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New Roles for Takeshita and Japan
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12072 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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12 / 1987 |
1,462 Words |
| Author
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Tetsuya Kataoka
Tetsuya Kataoka is a research fellow at the Hoover
Institution at Stanford University. |
On October 20, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chose Noboru Takeshita to succeed Yasuhiro Nakasone. He will serve a two-year term as party leader and, hence, prime minister. Now secretary-general of the LDP, the 62-year-old Takeshita is a former finance minister and a veteran of government and party politics within a system that requires a protracted period of grooming and apprenticeship. Takeshita is also part of the generation of "new leaders"; not because he is young, but because he belongs to the third generation of political leaders since World War II.
A graduate of Waseda University, a private school in Tokyo, Takeshita taught high school in his hometown in Shimane Prefecture in southern Japan before serving several terms as prefectural assemblyman. He ran successfully for the Diet under the auspices of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and remained Tanaka's faithful soldier until last year.
Tanaka was a wizard at party politics and he played the game with consummate skill, gambler's instincts, and unstinting use of money. "Money is power," he would say unabashedly, but it also proved his undoing when he ran afoul of the law in the Lockheed bribery scandal. While appealing the lower court's verdict, Tanaka could not run for Prime Minister. Instead he became the "Shadow Shogun," or kingmaker, controlling some 140 Diet members in his faction. Using that chunk of votes, he consecutively appointed Masayoshi Ohira, Zenko Suzuki, and Yasuhiro Nakasone - all members of factions other than his own - as prime minister. He did this to keep his own lieutenant from becoming prime minister for fear this action would herald the passing of power to a new generation. That lieutenant was
... (1968 of 8985 Characters)
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