From 1957-1960 Japan was led by the rightwing Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, a barely reconstructed figure of the Pacific War. Kishi had gained the trust of US Cold Warriors, however, and they were rewarded when he forcefully pushed Japan into a new treaty alliance with the United States.
In the winter of 1956-1957, the liberal figure of Tanzan Ishibashi assumed the premiership, aiming to normalize Japan’s relations with the Communist world and to depart from US Cold War policy. However, he was almost immediately felled by a stroke and resigned, leaving the government in the hands of the rightwing Nobusuke Kishi, who had the exact opposite vision for the country.
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.
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.
Hitoshi Ashida attempted in 1948 to give a reorganized Democratic Party-Socialist Party coalition a second chance at leading Japan’s government. But at this time the progressive phase of the US Occupation was ending, and pressure to create a conservative regime embracing Washington’s Cold War objectives became irresistible.
Tetsu Katayama served as Japan’s first socialist prime minister in 1947-1948. His moderate approach, however, proved unable to satisfy the increasingly contradictory demands of his political base and the US occupiers.
Conservative diplomat Shigeru Yoshida was thrust into the premiership in 1946-1947 after the US occupation forces blocked the ascendance of general election-winner Ichiro Hatoyama.
English-speaking diplomat Kijuro Shidehara served as prime minister in 1945-1946, corresponding with the most progressive phase of a US military occupation which was initially guided by the principles of the New Deal and the American concern that Japan never again pose a military challenge to US hegemony in the Pacific.
Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni stepped in to manage the surrender of the Japanese Empire in 1945. This was handled quite effectively, but it soon became clear that he was not even remotely on the same page with the incoming US occupation forces about what should come next.
The elderly Kantaro Suzuki served as prime minister for the spring and summer of 1945, hoping to guide the nation through the final disastrous stages of the Pacific War.
