Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [49]
One reason for the vast waste and hidden debts in the «special government corporations,» tokushu hojin, is precisely that they don't need to open their books to the public. The WRPc does not publish its balance sheets; neither does the New Tokyo International Airport, nor dozens of other huge special corporations, all of which function in near-total secrecy. For those who believe that reform is on its way to Japan, it was sobering to learn of a law proposed by the Ministry of Justice in 1996 that would tighten, not loosen, the bureaucrats' hold on information. According to the new law, agencies need not divulge information about committee meetings and may even refuse to disclose whether requested information exists.
This brings us to the critical factor in MOF s delay in closing down the Jusen: the Jusen hid their debts so well that they fooled everybody. A high-ranking MOF official admits «it was impossible at the time to get a handle on the scale of the situation.» This was true not only of the Jusen companies but of other banks that went belly-up in the mid-1990s, such as Hyogo Bank and Hanwa Bank, which turned out to have debts ten or twenty times larger than their stated liabilities. Today, the Ministry of Finance cannot find its way out of the labyrinth it created when it encouraged banks and securities firms to cook their books, bribe regulators, and consort with gangsters. It is lost in its own shell game.
Kawai Hayao, a leading academic and government adviser, says, «In Japan, as long as you are convinced you are lying for the good of the group, it's not a lie.» It's all part of what Frank Gibney, Jr., a former Japan bureau chief at Time, calls «the culture of deceit.» A few examples will show how deeply rooted this culture is, and how the policy of hiding unattractive facts prevents citizens from learning the true depth of their nation's problems or doing much about them.
Ladies and gentlemen, step right this way to a junior high school in the town of Machida, outside Tokyo. In 1995, the school board commissioned a study of a large crack that had opened up on the school grounds, since local residents were concerned that the landfill on which the school was built might be sinking. It was, but no need to panic: the board instructed the consulting firm to alter its report. Where the original had read, «It is undeniable that subsidence could re-occur,» the revised version stated, «The filled-in areas can be thought to have stabilized.» To prove this was so, the consultant set up meters at a school far away, in Yamanashi Prefecture, calibrated them to show no tilt, and attached photos of those meters to the report. So, although the Machida crack was 120 meters long, 10 to 20 centimeters wide, and up to 3 meters deep-and growing-the land was, according to the report, magically ceasing to sink. This fiction troubled very few people, for the school board granted another large contract to the same consultant immediately after it was revealed that the report had been doctored. A company representative commented, «We just want to avoid misunderstandings and make the phrasing of the text easy to understand.»
Government officials work hard to make sure that reports are easy to understand and eyesores pleasant to look at. Here is another example. At Suishohama Beach in Fukui, on the Sea of Japan, a large nuclear power plant regrettably detracts somewhat from the beach's picturesque charm. So while preparing its tourist poster, officials simply air-brushed the plant out of the picture. «[We did it] believing the beauty of the natural sea can be stressed when artificial things are removed,» they said.
Police departments provide special training materials to educate officers in how to shield the public from situations that they would be better off not knowing about. In November 1999, on the heels of a scandal in