The Godfather-san

Back in 1964, former Japanese Premier Nobusuke Kishi needed a big favor: a guarantee that his brother Eisaku Sato would succeed ailing Hayato Ikeda as Premier. So Kishi paid a secret visit to a Tokyo businessman who obligingly made a few telephone calls to his friends. As a result, Sato's opponent hastily withdrew from the race, and Sato went on to become Japan's Premier for an unprecedented eight years.

The tale illustrates the astonishing behind-the-scenes influence wielded by Ryoichi Sasakawa, 75, the most powerful remaining member of a vanishing breed of Japanese kingmakers known as kuromaku. The word translates literally as black curtain,* but the closest equivalent in American slang of the power it connotes is godfather. Through his enormous fortune (his real estate holdings alone are estimated at $71.4 million) and the huge store of giri (moral obligations) he has accumulated over the years by dispensing favors and finances, Sasakawa has a puissance that any American influence peddler would envy.

The son of a sake brewer, Sasakawa made a fortune before he was 30 by speculating in Osaka's grain and stock markets. He also was—and is—a dedicated right-wing superpatriot who decries the social changes that are moving Japan away from traditional manners and mores. In traditional fashion, he likes to boast of his conquest of more than 500 women, ranging from "a distant relative of Emperor Taisho to almost all the top geisha." His unbridled admiration for Benito Mussolini —"the perfect fascist and dictator" —lingers to this day. Indeed, Sasakawa sometimes boasts that he is the "world's wealthiest fascist."

In 1931 Sasakawa established the fascist Nationalist Masses Party and was elected to the lower house of the Diet during World War II, a political fling that landed him in Tokyo's Sugamo Prison for three years while U.S. officials tried unsuccessfully to prosecute him as a war criminal. Protesting his innocence, Sasakawa hired a big brass band to blast martial songs as he strode proudly into the clink. Behind bars, he became fast friends with Kishi and other imprisoned Japanese officials who later returned to power. He also got the idea of how to increase his fortune when an American guard threw a copy of LIFE into his cell. In it, he saw an advertisement for a motorboat.

After the U.S. gave up its attempt to prosecute him, Sasakawa fast-talked the government into letting him set up a series of motorboat races on which the public could legally bet. The races proved to be a big hit and also provided more cash with which Sasakawa could pile up giri. As head of the monopoly that controls the races even today, Sasakawa dispenses 3% of ticket sales ($105 million this year) to favored causes, including charities and research into shipbuilding technology. He has been most generous, though, to Japan's martial arts societies, bragging that he commands a "personal army" of millions of karate and judo experts who "might even volunteer to risk their lives once I order them to."