The Shadow Shogun : In Japan, Shin Kanemaru, a black belt in political Judo, is the maker of kings. Tired of the commute to Tokyo, he may even get the capital relocated to his home prefecture.

LAST MARCH, IN A PREFECTURE NORTH OF TOKYO, A GUNMAN CHARGED OUT of the audience just as the aged politician the Japanese call “the shadow shogun” finished his speech. Security men assumed he was a photographer hurrying past. He opened fire within 15 feet of his target. Three rapid shots rang out.

The old man, wearing a dark gray pin-striped suit with a balloon-sized pink floral ribbon over the breast pocket, a memento given in respect to his position, thought an insect had buzzed past his shoulder. Fear did not register on his face until the third shot from the .38 caliber revolver. Then, videotape of the incident shows, his lips trembled and his gaze slid toward the gunman. The rheumy brown eyes, usually little more than weary slits, widened. The ribbon bobbed on his chest like a target.

The shooter, a right-wing fanatic out to make a name for himself, stopped firing only after he was swarmed over by yellow-jacketed security guards. Additional security men, dressed in salary-man blue suits, rushed from the wings of the stage toward the old man, who disappeared.

A long minute passed before it was clear what had transpired. The tumult onstage and below in the audience continued until the old man was back in his chair, looking shaken but unhurt, mopping his brow. The relieved crowd broke into spontaneous applause. The politician did not rise to bow, however. Instead, his head dropped forward, and for an instant, the motion could have been construed as collapse. But when he raised his head at last, his eyes were once again little slits under the sage-like eyebrows. The great stone face was impassive.

If there is anyone in Japan who can dodge bullets, it is the shadow shogun, 77-year-old Shin Kanemaru. Having ducked a fair share of diplomatic gaffes as well as persistent rumors of corruption, underworld associations and personal illness, he has figured in the rise, and in some cases, the fall of every Japanese prime minister in the last decade. As a powerbroker and political boss, he is arguably the most influential man in Japanese politics. Indeed, he holds in his hands the fate of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa.

Kanemaru controls the highway to high office through his influence over the largest of the five factions that make up the patchwork of the conservative, industry-driven Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled the nation in unbroken hauteur since 1955. Despite repeated scandals and persistent rumors of political decline, the party pulls voters year after year because of Japan’s growing prosperity. Though the system has its flaws, and voters know it, it delivers what they most want: an ever-better style of living.

Since the LDP holds the majority in the powerful lower house of the Japanese Parliament, which elects the prime minister, no one can ascend to the nation’s top post without first getting Kanemaru’s blessing.

Kanemaru’s powers were clearly in evidence last October, when he pulled his support for Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, setting the stage for the naming of a new chief executive. When three LDP candidates then vied for the post, Kanemaru brokered a deal in which his faction threw its support behind Miyazawa, a veteran politician whose cerebral style had branded him an elitist. In return for Kanemaru’s benefaction, Miyazawa gave away at least two Cabinet seats and key party posts that his own faction normally would have controlled.

Kanemaru’s position as party vice president (the prime minister is president) is largely titular, good for a chauffeur and a parking place; his real power stems from the classic formula of money, favor and connections. He has say, for example, over which candidates get the party’s campaign largess. In his 34 years in politics, he has earned a reputation as a go-between who barters for high office. “Without me,” he has said, “nothing would go smoothly.”

Political careers ride on the pronouncements of this frail leader. “He is the sort of man you don’t want to cross,” says Cornelia Meyer, a Swiss adviser to a prominent legislator in an opposing faction. “You don’t know what he can do.”

His network extends even to the LDP’s opponents. The left-leaning Social Democratic Party of Japan represents the largest opposition. Split between a stubbornly unaccommodating Marxist wing and its more conservative leadership, it squandered a big win in the 1989 upper house election through internal squabbling. Party leader Makoto Tanabe has earned the suspicion of voters with his frequent consultations with Kanemaru. The two often are seen together in pricey restaurants. Two other key parties, both centrist and both disorganized, represent only occasional opposition to the ruling party. Most often they act in coalition with the LDP to override the Socialists. The fourth opposition party, the Communists, struggles to remain relevant.

Kanemaru’s partners in power are family. There is former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, whose eldest daughter is married to Kanemaru’s eldest son. And there is Kanemaru’s handpicked successor, Ichiro Ozawa, who shares an in-law with Takeshita. Together, they control what is known as the Takeshita faction. Factions are named for past or prospective prime ministers.

