Ceremony of Silence - Kakuei Tanaka's Shadow Buries Tanzan Ishibashi - 1973-1974

Ceremony of Silence - Kakuei Tanaka's Shadow Buries Tanzan Ishibashi - 1973-1974

In 1973, the joint funeral of former Prime Minister Ishibashi Tanzan's cabinet and the Liberal Democratic Party was held at Tsukiji Honganji Temple, with then Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka serving as chairman of the funeral service committee. The funeral hall, where a wreath of white chrysanthemums was placed with the inscription "From the Emperor and Empress" and the sound of the ceremonial rifle echoed through the hall, was filled with a display of national prestige. As Tanaka exited the podium after offering flowers, plainclothes policemen clapped their hands in time to his movements, signaling the prime minister as he glided into his black car. To the reporter's eye, the scene looked like a violent criminal being taken away in a convoy.

The ceremony was attended by political heavyweights such as Umekichi Nakamura, Kenzo Kono, and Tomomi Narita, all of whom were members of the Socialist Party. Even the Socialist Party members were moving as part of the national order on this occasion. The reporter was looking at this space, which was dominated more by the performances of the living than by respect for the dead, as a "political stage set.

Kakuei Tanaka was at the pinnacle of power at this time, backed by money power and factions, but the shadow of the Lockheed affair was already lurking behind him. The place of mourning for Ishibashi Tanzan, a liberal, was in fact a place where the falsehoods of the regime were exposed. The funeral was a symbolic moment that brought into sharp relief the contradictions that Japan faced in the 1970s: the state, power, and order.