Premier’s Reform Vow Fails to Halt Furor Over Scandal

Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa pledged Wednesday to “take the lead in carrying out political reform,” but his statement failed to quiet the widening uproar over Japan’s latest scandal.

Although Shin Kanemaru, Japan’s political kingpin, announced that he was ending a 38-year career, new demands arose for the resignation of yet another ruling Liberal Democratic Party powerbroker. And within the ruling party, the preeminent faction that has served as Miyazawa’s major prop teetered on the brink of a breakup.

Kanemaru, 78, stepped down Aug. 27 as vice president of the ruling party when he admitted receiving an illegal $4.1-million political contribution from a gangster-tainted parcel delivery firm.

He resigned his seat Wednesday in the lower house of Parliament and surrendered his position as chairman of the party faction founded by former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita.

“As party president, no one takes this event more seriously than I. I apologize to the people,” Miyazawa said, adding his pledge to carry out reform.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato described Kanemaru as “a pillar supporting the Miyazawa administration” and said his resignation “is a blow to the government.”

Kanemaru also apologized “from the bottom of my heart.” In a brief news conference from which television cameras were excluded, he told reporters he had resigned from Parliament to “make clear my responsibility as a politician” for the “imposition” he caused.

A public uproar erupted when prosecutors imposed a fine of $1,666 on Kanemaru without interrogating him and without requiring him to stand trial.

“It is only I who is at fault. No one else is to blame,” he said, urging the Takeshita faction to “unite as one to create a new era.”

Kanemaru, however, failed to recommend a successor to head the faction, which, by force of its numbers dominates ruling party politics. It includes nearly 30% of the party’s members of Parliament.

Renewed condemnation of Ichiro Ozawa, Kanemaru’s protege and the faction’s No. 2 leader, broke into the open, even as Kanemaru was urging unity. Ozawa was charged with failing to consult other faction leaders over the handling of the scandal whirling around Kanemaru.

Meanwhile, Koshiro Ishida, chairman of the Buddhist-backed Komei (Clean Government) Party, said that a revelation of ties with gangsters “makes Takeshita bear the same political and moral responsibility as Kanemaru.”

He declared that the former prime minister should also resign from Parliament. Ishida’s party holds the deciding vote in the upper house, in which the Liberal Democrats lack a majority.