2010-10-11
Since no one other than people like me, who subscribe regularly out of habit…would pay as much as ¥380 to buy this issue, let me briefly summarize her line of reasoning in my own way…She writes, citing a senior prosecutor, that testimony has also been obtained stating that there is a safe in Mr. Ozawa’s home…
With an unmistakable insinuation that there must be slush funds in it.
Now, dear readers, as you know, there are any number of wealthy people in the world, and whether we are talking about large corporations or small and medium-sized businesses, at least more than half are making profits…
Would it not be normal for such companies, or the homes of wealthy people, to have safes?
According to her logic, having a safe means having slush funds, so would it not be better for everyone in Japan who owns a safe to dispose of it immediately?
Tomorrow, might scrap dealers across Japan be inundated with requests to collect safes, and might all safe manufacturers and dealers go out of business…?
Scenes like that have surely been seen time and again throughout history in totalitarian countries.
Above all, Ms. Mitsuhashi, why not be sure to read Mr. A’s painstaking work published in Shukan Asahi, and ask whether those former prosecutors now practicing as lawyers—whose annual incomes, it says, are scarcely conceivable as being below ¥30 million—have safes in their offices or homes?
If they have safes, surely those must contain slush funds, so I look forward to your pursuing the matter and reporting the results with the same amount of space in the next issue.
Among my young friends is a man who graduated from the University of Tokyo and works at what is called a top-tier major corporation; when he was single, he was immensely popular with women, went on group dates with all the stewardesses, did the same with the beauties at television stations, and even conquered the hostess clubs.
Just as he was finally approaching the point of passing the usual age for marriage, that track record paid off: he married the daughter of an enormously wealthy family—in what is called marrying into money—and, at the same time, was apparently presented with a top-of-the-line foreign car for his personal use…
By your logic, this sort of thing, too, would presumably be practically a crime.
I want to tell Ms. Mitsuhashi…that it is your own mind that is practically fascist.
When television reported that, in the passage that the Prosecution Review Commission had suddenly added…it questioned why he would go out of his way to borrow money from a bank and pay as much as ¥4.5 million a year in interest…I felt that this really had gone far enough.
It appears that a lawyer guided this round of deliberations and the resolution, but I believe it is common knowledge that the fee for engaging a lawyer is at least 6% of the amount in dispute.
Or, according to Mr. A’s painstaking work, it appears to be a clear fact that, for those who have retired as prosecutors, sums in the millions of yen do not even merit attention…are, so to speak, no more than a fart.
What kind of logic is it that, when they receive money themselves, it is not a large sum, but when they seek to incriminate someone, the ¥4.5 million that person paid to a bank in interest becomes a large sum?
Ms. Mitsuhashi, as a leading representative of the privileged press club at the public prosecutors’ office…you are associated with Asahi Shimbun, after all…why not loosen up that rigid mind of yours before writing an article?
Otherwise, as the representative of the Great King Enma, I must designate you as one of the principal culprits who misled the public and…diverted the attention of politicians and citizens from the most important things that politics ought to address…whether the budget is being spent properly, how effective that spending is…whether any officials anywhere are using tax money for private purposes…
And who, by keeping them absorbed in the foolish back-and-forth with you, caused this country to lose somewhere in the region of ¥900 trillion in national wealth and national strength over these twenty years; I must assign you to the first rank of punishment by boiling in the cauldrons of hell, on a scale among the greatest in human history.