Photo/Illutration The nameplate of former lawmaker “GaaSyy” is removed from his desk in the Upper House chamber on March 15, after lawmakers voted to formally boot him from the Diet. (Koichi Ueda)

Tokyo police are pursuing a warrant to arrest former Diet politician Yoshikazu Higashitani on suspicion he violated Japan’s penal code by threatening celebrities in salacious gossip videos he published online under the pseudonym “GaaSyy.”

According to investigative sources, the Metropolitan Police Department officially put the request in for a warrant on March 16. Once one is issued, police will seek to put Higashitani, 51, on an international wanted list through the National Police Agency and the International Criminal Police Organization.

The department also intends to ask the Foreign Ministry to order Higashitani to return his passport. Under the law, the foreign minister or a consul can order the return of a passport after an arrest warrant is issued.

According to investigative sources, Higashitani is suspected of having threatened three people, including celebrities, in “expose videos” posted to his YouTube channel between February and August last year, where he purported to dish out “inside stories” about the entertainment industry.

In the videos, he suggested he would defame the three and urged one of them, a company owner, to go out of business, investigative sources said.

At the end of last year, the Metropolitan Police Department asked him to submit to voluntary questioning after multiple celebrities filed complaints over the videos.

In January, the department searched multiple locations in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture on suspicion of habitual threatening and defamation.

According to investigative sources, Higashitani has not responded to the police request to submit to voluntary questioning, citing his overseas stay as a reason.

He has been living in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates since he ran for office last summer. In that time, he continued to defame the complainants in his videos, investigative sources said.

The department decided the situation called for an arrest warrant, since Higashitani could go on the run or destroy evidence.

“I will not return to Japan," Higashitani said on his YouTube channel in response to the news police are seeking a warrant for his arrest. "I don’t think I want to go back to the suffocating society.”

It comes on the heels of him formally getting kicked out of the Diet for failing to show up for work after spending more than half a year as a lawmaker. The Upper House formalized a disciplinary committee decision on March 15 to expel him.

All members of the Upper House present at the plenary session voted to expel Higashitani, except for Satoshi Hamada, who is of the same party stripe.

Hamada read out a statement by Higashitani, claiming his expulsion is “in breach of the Constitution.”

But Hiroshige Seko, secretary-general for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the Upper House, told reporters after the session that the chamber’s decision was unequivocal: “We could express the wish of the Upper House almost unanimously.”

Masayo Tanabu, Seko’s counterpart in the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, told reporters that Higashitani “didn’t realize at all that he represented the entire public.”

By revoking his status as a Diet member, Higashitani also loses all the privileges enjoyed by lawmakers, including immunity from arrest during Diet sessions.

Kenichiro Saito, who won the fourth-most votes among candidates from Higashitani’s party, known then as the NHK Party, is next in line to take his Diet seat.

The party told the internal affairs ministry that its candidates who won the second and third votes in the summer Upper House election have since left the party, making Saito the de facto replacement.

Higashitani has meanwhile won the dubious distinctions of being the third lawmaker to be expelled from the Diet since World War II and the first to ever be given the boot for failing to show up for work.

The last expulsion of a Diet member was Kanichi Kawakami in 1951, a Japanese Communist Party politician elected to the Lower House.

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