Ex-Prime Minister Kishi Dies in Japan; Served in Tojo’s Cabinet During the War

Former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, a member of Premier Hideki Tojo’s cabinet that signed Japan’s declaration of war against the United States, died Friday.

Kishi, 90, was minister of commerce and industry in 1941, when he signed the declaration but he later became a major architect of the postwar alliance with the United States.

As prime minister from 1957 to 1960, Kishi helped push through Parliament a controversial revision of the 1951 U.S.-Japan mutual security treaty. Popular protests erupted against the revision, which many saw as creating an alliance that could draw Japan into nuclear war.

The protests forced Kishi to resign as prime minister two months after the treaty was ratified.

Kishi served as wartime vice minister for military procurement and as minister without portfolio with responsibility for war mobilization. He reportedly became increasingly opposed to Tojo’s insistence on continuing the war despite Japan’s heavy losses, and may have contributed to the collapse of Tojo’s government in 1944.

After Japan’s surrender, Kishi was imprisoned for 3 1/2 years as a war criminal. Upon release, he returned to politics and was elected to the lower house of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, in 1953.

In 1955, he helped forge the merger of two conservative parties into the Liberal Democratic Party, which has controlled Japan’s government ever since.

Kishi was appointed deputy prime minister and foreign minister by Prime Minister Tanzan Ishibashi in December, 1956, and became prime minister in February, 1957, when Ishibashi resigned because of ill health.

One of Japan’s worst postwar political crises erupted after Kishi sought to strengthen ties with the United States by revising the treaty signed in 1951 at the end of the U.S. occupation.

Leftists and many moderates opposed alliance with the United States on grounds that it could drag Japan into nuclear war. Kishi wanted the new treaty ratified before a scheduled visit by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in June, 1960.

As a parliamentary deadline neared, members of the opposition Socialist Party blocked the house Speaker from the podium and were dragged from the chamber by police.

Kishi’s backers forced the measure through a midnight session attended only by members of the governing Liberal Democrats. The action triggered demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of people and work stoppages by millions. More than 13 million people signed petitions demanding new elections.

Although there was little violence, Kishi’s government was forced to cancel Eisenhower’s visit because it could not guarantee his safety.

After the treaty took effect, Kishi resigned as prime minister. The protests then subsided relatively quickly.

Kishi continued to serve as a member of the Diet until 1979.