JAPANESE SHOPKEEPERS have had an exceptionally busy few days. As they see it, every last trace of Takafumi Horie must be removed from their shelves, or all hell could break loose.

It’s no small task. Such was the profile of the spiky-haired tycoon, arrested last week for fraud, that there are plenty of products to eradicate. From books to clothes to board games to the seditious little bottles of Horienajii caffeine drinks, everything must go. Like any good Stalinist airbrusher, the stores are concerned about the public interest. The mere presence of the games or drinks could spur other would-be young capitalists to challenge the system as vigorously — and as perhaps illegally — as their icon.

Japanese in their twenties and thirties, blogging for all they were worth, have protested vehemently. For most Japanese over 40, removing all visible trace of the subversive Horie is exactly the right thing to do. The extraordinarily divisive power of the 33-year-old, even as he languishes in a tiny Tokyo police detention cell, is stronger than any that Japanese society has known for decades.

He has done worse than divide young and old. He has flaunted his wealth in a way that Japanese tradition abhors and, by drawing other winners of the “new economy” to live in the same part of town as he does, has inflamed a snobbery of geography within Tokyo. In a country that defines itself by the concept of wa, or harmony, Horie has pitted the high-flyers against the drones, change against order, individuals against the mass. He has exposed the makings of class war in a supposedly classless society.

Now the country, still devouring Horie-related tabloid exposés, is waiting to see whether it was all done within the law. The charges against Horie, which he denies, are serious and suggest that he built Livedoor, his giant (but now rapidly shrinking) internet conglomerate, by sharp practice and outright deception. For a nation ill at ease with the full implications of shareholder capitalism, his rise and fall are the rotten fruits of the Wall Street orchard. Even without hindsight, the downfall of Horie was likely. The chilling phrase “the nail that sticks up will be hammered down” has tripped off Japanese tongues for a long, long time.

It is tempting to exaggerate what Horie actually achieved. He failed to buy a professional baseball team, failed to take over a huge TV company and failed to win a seat as MP for Hiroshima. But when youngsters started imitating the neologisms of “Horie-speak” it was clear that his challenges were simply too big, too bold and too numerous for the Establishment to let him get away with them. And even in the eyes of older business leaders who might conceivably have cheered him on, Horie’s unapologetic love of money stripped his attempts to slay sacred cows of any moral worth. In the words of one senior political analyst: “He made the wrong friends and the right enemies.”

Few listened at the time, but a speech by Motonari Otsuru, manager of the special investigation department of the Tokyo prosecutors’ office last April, suggested that Horie’s arrest should have seemed inevitable. “I want to expose those cases that will enrage Japanese who live by the sweat of their brow, people out of work as a result of corporate restructuring, and people who stick to the law even when they know they could get rich by breaking it,” he said.

The antics of Horie and Otsuru’s partisan rhetoric have blasted open cracks that Japan has been papering over since the 1960s. They set up a clash — long ignored by most Japanese who choose to believe that everyone is part of a giant middle class — between rich and poor, blue and white-collar work, “honest” and “dishonest” money.

At its heart, the Horie phenomenon has challenged the Japanese to question not only their role in society, but also whether that society’s driving principle of consensus is still valid. The ranks of the powerful Keidanren business lobby may have decried Horie’s Livedoor as just a money-making vehicle, but it has not convincingly articulated to the young generation why this is wrong.

Unwittingly, Horie’s internet company and his energetic pursuit of greater market valuation exposed the colossal Japanese economy for what it is: nervous about industries that do not make things or involve people running around in uniforms. It’s an old national neurosis, but a potent one.

The idea of a company and a boss only in business to make a quick buck is a challenge to the Japan Inc ideal. Before the non-tie-wearing Horie was flaunting his success on every TV programme and magazine cover, people were happy to believe that hard work was fairly rewarded and companies could mostly be relied upon to have society’s interests somewhere on their priority list. Horie’s demonstration that you can get the actress girlfriend, the fast car, the luxury pad and the private jet all at the age of 33 by share-splits, off-market deals and 40 takeover bids in two years upsets all that.

If he has run his affairs illegally it is a great pity. His catalytic, modernising value will be forgotten and few Japanese will have the nerve to recognise the rifts he exposed. Normally Horie would be sharing his views on all this on his blog which was, until two weeks ago, the best-read in the country. But he is the father of Japan blogs no more. When he arrived in his cell, he asked a defiantly cheeky question to which he, the whole of Japan and his jailer knew the answer. “Does this room have internet?”

Leo Lewis is Tokyo correspondent

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