Hayato Ikeda

Hayato Ikeda was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who served as the prime minister of Japan from 1960 to 1964. He was born on December 3, 1899, in Takehara, Hiroshima Prefecture, as the youngest child of Goichirō Ikeda, a sake brewer, and his wife Ume. He had six siblings. He attended Kyoto Imperial University and joined the Ministry of Finance following graduation in 1925. He served as the head of the local tax offices in Hakodate and Utsunomiya, and later as the vice minister of finance under Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida. He contracted pemphigus foliaceus, a rare skin disease, in 1929 and went on sick leave for two years. He recovered from the condition by 1934. He resigned from the Ministry of Finance in 1948 and won a seat in the House of Representatives, representing a portion of Hiroshima Prefecture, in the general election of 1949. He was a part of the liberal group that established the Democratic Liberal Party, a forerunner of the current Liberal Democratic Party. Along with Eisaku Satō, he was an understudy of Shigeru Yoshida and a leading exponent of the "Yoshida school" of conservative politics. He was appointed minister of finance by Yoshida in 1949 and announced the Dodge Line monetary policy, a strong deflationary policy recommended by Joseph Dodge, an American advisor. He visited the United States in 1950 to begin preparations for U.S.–Japan security cooperation following the end of the occupation. He also played a leading role in peace treaty negotiations with the United States. He became the minister of international trade and industry in 1952 and held various ministerial posts throughout the 1950s. He also served as the secretary-general of the Liberal Party and the chairman of the party's political affairs research committee. When Nobusuke Kishi resigned in July 1960, Ikeda became the president of the Liberal Democratic Party and the prime minister of Japan. He is best known for his Income Doubling Plan, which promised to double Japan's GDP in ten years. He launched a high-rate economic growth policy based on expanded public-sector spending, reduced taxes, and efforts to keep both inflation and interest rates low. He also made determined efforts to break down trade barriers to Japanese goods in foreign markets. Ikeda maintained a lower profile in foreign affairs, but he did favour expanding trade ties with the Soviet Union and China. He also repaired U.S.–Japan relations and domestic political rifts after the contentious 1960 Anpo Protests, as well as presided over the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He resigned in November 1964 because of ill health and died of pneumonia on August 13, 1965, in Tokyo. He was buried at Aoyama Cemetery in Minato, Tokyo. He was married to Mitsue Ikeda, the daughter of former Prime Minister Seiichi Katō, and had three children: Shinji, Yukihiko, and Kazuko. Yukihiko followed his father's footsteps and became a politician and a foreign minister. Ikeda was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum posthumously. He is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential prime ministers in Japan's history.