Zap!You'reFrozen
2005-01-20, 10:33 AM
I recently picked up the book "Kakuei Tanaka: A Political Biography of Modern Japan" by Steven Hunziker and Ikuro Kamimura. GREAT BOOK! Not only is it a wonderful biography of postwar Japan's most colourful and controversial politician, but also serves as an excellent guide to the history and structure of Japan's byzantine ruling party, and how Tanaka manoeuvred brilliantly within it, playing factions against each other, and maintaining a powerful influence even after his arrest for his role in the 1976 ANA-Lockheed scandal. The book explains in a very smooth and well-organized manner the history and makeup of the LDP's various factions, Tanaka's bewildering array of financial backers, and the sordid details of the scandal that was to be his undoing. It also tells the compelling story of how he rose from poverty in rural Niigata-ken armed with only an elementary school education to become a self-made millionaire and young maverick parliamentarian lionized by his rural constituents.
Unlike most of the books out there on Japanese politics which tend to be dry and weighed down by facts and figures, the Hunziker-Kamimura book is an entertaining and compelling read, crammed with political cartoons lampooning the late Jiminto godfather. Published in 1996, the books leaves off with Tanaka's death and the LDP's collapse in the mid-1990s, well before the likes of Obuchi and Koizumi emerged to salvage the beleaguered party. More than any book I have read on Japanese politics, this one portrays Tanaka and Japan's other PMs (notably Sato, Nakasone, and Takeshita) as individuals with their own distinct agendas and idiosyncracies rather than simply cogs in the ruling party machine. It shows Tanaka's legacy as a highly mixed bag: on the one hand it argues that he was very successful at spreading the benefits of economic development to rural areas previously ignored by the politicians and bureaucrats in Nagatacho, and that Japan's remarkably even distribution of wealth bears his stamp; but on the other hand that his legacy of porkbarrel politics and intra-party factionalism continues to cripple Japanese politics to this day - and that his ghost continues to haunt the LDP through the Hashimoto faction.
Unfortunately, it would seem that the book is currently out of print. Nevertheless, I highly recommend seeking it out second-hand or in libraries.
Unlike most of the books out there on Japanese politics which tend to be dry and weighed down by facts and figures, the Hunziker-Kamimura book is an entertaining and compelling read, crammed with political cartoons lampooning the late Jiminto godfather. Published in 1996, the books leaves off with Tanaka's death and the LDP's collapse in the mid-1990s, well before the likes of Obuchi and Koizumi emerged to salvage the beleaguered party. More than any book I have read on Japanese politics, this one portrays Tanaka and Japan's other PMs (notably Sato, Nakasone, and Takeshita) as individuals with their own distinct agendas and idiosyncracies rather than simply cogs in the ruling party machine. It shows Tanaka's legacy as a highly mixed bag: on the one hand it argues that he was very successful at spreading the benefits of economic development to rural areas previously ignored by the politicians and bureaucrats in Nagatacho, and that Japan's remarkably even distribution of wealth bears his stamp; but on the other hand that his legacy of porkbarrel politics and intra-party factionalism continues to cripple Japanese politics to this day - and that his ghost continues to haunt the LDP through the Hashimoto faction.
Unfortunately, it would seem that the book is currently out of print. Nevertheless, I highly recommend seeking it out second-hand or in libraries.