politics to postwar conservative hegemony and it was Kishi who welcomed organized crime and the nationalist rightwing into the mainstream of LDP power. By the 1990s, however, few seemed to remember the connection. By then, Kodama was dead, Sasakawa was weakened and dying, and a range of newly-founded religious organizations had become active -- indeed indispensable -- supporters of the LDP. Kishi's advice echoed faintly. Structural corruption within the "1955 System" was taken for granted. It was just the way things worked.
NOTES
* Japanese names are given in the Japanese order, surname followed by given name.
1. Author's interview with former Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, May 17, 2000.
2. Kurzman, Dan, Kishi and Japan: The Search for the Sun (New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1960), p. 256.
3. Quoted by Kurzman, p. 267.
4. Quoted by Kurzman, p. 278.
5. For a detailed account of these developments, including the use of "show money," see Hara Shinsuke, Kishi Nobusuke: kensei no seijika (Kishi Nobusuke: Powerful Politician) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1995), pp. 162-9.
6. Hara, op. cit., p. 177; and Kitaoka Shinichi, "Kishi Nobusuke: yashin to zassetsu" (Kishi Nobusuke: Ambition and Failure), in Watanabe Akio, ed., Sengo Nihon no saishotachi (The Prime Ministers of Postwar Japan) (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1995), pp. 121-148 .
7. Uemura Kogoro Denki Henshushitsu, ed., Ningen: Uemura Kogoro sengo keizai hatten no kiseki (Uemura Kogoro, The Man: The Path of Postwar Economic Development) (Tokyo: Sankei Shuppan, 1979), pp. 343-4, 606; and Hanamura Nihachiro, Seizaikai paipu-yaku hanseki (My Half-Life as the Pipeline Between the Political and the Business Worlds) (Tokyo: Tokyo Shimbun Shuppankyoku, 1990), pp. 19, 83.
8. Kano Akihiro and Takano Hajime Uchimaku: ayasutte kita kenryoku no rimenshi (Inside Story: The Hidden Background of How Power Came to Be Manipulated) (Tokyo: Gakuyo Shobo, 1976), p, 57.
9. Ono Koji, Nihon seiji no tenkanten (Reversals in Japanese Politics) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1998), pp. 91-94.
10. Masumi Junnosuke, Contemporary Politics in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp, 218-32.
11. Author's interview with Hori Wataru, April 28, 2000.
12. Asahi Shimbun, June 30, 1960.
13. Jacob M. Schlesinger, Shadow Shoguns: The Rise and Fall of Japan's Postwar Political Machine (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 109.
14. Kishi Nobusuke, Yatsugi Kazuo, and Ito Takashi, eds., Kishi Nobusuke no kaiso (Recollections of Kishi Nobusuke) (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1981), p. 126.
15. See Chalmers Johnson, Norbert A. Schlei, and Michael Schaller, "The CIA and Japanese Politics," Asian Perspective 24:4 (2000), pp. 88-94.
16. Kishi, Yatsugi, and Ito, pp. 118, 128.
17. Schlesinger, p. 110.
18. Arase, David, Buying Power: The Political Economy of Japan's Foreign Aid (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), p. 28 .
19. Nishihara Masashi, The Japanese and Sukarno's Indonesia: Tokyo-Jakarta Relations, 1951-1966 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976), p. 103.
20. Masumi,p. 229.
21. Yasuhara Kazuo, Keidanren kaicho no sengoshi (The Postwar History of Keidanren Chairmen) (Tokyo: Bijinesu-sha, 1985), pp. 102-3.
22. On the Recruit scandal, see Gerald Curtis, The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); and Sasaki Takeshi, ed., Seiji kaikaku 1800-hi no shinjitsu (The Reality of 1800 days of Political Reform) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1999).
23. For these details, see Iguchi Go, et al., Kuromaku kenkyu (Studies of Political Fixers) (Tokyo: Shinkoku Minsha, 1977); and Sato Seizaburo, ed., Za raito uingu no otoko: senzen no Sasakawa Ryoichi goroku (The Rightwing Man: The Prewar Record of Sasakawa Ryoichi) (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1999).
24. See Ino Kenji, "Sasakawa teikoku ga yuragu" (The Sasakawa Empire Trembles), Ekonomisuto, August 2, 1994, pp. 88-91; and Ino, "Sanninno kuromaku to Sasakawa Ryoichi" (The Three Political Fixers and Sasakawa Ryoichi), Ekonomisuto, October 3, 1995, pp. 86-91.
25. Wakamono to Shukyo Kenkyukai, ed. Toitsu Kyokai no uchimaku (The Inside Story of the Unification Church) (Tokyo: Eeru Shuppankai, 1992); and Andrew Marshall and Michiko Toyama. "In the Name of the Godfather," Tokyo Journal, October 1994, pp. 29-35.
26. Christopher Redl, "Curse of the Kingmakers," Tokyo Journal, May 1993, pp. 34-41; and Redl, "Japan's Divine Seduction: How the Unification Church Infiltrated the Japanese Government," unpublished manuscript, 1994.
27. Ino Kenji, 1995, p. 91.
28. Tajiri Ikuzo, Showa no yokai: Kishi Nobusuke (The Monster of Showa: Kishi Nobusuke) (Tokyo: Gakuyo Shobo, 1979), p. 88.
RICHARD J. SAMUELS is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has written numerous books on Japan, including Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Cornell University Press,1994), which won the 1996 John Whitney Hall Prize of the Association of Asian Studies. He has recently completed a comparative political and economic history of Italy and Japan, of which this paper is an edited excerpt. It is used with the permission of Cornell University Press. Professor Samuels received an Abe Foundation fellowship in support of this research and was affiliated with the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. In October 2001, Samuels was appointed Chairman of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission.
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12/27/2013 07:27 AM
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Re: A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
How The CIA Helped The Yakuza & The LDP Get Power & Promote Nuclear Power
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Anonymous Coward
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Re: A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
How The CIA Helped The Yakuza & The LDP Get Power & Promote Nuclear Power
[link to www.japansubculture.com]
"...Chapter 12: “We Ran It In A Different Way” is a must for anyone interested in the shadow history of Japan. It details how in post-war Japan, the CIA, using large amounts of cash, reinstated former war criminal Kodama Yoshio and hand-picked one of Japan’s Prime Ministers–in order to supress communist/socialist movements. Kodama had extensive yakuza ties and huge amounts of capital made in the black markets in China. ($175 million estimated). The Tokyo CIA station reported on September 10th, 1953, “(Kodama) is a professional liar, gangster, charlatan, and outright thief….and has no interest in anything but the profits.” It still didn’t keep the CIA from doing business with him up to that time and behind the scenes later. The chapter also notes how the CIA was able to ensure that Nobusuke Kishi became Japan’s prime minister and the chief of its ruling party, in order to ensure that Japan didn’t go red. The president himself seemed to have authorized huge cash payments to Kishi and his other lackeys within the LDP.
Chapter 12 “We Ran It In A Different Way” has a fascinating account of US backing of gangsters and their politicians in post-war Japan
Kishi’s links to the Yamaguchi-gumi and other organized crime groups are well-known. His former private secretary was instrumental in organizing the deal between former Yamaguchi-gumi Goto-gumi boss, Goto Tadamasa, and the FBI...
...According to the excellent book, The Japanese Mafia by Peter Hill, and other sources, Kishi also once put up the bail money for a Yamaguchi-gumi boss accused of a felony. Goto Tadamasa, the ex-yakuza boss (currently a Buddhist priest doing charitable work) in his memoirs Habkarinagra (Pardon me but...) also discusses his close ties to ex-Prime Minister Kishi....
================================
http://www.japansubculture.com/how-the-cia-helped-put-the-yakuza-and-the-ldp-in-power/
I just finished re-reading Tim Weiner’s magnum opus, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA ,which is perhaps the best book ever written on the Central Intelligence Agency, and its general history of dismal failures. On the eve of the LDP’s retaking of power, December 16th 2012, I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at the LDP and how they came into being in the first place. It’s like a story out of a John Le Carre novel, but as is often the case, truth is stranger than fiction–and more interesting.
Operations in Japan turned out to be one of the Agency’s rare success stories. Not only did the CIA put their party of choice in power, according the book 原発 正力 CIA-機密文書で読む昭和裏面史 (What Secret Documents Tell Us About The Hidden Showa-Era History of Ties Between the Nuclear Industry, Matustaro Shoriki–the former president of the Yomiuri Shimbun and founder of Nippon Television) published by Shinchosha, but using the Japanese media, they were able to convince Japan to invest in nuclear energy. Of course, US firms reaped the profits. But that’s another very long story.
Legacy of Ashes is a phenomenal book, especially in how it documents the CIA’s many, many failures–but operations in Japan were something else.
Chapter 12: “We Ran It In A Different Way” is a must for anyone interested in the shadow history of Japan. It details how in post-war Japan, the CIA, using large amounts of cash, reinstated former war criminal Kodama Yoshio and hand-picked one of Japan’s Prime Ministers–in order to supress communist/socialist movements. Kodama had extensive yakuza ties and huge amounts of capital made in the black markets in China. ($175 million estimated). The Tokyo CIA station reported on September 10th, 1953, “(Kodama) is a professional liar, gangster, charlatan, and outright thief….and has no interest in anything but the profits.” It still didn’t keep the CIA from doing business with him up to that time and behind the scenes later. The chapter also notes how the CIA was able to ensure that Nobusuke Kishi became Japan’s prime minister and the chief of its ruling party, in order to ensure that Japan didn’t go red. The president himself seemed to have authorized huge cash payments to Kishi and his other lackeys within the LDP.
http://www.japansubculture.com/how-the-cia-helped-put-the-yakuza-and-the-ldp-in-power/
I just finished re-reading Tim Weiner’s magnum opus, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA ,which is perhaps the best book ever written on the Central Intelligence Agency, and its general history of dismal failures. On the eve of the LDP’s retaking of power, December 16th 2012, I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at the LDP and how they came into being in the first place. It’s like a story out of a John Le Carre novel, but as is often the case, truth is stranger than fiction–and more interesting.
Operations in Japan turned out to be one of the Agency’s rare success stories. Not only did the CIA put their party of choice in power, according the book 原発 正力 CIA-機密文書で読む昭和裏面史 (What Secret Documents Tell Us About The Hidden Showa-Era History of Ties Between the Nuclear Industry, Matustaro Shoriki–the former president of the Yomiuri Shimbun and founder of Nippon Television) published by Shinchosha, but using the Japanese media, they were able to convince Japan to invest in nuclear energy. Of course, US firms reaped the profits. But that’s another very long story.
Legacy of Ashes is a phenomenal book, especially in how it documents the CIA’s many, many failures–but operations in Japan were something else.
Chapter 12: “We Ran It In A Different Way” is a must for anyone interested in the shadow history of Japan. It details how in post-war Japan, the CIA, using large amounts of cash, reinstated former war criminal Kodama Yoshio and hand-picked one of Japan’s Prime Ministers–in order to supress communist/socialist movements. Kodama had extensive yakuza ties and huge amounts of capital made in the black markets in China. ($175 million estimated). The Tokyo CIA station reported on September 10th, 1953, “(Kodama) is a professional liar, gangster, charlatan, and outright thief….and has no interest in anything but the profits.” It still didn’t keep the CIA from doing business with him up to that time and behind the scenes later. The chapter also notes how the CIA was able to ensure that Nobusuke Kishi became Japan’s prime minister and the chief of its ruling party, in order to ensure that Japan didn’t go red. The president himself seemed to have authorized huge cash payments to Kishi and his other lackeys within the LDP.
Chapter 12 “We Ran It In A Different Way” has a fascinating account of US backing of gangsters and their politicians in post-war Japan
Kishi’s links to the Yamaguchi-gumi and other organized crime groups are well-known. His former private secretary was instrumental in organizing the deal between former Yamaguchi-gumi Goto-gumi boss, Goto Tadamasa, and the FBI; it was a deal in which Goto shared intelligence on organized crime groups within Japan and information on North Korea in exchange for a visa to the the United States. He received a liver transplant at UCLA, a transaction which the FBI did not set up or was involved in. Some of this is discussed in Tokyo Vice.
According to the excellent book, The Japanese Mafia by Peter Hill, and other sources, Kishi also once put up the bail money for a Yamaguchi-gumi boss accused of a felony. Goto Tadamasa, the ex-yakuza boss (currently a Buddhist priest doing charitable work) in his memoirs Habkarinagra (Pardon me but…) also discusses his close ties to ex-Prime Minister Kishi. Robert Whiting in the seminal Tokyo Underworld also covers US political connections to organized crime in Japan in great depth and quite entertainingly. Whiting-san worked for the National Security Agency at one point in his life and what he says has great credibility as far as I’m concerned. (I’m not outing Robert by writing that he once worked for the NSA; it was mentioned in a Japan Times article several years ago and proved to be correct.) David Kaplan’s groundbreaking Yakuza:Japan’s Criminal Underworld was probably the first book to really examine the shadowy ties between the yakuza, the LDP and the US after the occupation. What makes Tim Weiner’s small chapter so impressive are the extensive notes, documents obtained from the CIA, and that he apparently conducted interviews on the CIA side as well. Impressive work.
