Kingpin Quits Seat in Japan Parliament

Under rising criticism for associating with gangsters and receiving only a slap on the wrist for accepting an illegal $4.1-million political donation, Shin Kanemaru resigned his Parliament seat today, ending a 38-year career that made him the kingpin of Japanese politics.

The parliamentary resignation of Kanemaru, 78, also marked the end of his stewardship of the 111-member dominant faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The group has chosen the last seven Japanese prime ministers; Kanemaru himself handpicked three of the last four, including the current one, Kiichi Miyazawa.

With no other leader of Kanemaru’s stature, the faction--founded by former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita--faces turmoil and perhaps a split. At least three of its lieutenants, in their 50s, are regarded as potential leaders of the faction and prime ministers in their own right.

Disarray in the Takeshita faction is expected to give Prime Minister Miyazawa new freedom to choose his policies. But it also deprives the 73-year-old prime minister of needed help in winning approval for legislation, both in the ruling party and in Parliament.

Although highly rated as a policy-maker, Miyazawa is considered to have little taste or aptitude for the wheeling and dealing of Japanese politics.

Kanemaru was a master of it. Parlaying common sense, quick wit and daring, the sleepy-eyed leader with a bulldog face became Japan’s behind-the-scenes political fixer--equally capable of dealing with the often-arbitrary opposition Socialists or with the many power-seeking factions in the ruling party.

Kanemaru on Tuesday afternoon dispatched a disciple, Norio Sugiyama, to meet Miyazawa, to tell the prime minister of his decision to quit politics. Miyazawa was told that Kanemaru had concluded that he must resign to avoid a stalemate in an extraordinary session of Parliament scheduled to begin Oct. 30.

During the session, Parliament is supposed to pass a crucial supplementary budget designed to revive a sagging economy. But opposition parties have demanded that Kanemaru be summoned to testify under oath about what he did with the $4.1-million contribution he received. Kanemaru reportedly divided the money among 60 factional followers to fund their 1990 election campaigns.

Kanemaru announced his decision at a meeting of faction leaders this afternoon.

Earlier Tuesday, former Prime Minister Takeshita visited Kanemaru to try to persuade him to stay on. When Kanemaru on Aug. 27 publicly admitted receiving the donation and resigned as vice president of the ruling party, he said he also would step down as head of the Takeshita faction. But factional lieutenants persuaded him to stay.

At a breach-of-trust trial of a former president of Sagawa Kyubin, an express delivery service, prosecutors revealed that Kanemaru, with Sagawa’s aid, had won the help of Tokyo’s leading gang in silencing a rightist campaign against Takeshita when he was seeking the premiership in 1987.

A decision by prosecutors to allow Kanemaru to pay a minuscule $1,666 fine without undergoing questioning and without going through a formal trial was widely viewed as favoritism and ignited the public uproar.

Despite Kanemaru’s departure from politics, opposition leaders said they will continue to demand that he testify in Parliament.