COLUMN ONE : A Prince of Politics Ascends : Japan’s new prime minister was born an aristocrat but with a reformer’s zealous heart. Some call him regal, others overbearing. Morihiro Hosokawa says he just wants to get things done.

On the morning in 1945 that he was to face interrogation by the allies as a Class-A war criminal who failed to stop Japan from igniting a disastrous Pacific war, former Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe put on a kimono and swallowed a dose of potassium cyanide to quietly kill himself.

Almost half a century later, in a strange quirk of history and fate, his grandson, Morihiro Hosokawa, stands at the very same helm to guide Japan through another turning point.

As he prepares to head the nation’s first postwar government to break four decades of domination by the Liberal Democratic Party, it is the ghost of his grandfather’s failure that drives the man who was elected Friday as prime minister of Japan.

Hosokawa--whose eclectic, almost eccentric aristocratic personality both charms and alienates those who know him--aims to be bold where his grandfather was weak, to shape history rather than be overwhelmed by it. Most of all, Hosokawa is determined to lead the march for reform in Japan, to stand up to established power cliques and appeal to the nation’s conscience.

“The deepest thing I learned from my grandfather’s tragic experience is that in times when you should speak out, you have to clearly speak out,” he declared last year, shortly after establishing the reformist Japan New Party. “Now I am raising my voice. I can hear that voice of fate.”

Fate has propelled him into one of the fastest rises in the history of Japanese politics: from a junior congressman to governor of a southern prefecture to the head of a fledgling minor party to prime minister in slightly more than two decades.

As Japan faces an uncharted future after the Cold War’s collapse, Hosokawa is speaking out--against his country’s political corruption, closed markets, powerful vested interests, high prices, shabby living standards and a tyrannical bureaucracy that has turned politicians into “sheep” and the populace into “cowards.”

With his strong vision for reform, abundant confidence and proven ability to get things done, Hosokawa, 55, has the potential to become one of the most dynamic prime ministers Japan has ever known.

The question is whether he has the political skills to navigate the minefields awaiting him and the leadership to forge a workable coalition among eight parties rife with competing egos, ambitions and some sharp policy differences.

The parliamentary wrangling with the LDP, which delayed his election by one day, was just the first indication of what Hosokawa has acknowledged will be the “rough seas” he will encounter as he battles what is still Japan’s largest single party.

Even within his own coalition, things won’t be easy for him. Hosokawa must broker differences over issues ranging from rice imports to national security. He must take care not to appear to be the puppet of Ichiro Ozawa of the Japan Renewal Party, the politician whom many consider the real behind-the-scenes power.

His former ties to Kakuei Tanaka, the onetime LDP kingmaker who invented money politics, and to the scandal-tainted Sagawa Kyubin Co., have also raised questions about how clean this reformer really is. Sagawa rented one of Hosokawa’s homes and gave him a loan and $238,000 in political contributions. (All was legally reported and Hosokawa says he has not taken money from them since 1991.)

If that weren’t enough, his critics say Hosokawa is mealy-mouthed and constantly changes his mind. He also sometimes offends with a regal bearing befitting the eldest son born to the 18th generation of one of Japan’s oldest and wealthiest lineages of feudal lords.

To this political prince, “everyone else has to be retainers,” said Tetsuhisa Matsuzaki, a former Japan New Party official who was fired from his post in June. “People who stand for democracy, freedom of speech and fair competition are eliminated from his inner circle.”

But Hosokawa’s admirers see his changes of mind as open-mindedness and his reticence as political smarts. “He knows what’s important, but until he is ready to say yes or no, he’ll stay fuzzy. That is the way to survive in this country,” said Yoshimi Ishikawa, a writer and adviser to the New Party Harbinger, which is closely allied with Hosokawa’s Japan New Party.

Hosokawa is often compared to President Clinton by those who see a governor turned top national leader who listens well, has an enormous intellectual curiosity and soaks up everything from Chinese classical literature to robotics and biotechnology.

But like former President George Bush, Hosokawa also is a wizard with the telephone and boasts a far-flung network of powerful friends. And like Ross Perot, his family’s fabulous wealth gives him the independence to reject traditional machine politics and chart his own iconoclastic course.