Kodama, the right-wing industrialist mentioned above, is notorious for his gangster connections but perhaps what best illustrates the point is that in the early sixties, Kodoma, Taoka Kazuo (田岡 一雄氏), the third generation leader of the Yamaguchi-gumi, and Machii Hisayuki (町井 久之) head of the once powerful Japanese-Korean mafia, Toseikai（東声会) all served as board members of the Japan Professional Wrestling Association at the same time. They were all good buddies. As noted in Legacy Of Ashes, and in other sources, the Liberal Democratic Party was founded with a mixture of criminal proceeds, yakuza money, and US funds. The days when the US were able to exert control over Japanese politics are long gone but the yakuza have managed to maintain their own ties and connections to politicians across the board. For the Japanese government, they are still a useful entity, at times, and before the APEC summit, calls were sent out to all the major yakuza leaders urging them not to get into any gang wars and to keep an eye on anti-American lefties. After APEC ends, the aftermath of someone lobbing a hand-grenade into the headquarters of the Yamaguchi-gumi Yamaken-gumi headquarters will probably result in a bloody gang war. But for the time being, the yakuza are keeping the peace.
Full Disclosure Memo: In the worst of the Japanese press and blogosphere, I’ve been accused of being an agent of the CIA several times. Or the Mossad. Take your pick. This is untrue. I’m not a Mormon, have been very promiscious, and I am not totally inept, all things which disqualify me off the bat. However, in 2006-2007, as part of a US State Department sponsored study on human trafficking in Japan, I worked with a company which has many retired CIA/NSA employees and has been accused of being a front company for the CIA. I don’t know if they are or aren’t a front company and I don’t really care. The study and the Human Trafficking report that came out of it had a positive impact on Japan’s attitude towards dealing with human trafficking isssues and that’s really all that matters.
If you’re interested in the outsourcing of intelligence, pick up a copy of Spies For Hire: The Secret World Of Intelligence Outsourcing *by Tim Shorrock. The CIA contractor card on the cover has a partial picture of a Jewish looking fellow but I don’t think that’s me. Not unless someone issued me a nifty little card and didn’t tell me about it. It’s an incredibly well-written book which is now back in print. (Thanks to Mr. Shorrock for letting us know.)
* I was contacted by a yakuza fan magazine journalist roughly two months ago who asserted that it was me on the cover of Spies For Hire and tried to shake me down for cash, obliquely. So by writing this post, I’m also saying “f*ck you very much.” Personally, what’s the most insulting thing about being accused of being a former CIA agent, and no offense to anyone working for the agency intended, but they have such a dismal success rate that it’s kind of like being accused of working for post-Bush FEMA. It wounds my pride. Most people who are in “the intelligence community” would argue that actually the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has the best actionable intelligence of any agency .
Anyway, if you’re a serious Japanologist, Legacy of Ashes is worth having on yourself for that chapter alone. (This is a revision of an article originally posted on November 14th, 2010).
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User ID: 52020893
Japan
12/27/2013 07:50 AM
Re: A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
C.I.A. Spent Millions to Support Japanese Right in 50's and 60's
WASHINGTON -- In a major covert operation of the cold war, the Central Intelligence Agency spent millions of dollars to support the conservative party that dominated Japan's politics for a generation...
...The American occupation forces freed accused war criminals like Nobusuke Kishi, later Japan's Prime Minister. Some of the rehabilitated politicians had close contacts with organized crime groups, known as yakuza. So did Yoshio Kodama, a political fixer and later a major C.I.A. contact in Japan who worked behind the scenes to finance the conservatives...
[link to web177.net]
WASHINGTON -- In a major covert operation of the cold war, the Central Intelligence Agency spent millions of dollars to support the conservative party that dominated Japan's politics for a generation...
...The American occupation forces freed accused war criminals like Nobusuke Kishi, later Japan's Prime Minister. Some of the rehabilitated politicians had close contacts with organized crime groups, known as yakuza. So did Yoshio Kodama, a political fixer and later a major C.I.A. contact in Japan who worked behind the scenes to finance the conservatives...
[link to web177.net]
日本のゴッドファーザー
一族の会議 - 日本の主要なヤクザの家族のリーダー。
左から二番目は義雄児玉、山口組のボス、日本最大のヤクザ一族です。
小玉義雄は一番左ですFirst is Yoshio Kodama from left
A meeting of the clans - leaders of Japan's principal Yakuza families.
下のCIAは日本の右に糧とサポートを与えた方法を説明しますティム·ワイナージョン·キャロル大学ウェブサイト（http://www.jcu.edu）に掲載1994年の記事である - 中 - ヤクザのボス義雄児玉含む1950年代と1960年代。
Below that is a 1994 article published at the John Carroll University website (http://www.jcu.edu) by Tim Weiner, that describes how the CIA gave sustenance and support to the Japanese right - including Yakuza boss Yoshio Kodama - during the 1950's and 1960's.
1994年10月9日 / October 9, 1994
C.I.A. 50年代と60年代に日本の右をサポートするための百万費やし
C.I.A. Spent Millions to Support Japanese Right in 50's and 60's
TIM WEINERによって / By TIM WEINER
ワシントン - 冷戦の主要な隠密作戦では、中央情報局（CIA）は、世代のために、日本の政治を支配した保守的なパーティーをサポートするために、数百万ドルを費やした。
WASHINGTON -- In a major covert operation of the cold war, the Central Intelligence Agency spent millions of dollars to support the conservative party that dominated Japan's politics for a generation.
C.I.A. 、日本の知性を集め、アジアにおける共産主義に対する防波堤の国を作り、日本の左を弱体化させるために、1950年代と1960年代に自民党とそのメンバーにお金を与えた、引退した諜報関係者や元外交官は言った。それ以来、C.I.A.その秘密の財政援助を落とし、日本の政党政治と貿易と条約交渉におけるポジションの内部情報収集ではなく集中して、引退した諜報将校は言った。
The C.I.A. gave money to the Liberal Democratic Party and its members in the 1950's and the 1960's, to gather intelligence on Japan, make the country a bulwark against Communism in Asia and undermine the Japanese left, said retired intelligence officials and former diplomats. Since then, the C.I.A. has dropped its covert financial aid and focused instead on gathering inside information on Japan's party politics and positions in trade and treaty talks, retired intelligence officers said.
多くの秘密の現金拠出を含む - 彼らは汚職事件の一連の後、電源から落ちたときに一党統治の自由民主党 '38年は昨年終了しました。 CIAの援助を弱体化させる部分で目指したパーティ - それでも、日本の国会で最大の当事者は、彼らは古い冷戦敵と月に厄介な連合、社会党を結成。
The Liberal Democrats' 38 years of one-party governance ended last year when they fell from power after a series of corruption cases -- many involving secret cash contributions. Still the largest party in Japan's parliament, they formed an awkward coalition in June with their old cold war enemies, the Socialists -- the party that the C.I.A.'s aid aimed in part to undermine.
日本の政治におけるCIAの財政の役割は長い歴史家やジャーナリストが疑われたが、自民党は常に、それが存在して否定しており、支援の幅と深さは、公に詳述されていない。秘密の援助の開示は古い傷を開き、日本の利益のための独立した音声として自由民主党 '信頼性に悪影響を及ぼす可能性がある。同盟国との間でスパイ活動の対象は、常に敏感であった。
Though the C.I.A.'s financial role in Japanese politics has long been suspected by historians and journalists, the Liberal Democrats have always denied it existed, and the breadth and depth of the support has never been detailed publicly. Disclosure of the covert aid could open old wounds and harm the Liberal Democrats' credibility as an independent voice for Japanese interests. The subject of spying between allies has always been sensitive.
C.I.A.お問い合わせに応答しませんでした。東京では、克也村口、自民党の経営局長は、彼がどんな支払いのことを聞いたことがなかったと述べた。
The C.I.A. did not respond to an inquiry. In Tokyo, Katsuya Muraguchi, director of the Liberal Democratic Party's management bureau, said he had never heard of any payments.
"この物語は、公式とプライベートレベルでアメリカ人が戦後日本におけるストラクチャード腐敗と一党保守的民主主義を促進する上で果たした親密な役割を明らかにし、それが新機能、"ジョン·ダワー、マサチューセッツ工科大学の大手日本学者は言った。 "我々は自民党を見て、それが壊れているだと、それは一党民主主義を持って不幸だと言う。しかし、我々はその不格好な構造を作成する役割を果たしてきた。"
"This story reveals the intimate role that Americans at official and private levels played in promoting structured corruption and one-party conservative democracy in post-war Japan, and that's new," said John Dower, a leading Japan scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We look at the L.D.P. and say it's corrupt and it's unfortunate to have a one-party democracy. But we have played a role in creating that misshapen structure."
物語のこまごまとした物をゆっくり機密解除された米国政府の記録で明らかにされています。国立公文書館における国務省文書は佐藤栄作、日本の元首相は、1958議会選挙のために米国からアンダーテーブルの拠出を求めている、東京のホテルで密会を説明しています。新たに機密解除されたC.I.A.歴史はまた、同年送信秘密のサポートについて説明します。
Bits and pieces of the story are revealed in United States Government records slowly being declassified. A State Department document in the National Archives describes a secret meeting in a Tokyo hotel at which Eisaku Sato, a former Prime Minister of Japan, sought under-the-table contributions from the United States for the 1958 parliamentary election. A newly declassified C.I.A. history also discusses covert support sent that year.
しかし、完全な物語が隠されたままです。それは生き残った参加者は、昔の多くのよく過去80年、と明示的に初期の1960年代に自由民主党にケネディ政権の秘密援助を確認し、まだ分類された国務省文書を説明し、政府関係者とのインタビューを通してつなぎ合わせた。
But the full story remains hidden. It was pieced together through interviews with surviving participants, many well past 80 years old, and Government officials who described still-classified State Department documents explicitly confirming the Kennedy Administration's secret aid to the Liberal Democrats in the early 1960's.
法律では、政府が30年後、公開する必要があり、 "すべてのレコードは主要な外交政策の決定と行動の包括的なドキュメントを提供する必要がありました。"いくつかの国務省とC.I.A.当局はケネディ時代の文書は、永遠に秘密の滞在する必要があります恐れて、彼らは日本の連立政権を混乱させるかもしれない、米国を困ら言う。その他国務省当局者は法律が文書が開封されることを要求すると言う。
The law requires the Government to publish, after 30 years, "all records needed to provide a comprehensive documentation of major foreign policy decisions and actions." Some State Department and C.I.A. officials say the Kennedy-era documents should stay secret forever, for fear they might disrupt Japan's coalition government or embarrass the United States. Other State Department officials say the law demands that the documents be unsealed.
成功の秘密オペレーション
A Secret Operation That Succeeded
日本の保守派のためのCIAのヘルプには、イタリアのキリスト教民主党のための秘密のサポートのように、他の冷戦操作に似ていた。しかし、それは秘密のまま - 部分的には、それが成功したので。自由民主党は、彼らの社会主義の敵を阻止彼らの一党支配を維持して、ワシントンと密接な関係を築いて、日本全体で、米国の維持軍基地へのパブリック反対をオフに戦った。
The C.I.A.'s help for Japanese conservatives resembled other cold war operations, like secret support for Italy's Christian Democrats. But it remained secret -- in part, because it succeeded. The Liberal Democrats thwarted their Socialist opponents, maintained their one-party rule, forged close ties with Washington and fought off public opposition to the United States' maintaining military bases throughout Japan.
One退職C.I.A.決済に関わる関係者は "それは闇の心であり、それが働いたので、私は、それについて話して快適ではないんだ"と述べた。その他秘密のサポートを確認した。
One retired C.I.A. official involved in the payments said, "That is the heart of darkness and I'm not comfortable talking about it, because it worked." Others confirmed the covert support.
"我々はそれらを資金、" 1955から1958へのCIAの極東の操作を実行したアルフレッドC.ウルマー·ジュニアは、言った。 "我々は、情報をL.D.P.に依存していた。"彼はC.I.A.言った支払額を使用していた両方のパーティをサポートするために、その初期の時代から、その中に密告を募集する。
"We financed them," said Alfred C. Ulmer Jr., who ran the C.I.A.'s Far East operations from 1955 to 1958. "We depended on the L.D.P. for information." He said the C.I.A. had used the payments both to support the party and to recruit informers within it from its earliest days.
1960年代初期で、党とその政治家への支払い "はとても確立などルーチン"彼らは日本に向けてアメリカの外交政策の基本的な、高度に秘密であれば、一部であったことがあった、ロジャーヒルズマン、国務省の諜報局長は語ったケネディ管理した。
By the early 1960's, the payments to the party and its politicians were "so established and so routine" that they were a fundamental, if highly secret, part of American foreign policy toward Japan, said Roger Hilsman, head of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the Kennedy Administration.
"原則は確かに私には受け入れられた、" U.アレクシス·ジョンソン、1966年から1969年まで駐日米国大使は語った。 "我々は我々の側にパーティーを融資しました。"彼はシニア国務省の役人になるために1969年に日本を去った後に支払いが続け述べた。
"The principle was certainly acceptable to me," said U. Alexis Johnson, United States Ambassador to Japan from 1966 to 1969. "We were financing a party on our side." He said the payments continued after he left Japan in 1969 to become a senior State Department official.
C.I.A.パーティを支持し、1950年代と1960年代に日本政府の多くの有望な若い男性との関係を確立しました。いくつかは、日本の政治の元老の中で今日があります。
The C.I.A. supported the party and established relations with many promising young men in the Japanese Government in the 1950's and 1960's. Some are today among the elder statesmen of Japanese politics.
