Higashi-Ikebukuro runaway car accident

Standard police practice in Japan is to arrest suspects of crime at the time they are apprehended; and standard journalistic practice in Japan is to refer to suspects in a case with the noun "suspect" (容疑者, yogisha) suffixed to their surname, and without the usual honorific suffix of "san" or "sama".　However, Iizuka was not arrested at the scene, or anytime thereafter, and was referred to in police reports and in the press as "Iizuka former official" or "Iizuka-san" rather than "Iizuka suspect." This led to criticism that Iizuka was being given special treatment because, being a retired senior bureaucrat, he was considered a "high-class citizen" (上級国民, joukyu kokumin).[15]

Investigators of the accident said that he was not arrested because he was also an injured party and was admitted to hospital. This meant that his case did not fulfil the requirement for arrest stipulated by the Rules of Criminal Procedure, which is that there be grounds for fearing that he might flee and/or destroy evidence. The investigators claimed that they had not established that he was an ex-bureaucrat until some time after the accident, and that online criticism of them was incorrect.[16]

Regarding the use of honorifics suffixed to Iizuka's name, instead of the usual suffix "suspect," the Asashi Shimbun newspaper explained it saying that it was "to convey that [Iizuka] was a public servant with social influence",[17] and the Nishi Nippon Shinbun said that it reflected their "clear rule that people not yet arrested should be referred to using an honorific suffix or their work-related title."[18]

It is noted that following referral of the case to prosecutors on 12 November 2019, some media organs began referring to Iizuka as "the suspect, Iizuka" (Iizuka-yogisha).[19] Professor Yutaka Ōishi of Keio University said regarding the debate over Iizuka's title in the media: "I believe that criticism has been mounting based on the view that has taken hold that the police and the mass media have come together to protect the man [i.e., Iizuka] because he is a former bureaucrat."[20]

The author, Akira Tachibana, commented as follows: "Saying that there is no need to arrest [Iizuka] because he does not satisfy the stipulation that there be grounds for fearing that he might flee and/or destroy evidence is what human rights lawyers have long asserted. Yet, most arrests are made without giving any recognition to this protestation by such lawyers. Thus, in this case, one can only wonder what it was in this case that led to the snap decision to deem arrest unnecessary.[21]

The treatment which Iizuka received gave rise to the popular term "high-class citizen," which was nominated for that year's "'You Can' New Word/Popular Phrase Prize."[22] "High class citizen" was also selected by Shogakukan publishing house as the "Word of the Month" for May for its Daijisen dictionary. Furthermore, "high class citizen" received the third highest number of nominations for the "2019 Prize for New Phrase Selected by Daijisen."[23]

In analyzing the reactions to the incident, Toyo Keizai commentator Atsushi Manabe writes that Iizuka's words and actions after the accident "added fuel to the fire", and as a result the case represents to people how unapologetic liars and coldblooded psychopaths succeed more than regular honest people, which goes against the zeitgeist of the common people. This "victory of brazen shamelessness" represents a loss of morals, and this is why people feel disgust and anger at it.[24][25][26]

Manabe also writes that to many people, the case represents how Japanese law no longer functions as it should, with criminals being able to get away with their crimes by using their privileged positions in society.[27]

Attention was also brought to Iizuka's Japanese Wikipedia article, which goes in-depth into his accomplishments, but has no mention of the incident. A small group of users constantly removed edits regarding the incident, before finally protecting the article so that nobody else could edit it. When brought up on the article's talk page, they cited this as being "the result of discussion by the community". Though the topic has been brought up multiple times since, with twelve of the thirteen topics on the talk page as of 8 October 2020 questioning the decision, all such attempts at discussion were answered with the same users saying that the topic has already been discussed and decided upon by "the community".[28]

The problems with the Wikipedia article were widely discussed on social media, and subsequently reported on by the Japanese news media, primarily by smaller web-based media, but also by some major outlets such as Asahi Shimbun, which questioned the decision of the Wikipedia users.　As of 8 October 2020, the page remains protected with no mention of the incident.[29][30]

It was reported that in the aftermath of the accident, more elderly people voluntarily surrendered their driver licenses.[31] For example, Fuji News Network reported that in the week following the accident, as many as 1,200 people in the Tokyo metropolitan district voluntarily surrendered their licence.[32] Following this, it was reported that, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, in the half-year following the accident, 42,252 people voluntarily surrendered their driving licence, which was 80% more people than for the same period in the preceding year.[33] Iizuka's driving licence was revoked by the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission in May 2019.[34]