Yasuhiro Nakasone - Later Political Life

Later Political Life

Nakasone was replaced by Noboru Takeshita in 1987, and was implicated, along with other LDP lawmakers, in the Recruit scandal that broke the following year.

Although he remained in the Diet for another decade and a half, his influence gradually waned. In 2003, despite a fight, Nakasone was not given a place on the LDP's electoral list as the party introduced an age limit of 73 years for candidates in the proportional representation blocks. This ended his career as a member of the Diet. The move was widely seen as a blunt and effective attack by Junichiro Koizumi on the old guard LDP leadership.

Nakasone's son, Hirofumi Nakasone, is also a member of the Diet; he served in the cabinet of Keizō Obuchi as Minister of Education and was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of Taro Aso.

In early 2010, "aware of his status as one of the few leaders revered across Japan’s suddenly fractured political landscape" and the country's "most revered elder statesman," Nakasone launched a series of interviews to address the direction of prime minister Yukio Hatoyama's government. In a profile at that time, Hatoyama's "inexperienced left-leaning" government was seen as "challenging Japan’s postwar political order and its close relationship with the United States." As well, the LDP was "crumbling into disarray" in the wake of Hatoyama's victory. In the profile, Nakasone described the moment "as a national opening on par with the wrenching social and political changes that followed defeat in the war praised the appearance of a strong second political party as a step toward true democracy. "'Being knocked out of power is a good chance to study in the cram school of public opinion,'" he was quoted as saying of the LDP. He "faulted Mr. Hatoyama for giving Washington the impression that valued ties with China more than he did those with the United States. 'Because of the prime minister’s imprudent remarks, the current situation calls for Japan to make efforts to improve things,' he said. The relationship with the United States is different from that with China, he said, because 'it is built on a security alliance, and not just on the alliance, but on the shared values of liberal democracy, and on its shared ideals.'" And relative to another high-profile current source of friction between Japan and the United States, Nakasone said "'Problems like Okinawa can be solved by talking together.'"