Every day brings new evidence that we live in a new and terrible age of zero accountability. That’s as true in Japan as anywhere else.
The latest exhibit is from Kishiwada City in Osaka, where the mayor has disbanded the city assembly after they passed a vote of no confidence. The cause: a lawsuit that accused him of sexual assault – but which he’s dismissing as a “sexual indiscretion.”
Mayor Nagano Kohei (永野耕平) held a press conference yesterday, his wife uncomfortably at his side, as he announced he was dissolving the assembly. Nagano lashed out at the assembly, saying his “affair” with a woman was wrong but wasn’t “cause for a vote of no confidence.”
City residents and netizens, however, say Nagano isn’t telling the full story.
The case came to light after Nagano’s victim sued him in court, claiming he sexually assaulted her. The woman, who supported Nagano’s election efforts in 2019, says the mayor raped her multiple times over the course of several years. After developing PTSD over the alleged attacks, she filed charges against him in 2021. However, prosecutors declined to pursue the case.
Nagano settled the case for five million yen (USD $32K). Since the case was settled, the details haven’t been made public.
The victim’s lawyer read a statement from her at a press conference earlier this month.
“I didn’t want to settle,” she said in her statement. “I had the choice to receive a legal judgment, but my body and my heart were in tatters.”
“The truth is that I didn’t want anything more to do with the defendant and I wanted this over as soon as possible.”
The assembly voted 20 to 4 for the motion, saying Nagano hadn’t been forthcoming about why he felt compelled to pay the victim damages.
Nagano claims that any sex with the victim was consensual. He says he “talked it out” with his accuser and claims he’s told the city assembly as much as he could while “respecting [the victim’s] request for privacy.”
The press conference lasted a full hour. Netizens tore into Nagano for “dragging” his wife to the presser. “This presser was aimed at society, but more than anything, it’s a presser in which a man used his wife to walk all over his female victim,” one user wrote on X.
Kishiwada legislators and residents in the city continue to call on Nagano to resign.
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