Takeo Fukuda

Bureaucratic career

Fukuda was assigned as financial attaché to the embassy of Japan in London in 1930. After three years he was called back to Japan to serve as the head of a local Tax Office.

At this time he married Mie Arai, the granddaughter of a Supreme Court justice. The couple came to have three sons and two daughters. Yasuo Fukuda was their eldest son. Fukuda steadily rose in the ranks of the Ministry. During the Pacific War he served as an adviser on fiscal policy for the Wang Jingwei regime.

At the time of the Japanese surrender, Fukuda was chief secretary and head of the Minister's Secretariat. Masayoshi Ohira and Kiichi Miyazawa were his subordinates at that time. He became chief of the Banking Bureau in 1946 and by 1947 he had risen to chief of the Budget Bureau. Fukuda was in line to become administrative vice minister, however in 1948 he was arrested in connection to the Showa Denko scandal, a corruption scandal involving several bureaucrats, businessmen and politicians which precipitated the fall of the Ashida administration. Fukuda was later acquitted, but the incident led him to resign from the Ministry in 1950.

Political career

In the 1952 election, Fukuda was elected as an independent to the House of Representatives, representing the third district of Gunma.

Fukuda grew close to Nobusuke Kishi, who was making a political comeback. He joined the Liberal Party along with Kishi in 1953 and when Kishi was expelled the following year Fukuda left with him and took part in forming the Democratic Party. Fukada became a prized lieutenant to Kishi.

The two parties merged to form the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955. After Kishi became prime minister, Fukuda became chairman of the Policy Research Council in 1958 and secretary-general in January 1959. Fukuda joined the cabinet in June as Minister of Agriculture, remaining until the Kishi was forced to resign as prime minister due to the massive 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security treaty.

After that, Hayato Ikeda was elected as LDP president and prime minister with the support of Kishi and his brother Eisaku Satō. Fukuda again became chairman of the Policy Research Council in December 1960. Before long, the alliance between Ikeda, Kishi and Satō began to fray. Satō wanted to succeed Ikeda and Kishi was inclined to support him, but Ikeda intended to have a long-term administration. In the reshuffle of July 1961, Ikeda treated his former opponents Banboku Ōno and Ichirō Kōno generously to balance the influence of Kishi and Satō. Fukuda for his part lost his position as policy chairman.

In January 1962, Fukuda formed the "Party Spirit Renovation League" (Tōfū Sasshin Renmei), which became a forum for Diet members to air anti-Ikeda grievances. The Kishi faction began to split between those who opposed or supported Ikeda, led by Fukuda and Shojiro Kawashima respectively. Kishi disbanded the faction in July 1962 and all but the group close to Kawashima joined Fukuda, who became Kishi's de facto successor as factional leader.

Satō decided not to stand in the 1962 LDP leadership election and Ikeda successfully ran unopposed, but the 70 or so members of the Party Spirit Renovation League cast blank ballots in protest. In the 1964 leadership election Fukuda strongly supported Satō against Ikeda. Satō was defeated, but soon afterwards Ikeda fell ill and had to resign as prime minister, naming Satō as his successor.

Although Fukuda remained locked out of the cabinet during the Ikeda years, his star began to rise again under Satō. Fukuda rose to the prestigious posts of Minister of Finance (1965–66, 1968–71) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1971–72). After Satō's third and final term as prime minister came to an end in 1972, Fukuda ran as a candidate to replace him but lost out to insurgent candidate Kakuei Tanaka. Under Tanaka, Fukuda once again served as Minister of Finance (1973–74), and even when the Tanaka cabinet fell due to a corruption scandal, Fukuda was seen as "clean" and served a stint as Director of the Economic Planning Agency under the ensuing cabinet of Takeo Miki (1974–76).

Premiership (1976–1978)

After the LDP's poor showing in the 1976 election, Miki stepped down as prime minister and Fukuda was elected to replace him. Fukuda remained in office until 1978, but was forced to rely on the support of minor parties to maintain a parliamentary majority. Although he was regarded as a conservative and a hawk on foreign policy, Fukuda drew international criticism when he caved in to the demands of a group of terrorists who hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 472, saying "Jinmei wa chikyū yori omoi (The value of a human life outweighs the Earth)."

In matters of Sino-Japanese relations, Fukuda began as one of the LDP's conservative pro-Taiwan voices. However, by the time he had become prime minister, he was forced to accommodate increasing calls within both the LDP as well as Japanese big business to further pursue peace treaty negotiations with the People's Republic of China in order to bring about increased access to trade in the long run. Fukuda stalled on this for a number of reasons. For one, there was still continued resistance among some in the LDP who were pro-Taiwan. Moreover, relations with the Soviet Union were only recently recovering from disputes over fisheries, and as China and the Soviet Union had strained relations, Fukuda was careful not to favour one too much over the other. The primary dispute, however, was China's insistence on the treaty to contain an "anti-hegemony clause" which Japan viewed as being directed towards the Soviet Union, and Fukuda did not wish Japan to become involved in the Sino-Soviet schism. After treaty discussions spent much time in limbo, the Chinese side eventually expressed flexibility on the anti-hegemony issue, and Fukuda gave the greenlight to pursue them. Before long, however, pro-Taiwan voices in the LDP placed intense pressure on the Fukuda, and further indecision led to Fukuda's approval ratings to dip down to 20%. Eventually, after further discussion, Fukuda finally consented to a modified version of the treaty which later became the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China.

On 18 August 1977, Fukuda delivered an address at the ASEAN summit in Manila, which had been popularly dubbed as the "Fukuda Doctrine." In this speech, Fukuda was mainly concerned with three goals: overcoming the psychological barriers between Southeast Asia and Japan which came about due to World War II by reaffirming Japan's commitment to pacifism, increasing mutual "heart-to-heart" confidence between Japan and ASEAN countries, and the willingness of Japan to be an "equal partner" with ASEAN countries (rather than the economic giant it was feared as). In order to bolster these promises, Fukuda clarified Japanese willingness to provide for loans and development assistance, but under the condition that ASEAN does not require Japan to commit to joining an exclusivist trading block.

In an effort to end the LDP's faction system, Fukuda introduced primary elections within the party. In the first primary towards the end of 1978, he was beaten by Masayoshi Ōhira for the presidency of the LDP, and forced to resign as prime minister. Fukuda was later instrumental in the formation of the Inter Action Council. He retired from politics in 1990.

Personal life

Fukuda was married and had five children: three sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Yasuo Fukuda, became prime minister in September 2007, after the sudden resignation of Shinzō Abe, and remained in that office for one year, making him the first son of a Japanese prime minister to become a prime minister himself. In addition, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi began his political career as a secretary to Fukuda, and the two were very close in their political and personal lives from the 1970s onward (Fukuda was the best man at Koizumi's wedding).

In his 1977 speech delivered to ASEAN, Fukuda identified controversial Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos as a close friend of his.

Death

Fukuda died of chronic emphysema in the hospital of Tokyo Women's Medical College on 5 July 1995 at the age of 90.

Honours

• Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (5 July 1995; posthumous)
• Golden Pheasant Award of the Scout Association of Japan (1979)