Political Corruption in Japan

Abstract

In international comparisons Japan is not a particularly corrupt country. According to TI’s 2001 Corruption Perceptions Index (where the higher a country’s placement the lower its perceived levels of corruption) among 91 countries Japan was ranked twenty-first, just behind Germany, ahead of France and Belgium, and ahead of the EU’s four southern Member States.¹ There is virtually no petty corruption; and apart from among segments of the political and managerial class, moral condemnation of corruption is near universal. Yet at the same time corruption is a structural component of Japan’s power structure. Political contributions — mostly of the illicit sort — are an essential lubricant of co-operative interactions in Japan’s fractious power triangle. Political corruption is endemic in a system run by an oligarchy operating in a gift culture.