Public records in the KAKEN (research grants) database are cited to argue that large sums may be flowing to activists and specific researchers.
A courtroom anecdote—where a clerk allegedly took notes in Chinese—feeds into calls for stricter nationality clauses and a spy-prevention law.
The piece questions how Japan defines national-interest violations, classifies sensitive information, and protects courts, research, and the information sphere.

2019-01-31.
A few years ago, when I was fighting a case in court, I submitted a magazine to the clerk and said, “It’s written here about China’s espionage activities.” Then that clerk, unbelievably, took notes in Chinese.
A chapter I published on 2018-11-15 titled “Astonishing: 440 million yen for a single study to the well-known leftist Professor Jiro Yamaguchi, tens of millions to activists who appear on television, and more” is now ranked 51st in the official hashtag ranking on Ameba under “Jazz.”
If you read this piece, you can instantly see why, the other day, Mio Sugita was fiercely attacked by pseudo-moralists and those who flaunt political correctness while in reality holding anti-Japan views.
Because I had known of Ms. Sugita—who, as a Japanese citizen, fought alone to expose the lies of what can only be called national-traitor “human-rights lawyers” and “civic groups” that keep conducting activities at the United Nations—I immediately realized, at the time of that bashing, that it had been engineered as usual by Jiro Yamaguchi and other contemptible sellouts, fools deserving the utmost scorn, together with agents of China and the Korean Peninsula, as I have already written.
The following is from a featured dialogue in this month’s WiLL magazine titled “There are this many… sleeper cells… hidden operatives.”
“A country where research grants are openly handed to anti-Japan activists and Chinese nationals… better to enact a spy-prevention law.”
Forgetting to pretend to be Japanese.
Sugita.
Ms. Miura Ruri caused an uproar with her sleeper-cell remark, didn’t she.
Fukada.
Sleeper cells are a meaningful concept in countries that have a spy-prevention law, but Japan doesn’t, so I don’t think there’s even any need to stay hidden.
In fact, they operate openly.
They steal corporate secrets, engage in anti-Japan activities, and Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians, and others enter research institutes connected to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications to conduct research.
Because it’s legal.
Kawazoe.
There was also a case where a highly suspicious person of Japanese descent, with a falsified background, had until recently been coming and going as an adviser to the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
A “Cabinet Office Sean K,” so to speak—this isn’t something to laugh about.
Fukada.
When it comes to sleeper cells, what concerns me from my own experience is the courts.
A few years ago, when I was fighting a case in court, I submitted a magazine to the clerk and said, “It’s written here about China’s espionage activities.” Then that clerk, unbelievably, took notes in Chinese.
I was so shocked that I wondered if they forgot to keep pretending to be Japanese (laughs).
In addition, during the trial there were extremely incomprehensible back-and-forth exchanges.
I want the nationality clause for national civil servants to be tightened strictly.
Sugita.
I think it is necessary to define the nationality clause as something like “Japanese up to the third generation back.”
However, rather than being more wary of naturalized citizens, we should be wary of people who are purely Japanese yet doing strange things.
Fukada.
To regulate all of that comprehensively, we ultimately need a spy-prevention law, don’t we.
What is needed is a clear line defining actions that run counter to the national interest, and a strict definition of levels of information confidentiality.
Kawazoe.
Of course, a Japan capable of doing that would be ideal.
But even among those working on the front lines of intelligence, the vast majority end up as mere cogs in an organization, thinking only of their own and their families’ lives.
And when people hear “spy,” they think of the world of movies, James Bond. It doesn’t feel real.
Even if a beautiful villainess in a body-conscious dress vacations in Monaco and plays chess with Bond for a while, Bond is written not to die—so it feels even less real.
And even if we were to make judgments on where to draw the line, there would be a dispute over questions like “By what standards” and “Who gets appointed,” and in the end it becomes a sorry story where spies slip in, including through divide-and-rule operations.
So we need public education that says you can’t just blindly trust a good-faith assumption.
Sugita.
Even within the Liberal Democratic Party, nobody talks about enacting a spy-prevention law.
When the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets was made, the only ones who argued “Shouldn’t a spy-prevention law come before that” were we of the Party for Future Generations (at the time).
Unlike then, we are now in the ruling coalition, but even if we try to deliberate a spy-prevention law in the Diet, the reality is that it doesn’t even get on the table—perhaps because people were satisfied with the secrets law.
Fukada.
The Abe Shinzo administration is also advancing constitutional revision, but if it aims to realize it, maybe it would be smoother to pass a spy-prevention law and encourage that type of lawmaker to seek exile abroad (laughs).
Kawazoe.
Then a whole bunch of ruling-party lawmakers might disappear too (laughs).
The darkness of KAKENHI.
Sugita.
Actually, the other day I asked a question in the Diet about KAKENHI.
At that time I raised KAKENHI linked to conscripted labor, but as I investigated, I found that astonishing amounts—440 million yen for a single research project to the well-known leftist Professor Jiro Yamaguchi, tens of millions to activists who appear on television, and so on—were being paid to anti-Japan propaganda activists.
If you search the internet for KAKEN in roman letters, a database comes up.
If you manually enter a person’s name and search, everything appears.
These are public records that anyone can access.
Until now there had been a question of “Why do leftists have so much money,” and many said “Maybe China is helping them,” but the reality was unclear.
In fact, might it not be flowing from public funds such as KAKENHI.
In Yamaguchi’s case, it is funding for a study titled “Comparative Research on Transformations in Governance in the Era of Globalization.”
It is unnatural to receive as much as 440 million yen from KAKENHI, which is supposed to fund scientific and technological research.
In his research, which does not require expensive equipment or measurement technologies, what in the world was 400 million yen used for.
Fukada.
Speaking of KAKENHI, there was once a professor at Waseda University who received KAKENHI for research on LSI (large-scale integrated circuits).
He outsourced work, funded by KAKENHI, to a Chinese female professor he was close with, and she established an identical laboratory at Shanghai University and conducted LSI research.
Kawazoe.
Hilarious! So a mistress and a partner-in-crime, twin laboratories spanning Japan and China.
Fukada.
It’s a disgrace: the entire lab was copied through a honey trap, and research was being conducted with Japanese KAKENHI funds.
Sugita.
Because anyone can investigate KAKENHI, it becomes possible to reveal a structure in which anti-Japan activists previously thought to be funded by China were in fact receiving money from the Japanese government.
This may be an important turning point that opens a breakthrough.
Kawazoe.
Anti-Japan activists are merely the front. Rather, it means China and North Korea’s influence operations have steadily worked to capture ministries and individuals who hold the funding sources and authority.
In short, it seems that many people, including ordinary citizens and even members of the Diet, do not understand the mechanism of money laundering.
Even if you explain an example of that scheme, even businesspeople become confused.
Sugita.
The roster of who reviewed KAKENHI is also published online.
I have not analyzed it yet, but in the end, because top-class pro-China figures like Maekawa Kihei, the former Vice Minister of Education, emerged, it seems a structure was created in which the Ministry of Education provides public money to the anti-Japan left.
Isn’t this itself espionage activity within the country.
Kawazoe.
In Japan’s political, bureaucratic, and business worlds—and including the media—those who have risen in rank are likely, to some extent, either pro-American or pro-China.
Words like “national interest” have probably disappeared from their minds.
To be continued.