Recently, a man by the name of Yoshihiro Yasuda was arrested.
He is a lawyer by profession.
I guess that most of today's young people without a habit of reading newspapers may have no idea of who he is. To them, the incident may appear to be just another case of someone arrested for some misconduct. Yasuda is no ordinary lawyer. He is the cheif legal counselor for Shoko Asahara, the guru of the notorious religious cult, Aum Shrinrikyo, and also a leader of the campaign against death penalty.
He was arrested for his alleged conspiracy with a company called Sun's Corporation run by a Singaporean national to conceal the money he should have repaid to Jusen Resolution Corporation(JRC).
Again, some explanation may be in order if you are not so keen to keep abreast of what the JRC does. This is a company set up in the wake of the highly controvertial Jusen debate as a poor excuse for injecting our tax money to solve the problem. In other words, it's a state-run collector of bad loans.
The president of this company is an ugly old lawyer by the name of Nakobo Kohei, a man being extolled to the skies these days by the nation's mainstream media, to whom he is the incarnation of virtue and justice to the extent that almost entire nation would like to see him replacing the current prime minister. The problem is that I find him quite contrary to what everybody believes him to be. He is actually a cunning man who hardly seems to deserve his name, Kohei (meaning "fair"!). We'd better call him Nakabo Hukohei (prefix "hu" is a Japanese equivalent of "un-" or "non-").
We need to put Yasuda's arrest in a proper perspective. What has happened is that a lawyer-turned debt collector in collaboration of the authorities is charging another lawyer who is a defense counsel for the Aum cult leader, Asahara.
When I first learned the news of Yasuda's arrest, I instantly knew in my bones that it was not so simple as what the news was telling us to believe. The flair developed in my long career as an anti-establishment warrior--or an outlaw, you might say, ha, ha, ha--was telling me that it stunk.
You see, there are a huge number of bad lots I want dead, but so few I want to protect. And this lawyer, Yasuda, is one of the very few I really want to protect. This book is published as a blow-by-blow account of the war I have fought since Yasuda's arrest, initially criticising the JRC and the Japanese police on the celebrated "Fox-Eyed Man's Web Site" on the Net, and culminating in my bursting into an office of the JRC. It can also be read as a 'combat manual' if you would like to fight the way I do as a venerable outlaw.
You may be saying, "I don't care about such a lawyer. All the talk about Aum Shinrikyo is ancient history, long forgotten. JRC? None of my business." But, I bet this is worth reading. You'll never lose on reading this book.
Although the book starts out with the episode of Lawyer Yasuda's arrest, it also purports to reveal how your beloved country, Japan, is gravitating headlong toward an abyss--a hell on earth that even Nostradams could not have made any prediction about. So, get combat-ready!
Here we go!

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It was around 5:30 AM on that day that I learned about his arrest as I received a report from an employee of his law firm, Minato-Godo Law Firm. He was arrested for obstruction of compulsory seizure. To put it briefly, the bubble economy spawned two types of people. One is that of creditors saying "Pay me back.", and the other being that of debtors, saying "I've got no money left to pay you back."

If they want to have this kind of issue settled in the court of law, both will have their own lawyers to defend them as required by the legal system of the land. There is nothing illegal or unusual about any lawyer defending any of the two parties involved in the issue. It just happened that it was a debtor, Sun's Corporation Tokyo Ltd. that Lawyer Yasuda was to defend, and that creditor was Jusen Resolution Corporation or JRC for short, which is sort of swarmed with many debts collecting specialist lawyers, headed by Nakabo Kohei. Actually, JRC is staffed not just with lawyers, but with those from the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and from prosecutors office. In other words, the established authorities are all mobilized and represented there.

While JRC was pushing ahead saying "We want the money back." without any hesitation, lawyer Yasuda was defending just as effectively those debtors who were saying "I've got no money to pay you back." This was a situation where something had to give. But nothing happened that would break such a deadlock. So, creditor, JRC implored the court of law to use its clout to forcibly recover the debts. Well, it first looked like just another money trouble between a lender and a borrower, a typical civil case with no police intervention. The police are not allowed to tamper with civil affairs. But what actually happened was that the police popped out on the scene to intervene in this civil affair saying that Lawyer Yasuda was obstructing a compulsory seizure (violation of penal code 96-22 "illegal evasion of compulsory seizure).Thus, he was arrested. (As it turned out later, it was some intriguing tricky scheme under way for quite a long behind all this)

Well, I don't usually get upset by anybody getting arrested, or rounded up by the police as I, myself get arrested or raided by cops some way or other once or twice a year. So my normal reaction to anybody getting arrested is to congratulate him on his "coming of age." if you like. But I knew instantly that his alleged obstruction of compulsory seizure was not the real reason for his arrest. You'd be a damn fool to believe that his arrest had nothing to do with his being the chief defense counsel on the trial of Aum Shinrikyo . It is more logical to conclude that it's because he was on that case that he was arrested.


His arrest took place at the time when the entire Japanese mass media, frustrated by the Aum case and Wakayama poison curried rice case, and showing their total disrespect for, or ignorance of what the judicial system is all about, were lashing out on the lawyers as they scrambled to launch a campaign against lengthy trials or defense lawyers exercising the right of silence. My basic perception at that time was that the Aum Shinrikyo's defense counsel was beset with pressures on all sides. But in my hindsight, I was a bit too optimistic in that I trusted the two JRC's executives, Lawyer Kuroda, and Lawyer Ozaki. Little had I thought that they would sell Yasuda to the police.

Kuroda, appointed as an executive of JRC on the Japan Bar Association's recommendation was the very person who asked Yasuda to join the defense counsel for Aum . Besides he was involved with a radical leftist organization called "Bund", and Ozaki was one of the founding members of another radical leftist organization called "Front", each having defended those sentenced to death or those involved in the "Rengo Sekigun case ", respectively. What's more, among the Second Tokyo Lawyers Club members, they are members of "Zenyukai" known as the faction of non-JCP (Japan Communist Party) leftist lawyers, of which Yasuda is also a member. In fact I had already received several e-mails detailing the wrongdoings they had seen in JRC. Had they been about other governmental agencies or the police, my blood would have boiled instantly. But it was JRC as I knew it with Kuroda and Ozaki in it that made a different man of me. I sort of refrained from doing what I should have done. To my great regret, it was too optimistic of me to rest assured that JRC was in good hands of Kuroda or Ozaki. Ah well, it taught me a good lesson. But, I still can't reconcile myself to the fact that Kuroda as I thought I knew him did what he did.


So it was in that context that the bust on December 6th took place. Over the telephone I asked "How may cops?" and the speaker on the other end of the line said "20 or more." "And who is dealing with the situation?" I asked. And the reply was "Lawyer Oguchi and several other lawyers."
Oguchi Akihiko is a lawyer working for Minatogodo Law Firm Yasuda is working for, and has been a long acquaintance of mine since my college days at Waseda University. He was a star activist presiding over the All Waseda Zenkyoto Kaigi. He sustained a serious injury to his head in an armed showdown with an arch-fiend Kakumaru (Revolutionary Marxists) faction and became disabled for a while. But he went on to become a student of Kyoto University to start over again as a lawyer. He is now a defense counsel on the Tanaka Yoshizo's case I am now involved in. I would say he is "my brother".

You can't win a war of this kind without causing your enemy irreparable damage at the earliest possible stage. So goes my theory. I rushed over to the office joining the people there in the belief that the more the people, the better no matter how useless they may be . It was about 7 when I arrived on the scene to find the office already locked out. Five or so cops were on the 1st floor foyer, blocking anybody trying to go up. After a lot of bandying "Let me in" and "No, we won't let you in" between the cops and me, I asked one of the cops there, "Which section are you". Well, the reason I asked a question like this is the case can be characterized by the section of the police dealing with it. They said "Section 2". Criminal Investigation Section 2 is supposed to deal with economy-related crimes such as fraud or bribery. I asked "Anybody from Security?" But the answer was negative. Not a single security cop among the 20 or more cops was to be seen. That was an operation conducted by Section 2 alone, so-called criminal investigation.

The lawyers did not actually get caught totally unprepared. They had been dimly aware of certain indications of a possible police raid. But Yasuda had been so busy with preparation work for the Asahara trial. He was too busy to leave the office for his family. He went home only 2-3 nights a month. In other words, he was easily "locatable", so easy to find. The police could have arrested him any time as they actually did. It would have taken at least one month for the police to establish the behavior pattern for a man like me with so many places to go home to. So they would have had no choice but to turn to the Security for the job of keeping a tab on me.(laugh). That would be too much for the Section 2 cops.

Anyway, I had had hard time overcoming the sense of incongruity about an Investigation Section alone conducting the investigation. "It won't be that long before we see the security police on the scene." I thought, wondering how this could possibly have been done without the involvement of the security police."

It should be remembered that the Japanese police are basically security police. From top to bottom the cops had not been treated as equal human beings within the police unless they were in the security section, until around 1985, that is, when the criminal investigation police began to gain power. The reason? It's the enfeebled left wing power in this country. The security police, brought into being solely to deal with the left wings, have no role to play when there are no left wings left for them to deal with. The security section could now be done without.

