Wow. The revelations in this case just keep sounding worse and worse:

An architect falsified reports on the structural strength of 20 apartment complexes and a hotel, putting hundreds of residents at risk of injury or death in the event of a large earthquake, officials said.

The buildings are located in Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

Two of the completed apartment complexes could collapse in an earthquake with an intensity of upper 5 on the Japanese scale of 7, ministry officials said.

...

In the past five years, Aneha worked on the strength reports for about 90 buildings, but he said he faked the reports for only the 21 buildings.

The land ministry will file a complaint against Aneha with the Metropolitan Police Department.

"We will adopt a stern manner in dealing with the architect and others who were involved in the illegal acts," said National Public Safety Commission Chairman Tetsuo Kutsukake, who has temporarily taken over as land minister for Kazuo Kitagawa, who is visiting Laos and China.

When asked about compensation for the residents living at buildings that need reconstruction or reinforcements, Kutsukake said: "Because this is a private matter, we will not be obliged to provide public funds. If the residents should wish to move out, we'd like to take measures, including helping them find accommodation at public housing or other facilities."

The numbers there are a little more specific than what we heard at the end of last week, particular the strength of a quake in which the buildings could fail. Upper 5 is not a minor little quake, but it's well within the realm of possibility for a seismically active region such as Kanto. Perhaps in practical terms this isn't as bad as it sounds; there are plenty of flimsy old wood-frame-and-corrugated-tin apartment buildings around Tokyo and environs. It's not as if these falsified inspection reports made possible the only unsafe buildings in the area. Still, they should open a serious can of Hammurabi on this guy's ass. Even if he wasn't the actual builder, he was the one whose job it was to deem buildings up to or not up to code, and people make their emergency plans based on the quake-resistance of the building they live in.

Some of the buildings with faked earthquake code certifications have been identified. You can guess the result:

Bureaucrats were busy taking calls from anxious residents Saturday following news reports of falsified structural strength data for 21 buildings in Tokyo and in Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures.

In Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, structural strength reports of five apartment buildings--including two that have residents--were falsified, it was revealed by the Construction and Transport Ministry on Friday.

Seven officials of the Funabashi municipal government's building guidance division came to work Saturday to respond to residents' inquiries. They were kept busy answering a spate of phone calls from residents from about 8 a.m.

...

However, a ward official said: "We've also been waiting for the result of a reassessment of the building's structural strength from the ministry. We can't say whether the building is safe or dangerous at the moment."

Officials dealing with the issue in other municipalities also were having a hard time. One of them asked, "How can we explain to residents when we don't have any data?" Another asked, "Should I just tell the residents to evacuate their apartments?"

Oy. Another big, if (slightly) less urgent question: Who's going to be stuck with the blame when the dust settles? (Kind of a ghoulish figure of speech in this case, but I couldn't resist):

"Basically, the first-class architect, who holds a government certified qualification and acted dishonestly, bears heavy responsibility," Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said at a press conference Friday in reference to 48-year-old Aneha, of Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, who owns Aneha Architect Design Office.

But Ishihara went on to say the government also was to blame because it failed to properly oversee eHomes, the Tokyo private organization that checked documents filed by Aneha on behalf of the government.

"I think it [eHomes] didn't read the documents properly and was slack about issuing approvals," Ishihara said.

"As the government commissioned the task to the private sector, the government should have properly guided the private sector," he said.

"The government should be blamed for the scandal," he added.

But the government is reluctant to consider providing assistance to the condominium residents.

"Basically, it is an issue that occurred as a result of private economic activities," a senior Construction and Transport Ministry official said. "As it is clear that the cause of the scandal was a deliberate falsification of documents, it is difficult for the government to help them."

The government has asked local governments to provide public housing for the residents, but moving costs and rent likely will have to be paid by the residents themselves.

...

Aneha, who provided the falsified reports, said the falsification is easy to detect if one does a simple calculation, but eHomes failed to spot it.

Apparently, so did the government agencies.

Repercussions from the Aneha scandal are still being felt. Just about the only bright side here so far is that it's given rise to one of those super-long kanji compound strings that can be such fun: 耐震強度偽造問題 (taishin kyoudo gizou mondai: lit., "earthquake-resistance strength falsification scandal"). It's not a whole lot of comfort:

The Mie Transport (Sanco) Corporation (Tsu City) announced on 23 November that it was halting operation of two hotels managed by its Sanco Real Estate subsidiary, the Sanco Inn Kuwana Station (Kuwana City, Mie Prefecture) and the Sanco Inn Shizuoka (Shizuoka City), until their safety and earthquake resistance could be confirmed. The design office at Aneha had participated in planning the structures.

Additionally, the Nagoya Rail (Meitetsu) Group's Meitetsu Real Estate (Nagoya City) similarly halted operations of its Meitetsu Inn Kariya (Kariya City, Aichi Prefecture) because Aneha had handled calculations for its construction.

