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Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike (Photo by Naoki Nishimura/AFLO SPORT)<by Ryo Kuroki>
Ever since the incumbent Governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike became a Member of Parliament in 1992, rumors have been circulating that Koike embellished her academic credentials.
Koike claims to have graduated from Cairo University but if an Arabic speaker listens to her Arabic, her published academic credentials as a Cairo University graduate seems more than dubious.
There are strong evidence about her fake academic credentials such as testimony by the flatmate supported by documentary evidence, Koike's self-contradictory statement in her book to have graduated in four years despite failing her first year, her rudimentary Arabic, her lie about the graduation thesis and her stubbornness in refusing to submit her graduation documents to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly.
Feeling a sense of duty as someone who learnt Arabic and graduated from an Egyptian university (MA, Middle East Studies from the American University in Cairo), I decided to investigate the allegations. After two years of investigation, I could not find any evidence, nor even the slightest hint that Koike graduated from Cairo University.
In this six-part article, I present the results of my investigation in detail.Here is the second part of it;
No graduation thesis required at Cairo University, says Koike
In judging the veracity of Koike's academic credentials, the graduation thesis and her fluency in Arabic are both very important. Taeko Ishii, author of "Fake CV", asked Koike about the subject of her graduation thesis. Koike’s response given through her lawyer was that "There was no requirement for graduation thesis at Cairo University at that time". She repeated the same answer clearly at the sessions of Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on 9 and 24 March this year.
In both Japan and Egypt, the requirement for graduation thesis varies by department and faculty. Yoshiharu Ogasawara, Professor Emeritus at Daito Bunka University, who graduated from the Department of Arabic in the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University in 1973 wrote his graduation thesis in Arabic and submitted it to the faculty for examination. On the other hand, two Japanese graduates of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science whom I met were not required to write graduation thesis and an Egyptian accountant who graduated from the Faculty of Commerce in 2003 was not required to do so, either.
I visited the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University in September 2018 to find out whether the department requires graduation thesis with my Egyptian research assistant. Their answer was that "In the Department of Sociology, graduation thesis was required in 1976 and that still remains the case today."
