Public gripped by trial as actress becomes latest celebrity to be shamed

For almost three months now, a single story has dominated Japan’s domestic news agenda. August’s landmark general election, which resulted in the country’s first substantial change of government for more than half a century, turned out to be a brief and minor diversion from the ongoing case of Noriko Sakai, the pop singer and actress who was arrested on drugs charges earlier the same month.

Accused of possessing illegal “stimulants” and of using them with her husband on a family holiday in July, Ms Sakai publicly confessed and apologised as soon as she was released on bail on September 17.

Standing in front of the Tokyo Daiba District police station, wiping away tears and bowing to the assembled reporters, she said: “I was defeated by my own weakness and caused grief to many people. I must correct myself.”

Many had not yet heard nearly enough and almost 7000 people lined up outside the courthouse on the first day of Ms Sakai’s trial two weeks ago, hoping to secure by lottery one of only 20 seats in the public gallery. She pled guilty and her sentence will be delivered tomorrow. If the prosecution has its way, as it usually does in Japan, this former teen starlet, now a 39-year-old mother, will face 18 months in prison.

The specifics of the case were melodramatic from the beginning. After arousing suspicion in a public bathroom on August 2, Ms Sakai’s husband Yuichi Takaso was stopped and searched by police, who found small quantities of the aforementioned “stimulants”. Under questioning, he admitted that he and his wife, despite now living separately, were recreational drug users. Another small quantity – 0.008 grams – was discovered at Ms Sakai’s apartment.

There followed a few days of public panic and excitement, as Ms Sakai suddenly disappeared with her 10-year-old-son, before eventually turning herself in. While admitting her own culpability, Ms Sakai blamed Mr Takaso for introducing her to Kakusezai, a form of amphetamine that now accounts for the majority of drug arrests in Japan.

Mr Takaso, in turn, identified an Iranian dealer, known only as “Anthony”, who supposedly sold him the stuff and who so far remains at large. By Western standards, drugs are not common in this country, where a pitiless justice system enforces a zero tolerance policy. The accused are generally presumed guilty, tried without jury, and ultimately convicted in 95% of criminal cases.

According to the Tokyo-based Drug Abuse Prevention Centre, the use and abuse of Kakusezai is much less widespread than it was during the Second World War, when it was called Hiropon and inhaled by arms factory workers to ward off fatigue. Black market sales from post-war stockpiles led to a mid-1950s peak of 55,000 arrests, as compared to just over 12,000 in 2007.

Even so, marijuana and ecstasy are now widespread enough for a recent survey to show that one in three students at Osaka’s Kansai University know where to get them, and Ms Sakai is not the first celebrity to be caught this year.

Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, a singer with the ageing boy band Smap, was arrested in April for sitting naked and intoxicated in a Tokyo park, thus destroying his squeaky-clean reputation, although he also gained some new fans by reportedly asking police officers “What’s wrong with being naked?”

And just days before the news about Ms Sakai broke, the actor and rock star Manabu Oshiro was found to have taken ecstasy in a Tokyo apartment with a woman who later died at the scene. Though Mr Oshiro’s case is ostensibly much more serious, it has received less media attention.

“Most normal people in Japan assume showbusiness people take drugs,” says Shima Kobayashi, a student and avid viewer of Ms Sakai’s TV show Hitotsu Yare No Shita (Under The Same Roof).

“I think the media have made a big deal over Noriko because she has a family and she just doesn’t look like she would take drugs. I don’t think that young people really care about that, but I do think they should get some proper education about drugs. All the government tells them is: ‘dame’ [don’t].”

Yoshikazu Umamori, a former drug user in his early 40s, agrees there is a generation gap in attitudes to this issue. “Even this new government is mostly old men,” he says.

“They don’t know or don’t remember how easy it was to get drugs in the 1980s when the economy was booming. It’s harder now and the government has bigger problems, but they’re using press attention on this case to look tough.”

Given her contrition, the media has eased off Ms Sakai and devoted more column inches to the Russian, African and Middle-Eastern drug dealers of Tokyo’s Roppongi entertainment district, adding a xenophobic edge to their newly enthusiastic coverage of Japan’s limited drug trade.

Some foreigners have taken offence at this, while others take it as a joke, as displayed by a new T-shirt slogan that quotes the sumo wrestler Wakanoho, who was arrested for cannabis ­possession earlier this year. “Some foreigner sold it to me in Roppongi,” it says.