Business Notes JAPAN

Three dark-suited men jumped from a car outside a Tokyo hospital last week and disappeared into the building. When they emerged, district prosecutors had arrested silver-haired Hisashi Shinto, 78, the powerful former chairman of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone. Within days, Takashi Kato, a former Vice Minister of Labor, was also taken into custody by authorities.

The detentions marked a fresh turn in the Recruit scandal, the spreading stock-for-influence deal that has already claimed three Cabinet ministers in the government of Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita. Shinto stands accused of taking $70,000 in bribes in the form of stock profits from heavily discounted shares of a Recruit Co. subsidiary. In return, the former NTT boss allegedly helped the fast-growing employment-and-communications firm break into the telecommunications business.

The Recruit affair has put intense pressure on the Takeshita government, whose popularity is at a record low of 21% in the polls. Opposition parties have called for the Prime Minister to resign unless he acts soon to clear up the scandal. Says one pundit: "Takeshita is in a real fix."