The criminal investigation police, on the other hand, have been acquiring an increasing number of authorization rights since the new Entertainment Establishments Control Law was in place. The security police do not have any authorization rights, except those "non-lucrative" such as the right to authorize a demonstration parade. So my observation is that the power structure of the police as you knew it before 1985 is changing as the criminal investigation section is increasingly getting involved in lucrative tasks with the security section still staffed with the elitists. It was the Aum incident that provided the first opportunity for the criminal investigation police to make their presence felt not only where money was involved. The security police type of approach proved absolutely useless in bringing the Aum Shinrikyo to justice. Or you could say there was something wrong with the way the security police had been investigating matters.

For instance, if the security police caught a man planting an explosive somewhere, they intentionally let him walk away with it, rather than arresting him there and then, in trhe act, so that they can follow him around to find everything they want to know about him, like who he associates with, etc. That is the way the security police go about their job, which is in a stark contrast with the approach the criminal investigation police adopt. The criminal investigation police would arrest him right on the spot. They first arrest him, and then beat him up, trying to wrestle confession from him before they start to construct an entire picture of the crime he has committed.

This style actually is suited better to the today's crimes that are committed mostly on impulse. The security police are still in the mainstream as far as the power structure goes, but they are gradually being replaced by the criminal investigation police that are proving more effective in the actual law-enforcement tasks. From a criminal's point of view, there is no way to hatch up a grand frame-up or anything like that today. The security police used to have saboteurs infiltrate into various left wing factions to undermine them. But today, they don't need to go to such a length. You just sit back and watch such left wing factions falling apart. Only Kakumaru (Revolutionary Marxists) remains as something to be reckoned with.

The declining power of the security police should be seen in the context that they are left behind the time in terms of money and the investigation approach. Put it another way, you'll see not so further down the road the security police gobbled up in the criminal investigation police. That's when the terror reigns with anything the police do being regarded as justice. The security police are abhorred, especially by my generation but the criminal investigation police may come across as nicer to our next generations.

The criminal investigation police will get involved in all sorts of cases. The security police have been looking down on them, saying "What good would it do the security of Japan, catching a peeping Tom in the act?" But what ordinary people really want to see in jail is not some endangered left wing activists but those perverts who watch them making love. It seems to me that the criminal investigation police are coming across as something more down-to-earth, something that does you cleaner justice. This is fascism with a clean face in my parlance, played out superbly by the criminal investigation police, not the security police as it has been in the past.

It is in this sense that, apart from some sense of incongruity I had, I felt that the arrest of Yasuda orchestrated only by Criminal Investigation Section 2 of Tokyo Metropolitan Police might represent a step across some significant line into a new realm. The criminal investigation police are now becoming capable of dealing with those engaged in the campaigns against death penalty or those involved in the Aum religious cult movement. Yasuda's arrest may well be a symbolic event.


Another thing about his arrest that made me feel that a significant line had been crossed was my perception, which I now regret was a bit too optimistic, that Yasuda was a sort of sanctuary in two ways; one that he was a court-appointed lawyer, head of defense counsel for Asahara, and the second that he is what is called a human rights lawyer campaigning against death penalty, not an immoral, corrupt lawyer. The likely repercussion from grass roots movement activists is one thing that must be taken into account by the police before such an arrest is made. So I thought Yasuda was doubly guarded as a sanctuary. I was so naively convinced. As it turned out, such a presumptuous perception of mine stood no chance before the reality, and crumbled away ainstantly. It's not because Yasuda got caught in a trap set by the security police. As I have already mentioned, what I think is characteristic of this new situation is that it's the criminal investigation police that came out in the open to take charge.


So I felt that things have definitely given way. A decisive one step has been taken by the establishment, crossing Rubicund as they say.
The closest you could get to this feeling may be the way you felt when you knew that "Suiheisha" was standing side by side with "Taiseiyokusankai" (Imperial Rule Assistance Association) when it was formed in 1940. It didn't make sense to those people that Suiheisha once inspired by the Blshevik Revolution and struggling for the liberation of buraku people even with a touch of anarchism, was advocating such ideals as Building East Asian Coprosperity, Whole Nation, National Reconciliation. Such series of events will add up, leading to fascism with people sitting back, making little sense of these events.

It seems to me that the establishment now makes no bone about shedding off the vague respect long shared with the general public for the traditional solid popular base the grass roots movements have long enjoyed and rested on. They have now no qualm about trampling on any vestige of what they have been opposed to. We sort of got caught unprepared when they trampled on us. Or should we say that we were a little bit in disarray in putting up our resistance. The establishment has been quick enough to notice this disarray, and take advantage of it.

This intrusion into what has long been a sanctuary should not be dismissed as merely accidental. What will follow once they get in may well be something on the scale we have never experienced before. The Yasuda's arrest should not be interpreted as something resulting from a small mistake he has made. Then, we should ask ourselves what it is that will come after this.
My prediction at this point of time is that there will emerge a regime organized around the president of JRC, Nakabo Kohei, a former chairman of the Japan Bar Association,
What this seems to be suggesting, although I didn't realize it until Yasuda was arrested, is a radical departure from the way a lawyer's profesion has long been perceived. What would replace the old perception is the one in which a lawyer practicing laws dictated by the modern rationalism as Nakabo himself says in his books, " Publicness is what being a lawyer is all about." - "Fighter Nakabo's Words", "We are committed to national policies" - "Nakabo Kohei, Commander in chief on the front".


What is more, as Nakabo says " JRC is one of the largest law firms in Japan with as many as 70 consultant lawyers across the nation. Added to this is around 160 lawyers assigned to individual cases at any given time, paying those lawyers a total of whopping \1,900 million annually, making it also one of the largest clients as Nakabo says in his interview on the LDP's Judicial System Special Investigation Committee"

As you can see, he seems to know how to make money talk. Indeed, he says "First, a lawyer should make \30 million from his earning as lawyer. Then, using this \30 million as investment capital, he should make an asset worth \200 million. This provides the economic base on which he can operate as a lawyer." (Cornered Nakabo Kohei). This is a bit of surprise, isn't it? Is he talking about investment or gambling when he says "making \200 million on \0.3 million"? Anyway Nakabo himself is said to have created his economic base such as above by selling or buying land and stocks. He also runs his own a Japanese style inn.

My lawyer, Oguchi, would be upset to know how lucrative it is to be a lawyer. Knowing how little he is earning, one would become tempted to suggest he be on dole. Having seen the way he works and lives as a lawyer, I have come to have a certain degree of respect for lawyers in general, believing that all other lawyers were the likes of him, not succumbing to venality although their vague and dubious ideas of social justice or human rights they are struggling for are highly disputable.

But, the Yasuda's arrest has changed all that. It now points to something we haven't expected to see. And some groups of lawyers are behind this change. They are now currying favors from the establishment to gain privileges. What has long been a trickle known as "Minbo" lawyers among lawyers is now a flood caused by a treacherous typhoon called Nakabo. That's the way I think we should see things today. I was feeling that way as I was watching the police doing the job around Yasuda's office.

Well, there is not a soul found in the drinking quarter of Tokyo's Akasaka area where the Minatogoto law firm is located. But what is really happening is something more akin to a Rubicund about to be crossed. This is quite symbolic of what I believe is happening in this country, with Nakabo type fascism as I call it, sneaking its way so successfully into the very fabric of our society completely unimpeded and unheeded by the rest of the society as a result of the compartmentalization of the society with each fragment becoming increasingly unrelated to one another.

And, I talked with Oguchi as we watched the bust taking its course. The memory came back to me of the time I was involved in the 1st round of Waseda University struggle in 1965 against the tuition fee hike. It looked like we were getting nowhere at the early stage with each party participating in it, but represented by a token number of students spending nights at school. So, that movement started with our realization that we would have to count on nobody but ourselves to take care of that movement right to the end. "Seems to be the story of our life, doesn't it?" I said to Oguchi, who just nodded, thinking to himself that "This is the same way we came.", and looking determined to do what he did 35 years ago with nobody to count on but himself.


The conclusion we came to after a little talk I had with Oguchi was that we shouldn't let Kuroda Junkichi get away with it all. But Oguchi warned "JRC is like a wedge driven into the bar association. So it would be too much to for the bar association to criticize JRC．” "Ok, let me do it. I don't care.", I replied, adding in a jest "The very name "Kuroda" makes me puke. It reminds me of "Kurokan" I so hate." So that was how I decided to go charging into JRC. Anti-death penalty people did follow it through in their own good manners.

This is a typical situation in which something's got to give. Every one in bar association is just sitting back, waiting for somebody else to venture to strike out. It actually takes somebody foolhardy like me for this mountain even to budge. And I am very much willing to offer myself as such a foolhardy striker. I will take care of the dirty, yet the toughest side of this struggle so that those clean-faced such as from the anti-death penalty forum can concentrate on what they can do. I don't mind being like a baseball's inconspicuous set-upper. I will try to strike out every one of them, allowing no runs, no base hits, nothing until I feel sure this game will be won.

