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- WORLD, Page 41World NotesJAPANTattling on Mr. Clean
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- One reason Sousuke Uno got the Prime Minister's job in the
- wake of the Recruit influence-peddling scandal was that he was
- widely regarded as Mr. Clean. Last week that reputation was
- impugned from an unexpected quarter: a former geisha who claimed
- to have been his lover. SCOOP: A SCANDAL INVOLVING PRIME
- MINISTER UNO, shrieked a headline in the weekly magazine Sunday
- Mainichi. In an interview, the 40-year-old, otherwise
- unidentified former geisha said Uno paid her about $21,000
- during a five-month affair that began in October 1985. She
- portrayed Uno as bullying and self-aggrandizing.
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- Traditionally, a public servant's private life is ignored
- in Japan, but the Sunday Mainichi's editor in chief, Shuntaro
- Torigoe, argued that "the time has come to question Japanese
- politicians' illicit relations with women." Questioned by
- legislators, Uno said, "I'd rather refrain from commenting on
- such matters in public."
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