long been a tradition that on a top official’s transfer to another posting, he is given all the money still left in the safe as a parting gift. Amid rising public doubts about police honesty, the National Police Agency (NPA) issued instructions in March 2004 to police departments urging them that if a local office is involved in mismanagement, it should apologise and return the amount misspent from its own accounts where possible. The NPA is also reportedly considering changing the receipts system, allegedly another hot bed of corruption in which those on the receiving end of funds use false names. The steps taken to prevent or reduce police corruption deserve credit, but surveillance of police by citizens’ groups must continue. Further steps to be taken include reforming the auditing system so that external auditors are used, but the police authorities have so far refused.
Laws aimed at curbing electoral corruption are seen to be implemented For the past few years there has been visible improvement in the enforcement of the Political Funds Control Law (PFCL), which obliges political parties and organisations to submit an annual financial report to the designated authorities. Three members of the Diet have been arrested and indicted in the past four years under the terms of the law. One of last year’s most widely reported scandals involved the daughter of Governor Yoshihiko Tsuchiya of Saitama prefecture, who has held the posts of speaker for the upper house of parliament and head of the environment agency. She was arrested and indicted for false reporting in her father’s political fund organisation, in violation of the PFCL. In April 2004 she was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment, which was commuted to a four-year suspended sentence after she showed remorse. Governor Tsuchiya stepped down from office after
the allegations surrounding his daughter surfaced in July 2003. Another scandal involved the chairman and executives of the Japan Dental Association (JDA), a long-time supporter of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Unaccounted funding contributions by the JDA reportedly amounted to ¥100 billion (US $910 million) in the years 2000–02, and many people believe that much of it went directly into politicians’ pockets. In April 2004 authorities arrested the executives of the JDA for bribing public officials. Police also cracked down on vote buying in elections for the lower house of parliament in November 2003. Arrests included two incumbent LDP parliamentarians on charges they had delivered cash to voters in violation of the Public Offices Election Law. Such arrests were previously rare in Japan. In a parallel development, the police announced it had decided to rigorously apply a five-year exclusion rule preventing a candidate whose campaigners are convicted of vote buying from running in a future election, even if the candidate was not directly involved in the offence. Allegations have been reported that Hiroshi Kumagai, a former head of the Conservative Party who announced his retirement from politics after being defeated in Shizuoka prefecture, may have gone for this reason.
Corruption shakes the medical world A wave of medical malfeasance was exposed in 2003–04. A professor in the faculty of medicine at Tokyo University was found to have misused subsidies from a private foundation, and was given disciplinary punishment in October 2003. The misappropriation of subsidies by a professor of medicine at Jikei Medical College came to light in March 2004, and he was dismissed. In April 2004 an investigation revealed that as many as 1,500 doctors from over
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