Eisaku Sato

Eisaku Sato (1901-1975) was a Japanese political leader who served as prime minister longer than anyone else in Japanese history. Under his leadership Japan gradually began to translate its immense economic strength into enhanced political power in the international environment.

Eisaku Sato was born on March 27, 1901, in Yamaguchi Prefecture into a family of samurai descent. His home province, Choshu, provided much of the leadership (including Sato's great-grandfather) in the movement that overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and established the new imperial government. During the first century after the Meiji restoration, Yamaguchi provided more premiers than any other prefecture.

Sato therefore grew up in an atmosphere highly charged with political concerns; his mother was reported to have impressed upon her sons a sense of obligation to serve the state. Sato's eldest brother, Ichiro, became a rear admiral, retiring just prior to World War II. Another older brother, Nobusuke Kishi, served in the Hideki Tojo Cabinet as minister of commerce and industry during the war and subsequently, after serving 3 years in prison as a Class A war criminal, became a leader of the Liberal Democratic party and served as Japanese prime minister from 1957 to 1960.

Career in the Bureaucracy

Like Kishi, Sato attended Tokyo Imperial University, a ladder to success in Japanese society, and graduated in 1924 after studying German law. For a time he was interested in working for the N.Y.K. steamship line or the Ministry of Finance, but neither yielded him an opportunity, and he eventually ended up in the Transportation Ministry. His rise in the bureaucracy was not meteoric in the way Kishi's was in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Starting in a minor provincial post, he slowly rose through the ministerial hierarchy to become director of the Automobile Bureau. He was reportedly demoted after an argument with the deputy minister and sent to Osaka. The fact that he was not at ministerial headquarters saved him from the postwar purge.

Immediately after the war Sato was named general director of the Railway Administration and was soon promoted to deputy minister of transportation, the highest rank a civil servant could aspire to. At this juncture he made a decisive departure from his bureaucratic career.

Career in Politics

The Occupation's purge of large numbers of the prewar political elite left room for new people to enter parliamentary politics. Shigeru Yoshida, the prime minister, was in the midst of building up a strong personal following in the Diet, composed mainly of former bureaucrats. One who came to his attention was Sato. It is said that Sato's handling of troublesome new labor unions caught the attention of Yoshida. However that may be, Yoshida asked Sato, in 1948, to become his chief Cabinet secretary, a position of considerable importance in running the affairs of the Cabinet and supervising relations with the party. Sato accepted and soon after won a seat in the Diet.

Sato's association with Yoshida lasted for several years, and he was intensely loyal to the old man. Yoshida suffered public criticism in the spring of 1954, when he rescued Sato from legal charges growing out of a scandal that involved shipping interests and many top leaders of Yoshida's Liberal party. Sato, who was serving as secretary general of the party, was accused of having received political bribes from shipbuilding executives. Yoshida employed the powers of his office to intervene and prevent the arrest of Sato, who thereafter always maintained his innocence.

Rise to Prime Minister

In late 1954 Yoshida, whose position had been weakened by the scandal and more basically by increasing factionalism among the conservatives, was unseated by Ichiro Hatoyama. The following year Yoshida's Liberal party merged with Hatoyama's conservatives to form the Liberal-Democratic party. Behind the thin facade of party unity, factional strife continued unabated. Sato had by this time built up a strong personal following which he threw behind his brother Nobusuke Kishi, who with Sato's help became prime minister from 1957 to 1960. Sato entered the Cabinet as minister of finance. The immense popular disturbances that attended the Security Treaty crisis in 1960 toppled Kishi, who was succeeded by Hayato Ikeda.

Sato himself gradually built up his own claims to the premiership. Ikeda defeated him in a bitter struggle for the party presidency in 1964; but later in the year Ikeda, dying of cancer, was forced to retire, and Sato succeeded to the party presidency and the premiership by acclamation.

The crisis in the universities and continuing problems of Japanese-American relations were two of the major challenges confronting Sato during his term as prime minister. To deal with campus disorders, which wracked nearly all the universities in Japan, Sato's response was a bill that would allow the Ministry of Education to take over a school if the disruption persisted more than nine months. It was evident in elections that Sato's party benefited from a hard line on student disorders.

