Japan Can’t Quiet Corporate Hecklers : * Shareholders: <i> Sokaiya, </i> blackmailers who promise to keep annual meetings under ‘control’ for a price, hit their targets despite efforts to deflect them.

With scandals in corporate Japan proliferating these days, Japan’s sokaiya, or professional corporate blackmailers, seem to be having a heyday.

Thursday, 1,737 companies across the nation held their annual shareholders’ meetings, most at 10 a.m., in a united action to fight the sokaiya.

But the sokaiya, who ask companies to pay them to keep annual meetings under “control” with the implicit threat that they will disrupt the meetings with embarrassing questions if they are not paid off, seemed to have managed to pick off some of the juicier targets.

“In times like this, we have justice on our side,” said Satoshi Yamamoto, head of the Rondan sokaiya group. He said sokaiya like himself go to annual meetings to attack management, get respect and win what he calls “badges of honor.”

Other sokiaya appear to take the side of management. At the annual meeting of Tokyo Electric Power Co., a utility with $33 billion in sales last year, environmentalists were on hand to give the company a good scolding about accidents at several of its nuclear power plants.

But when one woman rose to make lengthy comments and ask some sharp questions, she was interrupted by catcalls. “These questions are not important,” one man called out in a loud voice. “Let’s go on with the meeting.” The chairman immediately picked up on the suggestion, “Yes. Yes, let’s proceed,” and went on to the next item on the agenda.

A company spokesman said later that “the company has nothing to do with the sokaiya .” The company conceded, however, that one of its executives attended a $365-a-plate party at a fancy Japanese restaurant put on by a sokaiya member in April. The door prize: 1 million yen ($7,000) in cash.

At Nomura Securities Co., the annual meeting gave little indication of a company in the midst of a still-developing scandal. It was chaired by Yoshihisa Tabuchi, who had just announced his resignation after reports that Nomura had made $180 million in payoffs to cover losses of wealthy customers and $200 million in loans to a known underworld boss.

Since journalists were not allowed in the meeting hall and had to watch proceedings on a closed-circuit television that for some reason failed to pick up the voices of those asking questions from the floor, it was difficult to know what was taking place. At one point, a lonely voice shouted out at the president, “How can you tell us such ridiculous lies?”

But for the most part, the president’s explanations were followed by heavy applause and calls of, “We understand; we agree,” the clarion call of the working sokaiya. The company denies it has anything to do with sokaiya.

Yamamoto, the sokiaya boss, argues that in Nomura’s case, Nomura employees themselves had taken over the traditional role of the sokiaya, making loud noises to keep criticism to a minimum.

Although 6,000 police officers were mobilized across the country to keep the annual meetings peaceful--nearly five officers for every known sokaiya member--a few companies took some knocks for standing up to the sokaiya. The head of Toyo Trust and Banking Co., Mitsuo Imose, was punched in the face by an alleged member of the Kodama sokaiya group.

The Tokyo police established a special anti- sokaiya center with a big chart of all the companies holding meetings, their location, length of proceedings and problems. A long meeting is often a signal of sokaiya activity as they tend to drag meetings on to wear executives down. Since both the Tokyo Electric and the Nomura meetings were unusually long, it is unclear whether the sokaiya were in fact working for the companies as it appeared.

Last year, sokaiya showed up at the annual meeting of Koito, an auto parts company in which raider T. Boone Pickens purchased a large share. Pickens was shouted down and left the meeting in a huff.

The number of sokaiya working in Japan have fallen by more than a third since 1982, when a new law was passed making it illegal for companies to pay the sokaiya. Nobody really knows how much the sokaiya are paid, although the police know exactly who makes a living off the business.

“The business won’t go away until companies start rejecting them,” says Mikiro Onagi, a member of the Tokyo police who heads a special task force. “Since they are legitimate shareholders, we can’t bar them from the meetings.”