勝後藤田、1970年代に議会に入り、誰が最近、法務大臣を務め尊敬自民党のリーダーは、これらのコンタクトを認めた。
Masaru Gotoda, a respected Liberal Democratic Party leader who entered parliament in the 1970's and who recently served as Justice Minister, acknowledged these contacts.
"私はCIAと深い関係を持っていた"と、彼は1950年代と1960年代における諜報活動の高官として彼の年を参照し、インタビューで語った。 "私は彼らの本部に行ってきました。しかし、財政援助を受けて本格的な政府組織内の誰もがありませんでした。"彼がより明示的ではないでしょう。
"I had a deep relationship with the C.I.A.," he said in an interview, referring to his years as a senior official in intelligence activities in the 1950's and 1960's. "I went to their headquarters. But there was nobody in an authentic Government organization who received financial aid." He would not be more explicit.
"合法的なステータスを持つ大使館に駐在されたそれらのCIAの人々は罰金だった、"と彼は言った。 "しかし、また、秘密の人々があった。我々は、彼らが行っていたすべての活動を本当に知りませんでした。彼らは友好的国家から、我々は深く調査しませんでしたので。"
"Those C.I.A. people who were stationed in the embassy with legitimate status were fine," he said. "But there were also covert people. We did not really know all the activities they were conducting. Because they were from a friendly nation, we did not investigate deeply."
募集は '洗練'ました / Recruitment Was 'Sophisticated'
1950年代と1960年代に日本の保守派の募集があった "かなり洗練されたビジネス、" 1 CIAは言った役員。日本の国会で "我々の役員のかなりの数は、これは座席ごと座席ごとに行われていた自民党との接触であった"。第二C.I.A.役員は、代理店の連絡先が日本の内閣のメンバーが含まれていたと語った。
The recruitment of Japanese conservatives in the 1950's and 1960's was "a pretty sophisticated business," said one C.I.A. officer. "Quite a number of our officers were in touch with the L.D.P. This was done on a seat-by-seat basis" in the Japanese parliament. A second C.I.A. officer said the agency's contacts had included members of the Japanese cabinet.
C.I.A.として自由民主党を支持し、それは彼らの相手を弱体化。それはモスクワから秘密の財政支援を受けて、若者のグループ、学生グループと労働グループにエージェントを配置していた疑いが日本社会党、元CIAに潜入役員は述べています。
As the C.I.A. supported the Liberal Democrats, it undermined their opponents. It infiltrated the Japan Socialist Party, which it suspected was receiving secret financial support from Moscow, and placed agents in youth groups, student groups and labor groups, former C.I.A. officers said.
日本の反対を妨害すると、 "我々は何ができる最も重要なことでした"と1人だ。
Obstructing the Japanese opposition "was the most important thing we could do," one said.
秘密の援助が明らかに1970年代初めに終わった、貿易上の成長摩擦は、米国と日本との関係を緊張し始め、日本の成長富はエージェンシー問題の政治家を支持する点を作った。
The covert aid apparently ended in the early 1970's, when growing frictions over trade began to strain relations between the United States and Japan, and the growing wealth of Japan made the agency question the point of supporting politicians.
"その時までに、彼らは自己資金だった"元上級諜報関係者は述べています。しかし、代理店は、日本では、より伝統的なスパイ操作を確立するために、その長年の関係を使用していました。
"By that time, they were self-financing," a former senior intelligence official said. But the agency used its longstanding relationships to establish a more traditional espionage operation in Japan.
"我々は、すべてのキャビネット機関の貫通していた、" CIAは言った役員は1970年代後半と1980年代初めに東京に拠点を置く。彼は代理店がまた首相に側近を募集し、それは日本が貿易交渉で言うことを予め知っていたこと、農業省にこのような良い接点を持っていたと述べた。牛肉と柑橘類の輸入上会談で "我々は、フォールバック位置を知っていた"、と彼は言った。 "我々は、日本の代表団は出て行くだろうというとき知っていた。"
"We had penetrations of all the cabinet agencies," said a C.I.A. officer based in Tokyo in the late 1970's and early 1980's. He said the agency also recruited a close aide to a prime minister and had such good contacts in the agriculture ministry that it knew beforehand what Japan would say in trade talks. "We knew the fallback positions" in talks over beef and citrus imports, he said. "We knew when the Japanese delegation would walk out."
それはあったかもしれない便利なのに、内部の情報はほとんどアメリカの貿易交渉の日本人と上部の手を与えなかった。
Useful though it may have been, the inside information rarely gave American trade negotiators the upper hand with the Japanese.
アメリカの政策の 'リバースコース'
'The Reverse Course' Of American Policy
自由民主党のサポートは、いくつかの歴史家が、第二次世界大戦後の日本に向けたアメリカの政策の "逆コースの"と呼んでいるもので、その起源を持っていた。
The support for the Liberal Democrats had its origins in what some historians call "the reverse course" of American policy toward Japan after World War II.
1945年から1948年まで、日本を占領したアメリカ軍は、戦争に日本を率いていた右翼の軍国主義の政府をパージした。しかし、1949年で、物事は変わっていた。中国は共産行きました。ソ連はその最初の原子爆弾が爆発した。ワシントンでは、右翼を探し出すしない、共産を戦っていた。
From 1945 to 1948, the American forces who occupied Japan purged the Government of the right-wing militarists who had led Japan into war. But by 1949, things had changed. China went Communist. The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. Washington was fighting Communism, not ferreting out rightists.
アメリカの占領軍は、岸信介、後で日本の総理大臣のような非難の戦争犯罪者を解放。リハビリの政治家の一部は、ヤクザとして知られる暴力団と密接な接触を持っていた。だから義雄児玉、政治フィクサー、後で主要CIAがやった保守派の資金を調達するために舞台裏で働いていた日本での連絡。
The American occupation forces freed accused war criminals like Nobusuke Kishi, later Japan's Prime Minister. Some of the rehabilitated politicians had close contacts with organized crime groups, known as yakuza. So did Yoshio Kodama, a political fixer and later a major C.I.A. contact in Japan who worked behind the scenes to finance the conservatives.
これらの政治家も引退した外交官、ビジネスマンや戦略サービス局のベテランのグループからの支援、CIAの第二次世界大戦の前駆体を描いたグループのリーダーはユージンドーマン、促進するために1945年に国務省を辞め、古い日本の手だった "逆コース"。
These politicians also drew support from a group of retired diplomats, businessmen and veterans of the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II precursor of the C.I.A. The group's leader was Eugene Dooman, an old Japan hand who quit the State Department in 1945 to promote "the reverse course."
朝鮮戦争時には、ドーマン·グループは、CIAが資金援助、大胆な隠密作戦を引っ張っ
During the Korean War, the Dooman group pulled off an audacious covert operation, bankrolled by the C.I.A.
日本の保守派はお金を必要としていた。米軍は、タングステン、硬化ミサイルに使用希少戦略的金属を必要としていた。 "誰かがアイデアを持っていた：1石で2羽の鳥を殺すしましょう"と、ジョンHowley、ニューヨークの弁護士とOSSは言ったトランザクションを手配しましたが、彼はその中にCIAの役割を知らないと言ったベテラン。
Japanese conservatives needed money. The American military needed tungsten, a scarce strategic metal used for hardening missiles. "Somebody had the idea: Let's kill two birds with one stone," said John Howley, a New York lawyer and O.S.S. veteran who helped arrange the transaction but said he was unaware of the C.I.A.'s role in it.
だからドーマン·グループは、日本軍将校のキャッシュから米国にタングステンのトンを密輸10百万ドルのためにペンタゴンに売却。密輸業者は、児玉とケイ菅原、OSSによって募集日系アメリカ人が含まれていた第二次世界大戦中にカリフォルニア州の抑留キャンプから。
So the Dooman group smuggled tons of tungsten from Japanese military officers' caches into the United States and sold it to the Pentagon for $10 million. The smugglers included Kodama and Kay Sugahara, a Japanese-American recruited by the O.S.S. from a internment camp in California during World War II.
後半菅原のファイル - 後半ハワードハイデルベルグ、彼は1991年に死んだとき、ほぼ完成した本を書いてメイン教授の大学によって研究は - 詳細な動作について説明。彼らはC.I.A.を言うドーマン·グループの利益200万ドル以上を刈り取らタングステン操作のための資金調達で280万ドル提供する。
The files of the late Sugahara -- researched by the late Howard Schonberger, a University of Maine professor writing a book nearly completed when he died in 1991 -- described the operation in detail. They say the C.I.A. provided $2.8 million in financing for the tungsten operation, which reaped more than $2 million in profits for the Dooman group.
グループは1953年に日本初のポスト占領選挙で保守派のキャンペーンに収益を汲み上げ、Howleyはインタビューで語った。 "我々は、目的を達成するために、OSSで学んだ、右の手で右のお金を入れていた。"
The group pumped the proceeds into the campaigns of conservatives during Japan's first post-occupation elections in 1953, Howley said in an interview. "We had learned in O.S.S., to accomplish a purpose, you had to put the right money in the right hands."
1953によって、上のアメリカ占領、逆コースと同様の方法の下で、CIA日本では保守的な派閥を交戦で働き始めた。 1955年に、これらの派閥は、自民党を形成するために合併した。
By 1953, with the American occupation over and the reverse course well under way, the C.I.A. began working with warring conservative factions in Japan. In 1955, these factions merged to form the Liberal Democratic Party.
お金はすぐに米国から提供されていたという事実は、日本政府の最高レベルで知られていた。
The fact that money was available from the United States soon was known at the highest levels of the Japanese Government.
1958年7月29日に、ダグラス·マッカーサー2D、その後東京の米国大使であった将軍の甥は、佐藤栄作、財務大臣は、お金のために米国大使館に尋ねたことを国務省に手紙を書いた。佐藤は1964年から1972年までの日本の総理大臣だった1974年にノーベル平和賞を受賞しました。
On July 29, 1958, Douglas MacArthur 2d, the general's nephew, who was then United States Ambassador in Tokyo, wrote to the State Department that Eisaku Sato, the Finance Minister, had asked the United States Embassy for money. Sato was Prime Minister of Japan from 1964 to 1972 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.
大使はマッカーサー首相岸信介の政府からそのような要求は何も新しいものなかったことを書いた。 "佐藤栄作、岸の弟が、共産主義との戦いに財政援助のために私達にかまを入れてみました、"彼の手紙は言った。 "彼は昨年、同じ一般的なアイデアを提案したので、これは、私たちに驚きとして来ていませんでした。"
Ambassador MacArthur wrote that such requests from the Government of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi were nothing new. "Eisaku Sato, Kishi's brother, has tried to put the bite on us for financial help in fighting Communism," his letter said. "This did not come as a surprise to us, since he suggested the same general idea last year."
日本企業によって設立された秘密裏金が自民党を支援するため、佐藤は、添付メモは説明したように、心配していた排出した。
Sato was worried, an accompanying memo explained, because a secret slush fund established by Japanese companies to aid the L.D.P. was drained.
"米国は共産主義に対してこの定数闘争で保守勢力を支援するために財政資金を供給することは不可能であろう場合に佐藤は尋ねた、"メモは言った。それが佐藤の要求が直接付与されたかどうかは不明ですが、1958年選挙の資金を調達するという決定は最近機密解除されたCIAによると、上級国家安全保障当局者によって議論され、承認されました文書や元諜報将校。
" Sato asked if it would not be possible for the United States to supply financial funds to aid the conservative forces in this constant struggle against Communism," the memo said. While it is unclear whether Sato's request was granted directly, a decision to finance the 1958 election campaign was discussed and approved by senior national security officials, according to recently declassified C.I.A. documents and former intelligence officers.
インタビューでは、マッカーサーは、日本の社会主義者はモスクワ、左が拒否された電荷から自分の秘密資金を持っていると言いました。
In an interview, MacArthur said the Socialists in Japan had their own secret funds from Moscow, a charge the left denied.
それらの年に "日本の社会党はモスクワの直接衛星だった"、と彼は言った。 "日本は共産主義を行った場合、それは他のアジア諸国が追随しないであろうかを見ることは困難であった。アメリカのパワーを投影するからアジアの他の場所がなかったので、日本が異常な大きさの重要性を仮定した。"
"The Socialist Party in Japan was a direct satellite of Moscow" in those years, he said. "If Japan went Communist it was difficult to see how the rest of Asia would not follow suit. Japan assumed an importance of extraordinary magnitude because there was no other place in Asia from which to project American power."
1976年危機一髪 / A Close Call In 1976
1976年には、秘密の支払いは、ほとんど明らかにされた。
In 1976, the secret payments were almost uncovered.
米国上院小委員会では、収益性の高い航空機の契約を求めているロッキード社は、内閣総理大臣田中角栄と自民党に賄賂1200万ドルを支払っていたことを発見しました。導管は児玉だった - 政治フィクサー、タングステンの密輸業者とCIA連絡。
A United States Senate subcommittee discovered that Lockheed Corp., seeking lucrative aircraft contracts, had paid $12 million in bribes to Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and the Liberal Democrats. The conduit was Kodama -- political fixer, tungsten smuggler and C.I.A. contact.
その後引退C.I.A.ハワイで役員の生活は驚くべき先端に電話をかけた。
Then a retired C.I.A. officer living in Hawaii phoned in a startling tip.
