Japanese Money Politics

...Allen's error was that he could not quite get over the greed of a consultant after a buck, regardless of the source...

...ago, and he saw a likely way to capitalize on the friendship by purveying his services to Japanese business interests impressed with his "contacts" in Washington...

...President Nixon when he met Tanaka in Honolulu had urged him to do what he could about facilitating the sales of Lockheed aircraft in Japan...

...But more of them thought that Americans were silly to regard the acceptance of a gift as a major crime while all manner of criminals were out there making the streets unsafe for walking, much less democracy...

...If most American officials presumably are not so naive as to accept "payments" for magazine interviews and then forget about them in their office safes, an assortment of professors, consultants and businessmen remain in the employ of Japanese firms anxious to combat anti-Japanese sentiment...

...The recipient of the gift from the magazine is National Security Adviser Richard Allen, of course, cleared of any "wrongdoing" in the matter by the Justice Department but not yet back on the job because the White House ostensibly wants to determine whether he committed any other peccadilloes...

...To some Japanese, quoted in the national newspapers, the official furor raised by Allen's acceptance of a mere gift showed deep American morality, as compared with the insatiable desires of their own rulers...

...to buy them...

...Japanese ministers are customarily presented in movies as rather unattractive, hypocritical buffoons...

...A small irony is that Takase's most celebrated connection was the Toyota Motor Company, which owns his consulting firm through a subsidiary and paid him to introduce top executives to Allen, who received $100,000 a year as a consultant for Toyota's rival, Nissan, until late in Reagan's Presidential campaign...

...Allen, it will be recalled, had to drop Nissan after the Wall Street Journal exposed the relationship several days before the election...

...How long will the Japanese tolerate the spectacle of Tanaka exercising such influence over their government...

...He had, after all, regarded himself as "a friend" of Allen's ever since they studied together at Stanford's Hoover Institution more than 20 years Donald Kirk regularly reports for The New Leader on Japanese affairs...

...The implications of the Allen case go beyond mere introductions and kind words...

...Far better to let a few corrupt ministers and politicians play their own game while the rest of the people play theirs-that of turning out the goods and earning the profits that have made Japan possibly the foremost bastion of capitalism, the U.S...

...THE ALLEN AND TANAKA SCANDALS Japanese Money Politics BY DONALD KIRK RICHARD V. ALLEN Tokyo Take $2.2 million from an American aircraft company, and if you are a Japanese official you may be a national hero...

...With the LDP president automatically assured of election as prime minister by the LDP majority in the lower house of the Diet, Tanaka is in the position of being the kingmaker of Japan...

...It was going to be one company or another, so why not take all the money that could be squeezed from the greedy Lockheed officials who so desperately wanted to make a sale...

...Tanaka needed those planes, and neither Japan Air Lines nor the Self-Defence Force had anywhere to turn but the U.S...

...Suzuki named several of Tanaka's allies to Cabinet posts as well, giving him more influence in the government than his arch-enemy Takeo Fukuda, likewise a former prime minister and leader of another faction in the Diet...

...The answer is that he will probably be a major power for the rest of his life, even if he is convicted and goes to jail, for he has manipulated and bought off the allies he needs to insure his place as a behind-the-scenes wire-puller...

...The payoff to Allen, moreover, was but the most publicized of a multitude of efforts on the part of Japanese to buy American friendships-to purchase good will in a period of increasingly bitter recriminations over the huge trade inequities between the two countries, and the growing irritation resulting from Japan's refusal to agree to a major step-up in defense spending...

...The man who got the outsized Lockheed bribe, if we may believe the prosecutors who have been pressing the case against him since 1976, is former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who still controls the largest single faction in the lower house of the Diet, or Parliament, and may be the strongest politician in Japan...

...Nikaido's appointment was all the more remarkable since he, too, had been smeared by Lockheed-prosecutors believed he had accepted Lockheed funds, but in the end decided against pressing the charge...

