This article examines the background of the Volkswagen emissions scandal and the role played by Japanese technology from Horiba in exposing the fraud.
It also explores the political reactions in Europe and the broader historical and geopolitical context surrounding the controversy.

2019-02-08
Officially it was said to be a gesture of gratitude for the company’s expansion into France.
However observers remarked that the prime minister’s behavior looked almost like the awarding of a national order of merit.
Incidentally the prime minister’s name was Valls.
Masayuki Takayama has a famous regular column in the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho.
The following is from this week’s issue.
People around the world will surely recognize that my evaluation is correct that he is the only truly unique journalist in the postwar world.
In particular those who call themselves journalists at the Suddeutsche Zeitung should read this essay carefully.
Will Germany decline.
The factory of the “people’s car” Volkswagen created under Hitler came under Soviet control after the war.
Had that continued it would have been dismantled and transported to the Soviet Union just like the thermal power plant in Sunwu in Manchuria leaving only ruins behind.
Fortunately Britain which understood the high level of Volkswagen’s engineering took over its management and preserved it.
After the war it spread around the world as the people’s car.
Several years ago an American environmental organization began investigating automobile emissions and selected Volkswagen as one of the promising samples.
They did not choose Japanese cars partly because of the pride of white nations.
West Virginia University which was entrusted with the investigation searched for suitable measuring equipment and discovered a device the size of a suitcase.
With such a device emissions could be measured even while a car was running.
Thus measuring equipment produced by Horiba was installed in Volkswagen and other target vehicles and emissions were tested while driving.
The result revealed that Volkswagen which produced the cleanest figures in stationary tests emitted forty times the legal limit of NOx while driving.
The environmental group immediately reported this to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA investigated and discovered that Volkswagen had embedded a chip in its control system that suppressed NOx emissions only during testing.
Emission tests are normally conducted while the car is stationary.
The deception had been designed precisely with that in mind.
The EPA informed Volkswagen that the fraud had been discovered and demanded corrective action.
However the agency did not immediately make the matter public.
Cynically speaking if this had been a Toyota vehicle there might have been loud accusations of “sneaky behavior like Pearl Harbor” even before asking for correction and perhaps even a boycott of Japanese cars.
That is how underhanded the method was.
Yet Volkswagen failed to respond.
After a year the EPA finally went public criticizing the company and demanding astronomical compensation.
Even the brazen Volkswagen had no choice but to bow its head and struggle with recalls and lawsuits.
But its resentment eventually focused on Japan which had created the small measuring device.
Traditionally emission testing facilities were as large as gasoline stations.
Testing was always conducted at such large facilities.
Volkswagen had relied on that common assumption and carried out its deception.
In no country had the fraud been discovered.
If everyone was satisfied with the existing testing method why had Japan created such a small measuring device.
If Horiba had not done so no one would have thought of measuring emissions while driving.
Germans dislike Japan.
Russians are semi-white so they did not take Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War too seriously.
However during the capture of Qingdao in the First World War Germany suffered a complete defeat and everyone in the fortress became prisoners of war.
The pride of being a pure white nation was shattered.
Moreover those supposedly barbaric Japanese did not mistreat them but even allowed them to bring musical instruments and household belongings into the camps.
For Germans such generosity was itself humiliating.
Mercy and tolerance were supposed to belong to white Christian civilization and receiving them from the Japanese was unbearable.
Stories about prisoners performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and baking cookies in the Bando camp are things they would rather not hear even today.
Perhaps because of that resentment Germany later supplied the Chinese army with German rifles and helmets and encouraged Chiang Kai-shek to attack the Japanese concession in Shanghai.
Then once again the fraud of Volkswagen the pillar of German industry was exposed.
The cost would reach three trillion yen.
Again it was the Japanese.
Germans would never openly say how frustrated they were but the French who traditionally dislike Germany showed it through their actions.
During the scandal the French prime minister visited Horiba in Kyoto and warmly embraced its chairman.
Officially it was said to be gratitude for the company’s expansion into France.
Yet observers said the gesture looked almost like awarding a national order of merit.
Incidentally the prime minister’s name was Valls.
It is the same word spoken by Princess Sheeta in Hayao Miyazaki’s film “Castle in the Sky” as the spell that destroys a kingdom.
Perhaps it carried France’s long-standing sentiment.