Certainly accounting scandals are bad. I am sure there are shenanigans being done by quite a few Japanese companies.

That said, activist investors, the root cause, are a plague. Generally they want to boost short term profit at the expense of the longer-term. They are generally not interested in investing in the future rather cost cutting. Certainly most large companies could do with more efficient allocation of spending, but the US / western drive for short-term shareholder value is anathema to the good of the company longer term.