Word: sato
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Traditionally, a new Japanese Prime Minister does nothing until he has made his pilgrimage to the Ise Grand Shrines, humbly to request the support of Shinto gods. These days he also goes to Washington. Off last week on Japan Air Lines' Flight No. 800 flew Premier Eisaku Sato, 63, for his first trip to the U.S. since he took over from ailing Hayato Ikeda two months...
...Honshu sake bottler, Sato earned a degree from Tokyo University law school, started work as a government railways stationmaster, quickly rose to the post of Deputy Minister of Railways. As such, he caught the eye of postwar Premier Shigeru Yoshida, who made Sato his chief Cabinet secretary. Further boosted by another Premier, Nobusuke Kishi, who was his elder brother,* Sato went on to become a live wire in five Cabinets, played a leading role in Japan's economic miracle (his first name means literally "Prosperity Maker"). So smooth are Sato's looks that he has been called...
Despite Japan's industrial prosperity, and partly because of it, the housing shortage is the No. 1 problem new Premier Eisaku Sato faces, and he has made "a home for every family" by 1970 his government's rallying cry. His first budget, approved by the Cabinet last week, earmarks $727 million for new construction-enough for 337,000 new dwelling units, and a modest start toward his goal of 3,000,000 over the next seven years...
...obvious solution to the housing shortage would seem to be high-rise apartments. But this is unpopular in earthquake-scarred Japan, and the average height of Tokyo buildings remains 1.7 stories. Premier Sato hopes eventually to ease the claustrophobic crush by building new cities, filling in land around old ones. As a start, his agents are out combing the countryside for farmers willing to sell out for new housing, but the bargaining is tough. "In the final hours of negotiations," admits one agent, "we almost always end up hoisting the Rising Sun and appealing to the farmer to sell...
Ironically, Sato's first potential crisis was a threatened wave of leftist riots in protest against another U.S. visitor-the nuclear submarine Seadragon, which called last week at the Sasebo naval base on the southern island of Kyushu. But Japan has come a long way from 1960. There were some nasty-looking demonstrations in Tokyo and elsewhere, whipped up by the Socialists and Zengakuren, the far-left student organization. Cops banged heads as fluttering banners inveighed against Showa no kuro bune-the Black Ship of the Enlightened Peace Era. But the left-wingers were divided and the people generally...