The cunning Kanemaru plays the kingmaker in the trio; to become prime minister would, in a sense, be a step down for him. “I never wanted to be at the top,” he says. “It never entered my imagination. I have held many posts and I have had a long political career, but I have no plan to become prime minister. I know what I am.”

Scholars of government say that deal-makers such as Kanemaru are necessary to the political process in Japan, a society that relies on consensus. “If Japan didn’t have Kanemaru, they would have to invent him,” says Ronald A. Morse, a Washington-based analyst of Japanese politics.

With his visit to the United States and his meeting with President Bush in June, Kanemaru reached the high noon of his shadowy powers. In Ameri-centric Japan, an audience with the President is almost like a personal blessing from the Pope, a validation of political influence and power.

Kanemaru’s only real opponent is his health. After returning from Washington, he was hospitalized for three days. A routine check, a spokesman said. Plagued by diabetes and high blood pressure, he is said to have only a few good working hours a day. In 1986, Kanemaru had a serious stomach operation, and the speculation around the Nagata-cho, Tokyo’s Capitol Hill, was that the old man had cancer. If it was true, after six years, cancer is another of the bullets he’s dodged.

SUITE 605 OF THE PALAISE ROYAL NAGATA-CHO IS KANEMARU’S PRIVATE OFFICE. He is chauffeured there in a Bentley. Located behind the filing-cabinet gray office buildings of the Parliament’s lower house, his small suite in the gracefully balconied red-brick tower rents for a bell-ringing $25,000 a month. Though it is one of the most expensive rentals in Tokyo, as many as 40 members of Parliament have offices here.

Two security policemen relax on leather couches in the marmoreal lobby, dashing young men with brilliantined hair, wearing gold lapel pins bearing the initials (in English, for some reason) SP for security police, Japan’s version of the Secret Service.

The interior of Kanemaru’s suite is surprisingly drab and Dickensian despite the glorious exterior and chic address. Ill lit, with narrow tan halls and low ceilings, its small, crowded rooms are furnished with aging industrial-grade metal desks.

Kanemaru greets visitors in a nearby conference room. He sits at the end of a long, lace-covered table, looking small and alone, square and still, a diminutive idol in a dark blue suit. In a radius before him, the plastic cover protecting the lace tablecloth is spotted with ocher cigarette burns. His dark brown tie seems hastily knotted, with the tail hanging too long by several inches. He is frail. The handshake is gentle and lingering; his palm is smooth and soft. His chair is covered by a lamb’s wool throw. There is an aura of kindness about him, more that of an indulgent grandfather than Japan’s political godfather.

Despite the kindly visage, Kanemaru’s voice reveals a different character. Low and throaty, it is full of wet gravel, a growl worthy of his reputation. When Kanemaru replies to a question, he speaks forcefully, and when he searches for a word, he rumbles until he finds it. The first thing he talks about is his visit with President Bush.

“I told the President that I don’t trust the Russians. The promises they make turn out to be false. Giving money to them could be like pouring it down the drain. The President said he agreed. He said it was like throwing money out the window.” Bush and Kanemaru had a good-natured laugh over that one, he says. And, indeed, Japan has taken a hard line on aid to Russia. Still, after his return, concerns about Russia dominated his thinking. “I judged that conditions today must be reversed. We must find new ways to think about Russia,” he says.

Diplomatic forays, such as this trip to Washington, are relatively new for Kanemaru, and unusual. He has neither the portfolio nor the position to negotiate on behalf of Japan. His explanation for the U.S. trip was that he had grown concerned over worsening U.S.-Japan relations, and he felt he had to take matters into his own hands. It was a rationale that satisfied no one.

He has had little luck playing foreign policy entrepreneur. In September, 1990, he made a trip to North Korea that he is still trying to live down, literally: The man who tried to kill him in March said he did so because Kanemaru had offered an olive branch to North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

With no official charge or authorization, Kanemaru signed a joint statement with Kim that called for Japan to pay compensation for its 1911-1945 occupation of the North. The accord also called for postwar compensation, which stunned Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, the communique angered South Korea by suggesting diplomatic ties between Pyongyang and Tokyo. The situation became so volatile that Kanemaru had to fly to Seoul a month later to make amends.

The visit to Washington resulted in similar agitation. Kanemaru was said to have promised Bush that Japan would do more to stimulate the lagging U.S. economy. He talked about a spending package that would pump some 8 trillion yen--about $64 billion--into Japanese infrastructure projects that would lead to purchases of high-value imports such as computers, satellites and construction equipment.

