Hayato Ikeda

Prime minister of Japan (1960-1964)

• Born: December 3, 1899
• Birthplace: Yoshina, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan
• Died: August 13, 1965
• Place of death: Tokyo, Japan

Ikeda succeeded in restoring Japan’s prestige in the eyes of the world after the riots and unrest attending the 1960 renewal of the United States-Japan Security Treaty. Ikeda brokered a cooperative effort between his political party and the bureaucracy, which produced the widely supported Income Doubling Plan and resulted in a high-growth economic pattern that made Japan an important economic power.

Early Life

Hayato Ikeda (hah-yah-toh ee-kay-dah) was the second son of an old and wealthy family of rice wine brewers, born in Yoshina, Hiroshima Prefecture. He studied law and economics at Kyōto Imperial University. After graduation in 1925, he managed his own brewing business for a short time but in 1927 began what was to be a twenty-three-year career in the ministry of finance. He began as an administration officer in Tokyo, then worked for a period as chief of taxation offices in the small cities of Hakodate, Utsunomiya, and Tamazukuri. In the early 1930’s. Ikeda suffered a rare skin disease that kept him bedridden for the better part of five years. He then headed tax bureaus in Kumamoto and Tokyo. By 1945, he was overall director of the national tax bureau of the ministry of finance.

In the course of his bureaucratic service, Ikeda developed an impressive knowledge of Japan’s financial structure and its problems. In fact, he was later to write several books on financial subjects, including taxation, cost accounting, balanced budgeting, and tax law. He also developed close relations with many of Japan’s leading industrialists. He survived the bureaucratic purges of the American occupation (he was not yet high enough in rank) and between 1945 and 1952 was to render valuable assistance to the occupation in its effort to hold the line against postwar inflation, becoming in the process a strong advocate of the strict anti-inflationary policy of Joseph M. Dodge, the economic adviser to the occupation authorities.

In 1949, Ikeda decided to shift into elective politics. Winning a seat in the House of Representatives and repeating his success in four elections following, he drew close to then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida. Named finance minister, head of the agency for which he had worked so long, he continued to espouse a strong anti-inflationary stance. He also helped negotiate the United States-Japan Peace Treaty as well as the accompanying bilateral Security Treaty, which placed Japan under an American defense umbrella, in 1951. Meanwhile, he moved up in the Liberal Party, serving as secretary-general in 1952. When the Liberal Party merged with the Democratic Party in 1955, Ikeda was again appointed finance minister, helping to push through a tax cut.

Life’s Work

Ikeda served in subsequent Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) cabinets under Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi as minister for International Trade and Industry. In 1960, Kishi pushed for renewal of the United States-Japan Security Treaty in a particularly high-handed way in the face of violent demonstrations and strikes by a variety of antigovernment elements. It was clear to many of the factions that made up the LDP coalition that the opposition, particularly the Socialist Party, had been handed a popular issue that tapped many aspirations of average Japanese people. It was also clear that, while the treaty would have to be swallowed for the sake of relations with the United States (and was ratified in a stormy parliamentary session), Kishi would have to go if the conservative LDP wanted to maintain national power.

After much maneuvering among the LDP factions, Ikeda was elected party president and prime minister on July 18, 1960. He faced the immediate problems of restoring harmony among the divided LDP factions, of gaining some cooperation from opposition parties, of reassuring the United States that Japan was a responsible ally without appearing unduly subservient, and of beginning economic policies that would bring together a majority of Japanese interests. He was to succeed in a general way in all of these endeavors.

Within the LDP, nine personally led factions vied with one another for appointive posts in the cabinet and party. Whereas Kishi had penalized opposing factions by denying their members good positions, Ikeda distributed appointments more equitably. The result was to make LDP factions more supportive of the prime minister. While sacrificing some of his direct decision-making control, he gained party harmony and personal popularity. As factional infighting decreased, the LDP parliamentary majority went up from 283 of 467 seats to 296. For the next two decades, the LDP acquired such a permanent dominance in the parliament that it was said that Japanese politics was a one-and-one-half-party system.

In the aftermath of the Security Treaty blowup, which had caused Kishi’s downfall, Ikeda shifted his government’s priorities to domestic matters, specifically to economic growth. In what came to be called the Income Doubling Plan, Ikeda proposed that the government stimulate the economy by means of public works and central planning initiatives to an average 7.2 percent annual growth (doubling the gross national product in ten years). He did this in spite of advice from many within his party to restrain the economy in the face of an expected international economic slowdown. Ikeda’s solution to this was to stimulate Japanese consumer demand through government expenditure. The 1961 budget was accordingly 24 percent higher. Since this outpaced the gross national product (GNP) growth, Ikeda hoped that increases in revenues would offset any deficits. At first it appeared that bonds would have to be issued to finance public construction, but, at Ikeda’s request, the finance ministry escalated its estimates of revenues to bring them into line with the proposed expenditure. A New Industrial Cities Plan targeted twelve regions with upgraded transportation links, harbors, landfills, and public service improvements. Development corporations were established, combining private and government capital.

Ikeda’s stated objectives in putting forward this plan were to begin to build “social capital,” from which the average Japanese could improve his or her standard of living. He hoped to obtain a structural reform of business, promote foreign trade and technical cooperation, cultivate human resources, and equalize the uneven pace of development in the different segments of society and the economy. His vision created a consensus in the LDP and in Japan as a whole built around the notion of high growth and of managed growth. The LDP came to have more influence in budget making as the party rank and file seized more of the initiative in what had been the wholly bureaucratic preserve of the finance ministry. Ikeda was crucial in this process insofar as the finance ministry trusted and cooperated with one of its own alumni. He knew their procedures, could persuade through personal contacts, and made skillful use of advisers. Moreover, Ikeda’s personal popularity invited expanded newspaper coverage and stimulated a public consciousness of a “culture of growth,” which has characterized Japanese politics ever since.

The results of the Income Doubling Plan exceeded all expectations. The annual GNP growth rate in 1961 was 15.5 percent, then it dropped to 7.5 percent in 1962 and 1963, then rose to 13.8 percent in 1964. Instead of ten years, Japan’s doubling of GNP had occurred by 1965. The 1962-1965 budgets all ran ahead of the economy but continued to be funded without tax increases or bond sales. Annual per capita national income more than tripled.

In view of his predecessor’s difficulties in surviving politically while attempting to align Japan closely with the United States, Ikeda set a new low-profile foreign policy direction with an emphasis on self-reliance and greater sensitivity to neutralist or pacifist feelings. Therefore, while relying implicitly on the Security Treaty, he resisted the John F. Kennedy administration’s pressure to increase the Japanese military, for closer military cooperation with the United States, and for closer ties with South Korea. As the Cold War heated up, Ikeda paid lip service to resistance to world communism but played to pacifist opinion by paying equal lip service to the United Nations.

Ikeda managed to draw broad public support for his foreign policy by, as he put it, “separating politics from economics.” This was clear in his approach to Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. Resisting American calls for containment of communist China, Ikeda adopted instead a two-Chinas policy of increasing trade with communist China while beginning economic aid for (and continuing to trade with) Taiwan. He hoped to reduce American tariffs on Japanese exports through vigorous personal diplomacy. While there were no substantial American concessions in the short term, Ikeda did succeed in creating a Joint Trade and Economic Affairs Committee, which considerably enhanced Japan’s status and voice in bilateral trade matters.

One month after the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games of 1964, which showcased Japan’s growing position in the world, Ikeda developed a throat tumor and resigned. He died of postoperative complications on August 13, 1965.

Significance

Ikeda played an important role in the transition of Japan from a defeated nation to the front rank among economic powers. The five years of the Ikeda premiership can be viewed as the triumph of economics over politics. It is no surprise, therefore, that the man who presided over this introduction of the politics of high-growth prosperity was trained as an economist and functioned through most of his career as a bureaucrat rather than as a politician. As a bureaucrat, he was well known for speaking his opinions bluntly and frankly without much regard for public opinion. However, as a politician in the last stage of his life, he certainly proved that he could master the first principles of Japanese politics to listen to the opposition and then to devise the broadest possible consensus.

His policies of promoting a self-sustaining economic growth by a managed stimulation of the private sector and by coordinated planning grew naturally out of his own unique ability to bridge the gap between the political party and the professional career bureaucracy. As an activist prime minister willing to transcend factionalism, he drew his party into the economic decision making. As a trusted bureaucrat, he tapped the planning expertise of the finance agencies. The result was to associate both in the vastly popular endeavor of raising the GNP and standards of living. For decades thereafter, the LDP dominance would remain bound with its association with prosperity, and the partnership between elected politicians and the bureaucratic planning agencies would sustain the Japanese “economic miracle.”

Bibliography

Campbell, John C. Contemporary Japanese Budget Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Treats budget making from 1954 to 1974. This is an especially crucial area for the study of any country’s politics and is especially important for the Ikeda administration. Campbell’s approach is one of a political scientist. Based largely on firsthand observations and interviews or on primary materials, he develops insights into Ikeda’s domestic policies mainly in chapter 9. He details the shift from bureaucratic monopoly over budgeting to an LDP-Ministry of Finance partnership, which required much behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

Curtis, Gerald L. The Japanese Way of Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. The most comprehensive general treatment of Japanese politics since Nathaniel Thayer’s work, including the 1986 elections. Based entirely on Japanese sources, it describes the whole three decades of LDP dominance and thus gives a sense of perspective on Ikeda’s place in the context of post-World War II political history. Shows how the Income Doubling Plan, for example, was attempted in different guises by later prime ministers. Shows the problems and questions that have emerged since the Japanese “economic miracle.”

Edström, Bert, ed. Japan’s Evolving Foreign Policy Doctrine: From Yoshida to Miyazawa. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Examines in detail Japanese foreign policy, with a chapter on Ikeda, “The International Cold Warrior.”

Langdon, Frank C. Japan’s Foreign Policy. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1973. Treats foreign policy by looking at two case studies the Ikeda administration and the Sato administration (1965-1972) showing the contrasts between them. Ikeda’s policies were cautious, conciliatory, and nationalistic, whereas Sato’s were more pro-United States and, therefore, confrontational at home in facing opposition parties. About a third of the book concerns Ikeda’s foreign policy, which evidently set the paradigm for Japanese foreign policy following Nakasone.

Scalapino, Robert, and Junnosuke Masumi. Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. Describes the political situation at the time of Ikeda’s takeover. The last chapter is a detailed case study of the foreign policy crisis of 1960 in which the Kishi administration was brought down. It details the factional setup, behind-the-scenes maneuvers, and voter behavior, which the authors view as a transition from traditional to more “modern” politics. As a backdrop for Ikeda’s consensus building and shifting priorities, it serves to highlight his legacy to later politics.

Thayer, Nathaniel B. How the Conservatives Rule Japan. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. This is one of the earliest standard surveys on postwar Japanese politics. It is based entirely on Japanese written sources or on interviews with LDP politicians. Focusing as it does on the ruling party and the organs and processes of government, it mentions less about the Ikeda administration as such than the other works mentioned. As a source for how Japanese politics worked during Ikeda’s time it is unsurpassed.