ABSTRACT
Following Prime Minister Kaifu’s resignation, the LDP selected Miyazawa Kiichi to the premiership. This choice reflected the decreased salience of money politics. Instead of looking for another clean politician, the LDP returned to its traditional way of selecting a prime minister based on seniority and factional power politics. The return to this approach meant that the main contenders were old-guard politicians, many of whom had been implicated in scandals in the past, including Miyazawa Kiichi.
