councilor.org
| Source | Eubulides |
| Date | 03/07/19/01:58 |
| Triple Suicide Forces Japanese To Face Menace Of Loan Sharks
By Peter S. Goodman and Akiko Kashiwagi Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 19, 2003 OSAKA, Japan -- By the time Akiyo Nishihira squatted on the tracks with her husband and her elderly brother in the path of an oncoming train, the loan shark had been calling nightly, demanding payment and sometimes threatening to kill her. He had been calling the takeout lunch stand where she worked, and the factory where her husband mopped floors. Calling her neighbors, profanely insisting that they must pay in her place. "Every night, I am scared of the telephone. My husband and my brother feel sympathetic and have decided to die with me," Nishihira wrote to a neighbor from whom she had borrowed more than $2,000. She applied neat Japanese script to her pink, lined stationery, then wrote the address in calligraphy. "I cannot pay you the remainder. Please forgive me, truly. I cannot apologize enough. I will apologize with my death." The triple suicide last month at a rail crossing in Osaka, Japan's second-largest city, has riveted public attention on the increasingly widespread crime of loan-sharking -- usurious lending, at annual interest rates in excess of 6,000 percent. Such predatory finance has grown dramatically during Japan's years of economic malaise, fueled by spiraling debt loads and the expansion of organized crime syndicates into the lucrative trade, according to police and lawyers who handle such cases. For such lending to be happening at all in Japan seems perverse. Over the past several years, the central bank has cut interest rates effectively to zero in a bid to revive the world's second-largest economy. Growing reliance on loan sharks highlights how millions of households have fallen so desperately into debt that they have been left out of this low-interest bonanza. Personal bankruptcies have quadrupled over the past decade as wages have fallen, bonuses have been cut and businesses have closed their doors. Many households have such poor credit that no legitimate lender will extend a loan, yet they are suffering such a crunch that they are willing to take on absurd rates of interest to stave off collapse. Last year, more than 122,000 Japanese -- more than 11/2 times as many as in 2001 -- called authorities for help after borrowing money from loan sharks or turned up on customer lists when police raided lending operations, according to the National Police Agency. Experts estimate that the real number of victims exceeds 1 million, with most failing to report cases out of fear and embarrassment. In Tokyo, more than 900 people ran away from jobs and families last year to escape the terror of collections by loan sharks, according to city police. The fear reflects who is involved. Roughly one-fourth of the lenders are linked to violent crime syndicates known as yakuza, according to the National Police Agency, but a Tokyo-based lawyer who heads a group that advises victims of loan sharks nationwide, Kenji Utsunomiya, puts the number far higher. "They are behind the scene," he said. The triple suicide in Osaka on June 14 has injected urgency into the debate over a bill in Japan's legislature, the Diet, that would tighten the registration process for lenders while imposing penalties of up to $1 million on anyone caught exceeding legal interest rates. The proposed law would also increase the maximum prison sentence from three to five years. Police in major cities, including Tokyo and Osaka, have established task forces to investigate and prosecute violators. Loan sharks have become the last resort for a society already saturated with legal lending institutions for those with bad credit. "Consumer lenders," who dispense cash using automatic teller machines, can approve loans within an hour by telephone, with the interest capped at 29 percent. As wages have fallen in Japan in recent years, consumer lenders have proliferated in every city, and are advertised on subway placards, in tabloid newspapers and on tissue packs handed out by touts on the street. Once a borrower defaults on payments to a consumer lender, his name lands on a blacklist that circulates among other such institutions. The lists are then sold covertly to loan shark operations and shared among them, according to police and lawyers. The loan sharks also comb lists of personal bankruptcies published by the government, adding to their databases. They use these lists to target people in need. The typical pitch is by phone. "Someone calls, and they say, 'It looks like you're in a difficult situation,' " said Yoshino Yamazaki, who advises victims at a center in Saitama, an industrial enclave north of Tokyo. " 'Wouldn't you be interested in borrowing?' " The head of a construction company in Saitama said he began getting mail, daily phone calls and visits from men dressed like bankers after he had trouble making the payments on a loan from a finance company. At first he demurred. But when a building project was delayed in February, crimping his cash flow at the same time that he needed to buy materials, he gave in. He visited the office of the men who had come to see him. "When I opened the door, I immediately sensed that this was not a normal office," he said, speaking on condition he not be named for fear of retribution. Many of the men inside had shaved heads, and wore flashy silk shirts and Rolex watches. The touted rate during the pitch had been 29 percent, he said. Now, they changed the terms, offering a loan of about $4,000 to be paid back in two weeks with $1,000 tacked on as interest. He declined and began to get up to leave. Three men stood over him insisting that he "compromise," he said, adding: "I was scared. And I needed the money." An hour later, he had affixed his name stamp -- the Japanese equivalent of a signature -- to a stack of papers authorizing the $4,000 loan with $500 in interest to be paid back after two weeks. He had also handed over his telephone numbers and those of friends and relatives to serve as guarantors. When he was unable to fully pay off the debt, the loan shark activated clauses in the contracts authorizing new lending on tougher terms. Other loan sharks began calling him to solicit new loans just as the old ones expired. With no other way to pay on schedule, he submitted. According to the lawyers who handle such cases, this is typical fare. Loan sharks act in collusion, sharing data on customers and targeting the most vulnerable for new loans. Eventually, the interest due grows so high that even compliant borrowers cannot keep up. Once-sympathetic phone callers quickly turn malevolent, making