Blunt Politico, Idealist Vie to Define Japan’s Future : Politics: The conservative Ozawa and the liberal Takemura are chief rivals in the current power struggle.

TOKYO —  One is a brilliant policy strategist and ace at brute-power politics who criticizes Japan’s consensus decision-making as “collective irresponsibility.” He says Japan must become a “normal nation” by ending its free ride on American security policies and by more actively cooperating with such global ventures as U.N. peacekeeping operations.

For such views, Ichiro Ozawa of the Renewal Party is praised as a visionary and condemned as a dangerous autocrat.

The other is a liberal who rejects any role as a military or political giant. He says Japan should be a “small but shining nation” serving the world through ventures such as environmental cooperation.

Masayoshi Takemura, chief of the New Party Harbinger, is nicknamed Mumin Papa after a roly-poly creature in a Norwegian fairy tale; his kindly manner and consensus style may fit the Japanese character, but he is criticized as lacking substance.

They differ in policy, personality and political style. But Ozawa and Takemura have now become focal points and chief rivals in the monumental power struggle shaking Japan. That struggle--set off by the collapse last July of the Liberal Democratic Party’s 38-year rule--came into sharp relief after Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa resigned last week.

Ozawa, 51, is de facto commander of the ruling coalition’s conservative forces from the Renewal Party, the Buddhist-backed Clean Government Party and Hosokawa’s Japan New Party, an alliance that totals 150 members. Takemura, 59, leads the 108 members of the liberal wing’s New Party Harbinger, Socialists and Democratic Socialist Party.

As the political world lurches toward a historic realignment, the two rivals represent the sharp choices Japan faces in deciding what role to play internationally in the post-Cold War world. “This is a war between a Japanese idealist, Takemura, and a Japanese realist, Ozawa,” said political commentator Yoshimi Ishikawa.

The two men also display different attitudes toward two of Japan’s hottest issues: North Korea and tax policy. Ozawa says North Korea has a nuclear bomb and Japan might be a target, all the more reason to prepare defenses. Takemura has remained conspicuously silent. He enjoys friendly relations with the Pyongyang regime, having forged fishing treaties as governor of Shiga prefecture south of Kyoto. He visited North Korea in 1990 with former LDP kingpin Shin Kanemaru.

Ozawa has advocated a 10% increase in the consumption tax to pay for a 50% cut in income and residence levies--a bold plan that would probably offer a powerful economic stimulus. But Takemura has balked at raising the consumption tax and has advocated using deficit-financing bonds instead.

The two rivals have carried their war to bookstores, where Ozawa’s best-selling policy tome has outsold Takemura’s book more than 4 to 1, with 670,000 copies sold. In his “Blueprint for a New Japan,” Ozawa bluntly takes Japan to task for weak leadership, selfish economic development and slavery to the company; he offers explicit proposals for change, saying, “We continue to receive and not to give.”

Takemura, in his “A Small but Shining Nation,” says such a path is a dangerous invitation to rearm. Japan, he says, should look for less provocative ways to contribute, such as devoting 0.5% of its annual gross national product--about $20 billion--to global environmental protection.

But more than their policies, their differing political styles have drawn the sharpest attention.

Both are former LDP members but were groomed under radically different masters. Ozawa is a disciple of legendary political shogun Kakuei Tanaka, the former prime minister who honed to an art the corrupt system of money politics. Takemura is allied with Masaharu Gotoda, a godfather of the LDP liberal wing who accelerated the crackdown on corruption in the construction industry in 1992 as justice minister under then-Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa.

In Japan’s long tradition of political puppet and puppeteer, Ozawa works in the shadows, skillfully wielding power. He was said to be the mastermind behind the Hosokawa government and, over the years, has brokered agreements on such fractious issues as Japan’s $13-billion contribution to the Persian Gulf War and trade compromises with the United States in areas including telecommunications and construction.

His brute effectiveness has won him ardent fans and virulent enemies. He is resented not only by Takemura but also by a majority of LDP members, who blame him for destroying the party’s grasp on power by bolting with 35 members last year. As a result, he has become the lightning rod in the political turmoil, which is dividing along pro- and anti-Ozawa forces.

His shadowy style is coming under increasing attack. “In the Japan of today, politicians must take responsibility upfront for the power they wield,” said Teruaki Nakano, a Tokyo advertising executive and admitted Takemura fan.

As criticism against him mounts, Ozawa--a policy wonk and an intensely private leader--made a startling appearance last week on an entertainment show catering to women. He smiled it up, lovingly talked about his pet birds and gamely endured a “fashion check” of his dark blue suits. He confessed that he calls his wife, Kazuko, “Mama” and sometimes lies to her. (He was so obedient to his mentor Tanaka that he married her on his advice, sight unseen.)

He said his life’s greatest influence was his mother, a strict disciplinarian. He does not want his three sons to become politicians. He thinks about quitting at least half the time; his hero is a comic book character who enjoys total freedom as a masterless samurai.

The ladies loved him. “My image of you has really changed,” one woman in the audience gushed.

Takemura, meantime, enjoys a warm, fuzzy reputation as a conciliator. Even after leaving the LDP, he never burned his bridges. He employs a more traditional style of consensus building.

And unlike Ozawa, Takemura operates in the open. He was the first governor in the nation to publicly disclose his assets when the Lockheed bribery scandal shook the country in 1976, and later wrote several political reform bills as a congressman.

But Takemura lacks the raw power to deliver the goods, analysts say. Nor does he possess the skill with politics and money that Ozawa learned from the master, Tanaka.

Takemura and his pals “are utterly decent, genuine internationalists who don’t have much power and are used as potted plants to decorate the rougher, tougher side of Japanese politics,” said Chalmers Johnson, a University of California professor emeritus.

Johnson noted that despite Ozawa’s questionable tactics, he “does have the power to deliver.”

Takemura, raised by grandparents in Shiga after his farming mother died of overwork when he was 2, graduated from Tokyo University in economics in 1962. He married his wife, Chizuru, after meeting her at a dance party; they have two children. At 36, he became known as the “Bicycle Mayor” of his hometown of Yokaichi because he commuted to work by bike, and he distinguished himself for his anti-pollution policies as governor three years later. He was elected to the lower house of Parliament in July, 1986, and broke with the LDP in June, 1993, when it failed to approve political reform, founding the New Party Harbinger.

Ozawa was born in Iwate prefecture (state) in northern Japan. A graduate in economics of Keio University, he is the son of a politician and was elected to the lower house in 1969. He has held such posts as minister of home affairs and LDP secretary general. He left the LDP and established the Japan Renewal Party last year after the arrest on tax evasion charges of his political mentor, Kanemaru, threw the party into chaos.