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Fascism " a la Nakabo" Reveals Its Ferocious Nature (Part 1) -- Emergency Statement by Miyazaki Manabu -- First of all, the readers may want to read this morning's paper. It's a report by "credible" Asahi Shinbun newspaper known for its accuracy and faithfulness to the establishment in reporting "facts" The head defense counsel for Aum leader Matsumoto arrested for his part in Jusen-related financing practice The Metropolitan Police Department Investigation Section 2, investigating the case in which Nihon Jutaku Kinyu (Japan Housing Finance), a former housing loan corporation, and Sun's Corporation Tokyo Limited (Minato-ku Tokyo) were alleged to have transferred to a dummy company the rents for buildings owened by the two corporations for the purpose of hiding the money, arrested yesterday a 51 years-old lawyer Yasuda Yoshihiro of The Second Tokyo Bar Association (4-chome Yuhigaoka, Kamakura, Kanagawa) on suspicion of his involvement as an adviser and masterminder on the scheme. Lawyer Yasuda, who is the head defense counsel for the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, Matsumoto Chizuo (better known as Asahara Shoko" (43-year old) is also known as one of the leading figures in the campaign against death penalty. Lawyer Yasuda is now said to be exercising the right of silence. The police investigating the case found that the lawyer had conspired with Son Tadatoshi (63-year-old), who is charged with obstruction of compulsory seizure, and his son, Son Naoaki (38-year-old) also charged with obstruction of compulsory seizure by the Tokyo District Court at the instance of the creditors about the tenant rents for two buildings Son's Corporation owns, one being "Shiroganedai Sun Plaza" (located at 5-chome, Shiroganedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo), and the other being" Azabu Garden House" (located at 3-chome Motoazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo". Sun's Corporation allegedly notified its tenants by sending a false statement saying "The buildings have been loaned to other companies" and got them to pay the rents from March 1993 to September 1996 into the bank accounts of two dummy companies, Wide Treasure (located in Meguro-ku, Tokyo) of which the accused Sun Naoaki is the president, and ABC Enterprise (located in Minato-ku, Tokyo.) The rents concealed totaled around \200 million. Detecting their move to evade a compulsory seizure, Jusen Resolution Corporation（JRC）has been filing a charge against Sun's Corporation with the Metropolitan Police Department. According to the Investigation Section 2, Lawyer Yasuda, asked by the Suns to give them instructions on the way to get around the impending compulsory seizure, plotted a specific scheme to conceal the rents using dummy companies and came up with the false statement, received \200 million or more. The Suns' are now said to be starting to telling the investigators something that substantiates this. (December 7, 1998 Asahi Shinbun) This particular raid, and the way it was reported by our media was apparently intended to mislead the majority of readers: by implying " One rogue lawyer for notorious Jusen and lawyer defending even more notorious Asahara has been arrested. He must be a really bad guy." But the truth is that the police busted one of the nation's finest and most respectable lawyers. Another thing the police had in mind when they went ahead with this bust was that it would have an flinching effect on the lawyer's in general in carrying out their professional duties and those lawyers who are to defend "bad guys". But, our readers should be reminded that the "lawyers" are supposed to protect the interests of the accused or those likely to be accused and the police are supposed to protect the people. The balance is struck when these two, lawyers and the police contend with each other supposedly to protect their respective "public interests"" that they represent using all the resources and means available to them. This is the way system called "democracy" works although it's not half as perfect as you are led to believe. Still, it's a lot better a system if you come to think of North Korea. But, such is not the case this time. One party with the "right to arrest" pounced on the other, in other words, the "violence of the state" struck. In baseball parlance, it is a "bean ball". You may think that it's just another arrest made on a separate charge which the police are very good at when it doesn't matter why the arrest should be made. But, this is quite a new case in that it is a lawyer that is charged. So what happened was that the Investigation Section 2 of the Metropolitan Police Department made investigation into the matter to establish the allegation by Jusen Resolution Corporation as a case to be settled in the court of law. Where there goes "investigation", there exists a party that has suffered a "loss". In this case, the party that has suffered a loss is Jusen Resolution Corporation, of which Nakabo Kohei, lauded as a hero by the country's media, is president. Look what Asahi says "Yasuda received more than \2 million as a reward". There is nothing wrong about a lawyer receiving such an amount of money for his service for a client. The amount of money like this should not be dealt with equally with billions or hundreds of billions of taxpayers' money the Japanese government dumped into the banks run by irresponsible management. No lawyer in Japan could should get away if such an amount of money were enough to warrant the arrest. I don't bother to go into details. But to put it in a nutshell, so many laws have been modified to authorize this organization to do things it needs to do in recovering "Jusen"-related debts as if to put this "organization" above the laws, resulting rather symbolically in the arrest of Lawyer Yasuda As is clear from reading old newspapers, this must be seen in the context of a massive campaign led by the country's media servile to the establishment, saying in their reports on the "Aum trial". "The defense counsel is deliberately procrastinating the trial" But, the fact is that Yasuda is one of the few lawyers worthy of the title, likes of which are not so easy to find these days. Actually Oguchi Akihiko who is now the defense counsel on the "Tanaka-Kodama frame-up" case I am committed to, and was the leader of "Shaseido-Kaihoha" of Zengakuren is practicing at the same law firm. Knowing the kind of person Oguchi is, who is older than Yasuda now 51, I find it rather hard to picture to myself a law firm where he can work without any grievances. But there is such a firm, and Yasuda is surely the pillar of the firm. Imagine Oguchi serving a man his junior. This is more than enough to show how extraordinary a person Yasuda is, particularly to those who know the 70's. He represents the conscience of the lawyers in Japan, and one of the few real men I am so fond of among those "human rights" lawyers I am no so fond of. He is a kind of man who would foolishly put himself on the line for what I think would be a mere fiction such as the notion that even Asahara has his human rights no matter how the general public or mass media may be manipulated. He is so stubborn and so "inflexible" that he is incapable of any wrongdoing. In a sharp contrast with this, JRC is a state-run debt collector made up of judges, ex-prosecutors, police officers. Putting "poor-and honest" Nakabo Kohei at its top does not alter the fact at all that it's an organization created for the government, banks and agricultural cooperative-related financial institutions to get away with it. It's the power of the state itself, far from being a friend of the powerless as they want it to be called. "Has any journalist ever delved seriously into what Nakabo, the head of this organization has been doing in the past as a lawyer? " This is a question I want to ask as a man who was watching him in Hushimi, Kyoto where I come from, too. All they write is about "Morinaga arsenic-poisoned milk incident", depicting him as the champion of justice. But his past is just as dubious as mine. The reason I have kept quiet about it is that in a way he and I are all part of the same gang and neither would come out unscathed if we started slandering each other. . But, what really concerns me more than anything else is that the state authorities, under the name of Nakabo Kohei and JRC, has come to lay its hand on a lawyer devoted to the protection and promotion of human rights. The word "justice" is like a whore who can sleep with anybody as long as money comes her way. People are most likely to be misled when nobody has any doubt about "justice". Nakabo could mislead the people that neither Ozawa nor Obuchi can. Behind this facade of justice, Nakabo is free to do whatever he likes. This is what I call "White Fascism" The popular notion that Aum is "bad" and JRC is "good" has resulted in a widespread perception that any lawyer defending Aum is bad, and anything JRC does is good. It is on the strength of this widespread perception among our people that High Prosecutors Office and the Criminal Investigation Section 2 has decided to go ahead. What has made them so confident is the "social justice" and our mass media saying that "Death to Asahara right away because he is bad, or "public opinion" saying " Sentence to death the perpetrators of Wakayama arsenic poisoning attack" And they think that shedding sympathetic tears would take care of everything if the accused are acquitted. Taking time to weigh up the issue for proper balance to prevent this is what practicing laws is all about. This does not put any lawyer above anybody else, but surely is what makes this profession respectable. And what makes this profession respectable makes Yasuda more respectable as anybody who knows him testifies. Modern fascism presents itself as black-or-white clean-cut-ism. Look at those pictures of investigators. They hardly look grown-up. But, they are the very bureaucrats of the power of the state endowed with the authority to decide the life or death of your life. As individuals, they are all good civil servants or nice company employees. But they would do anything for their organizations. Remind you of something? Lots of them in history. But they are not so-called scoundrels or yakuza. Rather, they are "serious" and "excellent" people. But it's these people who would do anything they are ordered to do by the organizations they belong to. But, there's nothing new. We have seen some before. After all, that's the way of fascism. Recall Hitler's Jugends or Japanese Kamikaze Youth pilots. Nation's finest people were so "willingly" misled. The only difference with those in the past is that we have this time JRC, Nakabo, police, Asahi Shinbun or NHK misleading the "finest" of our time. To tell the truth, I was sort of caught off guard and a bit of upset. But, I think the power that Oguchi and his friends are capable of displaying is really something. As this is the territory where he has proved himself many times before, it would be exciting to see how this struggle will develop. Since Oguchi is such a nice fellow, willingly agreed to take on my far-from-lucrative job of defending ex-Red Army member Tanaka he has nothing to do with and Mr Kodama who was unwittingly drawn into what Tanaka got caught in, and Yasuda is "his brother", "Web Fox-eyed Squad" and I are now combat-ready to do as much as we could. Yasuda and Oguchi can count on us. Unlike Nakabo, we never double-cross. Hey, Kohei, look what we are getting up to. Don't just stand around after your grandstand play to the public gallery you think you can fool. You are known to have been awakened by the "Glico arsenic milk" case while I am allegedly the prime suspect on the "Glico-Morinaga" case. My image to the public is a pure fabrication of the police, but our reader should be reminded, so is Nakabo's. And it's you, Kohei, who will surely go down as a blemish on the history of the Japanese judiciary system. Well, you may be just another dumb not knowing your role of just being a cover, like a condom used to make "it" look harmless, or to make the resurgence of fascism look harmless. I don't want to blame you for being dumb. You can't do anything about you being that dumb, and I may be just as dumb as you are. But, you were a "condom used by the police", I would be "Viagra prescribed by the bogus left wing" to knock you off. Time can tell which will win. Our venerable "Asahi" has already shown its telltale tendency to manipulate the public opinion as follows: "Harsh punishment to the lawyer if found guilty", laments the head of JRC Mr. Nakabo, interviewed by Asahi Shinbun said "As a person in the same profession, I cannot help feeling strongly about what he is suspected of having done. If he is found guilty, he should be severely punished." Mr. Nakabo is the head of JRC that filed a charge against Sun's Corporation with the Metropolitan Police Department, that led up to the arrest of Lawyer Yasuda. Nakao told the Asahi reporter that a lawyer should impose strict discipline on himself as well as on others especially when he cannot deal with the case without his own involvement in ways that may incriminate him. "If that is the case, he shouldn't let his greed get better of him. Lawyers are expected to show the proper use of laws, and show the people the right way", said Nakabo, repeatedly emphasizing the importance of the law abiding attitude of a lawyer. (Asahi Shinbun December 7th, 1998) Next is Sankei Shinbun. What it says about the arrest of Yasuda is exactly the opposite of what Asahi says. While Asahi uses such explicit words as " ... deplores Nakabo, or laments Nakabo..." to manipulate the public opinion in favor of Nakabo or JRC. Beware of this "quality" paper. Sankei goes like this: Suspect Yasuda known as a leader of anti-death penalty campaign. The arrested suspect Yasuda Yoshihiro is a leader of campaign against death penalty as well as a defense counsel for the Aum religious cult leader Asahara Shoko. He is also widely known as the defense counsel on such famous criminal cases as "Nagoya college girl abduction and murder" (1980) and "Shinjuku bus arson attack " (1980). On hearing the news of his arrest, the activists who had been campaigning against death penalty with him all said in unison " I can't believe it. It would do our movement a great damage." The suspect Yasuda is a leading figure on the "Forum 90 calling for ratification of International Convention on Abolishment of Death Penalty". Professor Kikuchi Koichi of Meiji University who has been campaigning with the arrested lawyer as a member of "Abolishment and Halt of Death Penalty Liaison Committee" says " Since he is sure to deny the charge as he should, his detention is likely to be a prolonged one. His arrest causes great concern and damage to whomever he is involved with, to those he has won the confidence of. There is nothing I find about him that makes you think that he does something he was arrested for. His insouciance about money is so well known . His allows his fellow activists free access to his office as a