TOKYO – Japanese officials have not ruled out reappointing entrepreneur Joichi Ito to a major government-backed startup initiative, despite fresh scrutiny from newly released U.S. Jeffrey Epstein documents highlighting his past ties to the convicted sex offender, an overseer said Monday.
The 64 billion yen ($430 million) Global Startup Campus Initiative, aimed at creating a Tokyo tech innovation hub with top universities, has tapped Ito since 2024 as an executive adviser and steering committee member. A Sankei newspaper report, citing anonymous sources, claimed Ito, whose term ends this month, would be dropped, but a program official dismissed any final call, speaking anonymously to Reuters.
Ito’s expertise remains “vital,” the official stressed, noting he faces no criminal convictions. Ito, unreachable for comment, has long denied wrongdoing. He quit as MIT Media Lab director in 2019 amid an Epstein funding scandal and now leads Chiba Institute of Technology, which reaffirmed its support last week, insisting he knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes.
The latest U.S. Justice Department release of over 4,000 emails revived questions about Ito’s Epstein contacts, prompting The New York Times to report U.S. and Japanese universities pulling back from the project. Digital Garage, the fintech firm Ito co-founded in the 1990s, announced his retirement as executive officer by March’s end and board director by June.
Japan’s Digital Agency, where Ito sits on another panel, demurred on probes when pressed last week, with Minister Hisashi Matsumoto citing unverified info. The episode tests Ito’s standing in government and academia amid global echoes of Epstein’s network.