Sōsuke Uno was a Japanese politician who was briefly Prime Minister of Japan in 1989. A scandal exposed by the geisha Mitsuko Nakanishi contributed to his premature resignation from office after just sixty-eight days.
In 1960 he entered politics, winning election to the Diet of Japan. Six years later he was promoted to Vice-Minister at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, then similar positions with the Science and Technology Agency, then the Administrative Agency until earning his place in Cabinet as Minister for Trade and Industry and then Foreign Secretary until he was Prime Minister. Whilst Foreign Secretary he was applauded for his tact as foreign secretary, navigating international demands for increased Japanese contributions to international commerce with stern loyalty to his own nation's interests. In 1974 he served briefly as Director General of the Japan Defense Agency. Uno's career reached a peak in the most fraught times his party had seen, as he took the reigns of his party after the Recruit Scandal, when 47 Japanese MPs were found guilty of taking bribes and unfair trading. Of all prime-ministerial candidates, only Uno was free of blame from them, and he was given charge over the party, the government, and Japan. By this stage he had served his country for almost fifty years, and was placed in office on 3 June 1989.
Geisha affair
Uno encountered public scandal in 1989, when accused by the geisha Mitsuko Nakanishi of being "immoral" and stingy in his financial support during their four-month affair in 1986. Nakanishi would claim in following newspaper interviews that Uno had treated older geisha with arrogance and contempt, had not paid the appropriate fee of ¥300,000 per month for her company of four months, and had not provided a traditional parting gift as had been custom in geisha etiquette. A Washington Post article published in July 1989 brought international attention to the affair, with some geisha denouncing Nakanishi as a whistleblower, effectively compromising the discreet nature of the profession and engaging with political and economic affairs in the public sphere. Nakanishi later quit the profession, re-married and divorced once, attended a Shingon Buddhist school temple in Shiga Prefecture, and held various jobs unrelated to the geisha community. Due to the severity of the scandal, Nakanishi's own son disowned her during this time. To avoid further scandal, Sōsuke Uno resigned as prime minister in August 1989 after just 68 days in office, but continued to serve his country in various government posts until he retired fully in 1996. On 29 April 1994, he was awarded with the highest possible honour for a non-head-of-state, the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers.
Death
At 72 years of age, Sōsuke Uno then enjoyed a peaceful retirement in Moriyama city. He died in 1998 in his home. He published two collections of Haiku poems, as well as his book on prisonership in Siberia, along with painting, poetry, and music. A year later in 1999, his Geisha affair was highlighted in the Secret Life of Geisha, a TV documentary.