When Atsushi called from Kyushu yesterday, he related that one of the construction firms for whose buildings Aneha had produced the inspection reports known to be falsified, Kimura Construction (Yashiro City, Kumamoto Prefecture) has already essentially gone bankrupt. Yesterday morning, the shutters were closed over the windows and a note was posted in one of them stating that it was unable to pay its bills and was consulting with attorneys.

It's hard to explain just how chilling this is. It's not just that the Kanto Plain is an earthquake zone. In Tokyo, we're also right next to the ocean. Parts of the city are below sea level or built on filled-in creekbeds and such. Our houses are shoehorned in close together. We also have perceptible little tremors here every few weeks or so--constant reminders that the ground is unstable.

People don't sit around having morbid discussions about earthquakes all the time. At least, the people I know don't. But you do think about it when you're deciding how close you want that new bookcase to be to your sleeping head at night, or whether it's okay to have your emergency supplies several steps from the bed and the sofa where you spend the most time. Things like that. Word is that some of the buildings Aneha certified might collapse in earthquakes at a strong 5 on the JMA scale of surface vibration. That's strong, but a quake at that level isn't exactly unlikely to occur at some point soon, and the instruction that you get about earthquake preparation usually explicitly tells you to factor in the age and certified earthquake resistance of your building, for obvious reasons.

The friends I went out with last night are architects, BTW, so you can imagine that the Aneha scandal was one of our topics of conversation. New revelations include an admission that the firm falsified earthquake resistance certification for more buildings than we already knew about. Another problem:

But officials still have not managed to identify all of the buildings in question. Since the investigation by the Chiba Prefectural Government was limited to structures listed in Aneha's notes, officials have been able to identify only about one-third of all buildings, and the location of 20 buildings is unknown.

In Wakayama, where one hotel came under suspicion, city officials said an inspection failed to find any problems. However, officials added that Aneha's name had not come up in any of the city's own data, leaving doubt over whether the firm was involved in the construction of any other buildings in the city.

Another building was located in Gifu Prefecture. Officials said there was no evidence to suggest that data had been falsified, but added that they could neither regard the building as safe nor dangerous.

I'll bet that last bit of PR-speak is of significant comfort to people are wondering whether their house or hotel room could come crashing down on their heads. Of the buildings that are known to be unsafe, there are already plans to demolish some:

Three contractors involved in the construction of 22 metropolitan buildings built using falsified structural-integrity data have decided to demolish 13 housing blocks the government fears may collapse if hit by a temblor registering upper 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of seven.

At press conferences held in Fukuoka and Tokyo on Tuesday, Hideaki Shinohara, 40, president of Hakata Ward, Fukuoka-based real estate company Shinoken Co. and Susumu Kojima, 52, president of Huser Management Ltd., said they would reimburse costs incurred by those who had to be evacuated, but were divided on the idea of buying back the condominiums.

...

On Wednesday, Sun Chuo Home Co. of Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, said it would demolish two 10-story buildings and a nine-story building--a total of 177 units in the city.

Managing Director Keiji Kudo of the real estate company made the announcement during a briefing in Funabashi to the residents, during which he also offered his apologies to them.

He told the meeting, organized by the Funabashi municipal government, that his company had thought of reinforcing the three condominiums but that emergency inspections of their earthquake-resistance had led to the conclusion that they needed to be pulled down.

Not being an engineer, I'm not sure how weak a building has to be before you're better off tearing it down than trying to retrofit it. It doesn't sound good. It's been determined that one building, inspected by a team of architects from the Funabashi municipal government, has only 31% of the level of earthquake resistance required by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport. That sounds even worse.

The rating scale, BTW, apparently works like this:

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said it will compile a unified set of standards to be applied when local municipalities order buildings that are at risk from temblors to be demolished or repaired.

The ministry decided on the step because standards differ from one municipality to another. Officials reasoned that residents in the apartments at risk should not be worried further.

A benchmark of 1 describes strength that will withstand a temblor of upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7. Structures will be graded in proportion to the benchmark. A reading of 0.5 means that there is a danger the structure will collapse in an earthquake of upper 5 on the seismic scale.

Those classified as between 0.3 and 0.2 in quake resistance will be ordered torn down.

Of the 14 completed buildings in which Aneha, 48, was involved, the ministry said Monday that 12 were rated at 0.5 or less in quake-resistance levels. One was classified with a 0.56 reading.

As my friends and I were remarking yet again last night, an upper 5 is a significant quake, but it's not really what you'd call major. Nor is it a rare occurrence if you take Japan as a whole. As Taro Akasaka commented here the other day, the good news is that a scandal like this rivets the attention and could help prevent such fraud in the future. The Japanese will gamely put up with all kinds of discomfort, but tell them their houses aren't safe in earthquakes, and you will know their wrath.

This weekend's earthquake in China not only is sad in and of itself, but is especially sobering for those following what's happening with Japan's beleaguered construction industry and government bodies.

News is pouring in. The city of Hiratsuka in Kanagawa Prefecture (near Yokohama and the ancient capital of Kamakura) has acknowledged that it failed to check Aneha's structural strength report:

Municipal officials in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, failed to detect an architect's lies about the quake-resistance　of a hotel, saying his structural-strength report was simply too big to be checked in time.

