Eisaku Satō (佐藤 栄作, Satō Eisaku; 27 March 1901 – 3 June 1975) was a Japanese politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1964 to 1972. He was the third longest-serving and longest-uninterrupted–serving Japanese prime minister. Satō is best remembered for securing the return of Okinawa in 1972, and for winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974, which stirred controversy. He was a former elite bureaucrat like his elder brother Nobusuke Kishi and a member of the Yoshida school like Hayato Ikeda. Like his predecessor, he also supported Keynesian economic policies.
Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Satō was a member of the Satō–Kishi–Abe family and the younger brother of prime minister Nobusuke Kishi. Satō graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1924 and joined the Ministry of Railways. After the war, he entered the National Diet in 1949 as a member of the Liberal Party, and served in a series of cabinet positions under Shigeru Yoshida, including posts and telecommunications minister from 1951 to 1952, construction minister from 1952 to 1953, and chief cabinet secretary from 1953 to 1954. Satō later joined the Liberal Democratic Party and became finance minister from 1958 to 1960 under Nobusuke Kishi and international trade and industry minister from 1961 to 1962 under Hayato Ikeda.
In 1964, Satō succeeded Ikeda as LDP president and prime minister. He had the support of Japanese business and finance, and presided over a period of rapid economic growth. In foreign policy, he oversaw the normalization of diplomatic relations with South Korea and maintained close relations with the United States, allowing the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty to renew in 1970 and arranging for the return of Okinawa to Japan in 1972. In 1967, Satō introduced the "Three Non-Nuclear Principles" (the non-production, non-possession, and non-introduction of nuclear weapons), and in 1968 signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. However, it was later revealed that Satō had made secret agreements with the U.S. to allow violations of the principles. Facing mounting economic problems and falling approval ratings in the early 1970s, Satō resigned in 1972 and was succeeded as prime minister by Kakuei Tanaka, quickly losing his political influence when his protégé Takeo Fukuda did not succeed him.
Satō was born on 27 March 1901, in Tabuse, Yamaguchi Prefecture, the third son of businessman Hidesuke Satō and his wife Moyo. His father had worked in the Yamaguchi Prefectural Office, but quit in 1898, and started a sake brewing business in Kishida, Tabuse. The family had a history in sake brewing and had held the right for sake brewing for generations. Satō's great-grandfather was a samurai of the Chōshū Domain, with their outsized influence in Meiji era Japan, with more Meiji and Taisho prime ministers coming from Yamaguchi than any other prefecture. His two older brothers were Ichirō Satō, who would become a vice admiral, and Nobusuke Kishi, who served as prime minister from 1957 to 1960.
Satō studied German law at Tokyo Imperial University and in 1923, passed the senior civil service examinations. Upon graduation the following year, he became a civil servant in the Ministry of Railways. He served as Director of the Osaka Railways Bureau from 1944 to 1946 and Vice-Minister for Transport from 1947 to 1948.
Satō entered the National Diet in 1949 as a member of the Liberal Party.
He served as Minister of Postal Services and Telecommunications from July 1951 to July 1952. Sato gradually rose through the ranks of Japanese politics, becoming chief cabinet secretary to then prime minister Shigeru Yoshida from January 1953 to July 1954. He later served as minister of construction from October 1952 to February 1953.
After the Liberal Party merged with the Japan Democratic Party to form the Liberal Democratic Party, Satō served as chairman of the party executive council from December 1957 to June 1958, followed by a post as minister of finance in the cabinet of his brother Nobusuke Kishi from 1958 to 1960. As minister of finance, Sato requested the US to fund conservatives.
Satō also served in the cabinets of Kishi's successor as prime minister, Hayato Ikeda. From July 1961 to July 1962, Satō was Minister of International Trade and Industry. From July 1963 to June 1964 he was concurrently head of the Hokkaidō Development Agency and of the Science and Technology Agency.
Satō succeeded Ikeda after the latter resigned due to ill health. He would go on to serve the longest stint of any prime minister up until that time, and by the late 1960s he appeared to have single-handed control over the entire Japanese government. He was a popular prime minister due to the growing economy; his foreign policy, which was a balancing act between the interests of the United States and China, was more tenuous, and his grip on domestic politics was challenged by growing opposition to his administration's support for the American military operations in Vietnam.
Satō is the last Prime minister of Japan to visit Taiwan during his term. In 1965, Satō approved a US$150 million loan to Taiwan. He visited Taipei in September 1967. In 1969, Satō insisted that the defense of Taiwan was necessary for the safety of Japan. Satō followed the United States in most major issues, but Satō opposed the Nixon visit to China. Satō also bitterly opposed the entry of the PRC into the United Nations in 1971.
On 22 June 1965, the Satō government and South Korea under Park Chung Hee signed the Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea, which normalized relations between Japan and South Korea for the first time. Relations with Japan had previously not been officially established since Korea's decolonization and division at the end of World War II.
During Satō's term, Japan participated in the creation of the Asian Development Bank in 1966 and held a ministerial level conference on Southeast Asian economic development. It was the first international conference sponsored by the Japanese government in the postwar period. In 1967, he was also the first Japanese prime minister to visit Singapore. He was largely supportive of the South Vietnamese government throughout the Vietnam War.
Since the end of the Second World War, Okinawa had been occupied by the United States. While visiting the United States in January 1965, Satō openly asked President Lyndon Johnson to return Okinawa to Japan. In August 1965, Satō became the first post-war prime minister of Japan to visit Okinawa.
In 1969, Satō struck a deal with U.S. president Richard Nixon to repatriate Okinawa: this deal was controversial because it allowed the U.S. forces in Japan to maintain bases in Okinawa after repatriation. Okinawa was formally returned to Japan on 15 May 1972, which also included the Senkaku Islands (also known as the Diaoyu Islands in China and the subject, since 1971, of a Sino-Japanese sovereignty dispute; see Senkaku Islands dispute).
In his early years as prime minister, Sato had argued that Japan needed to develop nuclear weapons of its own to match those of China, but the United States government was staunchly opposed to this, and the Johnson administration pressured Japan to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Accordingly, Satō introduced the Three Non-Nuclear Principles on 11 December 1967, promising the non-production, non-possession, and non-introduction of nuclear weapons inside Japan. Thereafter, Satō shepherded Japan's entry into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Diet passed a resolution formally adopting the Non-Nuclear Principles in 1971. For these actions, Satō would receive the Nobel Peace Prize as a co-recipient in 1974.
However, recent inquiries show that behind the scenes, Satō was more accommodating towards US plans of stationing nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. In December 2008, the Japanese government declassified a document showing that during a visit to the US in January 1965, he was discussing with US officials the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the People's Republic of China. In December 2009, his son reported that his father agreed in a November 1969 conversation with US President Nixon to allow the stationing of nuclear warheads in Okinawa even after it was restored to Japanese sovereignty.