"それは、はるかに単なるロッキードよりもはるかに深いです、"ジェローム·レビンソン、パネルのスタッフディレクター、CIAは回想男は言う。 "あなたは本当に日本を理解したい場合は、自民党とその中に我々の関与の形成に戻って行かなければならない。"
"It's much, much deeper than just Lockheed," Jerome Levinson, the panel's staff director, recalls the C.I.A. man saying. "If you really want to understand Japan, you have to go back to the formation of the L.D.P. and our involvement in it."
レビンソンは、彼の上司が問題を追求する彼の要求を拒絶したことをインタビューで語った。
Levinson said in an interview that his superiors rejected his request to pursue the matter.
"これは、我が国の外交政策の中で最も深遠な秘密の一つであった"と彼は言った。 "これは我々が日本に着いた。保留にされた我々の調査の一つの側面であり、それは実際にすべてだけシャットダウンします。"
"This was one of the most profound secrets of our foreign policy," he said. "This was the one aspect of our investigation that was put on hold. We got to Japan, and it really all just shut down."
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CIAはヤクザと自民党が力を得ると
原子力発電を推進する助けた方法How The CIA Helped The Yakuza & The LDP Get Power & Promote Nuclear Power
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おそらく今までに中央情報局（CIA）に書かれた最高の本であるCIAの歴史、そして陰気な失敗のその一般的な歴史：私はちょうどティム·ワイナーの最高傑作、灰の遺産を再読み終えた。
自民党の2012年12月16日、電力の奪還の前夜に、私は、彼らが最初の場所にされて入ってきたそれはどのように自民党に戻って見てみると面白いかもしれないと思ったと。それはジョン·ル·カレの小説のうち、物語のようなものだ、しかし、多くの場合であり、真実は見知らぬ人よりもフィクションともっと面白いです。
日本での操作は、庁の珍しい成功例の一つであることが判明。だけでなく、CIAは本よると、電力の選択の彼らのパーティを入れなかった原発正力CIA-機密文書で読む昭和裏面史（秘密文書は、原子力産業の結びつきの隠された昭和時代の歴史、Matustaro正力について教えて何フォーマ新潮社から出版読売新聞と日本テレビの創設者の社長）が、日本のメディアを使用して、彼らは原子力エネルギーに投資する日本を説得することができました。
もちろん、米国の企業が利益を上げた。しかし、それは別の非常に長い話だ。灰の遺産は、特にそれがCIAの多くの、多くの障害を記録したが、日本での操作は他の何かあったかで、驚異的な本です。
第12章：日本の影の歴史に興味がある人のための絶対必要である "我々は、別の方法でそれを実行"。どのように戦後の日本、CIAにおけるそれの詳細は、多額の現金を使用して、元戦犯児玉義雄を復活し、日本の総理大臣の一つイン共産主義/社会主義運動をくどさせるために手摘み。
児玉は、広範なヤクザのタイと中国の闇市場で行われた資本の膨大な量を持っていた。 （推定1.75億ドル）。それはまだやってからCIAを維持しなかった1953年9月10日、東京で報告CIA駅 "（こだま）がプロのうそつき、ギャング、ペテン師、そしてあからさまな泥棒です。....と何かが利益には関心を持っていません。
"それまでとそれ以降舞台裏彼とのビジネス。また、この章では、CIAが岸信介、日本は赤い行かなかったことを確実にするために、日本の首相と与党の責任者となっていることを確認することができましたどのように指摘している。社長自身が自民党内で岸と彼の他の下僕に大きな現金支払いを承認しているように見えた。
第12章では、 "我々は、別の方法でそれを実行、"戦後日本の暴力団とその政治家の米国のバッキングの魅力的なアカウントを持っている山口組や他の暴力団に岸のリンクは、よく知られている。
彼の元私設秘書は元山口組後藤組のボス、後藤忠正、とFBIの間で取引を整理に尽力した、それは後藤と引き換えに、日本と北朝鮮の情報の中に暴力団にインテリジェンスを共有している取引でした米国へのビザ。彼はUCLA、FBIはこののいくつかは、東京副で説明されて設定していないか、またはインチ関与していたトランザクションで肝臓移植を受けた。
ピーター·ヒル、及び他の情報源により、優れた本は、日本のマフィアによると、岸はまた、かつて重罪で告発山口組ボスのため保釈金を出す。後藤忠正、彼の回顧録で元ヤクザのボス（現在は慈善活動をしている僧侶）Habkarinagra（恩赦私ですが...）はまた、元首相の岸への彼の密接な関係について説明します。
精液東京アンダーワールドのロバート·ホワイティングはまた、偉大な深さで、日本の組織犯罪への米国の政治の接続をカバーし、非常に愉快に。ホワイティングさんは彼の生活の中で一点で国家安全保障局（NSA）のために働いて、彼は私に関する限り大きな信頼性を持って言う。
（私は彼がかつてNSAのために働いたことを書き込むことで、お出かけロバートないんだけど、それが数年前にジャパンタイムズの記事に記載されているし、正しいことが証明されました。）デビッド·カプランの画期的ヤクザ：日本の刑事アンダーワールドは、おそらく実際には最初の本だった占領後のヤクザ、自民党と米国の間に影関係を調べる。何が印象的な大規模なノート、CIAから入手した文書を、彼は明らかにだけでなく、CIA側のインタビューを実施し、それはあるようにティム·ワイナーの小さな章になります。印象的な作品。
児玉、上記の右翼実業家は、最高のポイントを示していますか、おそらく彼のギャング接続の悪名高いですが、その60年代前半で、Kodoma、田岡一雄（田冈一雄氏）、山口組の第三世代のリーダーですと町井久之（町井久之）かつて強力な日韓マフィアの頭、Toseikai（东声会）すべて同時に日本プロレス協会の理事会のメンバーを務めていました。彼らはすべての良い仲間だった。
灰の遺産で述べたように、他のソースでは、自民党は、犯罪収益、ヤクザマネー、米ファンドの混合物で設立されました。米国が日本の政治のコントロールを発揮することができた日が長いなくなっているが、ヤクザは自分の絆と軒並み政治家への接続を維持するために管理している。
日本政府のために、彼らは時々、まだ便利エンティティであり、APEC首脳会議の前に、呼び出しは任意のギャング戦争に入るためと反米左利きに目を離さないようにそれらを促す主要なすべてのヤクザのリーダーに送り出された。 APEC終了後、山口組Yamaken-組本部の本部に手手榴弾をロビング誰かの余波は、おそらく血なまぐさいギャング戦争になります。しかし、当分の間、ヤクザは、平和を維持している。
完全な情報開示メモ：日本のマスコミとブロゴスフィアの最悪で、私はCIAのエージェントの数倍であると非難されてきました。またはモサド。あなたの好きなものを取る。これは真実ではありません。私はモルモンないんだけど、非常にプロミスキャスてきた、と私は、バットを私を失格すべてのものは完全に無能ではない。
しかし、2006-2007には、日本における人身売買に関する米国務省主催の研究の一環として、私は多くの退職したCIA / NSAの従業員を有しており、CIAのフロント企業であると非難されている会社で働いていた。彼らは、フロント企業でない場合、私は知らないし、私は本当に気にしない。
それから出てきた研究と人身売買報告書は、人身売買のisssues対処に向けた日本の態度にプラスの影響を持っていたし、それは本当にすべての問題です。
ティムShorrockによってインテリジェンスアウトソーシング*の秘密の世界：あなたは知性のアウトソーシングに興味があれば、レンタル用のスパイのコピーを拾う。カバーのCIA業者カードはユダヤ人を探して仲間の一部の画像を持っていますが、私はないと思う。しない限り、誰かが私に気の利いた小さなカードを発行し、それを教えていませんでした。それは今ではバックプリントである非常によく書かれた本です。 （私たちに知らせてための氏Shorrockに感謝します。）
私はそれが私のレンタルスパイの表紙にあったと主張し、斜めに、現金のために私を振ってみましたほぼ2ヶ月前にヤクザのファン雑誌のジャーナリストによって接触させた。だから、この記事を書くことで、私も個人的には、何が元CIAのエージェントであると非難されて、約最も侮辱的なことだ "。
[#v62528f1]
非常にF * ckのあなた"と言ってませんよ、と意図された代理店のために働いて誰にも悪気が、彼らそれはポストブッシュFEMAのために働くと非難されているような種類のだというような陰気な成功率を持っている。それは私の誇りを傷つける。
"インテリジェンス·コミュニティー"にいるほとんどの人は実際に麻薬取締局（DEA）は、任意の機関の最高の実用的なインテリジェンスを持っていることを主張するだろう。 [#n2779ae7]
あなたが深刻な日本研究家ならともかく、灰の遺産だけでは、その章のために自分自身で持って価値がある。 （これは元々2010年11月14日に掲載記事の改訂版である）。
http://www.japansubculture.com/how-the-cia-helped-put-the-yakuza-and-the-ldp-in-power/
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Re: A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
Oct-15: In an issue that hits newsstands Monday, Japan's gossip magazine Weeky Post disclosed Shinzo Abe, president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)and also prime minister hopeful, has connections with Japan's largest mafia group, Yamaguchi-gumi.
The magazine also published a photo(below) which allegedly shows Abe posing with a member of the group.
Responding to the accusation, Abe told reporters Monday morning the photo was authentic.
[link to mapjp.blogspot.jp] :
ELECTION WATCH Japan's yakuza-linked LDP head, Shinzo Abe
Today, so far 12 parties vie for votes as campaigning starts for Dec. 16 general election. Voters are to judge the party head's ethical behavior.
この１０月、田中慶秋法相が暴力団と親密な付き合いをしていたことが「週刊新潮」のスクープで発覚。ところがさらに驚いたことに、自民党総裁の安倍晋三と暴力団関係者との「スリーショツト」写真が出てきた。「週刊ポスト」がスクープしている。
写真は４年前の２００８年６月、議員会館の安倍事務所で撮られた。政権を放り投げてから１年後のことだ。写真中央に安倍晋三、向かって左側にアメリカ共和党のハッカビー議員、右側に「山口組の金庫番」と称される男が写っている。
LDP head Shinzo Abe has connections with yamaguchi-gumi mafiah(yakuza):
Oct-15: In an issue that hits newsstands Monday, Japan 's gossip magazine Weeky Post disclosed Shinzo Abe, president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)and also prime minister hopeful, has connections with Japan
The magazine also published a photo(below) which allegedly shows Abe posing with a member of the group.
Responding to the accusation, Abe told reporters Monday morning the photo was authentic.
However, he explained he met the person at a cocktail party welcoming U.S. Republican presidential candidate and the photo was taken by people in his constituency. About 5 or 6 people were present on the occasion.
He added that he has since had no contact with the person, denying charges he has close personal connections with senior members of the mafia group.
元首相安倍晋三は、週刊ポストは、山口組、日本最大の関連付けられているアーカンソー州知事マイク·ハッカビーとIcchu永、と彼の2008年の写真を公開した後、組織犯罪とのつながりを否定しているヤクザシンジケートを。
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has denied ties to organized crime after the Shukan Post published a 2008 photo of him with Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Icchu Nagamoto, who is associated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza syndicate.
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has denied ties to organized crime after the Shukan Post published a 2008 photo of him with Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Icchu Nagamoto, who is associated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza syndicate.
Icchu Nagamoto(R) as "a financial broker for the Yamaguchi-gumi mafia(yakuza),
Related items:
Japan's justice minister, Keishu Tanaka, who was appointed just 18 days ago, is set to resign, media reports say, after he admitted having had links with organised crime Oct-23:
Keishu Tanaka
Keishu Tanaka was brought into the cabinet at the start of the month as part of a reshuffle aimed at shoring up Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's shaky administration.
But a little over a week later he was forced to admit a yakuza connection after a tabloid magazine revealed he had once acted as matchmaker for a senior mobster.
Tanaka, whose ministry oversees the work of the courts, apologised but repeatedly insisted he would not be stepping down.
However, Noda on Tuesday "accepted his letter of resignation, although it was disappointing", said top government spokesman Osamu Fujimura at a news conference.
He added: "We cannot do anything about him (Tanaka) resigning due to health problems."
Tanaka checked in to a hospital last Friday as pressure mounted for him to step aside. He emerged on Monday night.
Resignations on health grounds are reasonably common in the upper echelons of Japanese politics. Newly-elected opposition leader Shinzo Abe stepped down from his short stint as prime minister in 2007 citing a bowel complaint in the wake of a disastrous electoral showing.
Local media were largely sceptical over the explanation for Tanaka's departure, with many reporting the 74-year-old had eventually caved in to pressure from lawmakers on both sides.
The yakuza are not illegal in
Tanaka's resignation, while not terminal, is a blow to Noda, who is already faced with a shrinking majority and an opposition threatening to block a vital bond issuance bill. (channelnewsasia.com)
2. Ex-Yamaguchi-gumi boss Watanabe dies:
Dec-3:Yoshinori Watanabe, former boss of the major yakuza crime syndicate Yamaguchi-gumi, has died, according to the Hyogo prefectural police. He was 71.
Watanabe was confirmed dead about noon Saturday, after his family found him collapsed at his home in Kobe, and called for an ambulance, the police said.