Hidetsugu Aneha, the Chiba Prefecture-based architect at the center of the growing scandal involving unsafe buildings, compiled the report for Park Inn Hiratsuka.

...

"The structural strength report was a very thick one measuring about 10 centimeters, and it was very difficult to check it thoroughly in three weeks,'' Hiratsuka Mayor Ritsuko Okura said Thursday.

The oversight came to light after officials of the city's urban policy department reviewed the report.

The 14 columns on the first floor of the hotel had between 60 and 70 percent the required strength, sources said.

Sounds like responsibility-dodging, huh? It may be worse than you think. In the week-and-change over which this story has been unfolding, it's becoming clearer and clearer that at least some of Aneha's falsifications should have been caught a long time ago. An on-site manager for the construction firm that built Sun Chuo Home # 15 in Funabashi apparently alerted the company as it was being built that it had too few girders. I'm quoting this at length so I can inflict on my Japan-based readers the full, creeping sense of horror I experienced when first reading it:

An expert analysis has revealed that structural integrity data on two apartment buildings submitted by architect Hidetsugu Aneha had less than half the required earthquake resistance, with overly small pillars and girders used in the calculations.

The analysis was provided by a first-class architect asked by The Yomiuri Shimbun to evaluate the plans of Aneha, who has admitted falsifying structural strength certificates for 22 buildings in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

The expert said the structural data were an outright falsification, with various data combined to reduce material costs, and it was hard to imagine how the inspection agency involved failed to notice.

Concerning the structural integrity data for Sun Chuo Home No. 15, an apartment building in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, the architect said, "I had an uncomfortable feeling looking at it at first glance."

The 10-story ferroconcrete building was designed by Aneha Architect Design Office in Ichikawa in the same prefecture, and constructed and sold by Sun Chuo Home Co. The Construction and Transport Ministry's recalculation found the building has only 31 percent of the necessary strength.

Bear in mind that these two condominium complexes were in Chiba Prefecture; they are not the same hotel that Hiratsuka is admitting it rushed through, and maybe Aneha was more careful to cover his tracks there. For his part, Aneha is accusing three of the construction firms with which he contracted of pressuring him to allow them to cut corners on structural strength.

Several hotels have been closed. A few days ago, the city of Yokohama ordered a condominium evacuated, and now the federal government has stepped in, with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport taking the unusual step of threatening to invoke the building standards law to force people out of condos designated unsafe if they refuse to evacuate. It's also proposing, naturally more stringent inspection procedures:

Checks will be tightened on construction authorization procedures in the wake of a scandal that has uncovered dozens of apartment blocks and large buildings built using falsified structural integrity data, the government said Saturday.

The Construction and Transport Ministry plans to introduce a manual on how to check the structural integrity data of building designs, as well as a random survey of government-designated private inspection companies.

The ministry will submit the draft reform plan to the Panel on Infrastructure Development, an advisory body to the construction and transport minister, at a meeting to be held next month.

Reviewing the checking system is one of the most important tasks to prevent a recurrence of the problem.

"Until now, the system was based on trust in the inspectors," a ministry official said. "But we must base it on the view that human nature is inherently evil."

Those who want to see the original of that last dramatic sentence can find it here: "これまでは設計者や、建築確認を行う民間機関、自治体などへの信頼が前提だったが、今後は性悪説に基づいた制度に変える。"

I didn't mention the China earthquake just because of its fatalities, BTW. Its magnitude was 5.7. That's the Richter scale for released energy, not the JMA scale for surface vibration--still, by all accounts, the quake and aftershocks were strong but not major. I assume they were of about the intensity at which Aneha's falsely certified buildings are expected to be at risk of failing.

One of the things commentators have been saying since yesterday is that Jiangxi Province was lucky in a sense: most of the houses that are falling down are only one or two stories, so injuries and fatalities have been minimal. The hotels and apartments we're talking about here in Japan are all, to my knowledge, multi-story structures. (At least one mentioned above is ten.) If, in the worst-case scenario, one of them collapsed, dozens of people could be buried in moments.

Fortunately, counts of deaths and injuries in eastern China don't seem to have ballooned overnight, so resources can probably be devoted to assisting those who have been displaced. It's cold at night now, so keeping people out of the elements will be the first priority.

So many dropped balls are coming to light in the Aneha scandal that I'm starting to expect Mr. Moose to wander by at any moment. One of the sticking points thus far had been over the degree to which the federal government should be helping out people who've been stuck with unsafe condos. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport has come up with a partial plan:

Residents of housing blocks built on falsified structural integrity data who took out loans with the government's Housing Loan Corporation to purchase their now unlivable homes, will be allowed to defer their loan payments, Construction and Transport Ministry officials said Sunday.

This will be the first step the government has taken to help those living in 230 condominiums in question. However, only 14 of the households, or about 6 percent, of them took out loans with the corporation.

Thus, the ministry is also looking into possibly assisting residents who borrowed from private financial institutions, the officials said.

...

