Monday, June 05, 2017, 12:00 - 14:00
Speaking Truth to Power : Former METI Bureaucrat
Language: The Speech and Q&A will be in Japanese with English interpretation.
Shigeaki Koga will forever be associated in the Japanese public mind with a televised diatribe to millions of viewers about the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Famously, Koga ended his live appearance on Asahi TV's Hodo Station in March 2015 by holding up a sign saying starkly: "I am not Abe."
By then a well-known critic of Abe’s policies, Koga claimed that meddling from the government had forced him off the air – a claim immediately denied by the show’s host, Ichiro Furutachi. Koga says he has since been unofficially blacklisted by most of Japan’s mainstream broadcasters.
Not that he has been silenced. His new book, titled "Nihon Chusu no Kyobo", or "The Secret Plot of the Japanese Government," tackles what he believes was the attempt to censor his views on the nuclear power industry, the cowardliness of the mass media, bureaucratic corruption and, above all, the duplicity of the Abe government.
Koga is a native of Nagasaki and after graduating from the University of Tokyo, was a career bureaucrat with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. He held a succession of key posts until going public with his concerns about the nuclear industry after the Fukushima disaster of 2011. His allegations that Japan’s utilities buy silence in universities and the media and neuter regulators by handing bureaucrats cushy post-retirement jobs, have earned him few friends in officialdom but a legion of fans among the general public.
Please reserve in advance, 3211-3161 or on the website(still & TV cameras inclusive). The charge for members/members' guest is 1,750/2,700 yen; non-members eligible to attend may pay in cash by e mail reservation (front@fccj.or.jp). (Menu: herb flavored roast swordfish with tomato sauce.) Reservations canceled less than one hour in advance for working press members, and 24 hours for all others, will be charged in full. Reservations and cancellations are not complete without confirmation. For meal service, please enter the room by 12:25.
Professional Activities Committee