base for the anti-death penalty campaign." (Sankei Shinbun December 7th, 1998). First of all, the readers may want to read this morning's paper. It's a report by "credible" Asahi Shinbun newspaper known for its accuracy and faithfulness to the establishment in reporting "facts" The head defense counsel for Aum leader Matsumoto arrested for his part in Jusen-related financing practice The Metropolitan Police Department Investigation Section 2, investigating the case in which Nihon Jutaku Kinyu (Japan Housing Finance), a former housing loan corporation, and Sun's Corporation Tokyo Limited (Minato-ku Tokyo) were alleged to have transferred to a dummy company the rents for buildings owened by the two corporations for the purpose of hiding the money, arrested yesterday a 51 years-old lawyer Yasuda Yoshihiro of The Second Tokyo Bar Association (4-chome Yuhigaoka, Kamakura, Kanagawa) on suspicion of his involvement as an adviser and masterminder on the scheme. Lawyer Yasuda, who is the head defense counsel for the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, Matsumoto Chizuo (better known as Asahara Shoko" (43-year old) is also known as one of the leading figures in the campaign against death penalty. Lawyer Yasuda is now said to be exercising the right of silence. The police investigating the case found that the lawyer had conspired with Son Tadatoshi (63-year-old), who is charged with obstruction of compulsory seizure, and his son, Son Naoaki (38-year-old) also charged with obstruction of compulsory seizure by the Tokyo District Court at the instance of the creditors about the tenant rents for two buildings Son's Corporation owns, one being "Shiroganedai Sun Plaza" (located at 5-chome, Shiroganedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo), and the other being" Azabu Garden House" (located at 3-chome Motoazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo". Sun's Corporation allegedly notified its tenants by sending a false statement saying "The buildings have been loaned to other companies" and got them to pay the rents from March 1993 to September 1996 into the bank accounts of two dummy companies, Wide Treasure (located in Meguro-ku, Tokyo) of which the accused Sun Naoaki is the president, and ABC Enterprise (located in Minato-ku, Tokyo.) The rents concealed totaled around \200 million. Detecting their move to evade a compulsory seizure, Jusen Resolution Corporation（JRC）has been filing a charge against Sun's Corporation with the Metropolitan Police Department. According to the Investigation Section 2, Lawyer Yasuda, asked by the Suns to give them instructions on the way to get around the impending compulsory seizure, plotted a specific scheme to conceal the rents using dummy companies and came up with the false statement, received \200 million or more. The Suns' are now said to be starting to telling the investigators something that substantiates this. (December 7, 1998 Asahi Shinbun) This particular raid, and the way it was reported by our media was apparently intended to mislead the majority of readers: by implying " One rogue lawyer for notorious Jusen and lawyer defending even more notorious Asahara has been arrested. He must be a really bad guy." But the truth is that the police busted one of the nation's finest and most respectable lawyers. Another thing the police had in mind when they went ahead with this bust was that it would have an flinching effect on the lawyer's in general in carrying out their professional duties and those lawyers who are to defend "bad guys". But, our readers should be reminded that the "lawyers" are supposed to protect the interests of the accused or those likely to be accused and the police are supposed to protect the people. The balance is struck when these two, lawyers and the police contend with each other supposedly to protect their respective "public interests"" that they represent using all the resources and means available to them. This is the way system called "democracy" works although it's not half as perfect as you are led to believe. Still, it's a lot better a system if you come to think of North Korea. But, such is not the case this time. One party with the "right to arrest" pounced on the other, in other words, the "violence of the state" struck. In baseball parlance, it is a "bean ball". You may think that it's just another arrest made on a separate charge which the police are very good at when it doesn't matter why the arrest should be made. But, this is quite a new case in that it is a lawyer that is charged. So what happened was that the Investigation Section 2 of the Metropolitan Police Department made investigation into the matter to establish the allegation by Jusen Resolution Corporation as a case to be settled in the court of law. Where there goes "investigation", there exists a party that has suffered a "loss". In this case, the party that has suffered a loss is Jusen Resolution Corporation, of which Nakabo Kohei, lauded as a hero by the country's media, is president. Look what Asahi says "Yasuda received more than \2 million as a reward". There is nothing wrong about a lawyer receiving such an amount of money for his service for a client. The amount of money like this should not be dealt with equally with billions or hundreds of billions of taxpayers' money the Japanese government dumped into the banks run by irresponsible management. No lawyer in Japan could should get away if such an amount of money were enough to warrant the arrest. I don't bother to go into details. But to put it in a nutshell, so many laws have been modified to authorize this organization to do things it needs to do in recovering "Jusen"-related debts as if to put this "organization" above the laws, resulting rather symbolically in the arrest of Lawyer Yasuda As is clear from reading old newspapers, this must be seen in the context of a massive campaign led by the country's media servile to the establishment, saying in their reports on the "Aum trial". "The defense counsel is deliberately procrastinating the trial" But, the fact is that Yasuda is one of the few lawyers worthy of the title, likes of which are not so easy to find these days. Actually Oguchi Akihiko who is now the defense counsel on the "Tanaka-Kodama frame-up" case I am committed to, and was the leader of "Shaseido-Kaihoha" of Zengakuren is practicing at the same law firm. Knowing the kind of person Oguchi is, who is older than Yasuda now 51, I find it rather hard to picture to myself a law firm where he can work without any grievances. But there is such a firm, and Yasuda is surely the pillar of the firm. Imagine Oguchi serving a man his junior. This is more than enough to show how extraordinary a person Yasuda is, particularly to those who know the 70's. He represents the conscience of the lawyers in Japan, and one of the few real men I am so fond of among those "human rights" lawyers I am no so fond of. He is a kind of man who would foolishly put himself on the line for what I think would be a mere fiction such as the notion that even Asahara has his human rights no matter how the general public or mass media may be manipulated. He is so stubborn and so "inflexible" that he is incapable of any wrongdoing. In a sharp contrast with this, JRC is a state-run debt collector made up of judges, ex-prosecutors, police officers. Putting "poor-and honest" Nakabo Kohei at its top does not alter the fact at all that it's an organization created for the government, banks and agricultural cooperative-related financial institutions to get away with it. It's the power of the state itself, far from being a friend of the powerless as they want it to be called. "Has any journalist ever delved seriously into what Nakabo, the head of this organization has been doing in the past as a lawyer? " This is a question I want to ask as a man who was watching him in Hushimi, Kyoto where I come from, too. All they write is about "Morinaga arsenic-poisoned milk incident", depicting him as the champion of justice. But his past is just as dubious as mine. The reason I have kept quiet about it is that in a way he and I are all part of the same gang and neither would come out unscathed if we started slandering each other. . But, what really concerns me more than anything else is that the state authorities, under the name of Nakabo Kohei and JRC, has come to lay its hand on a lawyer devoted to the protection and promotion of human rights. The word "justice" is like a whore who can sleep with anybody as long as money comes her way. People are most likely to be misled when nobody has any doubt about "justice". Nakabo could mislead the people that neither Ozawa nor Obuchi can. Behind this facade of justice, Nakabo is free to do whatever he likes. This is what I call "White Fascism" The popular notion that Aum is "bad" and JRC is "good" has resulted in a widespread perception that any lawyer defending Aum is bad, and anything JRC does is good. It is on the strength of this widespread perception among our people that High Prosecutors Office and the Criminal Investigation Section 2 has decided to go ahead. What has made them so confident is the "social justice" and our mass media saying that "Death to Asahara right away because he is bad, or "public opinion" saying " Sentence to death the perpetrators of Wakayama arsenic poisoning attack" And they think that shedding sympathetic tears would take care of everything if the accused are acquitted. Taking time to weigh up the issue for proper balance to prevent this is what practicing laws is all about. This does not put any lawyer above anybody else, but surely is what makes this profession respectable. And what makes this profession respectable makes Yasuda more respectable as anybody who knows him testifies. Modern fascism presents itself as black-or-white clean-cut-ism. Look at those pictures of investigators. They hardly look grown-up. But, they are the very bureaucrats of the power of the state endowed with the authority to decide the life or death of your life. As individuals, they are all good civil servants or nice company employees. But they would do anything for their organizations. Remind you of something? Lots of them in history. But they are not so-called scoundrels or yakuza. Rather, they are "serious" and "excellent" people. But it's these people who would do anything they are ordered to do by the organizations they belong to. But, there's nothing new. We have seen some before. After all, that's the way of fascism. Recall Hitler's Jugends or Japanese Kamikaze Youth pilots. Nation's finest people were so "willingly" misled. The only difference with those in the past is that we have this time JRC, Nakabo, police, Asahi Shinbun or NHK misleading the "finest" of our time. To tell the truth, I was sort of caught off guard and a bit of upset. But, I think the power that Oguchi and his friends are capable of displaying is really something. As this is the territory where he has proved himself many times before, it would be exciting to see how this struggle will develop. Since Oguchi is such a nice fellow, willingly agreed to take on my far-from-lucrative job of defending ex-Red Army member Tanaka he has nothing to do with and Mr Kodama who was unwittingly drawn into what Tanaka got caught in, and Yasuda is "his brother", "Web Fox-eyed Squad" and I are now combat-ready to do as much as we could. Yasuda and Oguchi can count on us. Unlike Nakabo, we never double-cross. Hey, Kohei, look what we are getting up to. Don't just stand around after your grandstand play to the public gallery you think you can fool. You are known to have been awakened by the "Glico arsenic milk" case while I am allegedly the prime suspect on the "Glico-Morinaga" case. My image to the public is a pure fabrication of the police, but our reader should be reminded, so is Nakabo's. And it's you, Kohei, who will surely go down as a blemish on the history of the Japanese judiciary system. Well, you may be just another dumb not knowing your role of just being a cover, like a condom used to make "it" look harmless, or to make the resurgence of fascism look harmless. I don't want to blame you for being dumb. You can't do anything about you being that dumb, and I may be just as dumb as you are. But, you were a "condom used by the police", I would be "Viagra prescribed by the bogus left wing" to knock you off. Time can tell which will win. Our venerable "Asahi" has already shown its telltale tendency to manipulate the public opinion as follows: "Harsh punishment to the lawyer if found guilty", laments the head of JRC Mr. Nakabo, interviewed by Asahi Shinbun said "As a person in the same profession, I cannot help feeling strongly about what he is suspected of having done. If he is found guilty, he should be severely punished." Mr. Nakabo is the head of JRC that filed a charge against Sun's Corporation with the Metropolitan Police Department, that led up to the arrest of Lawyer Yasuda. Nakao told the Asahi reporter that a lawyer should impose strict discipline on himself as well as on others especially when he cannot deal with the case without his own involvement in ways that may incriminate him. "If that is the case, he shouldn't let his greed get better of him. Lawyers are expected to show the proper use of laws, and show the people the right way", said Nakabo, repeatedly emphasizing the importance of the law abiding attitude of a lawyer. (Asahi Shinbun December 7th, 1998) Next is Sankei Shinbun. What it says about the arrest of Yasuda is exactly the opposite of what Asahi says. While Asahi uses such explicit words as " ... deplores Nakabo, or laments Nakabo..." to manipulate the public opinion in favor of Nakabo or JRC. Beware of this "quality" paper. Sankei goes like this: Suspect Yasuda known as a leader of anti-death penalty campaign. The arrested suspect Yasuda Yoshihiro is a leader of campaign against death penalty as well as a defense counsel for the Aum religious cult leader Asahara Shoko. He is also widely known as the defense counsel on such famous criminal cases as "Nagoya college girl abduction and murder" (1980) and "Shinjuku bus arson attack " (1980). On hearing the news of his arrest, the activists who had been campaigning against death penalty with him all said in unison " I can't believe it. It would do our movement a great damage." The suspect Yasuda is a leading figure on the "Forum 90 calling for ratification of International Convention on Abolishment of Death Penalty". Professor Kikuchi Koichi of Meiji University who has been campaigning with the arrested lawyer as a member of "Abolishment and Halt of Death Penalty Liaison Committee" says " Since he is sure to deny the charge as he should, his detention is likely to be a prolonged one. His arrest causes great concern and damage to whomever he is involved with, to those he has won the confidence of. There is nothing I find about him that makes you think that he does something he was arrested for. His insouciance about money is so well known . His allows his fellow activists free access to his office as a base for the anti-death penalty campaign." (Sankei Shinbun December 7th, 1998).