The ministry holds that the condominiums' builders should fulfill the defect liability to rebuild the buildings free of charge before the ministry assists residents, but it is not clear how such firms, including Huser, will handle the problem and whether they have the necessary funds to rebuild the housing blocks.

The ministry is searching for a way to extend a helping hand, as it will take time for the residents to rebuild their lives and they may be forced to repay their loans at the same time they pay rent on new homes.

I hope my arch tone over the last week hasn't made it seem that I regard this story as a joke. While it's true that we're very lucky no one was killed here, a lot of people have poured savings into mortgages that are now proving worthless. There's nothing funny about that.

There's also nothing funny about the fact that, as the Asahi reported this morning, it's beginning to look as if everyone--and I mean everyone--involved in these construction projects failed to be vigilant:

The reports submitted by Aneha, who is based in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, were supposed to be thoroughly checked by eHomes Inc., a private-sector inspection company.

At the same time, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport only carried out perfunctory reviews of the work done by eHomes in its annual inspection of the company.

To compound matters, a number of local governments were also lax in their efforts to unearth irregularities in reports put together by Aneha.

Land ministry officials searched the offices of eHomes in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on Thursday and Friday to look into the company's inspection procedures.

Sources said that eHomes apparently failed to reconfirm the information included in the structural-strength reports as required by the Building Standards Law.

The whole point of building redundancy into these sorts of procedures is to put as many pairs of eyes as possible on the same information: what one person doesn't notice, everyone else will. What actually appears to have happened--all Tragedy of the Commons-like--is that everyone assumed everyone else was being vigilant, so once Aneha had put his fraudulent structural integrity reports into circulation, the falsifications weren't discovered.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport made an announcement today:

On 28 November, reacting to the scandal in which Aneha Design falsified the structural calculations for apartment complexes and other buildings, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport firmed up new policies of systemic revision that would require the name of any architectural subcontractor that performed structural calculations to be recorded in any application for a building permit. The intention is to have revisions enacted and implemented in basic construction laws governing application documents by the end of the year.

Well, okay. I'm sure anyone who sees the name Aneha on a building permit application from here on will be sure to put it in the "Reject" pile. Otherwise, if there's a way this will help ensure greater vigilance on the part of those in charge of inspection and certification, I'm not sure what it is.

Like other federal ministries, the MLIT takes the tack that the safety of the public is too important for its operations to be spun off into private hands. Since protecting its citizens is the government's primary responsibility, I'd be inclined to agree. But the above policy appears to add only a little more paper pushing (never a hard sell on bureaucrats). The fact is that it's already the job of functionaries in government construction agencies to review structural calculations, and they didn't do it. Perhaps the rules themselves could use some revision, but the major issue is pretty clearly the mindset. It's not clear what anyone plans to do to change that.

If you care to depress or scare yourself, BTW, the Japanese Nikkei now has a handy category page dedicated to the Aneha scandal--certain to be updated frequently for the foreseeable future, if this week is any indication.

Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Kazuo Kitagawa has made an announcement about the Aneha scandal:

Regarding the earthquake resistance falsification scandal, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Kazuo Kitagawa announced on 4 December that he is investigating a plan to have federal and prefectural-level government bodies bear the entire burden of paying for the demolition of condominium complexes known to have insufficient earthquake resistance. His reasoning was that "there is also a danger to residents in surrounding buildings, so [the demolition] has a prominent public interest dimension." He related this to the press corps this morning after a television appearance.

Kitagawa explained that the reason for public assistance in this case was that "assessing who bears responsibility among the developers and other parties requires time, and we cannot wait that long."

Some of the affected residents have already organized a group so they can share information and possibly negotiate collectively. Kitagawa isn't kidding about the danger to the neighbors, BTW; the catastrophic 1999 Taiwan earthquake saw several large, modern buildings tip over.

Oh, yeah, and just in case you're not already rattled enough over this whole mess, check this out:

The architecture firm that designed one of the buildings for which disgraced architect Hidetsugu Aneha faked strength reports says it met directly with the building companies to warn them about Aneha in early 2004, but was ignored.

The Kanagawa Prefecture-based design company, and Atlas Sekkei, the architectural firm in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward asked to check Aneha's structural-strength reports, said they spotted irregularities in those reports.

The Kanagawa design firm said it had a meeting with Kumamoto-based Kimura Construction Co. and Tokyo-based consulting firm Sogo Keiei Kenkyujo (Soken) in early 2004 to point out the problems.

But the two firms did nothing. Both Kimura Construction and Soken continued to commission work to Aneha, leading to the construction of a string of defective hotels and condominiums.

The latest revelation directly contradicts what officials at Kimura and Soken have said.

Attention-grabbing lead paragraph of the week goes to the English Asahi:

The land ministry Thursday started a series of inspections to determine the extent of incompetence, inadequacies and possible corruption in an industry sector responsible for the safety of people's lives.

