In June 2020, Takasu Katsuya (owner of prominent plastic surgery clinic “Takasu Clinic”) along with Nagoya Mayor Kawamura Takashi, started a petition to remove Aichi Prefecture’s Governor Ōmura Hideaki from office. Over the course of a few months, the campaign would gather over 430,000 signatures; just under half of the 860,000 required to take the decision to a public vote. Takasu eventually withdrew from the campaign in November, citing health concerns related to his ongoing battle with cancer.
3 months later, the Aichi prefectural police department is now considering pressing charges against Takasu and co. for Violation of Local Autonomy Laws (地方自治法違反). An investigation into the petition found that over 80% of the signatures cast were fraudulent. In one case, a single individual wrote 110,000 signatures out of the 160,000 in the city of Nagoya. In total, 362,000 fraudulent signatures were submitted across Aichi Prefecture.
Multiple members of the Aichi prefectural and city government have also stated that “their names were written down without their permission,” casting further doubt on the validity of the petition.
Why a Recall?
To understand why the Governor is being asked to resign, we need to go back to 2019, during the Aichi Triennale controversy.
Aichi Triennale was an international art festival dedicated to “contributing to the global development of culture and art by creating and disseminating cutting-edge art.” The festival came under intense fire from right-wing extremists for a few of its exhibitions. Notably, a statue of a Korean comfort woman, and a documentary that showed a picture of the Showa emperor being burned.
In one case, a 59-year old man sent threatening faxes telling the exhibit to “close immediately or (he) will bring a gasoline can,” echoing threats similar to the horrifying arson case that happened at Kyoto Animation in the same year. These death threats caused the festival to close down but called into question the validity of Japanese censorship and free speech laws.
The art festival was eventually reopened, finishing its intended run without issue. However, far-right nationalists soon moved on to criticize the Governor for allowing the exhibition to go on. Takasu, an Aichi native, was a prominent voice. One of the criticisms was that taxpayer revenue should not have been used to fund the exhibition, stating that the “citizens of Aichi Prefecture feel betrayed.”
Who is Takasu Katsuya?
The owner of Takasu Clinic, one of the most famous plastic surgery clinics in Japan, Takasu has been an influential voice in conservative politics for quite a while. And this isn’t the first time he’s stirred up controversy either.
Last year we mentioned in our write-up about night workers being left out of financial aid that Takasu had been vocally opposed to giving hostesses COVID relief. He is also incredibly litigious, taking both the Aichi governor and director of the art exhibit to court for damages of 3 Million Yen.
From 2015 to 2017, he made tweets denying the holocaust and Nanjing Massacre, defended Nazi experimentation on prisoners, as well as Japan’s notorious Unit 731. He was later expelled from the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery after his tweets were translated by a member of the Counter Racist Action Collective (C.R.A.C.).
He also paid $275,000 at an auction to purchase the handwritten memoirs of Emperor Hirohito. So it seems pretty obvious that the doctor is a fervent supporter of Japanese nationalism.
While it’s yet to be seen how much Takasu and co. took part in the fraudulent signatures, and whether or not this had been their intention from the start, it’s safe to say that any chance of proving that “the citizens of Aichi feel betrayed” is now close to zero.