Born in Tokyo to an aristocratic family that dates back to 1534, Hosokawa has a lineage that includes feudal lords, prime ministers and even one relative from the imperial family. His family’s wealth was so substantial that his grandfather’s private art collection could create a museum “similar to the Louvre,” Hosokawa once said. He never carried money because everything he bought was paid for by the butler.

Growing up, he was surrounded by scholars, Buddhist masters, geisha, politicians, artists and other elites who came to visit his paternal grandfather, Moritatsu Hosokawa, a former politician with the upper house of Parliament. From him, Hosokawa learned to look for lessons in every encounter.

Lesson One: “The best way to study is to meet with top-class people in each field,” Hosokawa wrote in a recent book. As a result, he surrounds himself with excellence, and his brain trust includes such corporate pioneers as Kyocera Corp.’s Kazuo Inamori, who single-handedly created the market for high-tech ceramics, and Daiei Corp.’s Isao Nakauchi, who shook up Japan’s distribution system with discount retailing.

Lesson Two: “It’s never too late to learn.” Hosokawa was exposed early to a broad intellectual background and rigorous academic training. His father forced him to memorize the teachings of Confucius and the “Manyoshu,” a collection of ancient Japanese poems. During the wartime electricity shortage, his father made him study by candlelight. Hosokawa hated the studies then, but they helped spark a lifelong thirst for knowledge.

He took up Chinese classical literature in his 30s; skiing and tennis in his 40s, and piano in his 50s. An intense student, he made a paper piano keyboard and practiced every morning in the car as he was driven to the governor’s office.

That intellectual hunger helps him eagerly absorb new ideas.

When Mariko Mitsui, a feminist political activist, told him about Norway’s system of affirmative action for women politicians, he immediately incorporated the idea into the Japan New Party’s policies. He also sponsored a “politics school” to nurture women candidates and began aggressively recruiting women--even calling his old newspaper, the Asahi, and asking editors to recommend bright women reporters who might be suitable candidates.

His eagerness for new experiences even led him to the big screen, where he appeared in two samurai movies.

Lesson Three: “To govern the country, you need a strong will not affected by emotion.” One of Hosokawa’s boyhood mentors was a Zen priest and college teacher who lived on one of the family estates in Kamakura, where the prime minister attended school. The master would fill the boy’s head with vivid tales of Japanese history.

Hosokawa was particularly affected by the story of a famous warrior named Yorimoto Minamoto, who was said to have killed his brother, Yoshitsune, in a fit of jealousy and learned not to rule with passion.

The lessons show. Hosokawa is elegant, polite but eminently controlled.

When Kakuei Tanaka, his onetime political mentor, was arrested in the 1976 Lockheed bribery scandal, Hosokawa quickly cut ties with that faction, even though most other members remained loyal. To reformists, the action showed Hosokawa’s sense of ethics and clear-headed judgment. But to others in Japan, where human relationships based on obligation and sympathy are key, Hosokawa can come across as a cold fish.

Lesson Four: “The only important thing in life is how you live.” Hosokawa picked this up from another influential story learned from his Zen mentor about the final battle of Nobunaga Oda, a famous 16th-Century warlord. Before battle, he told his followers that life lasted only 50 years, a trifling moment in the course of the universe, so don’t regret the past or worry about the future.

“He doesn’t desire authority, money or fame,” his wife, Kayoko, 50, has said. “He can throw out everything for whatever is necessary at the moment. For him, the here and now is very important.”

Indeed, Hosokawa surprised the political world by giving up his parliamentary seat after two terms and his governorship after two terms, in stark contrast to typical politicians who hang on to power as long as they can. He has written that power corrupts after 10 years, and he discarded his jobs when he found new and better ways to achieve his goals of reform.

In 1963, Hosokawa was graduated in law from Sophia University. He set his sights on a political career from the start. To learn more about common people, however, he decided to work as a reporter for the Asahi newspaper despite his father’s vehement objections.