One tiny thing to be grateful for is that this is connected to the Aneha scandal and not, you know, some entirely new revelation about a whole different industry:

Twelve inspectors of the ministry's Housing Bureau started searching Japan ERI Co., the nation's largest building inspection company, in Tokyo's Minato Ward, at 9:30 a.m. [The article is dated 9 September.--SRK]

The ministry wants to determine why the company failed to act on a warning in 2004 that former architect Hidetsugu Aneha had faked a structural-strength report for a building in Tokyo.

Japan ERI Co. is not the same company that was warned by an on-site construction manager that reinforcements at the ground level were insufficient, so we have yet another organization to finger for not listening to alarms that had in fact been sounded.

Naturally, some people are taking this opportunity to cast aspersions on privatization:

Some experts say these private-sector companies have a difficult time being objective in their inspections. That is because real estate developers are not only the inspection companies' clients, they are often their shareholders.

And this is different from the government's being in bed with major keiretsu, their banks, and major constructions firms...how, exactly? Obviously, there were problems with monitoring here. Whether they stem from the very fact that the government privatized some of its inspection functions is a very debatable point, especially considering that when the fraud-filled documents did, in fact, hit the desks of government construction agencies, they let them pass through without challenging them. Another good thing to bear in mind is that, while it's not exactly classic amakudari, the inspectors now being targeted for investigation have interesting origins:

"We will completely cooperate with the ministry's inspections," Takahide Suzuki, the Japan ERI president, said in a statement. "By doing so, we want to regain the people's trust in our company."

Japan ERI employs 165 building inspectors, including 102 who had worked in local governments.

Other companies said they do not have the manpower to keep pace with the demand.

"We have no other choice but to employ people who worked as construction superintendents in local governments," an official said.

Just keeps getting better, huh?

The Aneha scandal has continued to ripen nicely:

In the earthquake resistance falsification scandal, the House of Representatives Land, Transport, and Infrastructure committee held a meeting to receive testimony that lasted through the day. Akira Shinotsuka (45), the former head of the Tokyo branch of Kimura Construction (Yashiro City, Kumamoto Prefecture; currently in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings), gave testimony concerning the rebar used in construction, normally 80-100 kilograms per square meter. "The idea in our company was to shoot below that quantity, to 70 kilograms [per square meter]," he stated. He acknowledged that this cap on the quantity of rebar had become the company's standard practice.

Hidetsugu Aneha (48), former first-class architect, testified, "I was under very specific* pressure (from Mr. Shinotsuka), having received suggestions that I reduce the normal 80-100 kilogram figure to 60 kilograms." Shinotsuka defended himself by saying, "Some reductions were within legal bounds. My perception is not that I applied heavy pressure [on Mr. Aneha]."

The English Asahi has a bit more fun with this latest round of hot potato. Note the droll near-zeugma in the second paragraph here:

Aneha, citing health reasons, had declined two previous requests to appear before the committee. But he was practically forced to appear Wednesday after being summoned as a sworn witness.

His testimony was filled with remorse, admissions and the name of Akira Shinozuka, former Tokyo branch chief of Kimura Construction Co.

...

Aneha quoted Shinozuka as saying in 1998, "We won't give you any work if you don't reduce the volume of reinforcing steel to be used.''

At that time, Aneha said about 90 percent of his work came from Kimura Construction. "If I refused, my income would have fallen close to zero. So I did it even though I knew it was wrong,'' Aneha said.

Aneha also said he felt Shinozuka understood the illegality of what he was asking the architect to do.

The Mainichi adds a few more dimensions:

Hidetsugu Aneha also cast suspicion on inspection agencies who failed to spot his misdeeds, saying such falsified records -- which masked potentially catastrophic defects in hotels and condominiums -- should be easy to detect.

...

The uproar has hit a sensitive nerve in Japan, calling into question building safety in one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. Authorities say that at least 71 Aneha-linked structures could collapse even in a moderate tremor.

Confirming the fears of many, a contrite Aneha described a construction industry in which developers eager for profits browbeat architects into cutting corners -- or risk losing business. Safety fears, he said, never entered the equation. [!!!!!!!!!!!!--SRK]

"I was under heavy pressure, but initially I refused partly because of my pride as first-class certified architect," the soft-spoken witness said. "But I had a sick wife who was in and out of a hospital, and refusing meant zero income."

Apparently, anyone with an ill family member is justified in making deals with the devil to maintain his income. I'll have to remember that.

BTW, while the people actually living in the unsafe buildings deserve most of the sympathy, let's not forget that others were screwed, too:

Independent hotel operators who have stopped business after their premises were found to have been built using falsified earthquake resistance data will be unable to receive financial support from the government--unlike owners of defective condominium units.

...

The 70-year-old owner of the Hotel Senpia in Ina, Nagano Prefecture, was introduced to Kimura Construction Co. in 1999 by a local building contractor. The contractor told him that "the company knows how to keep costs down."

He demolished a rice milling plant and a warehouse he had been running for many years, and Kimura Construction, a Kumamoto Prefecture-based company now filing for bankruptcy, took charge of building the 110-room, eight-story hotel.

