Kōki Ishii/石井 紘基 was a Japanese politician, socialist and victim of a highly suspicious assassination.
Life
Born during World War II and the fall of the Japanese Empire, Kōki graduated from university with a law degree and moved to the USSR for 6 years in the 1960s. Upon returning to Japan, he became a socialist politician and moved between various political parties.
He began to lead several commissions exposing government corruption, and discovered how there are around 3,000 companies in Japan that had been bribing the government and that around 2 trillion yen (in 2000 Japanese money, akin to $20 billion in 2019 USD), he argued that corruption was so entrenched in Japanese politics that exposing it would trigger the collapse of the government.
Murder
On the 25th of October, 2002, Kōki was stabbed to death by Ito Hakusui, a Yamaguchi-gumi gangster. Ito escaped down the road covered in blood in broad daylight and fled to the mountains without being noticed, but surrendered himself the next day. Ito said he killed Ishii because Ishii refused to pay a bribe. However, other theories have been proposed.
Theory #1: Government Assassination
Some of the evidence that the government was behind the assassination include:
- A journalist, his wife and staff claimed Kōki said he had "discovered something terrible".
- The day of his death he was due to announce his findings to the Japanese government.
- Reporters had been informed of the assassinations a full day before it happened.
- Documents were missing from his briefcase that he had taken with him.
- The killer claimed he was hired to perform the murder but didn't say by who.
- The police investigation did not swab for finerprints.
- His diary went missing mysteriously after the murder.