No one was particularly suspicious when Movie Actor Mitsuyasu Maeno appeared at Tokyo's Chofu Airport last week in a World War II kamikaze pilot's uniform, complete with white scarf and with risingsun flags emblazoned on his right sleeve and on his warrior's headband. As he rented a single-engine Piper Cherokee from a local flying club, he explained that he was merely doing a publicity turn for a new film on the 1944-45 suicide pilots.
So it seemed for a while after Maeno, 29, took off, accompanied by a photo plane. But after half an hour of picture taking, Maeno radioed to his wingman that he had "something to do in Setagaya"—a Tokyo area that is home to Yoshio Kodama, the millionaire ultra-nationalist who had been Lockheed's principal go-between in its efforts to use bribes to help sell its planes in Japan.
Minutes later, Maeno cut the Piper's engine and shouted into his microphone the traditional kamikaze pilot's farewell: Tenno Heika Banzai!—Long Live the Emperor! He then dove his plane into Kodama's house, where it slammed into a second-floor balcony and exploded in flames. Maeno died instantly. But neither Kodama, resting in another room, nor any of his family or staff was hurt.
Maeno's background included some porn film credits (most recent: Tokyo Emmanuelle), two broken marriages and a previous suicide attempt. An ardent admirer of the ancient Japanese samurai code, he also esteemed Yukio Mishima, the flamboyant novelist who committed hara-kiri in 1970 to protest Japan's loss of traditional values. Many members of Japan's restive right wing have felt that Kodama damaged their cause by acting as a conduit for American bribes—an error that Maeno evidently was seeking to avenge.
The kamikaze (divine wind) attack was yet another tremor in the continuing Lockheed shokku. Prime Minister Takeo Miki has been under heavy fire in the Diet, where his Liberal Democrats hold a steadily shrinking majority, for striking a deal with the U.S. Government that seemed aimed at containing further revelations about the scandal. Opposition parties are particularly angry at two conditions Miki accepted. Information resulting from U.S. investigations of the Lockheed affair will henceforth be passed confidentially to Japanese law agencies, and no names will be revealed publicly unless sufficient evidence is found for indictments.
Midnight Visits. The investigation by Japanese police, tax and customs agents has already yielded enough evidence to indict Kodama for falsifying his 1972 income tax returns. But Kodama, 65, has been confined to his home for much of the time since a stroke in late 1975, and whether he will ever face trial is doubtful. His doctor says that Kodama has been talking of receiving midnight visits from the ghost of an old friend, Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi. The admiral, by chilling coincidence, planned the first kamikaze missions in the waning days of World War II. The day before the war ended Onishi committed hara-kiri—with a sword that had been given to him by Kodama.