TOKYO -- Former Prime Minister Takeo Miki, 81, who ordered the arrest of his predecessor in a campaign to clean up Japanese government in the mid-1970s, died Monday of a heart attack.
Miki, who served as prime minister from 1974 to 1976, died at 10:35 a.m. at the Mitsui Memorial Hospital. He had been hospitalized after suffering a brain hemorrhage in June 1986.
Miki was known as 'Mr. Clean' for his drive to rid Japanese politics of corruption.
He took office in December 1974 as a surprise choice after the government of Premier Kakuei Tanaka collapsed due to a scandal over accepting bribes from the Lookheed Corp.
Miki got the job partly because his more powerful rivals were deadlocked. He emerged as a compromise choice. In addition, he was free from financial scandal.
Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, who is himself involved in an insider stock-trading scandal, praised Miki as 'a man of pure heart and clean hand.'
Miki held the record for the longest service in Japan's Diet since the end of World War II. He was a member of parliament for 51 years.
Miki was first elected to the lower house in 1936 and left office in 1976 to take responsibility for the defeat of his Liberal Democratic Party in national elections.
Before becoming prime minister, Miki served as foreign minister and minister of international trade and industry.
Miki, who was considered a liberal, was the originator of Japan's policy of limiting defense spending to less than 1 percent of the nations' gross national product.
The policy was scrapped two years ago under pressure from the United States, which spends close to 7 percent of its GNP on its military and has been urging Japan to shoulder more responsibility for its own defense.
Takeo Miki was born March 17, 1907, in Tokushima province on Shikoku, smallest of the main Japanese islands. His father was a well-to-do manufacturer of chemical fertilizers.
Miki was the first Japanese prime minister who was partly the product of an American education. In the 1930s he spent three years as a graduate student in economics and political science at the University of California and the University of Southern California.
Miki was about five feet six inches tall. Horn-rimmed glasses dominated his thin, bony face. He was something of an absent-minded professor.
'That man will go around with a grain of rice on his chin,' his wife, Mutsuko said. 'He will wear a suit on which he has spilled tea. I have to watch him closely.'
Miki liked to read and had a distaste for the drinking parties and late suppers that are part of a politician's life in Japan.
Shortly after taking office he became the first Japanese prime minister to give a public statement of his finances. The statement showed that Miki and his wife, daughter of a wealthy industrialist, had profited through shrewd but legal purchases of property in Japan's postwar land boom.
Miki listed all his properties, but declined to estimate their worth. Accountants who studied the list guessed the value at around $8 million.
