This Thursday a strikingly similar scene will play out. Barring last-minute glitches, Takeshita will testify before Japan’s Parliament about his alleged role in the latest of Tokyo’s unending skein of political scandals, the Sagawa Kyubin affair. His cooperation is part of a deal struck last week between the LDP and the opposition that guarantees passage of critical budget legislation. This time Takeshita’s political career may be on the line.
With public outrage in Japan still mounting over the scandal–which among other things has linked LDP politicians with prominent members of organized crime–opposition parties are trying to force Takeshita’s resignation from his Diet seat, just as they forced out Shin Kanemaru, titular chairman of Takeshita’s faction, late last month. Kanemaru admitted accepting $4 million in donations from Hiroyasu Watanabe, president of Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin Co., a large parcel-delivery firm with reputed ties to Japan’s mob. Kanemaru had fervently hoped his resignation would quell the brewing storm.
It didn’t, and that has severe consequences for Japan and the world. The former prime minister’s reported involvement in Japan’s latest scandals has only deepened public cynicism toward the ruling party. Bickering between the LDP and the opposition over whether Takeshita would testify delayed action on a critical public-spending measure designed to breathe life into Japan’s gasping economy. Moreover, in the past the United States has often dealt behind the scenes with senior Takeshita faction members on trade issues. “They had the clout within the party to get unpopular things done when it counted,” says one U.S. diplomat. “Now it’s not clear who fills that role, and that’s a problem.”
Takeshita is ensnared in Sagawa Kyubin as a result of his successful 1987 bid to become prime minister in a tight three-way race. Before he was named president of the LDP–tantamount to becoming prime minister–a small right-wing party with alleged links to organized crime began protesting his imminent ascendance. The Japanese Party of Imperial Subjects sent vans loaded with loud public-address systems around Tokyo to blare sarcastic praise of Takeshita–a tactic known as home goroshi, or “praise to kill.”
LDP leaders got the message. According to testimony earlier this month from Ryumin Oshima, leader of the group, no fewer than seven of them tried to get the sound trucks off the streets. He asserts that a party official representing Kanemaru offered $24.3 million for them to shut up. Another top LDP official subsequently offered $16.2 million, Oshima claims. (LDP officials deny both allegations.) According to Tokyo prosecutors, Kanemaru eventually went to Sagawa Kyubin’s Watanabe and asked a favor: could he get someone in the underworld to intervene with the right-wingers? Watanabe could, and apparently did. The praise-to-kill campaign fell silent. Takeshita became prime minister.
Now prosecutors and opposition politicians want to know why Takeshita and other LDP heavyweights cared about such a small-time group. Published reports say the group may have implicated Takeshita in banking irregularities. Potentially the most devastating allegation is that Takeshita himself met with a notorious organized-crime kingpin in 1987, presumably to solicit aid in getting the right-wingers to back off. Kanemaru himself has acknowledged that there is far more to the story than has yet emerged. “What is really important,” he admitted in a recent letter to supporters, “is that there were forces which set the group on [Takeshita] behind the scenes.” Will the identity of those “forces” emerge this week? Few political analysts bet on it. In addition to Takeshita’s testimony in Parliament, Kanemaru is to give a sworn statement from a Tokyo hospital, where he was conveniently admitted last week for treatment of an eye problem. “The party would rather have Kanemaru stay in the hospital, knowing that he tends to spill out the truth,” says one LDP source. “Whereas, Takeshita is an expert at talking a lot but not saying anything.” Even so, the former prime minister will have to watch his words. “If it looks like he perjured himself in any way, forget it,” says one Tokyo political analyst with ties to a rival LDP faction.
Even if, for the time being, Takeshita manages to keep his Diet seat, his power has ebbed significantly. The scandal has already sundered his faction. Last week Kanemaru’s protege among the rising generation of LDP leaders, Ichiro Ozawa, called a meeting of Takeshita faction members hellbent on splitting off. Increasingly, younger legislators in the LDP say they want nothing to do with anyone tainted by Sagawa Kyubin. “If the elections were held anytime soon, being an LDP member and especially a member of the Takeshita faction would work as a disadvantage,” says Yukio Hatoyama, a 45-year-old Diet man in the Takeshita faction.
How much more damage Sagawa Kyubin may do is not yet clear. It is, one Tokyo political analyst put it, “like a tornado”: it could yet blow down the whole house, or it could blow out to sea, having changed just the face of Japanese politics, not the substance. Which is more likely may be apparent after Noboru Takeshita, with an entire nation watching, faces the klieg lights, cameras and questions one more time.
