In Japan, when you drop your wallet, the person who finds it usually takes it to the police so that it can be returned. But even in a country with so many honest people, there is no shortage of political scandals. Many of the scandals involve entertaining or bribing bureaucrats or politicians in order to gain approval or permission for public works projects. In most cases, this is done not by bribing them directly with money, but with political contributions which are permitted by law. Because politics is an expensive business, political parties are given large grants from tax-payers’ money. Nevertheless, cases of bribery are constantly happening. In 1974, a magazine exposed the relationship between political donations and the policies of former Prime Minister TANAKA Kakuei – said to be Japan’s most powerful prime minister – which led to his resignation. After that, he was arrested in 1976 for an illegal donation he received in relation to the purchase of aircrafts. In those days, both the media and the prosecution were strongly inclined to root out corruption. In 2014, in order to move away from a politics dependent on bureaucracy to one led by politicians, the “Cabinet Bureau of Personal Affairs” was established. That gave the Cabinet Office, which was directly connected to the prime minister, the power to appoint bureaucrats. As a result, when the prime minister, the minister they served or other big-name politicians came under suspicion, bureaucrats often gave them special treatment. When summoned to the Diet to clarify the allegations, bureaucrats might say, “I don’t remember,” or they might say “I destroyed the relevant documents” for reasons such as protecting personal data, or they might black out important parts of documents. On the other hand, the public feel that the prosecution is reluctant to investigate the political world because its personnel and budget is controlled by the Cabinet. It often happens that when a political scandal has died down, the bureaucrat who protected the politician in question receives a promotion. Questions from Diet members to the Cabinet must be submitted in writing beforehand. The bureaucrats produce these papers with answers and explanations of those questions. The Cabinet then gives answers based on those documents. In other words, you could say that the politicians are the actors, and the bureaucrats the script writers.