Japanese System May Undermine Scandal Probe : Many Question Whether Energetic Ace Prosecutor Can Nail Political Bigwigs

Yusuke Yoshinaga, a diminutive man whose fierce eyes peer from behind a pair of thick-lensed glasses, represents renewed faith in government for many Japanese these days, as a turbid corruption scandal strains the credibility of their elected leaders.

Yoshinaga is the man who did the unthinkable in 1976 and arrested former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, then one of the most powerful politicians in Japan, on bribery charges. And he could strike again.

In his more than three decades serving in the public prosecutor’s office, Yoshinaga, 56, has acquired a reputation as an aggressive and meticulous investigator, loyal to the law and oblivious to outside political pressure.

Expectations have been running high since he took charge as Tokyo District public prosecutor in December, just as the Recruit scandal was beginning to boil out of control in Parliament with allegations that as many as 17 lawmakers peddled their influence by participating in an insider trading scheme, along with scores of other prominent Japanese.

So far, Yoshinaga’s performance has hardly seemed meek. Under his supervision, prosecutors have arrested 13 people, including two former top-ranking bureaucrats, the venerable former chairman of Japan’s telecommunications giant and the man who founded Recruit Co., the firm at the center of the scandal.

But it remains uncertain whether Yoshinaga will be allowed to finish his job and bring indictments against members of Parliament, should the evidence lead there. Although he embodies all the virtues of a zealous crime-buster, he must work within a system that prizes social harmony and political stability as much as it does any abstract ideal of enforcing the law.

“Informal pressures are always being applied,” said Hiroshi Kubo, an author specializing in criminal affairs who has studied the prosecutor’s office. “Nobody needs to say ‘stop.’ The government has ways of letting the prosecutors know it is displeased.”

Minister Forced Out

A remark by Justice Minister Masami Takatsuji last Wednesday before the budget committee of the lower house of Parliament emitted just such a chilling message, Kubo and other observers contend. Takatsuji, a former Supreme Court justice, said he might resort to using his “supervisory powers” to curb prosecutors should they be suspected of leaking information about the investigation.

Takatsuji told reporters Friday, however, that he had no intentions of interfering in the Recruit investigation.

Technically, the justice minister has the power to halt criminal investigations of a sensitive or political nature, but that option has been used only once in postwar history. Eisaku Sato, who would later become prime minister, was spared arrest in a shipbuilding bribery scandal in 1954, but the justice minister who intervened was forced to resign, bringing down the rest of the Cabinet with him.

Kubo believes that Yoshinaga, the ace prosecutor, was free to bag Tanaka in the Lockheed payoff scandal 13 years ago only because Tanaka had high-placed enemies, particularly in the person of Takeo Miki, who was prime minister at the time.

Now the situation is different, however, largely because the scandal casts a stain on the very fabric of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita and many of the party’s leaders are tied to Recruit’s money, as are several opposition lawmakers.

Sometime over the next week or so, according to unconfirmed reports, top prosecutors and ranking Justice Ministry officials are expected to meet to determine the course of Yoshinaga’s Recruit investigation, reviewing evidence and debating the social benefits and drawbacks of prosecuting any politicians who might be under suspicion.

The Recruit scandal could become an ultimate test of independence for the public prosecutor’s office, which is loosely aligned with the Justice Ministry in the administrative branch of government--but whose approximately 1,200 prosecutors cannot be fired like ordinary civil servants. It might also turn out to be an opportunity for prosecutors to demonstrate one of their most formidable powers: exercising the discretion not to indict.

Board Lacks Power

“Prosecutors don’t decide to indict strictly on the basis of the evidence and the law,” said a government official close to the public prosecutor’s office. “They have to take into consideration the social ramifications. It’s the same whether it’s a murder or a political case.”

Each of the 50 district public prosecutor’s offices in Japan is matched with a panel of 11 citizens called a Board of Inquest, ostensibly providing guidance in cases where prosecutors are suspected of failing in their duty. Unlike grand juries in the United States, however, these boards have no powers to compel prosecution.

The futility of this form of oversight was illustrated in a recent case in which prosecutors rejected a board’s recommendations and refused to indict three police officers in Kanagawa Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, who illegally wiretapped the home of a Japanese Communist Party official--even though the prosecutors acknowledged that sufficient evidence existed to bring the case to trial.

The public prosecutor’s office remains one of the most secretive institutions in the Japanese system of government. Yoshinaga and other prosecutors did not have the opportunity to consent or decline to be interviewed for this article because the switchboard operator in their agency refused to transfer telephone calls to their desks. Security guards at the entrance to their building turn away visitors without appointments.

Foreign journalists attempting to confirm even the most basic facts in the Recruit case, such as major arrests, are informed that prosecutors will speak only to members of the Japanese “press club” that covers the courts. Even for these chosen few, essential information must be squeezed out of sources by camping out on the doorsteps of their homes for nightly ambush interviews. Gathering news about the investigation becomes a game of deciphering vague comments by exhausted prosecutors dodging through doors.

Seen as a Signal

“If there’s evidence, we’ll prosecute” is the phrase said to be repeated frequently by Norio Munakata, who supervises about 30 prosecutors working on the Recruit investigation as deputy chief of the special investigations bureau in the Tokyo District public prosecutor’s office. Munakata, 47, now holds the job Yoshinaga had during the Lockheed probe. He once arrested the governor of Fukushima Prefecture for bribery and has acquired the sobriquet, “Little Yoshinaga.”

It may seem like a statement of the obvious, but Munakata’s line about prosecuting based on evidence is widely interpreted to be a signal that no one will be spared, not even politicians. It is not clear where their information comes from, but many Japanese reporters are speculating that some three to five members of Parliament are in line for indictment on charges related to the Recruit scandal.

The big one is likely to get away, they say. That would be former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, whose three aides reaped windfall profits by trading in the hot shares of a Recruit subsidiary and who is accused by opposition parties of using his influence as premier to assist Recruit in a deal to buy two U.S. supercomputers through the recently privatized Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Co.

“If Nakasone isn’t indicted, the public is going to wonder why,” said Ryuichiro Hosokawa, a political analyst. “There’s no legal logic as to why (former NTT Chairman Hisashi) Shinto should be indicted and not Nakasone. They both did the same thing. If the public prosecutor’s office doesn’t go all the way, it will reflect on their honor and dignity.”

Nakasone has denied any wrongdoing in the Recruit affair, and he has not been charged with any crime. But Japanese journalists covering the public prosecutor’s office say Nakasone’s name has emerged in connection with more than a dozen separate postwar corruption cases, including the Lockheed case. Each time, there has been insufficient evidence to bring charges, resulting in a growing sense of resentment among prosecutors, they say. This could not be confirmed with prosecutors themselves.

Yoshinaga, the quintessential prosecutor, is described in worshipful tones by Japanese journalists who have covered his career. He is painted as a ferocious courtroom attorney, a man who does not mince words and a genius at combing through financial records.

A Team Player

Indeed, Yoshinaga had intended to become a banker when he was a student at Okayama University in western Japan, but he was destined to become a prodigy in the law. While still a third-year university student, he passed the rigorous examination to enter the national Legal Training and Research Institute, the rite of passage for all judges, prosecutors and lawyers in Japan. The examination has about a 2% pass ratio.

Despite his extraordinary capabilities, Yoshinaga is ultimately considered a team player and a strategist, and not a bold or reckless maverick.

“Everyone is a gear in a cooperative investigation--if oil runs out in even one place, it can turn direction, and the whole effort can go wrong,” he has been quoted as saying. “The conditions that bring an investigation into fruition are the timing of heaven, the advantage of position and the harmony of man.”