The aim of the measure was to reduce Japan’s staggering 1991 global trade surplus of nearly $73 billion, up 104% from the previous year. Kanemaru’s proposal sounded good: It was double what had been proposed by Prime Minister Miyazawa. The budget-setting Ministry of Finance made no comment on Kanemaru’s proposal, but let it be known through leaks to the press that the numbers he proposed were out of bounds.

The motives for Kanemaru’s international exploits are unclear, but he seems determined to enhance his reputation in Japan by expanding his prominence in the international sphere. “I asked Kanemaru about these trips, but he did not reply directly,” says Takashi Kawachi, an editor for the Mainichi newspapers, which tend to take a dim view of Kanemaru’s party. “Maybe the kingmaker feels he has to be able to meet with the kings.”

IN HIS YOUTH, KANEMARU WAS A NATIONAL JUDO CHAMPION, AND HE SPORTED a seventh-degree black belt. His skills were not in the great looping throws for which the sport is famous in the West, but rather for the gritty, obscure end-game known as matwork, which is closer in style to a Greco-Roman wrestling match. There, the moves are rarely dramatic and determination carries the day. Kanemaru’s professional skills are said to parallel his judo technique: He has a genius for political matwork. His style might be compared to that of the late Richard J. Daley, the Chicago mayor and Democratic Party boss who greased the way to President John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960.

Language is part of his political judo. Kanemaru speaks the patois of the Nagata-cho, a vocabulary of vagueness and evasion. When questioned, he will recite obscure regional parables instead of providing detailed explanations. Natives have been known to get lost in his monologues. In meetings with Westerners, pairs of translators are sometimes hired to decipher his comments. His obscurity is a contrivance, a useful affectation.

On a visit to his home prefecture of Yamanashi in 1986, Kanemaru was asked by Japanese reporters when he expected the Parliament to be dissolved, making way for elections. Kanemaru replied: “This situation is like a midwife when she touches the belly of a pregnant woman.” The interpretation was that a decision was imminent. Kanemaru can, however, be direct when he wants to be. On the waning fortunes of a rival, he declared, “His influence is disappearing like horseshit in a swift stream.”

Kanemaru represents one of Parliament’s two dominant strains of political operators. He is the back-office type, as opposed to those who came from the elite ministries and the intellectual aerie of Tokyo University, those with pedigrees. Kanemaru’s breed is instinctual. Japanese call them “gut fighters.” And they control the country.

Kanemaru’s behind-the-scenes style has led to questions about his probity. Charges of corruption continue to percolate through his party. Two big scandals threaten to boil over. One involves Fumio Abe, a close associate of Prime Minister Miyazawa, who was arrested in January and charged with taking 90 million yen in bribes, about $700,000, from the now-bankrupt Kyowa Co., a steel-frame manufacturing firm. In return, Abe, a high-ranking LDP official, allegedly gave information about the route of an expressway project to the firm, which was planning to build a nearby resort. Also suspected in the scandal is the party’s chief Cabinet secretary, Koichi Kato, the man whose job is part press secretary and part chief of staff--a mix of Marlin Fitzwater and Samuel K. Skinner.

The second and potentially more damaging scandal involves Japan’s second-largest trucking company, Sagawa Kyubin. About 130 members of Parliament of all political persuasions are said to have dipped into a slush fund that funneled more than $620 million into election accounts during the last two decades. Police say Sagawa had close connections to the Japanese mob, and Kanemaru is widely believed to have paved the way for the firm to expand business into his home prefecture.

Kanemaru denies involvement and sympathizes with an electorate disenfranchised by greed. “In my opinion the system is not working well. The people are fed up with the political situation, including the LDP. They worry about the future. It’s serious. There is widespread consensus that reform is unavoidable, and Japanese politics must shift to meet the public need.”

One of the most widely held notions in Tokyo is that a change is in the air, and that the Liberal Democrats will undergo some kind of metamorphosis. Perhaps not this year or next, but before the decade is out. Speculation is that the Takeshita faction could break up, the party could split in two or the Social Democratic Party could throw out its left wing and mount a serious challenge to the LDP. But such ideas were in play during the 1980s and before. Nothing changed then, and many believe that nothing will change now.

“Anyone who keeps a file on the subject has a stack of articles under the heading: ‘Japan At the Crossroads,’ ” says Japan expert Chalmers Johnson of UC San Diego. “But nothing changes.”

