Chief of Japan’s Ruling Party Resigns : Politics: The move is likely to weaken Kaifu’s leadership. Socialists are dealt a setback in local elections.

A defeat in a Tokyo gubernatorial election spurred Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu’s chief party executive to resign Monday, while a nationwide setback dealt a blow to Socialist Chairwoman Takako Doi.

In a move that is likely to weaken Kaifu’s leadership, Ichiro Ozawa, 48, announced his resignation as secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

At the same time, Doi, 62, declared that her party will examine “the issue of responsibility” for its worst defeat ever in local elections in Tokyo and elsewhere. The elections Sunday marked the end of a remarkable surge that Doi, the first woman ever to lead a major political party in Japan, engineered in balloting for the upper and lower house of Parliament in 1989 and 1990.

In spite of Liberal Democrat victories in 68% of the seats at stake in prefectural (state) assemblies, Ozawa said he was stepping down to assume responsibility for splitting the party in Tokyo.

Keizo Obuchi, 53, a former chief Cabinet secretary, was named to replace him.

Kaifu, 60, who lacks a personal base of support, picked Obuchi after consulting former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, 67, and the party’s king-maker, Shin Kanemaru, 76, a former vice premier. Like Ozawa, Obuchi belongs to Takeshita’s powerful faction of followers.

To cement an alliance in Parliament needed to pass laws that financed Japan’s $9-billion pledge to the U.S.-led multinational forces in the Middle East, Ozawa dumped Tokyo Gov. Shunichi Suzuki, 80, to join the Buddhist-backed Komei (Clean Government) Party in endorsing a candidate of its choice.

The move induced the Komei Party to use its votes in the upper house of Parliament, in which Kaifu’s party lacks a majority, to fulfill the pledge to the United States. But it sparked voter sympathy for Suzuki, whom Kaifu’s party had supported in three previous elections, and split the ruling party. Most Liberal Democrats in the capital supported Suzuki, who ran without any party’s endorsement.

The former bureaucrat, who was first elected in 1979, swept 50% of the votes against 15 rivals, outpolling his Liberal Democrat-endorsed opponent by more than 850,000 votes.

The Socialists’ gubernatorial candidate, meanwhile, drew a paltry 6.3% of the votes, finishing fourth behind a Communist. Elsewhere, the Socialists won a mere 15% of the 2,693 seats at stake in 44 prefectural assemblies.

“All responsibility in the party rests with me,” Doi told reporters. But she said she could not resign with another around of local elections scheduled April 21.

Ozawa’s departure will deprive Kaifu of strong party leadership at a time when Japan faces key decisions that will affect its relations with the United States. Ozawa was credited with winning support in Parliament to enact key legislation needed to implement reforms that the United States has sought to remove impediments to imports.

Only last Thursday, Kaifu implicitly promised President Bush at Newport Beach that Japan would tackle its most sensitive political issue--an opening, at least partially, of its rice market--to ensure success of the so-called Uruguay Round of multinational trade negotiations.