High Court Orders Japan, Tokyo Govts to Compensate over Probe

Jiji Press

16:53 JST, May 28, 2025

Tokyo, May 28 (Jiji Press)—Tokyo High Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling ordering the Japanese and Tokyo metropolitan governments to pay about ¥166 million in damages over investigations into a case against spray-dryer maker Ohkawara Kakohki Co.

Teruyoshi Ota, presiding judge at the high court, backed the December 2023 ruling by Tokyo District Court that found the investigations by the Metropolitan Police Department and the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office into the company over its alleged improper exports illegal.

The plaintiffs are the company based in Yokohama, near Tokyo, CEO Masaaki Okawara, 76, former executive Junji Shimada, 72, and the family of former adviser Shizuo Aishima, who died at the age of 72 in February 2021 after being found to have stomach cancer while being detained.

In 2020, Okawara, Shimada and Aishima were indicted on charges of illegally exporting a spray dryer that might be repurposed to make biological weapons.. The charges were withdrawn the following year.

In the trial at the high court, the company side argued that the police had the industry ministry distort its interpretation of export control standards, citing as new evidence memos of the investigations and testimonies by investigators.

The central and Tokyo metropolitan governments claimed that the authorities had investigated the case according to the interpretation of the ministry from the beginning and that there was nothing unreasonable in their judgments, including the indictments against the three.