When Japanese National Railways was dismantled, a massive 30-trillion-yen debt was left to taxpayers. This essay examines why Tokyo’s Shiodome redevelopment succeeded while Osaka’s North Yard collapsed into confusion, revealing the decisive role played by Asahi Shimbun.

2016-03-28
At the time, I had students write on a sheet of paper placed on their desks, “Please build a soccer stadium in the North Yard and invite the World Cup.”
The reason I wrote in this chapter that “I am convinced that what happened with the North Yard was in fact a scandal greater than the shipbuilding corruption case” is as follows.
When Japanese National Railways was dismantled and privatized, a massive deficit of 30 trillion yen was left as a burden to be borne by taxpayers, a fact that many Japanese people now seem to have forgotten.
Japanese National Railways left behind not only an enormous deficit but also assets.
Among those assets, the two properties that could have been sold at the highest prices and thereby reduced the tax burden on the public were Tokyo’s Shiodome district and Osaka’s Umeda North Yard.
Tokyo implemented deregulation and market liberalization in earnest, easing floor-area ratio restrictions and other regulations in order to dispose of the land at the highest possible prices, and conducted international open bidding.
For several parcels, bids exceeding 100 million yen per tsubo were submitted, with companies such as Dentsu and the real estate firm of Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s wealthiest tycoon, winning the auctions, rapidly constructing magnificent buildings, and further elevating Tokyo’s status as a global city.
In contrast, in Osaka, opinions voiced by companies run by a man who at the time chaired the Koizumi Cabinet’s Council for Regulatory Reform were somehow echoed by Asahi Shimbun, which reported in its pages that “if open bidding results in extremely high prices, there is a risk of reigniting a bubble,” an argument utterly inconceivable in the deeply deflationary Japanese economy and in Osaka’s particularly depressed real estate market.
When I was fighting alone, I had my company employees type on A4 sheets, each time, what I had said to the three parties mentioned earlier, and deliver them to reporter Tagaya, who was writing articles on the North Yard under his own byline.
Yet, quite mysteriously, there was no response whatsoever from Tagaya.
In fact, it was the Asahi Shimbun Osaka headquarters that should have shared the same sense of anger that I felt.
As I have already written, it was when I read an article by Kenichi Ohmae in the monthly magazine SAPIO that I instantly realized that the mastermind behind the confusion surrounding the North Yard was none other than Asahi Shimbun.
To be continued.