The Japanese thought of him affectionately as a sort of comedian or clown of the economic animal farm. His curious character was a perfect blend of naivety and unscrupulousness, high-flown idealism and low-class squalor. Fate always smiled on one for whom crime nearly always paid.James KirkupRyoichi Sasakawa, businessman: born Mini City, Osaka 4 May 1899; died Tokyo 18 July 1995.. Only with his death comes the end of the Sasakawa Empire - and also, one might say, of the "Sasakawa Era" in Japanese political and business life.There was sometimes something almost comical in his twists and turns of fortune. His own newspaper, Rengo Shimpo, a boatrace fan sheet, started criticising its director, Yohei Sasakawa Japanese political life went into turmoil Ryoichi Sasakawa senior was confined to a wheelchair. Again fate lent a hand: at the last moment, Tanaka became involved in the Lockheed corruption scandal, and was forced to resign Sasakawa was still not off the hook. Another even more powerful threat had come from Kakuei Tanaka, the prime minister.

Neighbours would see a broken gentleman just standing in his garden looking up at the sky. A mysterious attacker fired a gun at his palatial Setagaya residence, leaving a loaded pistol on the doorstep as a sort of delicate hint, at which the Japanese are experts.Fate had been kind to him again when one of his right-wing rivals, Yoshi Fuji, was about to take over the Sasakawa Empire but was felled by a fatal heart attack. He would act strangely at parties, and have to be rushed away by secretaries. In these ads, he was always dressed in gorgeous, expensive kimono But in his mid-nineties the end was obviously drawing near. If only for that action, the old rascal should be remembered with respect and gratitude.In other self-promoting activities, Sasakawa spent millions on television commercials showing him surrounded by happy, singing children or nobly carrying an old woman on his back.

Blyth, whose books on haiku and senryu are world-famous, yet difficult to obtain in Britain, where the art of haiku is not understood. Other institutions gladly accepted his cash handouts, but some refused his offers.As President of the British Haiku Society, I myself must acknowledge a generous gift made by Sasakawa, which enabled us to publish The Genius of Haiku, a selective anthology of the writings of the great British Oriental scholar R.H. One of them was Linus Pauling, twice Nobel prizewinner, for Chemistry and for Peace: Sasakawa started by helping Linus Pauling's Institute with huge gifts of money. From this interview it dawned upon Sasakawa and his entourage that one does not "receive" the Nobel Prize - one has to grab it, using whatever means one can command. The names of the people who made recommendations for the Nobel Peace Prize are kept secret, but Sasakawa's investigators found out who they were.

They wanted him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and started the "Nobel Prize Receiving Operation" Sasakawa promoted himself ever more aggressively. He was able to have an interview with Alfred Nobel's grandson when he was on a visit to Japan. All this latterday benevolence came from motorboat gambling.But his hangers-on had higher ambitions for him. He provided funding for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (Jet), and for schemes to help graduate students.

The second came while delivering a lecture at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo He was then 84 years old. The state of his health had always been kept a secret by his entourage, so he started jogging in public, scorning the use of lifts, preferring to run up and down stairs to demonstrate his fitness. Sometimes, after running down flight after flight of stairs, he would arrive at the bottom only to find his way blocked by a locked emergency door, so that he had to run upstairs again and submit to the lift.Saskawa wanted to leave a good impression before he died. In 1986 he created the Sasakawa Peace Foundation to brighten his tarnished image. This provided funding for international scholarly exchange, academic surveys and guest forums graced by leading intellectuals in economic and political fields. Sasakawa had probably been hoodwinked into the operation by jealous rivals; his losses were estimated at 200 billion yen. He could not meet such huge debts, and it was then that his son Yohei began his takeover of the empire.