The cause of his death has not been determined. Watanabe became the fifth head of the Yamaguchi-gumi in 1989 after years of fighting between the Kobe-based group and the now-defunct Ichiwa-kai, another organized crime group based in the city. (Yomiuri)Yoshinori Watanabe
3. Mike Huckabee met with a Japanese gangster?
Oct-17 2012 By Josh Rogin
Mike Huckabee brought an unusual guest to his meeting with a former Japanese prime minister, the office of Shinzo Abe, now the country's opposition leader, is claiming.
In a 2008 visit to Japan, the former Arkansas governor showed up with a Yakuza money man known as the "Black Market King" who was later arrested for ties to the Japanese mob. A photograph of the encounter has recently emerged and is being used as an attack line in Japanese politics.
Huckabee, now a popular talk-show host, visited Japan just three months after he withdrew his bid to become the Republican nominee for president.
"Janet and I are in Japan this week where I'll be speaking on several college campuses, meeting with business leaders, and meeting with government officials, some of whom I know from previous trips here during my tenure as Governor. We are delighted at the warm welcome we've already received and especially amazed at the depth at which people in Japan follow the American elections," he wrote on the Huck PAC blog at the time.
In another Huck PAC blog post, the former governor wrote about meeting professors at Tohoku University, the governor of Hokkaido, and speaking at the Chamber of Commerce.
One meeting not noted on his blog was Huck's audience with Abe, who was prime minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and who is now the leader of Japan's opposition Liberal Democratic Party. A photo of that meeting surfaced this week in Japan, showing Huck smiling alongside Abe and another man, Icchu Nagamoto, whom the Tokyo Reporter describes as "a financial broker for the Yamaguchi-gumi, who was arrested earlier this yearfor violating money-lending laws."
The Yamaguchi-gumi are Japan's largest and most infamous Yakuza organization and one of the largest criminal organizations in the world.
The Japanese tabloid Shukan Post first published the photo, which is apparently hanging on the wall of the home of an unidentified Tokyo resident. Abe's office has said that Huckabee brought Nagamoto to the meeting and that Abe has never met him since.
In another Huck PAC blog post, the former governor wrote about meeting professors at Tohoku University, the governor of Hokkaido, and speaking at the Chamber of Commerce.
One meeting not noted on his blog was Huck's audience with Abe, who was prime minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and who is now the leader of Japan's opposition Liberal Democratic Party. A photo of that meeting surfaced this week in Japan, showing Huck smiling alongside Abe and another man, Icchu Nagamoto, whom the Tokyo Reporter describes as "a financial broker for the Yamaguchi-gumi, who was arrested earlier this yearfor violating money-lending laws."
The Yamaguchi-gumi are Japan's largest and most infamous Yakuza organization and one of the largest criminal organizations in the world.
The Japanese tabloid Shukan Post first published the photo, which is apparently hanging on the wall of the home of an unidentified Tokyo resident. Abe's office has said that Huckabee brought Nagamoto to the meeting and that Abe has never met him since.
Huckabee's communications director Sylvester Smith told The Cable today that Huckabee has has no ties to the Yakuza or to Nagamoto.
"The governor was in Japan on a speaking tour. All of his appearances and meetings were set up by a third party," Smith said. "Governor Huckabee had never met Mr. Nagamoto prior to that meeting, and he has not had any contact with him since that day."
Smith declined to say who put them in the room together or whether Huckabee or Huck PAC has any financial relationship with Nagamoto or his various business enterprises.
"There is a possibility that Nagamoto, who is a sort evil financial whiz and money lender for the Yamaguchi-gumi, might have approached Huckabee and tried to convince him to go in on a business deal," said Jake Adelstein, the author of Tokyo Vice, an insider's look at the Yakuza in Japan.
"Nagamoto was a key figure in the Inoue Kogyo fake capital increase case a few years ago that was prosecuted last year."
Nagamoto is on trial for allegedly violating lending laws related to the financial fundraising scam, Adelstein said.
This encounter is not Huckabee's only bizarre connection with Japanese politics. In 2009, The Cable reportedthat Huckabee was to be the featured lecturer for a cruise with a controversial Japanese general who is known for defending Japan's World War II atrocities.
Huckabee was in discussions to interview the organizer of that cruise, Toshio Tamogami, the former Japanese Air Force chief of staff who was firedin 2009 after creating an international incident by writing in an essay that Japan was "not an aggressor nation" in WWII. Huckabee's participation in the event was scuttled after The Cable's report came out.
"There seems to be an unholy alliance between Japan's ultra-right and the American right," said Mindy Kotler, the founder of Asia Policy Point, a non-profit organization that does research on Japan. "They agree on an aggressive anti-China defense policy, but little else. If the two compared values they would frighten each other."
4. 日刊ゲンダイ 2012.10.16
田中慶秋法相が暴力団と親密な付き合いをしていたこが「週刊新潮」のスクープで発覚し、自民党は「クビを取る」とイケイケだった。ところが、思わぬ事態に大慌てしている。
なんと、新総裁の安倍晋三と暴力団関係者との「スリーショツト」写真が出てきたのだ。きょう発売の「週刊ポスト」がスクープしている。
写真は４年前の０８年６月、議員会館の安倍事務所で撮られた。政権を放り投げてから１年後のことだ。写真中央に安倍晋三、向かって左側にアメリカ共和党のハッカビー議員、右側に「山口組の金庫番」と称される男が写っている。
なぜ、共和党の議員と暴力団関係者が一緒だったのか不思議だが、どうやら安倍の地元後援者の仲介だったようだ。
いずれにしても、暴力団関係者を議員会館の部屋に招き、写真を撮ったとなるとタダでは済まない。なにしろ相手は「山口組の金庫番」と称される人物だ。
「男は永本壹柱 いっちゅう という在日韓国人です。現在、貸金業法違反の容疑で公判中です。今年３月、逃亡先の韓国から帰国したところを逮捕された。『闇金融のドン』とも呼ばれている。朝鮮大学校を卒業後、大阪朝鮮高校の教師を経て裏社会に転じた変わり種です。学生の頃から、ケンカに負けたことがないという伝説を持つています」 （在日関係者）
永本の風貌は、ガッシリした体に丸坊主と、コワモテ。会った瞬間、安倍も素性に見当がついたはずである。安倍の「スリーショツト」写真に民主党は大喜びだ。
「民主党は『これで田中法相は辞任する必要がなくなった』『安倍と相打ちだ』とニンマリしています。先週金曜日、田中大臣が暴力団関係者との関係を認めたうえで『辞めない』と会見したのも、安倍のスリーシヨツト写真が掲載されることを事前に掴んだからです。たしかに、田中大臣は30年前のことだが、安倍はほんの数年前。しかも、わざわざ議員会館に招いているから言い訳は利きません」（政界関係者）
いつまでたっても山口組と手が切れない岸信介の孫・安倍晋三
安倍晋三の祖父は、ご存知・岸信介です。
岸信介は、広域暴力団・山口組と市場を奪いあうようにして満州で阿片を売りまくり、戦後はA級戦犯容疑者となって逮捕され死刑が執行される予定でしたが、その後、東西冷戦激化によって、アメリカに利用価値を見出されて釈放された男。
安倍晋三は、そんな祖父の代からのつながりで、今でも暴力団・山口組と手が切れず、事実、過去何度か、その関係が報道されてきました。
週刊ポスト2012年10月26日号で、逮捕された「山口組の金庫番」と一緒の写真をスクープされ、少なからず政権奪取に燃える安倍にとってはダメージとなっているようです。
週刊ポストは、「黒い交際写真の謀略」と、「謀略」の文字を加えることになって、安倍擁護であるかのように見せかけています。
額縁に入れられた写真の右側のひと目で暴力団関係者と分かる白いスーツの男は、韓国籍の山口組関係者、永本壹柱という男。
安倍晋三の祖父は、ご存知・岸信介です。
岸信介は、広域暴力団・山口組と市場を奪いあうようにして満州で阿片を売りまくり、戦後はA級戦犯容疑者となって逮捕され死刑が執行される予定でしたが、その後、東西冷戦激化によって、アメリカに利用価値を見出されて釈放された男。
安倍晋三は、そんな祖父の代からのつながりで、今でも暴力団・山口組と手が切れず、事実、過去何度か、その関係が報道されてきました。
週刊ポスト2012年10月26日号で、逮捕された「山口組の金庫番」と一緒の写真をスクープされ、少なからず政権奪取に燃える安倍にとってはダメージとなっているようです。
週刊ポストは、「黒い交際写真の謀略」と、「謀略」の文字を加えることになって、安倍擁護であるかのように見せかけています。
額縁に入れられた写真の右側のひと目で暴力団関係者と分かる白いスーツの男は、韓国籍の山口組関係者、永本壹柱という男。
写真は4年前の6月に、議員会館の安倍事務所で撮られたもので、今は、世田谷の永本壹柱の豪邸に飾られているもの。
安倍晋三が、統一教会の合同結婚式に祝電を送ったことは事実だし、安倍の2000坪もある通称「パチンコ御殿」といわれている邸宅の土地が、パチンコ・チェーン店を経営する元在日朝鮮人（現在は帰化）から、ほとんど無償で永久的に借り受けていることは有名です。
このように、「安倍と朝鮮コネクションと山口組との関係は」、もうどうやっても切れない関係にあるのですが、どういうわけか、過熱しないのです。
これが、民主党の議員なら、マスコミはたいへんな騒ぎにするでしょう。
ちなみに、左側のアメリカ人は、前にも、ちょこっとだけ書いたマイク・ハッカビー（Mike Huckabee）議員です。
安倍晋三が、統一教会の合同結婚式に祝電を送ったことは事実だし、安倍の2000坪もある通称「パチンコ御殿」といわれている邸宅の土地が、パチンコ・チェーン店を経営する元在日朝鮮人（現在は帰化）から、ほとんど無償で永久的に借り受けていることは有名です。
このように、「安倍と朝鮮コネクションと山口組との関係は」、もうどうやっても切れない関係にあるのですが、どういうわけか、過熱しないのです。
これが、民主党の議員なら、マスコミはたいへんな騒ぎにするでしょう。
ちなみに、左側のアメリカ人は、前にも、ちょこっとだけ書いたマイク・ハッカビー（Mike Huckabee）議員です。
この人は、前アーカンソー州知事で、2008年の大統領選にも出馬した福音派の牧師さんです。
なぜ安倍の後援者が、聖職者のハッカビーと、韓国籍の山口組系暴力団の永本壹柱を引き合わせたのか謎です。
この写真が表に出てきたきっかけは、永本が今年3月に逮捕されたこによるものですが、それにしても、安倍が自民党の総裁に決まった後に。
永本壹柱の自宅に招かれたマスコミの誰かが発見したのが、つい最近だったから？
でも、この写真が撮られてから4年も経つのに、なぜ、今頃になって？
週刊ポストが、本当に安倍晋三のイメージダウンを狙っているとすれば、自民党総裁選の直前に出すべきでしょう。
中吊り広告の見出しの「謀略」という、とってつけたような文字。
週刊ポストは、安倍が総裁に決まるまでこの写真の公開を手控えていたのではないか。
そして、いずれ出てしまうのであれば、解散総選挙の前に出してしまえば、安倍・自民党政権へのダメージは低く抑えることができるだろう、そんな読みがあるような気がします。
つまり、橋下徹に致命的なダメージを与えた週刊文春、週刊朝日も、ノコノコ今頃になって暴力団との黒い交際写真を出してきた週刊ポストも、狙いはどうであれ、結果的には「安倍政権誕生」に誘導するものです。
もし、この一連のスキャンダルに背後関係があるとすれば、それは自民党が仕掛けたというより、野田佳彦政権に見切りをつけた財界とアメリカ勢でしょう。
それ以外にありえません。
自民党の週刊誌を使った「B層洗脳戦術」は、今でも国民に使われている
さて、東電とズブズブの石破茂幹事長ですが、とうとう、これも暴力団との黒い交際が発覚した田中慶秋法相を辞任に追い込めそうです。田中慶秋法は、現在入院中です。
さらに、ここでも週刊文春の活躍目覚しく、今度は城島光力財務相が稲川会系暴力団のフロント企業から応援を受けていたことをすっぱ抜きました。
最初は、「私が暴力団関係者から選挙応援を受けたという、という文春の記事は、推測や伝聞で虚偽、著しい名誉毀損だ」とお怒りのご様子でしたが、今はトーンダウン。
どうせ、野田佳彦は、政党助成金がもらえるまで解散を延期できればいいのだから、この二人の議員のスキャンダルなど、開き直った野田にとっては痛くも痒くもないはずです。
自民党幹事長の石破茂にとっては、これは追い風です。
しかし、石破のほうも、自身が代表を務める党支部が在日韓国人が経営する会社から献金を受け取っていたことが発覚、民主党の閣僚を追及する矛先が鈍ってしまったようです。
第一、田中法相の暴力団との黒い関係を言うなら、祖父の代からのどす黒い暴力団との関係を断ち切れない安倍晋三は、いったいどうなるのか、ぜひ石破茂の納得のいく説明が欲しいところです。
安住淳民主党幹事長代行は、民主党の一期、二基の各議員を集めて、選挙活動資金として一人当たり300万円ずつ支給したと言いますから、暮れが押し迫ってからか、年明け早々か、間違いなく衆議院解散総選挙が近いようです。
あと5人離党すれば過半数割れで、完全に民主党の息の根を止められると胸勘定をはじている自民党ですが、彼らはますます過去の人となりつつあるようです。
数の論理、イデオロギーの論理ではないところで、国民の政治参加は始まっているのに、何も気がついていないというのは、この政党が終っていることを意味しています。
自民党が再び「時代を取り戻す」ためには、福島第一原発事故の元凶を作り、アメリカに言われるまま、震災復興もままならないほど借金を膨らまし続けてきた責任を自ら問い、それを有権者の前で説明することです。
そうすれば、一気に支持率は回復するのに、まだ「B層・愚民化戦略」を実行した小泉政権時代の世耕弘成に知恵を借りているようでは、この政党は時間の問題で消滅するでしょう。
「国民の生活が第一」の中村てつじ（中村哲治）議員が、小泉時代の世耕の「B層洗脳計画書」の存在を暴露しています。
なぜ安倍の後援者が、聖職者のハッカビーと、韓国籍の山口組系暴力団の永本壹柱を引き合わせたのか謎です。
この写真が表に出てきたきっかけは、永本が今年3月に逮捕されたこによるものですが、それにしても、安倍が自民党の総裁に決まった後に。
永本壹柱の自宅に招かれたマスコミの誰かが発見したのが、つい最近だったから？
でも、この写真が撮られてから4年も経つのに、なぜ、今頃になって？
週刊ポストが、本当に安倍晋三のイメージダウンを狙っているとすれば、自民党総裁選の直前に出すべきでしょう。
中吊り広告の見出しの「謀略」という、とってつけたような文字。
週刊ポストは、安倍が総裁に決まるまでこの写真の公開を手控えていたのではないか。
そして、いずれ出てしまうのであれば、解散総選挙の前に出してしまえば、安倍・自民党政権へのダメージは低く抑えることができるだろう、そんな読みがあるような気がします。
つまり、橋下徹に致命的なダメージを与えた週刊文春、週刊朝日も、ノコノコ今頃になって暴力団との黒い交際写真を出してきた週刊ポストも、狙いはどうであれ、結果的には「安倍政権誕生」に誘導するものです。
もし、この一連のスキャンダルに背後関係があるとすれば、それは自民党が仕掛けたというより、野田佳彦政権に見切りをつけた財界とアメリカ勢でしょう。
それ以外にありえません。
自民党の週刊誌を使った「B層洗脳戦術」は、今でも国民に使われている
さて、東電とズブズブの石破茂幹事長ですが、とうとう、これも暴力団との黒い交際が発覚した田中慶秋法相を辞任に追い込めそうです。田中慶秋法は、現在入院中です。
さらに、ここでも週刊文春の活躍目覚しく、今度は城島光力財務相が稲川会系暴力団のフロント企業から応援を受けていたことをすっぱ抜きました。
最初は、「私が暴力団関係者から選挙応援を受けたという、という文春の記事は、推測や伝聞で虚偽、著しい名誉毀損だ」とお怒りのご様子でしたが、今はトーンダウン。
どうせ、野田佳彦は、政党助成金がもらえるまで解散を延期できればいいのだから、この二人の議員のスキャンダルなど、開き直った野田にとっては痛くも痒くもないはずです。
自民党幹事長の石破茂にとっては、これは追い風です。
しかし、石破のほうも、自身が代表を務める党支部が在日韓国人が経営する会社から献金を受け取っていたことが発覚、民主党の閣僚を追及する矛先が鈍ってしまったようです。
第一、田中法相の暴力団との黒い関係を言うなら、祖父の代からのどす黒い暴力団との関係を断ち切れない安倍晋三は、いったいどうなるのか、ぜひ石破茂の納得のいく説明が欲しいところです。
安住淳民主党幹事長代行は、民主党の一期、二基の各議員を集めて、選挙活動資金として一人当たり300万円ずつ支給したと言いますから、暮れが押し迫ってからか、年明け早々か、間違いなく衆議院解散総選挙が近いようです。
あと5人離党すれば過半数割れで、完全に民主党の息の根を止められると胸勘定をはじている自民党ですが、彼らはますます過去の人となりつつあるようです。
数の論理、イデオロギーの論理ではないところで、国民の政治参加は始まっているのに、何も気がついていないというのは、この政党が終っていることを意味しています。
自民党が再び「時代を取り戻す」ためには、福島第一原発事故の元凶を作り、アメリカに言われるまま、震災復興もままならないほど借金を膨らまし続けてきた責任を自ら問い、それを有権者の前で説明することです。
そうすれば、一気に支持率は回復するのに、まだ「B層・愚民化戦略」を実行した小泉政権時代の世耕弘成に知恵を借りているようでは、この政党は時間の問題で消滅するでしょう。
「国民の生活が第一」の中村てつじ（中村哲治）議員が、小泉時代の世耕の「B層洗脳計画書」の存在を暴露しています。
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Re: A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
