Takeo Miki

Takeo Miki (毎日グラフ, 毎日新聞社, 10 March 1952.)

Born in Awa, Tokushima, Miki graduated from Meiji University in Tokyo. He attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in law from the institution in 1966.[1]

During 1937 Miki was elected to the Diet; he remained there for the rest of his life, winning re-election no fewer than 19 times over 51 years. In the 1942 general election he openly voiced opposition to the military government under Hideki Tojo and still managed to win a seat; his efforts at this time were assisted by Kan Abe, the grandfather of Prime Minister Shinzō Abe.[2]

Miki took over from Kakuei Tanaka as Prime Minister on 9 December 1974, following the latter's implication in the corruption concerning real-estate and construction companies. The attractiveness of Miki to the LDP bosses was chiefly due to his personal integrity, and his weak power base from his small faction. In fact, Miki had neither expected nor wanted to be prime minister at all, as was reflected when upon his election he murmured "a bolt from the blue".

While Miki was at the funeral of ex-PM Eisaku Sato in 1975, he was assaulted by a right-wing extremist: Hiroyoshi Fudeyasu, the secretary-general of the Great Japan Patriotic Party[3] with foreign dignitaries nearby.[4] This caused criticism of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police over not doing enough to ensure his safety.[3]

After being elected, Miki attempted to reform the LDP, relentlessly investigating the Lockheed bribery scandals, which made him a large number of enemies within the party. A campaign literally called "Down with Miki" ("Miki oroshi") was started by influential faction leaders. Despite Miki's personal popularity with the public, the Lockheed scandal reflected poorly on the party, which lost its overall majority in the 1976 election to the Diet and had to make deals with minor parties to remain in power. Embarrassed by the result, Miki resigned[5] and was succeeded on 24 December 1976, by Takeo Fukuda.

In Mao Zedong's final days, he took a great interest in Miki's political condition, as Miki was suffering a coup d'état from amongst his own party. Mao had never shown any interest in Miki before, or even mentioned him.

He held many other posts during his career in addition to being prime minister.

NFL player Takeo Spikes was named after Miki.[6]

• Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (14 November 1988; posthumous)

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  Memorandum of Conversation, White House state dining room, June 30, 1976

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This article incorporates text from OpenHistory.