Is Premier Hashimoto's Chinese 'lady friend' a spy?
By Edward Neilan
Japanese press suppresses news reports linking 'reverse Mata Hari' to prime minister.
TOKYO (JP): When a Paula Jones steps forward to charge American President Bill Clinton with making improper sexual advances, newspapers from Washington D.C. to Honolulu to Tokyo run the story. There are denials, explanations, embellishments and finally the case is taken to court or dropped.
When a Chinese woman spy is linked directly to Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and causes near-panic among Tokyo security agencies not so much on sexual promiscuity grounds as on the possibility that national security has been compromised, Japan's "kisha clubs" go into action and agree to suppress the story.
That's what happened recently when the Bushan Weekly, of the prestigious Bungei Shunju group, conducted a new investigation that confirmed old rumors that Hashimoto had a long-time acquaintance with a Chinese foreign ministry female interpreter. She was in fact a well-trained spy agent working at the second division of the Beijing City Security Bureau.
The magazine ran the results of its investigation in its Sept. 11 issue and demanded that Hashimoto, 60, clarify accumulated evidence.
The magazine appealed for the clarification on the grounds that the Japanese people needed to be reassured that national security with regards to China had not been breached.
The trouble with the magazine's argument is that the Japanese people didn't even know about the case.
The "kisha club" of reporters assigned to each ministry and important office -- in this case the Prime Minister's office -- "agreed" not to publish the story.
So much for freedom of the press in Japan. Or is it a case of Asian values versus western values?
Bushan Weekly asked the Prime Minister's office to comment on the facts of the case. No comment.
The Chinese lady spy, 44, met Hashimoto in 1982 when he led a Japan-Sino Friendship delegation to China and she was an interpreter assigned to the group. According to the magazine, their relations have continued since then. She was assigned to Chinese Embassy in Tokyo in 1985 when her husband also worked there as an information officer.
Hashimoto visited China again in 1991 as finance minister. The couple divorced in 1989 after returning to Beijing. Her husband accused Hashimoto as a major cause of their divorce. He revealed several love letters sent to his former wife from Hashimoto, then the foreign minister, using the ministry official letterhead.
Divorce proceedings also revealed that at one time the woman was involved in Chinese intelligence agency bugging of foreign embassies in Beijing.
Bunshun Weekly's timing was wonderful. The magazine's edition with the spy story hit the streets just as Hashimoto was in Beijing marking 25 years of ties with the People's Republic of China, handing over US$2 billion in new loans, and pledging that Japan would never recognize Taiwan independence or its status as part of "two Chinas."
Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng both said Hashimoto had done a good job. He returned to Tokyo to be re- elected without challenge as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, retaining the party's top China expert, Mandarin-speaking Koichi Kato, as LDP secretary general.
No one has yet suggested that Hashimoto might be a Manchurian Candidate -- the Richard Condon novel about a brain washed American prisoner of war who returns to political in the U.S. and does China's bidding.
But the Japanese public deserves some answers. So do American officials who are completing a security review with Japan to be finalized Sept. 24.
The annals of spy lore between Japan and China are rich. The most famous case is that of Mata Hari (Yoshiko Kawashima) who spied on China for Japan in the 1930s -- usually dressed as a man. More recently there was the celebrated case of singer Ri Koran (Yoshiko Otaka) who later became an elected member of Japan's Upper House of Councilors until she retired recently.