was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1982 to 1987. His political term was best known for pushing through the privatization of state-owned companies, pursuing a hawkish and pro-United States foreign policy and his rejection of Keynesianism and his support of neoliberalism.
Born in Gunma Prefecture, Nakasone graduated from Tokyo Imperial University and served in the imperial navy during the Pacific War. After the war, he entered the National Diet in 1947 and rose through the ranks of the Liberal Democratic Party, serving as chief of the Defense Agency from 1970 to 1971 under Eisaku Satō, international trade and industry minister from 1972 to 1974 under Kakuei Tanaka, and administration minister from 1980 to 1982 under Zenkō Suzuki. As prime minister, he passed large defense budgets and controversially visited the Yasukuni Shrine. A conservative contemporary of U.S. president Ronald Reagan, Nakasone privatized the Japanese National Railways and telephone systems, and favored closer ties with the U.S., once calling Japan an "unsinkable aircraft carrier". After leaving office in 1987, he was implicated in the Recruit scandal, causing the influence of his LDP faction to wane before he retired from the Diet in 2003.
Early life Family background
Nakasone was born in Takasaki in Gunma, a prefecture northwest of Tokyo, on 27 May 1918. He was the second son of Nakasone Matsugoro II, a lumber dealer, and Nakamura Yuku. He had five siblings: an elder brother named Kichitaro, an elder sister named Shoko, a younger brother named Ryosuke and another younger brother and younger sister who both died in childhood. The Nakasone family had been of the samurai class during the Edo period, and claimed direct descent from the Minamoto clan through the famous Minamoto no Yoshimitsu and through his son Minamoto no Yoshikiyo (d. 1149). According to family records, Tsunayoshi (k. 1417), a vassal of the Takeda clan and a tenth-generation descendant of Yoshikiyo, took the name of Nakasone Juro and was killed at the Battle of Sagamigawa. In about 1590, the samurai Nakasone Sōemon Mitsunaga settled in the town of in Kōzuke Province. His descendants became silk merchants and pawnbrokers. Nakasone's father, originally born Nakasone Kanichi, settled in Takasaki in 1912 and established a timber business and lumberyard which had success as a result of the post-WWI building boom.
Education, bureaucratic career and war Nakasone described his early childhood and youth as a happy one, and himself as a "quiet, easy-going child" nicknamed "Yat-chan". He attended a local primary school in Takasaki and was a poor student until the fourth grade, after which he excelled and was at the top of his class. He entered Shizuoka Higher School in 1935, where he excelled in history and literature, and learned to speak fluent French.
In the autumn of 1938, Nakasone entered the Faculty of Law of the Imperial University of Tokyo. During his time at the university, he was strongly influenced by , whose lectures on politics fascinated him. He also developed the belief that personality should not be used as a means to achieve something, which contributed to his strong anti-communist and anti-Nazi views. On the night of 10 March 1940, he received a phone call from his father telling him that his mother in Takasaki had fallen seriously ill. By the time he arrived in Takasaki on the first train the next morning, she had already passed away. The fact that his mother had not told him about her illness, so as not to distract him from his studies, became an impetus for him to work harder. He passed the high-level bureaucrat recruitment examination. He began working for the Home Ministry, which was as prestigious as the Ministry of Finance due to its extensive authority.Nakasone applied for the Navy's programme that allowed graduates from elite universities to serve as officers for two years without rising through the ranks. After completing a training period at the Navy Paymaster's School in Tsukiji, he became a lieutenant. With 2,000 staff under his command, ranging from young doctors and scholars to elderly ex-convicts, Nakasone departed the naval base at Kure on 29 November 1941 on a mission to build airfields. Aboard his ship, he struggled to issue effective orders to his staff and ultimately selected an ex-yakuza with eight convictions as his assistant to relay his commands. In January 1942, he arrived at Balikpapan in Dutch East Indies, where his unit was raided by a retreating Dutch cruiser. On the beach, he cremated the first 23 casualties among his staff, including his ex-yakuza assistant. This experience left a deep and lasting impression, which profoundly influenced his political beliefs. There, he realized that the construction of the airfield had been stalled due to the prevalence of sexual crimes, gambling, and other problems among his men, so he gathered comfort women and organized a brothel called "comfort station" as a solution. He managed to procure four Indonesian women, and a Navy report praised him for having “mitigated the mood of his troops". Nakasone married Tsutako Kobayashi, the daughter of geologist Giichiro Kobayashi, on 11 February 1945. A fortnight later, he lost his younger brother, Ryosuke, in an air accident.
