This book is a biography of Eisaku Sato (1901-75), who served as prime minister of Japan from 1964 to 1972, before Prime Minister Abe the longest uninterrupted premiership in Japanese history. The book focuses on Sato's management of Japan's relations with the United States and Japan's neighbours in East Asia, where Sato worked to normalize relations with South Korea and China. It also covers domestic Japanese politics, particularly factional politics within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), where Sato, as the founder of what would become the largest LDP faction, was at the centre of LDP politics for decades. The book highlights Sato's greatest achievement - the return of Okinawa from United States occupation - for which, together with the establishment of the non-nuclear principles, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the only Japanese to receive the Prize.

Based on extensive original research including interviews with key participants, this book examines how, following Richard Nixon’s famous visit to China in 1972, Japan established formal diplomatic relations with China, doing so before the United States and other Western countries. It considers the key personalities – Prime Minister Tanaka and Foreign Minister Ōhira on the Japanese side, and Zhou Enlai on the Chinese side, outlines how the discussions unfolded, and discusses the key issues which divided the two sides and how these issues were resolved: Japanese war reparations to China, how the two countries perceived their past, how Taiwan should be treated, and possession of the Senkaku Islands. The book also shows how Tanaka and Ōhira sought to reconcile China–Japan relations with the US–Japan Security Treaty and to continue non-governmental exchanges with Taiwan following the severing of relations. Overall, the book emphasises that the nature of the relationship established in 1972 continues to be very important for understanding present day China–Japan relations.

Yasuhiro Nakasone, who served as prime minister for more than five years in the 1980s, was one of Japan's leading postwar politicians. This book is a biography of him but, by interweaving in international politics and media appraisals of him, it also serves as an examination of Japan's postwar politics. Nakasone was an innovative conservative who actively criticized the conservative mainstream, and this book reveals from both domestic and foreign policy perspectives how the Liberal Democratic Party governed. The Nakasone government served as not only the final phase of the Cold War era of LDP factional politics but also as the starting point for the general mainstream faction system that followed. With the lengthy passage of time since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Japan's 1955 party system, there is a need to reassess Nakasone, showing that there was much more to him than the popular picture of him as a far-right hawk who loudly advocated for Japan to engage in autonomous self-defense and as an opportunist leader of a small faction, and to place the era in which Nakasone lived its proper historical context.

This book is a biography of Eisaku Sato (1901-75), who served as prime minister of Japan from 1964 to 1972, before Prime Minister Abe the longest uninterrupted premiership in Japanese history. The book focuses on Sato's management of Japan's relations with the United States and Japan's neighbours in East Asia, where Sato worked to normalize relations with South Korea and China. It also covers domestic Japanese politics, particularly factional politics within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), where Sato, as the founder of what would become the largest LDP faction, was at the centre of LDP politics for decades. The book highlights Sato's greatest achievement - the return of Okinawa from United States occupation - for which, together with the establishment of the non-nuclear principles, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the only Japanese to receive the Prize.

Based on extensive original research including interviews with key participants, this book examines how, following Richard Nixon's famous visit to China in 1972, Japan established formal diplomatic relations with China, doing so before the United States and other Western countries. It considers the key personalities - Prime Minister Tanaka and Foreign Minister Ohira on the Japanese side, and Zhou Enlai on the Chinese side, outlines how the discussions unfolded, and discusses the key issues which divided the two sides and how these issues were resolved: Japanese war reparations to China, how the two countries perceived their past, how Taiwan should be treated, and possession of the Senkaku Islands. The book also shows how Tanaka and Ohira sought to reconcile China-Japan relations with the US-Japan Security Treaty and to continue non-governmental exchanges with Taiwan following the severing of relations. Overall, the book emphasises that the nature of the relationship established in 1972 continues to be very important for understanding present day China-Japan relations.

This book analyzes Ohira's ideology, philosophy, and actions as a politician and a minister, based on primary sources from Japan and the USA, and makes a significant contribution to the field of Japanese political and diplomatic history. This book is the first critical biography to chart Masayoshi Ohira's life and work, with a focus on his political philosophy, and how he sought to create a new order in the Asia-Pacific region, framing a plan for solidarity across the Pacific Rim. If a statesman is a politician who has made diplomacy their life's work, then Ohira can be regarded as the first Japanese statesman of the modern era. While this ambition remained unfulfilled, Ohira's involvement in foreign policy was long and intensive-and highly influential-on the region. One of only two postwar prime ministers to have served as foreign minister for two terms, he attempted to balance the pursuit of a new order in the Pacific Rim with Asian diplomacy and focused on cooperation with the USA without becoming overly reliant on it. With the new availability of original documents decades after his death, this book has become possible, enabling the author to systematically follow and record Ohira's diplomatic vision. Combining history, political philosophy, political science, and international relations, this book is of appeal to history scholars and students of Japan, as well as of the foreign relations of countries such as the USA, China, and Korea.

This book analyzes Ohira's ideology, philosophy, and actions as a politician and a minister, based on primary sources from Japan and the USA, and makes a significant contribution to the field of Japanese political and diplomatic history. This book is the first critical biography to chart Masayoshi Ohira’s life and work, with a focus on his political philosophy, and how he sought to create a new order in the Asia-Pacific region, framing a plan for solidarity across the Pacific Rim. If a statesman is a politician who has made diplomacy their life's work, then Ohira can be regarded as the first Japanese statesman of the modern era. While this ambition remained unfulfilled, Ohira's involvement in foreign policy was long and intensive—and highly influential—on the region. One of only two postwar prime ministers to have served as foreign minister for two terms, he attempted to balance the pursuit of a new order in the Pacific Rim with Asian diplomacy and focused on cooperation with the USA without becoming overly reliant on it. With the new availability of original documents decades after his death, this book has become possible, enabling the author to systematically follow and record Ohira's diplomatic vision. Combining history, political philosophy, political science, and international relations, this book is of appeal to history scholars and students of Japan, as well as of the foreign relations of countries such as the USA, China, and Korea.