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- <text id=91TT2263>
- <title>
- Oct. 14, 1991: World Notes:Japan
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Oct. 14, 1991 Jodie Foster:A Director Is Born
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 41
- World Notes
- JAPAN
- Going, Going...Gone
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Cut the strings of a puppet, and it falls down. That is what
- happened last week to Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu. Noboru
- Takeshita, the leader of the dominant faction within the ruling
- Liberal Democratic Party, severed the political cords that have
- propped up Kaifu for two years. Kaifu realized he had lost his
- standing within the party. Rather than face humiliation in the
- Oct. 27 party elections that will select the next Prime
- Minister, he announced that he would not run.
- </p>
- <p> Kaifu's political collapse followed a week of legislative
- maneuvering that dramatized his inability to corral party
- support. A set of political-reform bills was killed in the Diet
- at the committee level. Kaifu erupted in anger and hinted that
- he might dissolve the assembly. It was an empty threat that cost
- Kaifu what little party respect he enjoyed.
- </p>
- <p> Now the contest for the Prime Minister's job is wide open.
- The three contenders who had already lined up to challenge
- Kaifu see their positions strengthened. Within the Takeshita
- faction, politicians are scrambling frantically for the
- nomination.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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