The scandal that has rocked the nation's leading financial firms goes beyond what novelists could ever have imagined, says writer Ryo Takasugi, whose recent novel offers a glimpse into the moral decay of Japanese bankers.
The scandal over payoffs to a "sokaiya" corporate extortionist by Nomura Securities Co. and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank is "incomparably more serious than any other past incidents involving Japanese firms," Takasugi says. His novel, "Kinyu Fushoku Retto" ("An Archipelago of Financial Corruption"), offers readers clues to how Japanese banks deal with sokaiya and the underworld.
Although the financial firms that appear in the novel are fictitious, they are modeled on major commercial banks that have in reality been rocked by various scandals in recent years. The work is based on interviews with people who have dealt with the racketeers and other shady aspects of the banking business, he says.