FORMER JAPANESE PM DEAD AT 101.
Presided over privatization of national railway
Yasuhiro Nakasone, who has died aged 101, did more than any of his post-war predecessors to raise Japan’s political profile to match its formidable economic strength.
In an age of outstanding political leaders — Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev and François Mitterrand — he was not out of place, as his chairing of the 1986 G7 summit in Tokyo demonstrated. “Nakasone put Japan on the world map and the rest of the world on Japan’s map” was how Time magazine summarized it.
During his nearly five years in power, Japan aligned itself more closely with the West, but Nakasone was less popular and effective at home. His opportunism earned the nickname “weather vane,” but he reminded critics that a vane, although flexible, had a sure footing.
His reforms aroused widespread opposition and were only partly successful.
Japan National Railways was privatized. Nippon Telephone and Telegraph was transformed from a public enterprise into a joint stock operation. But on the introduction of a sales tax and new liberalized school curricula, Nakasone failed.
The “total clearance of the post-war political accounts” ran right through his career, from the time when, as a young MP, he petitioned the U.S. to grant Japan more independence, to his last years, when he continued to press for a revision of the 1947 constitution imposed by the U.S.
Yasuhiro Nakasone was born May 27, 1918 in Takasaki City. He studied law at what was then Tokyo Imperial University.
In 1941 he joined the Ministry of Home Affairs. After the war, he was elected to parliament; at 28, he was the youngest member of the Diet.
After various powerful ministerial positions, in 1982 he was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party and took office as prime minister.
After stepping down as prime minister in 1987, Nakasone remained a member of the Diet until 2003.
In 1988 Nakasone founded the Institute for International Policy Studies, a think-tank that looks at ways Japan can play a political role commensurate with its economic power.
Nakasone’s wife, Tsutako, died in 2012. He is survived by three children.