Upon returning to Tokyo after the end of the Second World War, he resumed his suspended career at the Home Ministry. He observed the growing prevalence of communism among the Japanese people, but the Civil Service was largely powerless to address it under the absolute authority of the Allied Occupation Forces. While supervising the police force in Kagawa Prefecture, he decided to abandon his bureaucratic career and stand in the upcoming general election. He later wrote of his return to Tokyo in August 1945 after Japan's surrender: "I stood vacantly amid the ruins of Tokyo, after discarding my officer's short sword and removing the epaulettes of my uniform. As I looked around me, I swore to resurrect my homeland from the ashes of defeat".
Early parliamentary career
He stood in the 1949 general election as a Democratic Party candidate. He campaigned on a nationalist platform, arguing for an enlarged Self-Defence Force, to amend Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution (which outlawed war as a means to settling international disputes), and to revive Japanese patriotism, especially in reverence for the Emperor.Harvey, p. 362. He entered the Japanese Diet as a member of the House of Representatives for the Democratic Party. "As a freshman lawmaker in 1951, he delivered a 28-page letter to General MacArthur criticising the occupation, a brazen move. The General angrily threw the letter in [the] bin, Yasuhiro was later told. This stand established [Yasuhiro Nakasone's] credentials as a right-wing politician." He gained brief notoriety in 1952 for blaming Emperor Hirohito for Japan's defeat in the war.Bix, H.P. Hirohito, 2000. page 649. In 1955, at Nakasone's urging, the government granted the equivalent of $14,000,000 to the Agency for Industrial Science and Technology to begin nuclear power research.Daniel P. Aldrich, With a Mighty Hand, New Republic Nakasone rose through the LDP's ranks, becoming Minister of Science in 1959 under the government of Nobusuke Kishi, then Minister of Transport in 1967, Director General of the Japan Defense Agency from 1970 to 1971, Minister of International Trade and Industry in 1972 and Minister of Administration in 1981.
As the head of the Self-Defence Force, Nakasone argued for an increase in defence spending from less than 1% GNP to 3% of GNP. He was also in favour of Japan having tactical nuclear weapons.Harvey, p. 363. He was labelled "the weathervane" in 1972 because he switched his support from Takeo Fukuda to Kakuei Tanaka in the leadership election, ensuring Tanaka's victory. In turn, Tanaka would give his powerful support to Nakasone against Fukuda a decade later in the fight for the premiership.
Premiership (1982–1987)
In 1982, Nakasone became prime minister. Along with Minister of Foreign Affairs Shintaro Abe, Nakasone improved Japanese relations with the USSR and the People's Republic of China. Nakasone was best known for his close relationship with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, popularly called the "Ron-Yasu" friendship. Nakasone sought a more equal relationship with the United States, and said: "President Reagan is the pitcher and I'm the catcher. When the pitcher gives the signs, I'll co-operate unsparingly, but if he doesn't sometimes follow the catcher's signs, the game can't be won".Harvey, p. 365. Nakasone said Japan would be "America's unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Pacific and that Japan would "keep complete control of the four straits that go through to Japanese islands, to prevent the passage of Soviet submarines". He was attacked by political opponents as a reactionary and a "dangerous militarist". Nakasone responded by saying: "A nation must shed any sense of ignominy and move forward seeking glory". However his attempt to amend Article 9 failed.
In 1984, Nakasone visited China on the twelfth anniversary of Japan's diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic, for which the Chinese government arranged tours of China for 3,000 Japanese youths. On the trip, Nakasone's son was privately accompanied by the daughter of Hu Yaobang, the-then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. After the event, Hu was criticised by other members of the Chinese Communist Party for the extravagance and warmth of the event. Nakasone also visited President Corazon Aquino in a series of talks between the Philippines and Japan during a special state visit from 1986 to 1987, to provide good economic and trade relations.
In economic affairs, Nakasone's most notable policy was his privatisation initiative, which led to the breakup of Japan National Railways into the modern Japan Railways Group (JR). This led to 80,000 redundancies, unheard of in Japan until that point.Harvey, p. 369. He also privatized Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation and Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation to create Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and Japan Tobacco Inc. (JT). The privatization of the three public corporations reduced the number of employees and significantly improved ordinary income per employee, productivity, and sales. According to a report by Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training, 20 years after the privatization of NTT and JT and 16 years after the privatization of JR, the number of employees was reduced to 35% for JT, 65% for NTT and 70% for JR. In addition, NTT, JT and JR increased their ordinary income by 8 times, 5.5 times and 3 times, respectively. The productivity of NTT, JT and JR increased 3 times, 2.5 times and 1.5 times, respectively. Sales at NTT and JR increased 2.2 times and 1.2 times, respectively. Nakasone wrote of his economic reforms:
I was carrying out a kind of "improvement" of Japan's structure. For 110 years, ever since the Meiji restoration, Japan had been striving to catch up with America and Britain. In the 1970s we did catch up. Beyond that point the [state's] regulations only stand in the way of the growth of the economy. If government officials have too much power, the private sector of the economy will not grow. We had to change the system.Harvey, p. 364.