was the former owner of the Japanese restaurant "Egawa" in

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

, Japan. At the end of the 1980s, Onoue for a short time handled astronomical sums of investment capital, becoming one of the people symbolizing the Japanese

bubble economy Bubble, Bubbles or The Bubble may refer to: Common uses * Bubble (physics), a globule of one substance in another, usually gas in a liquid ** Soap bubble * Economic bubble, a situation where asset prices are much higher than underlying fundame ...

. In the last stages of the bubble the financing of her stock purchases turned sour and she was arrested, tried and convicted of

fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...

involving financial institutions.

Investment fraud

Onoue's restaurant flourished when she earned a reputation of accurately predicting stock market trends and horse racing outcomes for her customers. With the advent of the bubble her predictions became uncanny, and many customers from security financing and banks visited her restaurant as she became better known as a fortune teller than a restaurant owner. Before long, she personally took large loans from banks and started trading stocks. During the bubble's climax in 1988, she had received loans from financial institutions of 227 billion

yen The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a third reserve currency after the US dollar and the euro. T ...

, held close to 40 billion yen in timed deposits, had made a profit of 4.8 billion yen from stocks, purchased 28.8 billion yen worth of warikō discounted bonds, and paid 5.5 billion yen in interest rates. By the climax of the economic bubble, Onoue had become the largest single investor in all of Japan, as well as one of the world's wealthiest people, with her portfolio having accumulated a worth of $4.4 billion. When the gloom of the bubble became visible, however, her investments suddenly worsened and she acquired astronomical debt. At that point she escalated a fraudulent behaviour that she had been involved in previously: her scam consisted of having bank managers of her acquaintance working at Tōyō Shinyo Kinko bank to issue fake certificates of deposit in her name, which she would present as proof to other financial institutions of her credit worthiness, against which other banks would in turn release securities against which she traded stocks and bonds.
Court sentences Onoue to 12 years for fraud
" ''The Japan Times'', March 2, 1998.Japan: Beyond the End of History by David Williams, 2002 Until her arrest, she fraudulently acquired 342 billion yen from 12 financial institutions, including non-commercial banks. Before long this forgery of securities was discovered, which led to her arrest for fraud on August 13, 1991. The money she borrowed from financial institutions amounted to a total of 2 trillion 773.6 billion yen, with returned payments amounted to a total of 2 trillion 306 billion yen. The bankruptcy proceedings which began after her detention set her total debt at 430 billion yen, the highest ever accumulated by an individual in Japan. In court, Onoue's lawyers hoped to argue that she held no responsibility as she had absolutely no knowledge of stocks and was being manipulated by her surroundings; the defense strategy failed and she was sentenced to 12 years in prison. As a direct result of the fraud, neither of the two banks that handled huge amounts of Onoue's financing exist today. The

Industrial Bank of Japan Industrial Bank of Japan, Limited (IBJ), based in Tokyo, Japan, was one of the largest banks in the world during the latter half of the 20th century. It was established in 1902 as a policy institution or "special bank", similarly as Nippon Kan ...

was consumed in a merger with

Fuji Bank The Yasuda Bank () from 1880 to 1948, then Fuji Bank () from 1948 to 2000, was one of the largest Japanese banks for much of the 20th century, together with Dai-Ichi Bank, Mitsubishi Bank, Mitsui Bank, and Sumitomo Bank. It was the main bank of ...

that created

Mizuho Corporate Bank , or MHCB, was the corporate and investment banking subsidiary of Mizuho Financial Group, the second-biggest Japanese financial services conglomerate, prior to the reintegration of investment banking services under the Mizuho Bank name in July 20 ...

, and the financially failed Tōyō Shinyo Kinko bank partially merged with a number of prefectural credit unions.

Religion

In the end of 1970, according to former high school principal Hiraoka Shizuto, Onoue became a nun at

Mount Kōya is a large temple settlement in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan to the south of Osaka. In the strictest sense, ''Mount Kōya'' is the mountain name ( sangō) of Kongōbu-ji Temple, the ecclesiastical headquarters of the Kōyasan sect of Shingon Bu ...

's Kongōbuji Hōon'in temple and adapted the name of Junkō. Being closely acquainted with the Hiraoka family, she participated on an enlightenment tour to a Buddhist temple in India (Gyume temple), organized by the family. At that time, Onoue donated 20 million yen to the Gyume temple, but the Hiraoka family stresses that they made the donation. On the same tour, Onoue and Hiraoka together met the

Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama (, ; ) is the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is part of the full title "Holiness Knowing Everything Vajradhara Dalai Lama" (圣识一切瓦齐尔达喇达赖喇嘛) given by Altan Khan, the first Shu ...

. After that, Hiraoka invited the Dalai Lama to the Nenbutsu sect's Temple of Immeasurable Happiness.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Onoue, Nui Japanese billionaires Japanese Buddhist nuns Japanese fraudsters Japanese investors Japanese prisoners and detainees Living people Prisoners and detainees of Japan Japanese restaurateurs 20th-century Japanese businesspeople Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century Buddhist nuns 21st-century Buddhist nuns