Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone was a leader who advocated "settling all postwar issues in politics" and ran his administration in a top-down, presidential style of decision making while in office from 1982 to 1987. He was also a pragmatist who, as prime minister, shelved his long-time push for amending Japan's postwar Constitution. Nakasone may have gained an image as a hawk by working to beef up Japan's alliance with the United States and to increase defense spending. But he pursued a balanced diplomacy that also emphasized better relations with China and South Korea. Today's politicians still have a lot to learn from this giant, who died last Friday at the age of 101.
Nakasone is often compared with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. They both championed revising the Constitution, and Abe similarly called for a departure from Japan's "postwar regime." Nakasone spent five years in office — he was given an extra year as Liberal Democratic Party president after serving the two-year term twice, the maximum at that time, for leading the party to a landslide victory in the dual elections of lower and upper chambers of the Diet in 1986. Abe, who led the party to big wins in all six nationwide Diet races since 2012, is now serving his third three-year term as LDP chief and recently became Japan's longest-serving prime minister.
But Nakasone's political footing was entirely different from that of Abe, who is unrivaled in the LDP and faces a weak and fragmented opposition camp. When the LDP's factional politics was in full bloom, Nakasone, leader of a small factional group, was on shaky political ground in the party even as he took the government's helm.