Overview
- Shizuoka district prosecutors, who filed the case Monday, charged Maki Takakubo with violating the Local Autonomy Law and with forging and using a sealed private document in an indictment filed while she remains free.
- The indictment says she obtained the Toyo University president’s and a faculty head’s seals from an online maker, stamped a fake graduation certificate, and showed it at the city office on June 4, 2025.
- Prosecutors also allege she told a city council inquiry on August 13, 2025, that she first learned of her removal from the university register on June 28 even though she already knew she had not graduated.
- Police had questioned her voluntarily, she denied falsifying her credentials, she refused to hand over the certificate, and officers searched her home before sending the case to prosecutors.
- Takakubo won the mayor’s race in May 2025 after listing Toyo University as her highest education, a July disclosure showed she had been removed from the register, the council later twice passed no‑confidence votes that cost her the job, and she lost the December election; the council’s special inquiry panel, known as a Hyakujō Committee, can compel testimony and its leaders filed the complaints that set the probe in motion.