However, as the man was recovering from the shock of hearing that Aneha had falsified the earthquake-resistance data of his hotel, Kimura Construction filed for bankruptcy, seeking refuge in the courts. His chances of getting compensation from the company have all but disappeared.

...

The government decided to help condo owners by offering public money. But hotel owners were not included in the scheme because they are different from condo owners, who were unable to choose the construction companies involved, according to the Construction and Transport Ministry.

One hotel owner, who borrowed heavily from a bank, said, "We're suffering just as much as apartment owners."

I wouldn't necessarily throw myself into a full-scale pity party for these people--if you're told a construction company, of all enterprises, has a reputation for keeping costs down, the obvious thing to ask next is which corners are being cut. That's just common sense. On the other hand, the government supplied multiple confirmations that each of these buildings had passed certification and inspection procedures. It's not unreasonable for the elderly--whose work life was active when Japan Inc. had a reputation for uncompromising manufacturing competence that made it the envy of the world--to figure that a building couldn't pass certification by multiple government functionaries without having any possible problems discovered somewhere along the way.

I'm also not sure I buy the government's convenient dividing line between condo owners and hotel owners. People choose residential buildings by developers all the time in Japan; the different companies have distinct reputations, possibly the product of PR rather than substance, but still real to Japanese consumers. I'm frequently told, when people hear the name of our building, that Atsushi made a wise decision by going with reliable Mistubishi Estate. Even in the Japanese post-Bubble economy, new apartment buildings go up all the time. I suppose it may be true that condominium buyers are somehow more constrained in their choice of developers than landowners who want to build hotels, but the reason is not immediately obvious.



* Not even my sense of humor is black enough to permit me to translate 具体的 as "concrete" here.

Given the strike, it seemed prudent to ask the car service to leave extra time to get to JFK from Murray Hill--not that it needed extra prodding--and, naturally, traffic ended up being none too bad. It was rather touching to have taxis slide up to the curb (I waited outside with my stuff to make sure the drive didn't waste time buzzing for me) and be asked by the passenger riding shotgun whether I needed to carpool to the airport. Just try getting a cab in Manhattan if you look as if you're going to the airport at any other time! No glitches getting here and through emigration, though my thoughts as always ran along the lines of Why is it so easy for airport authorities in Asia to figure out how to set up enough tables for you to put your stuff back together after being scanned, while US airports make you take off your jackets and shoes and belt and take out your laptop...and then expect five people to reassemble themselves with a single 3'*3' slab of formica to lean on at the end of the line? Sheesh.

The problems I'm worried about, actually, are at the other end: Japan is expecting to be hammered by snow in Hokkaido and along the Pacific coast, so Atsushi's flight out of Kyushu on Friday could be delayed or canceled. We'll just have to wait and see. In other Japan news, the Building Contractors' Society of Japan is writing a manual to help people spot falsified structural strength calculations. That's nice, but I thought the whole scary point was the that falsifications were transparent and that it was a surprise no one had caught them. (BTW, here's yet more evidence that one of the construction companies, Huser, was warned ahead of time of Aneha's bogus figures. Residents of condominiums it built are asking to have the company declared bankrupt.) And there's more information about Kosuke Ito, the LDP Diet member who went to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport and asked for Huser to be treated gently:

Ito, who once served as director general of the National Land Agency, visited the director of the ministry's construction supervision division with Huser Management Ltd. President Susumu Kojima on Nov. 15, two days before the ministry disclosed the scandal.

"It'd be a problem if the company had to dismantle buildings (constructed based on falsified quake-resistance data)," the bureaucrat quoted President Kojima as telling him.

"Would you please consider his request?" Ito then told the division director.

The director said he rejected the request. "The safety of the residents is the top priority."

Ito denied having asked the bureaucrat for leniency for the Tokyo-based Huser. "People were already living in the condominiums, so the top priority was to ensure safety of the residents as soon as possible. I thought we had no time to lose, so I took him to the ministry on the same day."

...

In September last year, Kojima bought 50 tickets, each priced at 20,000 yen, to a fund-raising party for Ito's political fund-raising organization. Kojima has paid a 160,000 yen membership fee annually to the organization over the past four years.

Speaking of tense relations between government bodies, the Japan and PRC foreign ministers may meet. Or, if precedent is any indication, not.

Can't wait to get back home.

How rattled are people about the Aneha scandal? This is posted in the mail/package alcove in the lobby of our apartment building. It opened in 2000, and there has never been any suggestion whatever that its structural strength calculations were questionable. Translated, the substantive parts sandwiched between the ritual greetings say:

Recently, the "scandal in which the Aneha Design office falsified structural calculations" has been reported in newspapers and the like. Please be secure in the knowledge that none of the structural calculations for this building were contracted out to the design office at Aneha.

Furthermore, we have obtained confirmation that "this building was erected based on properly executed structural calculations."

Additionally, the structural calculations have been checked through independent inspection by XXXX Estate's structural technicians, with no reliance on the design firm or body of inspectors [that originally certified the building]; and the strength and distribution of rebar concrete in actual construction has been checked by quality control experts.

