Japan Press Weekly

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2016 December 7 - 13 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

JCP demands hearing of ex-Tokyo Gov. Ishihara regarding his pouring of taxpayers’ money into polluted site for fish market

Japanese Communist Party member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly Satoyoshi Yumi on December 7 in an assembly plenary meeting urged the metropolitan government to question former Governor Ishihara Shintaro and former Vice Governor Hamauzu Takeo about the expensive purchase of a former gas plant site.

Satoyoshi introduced documents that the JCP obtained from the Tokyo government through the information disclosure system. According to the documents, the Tokyo Metropolitan government in 1999 approached Tokyo Gas with a request to sell its gas plant site in the Toyosu district as an alternative site to the Tsukiji fish market, but the purchase negotiations did not go well at first. In October 2000, according to the documents, the then Vice Governor Hamauzu, Ishihara’s closest aid, met with gas company officials and said, “Let’s discuss these issues (of the purchase price and other related costs) behind closed doors.” After the meeting, Hamauzu instructed his staff to “take measures to prevent shareholders of Tokyo Gas from suffering a loss”. As a result, the negotiations made rapid progress, according to the documents.

After all these developments, the metropolitan government paid as much as 185.9 billion yen for the purchase of the Toyosu site, Satoyoshi said. She pointed out that regarding the cost for the decontamination work of the soil pollution at the former gas plant site, it was decided that Tokyo Gas would only pay 7.8 billion yen of the total cost of 86 billion yen. Satoyoshi said that that is totally unacceptable.

Satoyoshi also pointed out that in reply to the Tokyo government’s written request for clarificaiton, Ishihara in October claimed that he was never consulted about the amount of decontamination costs that the gas company should shoulder. However, Satoyoshi said that the disclosed documents clearly show that government officials reported to Ishihara about the issue.

The JCP assembly member urged Governor Koike Yuriko to conduct hearings with Ishihara and Hamauzu. Koike said that she will consider the proposal.

Satoyoshi stressed that for more than ten years the Tokyo Metropolitan government has been pushing forward with the Toyosu relocation project without providing accurate information and that the governor should review the project and cancel it if necessary.

Past related articles:
> Former Tokyo Gov. Ishihara stalls on explaining about Toyosu fish market problem [October 28, 2016]
> JCP Tokyo calls for cancellation of Tsukiji fish market relocation to Toyosu [October 5, 2016]