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 Takeshita.
The move up
Takeshita did Tanaka's bidding faithfully and subserviently and waited for the prize. Until the coming of age of the new leaders in LDP politics, a faction was what one built on one's own, as a stepping-stone, to the prime minister's office, and broke up on retirement. Now, the new leader inherits his faction lock, stock, and barrel. Pundits have deplored the fact that LDP leaders are like new chief executive officers appointed by the board to manage business corporations. Takeshita, for example, awaited his chance for at least a decade, during which time he served in all the top party and government positions a prime minister-candidate is expected to have filled.
Takeshita's chance finally came in 1985 when Tanaka was paralyzed by a stroke, but he declared himself leader only halfheartedly because of internal dissent from Susumu Nikaido, another of Tanaka's lieutenants. Takeshita would have bid openly to succeed Nakasone in 1986 if it had not been for the threat of schism in his own faction. Instead, he let Nakasone have a one-year extension. In any event, the Takeshita faction did split, leaving him the larger faction with 118 members.
Takeshita should be good in fund-raising, managing election campaigns, and running Japan's finances. Personally, he is about as attractive as former Prime Minister Suzuki, his chief selling point being sincerity. The only appealing plank in his race was the idea of "hometown" - he wants to turn Japan into a lovable hometown for everyone. Takeshita's Japan would be quintessentially "consensual," with him acting as broker of all factions and bureaucracies,
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