Says Ezra Vogel, a Japan specialist at Harvard University: “The LDP is gridlocked. Change could come within five to eight years, but if things are going smoothly, they aren’t going to have the drive to do anything. It’s going to take some defeat, and some serious troubles, if they are going to undertake reform.”

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone laughs at the idea that the ruling party faces extinction. In a purple-carpeted office suite as grand inside as Kanemaru’s was imposing on the outside, Nakasone says, “The LDP will continue for a long time. There will be reform, but not meticulous regulation.” In other words, there will be no crackdown on money politics.

FORMER U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER TIP O’NEILL USED TO SAY: “ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL.” Kanemaru might add: “And local means pork barrel.” Shirane, his hometown, sits in a Switzerland-like valley (albeit dense and cluttered) with Tokyo 60 miles to the east, the 6,000-foot southern Japan Alps to the west, Mt. Fuji to the south, and the Chichibu mountains to the north.

This is the prosperous wine-growing heart of Yamanashi prefecture, where the average income of a family of four is about $70,000 a year. A recent survey declared that Yamanashi, population 850,000, had the best living conditions in Japan, with soaring vistas, low housing prices and more leisure hours.

Much of the wealth in the prefecture flows from Kanemaru’s connections to the construction and transportation industries. He is a former construction minister, and road building has been something of an obsession for him. Bedeviled by the long commute from Tokyo to his home district in Yamanashi, Kanemaru pushed through an expressway link in 1982 that cut driving time by several hours. Parliament is expected to approve funds for a Kanemaru-driven four- and six-lane causeway in central Japan; his birthplace has already been designated as a prime exit point.

It is to Yamanashi that Kanemaru would move the government of Japan. An effort to relocate the capital has been under way in Parliament and Kanemaru heads the ad hoc committee that will make recommendations on the new location. The idea is that an overcrowded Tokyo needs relief, and that the easiest thing to do would be to move the politicians elsewhere. The government already owns land in Yamanashi that could be used for the new capital, Kanemaru points out. Since available land is hard to find in Japan, this gives the Yamanashi site a real advantage.

What is more, the mag-lev train (for magnetic levitation, a Buck Rogers technology that will drive 14 rail cars containing 10,000 commuters at speeds above 300 m.p.h.) will cut the 70-mile commute to Tokyo from Yamanashi to less than half an hour. Some sections of the line are projected to be in service by 1997. The three options for the mag-lev’s route all include Kofu, Yamanashi’s prefectural capital, as a destination.

Not surprisingly, land prices there are booming, up tenfold in five years. A land measure of approximately four square yards that once sold for $200 now sells for $2,300 (in some prime spots, prices reach $3,850). A 62-year-old farmer told the English-language newspaper Mainichi that sodbusters don’t want to sell their turf, but with such high prices, “I can’t say there isn’t a little desire in our hearts.”

Kanemaru is building a $1.5-million ranch-style addition to his family estate in the hilly suburbs of Kofu. The compound, which contains the original family home, the new manse and the imposing Buddhist temple he had built across the road adjacent to the family burial grounds, rises above a dusty parking lot. Walls surround all the houses in the area, turning the scrubby macadam streets into narrow gray corridors, behind which are the luxurious gardens and modern homes of his wealthy neighbors.

Last fall, at the groundbreaking ceremonies for the new home, Kanemaru told the crowd his father’s last wish was that Kanemaru not add on to the family home while he was still in politics--he feared his son’s reputation might be called into question. Kanemaru said that building the house now suggested that his retirement was in sight. There is little doubt, however, that he will run when he comes up for election next year.

KANEMARU’S FATHER WAS A wealthy sake brewer, and Kanemaru made a fortune during the war selling watered-down booze to the military. Legend has it that he tested the brew by dropping fish into the vats of rice wine. If they swam, he knew he had added too much water.

Kanemaru says he got into politics because a Tokyo official responsible for his prefecture did not recognize the soba flower, which provided the Yamanashi valley with a valuable cash crop. How could someone represent the district, Kanemaru wondered, if he didn’t understand how it earned its livelihood? When Kanemaru entered Parliament in 1958, he was viewed as a ruffian, unrefined, just another local pol. He quickly developed a knack for political timing and established a network of associates that proved invaluable. He caught the eye of Kakuei Tanaka, the man for whom the term “shadow shogun” was originally coined.

“Power is in the numbers,” Tanaka used to say. The party boss who can finance the largest number of legislators wields the power: the top post in the ruling party, the key posts in the Cabinet and the billions of yen that follow along.

