Japan's longest unbroken premier won a Nobel for pledges he quietly bent
Eisaku Satō led Japan from 1964 to 1972, longer without a break than any other prime minister. He won back Okinawa and announced that Japan would never make, own or admit nuclear weapons, earning the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize. Later revelations showed he had secretly agreed to let the United States violate those rules.
Born in 1901 in Tabuse, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Satō was the third son of a sake-brewing family descended from a Chōshū samurai; Yamaguchi produced more Meiji and Taishō prime ministers than any other prefecture. One elder brother, Ichirō, became a vice admiral, and another, Nobusuke Kishi, took a different surname and led the government between 1957 and 1960. Satō read German law at Tokyo Imperial University, passed the senior civil service exam in 1923 and joined the Ministry of Railways, eventually running the Osaka railways bureau and becoming vice-minister for transport.
He entered the Diet in 1949 with the Liberal Party and rose under Shigeru Yoshida, serving as posts and telecommunications minister, construction minister and chief cabinet secretary. After the Liberal Democratic Party formed, he ran the finance ministry in his brother's cabinet from 1958 to 1960, during which he asked Washington to fund Japanese conservatives. Under Hayato Ikeda he headed international trade and industry and later two agencies at once. When Ikeda resigned through ill health in 1964, Satō replaced him.
Backed by business and finance, he governed during rapid growth and, like Ikeda, favoured Keynesian economics. He normalised relations with South Korea, stayed close to the United States, let the security treaty renew in 1970 and arranged Okinawa's return in 1972. His Three Non-Nuclear Principles came in 1967, followed by signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. By the late 1960s he seemed to control the entire government, though balancing American and Chinese interests proved delicate.
Economic trouble and sinking approval ratings pushed him out in 1972. Kakuei Tanaka succeeded him rather than his protégé Takeo Fukuda, and Satō's influence faded fast. He died in 1975, a year after his Nobel award provoked controversy.
Source: Eisaku Satō
