Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita

Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita said he will not be driven from office by a stock-trading scandal that has forced three Cabinet ministers to resign. He said he will try to restore public trust in government. Opposition leaders have demanded Takeshita's removal in the wake of the resignation of Ken Harada, director of the Economic Planning Agency, because of links to Recruit Co., the firm at the center of the stock-trading and alleged influence-peddling scandal.

Former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, who died in his hospital bed this weekend after a long illness, almost singularly symbolized what has been wrong with the Japanese political system since the end of World War II. The best legacy of Takeshita's death would be to usher in a new era of Japanese politics in which there would be no more Takeshitas.

Former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita today denied charges that he had intervened to help a scandal-ridden express delivery company in exchange for the company's help in using gangsters to quiet a small group of his right-wing critics. His two hours of testimony before Japan's Parliament was part of a continuing effort to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding influence-buying by the delivery company Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin.

Former President Ronald Reagan plans to visit Japan in October at the invitation of Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita and speak at a symposium of Japanese businessmen and political leaders, a Japanese communications group has announced. Reagan would speak before the Fujisankei Forum in the first such speech by a former American President, the Fujisankei Communications Group said in releasing details of Reagan's trip. It would be the first trip for Reagan outside of the United States since he left office.

The politician viewed as the likely successor to Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita acknowledged Friday that his wife received a monthly consultant's fee from the company at the center of Japan's political scandal. Shintaro Abe, 64, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, called a news conference to confirm a report that his wife, Yoko Abe, received $2,300 a month as a consultant for Recruit Co. from February, 1986, to September, 1988. Takeshita acknowledged Tuesday that he and close aides accepted $1.15 million in donations and discounted stock from Recruit Co.

In another revelation in Japan's festering political scandal, former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe admitted today that his wife had received monthly donations from the Recruit Co. for three years. Abe's remarks followed a newspaper report that Mrs. Abe had received about $70,000 between 1985 and 1988. "Neither my wife nor I knew about this and I have left all my financial matters to my secretaries. After investigation, we found this was true and I regret my lack of knowledge," Abe told a news conference.

President Bush moved Monday to reinforce his warning to Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu earlier this month that Tokyo must move soon to open its markets or risk a serious political backlash here--and possible retaliation. Bush reiterated the theme in an hourlong private talk with former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, who is visiting here this week. Takeshita, Japan's most powerful politician, is regarded as the real political force behind Kaifu.

Parliament today approved Sosuke Uno as prime minister, and he pledged reforms to clear the air of an influence-peddling scandal that has decimated the top ranks of the governing Liberal Democratic Party. The 66-year-old former foreign minister also spoke out against the United States, saying Washington's use of its new trade law to force concessions from Japan was "like negotiating with your fists up." The conservative party also got new leaders, and Uno chose a new Cabinet in a bid to wipe the slate clean of the Recruit influence-buying scandal before elections for half the upper house of Parliament, expected within two months.

Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno flew home today to become Japan's next prime minister but found instead that a rival candidate had emerged within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Uno, 66, had been expected to be elected without opposition to replace Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, who is resigning over Japan's biggest political scandal since World War II. But a small group of party elders and younger members have objected to his connections with Takeshita and former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, both of whom have been disgraced by the Recruit Co. stocks-for-favors scandal.

Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno, 66, emerged Saturday as the leading choice to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita in his posts as chief of government and president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The party also unilaterally extended Parliament's current term for 25 days. Takeshita and Shintaro Abe, the Liberal Democrats' secretary general, reportedly agreed at a Saturday meeting to ask Uno to take over the scandal-ridden party. They met in a hospital where Abe, a close political ally of Takeshita, is recovering from a gallstone operation.

Prosecutors today indicted two politicians in Japan's biggest political scandal since World War II but failed to gather sufficient evidence to charge Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita or his predecessor, Yasuhiro Nakasone. Japanese television reported that the charges against the two politicians marked the conclusion of the prosecutors' bribery case in the far-reaching scandal, which earlier forced Takeshita to declare his intention to resign. The indictments, expected for nearly a week, were delivered against former Chief Cabinet Secretary Takao Fujinami and Katsuya Ikeda, a one-time senior official of Japan's No. 2 opposition party, Komeito, who resigned from Parliament last week over the scandal.

American observers, seeking to make sense of Japan's Recruit scandal, might be tempted to measure it against our Watergate episode. Both involved huge sums of illegal money; both were cracked open by enterprising reporters who had been assigned to a seemingly unimportant beat; both tripped up top business leaders, featured humiliating arrests and criminal convictions, and both ultimately led to the door of the highest government official in the land....

Kiyoshi Kishimoto was trained to sing folk ballads, the kind with morals attached, in which virtuous samurai are rewarded in old age for their earlier acts of benevolence. Words failed him, however, when he tried to write contemporary lyrics in the tradition of the Kawachi ballad, which is named for his native region near Osaka. Things were just not the way they were supposed to be. The golden rule was no longer in evidence. Everything had been turned around. "If you do bad these days, you're rewarded," Kishimoto lamented the other day. "If you cheat, you'll make a lot of money."

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party overrode an opposition boycott Friday to ensure final enactment of Japan's budget by May 28, raising confrontation in Parliament to a new peak. At the same time, the prospects for swift selection of a successor to outgoing Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita grew more clouded as the consensus choice, Masayoshi Ito, chairman of the party's Executive Board, called a news conference to reiterate his refusal to take the job. The ruling conservatives rammed the budget for the 1989 fiscal year that began April 1 through the House of Representatives, fixing May 28 or shortly thereafter as a deadline for Takeshita to submit an official resignation.