Photo/Illutration Masako Akagi, the wife of a Finance Ministry employee who committed suicide after being forced to falsify official documents, blasted the government for abruptly ending her lawsuit on Dec. 15 in Osaka. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

I wrote about the 2009 Greek debt crisis just the other day. Today, I would like to go back in time to ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy.

A lay judge system was in place back then, but the citizens called up for this duty were apparently vulnerable to bribery.

This was evidenced by the fact that a lottery system had to be adopted later as the only way to ensure that nobody could know in advance the cases to which the lay judges would be assigned, according to "Minshushugi no Genryu" (The source of democracy), by historian Yuzuru Hashiba.

It appears that the Japanese government has just "bought off" a trial, so to speak.

In a civil suit brought against the government by Masako Akagi, the widow of Toshio Akagi, an official of the Finance Ministry's Kinki Local Finance Bureau who killed himself in 2018, the government abruptly offered to pay her 107 million yen ($938,000) in damages to end the trial.

But what Masako sought from the trial was to find out what had driven her husband to suicide, how he was forced to falsify official documents and who made him do it. She was not after money.

In using more than 100 million yen in taxpayers’ money, I believe the government committed something far more insidious than outright bribery.

The Finance Ministry declared case closed on this data falsification scandal after only scant research.

Nobuhisa Sagawa, the former chief of the ministry's Finance Bureau in charge of managing state assets, refused to comment when he was called to testify in the Diet, insisting the case was still under investigation.

Masako sought from the court what she could not expect from the government and the Diet. But the trial was forced into termination before Sagawa could be questioned as a witness.

The foundations of democracy have been eroded.

In ancient Greece, it is said that there were messengers whose task was to urge citizens to participate in politics. They went around calling out, "Is there anyone who wishes to be heard?"

Masako is raising her voice, but the government remains silent.

Depending on the time and place, this can happen to anyone.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 21

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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