Japan's former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from the Lockheed Corporation, and is sentenced to four years in jail.

Kakuei Tanaka was a Japanese politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1972 to 1974. Known for his background in construction and earthy and tenacious political style, Tanaka is the only modern Japanese prime minister who did not finish high school or graduate from a university.

The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed 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.

The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and merged in 1995 with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but otherwise-unrelated Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which was operational from 1912 to 1920.