Kakuei Tanaka was born into a poor family in Japan in 1918. At the young age of 15, Tanaka left school to begin working, starting first in construction and then moved on to design and architecture. In 1939, Tanaka was drafted into the army, joining the Morioka Cavalry where he served as an enlisted clerk. He served here for two years before contracting pneumonia/lung problems and being hospitalized. Upon returning home, he founded the Tanaka Civil Engineering Corporation and married Hana Sakamoto. In the following years, their son Masaho and daughter Makiko were born. Her son only lived to be five years old, but Makiko is still alive today and remains a prominent political figure in Japan. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Tanaka became involved in politics by making a sizable donation to the Japanese Modern Progressive Party. His first attempt to gain a seat in the Diet was unsuccessful, but on his second attempt he managed to gain a seat and join the Democratic Party. He later joined the Liberal Democratic Party (now known as the Liberal Democratic Party). Shortly thereafter he was arrested and imprisoned on charges of receiving bribes for coal mining. In the first trial Tanaka was found guilty, but after appealing, he was finally found innocent. He resigned from his position as Deputy Minstrel but still retained his seat in the DLP. In 1955, the DLP became the Liberal Democratic Party and Tanaka bounced from cabinet seat to cabinet seat, gaining political experience and also becoming embroiled in further legal troubles, known as the Black Mist scandal. The Black Mist scandals occurred when Sato was Prime Minister and involved fraudulent sales of government land and the misuse of government funding for personal travel. Despite these scandals, Tanaka was elected president of the LDP and Prime Minister of Japan in 1972. Throughout his time Prime Minister Tanaka remained extremely popular among the Japanese people. One of the achievements he is best known for is the establishment of good relations with the People's Republic of China. He met with the United States, Indonesia and many European countries in an effort to establish good relations with them as well. While he may have been successful with foreign policy, his economic policies did not fare as well and his popularity dropped dramatically when there was an oil crisis in 1973. Shortly thereafter, Tanaka was accused of more shady dealings and resigned from his position of Prime Minister. in 1974. Subsequently, he was arrested again on corruption charges due to the Lockheed scandal and was sentenced to four years in prison and a 1 million yen fine (though he avoided this by appealing). His political status continued to decline over the next two decades, but his daughter Makiko gained support in 1993, the same year Kakuei Tanaka died. Although Tanaka's reign as Prime Minister lasted only two years, his political influence was great and his legacy continues to be substantial today. The term "cult of personality" came to mind when I read how strong the support of Tanaka's followers was. During Tanaka's campaign, a group called Etsuzankai was formed with the sole purpose of supporting Tanaka financially. Etsuzankai also gives us an example of a customer-customer relationship. At one point, the group had nearly 100,000 members. In exchange for members' money, Tanaka helped implement government-funded projects for members' villages. These included a high-speed railway, a project.