He got a taste of low life when he was urinated on while covering a crime story. After his apartment was burglarized, he briefly moved into the Asahi newsroom, where he slept on a Ping-Pong table--in the nude--earning him the nickname “the Barbarian.”

But he can’t always escape his illustrious lineage. According to an account in the Shukan Asahi magazine, Hosokawa was once sent to cover an arson case while based in his newspaper’s Kagoshima branch on Kyushu island. The police officer in charge happened to be a descendant of a family that had long served as the Hosokawa family’s bird feeders. The officer, on seeing Hosokawa, blurted out: “I can’t report a dirty story like crime to the young lord.”

When Hosokawa persisted, the officer said: “Then it is my duty to give you a scoop.”

In 1971, he married Kayoko Ueda, a fellow Sophia graduate who specialized in surfing and English literature. She turned down his first proposal, instead moving to London to work for a trading company. But when they met by chance on a street in Rome, she felt the hand of fate and consented. They have two daughters and a son.

She is an activist in her own right, having served with the LDP’s Kumamoto office and as vice chairwoman of the United Nations Children’s Fund.

During the recent lower house election, her husband returned to Kumamoto only once so she recruited two relatives, signed up 500 volunteers and ran her husband’s Japan New Party campaign herself. She says she supports the Japan New Party not because of her husband but because the party’s policies agree with her own views.

Despite their mutual passion for politics, there have been repeated rumors of marital strains over Hosokawa’s alleged roving eye. The Shukan Shincho magazine recently reported that his wife became neurotic and returned to her parents’ house because of Hosokawa’s alleged affairs with party members, secretaries, even his child’s college-age tutor. He has denied all rumors, and she also denied leaving him over the rumored affairs.

In 1971, Hosokawa launched his political career as an upper house congressman with the Liberal Democratic Party. From the start, he declared war on the bureaucracy, vowing to blast open the system with “dynamite.” After 12 years, he quit and ran for governor of Kumamoto in 1983, where he won overwhelmingly.

As governor, Hosokawa distinguished himself as a relentless prefectural salesman who helped bring several high-tech firms to what was a largely rural region. He also instituted some of the strictest water pollution standards in Japan and overturned the prefecture’s longstanding opposition to lawsuits by Miyamata mercury poisoning victims, siding with them against the central government.

According to Japanese news accounts, Hosokawa attacked red tape, simplified documents and tried to drum efficiency into his bureaucrats by dispatching them to work stints at private companies. He got a group of executives to find ways to cut the budget 7% when his own bureaucrats said it could not be done.

Despite his energy, Hosokawa found many of his initiatives stymied by the oppressive central government.

As a result, Hosokawa decided the best way to fight the system was to return to the national political scene.

The Japanese public still seems to have plenty of questions about him. A local magazine gave him only a “C” grade for clean politics. And most people still don’t seem clear on where he stands. A recent poll showed that 70% of those surveyed had qualms about him.

But Ishikawa, the writer, predicted that Hosokawa will make his mark on Japanese history--and remove the lingering legacy of his grandfather’s ineffectiveness at a time of urgent national need. “He will speak up in a big way and try to make some drastic changes,” Ishikawa said. “This is his fate from his family tree and blood history.”

Megumi Shimizu and Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo bureau contributed to this report.

Profile: Morihiro Hosokawa

Background on the new prime minister of Japan:

* Age: 55

* Birthplace: Tokyo

* Education: Rigorous at-home schooling in Japanese classics, culture; exposure to a range of intellectual, religious and artistic lights; Sophia University law school, 1963.

* Career: Reporter for Asahi newspaper; began political career in 1971 with election to upper house of Parliament at age 33, becoming youngest member ever; elected governor of Kumamoto prefecture (state) in 1983; defected last year from ruling Liberal Democratic Party to form Japan New Party, a key player in toppling 38 years of LDP control; elected Friday as 79th prime minister.

* Personal: Member of one of Japan’s elite families, which traces its roots to feudal aristocracy; married in 1971 and has two daughters and a son; a quick learner with diverse interests, including music, classical literature, skiing, tennis and even a brief stint as a movie actor.