Eisaku Satō

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Eisaku Satō
佐藤 栄作
Official portrait, 1964
Prime Minister of Japan
In office
9 November 1964 – 7 July 1972
MonarchHirohito
Preceded byHayato Ikeda
Succeeded byKakuei Tanaka
Member of the House of Representatives
In office
23 January 1949 – 3 June 1975
ConstituencyYamaguchi 2nd
Personal details
Born(1901-03-27)27 March 1901
Tabuse, Yamaguchi, Empire of Japan
Died3 June 1975(1975-06-03) (aged 74)
Tokyo, Japan
Political partyLiberal Democratic Party (1955–1975)
Other political
affiliations
Liberal Party (1949–1955)
Spouse
Hiroko Satō
(m. 1926)
Children2, including Shinji
RelativesNobusuke Kishi (brother)
Shinzo Abe (grandnephew)
Nobuo Kishi (grandnephew)
Alma materTokyo Imperial University
AwardsNobel Peace Prize (1974)
Signature
Japanese name
Shinjitai佐藤栄作
Kyūjitai佐藤榮作
Kanaさとう えいさく
Transcriptions
RomanizationSatō Eisaku

Eisaku Satō (佐藤 栄作, Satō Eisaku, 27 March 1901 – 3 June 1975) was a Japanese politician who served as

prime minister of Japan from 1964 to 1972. He is the third longest-serving prime minister, and ranks second in longest uninterrupted service
as prime minister.

Satō entered the National Diet in 1949 as a member of the Liberal Party. Gradually rising through the ranks of Japanese politics, he held a series of cabinet positions. In 1964 he succeeded Hayato Ikeda as prime minister, becoming the first prime minister to have been born in the 20th century.

As prime minister, Satō presided over a period of rapid economic growth. He arranged for the formal return of

Second World War) to Japanese control. Satō brought Japan into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize
as a co-recipient in 1974.

Early life

From left Sato (then Minister of Construction), Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida and Party chairman Saeki Ozawa (1953)

Satō was born on 27 March 1901, in

Taisho prime ministers coming from Yamaguchi than any other prefecture. His two older brothers were Ichirō Satō, who would become a vice admiral, and Nobusuke Kishi, who served as prime minister from 1957-1960.[2]

Satō studied

civil servant in the Ministry of Railways. He served as Director of the Osaka Railways Bureau from 1944 to 1946 and Vice-Minister for Transport from 1947 to 1948.[3]

Satō entered the

Diet in 1949 as a member of the Liberal Party
.

He served as Minister of

from January 1953 to July 1954. He later served as minister of construction from October 1952 to February 1953.

After the Liberal Party merged with the

Japan Democratic Party to form the Liberal Democratic Party, Satō served as chairman of the party executive council from December 1957 to June 1958, followed by a post as minister of finance in the cabinet of his brother Nobusuke Kishi from 1958-1960. As minister of finance, Sato requested the US to fund conservatives.[4]

Satō also served in the cabinets of Kishi's successor as prime minister,

.

Prime minister

Okinawa
.

Satō succeeded Ikeda after the latter resigned due to ill health.

American military operations in Vietnam. This opposition peaked with the 1968–1969 Japanese university protests, which eventually forced Satō to close the prestigious University of Tokyo for a year in 1969.[6]

After three terms as prime minister, Satō decided not to run for a fourth. His heir apparent, Takeo Fukuda, won the Sato faction's support in the subsequent Diet elections, but the more popular MITI minister, Kakuei Tanaka, won the vote, ending the Satō faction's dominance.

Relations with China and Taiwan

Satō is the last Prime minister of Japan to visit

Nixon visit to China.[7] Satō also bitterly opposed the entry of the PRC into the United Nations
in 1971.

Relations with South Korea

On 22 June 1965, the Satō government and South Korea under Park Chung Hee signed the Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea, which normalized relations between Japan and South Korea for the first time. Relations with Japan had previously not been officially established since Korea's decolonization and division at the end of World War II.

Nuclear affairs

In the 1960s Sato argued that Japan needed nuclear weapons to match those of China, but the United States opposed such. The Johnson administration pressed Japan to sign the

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ending, for then, Japan's nuclear ambitions.[8]

Satō introduced the

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Diet passed a resolution formally adopting the principles in 1971. For this he received the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1974.

However, recent inquiries show that behind the scenes, Satō was more accommodating towards US plans of stationing nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. In December 2008, the Japanese government declassified a document showing that during a visit to the US in January 1965, he was discussing with US officials the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the

Okinawa once it was restored to Japanese sovereignty.[10]

Okinawa issues

Since the end of the

Lyndon Johnson
to return Okinawa to Japan. In August 1965, Satō became the first post-war prime minister of Japan to visit Okinawa.