Imagine the US government supports corrupt politicians in foreign lands! Yep, all over the globe.
Dirtyboy
Think beyond impossible.
Think beyond impossible.
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Anonymous Coward
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12/27/2013 05:44 PM
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User ID: 29243552
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Re: A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
Man, that's messed up. It's all a lie, start to finish.
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SteamrolledGobias
User ID: 46787476
United States
12/27/2013 05:50 PM
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Re: A little-mentioned fact about Japanese Prime Minister Abe
very cool stuff AC thank you for sharing
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Mike Huckabee met with a Japanese gangster?
http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/17/mike-huckabee-met-with-a-japanese-gangster/
By Josh Rogin
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Mike Huckabee met with a Japanese gangster?
http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/17/mike-huckabee-met-with-a-japanese-gangster/
By Josh Rogin
Mike Huckabee brought an unusual guest to his meeting with a former Japanese prime minister, the office of Shinzo Abe, now the country’s opposition leader, is claiming.
In a 2008 visit to Japan, the former Arkansas governor showed up with a Yakuza money man known as the “Black Market King” who was later arrested for ties to the Japanese mob. A photograph of the encounter has recently emerged and is being used as an attack line in Japanese politics.
Huckabee, now a popular talk-show host, visited Japan just three months after he withdrew his bid to become the Republican nominee for president.
“Janet and I are in Japan this week where I’ll be speaking on several college campuses, meeting with business leaders, and meeting with government officials, some of whom I know from previous trips here during my tenure as Governor. We are delighted at the warm welcome we’ve already received and especially amazed at the depth at which people in Japan follow the American elections,” he wrote on the Huck PAC blog at the time.
In another Huck PAC blog post, the former governor wrote about meeting professors at Tohoku University, the governor of Hokkaido, and speaking at the Chamber of Commerce.
One meeting not noted on his blog was Huck’s audience with Abe, who was prime minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and who is now the leader of Japan’s opposition Liberal Democratic Party. A photo of that meeting surfaced this week in Japan, showing Huck smiling alongside Abe and another man, Icchu Nagamoto, whom the Tokyo Reporter describes as “a financial broker for the Yamaguchi-gumi, who was arrested earlier this year for violating money-lending laws.”
The Yamaguchi-gumi are Japan’s largest and most infamous Yakuza organization and one of the largest criminal organizations in the world.
The Japanese tabloid Shukan Post first published the photo, which is apparently hanging on the wall of the home of an unidentified Tokyo resident. Abe’s office has said that Huckabee brought Nagamoto to the meeting and that Abe has never met him since.
Huckabee’s communications director Sylvester Smith told The Cable today that Huckabee has has no ties to the Yakuza or to Nagamoto.
“The governor was in Japan on a speaking tour. All of his appearances and meetings were set up by a third party,” Smith said. “Governor Huckabee had never met Mr. Nagamoto prior to that meeting, and he has not had any contact with him since that day.”
Smith declined to say who put them in the room together or whether Huckabee or Huck PAC has any financial relationship with Nagamoto or his various business enterprises.
“There is a possibility that Nagamoto, who is a sort evil financial whiz and money lender for the Yamaguchi-gumi, might have approached Huckabee and tried to convince him to go in on a business deal,” said Jake Adelstein, the author of Tokyo Vice, an insider’s look at the Yakuza in Japan. “Nagamoto was a key figure in the Inoue Kogyo fake capital increase case a few years ago that was prosecuted last year.”
Nagamoto is on trial for allegedly violating lending laws related to the financial fundraising scam, Adelstein said.
This encounter is not Huckabee’s only bizarre connection with Japanese politics. In 2009, The Cable reported that Huckabee was to be the featured lecturer for a cruise with a controversial Japanese general who is known for defending Japan’s World War II atrocities.
Huckabee was in discussions to interview the organizer of that cruise, Toshio Tamogami, the former Japanese Air Force chief of staff who was fired in 2009 after creating an international incident by writing in an essay that Japan was “not an aggressor nation” in WWII. Huckabee’s participation in the event was scuttled after The Cable’s report came out.
“There seems to be an unholy alliance between Japan’s ultra-right and the American right,” said Mindy Kotler, the founder of Asia Policy Point, a non-profit organization that does research on Japan. “They agree on an aggressive anti-China defense policy, but little else. If the two compared values they would frighten each other.”
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http://www.japansubculture.com/japans-state-secrets-laws-empowers-the-elite-and-muzzles-the-press-fop-rip-12102014/
http://www.japansubculture.com/japans-state-secrets-laws-empowers-the-elite-and-muzzles-the-press-fop-rip-12102014/
Japan’s State Secrets Laws Empowers The Elite and Muzzles The Press: FOP RIP 12/10/2014
Posted by Lisa Du on Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Missing : Japan’s Freedom of The Press—once ranked number 22 in the world, she has been in ill-health and mistreated since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the new sheriff of Japan in 2012. Last seen at midnight on December 9th. Government sources who would not go on the record, for fear of being sent to jail for ten years, believe that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the ruling coalition may have played a role in the kidnapping of this freedom but were unable to confirm.
December 14 is Election Day in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is expected to maintain power, but what many have overlooked amid the election news is December 10 – the day that a controversial state secrets law goes into full effect
The law, passed last year, symbolically represents Japan’s aspiration to return to international prominence – but could prove ominous for journalists and the public. It allows Japan’s 19 government ministries to designate certain information as state secrets. The state secret classification lasts five years, a period that can be extended to 60 years. Any civil servant that shares the classified secrets and any journalist that works with the leaked information could face up to 10 years of imprisonment. In simple terms, a government employee that leaks a classified secret can receive up to ten years in jail. A reporter or citizen that urges the official to release information or works with the person to do so can be sent to jail for up to five years. In other words, a reporter who aggressively asks about matters deemed secret can go to jail for the questions alone.
“I see this… as [Abe] sending a message: the Japanese state is powerful and it has all these security interests in mind,” said Darren Zook, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
Abe’s conservative government has justified the state secrets law as necessary for the creation of an agency in Japan similar to the U.S. National Security Council. The law seeks to offset reluctance among Japanese government offices for fear of leaks.
The law also seeks to combat U.S. defense information leaks out of Japan, which Abe hopes to ensure by showing that he is in charge.
The law’s critics, including the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, have voiced their concerns about the policy allowing government overreach and impeding the main tenet of a liberal democracy – where a free and open press serves as a check on government power. The law’s ambiguity and breadth in Japan also means there is more opportunity for abuse, said Koichi Nakano, political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Recent revelations about the lack of regulation at the Fukushima nuclear plant is an example of stories that may not have been uncovered if the law was in place. In the future, other news stories about nuclear power and other environmental concerns – relevant to the public’s interest – could also be classified, Nakano added.
Although most coverage of the state secrets law has revolved around its obvious detriment to press freedom, the damage to journalism within Japan may be minimal. Despite a guarantee of press freedom in its constitution, Japan’s passive cultural environment has never provided fertile grounds for investigative journalism to thrive, Zook said.
The Japanese government is looking for a mascot for its oppressive State Secrets Act. This monsters with eyes to monitor the media and hands to arrest them may be ideal–no ears to listen to reason and no mouth to speak secrets–it can only attack.
What’s more concerning is that Japan’s state secrets law is just one in a series of increased measures that restrict within liberal democracies in the name of security. Canada, New Zealand and Australia have all passed similar laws, said Bob Dietz, the Asia program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists. Many of these state secret policies were implemented as a knee-jerk reaction to events such as WikiLeaks and Snowden’s NSA files, and rising uncertainty over terrorist threats. Yet the fast and hasty implementation of such laws across the globe means more room for institutional corruption and abuse.
“You can see tendency of more protection of government at the expense of journalists’ rights and the public’s rights,” Dietz said.
Reporters Without Borders, a watch-dog for freedom of information and promoter of investigative journalism internationally, in their World Press Freedom Index for 2014 dropped Japan to number 59 on its list, below countries like Serbia and Chile. This marks a precipitous fall; Japan was ranked as high as 22 in 2012. The United Nations and other international observers are becoming increasingly concerned about the direction of media freedom here.
In the land of the rising sun, investigative journalism and the public right to know has been quietly plunged into darkness. Even lighting a single candle in that darkness may have severe unforeseeable repercussions.
Lisa Du is a freelance journalist and a Master of International Affairs student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She has previously written for Newsday, Business Insider and The Charlotte Observer.
Jake Adelstein contributed to this article.
