Comprehension

Direction for the questions: Read the passage carefully and answer the given questions accordingly.

The Japanese want their Emperor to reign for long, very long, but their Prime Ministers to have very short tenures. During the 61 years Hirohito has been on the Chrysanthemum throne, 38 Prime Ministers have come and gone (or at least 32, if returns to power are left out of account). Eisaku Sato’s eight uninterrupted years as Prime Minister in the Sixties and early Seventies provoked fears about the possible ill-effects of one-man leadership on Japanese democracy, and led the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to lay down the norm of a two-year for a party chief and head of Government. Mr. Yasuhiro Nakasone, now bowing out, has served for an unusual five years. His success as Prime Minister was evidenced by the ruling party’s re-electing him leader more than once. But his plan to push through the Diet a Bill to levy a 5% indirect tax as part of financial reforms failed, in spite of the LDP majority in both the chambers. It was time then for him to go.

The quick turnover of Prime Ministers has contributed to the functioning of the LDP through factions. In the party that has ruled Japan for 32 years continuously, factionalism is not something unseemly. The leader is chosen by hard bargaining — some foreigners call it horse-trading — among the faction leaders, followed, if necessary, by a party election. For the decision in favour of Noboru Takeshita as the next President of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan, voting was not necessary. His hopes were stronger than those of the other two candidates — Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and former Foreign Minister, Shintaro Abe — if only because he had proved himself more skillful in the game of factional politics. A one-time protege of Mr. Kakuei Tanaka, he thrust himself forward when the leader was disgraced on a charge of accepting bribes for sale of Lockheed aircraft to Japan and debilitated by physical ailments. Mr. Takeshita took away most of Mr. Tanaka’s following and now leads the biggest faction in the LDP. Mr. Nakasone persuaded Mr. Miyazawa and Mr. Abe to accept Mr. Takeshita’s leadership. An election would most probably have led to the same result. Mr. Takeshita seemed to have forged a firm alliance with at least two other factions and put in his bag the votes necessary for a win.

How Mr. Takeshita will fare after taking over the reins of Government in 1987 is not so certain. He will be Japan’s first Prime Minister with a humble rural origin. A dichotomy in his nature shows through his record of teaching English in a junior high school and not trying to speak that language in public later. When he was the Minister of Finance, he gave the impression of an extremely cautious man with a reverence for consensus but challenging titled a book on his ideas Going My Way. Mr. Takeshita says that continuing Mr. Nakasone’s programmes would be the basis of his policy. This is not saying enough. Japan faces two main issues : tax reforms and relations with United States. Mr. Nakasone’s plan to impose an indirect tax ran into effective opposition, and the friction with the U.S. over trade continue. Mr. Takeshita cannot be facing any easy future as Japan’s next leader and there is nothing to show yet that he will be drawing on secret reserves of dynamism.

CAT/1994

Question . 362

The author’s assessment of the potential of Mr. Takeshita to be a successful Prime Minister can be summarized as one of