Corruption scandals in Japan at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries

The aim of the article is the analysis of corruption scandals among Japanese high-ranking officials (kanroy) from the mid-1990s, when facts of bribery and abuse of office revealed the fusion of big business and political power in Japan that led to the adoption of new anti-corruption laws. The article also analyzes the effectiveness of new laws to combat corruption in the Japanese bureaucracy. A huge variety of corruption cases usually differ depending on the cause of the occurrence or on the specific features of the nature of the case. The scandals structurally reflect the nature of the Japanese society itself. Despite the fight against corruption, the practice of fusing business and the executive has such deep traditions in Japan that anti-corruption legislation, the development of ethical codes, the declaration of incomes of officials, as well as other control methods common in Western European countries, could not be considered a sufficient anti-corruption instrument. It needs more control to eliminate the phenomenon of corruption, even in the country with a low corruption perception index, like Japan.