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http://www.voltairenet.org/article30028.html
Fascism and Philanthropy: Understanding Why the Japanese Foreign Affairs Office Protects Fujimori
Sasakawa, a Respected War Criminal
by Denis Boneau
http://www.voltairenet.org/article30028.html
Fascism and Philanthropy: Understanding Why the Japanese Foreign Affairs Office Protects Fujimori
Sasakawa, a Respected War Criminal
by Denis Boneau
Leader of a Japanese fascist party, Ryoichi Sasakawa developed a private army to exploit Manchuria and Mongolia. Convicted of the worst crimes during World War II, he was not tried by the Allies but he was retrained by the United States for their struggle against Communism. With the support of criminal organizations, the yakusas, he took control of the ruling Liberal Party and amassed one of the biggest fortunes of the world. Converted into a benefactor of the human race, he financed a philanthropic organization that equally served to implement his political conceptions in Third World countries.
Voltaire Network
Ryoichi Sasakawa: the allied forces opened a file on him as a Class A war criminal after the unconditional capitulation of Japan during World War II. Ryoichi Sasakawa was locked up in the Sugamo prison in the outskirts of Tokyo.
yoichi Sasakawa was born in 1899 in Minoo, near Osaka. He made a fortune speculating in the local rice markets. In 1927 he founded the Kokubosha (National Defense Society) and then, in 1931, the Kokusui Taihuto (Mass Party of the Patriotic Peoples), two ultra-nationalist organizations. Thus, he organized an army of 150 000 militiamen who participated in plundering operations in China, sometimes collaborating with the Kodama Kikan, a fascist organization led by his friend Yoshio Kodama. It’s all about officially controlling the production and export of strategic resources.
Thus, the «lords of the war» amassed a large fortune in Manchuria and Mongolia with the support of the imperial government. Sasakawa and Kodama, thanks to their private armies - Sasakawa even created an airborne unit with 20 airplanes and an airport in Osaka -, defrauded rich Chinese dealers and traffic in opium on their own. Sasakawa was also arrested in 1936, accused of having organized a crime syndicate in China, but he was soon released. In parallel with these mafia activities that intertwine with the activities of the Japanese diplomacy [1], Sasakawa tried to strengthen his influence in the Japanese political circles. In 1939, in an effort to consolidate the alliance between Italy and Japan, he met with Mussolini whom he enthusiastically described as the “perfect fascist and dictator”. Being an admirer of the “Duce”, he had his militias march in black uniforms. In 1942 he was elected as a member of the Diet, the Japanese parliament. Its program, ultra-nationalist and militarist, served the economic interests of the “lords of the war”, and basically demanded the intensification of military operations in South-Eastern Asia.
Yoshio Kodama
the end of the world war, the “lords of the war” were imprisoned with the other “Class A” inmates of the Sugamo prison. Kodama and Sasakawa would often visit Nobusuke Kishi, future key man of the Liberal Democratic Party [2], and Shiro Ishii, who directed the experiments of Camp 731 [3]. The Liberal Democratic Party was indeed a single organization that ruled Japan since their defeat with Washington’s approval. The American secret services, in a 1946 report, described the two fascists in the following manner: «Kodama’s long involvement in ultra-nationalist activities, sometimes of a violent nature, and his ability to unite the youth around him make him a man that will probably represent a bigger threat to security. Sasakawa is a potential threat for the future of Japan (...). He is a rich man who has no scruples as to the use of his fortune (...). He can change sides to take advantage of any opportunity» [4]. The CIA provides them with this opportunity by letting him become a combatant of the Cold War.
A Yakusa Godfather and Combatant of the Cold War
Ultranationalists Sasakawa and Kodama were solid bastions for the reconstruction of Japan that would become in the Asian showcase of market economy. General Willoughby, in charge of the American secret services, recruited henchmen at the Sugamo prison.
Kodama had vast experience in espionage: his activities in Manchuria were not limited to plundering but he also organized an efficient espionage service that passed important information to the imperial army. Sasakawa, for his part, heads a private army made up of experienced soldiers among whom the US secret services wouldl recruit informers, strikebreakers and “secret agents”. The ex-war criminal, who regarded his stay in Sugamo as «a vacation offered by the good God», was released in 1948 along with his comrades Shiro Ishii and Yoshio Kodama. In exchange, the “Class A” criminals put their political, military and mafia networks at the service of the struggle against communism conducted by the United States in Japan and in South East Asia.
Ryoichi Sasakawa, whose nickname was Korumaku (the shadow man) then became a decisive element in the reconstruction of Japan. Along with his friend Kodama, he financed the Liberal Democratic Party. On various occasions he influenced the election of the Prime Minister (he supported Sato in 1964 and Kakuei Tanaka in 1972). His political contacts allowed him to increase his fortune. Thus, in 1959, thanks to his former Sugamo comrade Nobusuke Kishi [5], he was appointed president of the Federation of Boat Races Organizers that was accountable to the Ministry of Transportation.
In 1994, the Federation declared a volume of businesses two billion yens, of which 3.2% completely depended on Sasakawa [6]. In parallel with his official activities, Sasakawa continued his career as an ultranationalist yakusa. In 1954 he joined the Butoku kai (Association of Martial Vitues), a militarist and fascist pressure group that included several “Class As”, especially the former director of the Mitsubishi, and important munitions manufacturing company and Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru. Likewise, he supported anti-communist organizations like Nihon goyu renmei, a group of World War II veterans, and the Zen-ai kaigi federation.
The Korumaku broke strikes and harassed political opponents thanks to his militias whose existence never became of public knowledge. Sasakawa claimed to be the leader of an eight-million men army. He headed numerous associations that served as a cover for his mafia activities. His karate and saber dance clubs included more than 3,500 000 members he similarly headed groups that were openly fascist like the International Federation for Victory over Communism (IFFVOC) that declared 160,000 members. This army turned Sasakawa into one of the most respected yakusas in Japan.
He and his friend Kodama controlled the mafia world and solved conflicts among rival gangs [7].
On the other hand, in 1963 Sasakawa became the main advisor of Reverend Sun Myung Moon. He encouraged the expansion of the Church of the Unification (Moon sect) [8]. With Moon and Chang Kai Chek he founded the World Anti-Communist League (WALC), a result of the merger between the Anti-Communist League of the Asian Peoples (APALC) and the Anti-Bolshevik Nations Bloc (ABN). The organization, that brought together the extremist factions of the Taiwanese, South Korean and American secret services, was behind military interventions in South America and Asia [9]. Sasakawa facilitated the coup d’état against Indonesian leader Sukarno and supported Philippine dictator Marcos through a mutual assistance association [10].
Philanthropy according to Sasakawa
The political leverage of Ryoichi Sasakawa, combined with his mafia activities, allowed him to build a huge empire with the consent of the US authorities. Thus, he immersed himself in a philanthropic career, investing part of his fortune in a foundation, the richest before the powerful Ford Foundation. He, who was proud of being «the richest fascist of the world» never hid his desire of obtaining, like his friend Jimmy Carter, the Nobel Peace Prize, but he had to content himself with the Helen Keller International Award, the Linus Pauling for Humanitarianism and the Peace medal granted by the United Nations.
- Pope John Paul II and Ryoichi Sasakawa.
Sasakawa was a benefactor of the Holy See.
Money is odorless.
The budget of the Foundation hides the dark past of its founder and attracts numerous leaders of international organizations, frequently linked with the United Nations, eager to obtain funds for their projects. The United Nations environmental award, the Sasakawa health award and the United Nations award for the prevention of catastrophes vouch for the efforts of the yakusa godfather.
In February 1978, by means of his naval construction foundation, he transfered half a million dollars to the United Nations and, in 1979, a million dollars to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), thus becoming the most important sponsor of the UN institutions. However, this generosity had another face. The Sasakawa clan, Ryoichi and his three sons) tried to control the organizations that receive their donations.
In 1999, when the election of an Egyptian lawyer ahead of UNESCO seemed definite, African representatives voted against their candidate and guaranteed the election of Japanese diplomat Matsuura. All the indications were that the Sasakawa Foundation promised «donations» in exchange for the votes of the African delegates. In 1993 and 1996, two internal reports of the United Nations already demonstrated the irregularities in the election of another Japanese man with few scruples, Hiroshi Nakajima [11], at the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) [12].
- US President Jimmy Carter runs with Ryoichi Sasakawa, who was his main financing source for his post-presidential political campaigns and programs.
The Sasakawa Foundation similarly co-sponsored, along with the Jimmy Carter Foundation, the “Sasakawa-Global 2000”, a farming program directed to ten African countries [14]. A close friendship between the former US president and the Japanese godfather was the origin of this philanthropic collaboration. In France, an «affiliate» of the Foundation was declared a public entity in 1990. It financed the Institute of East Asia of Lyon [15], the festival of Aix in Provence, the Guimet museum, concerts of the Chatelet Theater and activities linked to the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Who protects Alberto Fujimori?
Recently, the Sasakawa Foundation was involved in the forced sterilization of 300,000 Peruvian women [16]. Former President Alberto Fujimori is currently living in Japan as a refugee while Peruvian authorities make unsuccessful efforts to have him extradited so that they can try him for “crimes against humanity”. Alberto Fujimori is accused of having organized the Colina Group, a death squadron responsible for the elimination of members of the Maoist guerrilla Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) [17].
The Peruvian deputies also suspect that he may have planned the sterilization of indigenous women. Between 1995 and 2000, according to a report of a Congress commission, 331,600 women were sterilized and 25,590 men had vasectomies. This campaign, aiming at pacifying indigenous opposition groups and pleasing the IMF, that includes demographic control demands among its criteria [18], was mainly financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
The Nippon Zaidan, one of the annexed organizations of the Sasakawa Foundation, also gave funds for this vast operation of Malthusian inspiration. Its president, Ayako Sono, is the main supporter of Alberto Fujimori, who obtained the Japanese citizenship to avoid the Peruvian justice. There is every indication that the Sasakawa Foundation has solid relations in the heart of the Japanese government and actively participates in “secret” operations in Latin America.
- Yohei Sasakawa
The Sasakawa Foundation, too “generous” to be threatened, still covers mafia activities and diplomatic operations with unmentionable objectives.
Denis Boneau
The Monument in honor of Ryoichi Sasakawa at the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO)
Inside the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO), there is a small monument dedicated to the memory of Ryoichi Sasakawa, a Japanese war criminal during World War II. In the picture, a security guard of the organization kindly poses next to the statue of Sasakawa. The plaque reads: «A friend of the World Health Organization».
[1] Contrary to the thesis of American historiography*, World War II did not last from 1941 to 1945, nor from 1939 until 1945, as European historiography presents it, but from 1931 until August 17, 1945. It did not begin in Europe with the invasion of Poland by the troops of Adolf Hitler’s Reich in September 1939, but in the Asian border. In 1931, Japan invades the Chinese province of Manchuria. China was until then regarded as a property of the big European colonial powers, namely Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The capture of Shanghai by the imperial army in 1937 and the alliance of Tokyo with the Fascist Italy and the Nazi Germany in 1936-1937, gave Japan a place among the forces of the Axis. This participation was confirmed by the Japanese attack against the American naval base of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The war would end with the unconditional surrender of Japan.
(*) Historiography: Bibliographic and critical study of writings about history and their sources and also of the authors who have dealt with these matters. Art of writing history. Spanish Language Dictionary of the Royal Academy.
[2] Nobusuke Kishi became Prime Minister in 1957 thanks to the support of Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa.
[3] The regiment 731 of the Japanese imperial army settled in the Chinese city of Harbin in 1931. The prisoners’ camp of Harbin served as a laboratory for experimentation on human beings. Japanese scientists used Chinese prisoners and, from 1942 on, they also used American and Soviet prisoners in experiments trying to determine if human resistance to certain mortal diseases had to do with the “race” of the ill ones. Three thousand human beings were used as guinea pigs and had horrible deaths caused by typhus, the bubonic plague, cholera and syphilis in the experiments of the Japanese Mengel whose real name was ShiroIshii. When the Soviet Red Army freed Harbin, the last surviving “laboratory human beings” were gassed and the Japanese tried to erase any evidence of such experiments in the Camp 731. Shiro Ishii returned to Japan. The American secret services offered him his freedom in exchange for the results of his experiments in Harbin. Shiro Ishii peacefully dies in 1959 and he was never bothered for his past.
[4] Scott Anderson, Jon Lee Anderson: «Inside the League, The schocking exposé of how terrorists, nazis and latin american death squads have infiltred the World anti-communist league», Dodd, Mead and Company publishing house, New York, 1986.
[5] Ibid, p. 63.
[6] Philippe Pons, «Japon, La richissime fondation Sasakawa est mise en cause par le Parlement», Le Monde daily, Wednesday, June 15, 1994.
[7] Fabrizio Calvi, Olivier Schmidt: «Intelligences secrètes, Annales de l’espionnage»,(Secret Intelligence, espionage records) Hachette, France, 1988, p. 261-262.
[8] See : «Révérend Moon, le retour», text in French, Voltaire, March 26, 2001.
[9] See: «La Liga Anticomunista Mundial, internacional del crimen», (The World Anti-Communist League, international of crime) Red Voltaire, January 20, 2005.
[10] Jeffrey M. Bale, “Privatising covert action: the case of the Unification church”, Lobster, May, 1991.
[11] Following his election as director of the WHO, Dr. Nakajima is caught in the Russian border in posesión of stolen icons, and he is accused of trafficking works of arts.
[12] Thierry Meyssan, «Le bon docteur Nakajima», Exit le journal, February 12, 1994, and Serge Garde, «L’odeur du Yen», L’Humanité, Tuesday October 8, 2002.
