As the trial of Japan's most famous dot-com entrepreneur opened Monday, a much wider issue was also before the court: the nation's tenuous shift toward a more freewheeling market economy.
Takafumi Horie, 33, founder and former president of Internet startup Livedoor Co., faces charges of securities laws violations in falsifying earnings data to inflate stock prices. He said before the Tokyo District Court on Monday that he was innocent.
But in many ways the Livedoor scandal is more than the story of a cocky technophile. It has far deeper repercussions for the Japanese financial world.