JAPAN: Trouble for Tanaka

Political seismographs in Japan in the past month have registered a series of increasingly serious shocks to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and particularly to Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, 56. Inflation, the slowing of the postwar economic boom, which the Japanese had come to take for granted, and Tanaka's failure to halt factional fighting within the L.D.P. were the immediate causes of the tremors. In this month's election of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the national legislature, the L.D.P. lost six seats instead of breaking even as expected. That gave it only 128 seats in the 252-man body, its slimmest majority in the L.D.P.'s nearly 28 years in power.

A few days after the electoral setback, Deputy Prime Minister Takeo Miki, 66, quit the Cabinet, complaining about the $142 million squandered on the election by the L.D.P. Then last week Takeo Fukuda, Tanaka's most serious rival for leadership of the L.D.P., resigned from the Cabinet post of Minister of Finance. It was the most serious political threat yet to Tanaka.

Fukuda, 69, called on the Prime Minister to resign. "If things go on at this rate, the party will collapse," said Fukuda. "The L.D.P. must start from scratch to rebuild its image from the roots. This can only start with responsible leadership."

Obviously, Fukuda has himself in mind. As the leader of one of the five main factions of the L.D.P., he has long sought to win the presidency of the party and thereby the prime-ministership. Two years ago, Fukuda tried for the post and narrowly lost to Tanaka. Last year he was named by Tanaka to be Finance Minister, one of the country's most difficult and powerful positions. Fukuda proved his abilities by dealing fairly effectively with a triple economic threat: 1) a 300% increase in the price of imported oil; 2) the industrial world's highest rate of inflation (currently running at 22%); and 3) a dramatic slowing of economic growth rate down from 11% in 1973 to an anticipated 1.5% this year. He tightened credit, increased interest rates, and cut back government spending. These measures began stabilizing prices, at least until recently when industrial and business workers won a 32% wage hike, which is expected to spur new inflation.

Now that he has quit the Cabinet, Fukuda is expected openly to exploit the growing public dissatisfaction with Tanaka. In the most recent poll, the Prime Minister's popularity dropped to 19%.

Fukuda can count on backing from former Deputy Prime Minister Miki, who also heads an important L.D.P. faction, from a number of key party elders (such as Shigeru Hori, 71, who quit the Cabinet post of Minister of the Administrative Management Agency just before Fukuda quit), and from many of Japan's powerful corporate bosses. Unless mounting pressure forces Tanaka to resign, which currently seems unlikely, Fukuda will probably delay a showdown until next July when Tanaka comes up for re-election as L.D.P. president.