Eisaku Sato (27 March 1901 – 3 June 1975) was Prime Minister of Japan from 9 November 1964 to 7 July 1972, succeeding Hayato Ikeda and preceding Kakuei Tanaka. He was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan.
Biography[]
Eisaku Sato was born in Tabuse, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan in 1901, the biological brother of Nobusuke Kishi, and he studied at Tokyo Imperial University. Sato passed the senior civil service exams in 1923 and became a civil servant in the Ministry of Railways, later serving as director of the Osaka Railways Bureau from 1944 to 1946 and Vice-Minister for Transportation from 1947 to 1948. He entered the National Diet in 1949 as a member of the Liberal Party of Japan, and he served as Minister of Postal Services and Telecommunications from 1951 to 1952. He then served as Chief Cabinet Secretary to Shigeru Yoshida from 1953 to 1954 after serving as Construction Minister for two years. He succeeded Hayato Ikeda as Prime Minister in 1964 after Ikeda resigned due to ill health, and he supported the security treaty with the United States and the USA's military operations in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In 1969, he was forced to close the University of Tokyo for a year as the result of anti-war demonstrations in the city. After three terms as Prime Minister, he decided not to run for a fourth, and his faction's heir Takeo Fukuda lost to the popular Trade Minister Kakuei Tanaka.