It was Wednesday when a coast guard officer dropped a bombshell on his skipper and sparked a national sensation.
The 43-year-old chief navigator of the patrol ship Uranami, stationed in Kobe, reportedly admitted he posted video clips on the Internet showing a Chinese trawler ramming Japanese patrol craft off the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, shaking the Cabinet to the core.
The leak of the videos of the Sept. 7 collisions has raised two critical questions for the government and investigators: should he be punished for leaking what the government believes is " secret," and how can the government properly manage information in the age of the Internet?