Yomiuri Shimbun group head Tsuneo Watanabe dies at 98

Tsuneo Watanabe —Photo from Jiji Press

TOKYO, Dec. 19 — Tsuneo Watanabe, head of Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings and editor-in-chief of the major Japanese newspaper publisher, who also had a strong influence over the political world and the business circle, died of pneumonia at a Tokyo hospital in the small hours of Thursday. He was 98.

After graduating from the University of Tokyo, Watanabe, a native of Tokyo, joined Yomiuri Shimbun in 1950.

He became Yomiuri Shimbun president in 1991 after working as a political news reporter, head of the newspaper’s Washington bureau, deputy head of its editorial division, and chief of the political news department.

In 2002, he assumed the presidency of Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings in line with the newspaper publisher’s transition to a holding company structure. Watanabe then served as Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings chairman between January 2004 and June 2016.

He headed the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association from June 1999 to June 2003. He was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun in 2008.

Using his network of connections built when he was a political news reporter, Watanabe exerted a strong influence over politicians and business leaders. In 2007, he is believed to have liaised between then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who was also chief of the Liberal Democratic Party, and Ichiro Ozawa, then leader of the former Democratic Party of Japan, attempting to form a grand coalition between the two parties.

In 2014, Watanabe was appointed chief of a Japanese government panel of experts to set operating guidelines for the law on protecting specified national secrets.

In an interview with NHK, or Japan Broadcasting Corp., aired in August 2020, Watanabe talked about his experience in World War II and behind-the-scenes politics in the postwar period.

He sent a condolence message to the October 2020 funeral for former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, which was organized jointly by the cabinet and the LDP. Watanabe wrote many books.

Among his other activities, Watanabe long engaged in running the Yomiuri Giants professional baseball team since he became its owner in 1996.

He stepped down from the post in 2004 to take responsibility for a scouting scandal involving the Giants but returned as the team’s chairman the following year.

Watanabe maintained his strong influence in the baseball world until he quit as the Giants’ supreme adviser in 2016 over a gambling scandal involving players.

Also an avid sumo fan, Watanabe served on the Japan Sumo Association’s council in charge of issues related to yokozuna grand champions in professional sumo between 1991 and 2005. He headed the council for two years from 2001.

In talks with reporters, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba paid his tribute to Watanabe, saying: “He was a great journalist. May he rest in peace.”

Ishiba said he reread Watanabe’s book on the LDP and its factions, noting that the book is “full of thought-provoking suggestions on what the LDP is, what factions are, and how we should be going forward.”

“I wanted to ask him more about the future direction for the party and democracy, and Japan’s path as a pacifist nation,” he said.

At a press conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi expressed his condolences over the passing of Watanabe.

Calling Watanabe a “living witness of Japan’s postwar politics who interacted with numerous politicians,” Hayashi added, “I learned a lot from his compelling pieces of writing.”