Eventually those yen caught up with Tanaka, and in 1974, he was forced to resign as prime minister, caught up in what the Japanese press dubbed “money politics.” Tanaka was arrested in 1976 for allegedly accepting a $1.8-million bribe from the Lockheed Corp. (As evidence of his lingering power, the appeal of his 1983 conviction is still pending.) He was anything but contrite about the episode. Instead of leaving politics, he quit the party, kept his seat in Parliament and began building up his faction until it peaked in 1986 at 141 members, larger than the largest opposition party.

Kanemaru was a creature of Tanaka, but he joined the in-house coup in 1984 that led to the great man’s fall. It was Caesar and Brutus. Says Kanemaru: “The time required such behavior, and even now I respect Tanaka.” A counterattack by Tanaka ended weeks later when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, ending the reign of Japan’s most powerful postwar leader.

Kanemaru’s co-conspirators in the plot to bring down Tanaka were his family members, Noboru Takeshita and Ichiro Ozawa. Over time, as they consolidated power, each assumed a role in the faction’s leadership. Takeshita brings in much of the money, and while he has vast power, he is not an operating officer. Kanemaru does the bargaining for the faction, negotiating legislative deals and horse-trading for high office. The younger Ozawa is the faction’s idea man. He calls for Japan to become an equal player among the great powers. During the Gulf War, he took the unpopular position of urging Japan to send armed troops in support of the international effort.

The role of Kanemaru’s relatives in the faction’s affairs emerged clearly last December, when his second wife, Etsuko, died. In the course of their 30 years of marriage, she became his chief campaigner and described herself as her husband’s secretary-general. She was partial to red Porsches, green Aston Martins and French wines. A golf fanatic, she was leaving to play the links one cold morning last December when Kanemaru called to her. “Where are you going?” he wanted to know. “Golf,” she replied. It was her last conversation with her husband. She died that day of a stroke at age 64.

Her death devastated Kanemaru. It was his daughter-in-law, Takeshita’s child, who nursed him back. Her ministrations helped smooth over differences between the former prime minister and the party don that arose last fall, when the faction dropped its support for ill-starred Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu.

At the time, Takeshita made it known that he wanted Kaifu’s job as prime minister. The move was opposed inside his own faction by none other than Kanemaru and his protege, Ozawa. The English-language newspaper Asahi Evening News quoted a humiliated Takeshita muttering to an aide: “People must be seeing me pushed by them to tokudawara ,” to the edge of the sumo ring.

With Kanemaru’s support, Miyazawa became prime minister, but in his first 120 days, events ran against him and were worsened by his ineptitude. He also botched legislative initiatives and his party lost a string of three prefectural elections, for which he took responsibility. “Prime Minister Miyazawa’s influence is sinking like a mud boat,” Kanemaru commented at the time. His strategy was to let Miyazawa founder, demonstrating that only with his support could the prime minister salvage his administration.

It worked. Seeking to improve his fortunes, Miyazawa in February threw a party in honor of Kanemaru at a fashionable restaurant in Tokyo’s Akasaka entertainment district. The shadow shogun drank tumblers of Chivas Regal, and, according to the Asahi Evening News, pledged to Miyazawa: “Shin Kanemaru is a man. Even if my legs fail me, I will support the Miyazawa government. As long as you don’t double-cross me, I will keep my promise.”

In the months after the affair, Miyazawa’s political outlook brightened. He was credited with leading the party to victory in two prefectural elections, as well as a major legislative victory--a bill that would allow, for the first time, Japanese armed forces to join U.N. peacekeeping missions. Most important, the party won July’s upper house elections by a historic margin, and now it appears that Miyazawa will last out his two-year term. How much can Miyazawa thank Kanemaru for his change in fortune, and how much is he now beholden to the shadow shogun? That remains one of the mysteries of Japanese politics.

In the Parliament building’s red-carpeted central hall, which is reserved for imperial visits, there are four pedestals, one in each corner. Three hold bronze statues of Japan’s great statesmen. The fourth is bare. There is no official explanation; one account speculates that it is awaiting the next great Japanese statesman. A second story is more logical: The pedestal is empty because no one could agree on who should be immortalized. Perhaps the pedestal is destined to remain empty, representing something else, rarely discussed: the unseen powers that lurk behind high office, the shadow shoguns.

“I am called a kingmaker,” Kanemaru says, “and I can’t deny it.”