Photo/Illutration Journalist and social critic Takashi Tachibana died on April 30. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Takashi Tachibana, a dogged reporter and intellectual powerhouse whose investigative reporting toppled a prime minister, died on April 30 of acute coronary syndrome. He was 80.

Tachibana rose to fame after an article of his appeared in the monthly Bungei Shunju magazine in 1974 that uncovered scandalous financial dealings of then Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who had enjoyed wide popularity because of his humble upbringing.

The article led to other media reports about various money trails that eventually led to Tanaka’s resignation. Tanaka was later found guilty in the massive Lockheed bribery scandal.

Tachibana used investigative methods for researching his stories on Tanaka that he would continue to rely on in his unquenchable thirst for knowledge about various scientific fields.

He and his associates gathered a huge volume of documents concerning Tanaka, the various companies under his control in Niigata Prefecture and the ties of his political support organization.

While Tachibana would go on to write about other political issues, such as radical groups and the Japanese Communist Party, his interests became more intellectual over time as the focus of his writing turned to advanced scientific subjects, such as space travel, brain death and cancer.

Tachibana accumulated and read huge volumes of specialized works to gain what he considered was the requisite knowledge to be able to write authoritatively about a given subject, attaining a masterful grasp of various specialized scientific disciplines.

In preparing for a dialogue with Susumu Tonegawa, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for his discovery about antibody diversity, Tachibana is said to have read enough books to fill three shelves.

His library at his Tokyo office held about 100,000 books, allowing him to easily write about his reading experiences as well.

Tachibana lamented the increasingly narrow specialization in academics and tried to pass on to students what was involved in sufficiently researching a subject to write about it.

At his alma mater, the University of Tokyo, Tachibana taught a seminar in which he explained his own experiences and helped students interview individuals across a wide range of fields.

In a book published in 2020, Tachibana wrote that he had no interest in his own funeral or having a grave. His family complied with his wishes and held a simple ceremony among themselves and his remains were buried under a tree.

(Yuri Yamamoto contributed to this article.)

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