TOKYO (TR) — Fifty years after the Lockheed bribery scandal erupted into Japan’s greatest postwar political crime, a former close aide to disgraced Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka is claiming that “hidden forces” manufactured the crisis to obliterate his political power.
Keiichi Konaga, 95, a former Vice-Minister of International Trade and Industry who served as Tanaka’s executive secretary, recently spoke out about the scandal that led to the legendary politician’s arrest and spectacular downfall.
“When the scandal broke, I instinctively felt that some hidden forces were at work to strip Tanaka of his political power,” Konaga says to weekly tabloid Shukan Post (May 8-15). “At the time, Tanaka was invincible. No one domestically could oppose him. Then, an arrow flew in from America. I still suspect there was a hidden motive, and I still wonder who really fired that arrow.”
Eliminate a political threat
Following the revelation of the massive bribery network, the Japanese media fiercely turned on Tanaka, and public opinion plummeted. However, Konaga suggests the scandal was perfectly timed to eliminate a political threat.
According to the former aide, Tanaka had a fierce ambition to return to the premiership, backed by immense public popularity following his normalization of diplomatic relations with China and sweeping domestic infrastructure projects.
“If he returned as Prime Minister, it would have been a long-term administration,” Konaga notes. “There may have been people who thought, ‘If Tanaka comes back, my turn will never come.'”
As the gatekeeper at Tanaka’s sprawling Mejiro estate, Konaga managed a dizzying daily schedule, fielding roughly 20 petitions every morning in rapid three-minute intervals. While he admits executives from Marubeni — the Japanese trading house deeply implicated in funneling the bribes — visited the residence, he firmly denies any presence of Lockheed Corporation.
Alerted political landscape
Konaga further deflected Tanaka’s direct involvement in the scandal, stating he never contacted the Transport Ministry regarding aircraft procurement on Tanaka’s behalf, insisting the controversial deal was strictly a private transaction between All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Lockheed.
The Lockheed scandal forever altered Japan’s political and judicial landscape, but Konaga argues the ultimate victim was the nation’s future.
Tanaka’s master plan for Japan involved aggressive decentralization, utilizing bullet trains and highways to redistribute industry away from Tokyo and back into the countryside.
“Today, the decline of rural areas is staggering, and regional revitalization is a major political issue, but Tanaka was tackling that half a century ago,” Konaga laments. “If the Lockheed scandal hadn’t happened and his vision was realized, the current state of regional decline, and perhaps even Japan’s declining birthrate and aging population, might be completely different today.”
