When Ichiro Hatoyama finally gained the premiership from 1954-1956, he had become elderly and was in failing health. This did not stop him, however, from scoring two major achievements: he presided over the creation of the Liberal Democratic Party and reestablished diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.
In a stunning reversal, Donald Trump won the popular vote in the November 2024 election, leading a Republican wave that took control of the presidency and both chambers of Congress.
Shigeru Yoshida’s second premiership from 1948-1954 was one of the most transformative in Japanese history, taking the nation from its progressive, unstable early postwar era into a long period of entrenched conservative rule, ostensibly exercising independence but in reality functioning as a client state absorbed into the informal American empire.
What Fujimori did with power became a cautionary tale—of how an outsider, once let in, can corrupt everything.
