Issue:
April 2024
The LDP slush fund scandal has exposed weaknesses in media coverage, and Japan’s democracy is the victim
The biggest political scoop of recent times – and currently the subject of fevered debate – was, in fact, published a year and a half ago in the Japanese Communist Party’s newspaper Shimbun Akahata.
The paper reported that annual revenue/expenses reports published by the finance committees of several Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) elected representatives had revealed several anomalies.
Professor Hiroshi Kamiwaki from Kobe Gakuin University spent New Year's Eve in 2023 analyzing the reports and discovered numerous inconsistencies in the LDP's records.
"It couldn't have been a simple mistake, it was intentional,” he told me recently. “That's why I reported these oddities to the Special Investigation Unit of the Tokyo Prosecutors' Office.”
However, it was not until around 10 months later that the allegations, based on leaks by investigators, appeared on the front pages of major Japanese newspapers. It is still unclear why big media companies had spent months studiously ignoring the claims first reported by Akahata.
The fact that the LDP lawmakers’ “parties” were fund-raising events was well known. No one in Japan seemed concerned about this method of securing cash, which enables companies to make donations to local elected representatives in exchange for political help in facilitating their activities.
Sixteen years ago, in my book Les Japonais (Tallandier Publishing), I denounced these practices, which are facilitated by a "sieve law" containing such large holes that it lets everything slip through. But despite being able to use numerous other legal means of collecting funds, and without having to report donations under ¥200,000, LDP lawmakers went even further by failing to declare money they collected for factional parties and keeping the profits.
The party’s reserves of "hidden money" stayed in the headlines for weeks. Editorials denounced MPs who had been found culpable. Journalists went on the offensive against ministers who were later forced to resign. Ultimately, though, prosecutors decided not to indict senior officials of the Abe faction (Yasutoshi Nishimura, Hirokazu Matsuno and several others) and Nikai faction.
Prosecutors held open press conference – a relatively rare occurrence - to explain their reasons, while senior politicians who had been cleared of wrongdoing nonetheless pretended to take their share of the responsibility by agreeing to submit themselves to a political ethics review committee.
As the newspapers clamored for a response, the politicians in question remained silent. If it hadn't been for pressure from the media, it is fair to say that they would have dealt with the matter behind closed doors.
That said, there is more the media can do to prevent the scandal from disappearing. Newspapers rely on leaks from people across the political spectrum, but in this instance, they need to dig much deeper to get to the truth. The risk is that the affair will drag on and the media will lose interest.
In fact, that is already happening. Coming at a time when ordinary citizens were expected to declare their income and pay tax on it, the LDP factions’ practices – which some commentators have described as a form of tax avoidance – are no longer making the headlines.
A change in the law on funding will inevitably follow, as Fumio Kishida’s administration is in no position to resist it. What is less clear is how far the reforms will go. That will be determined by the outcome of the power struggle currently unfolding between the Kishida and Abe factions.
Without strong pressure from the media, the changes are unlikely to be as sweeping as many people would like. “We need to push the public to demand a total ban on fund-raising parties,” Professor Kamiwaki said.
The opposition parties are poorly placed to push for change since they are unable to agree on what should come next.
Even a scandal of this magnitude has failed to make much of a dent in the government … it should have toppled the Kishida administration. That is a sign of a broken democracy. And the media must take their share of the blame.
Karyn Nishimura is a correspondent for the French daily newspaper Libération and Radio France.