[13] «Organisation mondiale de la santé, scandales et gabegie», (World Health Organization, scandals and deception) Le Point French magazine, No.1334, April 11, 1998
[14] Serge Garde, «Un parfum de corruption» (A scent of corruption), L’Humanité French daily, Tuesday, October 14, 2003.
[15] In March 2002, a researcher of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Philippe Pelletier, quit alter denouncing the financing of the institution by the Sasakawa Foundation, an action to which French authorities reacted with indifference. The director of the French subsidiary, Tominaga, affirmed he was not aware of the activities of Ryoichi Sasakawa. Cf. Serge Garde, «L’odeur du Yen», op.cit.
[16] Serge Garde, «Pérou, imposture du programme de contrôle des naissances, 300.000 femmes stérilisées en quatre ans», (Peru, imposture of the birth control program, 300,000 women sterilized in four years) L’Humanité French daily, Tuesday, December 3, 2002.
[17] See: “The mafias counterattack”, by Herbert Mijica Rojas, Red Voltaire/IPI, January 3rd, 2003.
[18] Françoise Barthélémy, «Une politique d’État froidement élaborée, Stérilisation forcée des indiennes du Pérou» (A coldly elaborated State policy, the forced sterilization of indigenous women in Peru), Le Monde diplomatique, French monthly magazine, May 2004.
[19] In 1994, the Mainichi daily Publisher a list of 100 retired government employees who received money (7 300 million yens annually) from the Sasakawa Foundation.
[20] Fabrizio Calvi, Olivier Schmidt, Intelligences secrètes, op. cit., p. 262.
(*) Historiography: Bibliographic and critical study of writings about history and their sources and also of the authors who have dealt with these matters. Art of writing history. Spanish Language Dictionary of the Royal Academy.
[2] Nobusuke Kishi became Prime Minister in 1957 thanks to the support of Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa.
[3] The regiment 731 of the Japanese imperial army settled in the Chinese city of Harbin in 1931. The prisoners’ camp of Harbin served as a laboratory for experimentation on human beings. Japanese scientists used Chinese prisoners and, from 1942 on, they also used American and Soviet prisoners in experiments trying to determine if human resistance to certain mortal diseases had to do with the “race” of the ill ones. Three thousand human beings were used as guinea pigs and had horrible deaths caused by typhus, the bubonic plague, cholera and syphilis in the experiments of the Japanese Mengel whose real name was ShiroIshii. When the Soviet Red Army freed Harbin, the last surviving “laboratory human beings” were gassed and the Japanese tried to erase any evidence of such experiments in the Camp 731. Shiro Ishii returned to Japan. The American secret services offered him his freedom in exchange for the results of his experiments in Harbin. Shiro Ishii peacefully dies in 1959 and he was never bothered for his past.
[4] Scott Anderson, Jon Lee Anderson: «Inside the League, The schocking exposé of how terrorists, nazis and latin american death squads have infiltred the World anti-communist league», Dodd, Mead and Company publishing house, New York, 1986.
[5] Ibid, p. 63.
[6] Philippe Pons, «Japon, La richissime fondation Sasakawa est mise en cause par le Parlement», Le Monde daily, Wednesday, June 15, 1994.
[7] Fabrizio Calvi, Olivier Schmidt: «Intelligences secrètes, Annales de l’espionnage»,(Secret Intelligence, espionage records) Hachette, France, 1988, p. 261-262.
[8] See : «Révérend Moon, le retour», text in French, Voltaire, March 26, 2001.
[9] See: «La Liga Anticomunista Mundial, internacional del crimen», (The World Anti-Communist League, international of crime) Red Voltaire, January 20, 2005.
[10] Jeffrey M. Bale, “Privatising covert action: the case of the Unification church”, Lobster, May, 1991.
[11] Following his election as director of the WHO, Dr. Nakajima is caught in the Russian border in posesión of stolen icons, and he is accused of trafficking works of arts.
[12] Thierry Meyssan, «Le bon docteur Nakajima», Exit le journal, February 12, 1994, and Serge Garde, «L’odeur du Yen», L’Humanité, Tuesday October 8, 2002.
[13] «Organisation mondiale de la santé, scandales et gabegie», (World Health Organization, scandals and deception) Le Point French magazine, No.1334, April 11, 1998
[14] Serge Garde, «Un parfum de corruption» (A scent of corruption), L’Humanité French daily, Tuesday, October 14, 2003.
[15] In March 2002, a researcher of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Philippe Pelletier, quit alter denouncing the financing of the institution by the Sasakawa Foundation, an action to which French authorities reacted with indifference. The director of the French subsidiary, Tominaga, affirmed he was not aware of the activities of Ryoichi Sasakawa. Cf. Serge Garde, «L’odeur du Yen», op.cit.
[16] Serge Garde, «Pérou, imposture du programme de contrôle des naissances, 300.000 femmes stérilisées en quatre ans», (Peru, imposture of the birth control program, 300,000 women sterilized in four years) L’Humanité French daily, Tuesday, December 3, 2002.
[17] See: “The mafias counterattack”, by Herbert Mijica Rojas, Red Voltaire/IPI, January 3rd, 2003.
[18] Françoise Barthélémy, «Une politique d’État froidement élaborée, Stérilisation forcée des indiennes du Pérou» (A coldly elaborated State policy, the forced sterilization of indigenous women in Peru), Le Monde diplomatique, French monthly magazine, May 2004.
[19] In 1994, the Mainichi daily Publisher a list of 100 retired government employees who received money (7 300 million yens annually) from the Sasakawa Foundation.
[20] Fabrizio Calvi, Olivier Schmidt, Intelligences secrètes, op. cit., p. 262.
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https://news.vice.com/article/this-may-be-the-most-dangerous-and-most-costly-photo-in-japan
Japan
This May Be the Most Dangerous — and Most Costly — Photo in Japan
By Jake Adelstein
Hidetoshi Tanaka (left) with Shinobu Tsukasa, the head of the Yamaguchi-gumi, in 2005
In September, the right-wing scandal sheet Keiten Shimbun obtained the photo of Hidetoshi Tanaka (left), the chief director of Japan University and the vice chairman of Japan's Olympic Committee. Sitting next to Tanaka is Shinobu Tsukasa, the head of Japan's largest yakuza [organized crime] syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi. (Note his left hand.)
The photo, which police believe was taken in early 2005, was anonymously sent to several media outlets including Keiten Shimbun; one magazine received a note with the photos that read: "I am an employee of Japan University, where many are in conflict with chief director Tanaka. Six or eight years ago, when Tanaka was elected as the chief director of the board, he went to a club in Nagoya and celebrated his promotion with the head of the Yamaguchi-gumi and many other Yamaguchi-gumi... members. He has shown us these photos over the years to intimidate us into silence. Please investigate."
Japan's biggest organized crime syndicate now has its own website and theme song. Read more here.
Yakuza is the umbrella term for Japan's 21 organized crime groups, which boast an estimated 60,000 members. They exist as semi-legal entities in Japan with offices, business cards, and even fan magazines, and make their money principally from racketeering, loan sharking, fraud, extortion, stock market manipulation - and construction.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics are predicted to cost at least $5 billion. That means there's a lot of money to be made in construction.
According to police and other sources, a reporter for Keiten Shimbun attempted to seek clarification from Japan University and Tanaka about when the photo was taken and what Tanaka's current relationship, if any, is to the Yamaguchi-gumi. On the night of September 30, as the reporter was walking back to the newspaper office, he was assaulted by two men with metal baseball bats who struck him repeatedly in one place on his body. A police source said they will not specify the location of the injury "because it's something only the assailant would know, and we wish to weed out possible false confessions."
The day after the assault, almost every major media organization in Japan received threatening phone calls from people telling them not to publish the photo. One magazine editor, who spoke to VICE News on the condition of anonymity, said the threat was, "'We attacked Keiten Shimbun. If you get uppity and publish that photo of those two, you'll meet the same fate.'"
More than a month later, the photo remained unpublished. (VICE News is the first outlet to publish the photo.) However, Keiten Shimbun did publish another photo of Tanaka toward the end of October. In that photo (below), from sometime in 2004, Tanaka is pictured with another senior member of the Yamaguchi-gumi named Iwao Yamamoto, who was once close to Tsukasa. Yamamoto shot himself in front of the grave of his predecessor in December 2010.
Tanaka (right) with senior Yamaguchi-gumi member Iwao Yamamoto in 2004
Tanaka has a history of shady associations. A photo of him (below) was taken at a party commemorating the promotion of gang boss Hareaki Fukuda to chairman of the Sumiyoshi-kai crime group - a rival of the Yamaguchi-gumi - in September 1998 at the New Otani hotel in Tokyo. Tanaka allegedly went to the party to congratulate Fukuda. (Sumiyoshi-kai sources say that sometime around 2003, Tanaka began to associate more closely with the Yamaguchi-gumi.)
Fukuda and Tsukasa are both well-known to US law enforcement. An investigator for a federal agency who spoke to VICE News said, "In 2012, the United States put in place economic sanctions against these two yakuza groups and forbid US citizens to associate with the groups or their leaders. These photos raise concerns about Japan's seriousness in the fight against transcontinental crime."
Japan's Olympic Committee, however, does not appear to share those concerns. The committee plays an important role in carrying out the wishes of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and making sure the games run smoothly. It also is said to be privy to information about construction taking place for the games, information that would be very valuable in winning lucrative construction contracts. The Japan Olympic Committee did not respond to questions submitted to them Monday.
The least likely suspects for the assault and threats are actually the Yamaguchi-gumi, who generally wouldn't resort to such tactics thanks to Tsukasa's influence.In addition to serving as the vice chairman of Japan's Olympic Committee, Tanaka is also the chief director of Japan's largest college, Japan University, and the president of the International Sumo Association; police believe that Tanaka may have gotten to know Tsukasa and other Yamaguchi-gumi members via his sumo connections. Sumo was plagued by a scandal in 2009 when it was revealed that many wrestlers had been placing bets on baseball games with Yamaguchi-gumi bookies. There were also allegations that wrestlers had rigged matches, but the police investigation yielded nothing.
When contacted by VICE News, a spokesperson at Japan University said, "The University received these photos with a written threat in early September and have filed a report with the police on charges of intimidation. Mr. Tanaka has no memory of ever meeting these individuals and we consider the photos to be fakes." Japan University has not submitted the photos to an outside institution for forensic analysis and could not explain how the photos might have been faked. VICE News was told it was not possible to speak to Tanaka, though through the university he has admitted to accidentally meeting Fukuda several years ago. Tanaka also met Yamaguchi-gumi consigliore Heo Young Joong in the 1990s, but he has said it was not a close relationship. The meeting was reportedly to enlist the politically influential Joong's help in making sumo an official Olympic sport by 2008.
Questions remain about who exactly attacked the journalists and threatened harm to other magazines if the pictures were published. The police are currently operating on the theory that the Sumiyoshi-kai may have released the photos and staged the attacks to make people believe the Yamaguchi-gumi was responsible. This could initiate a crackdown on all Yamaguchi-gumi front companies in the construction industry, forcing them out of the lucrative Olympic racket. The remaining pie could then be divided among other yakuza.
The least likely suspects for the assault and threats are actually the Yamaguchi-gumi, who generally wouldn't resort to tactics like that against a reporter thanks to Tsukasa's influence. Since leaving prison in 2011 after serving time for weapons charges, the longtime yakuza has strictly enforced the old code of the Yamaguchi-gumi: Don't assault civilians, don't engage in petty theft or robbery, don't sell or use drugs. That said, not everyone in the organization shares Tsukasa's beliefs in traditional yakuza family values.
Tanaka (left) at a party commemorating the promotion of Hareaki Fukuda to chairman of the Sumiyoshi-kai crime group in 1998
Regardless, it is doubtful that the revelation of past or present connections between Tanaka and the yakuza will result in any attempt to clean up the committee or the Olympics. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's grandfather Kishi Nobusuke - a former prime minister himself whom Abe is known to admire - had friendly ties with the Yamaguchi-gumi; in 1971, Nobusuke helped put up the bail money for a Yamaguchi-gumi member accused of murder. In 2012, a photo surfaced of Abe and Yamaguchi-gumi member Ichuu Nagamoto - along with US politician Mike Huckabee - taken in 2008.
Abe insisted that he didn't know Nagamoto, and claimed he'd been photo-bombed.
And so it's possible that the yakuza involvement in the Olympics isn't a problem because the Abe administration doesn't see it as a problem - just as they don't appear to see yakuza involvement in the nuclear industry, entertainment industry, and construction industry as problems. The Tokyo district court ruled in January 2013 that one of the major construction companies handling Olympic projects had hired yakuza to intimidate someone during negotiations. That has had no effect on the company's ability to land Olympic construction work.
North Korean meth, motorcycle gangs, Army snipers, and a guy named Rambo. Read more here.
Since September, two of Abe's newly appointed cabinet members have had to resign after allegations surfaced that they broke political regulatory laws. The recently appointed minister of Trade Industry and Commerce had to apologize for the use of public funds by his subordinates to attend an S&M club. And Eriko Yamatani, the current head of the Public Safety Commission, which supervises the police, has had a history of association with yakuza-backed extreme right-wing groups.
As planning and construction for the Olympics moves forward, there will be chances to ask questions. But the odds of press-club reporters asking about yakuza influence are about as likely as sumo finally becoming an official Olympic sport in 2020.
Follow Jake Adelstein on Twitter: @jakeadelstein
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