In November 1969 Sato flew to Washington seeking to conclude negotiations for the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty by 1972. Upon returning to Japan, he dissolved the House of Representatives, and in the general elections held on December 27 his party won a resounding victory. In June 1971 the United States and Japan signed a treaty to restore Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands to Japanese sovereignty in 1972; the accord was ratified by both countries in March 1972. In July the 71-year-old premier resigned. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974, along with Sean MacBride, for his policies on nuclear weapons that contributed to stability in the geographic area. He died the following year, on June 2, 1975, in Tokyo.

Further Reading

There was no reliable biography of Sato. For a perceptive analysis of the workings of Japanese politics see Donald C. Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (1969). Another useful book for understanding the intricacies of the politics in Sato's party was Nathaniel B. Thayer, How the Conservatives Rule Japan (1969). Sato's policies were also discussed in Edwin O. Reischauer's Japan: The Story of a Nation (1989). □

Satô Eisaku (b. 27 Mar. 1901, d. 3 June 1975). Prime Minister of Japan 1964–72 The brother of Kishi Nobusuke, another famous postwar Prime Minister, although his period in power was to be much longer and less controversial. Satô was one of the so-called Yoshida school, a bureaucrat recruited by Yoshida Shigeru into the political world. After a period in the railways ministry during the war, Satô entered the government as Chief Cabinet Secretary to Yoshida's second Cabinet in late 1948 despite the fact that he was not a member of the Diet. Elected to the Diet the following year, he established himself as a close member of Yoshida's inner circle, serving as Post and Telecommunications Minister and Minister of Construction. Though Yoshida was largely excluded from the new conservative order established after the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party, Satô's career was only temporarily affected and thanks to his family connections he joined Kishi Nobusuke's Cabinet as Minister of Finance in 1958. He continued to serve in Ikeda Hayato's administration and was his successor in 1964. His premiership, which survived for over seven and a half years, saw the peak years of Japan's economic growth. Aside from his guidance of economic policy, Satô's skilful handling of diplomacy allowed him to ensure the return of Okinawa from the USA. He also improved relations between Japan and South Korea. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

Eisaku Sato , 1901–75, Japanese politician, prime minister (1964–72), brother of Nobusuke Kishi . After receiving a law degree from Tokyo Imperial Univ. (1924) he entered the ministry of railways, serving there until 1947, when he was appointed vice minister of transportation. He left the transportation ministry in 1948 and entered politics as a Liberal-Democratic member of the lower house of the Diet. He held a variety of ministerial posts in the next several governments, including minister of construction (1952–53), minister of finance (1958–60), and minister of science and technology (1963–64). In 1964 he succeeded Hayato Ikeda as prime minister when ill health forced the latter to resign. Although inexperienced in international affairs, Sato pursued a vigorous foreign policy during his term in office. He negotiated an agreement (1965) that called for the normalization of South Korean–Japanese relations, and in 1969 he signed a treaty with the United States that led to the reestablishment (1972) of Japanese sovereignty in Okinawa. However, Sato did not anticipate the public outcry against a provision in the Okinawa agreement that allowed U.S. forces to remain on the island, and he was forced to resign in 1972 shortly after the treaty took effect. Sato was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

Sato Eisaku (1901–75) Japanese statesman. As a supporter of YOSHIDA SHIGERU, he advocated cooperation with the USA in the immediate post-war period. Forced from the cabinet over allegations of corruption in 1954, he returned four years later and between 1964 and 1972 served as Prime Minister. He overcame a period of student violence, oversaw the extension of the revised United States Security Treaty (1970), negotiated with the USA for the return of Okinawa and the other Ryukyu islands, and normalized relations with South Korea. After leaving office he received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to make Japan a nuclear-free zone.

Sato, Eisaku (1901–75) Japanese statesman, prime minister (1964–72). Sato held a number of cabinet posts (1948–64) before becoming prime minister. His term in office is notable for its foreign policy successes, such as the restoration of relations with South Korea (1965). Sato negotiated the return (1972) of Okinawa from the USA. A provision that US forces were allowed to remain on the island, however, inflamed public opinion. He received the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize.