This article introduces Masayuki Takayama’s “How They Used Kagoike,” a sharply satirical critique of how the Asahi Shimbun framed the Moritomo scandal and how the Kagoike couple exploited both conservative and left-wing networks for their own ends.
From the use of the Imperial Rescript on Education, patriotic-school fundraising, applications for state land and subsidies, and the invocation of Akie Abe’s name, to the Asahi’s later restaging of the Moritomo affair, Takayama traces how fraudster opportunism and media fabrication intertwined.
It is a striking piece for understanding media narratives in postwar Japan, especially in relation to the Asahi Shimbun, Moritomo Gakuen, Yasunori Kagoike, Akie Abe, and Kiyomi Tsujimoto.

2019-03-15
Its aim was to fit the Asahi narrative that he had “borrowed the majesty of the prime minister’s wife, the fiercest tiger of all.”
Even a heinous criminal who siphoned off public funds can apparently be written about this beautifully.
Is that really something to boast of.

A book-loving friend told me that today was the release day of Shukan Shincho and bought a copy for me.
Since I stopped subscribing to the Asahi Shimbun in August five years ago, I have had no idea at all what sort of things the paper is writing now.
But when I read today’s “Henkens Jizai” by Masayuki Takayama a little while ago, I burst out laughing.
He and Professor Hiroshi Furuta are both great men whom I came to know after that August five years ago, and both overflow with the gift of humor.
What follows is from “Henkens Jizai,” the signature column in this week’s Shukan Shincho, released today.
After all, I subscribe to it precisely in order to read this and Yoshiko Sakurai’s serialized essays.
Any emphasis in the text other than the headline is mine.

How They Used Kagoike.

A swindler, after all, must have a sharp eye for the moment.
This spring, elderly residents in Yokohama received a notice in the name of the “Japanese Bankers Association,” saying that “there has been a revision of the Banking Act due to the imperial era change on May 1.”

It said that, in accordance with the revision, current cash cards would be “replaced with cards equipped with fraud-prevention measures,” and instructed recipients to “write down your account number and PIN, and send it together with your old card to the Bankers Association at the address below.”

The change of era name is the topic of the day.
Television and newspapers are full of talk about calendar makers being in trouble, or government documents being switched to the Gregorian calendar on this occasion.
This particular swindler cleverly exploited the commotion over the era change in hopes of profiting from it.
In fact, some people were deceived.
But the scheme itself was far too sloppy, and the culprit was caught.

In that sense, the swindlers Yasunori Kagoike and his wife Junko also had an eye for the trends of the times.
Looking over the world, the couple judged that the Left was finished.
Even in the world of public debate, the Left amounted to little more than the aging Sōichirō Tahara and the somewhat senile Yūko Tanaka.
Even the somewhat younger Jirō Yamaguchi had nothing to say except, “Pay money to the Korean wartime laborers,” and “Cut Abe down.”
And for that he receives 600 million yen in state research funds.
There is no sense of propriety.
The future is bleak.

Perhaps the age ahead would be one of a return to Japan and of conservatism.
So when he had the children at his kindergarten recite the Imperial Rescript on Education, it immediately became talked about.
“Kagoike, who carries out education in the conservative mainstream,” won the favor of people sick and tired of the Japan Teachers’ Union’s biased education.
As a test, he asked the leading conservative Shōichi Watanabe to give a lecture, and he gladly accepted.
Takeo Hiranuma came as well.
So did Tsuneyasu Takeda, a great-grandson of Emperor Meiji, and Toshio Tamogami.
At the far end of those personal connections stood the present prime minister’s wife, Akie Abe.

The conservatives who met Kagoike were all bewildered by his face and manner of speech, which conveyed not the slightest fragment of sincerity.
But conservatives, as a rule, do not suspect other people.
All were Japanese of the good-faith school, and Akie too believed Kagoike to be a good man.
The swindler Kagoike thought to himself.
Conservatives are a feast.

Indeed, once he used their names as a billboard and said, “I am going to build an elementary school for patriotic education,” donations amounting to as much as 400 million yen gathered with little effort.
It was not a feat of which Sōichirō Tahara would have been capable.

From then on, whenever applying for the sale of state land or for subsidies, Kagoike would invoke names such as Akie’s and make himself look like a man of great influence.
As a result, he managed to swindle as much as 170 million yen from the state and from Osaka Prefecture.

But then an unexpected turn of events occurred.
A city council member in neighboring Toyonaka happened to be a former secretary to Mizuho Fukushima, and she began making an uproar that an elementary school teaching the Imperial Rescript on Education was outrageous.
The local politician Kiyomi Tsujimoto also began to move.
It got to the point that Kagoike’s wife lamented in an email, “Tsujimoto is harassing us again.”

And then the Asahi Shimbun entered the scene.
Kagoike was troubled.
He said that he was not really a sincere conservative at all, that he had merely used them as prey.
But Asahi had already constructed the narrative that “Akie exerted pressure in the sale of state land.”
In that script, Kagoike was the villain who had teamed up with Akie.
Once the investigation began and the public-fund fraud was exposed, he would be turned into something he had never intended to be, namely “a conservative swindler.”
He wanted to avoid that.

So Kagoike decided to cast off the skin of conservatism and ingratiate himself with the Asahi.
He decided to make a false accusation that “thanks to the prestige of the prime minister’s wife, we were able to get the state land this cheaply.”
And in return, might they not overlook the fraud to some extent.
That was why the Social Democratic Party and the Communists went in and out of the Kagoike house.
It was for that bargain.

Thus, a living witness appeared for the Moritomo scandal fabricated by the Asahi.
Kagoike was assigned the role of “a victim of a politically motivated investigation,” a fraudster turned criminal by government pressure.

On the day of Kagoike’s first court hearing, the Asahi mobilized its entire paper to stage a rerun of the Moritomo scandal, but what was most laughable was the Tensei Jingo column.
In court, Kagoike defended himself “like a fish in water,” while from the defendant’s seat his wife Junko gazed at him with rapture.
The paper praised them as “a husband-and-wife pair cherishing one another.”
Its aim was to fit the Asahi narrative that he had “borrowed the majesty of the prime minister’s wife, the fiercest tiger of all.”
Even a heinous criminal who siphoned off public funds can apparently be written about this beautifully.
Is that really something to boast of.