threats of bodily harm and warning of disclosures to neighbors and relatives. Police and lawyers could not recall a case of actual violence being dispensed, but men dressed like gangsters sometimes visit people to sow fear, they said. The construction chief said he received phone calls and faxes at work and at home threatening to tell his parents and friends about his troubles. One night, after midnight, he was awakened by a telegram delivered to his door demanding payment. It came in a shiny black box with a flower, the typical packaging for a note of condolence. In June, he sought help at the Saitama center and was advised that the law prescribes debt forgiveness after the principal is paid back plus the legal amount of interest. He stopped paying. By then he had handed over $9,000, but the loan sharks claimed he still owed $21,000 -- all for an original loan of $4,000. A phone call from a legal aid group on behalf of a victim is generally enough to stop the barrage. Sometimes, as in the case of the construction chief, advocates are even able negotiate settlements in which the loan shark returns money rather than face the prospect of a lawsuit or prosecution. "They don't want to be raided by the police and lose all their customer information," said Toshio Yamazaki, a volunteer at the aid group. "What they are doing is outrageously profitable and they would rather not waste time. They can find numerous other suckers so easily." Osaka, a manufacturing city now suffering as production shifts to China, has proven particularly fertile ground for loan sharks. Nishihira and her husband occupied a ground-floor apartment -- two rooms with tatami mats on the floors -- in a complex constructed by the government in the 1960s for laid-off coal miners. Today, it is all-purpose, low-income housing. White paint peels off rusted railings, underwear hangs from plastic drying racks and grimy mops poke out of kitchen windows. On one side sits a paint factory, on the other an oil refinery. In every direction, the sound of sawing, hammering and clanging fills the air. Nishihira and her husband moved there in 1985, the year they were married. They were already in their fifties and childless. He worked as a janitor and drove her to her job at the takeout stand in their four-door white Nissan sedan with teddy bear seat cushions. She dressed neatly, favored bright colors and spoke formally. On holidays, she handed out origami greeting cards she made herself. But the Nishihiras' quiet routine masked deepening troubles, relatives and neighbors said in interviews. About three years ago, Nishihira's husband, who was 61 when he died, fell at work and had to be hospitalized. After that, he walked with a limp and required constant medical attention. About the same time, he bought the car, despite her opposition. "She felt it was more of an expense than they could handle," recalled their neighbor, Akiko Yamashita. Nishihira's older brother was also not well. Last year, as he turned 80, he was hospitalized with an intestinal problem, according to another brother who lives in a different part of town. Nishihira, who was 69 when she died, was close to her older brother. She helped him pay his bills and often visited him, taking him food. Caring for these two aging men, their medical bills mounting, she began to show strain. Her once round-face became gaunt, neighbors said. Her federally subsidized rent was a mere $150, but she was usually late with it over the past two years, said the complex manager, Yasuyuki Tsuji. "She was very embarrassed," Tsuji said. "She would wait until no one was around to come in and tell me. Usually she came with a note. 'I'm going to pay the rent on such and such a date.' She usually did." He liked her -- one of her greeting cards still hangs above his desk -- and he gave her a break. Nishihira had already maxed out on credit from the consumer lenders when, at the beginning of April, she borrowed 15,000 yen, or about $127, from a loan shark based in Tokyo, according to an officer at the Yao police station in Osaka. She would later go there to report her trouble. On April 22, Nishihira and her husband knocked on the door of their neighbor, Yamashita. They needed money. Nishihira had borrowed relatively small amounts from her before, $150 or so. This time she asked for more than $2,000. "She said she needed it for a car inspection and mentioned that she was also having some trouble with loan sharks," Yamashita said. "I asked her, 'Why are you dealing with these people?' and she said, 'There's no other way.' She was very depressed and worried." Yamashita complied. "I just thought for her to come and plead for money in this way, they must be in an extraordinary situation and I must help." Meanwhile, Nishihira was also borrowing from more than a dozen other loan sharks, in the typical spiral of debt that would lead to her paying out more than $16,000 in interest, according to a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. On May 12, she visited the police station to plead for help. She had already paid out more than $800 in interest on the initial loan, she told the police, but it was not enough. The first loan shark was calling her regularly. The police told her she did not have to pay and later called the loan shark on her behalf, warning that further threats would constitute a crime. On June 9, Nishihira penned her farewell letter to Yamashita. "I have fallen prey to a malicious con man," she wrote. "I'm the most to blame because I'm the one who went to that sort of place." She still owed her friend about $1,300. She included the name and phone number of her husband's job, suggesting some of the money could come out of his final $800 paycheck. The next day, Yamashita received a call from a loan shark in Tokyo who asserted that she was Nishihira's guarantor and had to pay. While she was on the phone, Nishihira came to her door, frantic. She had just gotten off the phone with the loan shark herself, and knew he would be calling her neighbors. She grabbed the receiver. "Why are you calling her?" she screamed into the phone. On the evening of June 13, Nishihira slipped an envelope into the mail slot of the housing complex manager. A letter, plus the previous month's rent in cash, late for the last time. "Dear Mr. Landlord," it read. "I can't pay more than one month. Please forgive me. Thank you for taking care of me." After darkness, Nishihira, her husband and her brother went together to the railroad crossing near the Yao police station. It was five minutes after midnight when they dropped to the ground, pressed themselves together and waited for the train. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho