Sadao Hirano, former member of the House of Councillors, revealed the true nature of the Lockheed affair, which he witnessed up close as secretary to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Hirano appeared on Arc Times: The News on November 29. —–By Arc Times staff.
“It was actually a power struggle between the Miki/Nakasone administration at the time in Japan and Mr. Tanaka,” Hirano revealed.
What was the true nature of the “Lockheed affair” in which former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was arrested in July 1976? —- Sadao Hirano, a former member of the House of Councillors and well-known political expert, stated in Arc Times: The News on November 29, “although an argument that the U.S. played a major role in the affair is also reasonable, it was actuallly a power struggle between the Miki/Nakasone administration at the time in Japan and Mr. Tanaka. Then it was also a political battle between the prosecutors and Mr. Tanaka,” he said.
The view that “behind the scenes, U.S. intentions were at work” in the arrest of former Prime Minister Tanaka remains persistent, among some experts in Japan.
What Hirano revealed, however, was actually an aspect of the power struggle between the Miki/Nakasone Administration (which composed of then-Prime Minister Takeo Miki and LDP Secretary General Yasuhiro Nakason) versus former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka.
At the time, Mr. Hirano was working for the Secretariat of the House of Representatives as a secretary to Shigezaburo Maeo, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. What he witnessed there was the political battle over the potential testimony in the Diet by right-wing tycoon Yoshio Kodama.
In February 1976, through a congressional testimony before the U.S. Senate, two allegations suddenly came to light: (1) ¥2.1 billion in bribes from the Lockheed Corporation were funneled to “Japanese government official” through Mr. Yoshio Kodama, in order to sell the P3C anti-submarine patrol aircraft to Japan, and (2) ¥500 million in bribes were funneled to trading company Marubeni Corporation to have the commercial aircraft, the Tri-Star, introduced to All Nippon Airways.
“It would be Mr. Nakasone rather than Mr. Miki,” Hirano said.
The “Kodama route,” with its “2.1 billion yen” bribe amount, was initially the biggest focus, and the Diet attempted to call Kodama as a witness. However, Kodama’s doctor submitted a medical report stating that Kodama had a stroke. A team of doctors commissioned by the National Diet of Japan was asked to directly check Kodama’s condition in order to ascertain the truth of the story.
It was Mr. Hirano who was coordinating the dispatch of the doctors under the leadership of Speaker Maeo of the House of Representatives. The team of doctors dispatched by the Diet visited Kodama’s residence on the evening of February 16, 1976, and eventually diagnosed that Kodama was in a serious coma. As Kodama was not able to testify, the identity of the “Japanese government official” who received the bribe through the “Kodama route” remained unknown. The focus then shifted to the “Marubeni route” of the “500 million yen,” and in July of that year, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office arrested former Prime Minister Tanaka for receiving a bribe from Marubeni.
At that time, Mr. Hirano felt that the date and time of the dispatch of the team of doctors to Kodama may have been leaked in advance. 25 years later, in 2021, Hirano became convinced of the leak. A colleague of Kodama’s doctor at the time revealed in a monthly magazine that the doctor gave Kodama a powerful sleeping injection several hours before the parliamentary medical team arrived at Kodama’s residence.
“The secretary general of the ruling party was in a position to know whether and when to dispatch a team of doctors. So, probably, the information have been passed on to the doctor, and he responded to it,” Hirano said. As for who influenced the direction of the Lockheed affair, he said, “Well, it was probably LDP’s Secretary-General Nakasone rather than Mr. Miki,” he said. Hirano’s interview with Arc Times shed light on a dark part of the Lockheed affair, which remains shrouded in darkness as most of those involved, including Tanaka and Nakasone, have passed away.
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