Japan: Narrow Shave

After a couple of two-year terms of competent but colorless rule, Japan’s Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda, 64, was supposed by custom to make way for a successor. But when the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party met in Tokyo last week to choose a new president—and hence a new Prime Minister—Ikeda upset tradition by bidding for a third term.*

Square-jawed and obstinate, Ikeda decided that a third term was precisely what he needed to carry out some “unfinished business,” although he never said exactly what that business might be. Two formidable rivals challenged him: 1) Eisaku Sato, 63, Minister of State under Ikeda and the obvious heir apparent, who attacked Ikeda’s policy of “patience and tolerance,” promised a dynamic regime that would fight for the return of the Kuril Islands from Russia and the Ryukyus (which include Okinawa) from the U.S.; and 2) Aiichiro Fujiyama, a silver-haired sugar baron who had served as former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi’s Foreign Minister and as party coordinator under Ikeda.

But the two fell short of victory in the closest party leadership election in Japan’s postwar history. Ikeda emerged with 242 votes for the party presidency to 160 for Sato, 72 for Fujiyama. In a pithy acceptance speech of 55 seconds, Ikeda pledged to seek “greater cooperation for the purpose of solidifying our great party.”

*Tough old Shigeru Yoshida, now 85, is the only man to have served three consecutive terms as Prime Minister in postwar Japan. That was largely because his premiership from 1948 to 1954 spanned the transition from Allied occupation to Japanese independence.