Shock of a Fallen Samurai

Ohira dies ten days before an uncertain election

His nickname, "the Bull," was well deserved. At an age when most elder statesmen stay at home, Japan's Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira, 70, went charging all over the world. Last January he personally promoted his pet project, the concept of Pacific Basin cooperation, by traveling to Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. A staunch U.S. ally, Ohira came to the U.S. to talk to President Carter last month before he visited Mexico and traveled to Canada to renew his acquaintance with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. When he learned of Tito's death, he rushed to Belgrade for the funeral. Back home, after his government lost a vote of confidence in the Diet, he refused to resign but called a new election instead. Just as he was about to start a vigorous campaign, he was taken to a Tokyo hospital for exhaustion. Even then, with a diagnosis of angina pectoris, Ohira chafed to get out of bed. He ordered a party official to fly to Venice to find hospital facilities so that he might personally represent Japan at this week's world economic summit. He never got to go. Last week, early one morning, Ohira died of a heart attack.

Ohira's death was not expected to provoke any significant change in Japan's foreign policy and solidly pro-Western loyalty; Ohira himself had regularly reaffirmed it, with the full backing of his conservative Liberal Democratic Party. The problem was that no one was prepared to guarantee how long his party might remain in power: it had been left leaderless just ten days before the national elections that will test its narrow majorities in both houses of the Diet.

Although the party has been in power without interruption for 25 years, it has been seriously divided since the election last fall. Ohira had confidently planned to increase his party's strength in the Diet's 511-member lower house, but a candid speech about higher taxes provoked a slight loss instead. Opponents and members of his own party began calling for his resignation. Rival party factions became so embittered that last month, when the opposition Socialist Party called for a no-confidence vote, a customary political maneuver, Ohira was shocked to see his government toppled largely by members of his own party who abstained in the voting. The defeat forced him to dissolve the Diet and call the June 22 election.

"If I were to prepare a balance sheet of my life, I suspect that the figures on the liability side would be all too large and my assets in comparison all too small," Ohira once wrote. To some Japanese, in fact, Ohira was just a stubborn bureaucrat, resisting disparate cries for change, but to many others he was a symbol of embattled principle.

Reared as a poor farm boy, Ohira graduated from Tokyo College of Commerce, one of Japan's top institutions. During World War II, he worked as a tax official in China's occupied Inner Mongolia, and on his return to Japan became a section head in the Finance Ministry. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1952 and served ten consecutive terms. As Foreign Minister in Kakuei Tanaka's Cabinet from 1972 to 1974, Ohira successfully promoted the normalization of Japan's relations with China. Even though Tanaka's government was toppled in 1974 by corruption charges--Tanaka himself was accused of taking a $2 million bribe from Lockheed --Ohira went on to become Prime Minister in December 1978. Said he to his doctors just before he died: "I would have no [personal] regrets in resigning, but I am in politics for the sake of Japan."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Ito was named to fill Ohira's position until the election is held and a new Diet can be convened. If the Liberal Democrats retain their majority, they may name a noncontroversial figure to serve out Ohira's term as Prime Minister, which ends in early December. Hirokichi Nadao, 80, who is one of the founders of the Liberal Democratic Party and house speaker, is one possibility; Eiichi Nishimura, 82, the vice president of the party, is another. Local politicians were already saying that Ohira's death actually might help restore party unity, and thus bring victory in the election. Such optimism is in keeping with ancient lore: the army of the fallen samurai always wins the battle in his honor.

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