Kaku-san paid cashIT WAS a favourite boast of the late Kakuei Tanaka, a former leader of Japan, that he won his first cabinet job in 1957 by giving the then prime minister, Nobusuke Kishi, a small backpack filled with ¥3m (perhaps $70,000 in today’s money). As Tanaka’s stature in Japanese politics grew, so did the size of his bribes: eventually he needed large metal suitcases. Two years after he resigned as prime minister in 1974, following accusations of dodgy property deals, he was arrested for pocketing $1.8m in bribes ($8.7m today) from America’s Lockheed Corporation, a defence contractor.
Forty years on, Japan is gripped by nostalgia for Kaku-san, as he is fondly known. A slew of recent books and articles lionise him. In this year’s “Genius”, a bestselling book about Tanaka written in the first person, as if he were still alive and doling out construction contracts, Shintaro Ishihara, a retired right-wing politician and former Tokyo governor, argues that politicos nowadays just lack his class. Others praise his common touch and ability to get things done: he was known as “the bulldozer with a...Continue reading
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