$84 Million in Hidden Loot: Scandal Mounting in Tokyo : Corruption: Onetime political kingmaker is accused of stashing away $50 million. Son’s cache is put at $34 million.

Jolt after jolt, shock after shock, the seamy accounts of Shin Kanemaru’s corruption keep surfacing: Reports Tuesday that Japan’s onetime political kingmaker stashed away hundreds of pounds of gold, cash and bonds totaling as much as $50 million were eclipsed by reports today that his son had hidden a safe filled with another $34 million in loot.

The first cache of gold was seized by prosecutors as Kanemaru aides tried to relocate it, apparently to evade authorities. And the second safe was confiscated in a room rented by Kanemaru’s son, Shingo, 48, who confessed he decided to hide the loot after hearing of his father’s arrest on charges of tax evasion on Saturday.

The staggering amount of money has stunned even this long-suffering public, whose leading politicians have been embroiled in one corruption scandal after another. But it appears no one has come close to Kanemaru in the brazenness and sheer financial magnitude of his acts.

And the fact that Kanemaru apparently stuffed his own pockets with the money, rather than using it for his political machine, has touched a raw nerve in the otherwise tolerant public.

“Everyone is suffering from recession, and Kanemaru is a thief,” said one indignant sweet shop owner, 65, as she waited in line to properly pay her taxes at the Honjo Tax Office in Tokyo.

Kanemaru resigned from Parliament last fall after admitting he received $4 million in illegal donations from a mob-tainted trucking company executive.

But the latest revelations have given the public a glimpse of just how much unreported money is floating around the underside of the nation’s political system.

Analysts say the fact that official records list not the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, but the fringe Communists, as the top recipients of campaign contributions indicates the extent to which campaign fund laws are routinely flouted.

Indeed, prosecutors are currently trying to establish when and through which political sources the money flowed to Kanemaru.

But whether the Kanemaru scandal jolts the ruling party into bona fide reform is still very much in question.

The Japanese media are having a field day with the story--one news station Tuesday night gleefully broadcast a dollhouse model of the 7-by-7-foot cell in the Tokyo Detention Center housing the former political kingpin--a far cry from his plush homes in Tokyo and the Mt. Fuji area of Yamanashi prefecture.

But Japan’s system of money and politics has become so deeply entrenched that many officials who once questioned the morality have become inured to it.

“Our (ethical) sense toward money has become blunted,” one LDP politician told the Yomiuri newspaper. “Twenty years ago, when I was first elected, I received an envelope with $2,600 in it from our faction boss. At the time, I felt bad and fretted about it overnight. But now the amount of money you receive is much greater, and you no longer question it.”

Until now, LDP leaders have not paid much more than lip service to the cause of political reform. Shortly after Kanemaru’s arrest, LDP Secretary General Seiroku Kajiyama went so far as to say that because it occurred after he resigned from the Parliament, it was his individual problem and bore no relation to the political system.

Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, meanwhile, has mainly offered expressions of “regret.” On Tuesday, however, he told the Upper House Budget Committee that he was determined to push through anti-corruption laws in the current parliamentary session.

Ironically, the man advocating the most drastic reform, Ichiro Ozawa, is thought to be weakened by the arrest of Kanemaru, his onetime political mentor. Ozawa is calling for total disclosure of all contributions, bans on business donations to individuals and a system of public campaign financing.

But, for many of the long-suffering Japanese constituents and taxpayers, that doesn’t go far enough.

“Al Capone of the Mafia was arrested for tax evasion,” said one 67-year-old retired business executive, as he waited to pay his taxes at the Shinagawa tax office. “So this time, the prosecutor’s office and tax authorities should conduct an investigation of every Parliament member.”