Farming Minister tries to top himself

[dimwit]

Apparently the story is just coming in on the wire services and TV news that Argiculture Minister Matsuoka is in critical condition after attempting suicide. Matsuoka is the guy with the highly improbable water bill.

http://home.kyodo.co.jp/

[Captain Japan]

I suppose it was this that put him over the edge:
Farm minister gets donations from 14 firms linked to scandal-hit body
Kyodo

(Kyodo) _ Two campaign fund management bodies of farm minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka received a total of around 13 million yen in donations from 14 contractors awarded construction work by the Japan Green Resources Agency (J-Green), a government-controlled forestry management body suspected of having been involved in rigging bids, political fund reports and bidding data showed Friday.

The donations were made in three years through 2005 by the contractors based in Kumamoto Prefecture for farmland and forestry development projects in the prefecture, the documents showed.

Matsuoka is also known to have received about 8.5 million yen in donations from contractors implicated in bid rigging for forestry road construction projects....more...

For threads on big rigging, go here and here.

[dimwit]

Looking back, he seems to have a history of problems even before becoming a politican

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_2002_July_1/ai_88170601

Yamarin paid 2 mil. yen to Toshikatsu Matsuoka in 1998
Japan Policy & Politics, July 1, 2002

Yamarin, a Hokkaido timber firm under a police probe for bribery, paid 2 million yen to Toshikatsu Matsuoka, a former vice farm minister, on the same day in 1998 it paid 5 million yen to Muneo Suzuki, a former Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) strongman who has been arrested on bribe-taking charges, sources familiar with the case said Tuesday.

Matsuoka, an agriculture ministry official who went on to serve as vice minister after he became an LDP lawmaker, allegedly received the money on Aug. 4, 1998.

Two days later, Matsuoka talked with senior officials of the Forestry Agency and asked for leniency on a logging violation committed by Yamarin. Matsuoka served as parliamentary vice minister at the agriculture ministry from August 1995 to January 1996.

[Captain Japan]

Here's a head-in-the-sand editorial about that case:
EDITORIAL: Forest road bid-rigging
Asahi

On Thursday, however, the special investigative department of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office arrested key officials of the Japan Green Resources Agency (J-Green), an independent administrative agency in charge of issuing orders for forest road projects, and directors of four contractors--including nonprofit foundations--who landed those contracts... The investigation has just begun. We wonder if this style of bid-rigging is a rampant practice on forest road construction nationwide, and not simply limited to the survey operations that led to Thursday's arrests. J-Green also maintains an agricultural promotion division, raising suspicions that government-led bid-rigging may have tainted those projects as well. Along with the truth behind the practice of amakudari, this scandal offers a long list of issues for the Tokyo prosecutors and the Fair Trade Commission to clear up once and for all.

I was at a meeting held by the World Bank a few weeks ago. I started talking to a guy who worked for a Japanese material supplier in Nagoya. On the topic of bid rigging, I asked him if he thought 95% of all bids were rigged in Japan - a figure I had read - and all he could do was laugh. "100%!" he exclaimed. "No, 200%!"

This editorial comments on Matsuoka's water bills. And Abe seems very satisfied with Matsuoka's explantions.
EDITORIAL: Political funds scandal
Asahi

Intensive debate on the problem of political funds was held in the Lower House Budget Committee on Wednesday. The greatest point at issue was suspicions over Matsuoka's "purified water."

Despite the fact that he has an office in the Diet members' building where rent and utilities are free, he recorded tens of millions of yen for office expenses and costs for lighting, heating and water in his political funds reports. Why?

In answer to that question posed by the opposition, Matsuoka simply kept saying, "I am properly dealing with accounting as required by law." As usual, the prime minister entirely backed him up.

Former Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) President Katsuya Okada repeatedly pressed Abe: "Do you really think Matsuoka has shown accountability for his act?" All the prime minister said in response was, "I understand that he has achieved accountability in accordance with the law."

[dimwit]

What are your bets as to the LDP trying to spin him into being a martyr of unfair criticism by the opposition?

[baka tono]

Well now he is dead according to nhk.
The only difference from his pre suicide self is that now its not just his brain that isnt working anymore.

[Mike Oxlong]

Hadn't the government just announced a campaign to reduce the overall suicide rate 20% or something to that effect? The ol' irony meter couldn't be higher right now

[Greji]

Hadn't the government just announced a campaign to reduce the overall suicide rate 20% or something to that effect? The ol' irony meter couldn't be higher right now

New target figure. 21%

[Spidey]

DEAD!

Just another "gomennasai" suicide to add to the already tens of thousands every year in Japan. Can anyone say, "Anti-suicide campaign?"

[Mulboyne]

I see he was taken to the Keio University Hospital in Shinjuku. That's the same one the ZARD singer, Izumi Sakai, died in yesterday. The PR department there must be busy.

[Captain Japan]

I see he was taken to the Keio University Hospital in Shinjuku. That's the same one the ZARD singer, Izumi Sakai, died in yesterday. The PR department there must be busy.

