Why Japanese break the law

The scandal at Nomura Securities, the subject of this month’s cover story, carries an important lesson for anyone dealing with Japan. Japanese financial institutions have a very different attitude to the law than do their western counterparts. Not to put a finer point on it, they have little moral compunction about breaking the law when it suits them.

That sounds a serious charge. But it goes some way to explain why Nomura, less than two years after it was caught illegally paying off sokaiya – gangsters who threaten to disturb annual shareholders’ meetings – was doing exactly the same thing again.