What you have read so far is the urgent statement on the arrest of lawyer Yasuda, which I put on my web site before the dawn the next day I was there witnessing the police raid. What really counts for me is a quick response and reaction to whatever happens and whenever I like. That's the only way to beat the system. A lot would be lost as it takes time to have your views expressed through newspapers or TV. After all, newspapers and TV are our ultimate enemies. We should never allow ourselves to play their game at their home. It's hard to beat them away on the road.

In this sense, a web site is one helluva weapon for me. But I want to say something about many people, especially young ones who believe in web sites. I find them a bit too maniac. I think they should be more straightforward like we were as young. Whenever something happened, we found ourselves grabbing at a rock to throw or clutching at a bar to beat'em up with, or at whatever happened to be there. My web site is just like a rock or a bar in my youth. It just happened to be there on the Net for me to use.

One reason that this statement is titled is that it expresses the remorseful feelings I had when I saw the police raid. I really regret that I had been a bit too lenient or biased in favor of JRC. As a man once given to speculative land dealing, I know only too well that JRC is an overwhelmingly powerful organization when it comes to restoration of bad loans. And JRC seems to have something clean about it. But actually it's an authoritative power where corruption has already set in. Any power starts corrupting the moment it thinks it's in power.

For example, what actually happens almost without exception is that an accused party, in this case, a debtor appoints as the consultant lawyer a lawyer with a connection with JRC. This will soften up the collector, JRC. But at the same time, this makes it easier for JRC to recover the bad loans if the lawyer it has to deal with is not a hard-to-crack one like Yasuda, but one still under its influence. This is the power JRC represents. It's typically the way power is in Japan. Viewing the arrest of Yasuda in this light, we may come up with a different version of what has happened.

Endo Makoto is a lawyer. He was on Teigin poison plot as chief defense counsel for Hirasawa Sadamichi who was sentenced to death, and also was on the case of Anti-gangster organization act as the head of the defense counsel for Yamaguchi--gumi Yakuza syndicate. He was the one who offered to be a guarantor of Nagayama Norio who was sentenced to death, and sprinkled his ashes over the Sea of Okhotsk according to his will. Endo is a man of true grit just like Yasuda is. He says "Yasuda will not be found guilty even if he did what he was arrested for." His view on this arrest many be summed up as follows:

The charge against Yasuda is that he instructed Sun's Corporation to have the rents for the buildings it owns paid into the accounts of dummy companies in order to evade the compulsory seizure on the rent income, thus obstructing the compulsory seizure. Even if Yasuda gave such an instruction, what JRC could have done was to bring a charge with the court of justice to serve notice of the compulsory seizure on the rent income (sublease rent credit). Had it done that, the court must have issued an compulsory seizure order immediately so the rents could have been paid to JRC every month.

