BIG IN JAPAN
Makiko Tanaka
 Makiko Tanaka, daughter of Kakuei Tanaka, Japan' most revered postwar Prime
Minister, was recently inducted as Japanese Foreign Minister and no longer seems to be
following in her father's footsteps. Tanaka's outspoken and irreverent political style has
gained her cult status among the Japanese public, and since becoming the country's first
female front-ranking cabinet appointee, she has stamped her dominance on the political
landscape. "Most party elections are like a garage sale," she said in a recent
interview, "full of senior politicians who've been in office too long." She says
some should be strapped to satellites. She also advised the recently departed Prime
Minister, Yoshiro Mori, that the best way he could help Japan would be to place a large
adhesive bandage over his mouth.
After attending high school in America, Tanaka, known fondly as "Maki," entered
Waseda University in 1964 and was soon apprenticed into politics. In 1974 she witnessed
her father's arrest, and subsequent withdrawal from office, due to bribe allegations -
still regarded by many as a "conspiracy" against the populist leader. Yet this
did not dint her passion for politics. In 1983 she campaigned strongly with her husband,
Naoki, to get him elected to the Diet. But ever the dutiful daughter, she was called to
her father's aid in 1985 after he suffered a massive stroke, and spent a year nursing him
back to recovery.
Tanaka entered the Diet in 1991, and from then on the public spotlight was now firmly on
the outspoken lawmaker, not only because she was the heiress to Japan's most renowned
postwar political dynasty, but because she was a woman. "I will do politics using the
sense of a housewife," she said to the Diet in 1992, and the press dubbed the scene
"the whirlwind of Madonna." She has since been one of the few active women
members in a male-dominated Diet.
In April 2001, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appointed Tanaka Japan's first female
Foreign Minister. Considering Tanaka's star power and her supporting role in elevating
Koizumi to the Prime Ministership, the move was expected, but many feared Tanaka's tirades
might destabilize foreign relations. Such fears did not temper Tanaka's vitriol. "I
usually like to say what's on my mind. I think that's what diplomacy is about," she
said in a recent interview. Criticism of a decades-old security alliance with America, and
of the US's missile defense plan in the region, has already unsettled Japan-US relations.
But those who saw her father help reconcile Japan and China in the 1970s hope that Tanaka
might warm the icy diplomatic waters between the Far East superpowers.
Not afraid to challenge the US, neither is Tanaka shy when it comes to disparaging LDP
bureaucrats. "Explanations by Foreign Ministry officials always sound as though they
have something stuck in their mouths and debate often misses the mark of what the general
public is interested in," she said recently. In the wake of these and similar
remarks, the LDP's ruling faction, once ruled with an iron fist by her father, has
attempted to expel Tanaka from the party.
A breath of fresh air in politics-weary Japan, Tanaka is, ironically, taking on a
political machine set up by her father. But this hasn't stopped the pundits from tipping
Tanaka to take the top political job in the future.
Stuart Braun
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