A Charity’s Checkered Past

In 1939, Sasakawa used one of them to fly to Rome, where he met Mussolini. Years later, he expressed regret about not meeting another European leader at that time: “Hitler sent me a cable asking me to wait for him, but unfortunately I didn’t have time.”

The problem after the war was that the American occupiers in Japan badly needed the extreme right to counter the leftist movement, which was growing strong in the late 1940s. So, in 1948, Sasakawa, Kodama and Kishi were all released and allowed to rebuild their former organizations.

A meeting in Burma of the Global Alliance for the Elimimnation of Leprosy was funded by the Nippon Foundation

Kodama took care of the yakuza, while Kishi became prime minister—and Sasakawa, through his powerful connections, secured a monopoly on the only legally permitted gambling in Japan at the time: motorboat racing. As a result, Sasakawa became immensely wealthy—and continued to back various extreme right-wing causes. In 1974, Time magazine quoted Sasakawa as saying, “I’m the world’s wealthiest fascist.”

At home in Japan, he supported rightist organizations with links to the yakuza: the Zen-Nihon Aikokusha Dantai Kaigi, or the “All Japan Federation of Patriotic Organizations,” and the Seinan Shisho Kenkyu Kai, the curiously named “Youth Ideology Research Organization.”

Internationally, he was linked to the World Anti-Communist League, which brought together Asian rightists, an array of Latin American fascists including Pastor Coronel, the chief of Paraguay’s dreaded secret police, members of Croatia’s Ustasha movement which had collaborated with Germany and Italy during the war, former Iron Guards from Romania, Ukrainian Nazis and former members of various US intelligence agencies.

And, then the charities. All the money was, of course, taken from unlucky Japanese gamblers, but it was Sasakawa who basked in fame and publicity. His children continue to reap praise for distributing funds which are not their own—and the board of trustees of the Nippon Foundation still includes Yukio Kageyama and Toshio Takeuchi, prominent members of the Japan Motorboat Racing Association.

Sasakawa’s special relationship with Burma is no coincidence. It was established when Gen Ne Win was in power, and he had been trained by the Japanese secret police, the Kempetai, during World War II. Today, Sasakawa’s foundations are apparently comfortable dealing with the Burmese junta—which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the origin and background of what must be two of the world’s most curious set of “charitable foundations.”

Bertil Lintner, a journalist who specializes in Asian politics and culture, lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand