In Passing

Tokyo

R. Hashimoto, Japanese leader

Former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who stood up to the United States in trade negotiations and helped defuse tensions over U.S. military bases in Japan, has died. He was 68.

Hashimoto, who was prime minister from January 1996 to July 1998, died Saturday at the International Medical Center of Japan in Tokyo. He had been in critical condition after suffering abdominal pain and undergoing surgery to remove a large part of his intestines. His son, lawmaker Gaku Hashimoto, said his father died from multiple organ failure.

Hashimoto’s star rose when he demonstrated rare toughness against Washington in a bitter auto sales dispute as trade minister in 1995.

In 1997, he helped quell opposition to U.S. military bases on the southern island of Okinawa, arranging to return to the local government land that had been leased to the Marines. He also promised aid to shore up Okinawa’s struggling economy.

But his political career ended under the shadow of controversy.

A political donation scandal prompted him to resign last year as head of what was then the largest faction in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. He retired from politics in September, citing poor health.

New York

Lloyd Richards, stage director

Lloyd Richards, the stage director who helped launch Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson into the playwriting pantheon, revolutionizing not only black theater but the entire way in which new American drama is shepherded from first draft to polished premiere, has died.

Richards, who won a 1987 Tony award for directing Wilson’s “Fences,” and received the National Medal of the Arts in 1993, died from heart failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City on Thursday, the evening of his 87th birthday.

Those remembering him spoke of his impact on playwrights and actors alike, his role in creating a prominent place for black voices, and in giving meaty early roles to a bevy of now-famous actors, including Laurence Fishburne, Louis Gossett Jr., Angela Bassett, Delroy Lindo and Samuel L. Jackson.

“Anybody of my generation that was under Lloyd’s tutelage got some of the best fathering and nurturing of your creativity that you could get,” said Fishburne, who made his Broadway debut under Richards in Wilson’s “Two Trains Running.”