Kakuei Tanaka - Fall From Power

Fall From Power

Early in 1985, Tanaka finally lost his power. Takeshita formed a "study group" called Soseikai, and this group quickly won over 40 of the faction's 120 Diet members. The split in Tanaka's faction aggravated his existing problems with alcoholism and hypertension, and he suffered a stroke just three weeks after Takeshita's departure. His daughter Makiko spirited him from the hospital after authorities refused to give the former prime minister an entire floor, and the Diet session halted entirely while details of Tanaka's condition leaked out to the press.

Tanaka remained in convalescence through the election of 1986, where he retained his Diet seat. On New Year's Day of 1987, he made his first public appearance since the stroke, and was clearly in poor condition: half of his face was paralyzed, and he was grossly overweight. In that year's election, virtually all of his faction members joined behind Takeshita, and Etsuzankai lost five of its twenty seats in Niigata.

The Tokyo High Court dismissed Tanaka's appeal on July 29, and the original sentence passed down in 1983 was reinstated. Tanaka immediately posted bail and appealed to the Supreme Court.

While his appeal lingered in the Court's docket, Tanaka's medical condition deteriorated. He resigned from the Diet in 1989, was diagnosed with diabetes, and finally died of pneumonia at Keio University Hospital at 2:04 p.m. on December 16, 1993.

Makiko Tanaka, who was not associated with Etsuzankai, was elected to her father's old seat in Niigata in 1991, and became foreign minister in the cabinet of Junichiro Koizumi in 2001.

Tanaka's LDP faction has survived beyond his death. Its support base, which flocked to Takeshita in the late 1980s, coalesced during Tanaka's convalescence. After Takeshita was sidelined by the Recruit scandal, the Tanaka faction rallied behind Ryutaro Hashimoto, who led the Tanaka faction (now called the Hashimoto faction) until scandal forced him to resign his leadership position in 2004.