Carlos Ghosn’s lawyer says Japan is back to the bad old days when the country was closed to foreigners

THE lawyer of fallen Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn today declared his harsh treatment heralded the grim return of “Japan Inc”, the post-war system where the country was closed to foreigners and the rest of the business world.

As Japan prepares to welcome world leaders at the G20 summit in Osaka this week, Takashi Takano contrasted the treatment of French citizen Ghosn and his lieutenant Greg Kelly with that of the company’s chief executive Hiroto Saikawa.

Saikawa is said by Kelly’s defence to have approved many of the incidents under investigation. Ghosn was arrested and detained in solitary confinement for 130 days for alleged financial misconduct, often being questioned with no right to a lawyer, unlike Japanese national Saikawa.

“One uncomfortable but obvious difference is that Ghosn and Kelly are Western executives and Saikawa is not,” he wrote in the English-language Japan Today.

“It gives me no joy to issue this warning: Japan Inc has returned.”

Japan Inc is widely blamed for creating the inflexible economic conditions that led to the extreme and lengthy recession in the 1990s, known as the lost decade.