Whether on one side or the other side of the issue, this kind of compulsory seizure on the credit is something lawyers are quite used to and familiar with as many preceding cases approve. So this is a case where the creditor will have no difficulty executing compulsory seizure. How could anybody obstruct "compulsory seizure" ? That is the point Yasuda is making. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

Actually, JRC is now up against a formidable rock as it were. They started out with easy targets, easy-to-recover bad loans. With this first round of the job now done, they are left nothing but troublesome dud loans like a rock bed. Troublesome, especially when the debtors take counter-measures through legal means. Indeed, what Yasuda was doing was what most lawyers do as common legal practice to defend the debtors. What the deadlocked JRC came up with was the idea that they would decide to get rid of those lawyers defending the debtors, that is, arrest them. This would surely intimidate lawyers because any sign of hostility against JRC would be enough for any lawyer to be arrested.

This is nothing but the power in its naked form. If carried to the extreme, this logic could allow any private property to be confiscated, the reason being that any private property belongs to the state. It's as if defending private property would be a crime or no national policy should be contested. The role of JRC is a matter that needs to be examined more closely as the arrest of Yasuda takes its course. But at this moment, I want to warn you that because the Nakabo's way of doing things depends after all on the support of public opinion, it is all the more dangerous.

To put it in the context of this arrest of Yasuda, people of Nakabo's mindset would think that lawyers are not allowed to defend people unable to repay. Every decision must be made based on whatever is justice in the eyes of the public. Granted that being unable to repay may constitute injustice. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't defend the perpetrator of injustice. This would be a typical fascism. I think the fascism in Japan will emerge with an extremely clean face, spearheaded by the mass media, that clean faced fascist which Nakabo is.

Look what the public opinion says about the Aum trial. It goes like this; "Asahara should be sentenced to death right away because he is such a devil that doesn't deserve to be put on trial. Why bother such a trial? Get it done away with and go on." Well, I am not defending Asahara at all, but I don't think that's the way any trial should go.
Let me give you an example more relevant to me. Suppose a yakuza man is charged with the same crime as a non-yakuza man is. He will certainly get 50% more in jail. In other words, the equality under the law does not apply to Yakuza. "All Japanese nationals are equal under the law, and shall not be discriminated against in their political, economic, or social relationship on the basis of race, creed, sex, social status, or family origin." is what the Article 14 of the Japanese Constitution says. People like Nakabo should be reminded that a proviso such as "except Yakuza" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Let's face it. It's judges pandering to the public opinion.

Indeed, yakuza will never be acquitted even if he is apparently not guilty. Here is a story I was told by a person who came to see me, seeking my advice. The story goes like this:
One yakuza man dropped his wallet and reported to a police box. He was not a well-to-do yakuza and in the wallet he had only several hundred thousand yen, and his business card indicating his affiliation with a yakuza syndicate. Seven months later, he was arrested. The reason was that the wallet turned up allegedly with stimulant drugs in it. This is absurd, isn't it? How could he have reported to the police if the wallet had contained stimulant drugs no matter how stupid he may be?

So, I put this case to the court with a lawyer. The wallet was found by an old lady. The written record made at the police box after checking the contents of the wallet does not say the wallet contained any stimulant drugs. That it was a police fabrication was all too obvious. Who else could have planted the drugs in the wallet but the police? In her reply to the lawyer's question "Did the wallet contain any drug?", the old lady testifying on the witness stand said "No, it didn't." That would lead anybody to think that the yakuza man would walk out the courtroom clear of the charge. But the fact was that he was found guilty.

The judge presiding over the case must have reasoned with himself this way: "Under the present law, we cannot convict him of possession of stimulant drugs. But that fact that the accused is a member of a designated gangster syndicate makes it difficult to find him not guilty considering the anticipated public outcry against the verdict. So the best way to get around this is to find him guilty, and sentence him to the prison term of as many days as he has already spent under detention, so that he does not have to be sent to jail. "
Pandering to the public opinion while actually fearing the repercussion from the Yakuza world, the judge finds him guilty but of a very minor offence.
This is how the legal system operates or how the public opinion is pandered to. It won't do you any serious harm as long as things remain just as they are now at this stage. But they are destined to manipulate the public opinion. And that's Nakabo's way and we call it "Fascism a la Nakabo".



Mind you, fascism does not come with the same face. It's a little bit bookish but at the 7th Comintern (Communist International) Dimitrov defined fascism as "the most exclusive form of financial capital". This means that at least on principle, the financial capital and the state stand in conflict with each other as long as the crisis is kept from surfacing. But once the crisis comes to fore, that principle goes out the window so the state and the financial capital become at one with each other and openly go hand in hand. With the deepening financial system crisis, the drowning state will clutch at anything that might help extricate itself out of the crisis. It will blatantly pushes ahead in the interest of its financial system under the banner of national policy. Rings the bell? Yes, that's exactly what Nakabo is doing.


First, recall how JRC came into being. What started all this was the decision that the people of Japan would bear the tax burden of \680,000 to make up for the 100% irrecoverable bad loans associated with the housing loan financial institutions better known as Jusen corporations. And what Deposit Insurance Corporation set up to collect the rest of recoverable \6.75 trillion of bad loans was JRC. Deposit Insurance Corporation is a government agency through and through with 94% ofits capital furnished by the government.

And its chairman of board of directors is an ex-prosecutor into the bargain. So what Nakabo is doing is to team up with this organization to turn what should be mere civil cases of money trouble into criminal cases, declaring shamelessly "we will carry out national policies." What we are witnessing is none other than the state and financial capital becoming at one with each other to bulldoze their way through crushing everything that gets in the way. It was in this sense that I call JRC a "state-run debt collector", the other face of the coin being the Japanese economy now on the brink.

Its parallels abound. One such parallel is what Mussolini did in Italy when he created public agencies and corporations staffed with many technocrats and specialists and funded with state capital, thus intensifying the state intervention in the economy and society, resulting in overgrown administrative agencies and bureaucracy. This is almost a replica of what Nakabo is getting up to, insisting on the importance of the lawyer's publicness and active participation in the administrative activities. We call it technocrat fascism. The fascism from the above.

Many other characteristics of what Nakabo is doing proves that it's fascism. For instance, exclusion of heretics, which was a typical form of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan before the Second World War. Sueno Kosan charged by JRC with a criminal act is more on the outlawed side. And Sun of Sun's Corporation for which Yasuda has been an adviser is a Singaporean national. And there are many more JRC are suing. But almost all of them are those excluded from the society such as Koreans residents in Japan and yakuza. What Dimitrovwas referring to when he said "exclusive and violent form" was racial discriminations, wars, and civil disturbances. But what is happening now toward the end of the century in Japan may not be a war as we know it, but still it should be seen as basically the same thing as Dimitrov was referring to.

Added to this characteristic of fascism is the tactic of winning over petit bourgeois or lower middle class citizens. This is what NAZIS was very good at. To the applause of lower middle class, they went out of their way to draw up the "25-article platform" to address the grievances the lower middle class people had against loan sharks and large commercial capitals. Rings the bell again. His showdown with Sumitomo Bank was intended to create an image of JRC being strict on financial capitals with NHK featuring this incident to enhance this image. Nakabo knows what to do and what not to do. This is the fascism from the bottom.

What they are getting up to is to organize the country both from the top and from the bottom into one body of one mind to the exclusion of un-Japanese, not to mention those lawyers who take sides with un-Japanese. It's all very well worked out. Nakabo is much of an enemy, I must admit.
Well, you would stand no chance if you were to fight against a justice-faced fascism with the public opinion behind it. As I said before, justice is their home ground.

P.S. The article I put up on my web site on that date has turned out to be one of the reasons that the application for lawyer Yasuda's bailout was turned down. You can come up with almost any sort of reason to justify what you want to do. Here is what a prosecutor Urata Keiichi wrote to explain why the application was turned down. The reader should read this to see how stupid he is.

The photos of Criminal Investigation Section 2 officers are now in the public domain on the Internet with such footnotes as "Yasuda's office raided. 21 lads of Investigation Section 2 working hard" "Look at those faces. They look far from grown-up" .......... It is not unlikely that returning the accused to a person who openly obstructs the investigation and bullies those involved in the investigation would allow the accused to conspire with him to slander on the Internet those expected to be interrogated as witnesses in the court, thus putting a psychological pressure on them not to testify against themselves.

Perhaps "a person who openly obstructs the investigation and bullies those involved in the investigation" is me. They are worried that those of Sun's Corporation now reported to be testifying against Yasuda may be in danger if a man like me is free to do as he pleases. So it is absolutely necessary to hold Yasuda hostage to keep me at bay.

It should be remembered that there is no privacy for a civil servant on duty in the first place, especially for those uninvited who have broken into an office. Living off the taxpayers, Mr Urata does not seem to understand that people who want to view a homepage will pay to be hooked up to the Internet. That means it's up to those people to decide whether to see my home page or not. If you don't want to see it, just don't. Just because it is your duty to check my homepage, that doesn't mean at all that everybody else has the same obligation. Mr. Urata is the only person in this whole wide world who is looking at the homepage he doesn't want to look at.

If you are aware of this, how could slandering those expected to testify as witnesses in the court put a psychological pressure on them not to testify against themselves? Or do you expect me to beg the witnesses for the prosecutor to come to visit my home page just as the police bullied, or implored JRC to charge Yasuda? Make no mistake about it, my prosecutor friend. Maintaining the highest standard of intelligence and integrity, my web site has been often used for criticizing the police for their "decent from heaven" ("Amakudari") practice or for criticizing major newspapers or TV journalism for their corruption with the evidence attached to the relevant articles, but never been used for such a lowly act of slandering others as major newspapers and TV journalism are always doing when they are just parroting what the police investigation team is saying in their press release. If you feel bullied or intimidated where you have no reason to, it's your problem. He gave himself away when he said my web site was an intimidating or bullying kind. And he is confessing that in an official statement. How stupid of him! We might not have realized, my friend prosecutor, that you were intimidated, trembling, shaking had you felt the way most other people felt about my web site. Thanks anyway for telling me that you are scared. No wonder you want me to be quiet in return for the Yasuda's release, and you don't want this book to be published.

If you can say "Lawyer Yasuda should not be bailed out" because of "the possibility of something being written" on the Net. Then any request for bailout could be turned down for this reason, could it not? "The reason for turning down the request for bailout" is a historical document, the first document that has ever said "The request for bailout should be turned down because of the possibility of something being written in somebody else's homepage." In this sense, the name "Urata Keiichi" may go down in the history of the judiciary world. I would like the world to know this high intellectual standard of the judiciary authority of Japan." That's one reason I have decided that this book should be translated into English."

I hear Mr Urata is actually a Ministry of Justice's "expert" in patrolling the Net for obscene pictures. So it would make a lot of sense if he arrested me for putting " those faces of the cops" on the Internet, and charged me with the offence of "displaying obscene pictures in public". Indeed, that picture was the most obscene one I had ever seen, disgustingly obscene. Ya, I am very much willingly to plead guilty of that.

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Fascism " a la Nakabo" Reveals Its Ferocious Nature (Part 2) -- Emergency Statement by Miyazaki Manabu -- Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department put the arrested lawyer Yasuda into the same cell as Asahara was in. How dare you could have done that, putting lawyer Yasuda in the same cell as Matsumoto Chizu in with nobody to see him. It's the despicable nature of the police bureaucrats, and the blatant obtrusiveness, and manipulation of mass media that this represents. What the police are expected to do in a case like this is to remind the public that the arrest of Yasuda should be dealt with separately from the Aum trial, and to tell them not to relate the arrest to the Aum trial. But they dare to do exactly the opposite as if to say "Look at them! See what I mean?" It's the same nastiness as we used to know in the past that they exhibited when they had newspaper people take photos in front of the police. This is funny considering their pathetic aversion to being photographed. It seems to me that the opinions expressed in our vernacular papers are no more than an uncritical justification of this police strategy. The Yasuda's arrest is part of the plot hatched between the prosecutors and the police to manipulate the mass media on the strength of the impoverished public opinion. To tell the truth, it wasn't lawyer Yasuda that the Criminal Investigation Section 2 was after at the early stage. It was a lawyer by the name of Tanaka Moriichi, who was a defense counsel on the case of illegal financing practices involving Shinwa Bank in Kyushu Island. But when an investigating prosecutor met him, he implicated his knowledge about a scandal involving the prosecutor's office, saying "Who do you think you are dealing with? Do you want to know what I know about your mates?" The scheme was scrapped. It was criminal case chief director of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office, Kamigaki who decided to scrap it. Kamigaki is a long acquaintance of lawyer Tanaka Moriichi from his days in Okayama University. And Tanaka is one of those "Yameken" or a lawyer who gave up his carrier as a prosecutor. So what happened was that the prosecution gave the police a "go-ahead" with the arrest of Yasuda in return for their halt to the on-going investigation to have the case scrapped. Face saved for the prosecution, too. There is a strange rumor bandied about that I am involved in this, too. This guy, Kodama Tsutomu in the Criminal Investigation Section 2 died about 6 weeks ago from working too hard, too long. But the Superintendent of the Metropolitan Department, whose expected "Amakudari" or decent from heaven to Japan Air Line was exposed in my homepage, was too busy with his own affairs to know one of his subordinates was overworking himself to death. So his colleagues wanted to put Yasuda under arrest by all means to revenge the poor dead Kodama on the special 49th day from his death, for his soul to leave this world in peace, if you like. So the story goes. But why revenge on Yasuda? Why not on the Superintendent? By the way, that planned "Amakudari" to JAL was scratched off. The Metropolitan Police Department got flooded with mass media reporters after having read this home page. Had they forced their way with their planned "Amakudari", the subject would have been brought up in the Committee on Judicial Affairs. It just happened that lawyer Yasuda was offered as a sacrifice. It could well have been me. Why not? Well, that's a bit too far-fetched. Another thing that we cannot causes a grave concern in this case is that not only the police, prosecution, and writers under the thumb of government, but also lawyers all ganged upon Yasuda as if to say "majority is the right cause" The vice president of JRC "K" who charged Yasuda in collusion with Nakabo is the boss of the Tokyo Second Bar Association. With no lawyer offering to become a defense counsel for Aum, he threw himself on the ground to beg Yasuda, saying "I'm in a big trouble with nobody taking on the job. Please take on this job to help me out." Well, I wouldn't trust anybody who throws himself on the ground. But Yasuda did. Being a chivalrous man, he said "Defending criminals is what a lawyer is paid to do." That's how he became a court-appointed lawyer. Such is the kind of person Yasuda is. So the rest of the lawyers have turned against Yasuda who works seriously in the interest of the accused and does not live up to the expectations of the general public and mass media that are flirting with the idea of lynching like in a cowboy film, saying "Just pretend you defend the accused and kill Asahara right away", The police, mass media, and judiciary community are now united as one to get the things moving in the direction they like, heavily relying on the public "mood" of the time as they did when they put the two completely separate cases in the same bracket to make it look like they are related to each other. What else could be called fascism but this? Here is an article carried in Sankei Shinbun newspaper, the paper I praised before. But, Looks like this stupid columnist has wrecked it all. [Sankei Column] We have brought up the subject of lawyer's "occupational ethics" a number of times before. But to our great regret, the same subject must be brought up to call into question the absence of moral. The lawyer heading defense counsel for the accused, Aum Shinrikyo cult leader Matsumoto Chizuo was arrested on suspicion of giving instructions on assets hiding. But, there are two things at issue, this and that, and this columnist will treat this as separate from Aum because it has nothing to do with Aum. "This" refers to "a crime" of a lawyer while "that" refers to "common sense". It is, however, said that no better word could describe what this lawyer and others are doing as defense counselthan "lack of common sense" ▼ More than 2 years and 7 months or more than 100 hearings into this trial, it is becoming ever more likely that this will go on for as long as 10 years. They just go round and round in circle and never go forward with so little being deliberated upon. And it is said that the lawyers are procrastinating. The reason I call this practice "lack of common sense" of the worst kind is that it is not technically illegal.▼ They find fault with every evidence and every witness brought in by the prosecution, fault them on the slip of the tongue, and ask questions endlessly on trifle matters while the accused is looking away, completely indifferent or dozing off. The trial just goes around and around getting nowhere.▼ Mr. Sagi Ryuzo, a writer who's been tracking this trial from the observer stand says "It is all too obvious that the defense counsel are trying to procrastinate the trial. And why doesn't the head of the defense counsel appear in the press conference? Those in the defense council are accountable to taxpayers and should make their conviction clear to the nation, every one of them.(Tokyo Shinbun Newspaper) ▼ Unbridled "lack of common sense" will lead to demoralization. With the court of law left so demoralized and degraded, this country would end up as a lawsuit society like America. After all, a lawyer who commits a crime and a lawyer lacking in common sense may be the two sides of the same coin. (Sankei Shinbun December 9, 1998) The police don't like anything I like. I shouldn't have praised Sankei. After all, Sankei displeasing the police does not make a good picture. So that was Sankei kissing the police' ass to make up for the displeasure I gave the police when it reported on the Yasuda's arrest. This writer, Sagi Ryuzo's logic is quite often used by most of the press conveniently. His logic is used to justify the implicit "Lawyers are to blame because they were procrastinating." rather than the more explicit "Just go through the motion of defending the accused and kill him right away", I want to say to those people in a hurry "What's wrong with taking time for the Aum trial?" Taking time to examine the case is not something special or extraordinary especially the accused is arrested and in custody. "Waste no time in executing Asahara" is an act that panders to the "public opinion", not an act expected of a legal expert. These people want to shout the joy of seeing Asahara executed just as much as they wanted to see the suspect Miura executed for alleged murder of his wife in LA, or to see the suspect Hayashi to be executed for arsenic poisoning plot in Wakayama. And I cannot but feel that underlying all this is a fragile mentality of almost all Japanese that cannot bear what they don't like. For judges and prosecutors, I am one of those they don't like, and therefore, they can't bear. Rights cannot be protected without being exercised. And fascism is a condition where laws succumb to lawlessness in favor of the power of the state. So what we are witnessing here is a democracy going rotten with one writer enboldened by the lowly mass media incapable of going any further than saying "We hate Asahara", which, in turn, is turning to this for the basis of their hysteria. That rotting democracy is what you are earning your livind on, isn't it? You'll regret it, my psuedo-democtactic citizens. There is more to this case.

