After the war, he entered the National Diet in 1947 and rose through the ranks of the Liberal Democratic Party, serving as chief of the Defense Agency from 1970 to 1971 under Eisaku Satō, international trade and industry minister from 1972 to 1974 under Kakuei Tanaka, and administration minister from 1980 to 1982 under Zenkō Suzuki.

A conservative contemporary of U.S. president Ronald Reagan, Nakasone privatized the Japanese National Railways and telephone systems, and favored closer ties with the U.S., once calling Japan an "unsinkable aircraft carrier".

After leaving office in 1987, he was implicated in the Recruit scandal, causing the influence of his LDP faction to wane before he retired from the Diet in 2004.

According to family records, Tsunayoshi (k. 1417), a vassal of the Takeda clan and a tenth-generation descendant of Yoshikiyo, took the name of Nakasone Juro and was killed at the Battle of Sagamigawa.

He attended a local primary school in Takasaki and was a poor student until the fourth grade, after which he excelled and was at the top of his class.

He entered Shizuoka Higher School in 1935, where he excelled in history and literature, and learned to speak fluent French.

[6]Nakasone applied for the Navy's programme that allowed graduates from elite universities to serve as officers for two years without rising through the ranks.

[2] With 2,000 staff under his command, ranging from young doctors and scholars to elderly ex-convicts, Nakasone departed the naval base at Kure on 29 November 1941 on a mission to build airfields.

Aboard his ship, he struggled to issue effective orders to his staff and ultimately selected an ex-yakuza with eight convictions as his assistant to relay his commands.

He observed the growing prevalence of communism among the Japanese people, but the Civil Service was largely powerless to address it under the absolute authority of the Allied Occupation Forces.

While supervising the police force in Kagawa Prefecture, he decided to abandon his bureaucratic career and stand in the upcoming general election.

[15] In 1955, at Nakasone's urging, the government granted the equivalent of $14,000,000 to the Agency for Industrial Science and Technology to begin nuclear power research.

Along with Minister of Foreign Affairs Shintaro Abe, Nakasone improved Japanese relations with the USSR and the People's Republic of China.

On the trip, Nakasone's son was privately accompanied by the daughter of Hu Yaobang, the-then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Nakasone advised the Japanese public to purchase foreign imports; in a well-publicised shopping trip, he bought an American tennis racket, an Italian tie and a French shirt.

[28] Influenced by Japanese philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji, Nakasone believed that Japan's "monsoon culture" inspired a special Japanese compassion, unlike the desert culture of the Middle East that produced the Judeo-Christian "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth".

This had great symbolic significance as he visited the shrine in his official capacity, intending to reassert the Japanese government's respect for the spirits of the ancestors killed in battle, including those who died in World War II.

[29] This turned out however to be a controversial move which was heavily criticised by the Chinese Government (including in its newspaper, People's Daily) and led to angry demonstrations in Beijing.

The commission also recommended that the national anthem should be taught and that the Rising Sun Flag should also be raised during entrance and graduation ceremonies.

[22] Nakasone was replaced by Noboru Takeshita in 1987, and was implicated, along with other LDP lawmakers, in the Recruit scandal that broke the following year.

In 2003, despite a fight,[37] Nakasone was not given a place on the LDP's electoral list as the party, by then led by Jun'ichirō Koizumi, introduced an age limit of 73 years for candidates in the proportional representation blocks, ending his career as a member of the Diet.

In a profile at that time, he saw Hatoyama's "inexperienced left-leaning" government as "challenging Japan's postwar political order and its close relationship with the United States".

[2] "Being knocked out of power is a good chance to study in the cram school of public opinion", he was quoted as saying of the LDP.

'Because of the prime minister’s imprudent remarks, the current situation calls for Japan to make efforts to improve things,' he said.

And relative to another high-profile current source of friction between Japan and the United States, Nakasone said: "Problems like Okinawa [and the American military base there] can be solved by talking together.

[45][46] Nakasone was the second oldest Prime Minister of Japan by age after Naruhiko Higashikuni, who lived to 102 years, 48 days.