Failed to Make Japan Respected, Nakasone Says

In his final news conference as prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone acknowledged Wednesday that he had not accomplished what he most wanted to--”make Japan a nation respected in international society.”

Nakasone, who officially resigns Friday, told reporters that when he took office in 1982, Japan was being condemned as a nation that was “tricky” and “unfair,” an “economic animal.”

“I wanted more than anything to wipe out these labels,” he said. “I worked every day with that in mind.”

But he said that despite his efforts, which included repeated calls for Japan to “internationalize,” to open up its society and its markets to foreigners, Japan still lacks “international respect.”

Looking back to 1945, Nakasone recalled the “point of origin of my politics,” when he came home to a Japan “beaten in war . . . in my navy uniform, stripped of its insignia of rank.”

“I stood in the fields of devastation in the midst of Tokyo,” he said, “and thought . . . what can be done to make this country live and prosper?”

In the decades since, Japan has enjoyed a “great era” in which it has “accumulated riches,” he said, adding:

“But we have not yet won international respect. For that, we must correct (our faults), we must expand efforts to associate with foreigners and we must make appropriate donations (to the world). . . . With the last 40 years as a base upon which to build, we should progress further to achieve respect in international society.”

Sees Need for Reforms

Shortly after Nakasone resigns Friday, Parliament will elect Noboru Takeshita as his successor. In his speech, the outgoing premier said he had chosen Takeshita, a politician noted for his ability to adjust conflicting interests, to succeed him because reform is still needed at home. He cited as areas needing change taxes, education, land tenure, parliamentary procedures and reapportionment of legislative districts.

“We have reached the point,” he said, “where Japan must carry out reforms at home to win a voice in diplomacy.”

As a politician and as prime minister, he said, he has always stressed the importance of the state despite the ill repute into which nationalism fell as a result of Japan’s defeat in World War II.

“Whether in victory or in defeat, the nation is the nation,” he said. “I have told people of the left that they should not think of the nation as evil and make trouble for it. The nation is the common society in which all of us live. It is a foothold for our contributions to international activities.”

Urges Japanese Pride

Nakasone urged his people to take pride in themselves as Japanese, and he complained that policies carried out under U.S. military occupation in 1945-1952 had “warped” Japanese traditions. Those distortions, he said without identifying them, must be corrected to restore “a healthy nationalism.”

“A national people with no nationality, a Japanese people who have no interest in Japanese culture and independence, a people who are wandering about, will receive no respect,” he said. . . .Japanese must act with pride as Japanese to be respected internationally. Japanese must not forget this.”

The nation’s challenge for the future, he said, will be to blend a “healthy nationalism with internationalism.”

Nakasone said he will make it a point “not to get in the way” of his successor. He said he will devote himself to studies, especially of strategic defense issues, in order “to avoid becoming senile.”

He said he has promised his wife, Tsutako, that he will take her to a hot-springs resort “once every month.”

To Visit Yasukuni Shrine

And he said he plans to visit Yasukuni Shrine, where the spirits of Japan’s war dead are believed to dwell, including that of his younger brother, Ryosuke, who died in a plane crash.

“As a private citizen, such visits should cause no political trouble,” he said, referring to a storm of protest that erupted in China and South Korea in 1985 when he visited the shrine in an official capacity--the first serving prime minister to do so. Last year and again this year he made no visit to the shrine, which Japan’s neighbors regard as a symbol of Japanese militarism.

As for his feelings as he leaves office, Nakasone said he had composed a poem, and, without offering any interpretation, he read it:

Hana aran Nowaki no hate no Chigusa nimo .

Roughly translated, it means, “After the autumn storms, thousands of wild plants may still bloom.”

Nakasone will retain his seat in the lower house, a seat he has held since 1947. And he will resume direct leadership of the faction--86 members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party--that has pledged loyalty to him.