I rode past the hospital a few hours ago. Lots of helicopters overhead, and many black saloon cars clogging up traffic around the Soka Gakkai hq (across from the hospital) on Gaien Higashi Dori. The press were stuck outside the parking lot. I don't suppose there's much of a story (at least as far as the suicide goes) to report anymore.

[TFG]

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Should have been hung along with the rest of the LDP! Fucking leeching on tax payers money including FG's taxes and we are not even represented.

This scandal is only the tip of the iceberg, there are many more LDP members involved.

[GuyJean]

.. I don't suppose there's much of a story (at least as far as the suicide goes) to report anymore..

They need more reenactments in Japan.

GJ

[IkemenTommy]

This scandal is only the tip of the iceberg, there are many more LDP members involved.

Just follow the money trail and there will be a lot more people involved in this. Buddies helping buddies.

It's strange how the Japanese never rule out foul play and quickly jump the gun on every death as suicide. Who knows.. he could have been murdered by the same people who did not want their identities revealed.

[Captain Japan]

[GuyJean]

.. and "Only my wife knows the inside details.".

Great; he just killed his wife too.. Her only option now is to join her husband.

GJ

[james]

Just follow the money trail and there will be a lot more people involved in this. Buddies helping buddies.

It's strange how the Japanese never rule out foul play and quickly jump the gun on every death as suicide. Who knows.. he could have been murdered by the same people who did not want their identities revealed.

i was thinking about this today, for no other reason than i was getting a haircut and that was what was on the tube.. captive audience.

it occurred to me that they seem to have to determined rather quickly that it was in fact a suicide.

[Captain Japan]

i was thinking about this today, for no other reason than i was getting a haircut and that was what was on the tube.. captive audience.

it occurred to me that they seem to have to determined rather quickly that it was in fact a suicide.

I tend to think he wasn't murdered BUT if you read the story that includes mention of the suicide notes you will see that the body has already been turned over to the family without an autopsy being done.

[Captain Japan]

[dimwit]

This 'special' water that Matsuoka's office was receiving sounds like the 'special' magazine suscriptions for businesses or the 'special' hand towels that bars and restaurants are offered by gentlemen in sunglasses.

Has there been any report on the about who he was getting his water from?

[emperor]

Why So Many Suicides in Japan?
It's the economy, stupid. And the health-care system. And the religious beliefs. And the …
By Christopher Beam
Posted Thursday, May 31, 2007, at 6:39 PM ET

Japan's agriculture minister hanged himself Monday amid allegations of bid-rigging and padding government expenses. The following day, an executive allegedly linked to one of the scams leapt to his death. In 2005, 32,552 people killed themselves in Japan―one of the highest suicide rates among industrialized nations. Why are there so many suicides in Japan? There's no single factor, but experts point to a combination of economic woes, poor mental-health resources, lenient insurance policies, lack of religious prohibition, and cultural acceptance of the practice. The economic recession that hit in the late 1990s seemed to increase the number of suicides, which jumped by 35 percent in 1998. Japan's high-interest loan system and historically strict bankruptcy laws may have contributed to this effect. But the Japanese suicide rate remains elevated, even though the economy has since recovered. Even before the recession, the rate was already a third higher than that of the United States. (Not that Japan is setting any records: Hungary, Estonia, and Latvia, among others, have more suicides per capita than Japan.)
The stigma attached to mental illness―and the psychiatrists who treat it―may also contribute to the high suicide rates. Antidepressant SSRIs didn't become widely available until 1993, and as of 2003 you could get Zoloft and Prozac only by ordering them through the mail. (Japan has been slow to introduce other drugs, too: The birth control pill, which was legalized in 1999, remains unpopular.) In 2006, the government began introducing reforms that would create suicide hot lines and make counselors available in schools and at work.
The country's legal system doesn't do much to deter suicides, either. The penal code has no provision for killing yourself, which means the government can't seize your property or send you to jail after a failed attempt. Suicide is even covered by most life-insurance policies, as long as the beneficiary waits a certain period of time―say, two or three years after signing up―before doing the deed. By contrast, some U.S. states do criminalize suicide (although they rarely enforce it), and it's almost never covered by life insurance.
Cultural factors play an important role as well. Whereas Christianity, Judaism, and Islam proscribe suicide, Japan's most popular religions―Shinto and Buddhism―are more permissive. (Critics of this theory point to China's significantly lower suicide rate as evidence that religious differences aren't to blame.) In addition, suicide is considered a legitimate solution to vexing problems. If a massive debt is going to make you a burden to your family, or a political scandal is going to taint those around you, some consider it not just permissible but responsible to protect them by offing yourself.
Suicide looms large in Japanese history and literature. Samurai warriors were famous for their willingness to disembowel themselves, a ritual called seppuku or hara-kiri. During World War II, kamikaze fighters rigged their own planes with explosives before divebombing into targets. In 1970, the ritual suicide of Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima drew international attention to the practice. In recent years, two trends have garnered particular attention: suicide as the result of schoolyard bullyingsuicide pacts among groups of people who meet on the Internet. Because of the latter, the government started offering families free software to block access to suicide-related Web sites.