At day's end, it was perhaps one of the few things over which he held no sway, the relentless logic of aging, that made Tsuneo Watanabe, Japan's most powerful media baron, decide to step out of the shadows.
For years, most Japanese had caught only glimpses of the man, usually leaving, late at night, one of his favorite ryotei, the members-only redoubts where Watanabe dined with fellow power brokers and received supplicants. Reporters would swarm around him as he made his way toward his black sedan, peppering him with questions on the day's topic, and he would oblige them with imperious one-liners that made him the embodiment of the arrogant, ultimate insider.
But Watanabe, now nearly 80 years old, has stepped into the light. He has recently granted long, soul-baring interviews in which he has questioned the rising nationalism he has cultivated so assiduously in the pages of his conservative newspaper, the Yomiuri -- the world's largest, with a circulation of 14 million.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Now, he talks about the need to acknowledge Japan's violent wartime history and reflects on his wife's illness and his own, as well as the joys of playing with his new hamsters. Struck by his own sense of mortality, Watanabe seems ruf-fled that his power may be waning. He has railed against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who he says just doesn't listen to him anymore.
"Before, early on, he used to listen to me sometimes," Watanabe told a television interviewer.
During a two-hour interview at his office, where, in addition to the paper, he presides over Japan's most popular baseball team, the Yomiuri Giants, and the rest of the Yomiuri Media Group's empire, he puffed on one of the three pipes on the coffee table before him. He was a man in a hurry, in a hurry to change Japan, no less, by forcing it to confront, understand and judge its wartime conduct -- and set it on the correct path as his testament to the nation. "I'll be 80 years old this year," he said. "I have very little time left."
His first move was to publish an editorial last June criticizing Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, the Shinto memorial where 14 Class A war criminals, including the wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo, are deified. It was an about-face for the Yomiuri, which tended to react viscerally against foreign criticism of the Yasukuni visits.
nationalist push
Indeed, the paper was a main force in pushing for the more muscular nationalism now emerging in Japan. Shortly after becoming editor in chief in 1991, Watanabe set up a committee to revise the US-imposed pacifist constitution. If MacArthur's Constitution emasculated Japan by forbidding it to have a real military, Watanabe's constitution, published in 1994, restored its manhood.
Now, it seems only a matter of time until Japan completes the process that Watanabe started years ago. Still, he seems troubled by some aspects of the nationalist movement he helped engender. The editorial, which reflected his worries about Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors, sent shock waves through the political world. It called for the building of a secular alternative to the shrine and said that Koizumi did not understand history.
Koizumi worships at a shrine that glorifies militarism, said Watanabe, who equates Tojo with Hitler. He added, "This person Koizumi doesn't know history or philosophy, doesn't study, doesn't have any culture. That's why he says stupid things, like, `What's wrong about worshipping at Yasukuni?' Or, `China and Korea are the only countries that criticize Yasukuni.' This stems from his ignorance."
Like many of postwar Japan's leaders with wartime experience, Watanabe is suspicious of the emotional appeals to nationalism used increasingly by those who never saw war.
political heavyweight
After graduating from the University of Tokyo after the war, Watanabe joined the Yomiuri newspaper in 1950 and made his mark as a political reporter. Political reporters in Japan tend to succeed by becoming close to a particular politician. According to a 2000 biography by Akira Uozumi, Watanabe ingratiated himself so much with one Liberal Democratic heavyweight, Banboku Ohno, that he became the gatekeeper at his house. Politicians seeking favors from Ohno would ask Watanabe to put in a good word.
Convinced that Japan will never become a mature country unless it examines its wartime conduct on its own, Watanabe ordered a yearlong series of articles on the events of six decades ago. In August, the newspaper will pronounce its verdict.
The series and Watanabe's attacks on Koizumi are said to have shaken Japanese politics, as Koizumi prepares to retire in September. Even though he won a landslide election a few months ago, attacks against his legacy are rising. Political analysts see the hand of Watanabe. The series, Watanabe said, has started changing the opinions of some politicians. But he is far more ambitious.
"I think I can change all of Japan," he said.
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