Kuchikomi Jan. 04, 2011 - 05:35AM JST ( 10 )

Where are they now?

They filled our news columns and our television screens and seemed, for a moment, so important. The moment passes, and what happens to them? What are they up to, these forgotten celebrities, villains and victims, 20 years later? Shukan Shincho (Dec 30 – Jan 6) catches up on 20 of them. Lack of space confines us to two.

Remember the late Sosoke Uno? You’re forgiven if not. He was one of Japan’s least memorable prime ministers. His administration in 1989 lasted all of 69 days. Japan then was at the height of its prosperity, the grim decay in store for it scarcely foreseeable. Memorable prime ministers were a luxury the country didn’t need. Faceless nonentities served the purpose just fine. Uno is worth recalling only for the manner of his downfall, involving as it did a scandalous liaison with a geisha.

The geisha, Mitsuko Nakanishi, is now 61. “Same clear eyes, same full lips – you’d know her at a glance,” says Shukan Shincho. Too bad for her. The notoriety has been persistent, and it doesn’t seem to have done her much good. As for Uno himself – well, other high-ranking politicians have had geisha mistresses, there’s nothing new there, but compared to at least some of them, “Mr Uno,” says Nakanishi, “had absolutely no consideration for a woman.” It was a purely commercial arrangement – 300,000 yen a month in exchange for her availability.

What of Nakanishi since? “Wherever I went, I was stared at. I couldn’t set foot in Tokyo. My parents were dead, I was divorced, I had nothing to do with my son and nowhere to go. An acquaintance introduced me to a temple in Shiga Prefecture, and I joined as an acolyte.”

Even there, she says, the media sniffed her out. Besides, she lacked the religious vocation. Subsequent ups and downs sent her to work at an establishment purveying Buddhist accessories, to hairdressing school, to massage school. She qualified as a masseuse, got married, got divorced. No more marriage for her, she vows – two was enough. And how does she rate the current prime minister? Naoto Kan’s seemingly helpless political shuffling, she says, is “unmanly.” Not much seems to have changed in 20 years.

Our next guest, so to speak, is Nobuyuki Sato, vigorous champion of human rights – his own. His treatment in prison, where he languishes for kidnapping a 9-year-old girl in Niigata in 1989 and confining her nine years and two months, does not please him.

To a journalist who corresponds with him he reportedly wrote, “The feelings of the weak are not worth considering. What else can they do but yield to the strong?”

A quarrelsome prisoner, he has spent 250 days of the past 10 years in a punishment cell, and vigorously protests this “infringement of my human rights.” It never seems to cross his mind, remarks Shukan Shincho, that prison, though harsh, is humane compared to what he put his victim through.

The case was riveting at the time for its sheer horror. The victim, now 30, is “well, thank heaven,” says her grandmother. “She’s attending school. But Sato ruined her life. Even now, when she thinks back on her captivity, it drives her to despair. Memories like that don’t fade easily.”