Politicians (not all of course) are corrupt all over the world.
Corrupt Japanese politicians seem to favor suicide as their last course of action.
What I just cannot understand is this logic: pretend you are a politician in Japan. You're in your 50s or 60s, married, kids, maybe even grandkids. I'm sure the corruption slope is a slippery one, but if it ends up with suicide (for whatever reason) then what's the use? A whole life spent in civil service, that family will be forever tainted by that suicide. What a waste.
UPDATE: Now there are 3 suicides interconnected. Matsuoka, Shinichi Yamazaki, and Yukihiro Uchino who Fukumimi writes about.
LEAD: Former exec linked to J-Green scandal falls to death
Matsuoka's reported suicide ｫ from the inside, looking in
Facing Inquiry, Japanese Official Commits Suicide - New York Times
Observing Japan: Matsuoka Toshikatsu, RIP
Japan's Agriculture Minister Offs Himself - Japan Probe
Observing Japan: "An indispensable man of talent for agriculture administration"
Matsuoka death shocks politicians
UPDATE 2:
Observing Japan: Whitewashing Matsuoka
Mutantfrog Travelogue - Reactions, Speculation on Matsuoka's Suicide
Liberal Japan - Toshikatsu Matsuoka commits suicide.
You may know by now that this suicide was followed by another suicide from Midori Shigen Kikou (Japan Green Resources Agency).
This has been the tradition of Japan since the old Kurosawa film era.
Have you watched the movie "bad sleep well?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bad_Sleep_Well
Matsuoka seem to have been very well prepared writing eight letters but I kind of feel strange that the body of both were found in pajamas.
As Nobi points out, another suicide related to the J-Green scandal was reported this morning.
The THIRD suicide which can be directly connected to this affair. (although the first suicide appears to have been buried by the mainstream press thusfar)
And yet Abe thinks he can get away with not ordering an investigation into the issue.
In the west, I don't think anything less than a comprehensive independent inquiry into the affair would be deemed acceptable (after all, not-insignificant sums of taxpayers' money was wasted). But in Japan, where investigations are more like a whichhunt to identify a suitable scapegoat and then carry on as usual, the death of the lead actors is likely to signify closure.
After all, neither the bureaucrats, ex-bureaucrats in cushy post-retirement jobs at organizations close to their original ministries whose main purpose is to provide such jobs to ex-bureaucrats, nor the politicians who benefit financially from said organizations in the form of political donations and electoral support, don't want these cozy relationships to come to an end.
How many times have we seen such scandals, and how many times have they been explained away as being one-off cases? There just isn't the motivation to change the status quo.
When will the electorate wake up and express their anger?