Published on October 17, 2019.
This article examines the Kansai Electric Power money-and-goods scandal, the opaque relationship with former Takahama deputy mayor Eiji Moriyama, the silence of the mass media, the structure of psychological and verbal suppression surrounding the Buraku Liberation League, and the limits faced by a private company.

October 17, 2019.
From his predecessor, he had been handed down nothing more than the words that Mr. Moriyama was “difficult to deal with,” and he explained, “There was no way I could consult anyone. I had no choice but to deal with it as an individual matter.”
Kansai Electric Power, like other electric power companies, is a major corporation representing Kansai.
It is a company that, throughout the postwar period, has continued to provide electricity—the very foundation of the nation’s economic activity and of the modern and cultural life of the people, without any exaggeration—with the world’s highest quality and organization.
As with other electric power companies, it is a company where, among those who graduated from the highest institutions of learning in the region, the most outstanding people found employment.
As a result, Japan built the world’s highest-quality electric power infrastructure, the exact opposite of the poor electric infrastructure systems seen in developing countries.
That this was the foundation of Japan’s development is a fact understood without being told by any citizen whose intellect is above that of a kindergarten child or elementary school student, except for the mass media such as Asahi and NHK, the media entertainers who have gone along with them, and those who have parasitized them.
However, no matter how outstanding they may be, they are nothing more than one private company.
The mass media have driven even prime ministers from office.
There is no end to the examples of backbench Diet members being driven from office or even to suicide.
The mass media are called the Fourth Estate, and it is no exaggeration to say that, in a democratic society, they are the greatest power holders.
Yet the mass media, who possess such overwhelming power, maintain complete silence when it comes to matters involving the Buraku Liberation League and the like.
…Until recently, the same was true with regard to South Korea and Korean residents in Japan…
The only exception was the case uncovered in Osaka quite some time ago.
It was when the facts came to light that leading figures of the Buraku Liberation League based in Higashiyodogawa Ward had continued to receive special treatment from the four major banks of the time and had obtained enormous profits, and that they had also attacked and co-opted Osaka City, leased land under the Midosuji Line for almost nothing, operated a motor pool, continued to make enormous profits, and yet paid almost no taxes.
I repeat.
Kansai Electric Power is merely one private company.
That there was no action it could take against a party about whom the mass media—whom it is no exaggeration to call the greatest power holders—kept their mouths shut is clear from the conduct of the major banks and Osaka City at the time, as revealed by the above-mentioned case.
Until now, the Japanese people have not once seen any media report criticizing the behavior of the leading figure of the Buraku Liberation League in Fukui.
In other words, against an opponent whom even the powerful mass media fear, an opponent that may be described as the greatest psychological suppressor, and in reality as one that collectively and violently exerts pressure against criticism, rebuttal, and therefore freedom of speech, what on earth can one private company do!
Do the politicians of the Constitutional Democratic Party and others, whom it is no exaggeration to call tax thieves, the mass media, and the media geisha, really fail to understand a fact that even an elementary school student can understand!
…In other words, what the Buraku Liberation League has done is bullying against a private company, that is, against good citizens, by using the word discrimination for its own convenience and self-aggrandizement…
The following is from an article published on the front page of today’s Yomiuri Shimbun under the headline, “Money and Goods Also More Than 20 Years Ago: Former Kansai Electric Executive Testifies to Receiving Them.”
In the case in which twenty executives and others at Kansai Electric Power received large sums of money and goods from the late Eiji Moriyama, former deputy mayor of Takahama Town, Fukui Prefecture, it has become clear that the receipt of money and goods had also taken place more than twenty years earlier.
A former executive who held an important post in Kansai Electric’s nuclear power division in the 1990s revealed in an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun that he himself had also received such money and goods.
In the report that Kansai Electric made public on the 2nd, interviews were limited to twenty-six people who belonged to the nuclear power division and other departments between 2011 and 2018 and had contact with Mr. Moriyama.
It was found that twenty of them had received money and goods worth approximately 320 million yen.
Because the scope of the investigation was narrowed, the oldest confirmed case of receiving money and goods was that of Chairman Makoto Yagi in 2006.
This former executive was outside the scope of the investigation, meaning that the opaque relationship between Kansai Electric and Mr. Moriyama had existed at least more than twenty years earlier.
According to the former executive, when he was assigned to the nuclear power division in Fukui Prefecture in the 1990s, Mr. Moriyama came to greet him and handed him a paper bag containing a box of sweets as a congratulatory gift for assuming his post.
On the spot, he firmly refused, saying, “I cannot accept this,” but Mr. Moriyama flew into a rage, saying, “Are you saying you cannot accept my gift?” and he accepted it for the time being.
He did not reveal the contents to the reporter, but said that “an expensive item beyond the bounds of courtesy was inside, at the bottom of the paper bag.”
He then took nearly a year to return it.
From his predecessor, he had been handed down nothing more than the words that Mr. Moriyama was “difficult to deal with,” and he explained, “There was no way I could consult anyone. I had no choice but to deal with it as an individual matter.”
Kansai Electric says that it will now establish a third-party committee and would like to clarify the actual situation of the receipt of money and goods by expanding the time period and the range of people investigated.