I'm sure that cost a pretty penny, especially if the company's dozens of apartment buildings in metropolitan Tokyo are all being re-inspected. But it's understandable that such measures were deemed necessary, considering the multiple levels of negligence that have been shown to have allowed Aneha to get away with his deceptions. At this point, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport is considering providing assistance to owners of hotels and condominiums that have up to 50% of the mandated earthquake resistance level. The money would cover up to 15.2% of inspection and retrofitting costs.

For those keeping count out of ghoulishness, the number of buildings affected by the Aneha scandal has reached 89:

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport announced on 30 December that a hotel in Kirishima City, Kagoshima Prefecture, had been newly confirmed as a structure for which architect Hidetsugu Aneha had falsified structural calculations. The number of problem buildings has now reached 89 in 18 prefectures.

This was the first building confirmed as fraudulently certified in Kagoshima Prefecture. The prefectural government had at first reported that there was no falsification, but a new examination demonstrated that the structural calculation documents contained falsifications.

The hotel, the Sun Hotel Kokubun, received its architectural confirmation in November 1999 and has 52% of the minimum standard earthquake resistance. It was reported to be closed for business on 27 December.

No, I'm not drinking crushed dried plums in boiling water because I have a hangover.

And if, just theoretically, I were drinking crushed dried plums in boiling water because I had a hangover, it wouldn't be because I was with friends carousing until 6 a.m.

That racket. Please, you have to stop the racket.

Of course, some people's headaches are just beginning:

Looking beyond discredited architect Hidetsugu Aneha, police are now focusing on the companies that likely pressured him to fake his quake-resistance reports, sources said.

Kumamoto Prefecture-based Kimura Construction Co. and Tokyo-based Huser Co., both named as central players in the wide-reaching scandal, are apparently soon to face criminal charges.

The sources said a joint team of Metropolitan Police Department and Chiba and Kanagawa prefectural police investigators plan to hold Kimura Construction criminally responsible in the falsification of structural strength reports to cut costs.

Aneha has told police that Akira Shinozuka, the former Tokyo branch head of Kimura Construction, pressured him to reduce the amount of steel fortification in his designs.

All parties in the scandal have denied any wrongdoing, apart from Aneha.

...

Huser is known to have sold condominium units even after it learned in October that they might have had substandard quake resistance.

The Real Estate Business Law prohibits firms from signing contracts that intentionally withhold pertinent information from buyers.

Substandard earthquake resistance is, you know, kinda pertinent here.

Since Huser ordered the construction of the complexes, it can also be held in violation of the Building Standards Law.

But unlike Kimura Construction, which drew up the design blueprints, Huser merely ordered them, so its intent to falsify data must be proven for it to be held criminally responsible, sources said.

We can now look forward to months, perhaps years, of "Oh, yes, you did"..."Oh, no, I didn't."

The good news is that we seem to have gone a few days without the discovery of yet another substandard building. The number is almost certain to break ninety at some point in the new year, though.

It's probably bad taste to think this way, but I can't decide whether Huser president Susumu Kojima was extraordinarily unlucky or extraordinarily lucky today.

He was delivering testimony before the Diet, though hardly of his own volition:

In [a further development of the] earthquake resistance falsification scandal, Susumu Kojima, president of Huser Corporation (Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo) gave testimony before the diet during a meeting of the lower house Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Committee on 17 January. Of suspicions that he was essentially aware of the falsifications and applied pressure to keep them from being made public, he repeated his refusal to testify: "It may tend to incriminate me." [Literally, he said that "there is the possibility of investigation and prosecution," but I assume that's the equivalent.--SRK]

Kojima has, it would appear, plenty to clam up about:

An executive of Tokyo-based developer Huser Ltd. repeatedly directed a contracting design firm to let disgraced architect Hidetsugu Aneha calculate the structural integrity of condominiums, citing Aneha's ability to work out "economical designs," The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.

The design firm initially planned to use another structural design firm to conduct earthquake-resistance calculations on a condominium in 2002, but the Huser executive protested, saying: "That firm's designs use excessive materials. Use Aneha because he can do it economically," sources said.

The action highlights the close relationship between the developer and the 48-year-old former architect.

According to the sources, the design firm made a contract with Huser to design a condominium in Tokyo in 2002. It intended to entrust the condominium's structural calculations to the structural design firm with which it had business ties.

The Huser executive, however, criticized the structural design firm for designing buildings with excessive materials. He named Aneha, saying, "We should use the architect who knows how to economize."

Of course, that "Huser executive" didn't tell the Yomiuri that Kojima gave his blessing to this maneuver.

What's especially unlucky for Kojima is that it's 17 January. That is, it's the eleventh anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake--the one in Kobe--and as always, it's getting a lot of media play. As I write, NHK is running a special called 活断層列島 (katsudansou rettou: "An Archipelago of Active Fault Lines"), complete with spooky, foreboding music like a wind tunnel in hell. It began with several shots of buildings that had not been expected to collapse in an earthquake. Naturally, they were rubble. The Kobe Earthquake is in living memory for everyone above high school age in Japan. This week more than any other in the year, Japan can be depended on to be keenly aware of how fragile buildings that aren't built properly to withstand earthquakes can be. Watching Kojima on television, as he's tearing up and proclaiming that he never meant anything bad for his firm's customers, one is hard pressed to be moved.

