The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed a series of bribes and contributions made by officials of U.S. aerospace company Lockheed from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft.The scandal caused considerable political controversy in West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. In the U.S., the scandal nearly led to Lockheed's downfall, as it was already struggling due to the commercial failure of the L-1011 TriStar airliner.



Kakuei Tanaka (田中 角栄 or 田中 角榮, Tanaka Kakuei, 4 May 1918 – 16 December 1993) was a Japanese politician who served in the House of Representatives from 1947 to 1990, and was Prime Minister of Japan from 1972 to 1974.

After a power struggle with Takeo Fukuda, he became the most influential member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party from the mid-1960s until the mid-1980s. He was a central figure in several political scandals, culminating in the Lockheed bribery scandals of 1976 which led to his arrest and trial; he was found guilty by two lower courts, but his case remained open before the Supreme Court through his death. The scandals, coupled with a debilitating stroke he suffered in 1985, led to the collapse of his political faction, with most members regrouping under the leadership of Noboru Takeshita in 1987.He was nicknamed Kaku-san and was known as the "Shadow Shōgun" (闇将軍, Yami-shōgun). (The title of "Shadow Shōgun" has since been used to describe Ichirō Ozawa.) His political-economic direction is called the construction state (土建国家, Doken Kokka). He was strongly identified with the construction industry but never served as construction minister. His daughter Makiko Tanaka and son-in-law Naoki Tanaka remain active political figures in Japan.