Noboru Takeshita

Noboru Takeshita was born on 26 February 1924, in present-day Unnan, Shimane Prefecture, His family had been sake brewers for generations, and Takeshita was the 20th head of the Takeshita brewing family. Both his father Yūzō and his grandfather Gizō had been men of high repute in the region, and Takeshita followed in their footsteps and decided to become a politician when he was in junior high school. Takeshita attended Waseda University in Tokyo. He married Masae Takeuchi prior to joining the Imperial Japanese Army to serve as an instructor during World War II. His wife committed suicide while he was away for the war, which author Jacob Schlesinger argued made Takeshita obsessive about his composure and highly reserved about showing anger to others. After the war, he remarried, to Naoko Endō, a distant relative, and worked as an English teacher and managed a high school judo team before entering politics in 1951. As a young judo competitor, he was known as "master of the draw" for his ability to avoid easy victories over weaker opponents and to avert defeat by stronger opponents. ==Political career==

Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan in 1988 in 1988 in 1989) Takeshita served as a local assemblyman in Shimane Prefecture from 1951. In the period Takeshita was finance minister, the Yen appreciated relative to other international currencies. The rise of the strong Yen (endaka) enhanced Japan's status as a financial powerhouse and led to the Japanese asset price bubble of the 1980s. Tanaka never recovered from his stroke, and by July 1987, Takeshita's faction counted 113 of the 143 Tanaka faction members, while only thirteen supported Takeshita's rival Susumu Nikaido. The Tanaka faction members who moved to Takeshita's faction included Ichiro Ozawa, Tsutomu Hata, Ryutaro Hashimoto, Keizo Obuchi and Kozo Watanabe. In July 1986, Takeshita left the Cabinet and was named to the key post of secretary general of the party. ==Premiership (1987–1989)==

In November 1987, Takeshita became president of the LDP and was thus elected Prime Minister of Japan, replacing Yasuhiro Nakasone. Among the highlights of the period in which Takeshita led the government, he acknowledged that Japan had been an aggressor during World War II. This statement was part of a speech in the Japanese Diet. Takeshita also pursued diplomacy in the rest of the world, including tours of several western nations as well as discussions for debt forgiveness to developing countries. Takeshita's initial tenure was relatively comfortable due to steady success in the Japanese economy at the time, but soon his administration began to see some issues. The number of unskilled foreign workers (from areas such as the Philippines and Bangladesh) doubled between 1986 and 1988, and the American government passed into law the Omnibus Trade Bill, which threatened Japanese exports to the country. Moreover, despite Takeshita's diplomatic gestures, trade imbalance with both Western Europe and East Asia continued to widen, leading to friction between the Japanese and foreign governments. Takeshita was mainly remembered within Japan for implementing the country's first consumption tax, which his government forced through the Diet in 1988 amid public opposition. Economics The economic policies of him and his two successors are seen as part of the neoliberal cycle by Post keynesians. He advocated for deregulation. ==Later years and death==

Although Takeshita was accused of insider trading and corruption, he was never charged and was able to retain his seat in the Diet until shortly before his death. Takeshita himself died of respiratory failure in June 2000 after over a year in hospital, during which time he was said to have "masterminded" the coalition between the LDP and New Komeito and to have arranged the election of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori from his hospital bed. He had planned to retire from the Diet as of the 2000 general election, which occurred just days after his death. The Economist characterized his death as the end of an era that was "a dizzy mixture of brilliance and corruption" in Japanese politics. Hashimoto led the former Takeshita faction until refusing to stand in the 2005 general election due to a fundraising scandal, and died shortly thereafter. The remnants of the faction, formally known by this time as Heisei Kenkyūkai (Heisei Research Council), remained active under the leadership of Yūji Tsushima, who resigned prior to the 2009 general election, passing control to Fukushiro Nukaga. The faction raised much less in donations during the 1990s and 2000s than it did under Tanaka and Takeshita in the 1980s, as electoral reforms enacted in 1994, coupled with new campaign finance regulations and the ongoing economic slump that followed the Japanese asset price bubble, weakened the power of factions in Japanese politics. ==Personal life==

Takeshita was twice married, and survived by three daughters (his only son, Rikidō, died one month after his birth in 1954) and several grandchildren, and manga artist Eiki Eiki. His younger half-brother, Wataru (1946–2021) was a reporter with NHK, who then began working for Noboru as an aide in 1985. Wataru entered politics in 2000 and served as leader of his old Takeshita faction (now known as the Heisei Kenkyūkai faction) from 2018 until his death in September 2021. Takeshita's two other younger half-siblings were Saburō (born 1948) and Sakae. ==Honours==

• Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (20 June 2000; posthumous) • Golden Pheasant Award of the Scout Association of Japan (1991) ==External links==