We often hear nowadays that politicians in Japan are "smaller" than they used to be. The reference, of course, is not to physique but rather to the capacity of today's politicians to demonstrate broad-mindedness and magnanimity as their predecessors did.
Two politicians of the past can be singled out as magnanimous yet hard-core, or simply "big men." One is the late Saburo Eda, who led the former Japan Socialist Party as acting chairman (he is the father of incumbent Upper House president Satsuki Eda); the other is the late Masayoshi Ito of the Liberal Democratic Party, still remembered for refusing to become prime minister.
In June 1956, in a question session before an Upper House plenary session in connection with a no-confidence motion the JSP had pushed against the Upper House secretary general, the elder Eda called on Kiichi Miyazawa, then a newcomer to the chamber, three times to leave the ruling LDP and join the opposition Socialists.