From “Lawfare” to “Jailfare”

A New Tactic of Unrestricted Warfare

Tokyo, Japan, July 27, 2021 -- Fukada Moe, a Japanese journalist and a best-selling author, arrived in the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office with hundreds of supporters waiting outside. She came to the office because she published an investigative report exposing the most successful China People’s Liberation Army (PLA) spy network infiltration into the Japan Congress and Japan Science and Technology Agency. This spy network likely has copied data from Japanese government servers and transmitted it to a China PLA facility in Baoding, Hebei Province. This highly sensitive data includes the most detailed 3D marine maps surrounding Japan that shows all the US naval bases and information related to the satellite communication protocols between the Japan Self Defense Force and the US Indo-Pacific Command.

On July 27, 2021, hundreds of patriotic Japanese gathered at the front of the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office to support Fukada Moe. She has been accused of criminal deformation against a China People’s Liberation Army spy network in Japan by revealing their identities in her articles.

Fukada Moe came to the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office not for the investigation of such a hideous PLA spy network threatening both Japan and the US national security, but for an arraignment of criminal defamation charges against her for publicly calling these people “China spies”. The Tokyo prosecutor, Naoaki Itami, who detained Fukada Moe, not only denied her right to an attorney as she was interrogated without the presence of any legal counsel, but also has not provided any written documents regarding his investigation on her.

Under all these injustices, Fukada Moe now faces a three-year jail sentence imposed by Naoaki Itami, a rare and extremely harsh punishment for a journalist in a free country. Naoaki Itami’s action has angered tens of thousands of patriotic Japanese and has resulted in many of them to walk on the streets in protest for the first time in their lifetimes. “We are here not for politics, but for the welfare of all Japanese. We don’t allow Japan to become the next Hong Kong!” said Mr. Sato, a Fukada Moe supporter.

Many Fukada Moe’s supporters waited more than six hours at the front of the Tokyo Prosecution’s Office until she was released from interrogation close to 6 pm on July 27, 2021. She made a touching speech after the release.

The key person of this spy network is a high-level China PLA official, Yefan Wu (呉也凡). He is a professor at Jingtezhen University and a material scientist with expertise in stealth technology in defense applications. Yefan Wu has close ties to a Chinese top-level military specialist, Longtu Li, who is the head of a specialty group of new materials in China’s State Administration of National Defense Science, Technology, and Industry. Yefan Wu is also an expert for the PLA registered under the China 863 project. Their mission is to develop the DF17, China’s most advanced hypersonic intercontinental nuclear missile, as well as J20/J31 jet fighters, which are China’s counterfeit versions of the US F-35.

Yefan Wu received his Japanese citizenship as Takeo Fujii in 1993 at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing when he was forty years old, two years after Takeo’s father, Osamu Fujii, died in China in 1991. Following that, Yefan Wu’s son, Siguo Wu, became a Japanese citizen in 1995. This act violated Japan’s repatriation law regulating how foreign-born Japanese can reclaim their Japan citizenship. Yefan Wu’s identity card, obtained from a Chinese police department in 2019, shows he is of pure Chinese ethnicity. His grandparents were imperial officers in the Qing Dynasty, which completely contradicts Takeo Fujii’s identity, whose grandfather was an imperial officer to the Japanese Emperor.

After reading Fukada Moe’s investigation report, many patriotic Japanese approached her to learn about the evidence she has gathered. A Japanese congresswoman briefed the late US senator John McCain on the existence of this PLA spy network, and more than 500 Japanese filed criminal complaints against Yefan Wu and Siguo Wu to local police stations after examining Fukada Moe’s evidence. Fukada Moe also submitted 3,000 pages of evidence to the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office detailing the criminal activities committed by the PLA spy network.

On August 5, Naoaki Itami dismissed all charges against the PLA spy network without explanation or any justifiable reason. How can Naoaki Itami ignore 3,000 pages of evidence? How can he also ignore the fact that a US Senator recognized the threats caused by the PLA spy network in Japan and sent a thank you email to Fukada Moe appreciating her investigation?

On August 5, the Tokyo prosecutor, Naoaki Itami, dismissed all charges against the PLA spy network in Japan without explanation or any justifiable reason despite 3,000 pages of incriminating evidence and 500 Japanese filed criminal complaints.

After hearing from Fukada Moe of Naoaki Itamis’s interrogation, a member of her legal counsel team concluded that Naoaki Itami built his case on two assumptions. First, joining the PLA is Japanese right, just like many Japanese joined the US Forces. Second, the statute of limitations for the crime of forging documents is three years. Those Chinese has obtained Japanese citizenship in 1993 and 1995, which by now is way past the statute of limitations for opening an investigation; therefore, the cases against the PLA spy network were all dismissed in spite of the sound evidence.

Does the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office know that China law dictated that only patriotic Chinese citizens can join or serve the PLA?

Japanese law does not allow dual citizenships. Once a Japanese citizen claims a foreign citizenship, that person immediately loses their Japanese citizenship. “It is an unrelated matter,” revealed a person close to the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office. He said the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office doesn’t want to investigate a Japanese citizen who might be an imposer from China because there is not an official channel to verify legal matters with China as there is no legal treaty between Japan and China.

How about the freedom of speech?

Soon after Fukada Moe published her first article regarding what she has discovered about the PLA spy network, she started to receive all kinds of threats. On December 26, 2015, a long nail was put into the tire of Fukada Moe’s car in Ginza, Tokyo when she parked her car for lunch. The nail was well hidden in the inner corner of front left tire. Luckily, or miraculously, Fukada Moe discovered the nail before driving her car on a highway for the next meeting.

An anonymous on-line army that does not show their faces or real names began posting hundreds of daily slanderous and threatening messages against her soon after she published her first article in 2015 revealing the PLA spy network in Japan. Some of those messages are life threatening notes they are going to kidnap, incarcerate, beat, and torture her, her family, and her friends.

An anonymous on-line army that does not show their faces or real names began posting hundreds of daily slanderous messages against her. These posts criticize her as a fraud, a criminal, and a “China Spy,” accompanied by edited pictures and forged documents. Some of these posts are life threatening notes claiming they are going to kidnap, incarcerate, beat, and torture her, her family, and her friends, accompanied with her personal information, such as where she lives and where she has been. Some politicians also joined the charade. Toru Hashimoto, the leader of Japan’s Innovation Party, supported the on-line army with supporting messages.

The Tokyo police detained Fukada Moe to conduct the initial interrogation of a libel complaint in November of 2019. Yusuke Takahashi of the Ushigome police station told her that those people posting slanderous or threatening messages over the Internet against her are just expressing their personal opinions and is protected by freedom of speech. However, Fukada Moe calling someone a Japanese China spy is a crime for she made a public statement of those Japanese as China spies with their true identities. Yusuke Takahashi concluded Fukada Moe has committed a crime because she published information that had not yet being verified as “true and accurate” by Japanese officials.