A Vote for Strong Leadership

By George Russell

The new Prime Minister: decisive, agile and pro-American

In a country famed for its advanced technology, the vote-counting ceremony in Tokyo last week had a strangely archaic flavor. White-jacketed party workers carried cardboard boxes full of ballots across the floor of the city's cavernous harbor-front International Trade Fair exhibition hall. They tallied 974,150 mail-in votes by hand, then stuffed the ballots into green plastic baskets for a final scrutiny by election referees. Finally came the announcement that 58% of the members of the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party (L.D.P.) had picked Yasuhiro Nakasone, 64, to succeed Zenko Suzuki, 71, as their president. When, two days later, the choice was confirmed in a vote of Japan's Diet (parliament), where 421 L.D.P. members form a majority, Nakasone automatically became Prime Minister. Said Nakasone: "Confronted with the times, the nation expressed its need for strong leadership."

Nakasone's predecessor was never known for that quality. Suzuki, a compromise candidate chosen after the sudden death of Masayoshi Ohira in 1980, had developed an embarrassing reputation for indecision and incompetence. Although Nakasone (pronounced nock-ah-so-nay) will not deviate from the free-enterprise, pro-Western policies of his predecessors, he comes equipped with a solid understanding of defense and economics, two of the most pressing issues on his agenda. A seasoned administrator who has held five Cabinet posts over the past 23 years, Nakasone is, perhaps most important, a decisive and agile politician who knows what he wants and how to get it.

The vote underlined a fundamental reality of politics in the right-of-center party that has ruled Japan without interruption since 1955. Winning the Liberal-Democratic leadership is seldom, if ever, a matter of personal popularity. Instead, victory requires the support of powerful backroom leaders who personally control significant factions in the party's parliamentary group. Nakasone's candidacy was supported by the two most prominent factional chieftains in the Diet: Suzuki and former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, 64, who retains his influence in the L.D.P. despite the fact that he faces a court verdict next year on charges related to the 1975 Lockheed bribery scandal.

The machine-style politics of the Liberal-Democrats has been a source of party strength over the years, but lately internecine squabbling has paralyzed the institution. Suzuki held on to power by saying, and doing, virtually nothing. Finally, when faced with such growing problems as a rising budget deficit, Western displeasure with Japanese trade surpluses and the need to prune a mushrooming government bureaucracy, Suzuki announced in October that he would resign as soon as a successor could be named.

The new Prime Minister is cast in a very different mold. The son of a wealthy lumber dealer, he served as a naval paymaster in The Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) and Formosa (now Taiwan) during World War II. For a few years after the war he was so embittered that he insisted on always wearing a black tie, since "every Japanese should be in mourning." But in the early '60s, Nakasone was deeply impressed by the political style of the late Robert F Kennedy, from whom he picked up the very un-Japanese habit of shaking hands with everyone he meets.

Nakasone summed up his current attitude toward the U.S. for TIME last week. Said he: "The most important thing is to have close and human relations between the two leaders of our countries." On mutual defense matters Nakasone was even more cordial. The U.S., he said, "is the lance, and the role of Japan is the role of the shield. The U.S. and Japan must complement each other in defense."

Nakasone was first elected to the lower house of the Diet in 1947. In 1959 he joined the Cabinet as director-general of Japan's Science and Technology Agency and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Later he broadened his experience by heading both the Defense Agency and the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Says a U.S. diplomat based in Tokyo: "Nakasone is one of the few Japanese who understands the seriousness of the problems we face in trade and defense. He is likely to confront them in a forthright manner."

Married, with three grown children, the Liberal-Democrat leader is considered to be one of the most cosmopolitan and widely traveled members of his party. He plays golf (handicap 22) and dabbles in oil painting. His taste for things Western includes a penchant for breakfasts of boiled eggs and tea with milk at his comfortable home on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Despite his pleasant, outgoing personality, Nakasone has drawn surprisingly sharp criticism from some of his fellow politicians. His nickname is Weathervane, because of his habit over the years of shifting allegiances between competing party factions. He is also handicapped by his close ties to the tainted Tanaka. At week's end Nakasone appointed no fewer than seven Tanaka supporters to his 21-member Cabinet. In 1972 Nakasone threatened to sue a Japanese magazine after it charged that he accepted a $2.3 million bribe from Tanaka in exchange for political support. The court action failed to materialize. The charge was resurrected in the press, but without much impact, during the latest leadership campaign. Nonetheless, notes one veteran Japanese political observer of the scandal, "it's the scar on his shin."

Nakasone's first priority will be to attack the problems that Suzuki neglected. Just last week U.S. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige warned that the Japanese would be "mistaken if they think the U.S. is going to be a paper tiger" in their complaints about Japanese trade barriers. Nakasone's room to maneuver on trade issues is limited by a slowdown in the normally explosive Japanese economy: next year the gross national product may grow by only 3.3%, after 2.5% growth in 1982. Nakasone must also walk a fine line between U.S. pressure to make his country increase its defense commitments on the Pacific Rim and fears among Japan's neighbors of a reawakened Japanese militarism. Facing these challenges, Nakasone will have little time to demonstrate that he is, as he has promised, the strong leader Japan needs.

--By George Russell. Reported by S. Chang and Edwin M. Reingold/Tokyo

With reporting by S. Chang, Edwin M. Reingold/Tokyo

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