"I Have No Recollection" — The Institutionalization Mechanism of Political Memory Denial

Knowledge is inseparable from power. Saying "I do not know" can itself be a form of power.

"I have no recollection of that." This phrase recurs in parliamentary testimony and public-records disclosure proceedings in Japan. During the Diet deliberations over the Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen scandals from 2017 to 2018, government officials produced an unbroken string of responses: "I have no memory of that," "I was not aware of it," "I cannot confirm it."

This is not a question of individual memory capacity. It is a structural problem: in certain official settings, the response "I do not know" is institutionally tolerated, and in fact operates as a rational choice. That is the core issue.

McGoey (2012) framed "strategic ignorance" as a matter of the benefits obtained by claiming not to know something, even when one possesses the relevant knowledge. Japan's political "I have no recollection" is the institutionalized form of that strategic ignorance. The problem lies not in individual choice but in the structure that enables organizations to remain in a state of not-knowing.

The Legal Asymmetry Between "Memory" and "Knowledge"

One reason the response "I have no recollection" functions as it does is a legal asymmetry.

Perjury is at issue when one makes a statement contrary to the facts. The response "I have no memory of it" is not a denial of a fact — a statement that "such a thing did not happen" — but rather a declaration of an internal state: "I do not remember it." It is difficult for a third party to objectively disprove an internal state.

This legal character makes "I have no recollection" a low-cost defensive move. The burden of proof shifts to the other side, and the person being questioned can respond in the form "there is nothing to be done if I have no memory of it." This is an epistemically important asymmetry: denying cognition is far harder to refute than denying a fact.

Miranda Fricker (2007) addressed the question of power embedded in "whose testimony is trusted." The denial of political memory is the reverse face of that question — namely, "whose testimony can be denied." The "I have no recollection" of someone in power carries the force to override the "it definitely happened" of someone without power.

Organizational Memory and Individual Memory

Individual memory and organizational memory are distinct things. Even if an individual forgets, an organization should retain records — documents, emails, meeting minutes, exchanges between personnel.

The structure of public records management is what becomes problematic here. As Sugawara has pointed out, Japanese public administration frequently handles important decisions as informal "meeting memos" or verbal confirmations rather than formal records. By not preserving organizational records, the conditions can be created for a later situation in which "there is no record" or "the person in charge does not remember either."

This is not an accidental product. Where a bureaucratic culture has formed around the principle "do not put decisions that might become problems later into writing," the absence of records itself functions as a pre-emptive move to evade accountability. It is not individual memory loss; it is organizational avoidance of record production.

What the Moritomo and Kake Scandals Revealed

The Diet deliberations over the Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen scandals from 2017 onward are important as a case that made this structure visible.

In the Ministry of Finance (Zaimushō) public-documents falsification scandal, more than 300 passages in official approval documents were rewritten. What deserves attention is that the rewriting was carried out not to make something "as if it had never happened" but to prevent "suspicion from arising." The facts were not erased; the path leading to the facts was severed.

This is structurally identical to the "non-adoption" pattern discussed in The Inhibitory Effect of Strategic Ignorance in EBPM. Even when evidence exists, an organizational decision is made not to adopt it. Here, the pathway to the evidence itself was altered.

Functional Analysis of "Remaining in Not-Knowing"

The response "I do not know" in a political context serves at least three functions.

Dispersal of responsibility: If one did not know, one was not involved in the decision. If one was not involved in the decision, one bears no responsibility for the outcome. This creates the conditions for explanations such as "the person in charge acted unilaterally" or "it was standard ministry practice."

Avoidance of prosecution risk: If one knew and made a decision, the correctness of that decision can be called into question. The position of "I did not know" allows one to frame a bad outcome as "I was deceived."

Termination of debate: The response "I cannot confirm it" or "there is no record" places an upper limit on the pursuit of the facts. By foisting the unreasonable demand "prove that something does not exist" onto the other side, the debate can be brought to an end.

The Structure of Parliamentary Questioning About "Memory"

The left column of this table (the questions) represents demands for "epistemic justice"; the right column (the responses) represents the practice of "epistemic obstruction."

Connection to Silence-Structuring

What the analysis of silence-structuring addressed was the mechanism by which, as the cost of dissent rises, "not saying even what one knows" becomes fixed at an organizational scale.

The denial of political memory has a complementary structure. Silence-structuring is the normalization of "not saying"; "I have no recollection" is the institutionalization of "not knowing." If the former closes the exit of information, the latter closes the entrance. Organizationally, the two operate in tandem. In an organization where the silence-structuring principle of "do not bring that kind of talk up to management" is functioning, upper-level officials are structurally guaranteed to remain in a state of not-knowing. "The person in charge who failed to report" takes responsibility while "the manager who did not know" is protected. This is a vertical division of labor in organizational ignorance.

Conditions for Institutionalization

Why does "I have no recollection" recur? Because it "works." That it works means that this response has, in practice, allowed the pursuit of accountability to be evaded.

Three conditions must hold for it to work. First, there must be no means by which an internal state (memory) can be objectively disproven. Second, records must either not exist, or their disclosure can be refused. Third, media and public scrutiny must subside within a certain period.

So long as all three conditions are met, "I have no recollection" remains a rational choice. To counter it, two simultaneous measures are needed: strengthening public records management (guaranteeing that records exist) and making the information-disclosure request system substantively effective (guaranteeing access to records). The problem is not a technical reform but a question of institutional design — one that raises the cost of remaining in a state of not-knowing.

→ Related: What Is Silence-Structuring? | Strategic Ignorance in EBPM | The Monthly Labour Statistics Scandal and State-Level Ignorance