On the other hand, today also brought the news that the death sentence for Tsutomu Miyazaki--surely Japan's most famous serial killer--had been upheld by the Supreme Court. Considered against Miyazaki's blood-chilling example of sociopathy, mere insufficient girding of buildings doesn't seem quite such a horror. If there's anyone whose face all over the news can make a dirty contractor look unsullied by comparison, he's it:

Miyazaki's lawyers had argued that it was "obvious that (the defendant) is suffering from some kind of chronic mental disorder such as schizophrenia." They cited his use of psychotropic agents at the Tokyo Detention House and his auditory hallucinations that came into light during the high court sessions.

...

According to the lower court rulings, Miyazaki abducted and killed four girls ranging in age from 4 to 7 in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture from August 1988 to June 1989. He was also held responsible for stripping a 6-year-old girl in Tokyo's Hachioji.

The cases were described as "theatrical crimes" because Miyazaki sent a letter and parts of the remains of one of his victims to her family.

He also claimed responsibility for the crime to the media using a female pseudonym, Yuko Imada.

He also incinerated one of the victims, and claimed he ate the body parts of one of the girls.

When Miyazaki was arrested in July 1989, investigators found about 6,000 videotapes in his room, many filled with sadistic and grisly scenes.

They also discovered many pornographic comic books dealing with young girls and pedophilia.

When Miyazaki is executed, it will probably be carried out without warning. The practice in Japan is not to give families a few days for final visits, and even in the cases of infamous criminals, the announcement of the execution is only made public on the same day.

A case of earthquake resistance fakery not perpetrated by Aneha (story so far as I've kept track) has surfaced:

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport disclosed on 8 February that it had confirmed a case of fraud related to structural calculations for three apartment complexes in Fukuoka City; the calculations had been contracted out to a design firm that was not part of Aneha Architecture and Design. The firm in question is Something (Fukuoka Prefecture; closed for business in 2002), and the construction firm for all affected buildings was Kimura Construction (Yashiro City, Kumamoto Prefecture; now in bankruptcy proceedings). This is the first case of such fraud that has come to light that did not involve former first-class architect Hideji Aneha.

*******

Princess Kiko, the wife of the current Emperor and Empress's second son Fumihito, is pregnant with her third child. The Nikkei seems to think it newsworthy that the British press is going bananas over the news--maybe there's some sort of constitutional monarchy kinship thing going here? Anyway, the news feeds into the controversy over possible female succession that's been percolating here:

News of a new member of the imperial family comes as the government is moving to revise the Imperial House Law to allow females and their descendants to ascend the Chrysanthemum throne.

However, conservative Diet members, especially those in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, oppose Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's stated intention to pass the revision during the current Diet session.

No boy has been born in the imperial family since Fumihito in 1965.

If the emperor's next grandchild is a boy, he would be third in line to the throne under the current Imperial House Law.

The English Asahi has another article specifically about the move to change the rules of successsion here. Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako, his much put-upon wife, have managed to produce a daughter, but she's ineligible to become empress.

*******

I was hoping there would be something deliciously inflammatory to report from the Japan-DPRK summit this week. (Well, stopping short of "We're sending missiles to Tokyo, Insular Devils!") No such luck. The talks ended today. The result? Negotiations must continue. Oh, okay:

Japan and North Korea concluded their five-day schedule of talks on 8 February with a general meeting at a hotel in Beijing. Japan once again conveyed that its fundamental approach is that "until the issues of the 1970s abductions of Japanese citizens and of the DPRK's nuclear program and long-range missiles are resolved, there will be no normalization of relations." There was no progress in concrete terms. Both parties affirmed that parallel talks will continue on three major themes: normalization of relations, Japanese abductees, and North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

Japan doubts the DPRK's sincerity. The DPRK returns the compliment.

*******

As always, they may (or may not) be contemplating increasing the consumption tax (or at least changing it in what might possibly be deemed a non-negative, non-zero direction). Yeah, I know--blah, blah, blah. What's semi-interesting is that the DPJ seems to have wheeled Katsuya Okada out of the morgue to comment:

The Prime Minister indicated that he is of the opinion that continuing reforms will be necessary even after [current] goals will have been achieved, stating, "It cannot be said that once the primary balance is in the black, financial restructuring is finished." Okada proposed corrections, stating, "We must [first] think about what our next goals will be," and ending with, "Those in positions of authority at that point in time will have to think about them."

That part of the back-and-forth, while not very interesting in and of itself, is important because Koizumi has made it clear that he expects his followers (called the "Post-Koizumi" government, in what has become a tediously over-repeated locution) to continue his program of reforms, by implication, to his liking. No one, either within the ruling coalition or in the opposition, is certain right now how well Koizumi will actually be able to use his present power to exert influence on future administrations.