Japan Stunned by Sudden Fall of Popular Politician

The surprise resignation from parliament Friday of feisty former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, one of Japan’s few prominent women legislators, dismayed many here and had tongues wagging about the ironic fate of the popular politician.

The colorful, blunt-talking Tanaka stepped down midmorning from her seat in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, under a cloud of allegations that she had misused state funds meant to pay an aide’s salary, charges she has repeatedly denied.

It was an ignominious end to the nine-year parliamentary career of Tanaka, 58, whose directness makes her stand out here like a red dress in a sea of black suits. Though Japanese tend to shun confrontation, her sharp tongue won her points with a public largely disgusted with the nation’s politics.

She had made her agenda reforming the scandal-ridden bureaucracy and machine-style politics of the ruling party, to which she belonged, even though her father had been the king of pork-barrel politics.

That her father, the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, also had resigned amid a scandal--bribery allegations led him to quit in 1974 but he nevertheless remained a shadow shogun--added to the atmosphere surrounding her abrupt departure.

Newspapers published extra editions. News reports broadcast continuously throughout the day. And Japanese constituents shook their heads in chagrin. Some were disgusted that Makiko Tanaka had gotten mired in scandal.

“I expected her to do a lot, but she totally betrayed me,” groused Eiko Shinozawa, 45, a female accountant in Tokyo. “It was all a facade, and she was just as lowdown as the rest of the lot.”

More people seemed to feel betrayed that Tanaka had opted to resign rather than continue to fight for reforms and that she would no longer be around to call it as she sees it.

“Oh, it’s so disappointing,” said Sakae Hirose, 60, a Tokyo salaryman. “Of course, her scandal is a problem and it’s bad. But she’s got vitality. She is strong and able. It’s a pity she was sullied by dirty Japanese politics that got her involved with this.”

Some suggested that the allegations were small potatoes in the spectrum of Japanese political scandals and that she might have been set up by bureaucrats or members of her Liberal Democratic Party, with whom she often took issue.

In a characteristic remark, she once publicly branded three top leaders of the LDP as “bonjin, gunjin and henjin”--bland man, military man and strange man. The man she called strange is current Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He nevertheless named her foreign minister last year because of her popular appeal, only to sack Tanaka after her continual high-profile clashes with bureaucrats and several most undiplomatic gaffes.

But others said she resigned to spare herself a fuller investigation and to pave the way for her 31-year-old son to run for her seat in October. On a television talk show, investigative journalist Yoshiu Arita accused her office of failing to account for more than $800,000 of taxpayer money.

Tanaka’s tiny office at parliament was closed Friday, a box of newspapers and mail waiting outside. Phones went unanswered. In the early evening, she showed up at her Tokyo residence, which was thronged with reporters.

Tanaka explained that she had been contemplating the resignation since last month, when the LDP stripped her of voting power and rights within the party for two years in the wake of the alleged violations. “There was no point to continuing, since I couldn’t do any substantial work.

“It’s like my wings were torn off, and realistically, I can no longer work as a lawmaker,” she said.

There was some speculation among the public that she might run as an independent, but it seems unlikely, given her rationale for quitting. The LDP is overwhelmingly the dominant political party. “She was just alone, belonging to nothing,” said political analyst Hiroshi Takaku.

The allegations against her are rather murky: that state money allocated for her secretaries disappeared and that she used staff members paid by her family-run bus company to assist her.

She denied the charges. In a parliamentary hearing on the matter last month she seemed uncharacteristically timid, constantly turning for help to her lawyer and accountant when grilled by fellow legislators.

She apologized Friday for the lingering doubts. As a result of the ethics committee hearing, she said, “it’s regrettable that citizens still have the impression that I didn’t clear up the allegations against me.”

It would be a stretch to say that Tanaka’s resignation deepened pessimism about the political paralysis here: It would be hard for it to get any worse. The public is weary of the lack of change and seemingly endless scandals that have driven several other prominent politicians from office in recent months. Koizumi, installed as prime minister last year amid soaring popularity and hopes for change, hasn’t been able to accomplish much reform. His ratings plummeted after he fired Tanaka.

Her ratings too had been falling, though not as drastically, in recent months in the wake of the scandal and newsmagazine accounts of her alleged disorganization and verbal abuse of her aides. Recent polls nonetheless labeled her as one of the public’s top choices for prime minister--a rather moot point now, since parliament fills the post from among its members.

“No one could have imagined this six months ago,” Koizumi said Friday.

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Takashi Yokota and Hisako Ueno of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.