Kakuei Tanaka
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Kakuei Tanaka (Kanji: 田中角栄, Hiragana:たなか かくえい, Tanaka Kakuei) was a Japanese politician who was the Prime Minister of Japan from 1972 to 1974. He was the most influential figure in Japanese politics during the 1970s after winning a power struggle with the much weaker Takeo Fukuda, he was also a central figure in many political scandals that had taken place throughout the early-1970s to the mid 1980s. He was also considered a "Shadow Shogun" a title that was currently used to describe Ichiro Ozawa.
Biography edit
Kakuei Tanaka was born on 4 May, 1918 in the Niigata (present day Kashiwazaki & Niigata) to a farming family, he had 7 siblings but he was the only son who survived into adulthood. He dropped out of school at just only 15 years old and he was later drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1939, in which he would be serving with for 2 years from 1939 to 1941 under the rank of Superior Private.
After the war, he joined politics in the early 1950s, becoming a member of the newly formed Liberal Democratic Party. He would gain support from a group faction known as the Etsuzankai and would even meet them individually and provide them a tour of both the Diet Building and the Imperial Palace which would further make him look more gangster-like.
Despite his lack of seniority from the time, he would still be able to gain immense support due to his relatives coming in contact with people related to the then Prime Ministers Nobusuke Kishi, Eisaku Sato, and Hayato Ikeda. Prime Minister Ikeda would even hire him as the Minister of Finance in 1962. Tanaka's time as Finance Minister would result in high growth in the Japanese economy.
In 1965, when Tanaka was serving under Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, he was going to be promoted to becoming the Secretary-General of the LDP but the Black Mist scandal emerged which resulted with another party member Takeo Fukuda taking the office instead. Tanaka would even lose his job as the Minister of Finance the following year. This would result in the decades long rivalry in the Sato government with the two battling each other over who would replace Sato. He would eventually become the Secretary-General in 1968 until he became the Minister of the International Trade in 1971.
In 1972 when aging Sato resigned from the premiership he initially wanted Takeo Fukuda to succeed him and become the new prime minister but with the support of two politicans (both future prime ministers) Masayoshi Ohira and the much younger Yasuhiro Nakasone, Tanaka would become the new prime minister defeating Fukuda 282 by 190.
By this time, with the UN resolution 2758 passed a year ago in 1971, Prime Minister Tanaka would become notable for establishing relations with People's Republic of China by meeting with its leaders Mao Zedong and his 2nd in command Zhou Enlai discussing matters such as the Senkaku Islands. The meeting took place in just merely 2 months after he took office. And in terms of relations with the US (led by Richard Nixon at the time), he would even play a role in the repatriation of Okinawa.
In 1974, a magazine had revealed that Tanaka had profited off of companies purchasing remote lands before announcing it to the public which hints at corruption but the action wasn't illegal, but the magazine would inspire rivals to investigate into him even more. It was also revealed that prior to his premiership, he used a Geisha's identity to do shady deals during the 1960s. But because of the reveal of two shady stories, He would eventually resign from the premiership in November with his resignation speech read by his Chief Cabinet Secretary (and another future prime minister) Noboru Takeshita. After his resignation, he would be replaced by Takeo Miki as prime minister with Miki promising for a "clean government". Despite no longer being the prime minister, the scandals continued to keep coming throughout his later years as former prime minister.
Two years later in 1976, the Lockheed scandal would re-emerge resulting in the now former prime minister Tanaka getting arrested as a result of the scandal. It was revealed that when he was prime minister in 1972, he accepted a $1.8 million dollar bribe from a company to purchase a Lockheed L-1011 aricraft. Prime Minister Miki went to the diet and tried to push for more details of the scandal while US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger didn't want to reveal any information about the scandal fearing the damage it could cause to the US-Japan relations. Tanaka would be released a month later in August by a 200 million yen bail. Ironically, the scandal and his arrest did not put an end to his political influence or his career as his faction had 70-80 member at the time of his arrest which would grow to 100 members by 1981. Despite still being on trial, he's still has the power within the party and is able to continue influencing the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership while on trial at the same time for the remainder of the 1970s.
In retaliation to Miki's actions, he persuaded many members of his faction to support his old rival Fukuda in an attempt to depose Miki in the 1976 Japanese general election in which even though Miki won the election as prime minister, he was forced to resign from both his party leadership and his premiership after the election resulting with Takeo Fukuda becoming prime minister right at the end of 1976. But unfortunately, the partnership between Tanaka and Fukuda wouldn't last however, in 1978, he rallied behind Masayoshi Ohira to depose Takeo Fukuda which results in Fukuda losing the party leadership causing him to resign from office. Ohira eventually died in two years later in 1980, and was replaced by Zenko Suzuki. Just like Ohira before him, members of the Tanaka faction also elected Suzuki into the prime minister office, but Suzuki would also resign from office another two years later in 1982.
When Yasuhiro Nakasone ran for the LDP leadership in November that same year, Tanaka along with members of his faction (just like with Ohira and Suzuki before) supported Nakasone's election to the party leadership. But however, when Nakasone became prime minister, many opponent began to believe that Nakasone was controlled by Tanaka, even going as far as calling his government the "Tanakasone" cabinet.
The Lockheed trials would eventually end in 1983, with former Prime Minister Tanaka being found guilty and sentenced to 4 years behind bars. Tanaka would refuse the sentence and called for an appeal citing that he will not leave the diet seat as long as he has supporters. This resulted with a war in the Diet weather or not to remove Tanaka from his seat. Prime Minister Nakasone would eventually dissolve the diet and call for another election in order to distance his party from Tanaka. After the 1983 Japanese general election which saw Nakasone re-elected as Prime Minister, Tanaka is able to retain his seat and Nakasone ironically appointed six members from Tanaka's faction into his government (one of them being former Noboru Takeshita who would eventually become Nakasone's successor as prime minister). Takeshita would become prime minister after Nakasone's resignation in November of 1987. Takeshita himself would be involved with his own scandal in 1989 (recruit scandal) resulting with his own resignation in June of that same year.
Tanaka is still able to retain his seat after the 1986 Japanese general election, but by this time, Takeshita formed his own faction and it constitutes 113 of the 143 members of the Tanaka faction. Many other politicians from the faction would also defect from Tanaka and incorporate themselves into the newly formed Takeshita faction, politicians such as Ichiro Ozawa, Kozo Watanabe, Tsutomu Hata, Ryutaro Hashimoto, and Keizo Obuchi. with Hata, Hashimoto, and Obuchi becoming prime ministers in the 1990s.
Kakuei Tanaka died in 1993 at the age of 75. His daughter Makiko Tanaka would take over his seat in the diet and become Foreign Minister in 2001 under the government of Junichiro Koizumi. She would eventually get fired from her position in January 2002.