Shortly after the quake-proofing scandal broke, Shukan Bunshun referred to the "hairstyle" of architect Hidetsugu Aneha as being just as much a "fabrication" (gizo) as the structural calculations he drew up for all those doomed condominiums. The joke was a telling one. Publicly exposing wig-wearers is a media taboo on the scale of outing homosexuals, and Bunshun's use of this less-than-relevant revelation in one of its headlines indicated that the gloves were off. Aneha's sins were so grave that anything could be thrown at him.

As the scandal has developed and implicated more and more people, Aneha has come to look like the unfortunate schmuck who got caught first. When he was the sole focus of enmity things were easy, but now that it appears the whole system is rotten, the media's coverage has become a babble of accusations, buck-passing and engineering jargon.

What the average person takes away from it all is something the media usually only hints at: Substandard dwellings are the norm in Japan. The country's housing construction industry is a racket that the government tolerates because it advocates a policy that places home-ownership at the center of the country's economy. Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe inadvertently said as much when he declared that something had to be done about the scandal right away "or the Japanese economy would be ruined." Some media criticized the remark, saying that Takebe was more concerned about general contractors than about homeowners, but it didn't change the truth of what he said. If consumers take the scandal seriously and stop buying homes, the country could be looking at a recession. The government is chiefly to blame since such a scandal was inevitable given its hands-off approach to the construction industry.