The End Of Japan's `godfather'

The Age

Friday October 16, 1992

TOM ORMONDE

The disgraced kingmaker of Japan's political world has quit, but the sleaze and corruption is likely to continue. TOM ORMONDE reports from Tokyo.

IF HE hadn't been Japan's most powerful politician, Shin Kanemaru would easily have passed for a yakuza crime boss, with his puckered face, snake eyes and gangland crew-cut.

His language is the type you might expect to hear in dark alleys of Tokyo where gangs run illicit sex houses and intimidate people. The other trait Mr Kanemaru shares with Tokyo mob chiefs is getting around town in the back of a big black Mercedes.

There may be deeper reasons, too, why the Japanese media nicknamed this legendary political fixer ``The Don".

Mr Kanemaru has been the unrivalled backroom chief of the ruling Liberal Democrats (being free, evidently, to select Japanese prime ministers at his own pleasure and order them around) and has cultivated contacts in opposition parties and is said to have befriended top crime figures _ the men he seemed to mimic _ to fortify his political power.

Japan's system of government, like Australia's, is called a parliamentary democracy. Shin Kanemaru helps us appreciate the fundamental differences.

Like his predecessors, Mr Kanemaru earned his stripes by being an excellent bagman and manipulator. An ability to raise obscene sums of money to buy and trade influence still remains the decisive criterion for promotion in Japanese politics, ahead of intellectual calibre. It is not hard to see how criminal friends could advance a career.

As the ``shadow shogun" _ the power behind the throne in the world's second richest nation _ Mr Kanemaru got too important to be left out of anyone's political calculations. President Bush rolled out the red carpet for him when he visited the United States this year.

But Shin Kanemaru's underworld links finally caught up with him this week, bringing his career to an effective end. The 78-year-old godfather of politics was hounded into an early retirement by unrelenting public anger over his role in a financial scandal and dealings with the mob.

His fellow powerbroker, Mr Noboru Takeshita, also seems endangered by the scandal, raising the possibility of Japanese politics losing its two main players in one hit.

It is widely assumed Mr Kanemaru is already a spent force, though you could never be sure. A struggle for succession among younger ruling party bagmen is underway. The new men will carry expectations and hopes of the Japanese public for serious reforms to attack political corruption at the core, to bring Japan's third world political system into line with its first world economy.

If previous scandals are a guide, the Japanese public should not count on promises from politicians to fix the system. Just over three years after the Cabinet of Mr Takeshita had to resign over the Recruit payoffs affair, another scandal is paralysing Japanese decision-makers when the world is looking to them for leaderhip. This fiasco differs from the previous in many ways, most notably in the yakuza factor.

It is not new for Japanese politicians to be fraternising with gangsters. Since long before World War II, good relations with yakuza have often been considered useful by Japanese businesses and politicians with the odd nasty job to do. Continued courtship of gangs serves to underline the enduring role of intimidation in Japanese society.

Few Japanese politicians have appreciated and harnessed the power of intimidation better than Shin Kanemaru. Reports of his use of gangsters for political ends dates back at least to 1987, when he was still on the rise and was backing Mr Takeshita's ultimately successful bid to be Prime Minister.

According to prosecutors, Mr Kanemaru sought the help of Susumu Ishii, head of the Inagawa-kai crime syndicate, to silence a right-wing group campaigning against Mr Takeshita.

The rightists, seeking to damn the candidate with their praise, had been broadcasting sarcastic pro-Takeshita messages at high volume from mobile sound trucks around the offices of ruling party Diet members who were to select the PM. The yakuza boss is said to have brokered an end to the harassment campaign, which in turn marked the beginning of a close association with Mr Kanemaru that lasted until Ishii died last year.

The first contact with the crime chief came through a man called Hiroyasu Watanabe. Mr Kanemaru probably wishes now he had never met this man, who was a wildly ambitious president of an express courier company called Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin. Today he is the central figure in the scandal which forced Mr Kanemaru to quit and which may yet cut short Mr Kiichi Miyazawa's term as Prime Minister.

The courier company was bankrupted by its president's mad quest for favor in political and crime worlds, into which he pumped hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, loans and loan guarantees. A month ago Mr Kanemaru publicly admitted receipt of a 500million yen ($A5.7million) ``donation" _ more than 300 times the legal limit.

He resigned as ruling party vice-president to show he was sorry, and shut himself inside his Tokyo mansion for the month of September, waiting for prosecutors and the Japanese public to leave him alone.

The prosecutors obliged, abandoning plans to cross-examine Mr Kanemaru and summarily fining him 200,000 yen ($A2300) for violating Japan's Political Funds law. But public anger exploded on a scale rarely seen in this normally passive society, with protests centring on the meagre penalty and the favorable treatment of Mr Kanemaru.

By the time he emerged from hiding and showed up for work earlier this month to resume duties as a faction chief, most of the country and a large number of MPs from his own party had turned against him. The great fixer and kingmaker, the man who routinely showed contempt for democracy, was finally shamed into retirement by the will of the people.

While public pressure for more action remains, prosecutors have given mixed signals about their determination, or lack of it, to pursue others caught in the Sagawa net _ and about whether to lay bribery charges, which are difficult to sustain.

Speculation that the scandal may lapse soon is also fuelled by a conspicuous lack of vigilance from opposition parties, which are said to have dirty money recipients in their own ranks.

The strength of public opinion may yet push Japan's politicians into making a brave start on reform, which is essential if this country wants to be taken more seriously as a global political leader.

In the absence of drastic change, the Japanese politicians are destined to remain utterly preoccupied with their pathetic business of raising cash and trading favors, leaving important policy detail in the hands of the faceless, unelected bureaucrats as usual.

© 1992 The Age

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