World

Japan's Political Odd Couple Splits

January 29, 2002 / 12:50 PM EST / AP

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Tuesday fired his popular foreign minister and her main rival, a deputy with whom she had a public feud that held up budget legislation in parliament.

Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka has been key to Koizumi's high public approval ratings. She is constantly called his most popular minister because of her promises to fight status quo politics and corruption in the elite Foreign Ministry.

Outspoken

Fiery and outspoken Makiko Tanaka, Japan's first female foreign minister, was highly popular with the Japanese public but proved a headache for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi soon after they took office last year.

It was a humiliating fall for Tanaka, daughter of late ruling party kingmaker and populist politician Kakuei Tanaka.

Her term at Japan's Foreign Ministry had been marked with resentment of the way she was handling a series of scandals at the ministry as well as her tendency to attack the postwar machine politics her father had polished to a fine sheen.

But her popularity among ordinary voters, who admired her plain-spoken style, prompted Koizumi to keep her on despite the squabbles.

A housewife when first elected to the Lower House in 1993 largely on the power of her father's name, Tanaka, who inherited his gravelly voice and swagger, quickly became popular in her own right for her outspokenness and sharp, pithy comments.

In 1998 she described the LDP leadership race as a "garage sale" between a "mediocrity, a soldier and a weirdo."

The mediocrity, Keizo Obuchi, won.

The weirdo was Koizumi, who ignored the barb and named her as foreign minister when he took power last April, and who fired her Tuesday. Reuters/CBS

But she has also been engaged in a highly public squabble with top aides that has stalled some legislation — including a crucial supplementary budget to lift Japan's moribund economy.

"She was summoned to the residence and told to take responsibility for the confusion," said ruling Liberal Democratic Party secretary-general Taku Yamasaki. "The replacement has not been decided."

Koizumi said he removed Tanaka so the squabbles would not hold up passage of next fiscal year's budget.

"I wanted to normalize the debate over the budget," Koizumi said in announcing his decision. "In this severe economic situation the budget must be passed as soon as possible. W must also think of our interests in diplomatic affairs."

Koizumi said he has not decided on Tanaka's replacement. The Kyodo News Agency reported, citing unidentified government sources, that Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi will take over the foreign affairs portfolio while remaining in her current post.

The most damaging feud began when Tanaka accused a lawmaker of trying to bar two non-governmental organizations from last week's Afghan reconstruction conference.

The lawmaker, Muneo Suzuki, denied the claims. The dispute turned into a fight between Tanaka and her vice minister, Yoshiji Nogami, who denied her claims that he had told about Suzuki's intentions.

Parliamentary debate on the supplementary budget was delayed by questioning over the conflicting claims.

The prime minister fired both Tanaka and Nogami. News reports said Suzuki also plans to resign as head of an influential foreign affairs committee.

Tanaka said Koizumi summoned her to his house shortly before midnight Tuesday and told her of his intentions.

Koizumi "asked me to agree to personnel changes. I asked if that meant me, if I was being replaced, and he said that's right," Tanaka told reporters in an interview aired on NHK television.

The $19 billion supplementary budget cleared Parliament's powerful lower house — ensuring it will become law — about an hour before news of the changes in the foreign ministry.

Opposition parties boycotted the vote to protest the confusion over the foreign ministry debate.

The reform-minded Koizumi swept to power last April on a wave of public disgust with years of backroom dealings between the ruling party and bureaucrats that has been blamed for contributing to the decade-long economic slump.

Tanaka, known for her fiery speeches promising to bust up the status quo, has been emblematic of the movement to shake Japan out of political inertia.

But she has also been accused of being undiplomatic.

She caused a stir just days after she was named Japan's top diplomat by snubbing U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during his visit to Tokyo.

She also recently missed a diplomatic meeting because she was reportedly looking for a lost ring and screamed at a subordinate over a failure to get tickets to a party.

Her outspokenness earned her enemies in her ministry, who have fought back by leaking every action by Tanaka that could be portrayed negatively and by blocking her choices for new appointments and transfers in the ministry.

By Joji Sakurai
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