For example, if you pay a cop, say \300,000 and give him the name of someone you don't like. They will detain him for a couple of days for no reason. For the maximum two days he was allowed to stay, screaming and shouting cops ask him questions like "What's that you have done?" The poor man does not have any idea what's going on at all.

Another example is those detectives assigned on gangster-related duties. A little toward Shinjuku from Nakanosakaue on Oume Kaido Road is a family restaurant on the left. That's where cops on drug-related duties hang about. What they do there at the restaurant is get information from women on the drug in return for the stimulant drugs they give these women. They do such things everyday. Corruption? Yes, it is, and spreading very very fast.

Next, it would make a bit of a headline. It's about the one when Director General of Police, Kunimatsu Takatsugi was shot. Our mass media got worked up and made a lot of fuss about who had shot him. I wouldn't approach this type of case that way. Considering the kind of salary he is getting, I wondered how he could afford such a house he was living in. So I checked his house's registration to find, sure enough, that he bought it on no mortgage. He bought that condo for well over \100 million in cash. Where was that kind of money from? And what's more, he has another one on no mortgage. The Director General of Police is one of the highly paid jobs in this country, but not at all enough to buy both of them in cash. What that shooting tells me is that he is making that kind of money on the side. And it is quite strange in the first place that people should get so worked up just because one cop was shot. Being a cop involves risking your life. That's what they are paid, and expected to do.

Kunimatsu has long been in my life as if it' my fate to deal with this cop. In 1969, he was head of Motofuji Police Station. This is the station across from the Tasuokamon gate to Tokyo University. So, it's now customary for a Tokyo University graduate to be appointed the head of this police station. It's Tanaka Yoshizo I am supporting in Thailand that who threw a Molotov cocktail into the station head room. Looking back, Tanaka cracked "It burned well."
Well, joking aside, Kunimatsu was once the Director of Osaka Prefecture Police Department notorious as the nation's most scandal-ridden. Then one book came out titled "Police Corruption" at the time when a scandal, known as "Slot machine scandal" hit this police department. But the scandal got shelved never to be on anybody's lips when one elite police officer hanged himself. It was Kunimatsu who was then the Directorin Osaka.

More interestingly, Nakabo's long been mixed up with this cop, too since Yoyoda Shoji Fraud case where Nakabo was the trustee in the bankruptcy. The police and a lawyer are supposed to be oppose each other. But it has become known that they have been working together, helping each other. When Kunimatsu was the head of Criminal Investigation Bureau, and Nakabo was the chairman of the Japan Bars Association, the police authority was working toward the introduction of the new Anti-Gangster Law. Quite a few lawyers, whose job it is to be on the side of the suspect, raised a doubt about the legality of that law, pointed out its abusive nature. Despite all this, the Anti-Gangster Law was installed.

Kunimatsu was actually quoted as saying "Mr. Nakabo had never said "Yes". But the final collective decision reached through his coordination efforts got us what we wanted, to the satisfaction of every party to this issue. Had he not been the chairman of that association, the law might not have come into being." ("Cornering Nakabo Kohei"). To put it straightforward, Nakabo colluded with the police against the will of the lawyers.
And later, to top it off, Kunimatsu was appointed as a special adviser to the "Liability Tracing Committee" set up by Deposit Insurance Corporation which operates on the instructions issued by JRC of which Nakabo is the president. It's a typical case of "The more wrong you do, the more sound you can sleep on it"

So how could we expect the rest of the police to be not like a top police executive Kunimatsu?
And another thing you don't seem to realize is that a cop arresting a thief or murderer is not for the cause of justice. He is paid to do it. If you are a cop insisting that you are doing what you are doing, I would say to you, "Can you volunteer to do it without getting paid?" Everybody seems to be mistaken there. If it's something you are doing for justice, why not do it on a voluntary basis?" I bet there would be nobody left of the police if they must do what they are doing for justice but without getting paid." They are just filthy brats as far as money goes. But, besides money, what makes them tick is their face, that is the face to be saved. Their tenacity to this obsession is just as palpable in anything they do. What pissed off Criminal Investigation Section 2 more than anything during the course of investigation into the alleged irregularities of Yasuda's behavior was the death of one detective who overworked himself to death. They just took it out on Yasuda by putting him under arrest.

Mr Hayashi is a lawyer who was there to witness the police raid. Yasuda was on the case of Sun's Corporation with this lawyer. During the raid, one investigator said to him, "Is that you, Hayashi?" When Mr Hayashi went to Marunouchi Police Station on the matter relating to detention of Mr Sun or his son of Sun's Corporation, the cop attending to him fell down and taken to a hospital, but died. Yasuda's arrest was apparently their act of revenge, tit-for-tat.

Incidentally, I was on a radio program, asked to express my view on "Karoshi" when the news that the cop died of "Karoshi". I said in reply "Why make such a fuss about one dog or two who die?" (However, I love dogs as man's best friends) This got on their nerves again. So I hear.
But, you've got to remember that at the time the cop lost his life, we got informed by a union on the JAL side that the current Superintendent of the Police was on its decent from heaven toward JAL, and put that information up in my web site wasting no time. The decent from heaven to Japan Air Line did not materializes a result of the reaction of the press to my home page. The Superintendent may still hand on a job with some special corporation, anyway.

True, those rank and file investigators may have been working so hard that they may die anytime. But you should be reminded that it was when the Superintendent was looking for a job he could descend from heaven to. You are barking up the wrong tree when you blame me. You should blame the one who got you to overwork yourselves to death while he was indulgingly on the look for his post-retirement lucrative job.

You see this is the way I have been put up a fight. It's not for the cause if justice I fight. We stand no chance to win until the issue is brought down-to-earth. We are bound to lose the battle as long as we fight for the cause of justice. It was probably for the cause of justice that Yasuda was fighting. Yasuda is a man of justice. Nothing's wrong with that. I like him for that. I like the person he is. But fighting for the cause of justice is after all playing away on the road, not at home. So it's a losing battle, sooner or later. Let them ridicule us, or discriminate against us. Only by so doing, can we fight in the way that moves people? Now let's go back to the subject of face saving. It was just about the same time the Superintendent was on the job hunt and one dog died that the Section 2 was after a lawyer by the name of Tanaka Moriichi.

He was a "Yame-ken" as an ex-prosecutor derogatively is called, but was regarded as a guardian-angle by politicians, speculators, and gangsters. He was a defebse counsel for Kyo Eichu known as the king of underground financiers, Kotani Mitsuhiro who was the director of Koshin speculators group, arrested for his involvement in Kokusai Kogyo scandal, Ito Suemitsu on the Itoman scandal, and Takumi Masaru, the No.2 of Yamaguchigumic gangster syndicate, who was shot to death at Shin-Kobe Oriental Hotel.

But, the prosecution called a halt to the efforts then under way for his arrest. He is a graduate of Okayama University, and a long acquaintance of Criminal Investigation Division Head, Kamigaki of Tokyo District Prosecutor's Office since his college days. When he was just about to be arrested in connection with Shinwa Bank scandal, a young prosecutor from Osaka District Prosecutor's Office went down to see Tanaka on a fact-finding mission. But Tanaka insinuated his knowledge of some scandal involving prosecution, saying something like "That's about one fifth what I know. Is is OK? Why don't you check with your boss? Indeed, Tanaka had something up his sleeve and something scanderous could have possibly come out if the prosecution had pressed hard on him. And that's the reason they hesitated.

My guess is that a mountain of secret information could have been extracted from Tanaka Moriichi had he been arrested. Information on the underground financier world in Kansai area or on a politician by the name of Kamei Shizuka, etc. In fact, the Criminal Investigation Section 2 must have been burning with sense of justice, with an eye to arresting Tanaka, racking him for information that might lead to bigger scandals. They may have already gone so far as to apply to the prosecution for an arrest warrant.
The prosecution, it's my pure guess, then, may have suggested to the Section 2 that they arrest Yasuda rather than Tanaka, saying "You'll be credited if you arrest Yasuda who is the head of the Asahara defense counsel, and the ringleader behind the procrastination of the Aum trial." This must have been the way the authority lured the police away from the source of embarrassment.

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