Hiromu Kurokawa

Hiromu Kurokawa is one of those figures who'd have stayed completely invisible to the public — a career prosecutor, Tokyo University pedigree, the kind of bureaucrat who operates entirely out of sight — except he managed to implode in the most absurdly mundane way possible: playing mahjong with newspaper reporters while Japan was in a COVID state of emergency in 2020. What makes it stick isn't just the hypocrisy (he was the man the Abe administration had controversially extended past mandatory retirement age, bending cabinet rules to keep him on a path to become Prosecutor General), it's that his poker-faced institutional career collapsed over tile games and cab fare that journalists paid on his behalf. The whole episode became a flashpoint for debates about press coziness with power and political interference in the judiciary that Japan still hasn't fully reckoned with. A footnote in the end, but a telling one.

Hiromu Kurokawa (born February 8, 1957) is a Japanese prosecutor who built his career within Japan's public prosecution service. He graduated from the University of Tokyo and rose to senior positions in the Japanese legal establishment. He drew widespread public attention in 2020 when a government cabinet order extended his tenure as Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office chief, sparking constitutional debate over prosecutorial independence. His career ended abruptly in May 2020 after he admitted to playing mahjong for money during the COVID-19 state of emergency, and he resigned.

Name (English)

Hiromu Kurokawa

Name (Japanese)

黒川弘務

Reading

くろかわ ひろむ

Born

February 8, 1957 (age 69)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Rooster (酉)

Origin

Japan

Occupation

Prosecutor

University

University of Tokyo

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%BB%92%E5%B7%9D%E5%BC%98%E5%8B%99

Tags

• Prosecutor

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.