Nakasone Names 3 Rivals to Key Posts After Being Reelected Japan’s Premier

Yasuhiro Nakasone was reelected prime minister Tuesday by Japan’s Parliament and quickly reshuffled his Cabinet, naming all three of his major rivals to key posts and appointing a ruling party executive team dominated by political veterans.

In a special session of the Parliament, Nakasone who led the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to a landslide victory in July 6 elections, was reelected to serve out his present term ending in October.

Finance Minister Noboru Takeshita, 62, a lieutenant of the 140-member faction of Parliament nominally headed by former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, was named to the key post of secretary general of the party.

Heads Executive Board

Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, 62, who on July 14 took over the helm of the 82-member faction that former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, 81, had led for 26 years, was named chairman of the Liberal Democrats’ executive board.

Kiichi Miyazawa, 66, vacated the post Abe assumed to move into Takeshita’s old job as finance minister.

Replacing Abe as foreign minister will be Tadashi Kuranari, 67, one of the 78-member Nakasone faction’s top economic and agricultural policy specialists. Although inexperienced in diplomacy, he had been serving as chairman of the ruling party’s special committee on international economic measures.

The new jobs for Takeshita, Abe and Miyazawa, all of whom are seeking to succeed Nakasone, will restrict their freedom to criticize the popular 68-year-old prime minister.

Their appointments, along with the selection as deputy prime minister of another Tanaka lieutenant, Shin Kanemaru, 71, are regarded as laying the foundation for a lengthy extension in office for Nakasone, whose second two-year term as party president ends Oct. 30.

Third Term Discussed

Party rules do not allow a third term, but both Takeshita and Kanemaru have indicated they are willing to support Nakasone’s remaining in office for as long as a year to carry through with economic and administrative reforms he has sponsored.

Other party leaders have agreed in principle to extend Nakasone’s term but disagree on how long the extension should be. The party is expected to meet this fall to change the party rules, which currently prohibit a third term for the party president.

Kanemaru, as outgoing secretary general, masterminded the strategy that gave the Liberal Democrats a landslide victory of 304 seats, or a 48-seat majority, in the lower house election July 6. He was charged with the responsibility of preparing measures to spur domestic economic growth.

In all, eight members of the Tanaka faction were named to the 20-member Cabinet. That was two more than Nakasone picked in November, 1982, for his first Cabinet, which his party rivals at that time condemned as a “Tanakasone Cabinet.”

Factions Key to Power

Factions hold the key to power in the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan since 1955.

Miyazawa told newsmen that serving as finance minister would be “a tough job.”

“With achievement of fiscal reforms (to balance the budget) still far off and the need to correct our overseas surpluses, it will be difficult to strike a balance,” he said. “We also will need to find funds to implement an income tax cut. It looks like a tough job.”

Expenditures Limited

Miyazawa has been a leading critic of Nakasone’s austere budget policy. On Monday, the government decided to limit the increase in general expenditures in the 1987 budget to only 1%.

Last spring, Miyazawa unsuccessfully urged the government to demand that the United States, West Germany, France and England join Japan in intervening in foreign exchange markets to halt the appreciation of the yen. On Tuesday, he called “international cooperation and appropriate intervention” in foreign exchange markets the key to stabilizing the yen, now 55.8% higher in value than last September, when the same nations took joint action to lower the value of the dollar.

(In trading Tuesday, the yen reached its 15th post-World War II record high this year, closing at 155.30 to the dollar on the Tokyo Foreign Exchange Market.)

Ito Takes Policy Post

Nakasone also named Masayoshi Ito, a former foreign minister, to the other major ruling party post--policy board chairman--to maintain the same factional balance in the party, which has supported his administration since he took power in November, 1982. Ito, like Miyazawa, is a member of the 88-member faction headed by former Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki.

Named to the other key economic post in the Cabinet--minister of international trade and industry--was Hajime Tamura, 62, a veteran Tanaka faction leader.

Only Chief Cabinet Secretary Masaharu Gotoda, 71, was retained in his present post.