Word: takeshita
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...constant stream of fresh disclosures, overshadowed only briefly by the death and funeral of Emperor Hirohito, has proved costly for Takeshita. Last week the popularity rating of the Takeshita Cabinet hovered around 10%, a postwar low. The Prime Minister's fall from public grace comes only partly from outrage over Recruit. The Japanese also bitterly resent a new 3% national consumption tax, part of a reform package that will eventually reduce taxes. In several recent local elections, these issues have badly hurt the L.D.P., which has been in power continuously since the party's formation in 1955. No less partisan...
Aides and relatives of Takeshita and his predecessor, former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, are known to have purchased shares of Recruit Cosmos -- 12,000 and 29,000 respectively. Both men deny personal involvement. Those transactions, Takeshita declared last week, were "their personal dealings, not mine...
...While Takeshita maintains that he did not profit from stock deals, he did finally acknowledge receiving from Recruit sizable gifts in other forms. The Prime Minister conceded that in 1986 and 1987 the company donated $259,000 to his political organizations. He also admitted that Recruit bought more than $570,000 worth of tickets to two fund-raisers held for him in Tokyo and Iwate prefecture in May 1987. Such contributions are not illegal, but these may have exceeded legal limits imposed after the Tanaka scandal...
Japan is no different from other industrialized countries in permitting individual and corporate contributions to politicians, parties and causes. But the amounts allowed in Japanese politics are large by any measure, and the system has long tentacles. Takeshita, like other L.D.P. faction leaders, used the huge sums he raised to aid the political careers of lower-ranking members in his faction...
...expected to ante up for their constituents at weddings, funerals and other rites of passage. A survey of 89 Diet members by the daily Asahi Shimbun showed that each spent about $4,200 a month on an average of seven weddings and 27 funerals. Thus, despite the call by Takeshita and others for campaign-financing reform, University of Tokyo political scientist Takashi Inoguchi remains pessimistic. Says he: "How can we carry out reforms when even the voters are getting money...