Word: kishi
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...chose the civil service, joined the Agriculture and Commerce Ministry as a clerk, rose rapidly, toured (1926-27) in the U.S. and Europe studying the steel industry. Posted to Manchuria in 1937, he was a top economic czar of the Japanese-occupied territory. In 1939, aged 42, astute Kishi returned to Japan as Vice Minister of Commerce and Industry...
World War II. Invited to join militaristic Premier Tojo's wartime Cabinet, Kishi served for three years as Commerce and Industry Minister, resigned in 1944 after a showdown with Tojo over military strategy (Minister Kishi wanted to sue for peace if the U.S. landed at Saipan). Arrested by the U.S. in 1945 as a suspected war criminal and put into Tokyo's grim Sugano Prison, Kishi mopped floors, cleaned latrines, had "plenty of time for soul-searching" until his release in 1948 (he was never brought to trial). Kishi regards his prison term as the turning point...
Political Career. Well established as a business tycoon (pulp, chemicals) when finally "depurged" in 1952, onetime Bureaucrat Kishi took a long, hard look at resurgent Japan. went into politics. He soon became the dominant figure in the backstage maneuverings from which: 1) Japan's two big feuding conservative parties, the Liberals and the Democrats, were merged into the gigantic Liberal-Democratic Party and ranged in solid opposition to the Socialists and Communists; and 2) Kishi himself emerged last winter as Foreign Minister under 72-year-old Premier Tanzan Ishibashi. Four months ago, Nobusuke Kishi became his country...
Foreign Policy. Swarthy, slight (5 ft. 4 in. 130 Ibs.) Premier Kishi is as avid a golfer as President Eisenhower, happily looks forward to a match with Ike at Burning Tree this week. His handicap is a "state secret,'' but under the pressure of work it has gone up from 15 to 21. No state secret are the "suggestions" for a "new era" in Japanese-U.S. relations that he will raise with Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles. Basic to Kishi's problem, as his political opponents are well aware, is an ominous statistic...
...Also on Kishi's mind: restoration of at least some Japanese civil administration on U.S.-controlled Okinawa; revisions in the U.S.-Japanese defense and security agreements-e.g., Kishi is bringing with him a three-year timetable for a Japanese armed-forces buildup, will probably ask for a similar timetable for the U.S. withdrawal of at least part of its forces from the Japanese home islands; and, hottest of all, increased scope for Japanese trade with Red China...