Word: kishi
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Because he had openly declared that the war was lost, it was an uncomfortable time for Kishi. He was followed about Tokyo by the secret police, and devoted himself to writing a long defense of his position that no newspaper dared print. After his suburban house was burned down in an air raid, Kishi and his wife and two children went back to Yamaguchi. He was lying sick in bed when the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima, only 70 miles away...
Cell Thoughts. Japan's surrender soon followed, and Kishi wondered whether he should wait for arrest by the Americans or commit suicide. A large family conference of Satos and Kishis assembled in his sick room to argue the question. One of his old schoolteachers tactlessly reminded Kishi of his fiery arguments in favor of hara-kiri when he was 16 years old. Kishi's answer was to brushstroke a short poem, which translates: "In another role, I shall commemorate the just war forever." This is nearly as obscure in Japanese as it is in English, but one thing...
After serving three years in Sugamo Prison, Kishi and 18 other "Class" A war-crime suspects" were released without trial. In jail he had read Confucius, exercised, cleaned cells and latrines, despised the craven and selfish behavior of the admirals and generals in prison with him, and thought. Kishi recalls: "I had plenty of time to strip my own soul naked and study it." He says he was "forced to the conclusion that the war had been futile from the start. I became convinced that Japan must never again be involved in war." Finally, "when I found...
...release in 1948, while eating his first home meal of raw tuna, Kishi received a phone call from Sugar Magnate Aiichiro Fujiyama, who had cared for the Kishi family during his imprisonment. He offered Kishi the chairman ship of one Fujiyama company and a directorship in another. With his income assured, Kishi looked around him at the new Japan. The good things of the occupation-land reform, abolition of the peerage, parliamentary democracy-were balanced, he thought, by such bad things as inflation, the breakup of the cartels and the wide influence of the Communists, who had been...
...government was headed by the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, whose daughter was married to a cousin of Kishi's. The Secretary-General of the Cabinet was Kishi's own brother, Eisaku Sato. Prospects seemed inviting, but there was nothing Kishi could do until he was "de-purged" in 1952. He spent the time working at his industrial jobs and in profitably cultivating his wide acquaintance among businessmen...