Satō–Kishi–Abe family

Nobuhiro was part of the Meiji oligarchy along with fellow Choshu retainers Itō Hirobumi, Inoue Kaoru, and Kido Takayoshi, who formed much of Japan's post-Meiji government and held an outsized influence, historically sending more prime ministers to the capital than any other region.

Through the Matsuoka, the Sato were related to the royal family through Kacho Haruko, the daughter of Marquis Fushiminomiya Hironobuo and Princess Kaninnomiya Hanako, who was once considered as a potential match for Crown Prince Akihito.

In 1938, he was promoted to Vice Admiral and assigned to command the Japanese naval station at Port Arthur, but was transferred to the reserves in 1940 due to ill health.

[13] Kishi became known as one of the more prominent members of a group of "reform bureaucrats" within the Japanese government who favored a statist model of economic development with the state guiding and directing the economy.

[21] The man handpicked by Kishi to lead the MIDC was his distant relative and old First High School classmate, Nissan Group founder Ayukawa Yoshisuke.

[22] The system that Kishi pioneered in Manchuria of a state-guided economy where corporations made their investments on government orders later served as the model for Japan's post-1945 development, and subsequently, that of South Korea and China as well.

[16] In order to make it profitable for the zaibatsu to invest in Manchukuo, Kishi had a policy of lowering the wages of the workers to the lowest possible point, even below the "line of necessary social reproduction".

[26] Kishi expressed views typical of his fellow colonial bureaucrats when he disparagingly referred the Chinese people as "lawless bandits" who were "incapable of governing themselves".

[26] According to Kishi's subordinates, he saw little point in following legal or juridical procedures because he felt the Chinese were more akin to dogs than human beings and would only understand brute force.

[27] Kishi spent almost all of his time in Manchukuo's capital, Xinjing (modern Changchun, China) with the exception of monthly trips on the world famous Asia Express railroad line to Dalian, where he indulged in his passion for women in alcohol- and sex-drenched weekends.

[28] According to Driscoll, "photographs and written descriptions of Kishi during this period never fail to depict a giddy exuberance: laughing and joking while doling out money during the day and looking forward to drinking and fornicating at night.

"[29] Kishi was able to afford his hedonistic, free-spending lifestyle as he had control over millions of yen with virtually no oversight, thanks to being deeply involved in and profiting from the opium trade.

[30] Before returning to Japan in October 1939, Kishi is reported to have advised his colleagues in the Manchukuo government about corruption: "Political funds should be accepted only after they have passed through a 'filter' and been 'cleansed'.

However, the U.S. government did not charge, try, or convict him, and eventually released him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction.

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 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.

[38] Satō arranged for the formal return of Okinawa (Ryukyu Islands; occupied by the United States since the end of the Second World War) to Japanese control.

[44][45] Abe stood as a Seiyūkai Party candidate in the February 1928 general election but lost; he was appointed village mayor of Heki in 1933 and later served in the Yamaguchi prefectural assembly.

[59] In 1988, his chances of becoming prime minister sometime in the near future were again thwarted when his name became associated with the Recruit-Cosmos insider-trading stock scandal, which brought down Takeshita and forced Abe to resign as the party's secretary general in December 1988.

Satō announced in 2012 that he had a document signed between his father and U.S. President Richard Nixon that would allow American nuclear weapons to be brought to Okinawa in emergencies.

[68][69][66][70][71][72] After his retirement at Mitsubishi he maintained a part-time advisory role while also being appointed outside director of Yamaeo Group Holdings, Seikei Gakuen, and Fumakilla.

Following the LDP's landslide victory in that year's general election, Abe became the first former prime minister to return to office since Shigeru Yoshida in 1948.

Abe was a staunch conservative and associated with the Nippon Kaigi, which holds negationist views on Japanese history, including denying the role of government coercion in the recruitment of comfort women during World War II, a position which caused tensions particularly with South Korea.

The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, who was immediately arrested by Japanese police, confessed to targeting the former prime minister because of Abe's reported ties with the Unification Church.

[76] Following her husband's first stint as prime minister, she opened an organic izakaya in the Kanda district of Tokyo, but was not active in management due to the urging of her mother-in-law.

[79] While her husband was in office, Abe developed a close relationship with the Moritomo Gakuen kindergarten in Osaka, which is noted for its conservative and militarist culture, including requiring students to memorize the Imperial Rescript on Education.

He re-took a seat in Yamaguchi Prefecture that had previously belonged to his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi and great-uncle Eisaku Sato, but that had been lost to the Democratic Party of Japan in the 2009 Japanese general election.

[89] Following the news of Kishi's appointment, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman expressed hope that Japan would refrain from developing official ties with Taiwan.

[90] Kishi and Reynolds also emphasized their opposition to "any destabilizing or coercive unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions in the East China Sea," and some analysts have speculated this to be in reference to Chinese maritime activities around the Senkaku Islands.

[91] In a September 2021 interview with the Mainichi Shimbun, Kishi stated that Japan cannot stand aside when events occur in Taiwan due to being close neighbors and allies with shared universal values such as freedom and democracy.