In 1969, Satō struck a deal with U.S. president

Okinawa and remove its nuclear weaponry: this deal was controversial because it allowed the U.S. forces in Japan to maintain bases in Okinawa after repatriation.[11] Okinawa was formally returned to Japan on 15 May 1972, which also included the Senkaku Islands (also known as the Diaoyu Islands in China and the subject, since 1971, of a Sino-Japanese sovereignty dispute; see Senkaku Islands dispute
).

Satō and his wife with Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos

Relations with Southeast Asia

During Satō's term, Japan participated in the creation of the Asian Development Bank in 1966 and held a ministerial level conference on Southeast Asian economic development.[12] It was the first international conference sponsored by the Japanese government in the postwar period. In 1967, he was also the first Japanese prime minister to visit Singapore. He was largely supportive of the South Vietnamese government throughout the Vietnam War.

Later life

Satō shared the

Le Duc Tho had become the first Asian to win the prize, but Tho had rejected it.[14]
)

Death

While at a restaurant on 19 May 1975, Satō suffered a massive stroke, resulting in a coma. He died at 12:55 a.m. on 3 June at the Jikei University Medical Center, aged 74. After a public funeral, his ashes were buried in the family cemetery at Tabuse.

Satō was posthumously honored with the Collar of the Order of the Chrysanthemum, the highest honor in the Japanese honors system.

Personal life

From left - Hiroko, Shinji, Eisaku, Ryutaro, & Fujieda (Matsuoka), 1931

Satō married Hiroko Matsuoka (

House of Councillors, and formerly worked as an aide for his cousin-in-law, Eisaku's grandnephew, Shinzo Abe
.

In a 1969 Shukan Asahi interview with novelist

Shinzō Abe (his grandnephew) were also both prime ministers.[16]

Honours

Satō received the following awards:

Foreign honours

See also

  • List of Japanese Nobel laureates
  • List of Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of Tokyo

References

  1. OCLC 20260847
    .
  2. .
  3. ^ a b c "The Nobel Peace Prize 1974". Nobel Prize. Retrieved 6 January 2013.
  4. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  5. .
  6. ^ Feilier. Learning to Bow. Page 80
  7. ^ MacMillan. Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World
  8. ^ "Imagine This: Japan Builds Nuclear Weapons". 25 May 2019.
  9. ^ "Editorial: The U.S. nuclear umbrella, past and future". Archived from the original on 19 January 2021. Retrieved 9 January 2011.
  10. ^ "Document on secret Japan-U.S. nuclear pact kept by ex-PM Sato's family". Archived from the original on 17 October 2018. Retrieved 9 January 2011.
  11. ^ Ambrose. The Rise to Globalism. Page 235
  12. ^ Hoshiro, Hiroyuki (7 May 2007). "Postwar Japanese and Southeast Asian History - A New Viewpoint". Research and Information Center for Asian Studies. Retrieved 6 January 2013.
  13. ^ "Eisaku Sato". Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Institute. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
  14. ^ Pace, Eric (14 October 1990). "Le Duc Tho, Top Hanoi Aide, Dies at 79". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 October 2013.
  15. ^ "The Wife Tells All". Time. 10 January 1969. Archived from the original on 17 December 2007. Retrieved 6 January 2013.
  16. ^ "1986 dual elections offer clue to Abe's plans".
  17. ^ 䝪䞊䜲䝇䜹䜴䝖日本連盟 きじ章受章者 [Recipient of the Golden Pheasant Award of the Scout Association of Japan] (PDF). Reinanzaka Scout Club (in Japanese). 23 May 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 August 2020.
  18. ^ "Boletín Oficial del Estado" (PDF).
  19. ^ "Semakan Penerima Darjah Kebesaran, Bintang dan Pingat". Archived from the original on 19 July 2019. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  20. ^ "Indonesia President Yudhoyono Conferred The Singapore Order of Temasek (First Class)". 11 September 2014.
  21. ^ South Korean Government Decorated 12 Japanese Extreme Right Figures

Further reading

External links

Political offices
Preceded by Chief Cabinet Secretary
1948–1949
Succeeded by
Preceded by Minister of Posts and Telecommunications
1951–1952
Succeeded by
Preceded by Minister of Telecommunications
1951–1952
Succeeded by
Post abolished
Preceded by Minister of Construction
1952–1953
Succeeded by
Preceded by Head of the Hokkaido Development Agency
1952–1953
Succeeded by
Preceded by Minister of Finance
1958–1960
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Minister of International Trade and Industry

1961–1962
Succeeded by
Hajime Fukuda
Preceded by Head of the Science and Technology Agency
1963–1964
Succeeded by
Preceded by Head of the Hokkaido Development Agency
1963–1964
Succeeded by
Preceded by Prime Minister of Japan
1964–1972
Succeeded by