The Crisis of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party

Abstract

A s A result of Japanese general election of December 5, 1976, Liberal Democratic Party-for first time in its 21 years of unbroken rule--failed to win a majority in lower house of Diet. With its strength in upper house already reduced to a slender majority, outcome of latest election would appear to bring LDP one-party rule closer to a end. The election was first opportunity for Japanese voters to react to LDP following revelation of Lockheed payoff scandal, in which prominent Liberal Democrats were implicated. The incumbent Prime Minister Miki Takeo, who based his election strategy on public exposure of scandal in order to cleanse his party's image, called election setback the verdict of people concerning scandal.1 The Lockheed bribery scandal became public early in February 1976, when US Senate Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations investigating foreign payoffs reported that Lockheed Aircraft Corporation had spent $12.6 million in Japan to promote its aircraft sales through middlemen and Marubeni Corporation, a trading firm that served as Lockheed's sales agent in Japan. The money included legal commissions, but most of it consisted of unreported-hence illegal -payments. Some of illegal funds were paid to All-Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan's largest domestic airline, which in 1972 decided to buy Lockheed L-1011 TriStar jets; and at least $2 million was funneled to high government officials who approved ANA's choice of Lockheed planes.2