About 4,000 people, including Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Foley and former South Korean Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil, attended Saturday's funeral for former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita in his hometown of Kakeya, Shimane Prefecture.
Takeshita died June 19 of respiratory failure at the age of 76.
 |
| Some 4,000 people attended a memorial service Saturday for former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita in his town of Kakeya, Shimane Prefecture. -- Kyodo Photo |
In a tearful memorial address, former Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki, who chairs the funeral committee for Takeshita, said, "He returned to dust in Shimane at last."
When the late prime minister ran in a House of Representatives election for the first time in 1958 and won, he campaigned under the slogan, "I was born in Shimane, brought up in Shimane and will return to dust in Shimane some time," said Aoki, who was Takeshita's secretary at that time.
The funeral was jointly organized by the Kakeya municipal government, the Shimane prefectural branch of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Takeshita's family.
Former Prime Ministers Ryutaro Hashimoto and Yasuhiro Nakasone, LDP Secretary General Hiromu Nonaka, parliamentary leaders, Cabinet ministers, representatives of political parties, guests from abroad and local residents were also among those who attended the service at a Kakeya municipal gymnasium.
About 240 Diet members, including Mori, flew into Shimane Prefecture on a chartered flight from Tokyo. They arrived at the funeral venue on seven buses with a police escort.
A private funeral for Takeshita was held two days after his death at Tsukiji-Honganji Temple in Tokyo's Chuo Ward, with many politicians attending the ceremony.