How Dirt Finally Downed Mr. Clean

Tight-lipped and haggard, Japan's Premier Takeo Miki waded into the TV glare to concede defeat. Acknowledging an "unprecedented crisis of the postwar years," Miki called on his faction-torn Liberal Democratic Party to "accept frankly the judgment of the people" and seek "reform and change." The L.D.P. has little choice. In an election upset with far-ranging implications, 57 million Japanese voters last week dealt the country's ruling party its worst drubbing since it was formed in 1955.

The election increased the strength of four of Japan's five opposition parties in the lower house of the Diet (the other loser: the Communists, who dropped 22 of their 39 seats). The chief beneficiaries of the voter uprising were three moderate reform groups: the Buddhist-backed Komeito (Clean Government Party), the Democratic Socialist Party and the New Liberal Club, a maverick L.D.P. spin-off dedicated to "rehabilitating conservatism."

Good Judgment. What aroused cautious, conservative Japanese voters to overturn two decades of L.D.P. rule, was outrage over the "rokkiido" (Lockheed) scandal, plus concern over inflation (9.7%), pollution and soaring medical, housing and utility costs. Miki's decision to play a reformer's role and expose his own party's involvement in the Lockheed case was not sufficient to save the L.D.P. Confessed Miki, as he watched the votes pour in on television: "I can't help admiring the Japanese people for showing such good judgment."

With just 249 of 511 seats, Miki's Liberal Democrats could patch together a wafer-thin majority of three only after gaining the support of nine independents. Though the L.D.P. will still be able to form a government, its era of uncontested dominance is over. For the first time, it will be forced to woo opposition groups and indulge in parliamentary trade-offs and maneuvers.

The first such maneuver may be the resignation of Premier Miki. Soon after the election, one Miki aide asked rhetorically, "Why do we admire cherry blossoms so much? Because they fall so quickly. When they're still beautiful, still pure, the aesthetic is right. That's why Miki will resign." Miki himself told an associate, "The Japanese sense of grace will not permit me to stay." With that, he withdrew for the weekend to his mountain villa 80 miles west of Tokyo to put the final touches on what is expected to be an unusual combination: an offer to resign tied to demands for reform. These include renunciation of "money politics," an energetic continuation of the Lockheed probe and the election of a successor from the party at large, rather than by L.D.P. Diet members. Without such concessions, Miki could well refuse to resign since he retains considerable support. In that case he might yet survive as Premier or at least remain, in his fashion, a powerful elder statesman.

Miki's attitude typifies his defiance of L.D.P. tradition, a quality that has irritated, affronted and finally outraged party stalwarts. Deceptively mild-mannered, Miki, 69, displayed samurai nerve all year, pressing the Lockheed investigation to the indictment of 19 top businessmen and politicians, including his predecessor as Premier, Kakuei Tanaka. Even as he was acclaimed the "Mr. Clean" of Japanese politics, party leaders tried to dump him for exposing L.D.P. improprieties. Backed in the struggle by public opinion and the press, Miki had hoped for vindication at the polls.

Instead, Tanaka and four other Diet members linked to Lockheed's scheme to buy influence and stimulate sales with over $2 million in bribes were re-elected by loyal rural constituencies, while three Cabinet members were defeated.

Miki's strongest challenger is his harshest critic, former Deputy Premier Takeo Fukuda, 71, who has lined up powerful backing from among the L.D.P.'s half-dozen factions in a bid to succeed Miki. Their rivalry became so bitter that they maintained separate national headquarters during the three-week campaign and kept up a running feud that badly damaged L.D.P. prospects. One possible compromise choice is Finance Minister Masayoshi Ohira. Miki is genuinely convinced that radical reforms are needed to refurbish the L.D.P.'s image. His diagnosis: "The party caused its own defeat because we failed to reflect deeply on our past mistakes."

Buried Scandals. The mistakes are more like earthquake faults in the system of kinken (money power) the Liberal Democrats have forged. Formed as an umbrella group running from the nationalist right to the non-Marxist left, the L.D.P. was vanguard and overseer of the dynamic industrial surge that made Japan's the world's third largest economy. While successive L.D.P. governments focused on development, Japan's growing social welfare problems became issues for the opposition. Since 1958, the L.D.P.'s vote has dropped from 57.8% to last week's 42%.

Throughout, the L.D.P. lived in symbiosis with the industrial giants of "Japan Inc." At election time, lavish flows of corporate cash fueled the L.D.P. campaigns. Frequent scandals were quickly buried, and in the heady atmosphere of growth, few cared. But all that has changed since 1974, when Miki stepped in as the L.D.P.'s compromise choice to replace disgraced Premier Tanaka. The L.D.P.'s decline may be hard to reverse. Says one high Miki aide: "I would not rule out a breakup of the party. We're in for a period of basic political realignment in Japan."

Wary Voters. Still, Japanese voters remain wary of radical alternatives. Among the strongest evidence of that was the pounding the Communists took at the polls. Voters apparently shied away from giving them real power as the L.D.P. weakened. Indeed, last week's most striking gains were scored by the centrist New Liberal Club, led by Yohei Kono, 39, who broke from the L.D.P. last June. Of the 25 candidates Kono fielded, 17 won, an astonishing triumph for a new party in Japan. Kono told TIME last week: "We're not socialists. But we insist on equality of opportunity. We want fair competition in business. We want a smaller and more efficient bureaucracy." Those themes and N.L.C. calls for reform of campaign finance and the school system's "examination hell" clearly struck home with the voters. The victory has made Kono a national figure and raised talk of a possible coalition with the L.D.P.

Japan's reformers have something else to look forward to: 50% of all Japanese are now under 30, and the 4.3 million new voters in last week's election showed their weariness with the nation's feuding gerontocrats by dumping superannuated candidates of most parties. With that young constituency in mind, reformers can drive hard bargains for any aid they extend to their damaged, divided and scandal-prone elders.

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