...Suzuki, in his usual utterly bland, dull and clever way, explained simply that Nikaido evidently had "rehabilitated" himself and was doubtless thinking over the significance of the protest against his appointment...

...Tanaka's faction will almost certainly back Suzuki, as it did when Tanaka agreed on Suzuki as a compromise candidate to succeed Masayoshi Ohira following Ohira's death in June of last year...

...The fact that the Japanese go on year after year electing the LDP as the ruling party indicates the togetherness of this society...

...The difference in the responses to the Tanaka and Allen scandals reflects more than dissimilarities between "systems" and "values...

...Allen, in contrast, represented a pipeline into the White House for Japanese business interests anxious to keep the United States from adopting protectionist measures in the form of tariffs or quotas...

...In fact, the White House scandal probably would not have made front-page news here had it not been for the Japanese angle...

...Thus perhaps Allen's offense really was worse than that of Tanaka, especially in view of his relationship with a Japanese professor named Tamotsu Takase...

...For all the joking about the characters in charge, few Japanese want to upset the status quo and jeopardize the peaceful, prosperous way of life to which they have become accustomed over the past generation...

...included...

...The verdict on Osano-who is now going through the appeals process-was particularly significant because it was the first one in the Lockheed scandal, and an index of the fate awaiting Tanaka...

...Fukuda's faction had an equal number of Cabinet seats, but had no one to match Nikaido in the party hierarchy...

...And at the age of 76, Fukuda is getting a bit too old to be a serious challenge even by the standards of Japanese leaders (Nikaido is 72 and Suzuki is 70...

...It also happened that Allen's problems surfaced at the very moment that Tanaka appeared to be losing some of his prestige...

...Still, to the majority of Japanese the recent reshuffling of the Cabinet was "just a newspaper story"-one of those events that captures the headlines and excites reporters for some strange reason, but leaves readers totally bored...

...In any event, the court is not expected to rule on his case until late next year-possibly after the regular election for president of the LDP in December...

...A victory by the distant second-ranking Japan Socialist Party appears totally out of the question...

...Take $1,000 from a Japanese magazine, and if you are an American official you could be a criminal...

...Fukuda would disagree, yet Tanaka in alliance with Suzuki appears invincible...

...Money politics" is the name of Tanaka's game, and he apparently played it with his usual acumen, for Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki was sufficiently impressed by Tanaka's strength and the need for his enduring friendship to name his sidekick, Susumi Nikaido, as secretary-general of the LDP...

...The Japanese are not uncritical of the corrupt power-juggling system that has dominated their country since the end of the War...

...The conflicting ironies of the two situations were never so sharply limned as during the past few weeks...

...Takase is also the one who gave Allen a gift of three watches valued at $405 last January, when he was arranging the interview of Nancy Reagan for Shufu-no-tomo magazine, and the pro-fessor served as interpreter during the interview...

...Warm over Allen's sentiments, and you might have him whispering sweet words of "understanding" for "forbearance" into the ears of President Reagan at a key juncture-say, in talks on holding down automobile exports...

...No sooner did Tanaka's star fall, though, than it rose again with the reshuffle of Cabinet ministers and leaders of the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) at the end of November...

...It was Professor Takase, commuting back and forth from his job on the faculty of Kyoto Industrial University to his post as managing director of a business consulting firm in Tokyo, who was most anxious to retain Allen's good will...

...The ultimate point is that Japanese interests, were they able to keep on with the gift-giving on polite visits to the White House, could in a subtle way work up sources of information that in other countries might, less politely, be labeled as "spying...

...Often they bear a peculiar resemblance to Tanaka, and are given to handing out bagfuls of yen to their subordinates while cuddling mistresses in their lavish offices...

...He seemed to have lost out when one of his closest confederates, Kenji Osano, an enormously wealthy businessman, was actually found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison for having lied to the Diet about his knowledge of the Lockheed case...