Yoshida played a major role in determining the course of post-war Japan by forging a strong relationship with the United States and pursuing economic recovery.

In 1936, he was considered for foreign minister in the cabinet of Kōki Hirota, but he was opposed by the Army, who strongly identified him with liberalism and friendship with Great Britain and the United States.

During the U.S. occupation after the war's end, Yoshida served as foreign minister in the cabinets of Prince Higashikuni and Kijūrō Shidehara.

He returned to the premiership in 1948, and negotiated the Treaty of San Francisco, which ended the occupation and saw the restoration of sovereignty to Japan, and a security treaty with the U.S. Yoshida pursued a strategy of concentrating on economic reconstruction while relying on an alliance with the United States for defense, a strategy known as the Yoshida Doctrine.

Yoshida's legacy continued to play an important part in Japanese political life, particularly through his two protégés, Hayato Ikeda and Eisaku Satō, who served as prime ministers from 1960 to 1964 and 1964 to 1972 respectively.

Shigeru Yoshida was born on 22 September 1878, in Kanda-Surugadai, Tokyo, the fifth son of Tsuna Takeuchi, a former samurai of the Tosa domain.

As young samurai, Tsuna and Kenzō had made names for themselves amidst the decades of unrest around the time of Meiji Restoration.

In 1894 he went to Tokyo and spent a year studying at Nihon Gakuen, a school run by the famous educator Jugo Sugiura.

Yoshida advanced to the university department at Peers’ School, which Prince Konoe had established to train diplomats.

[3] Yoshida's diplomatic career began with a posting in China, first at the Japanese mission in Tianjin in November 1906, then in Fengtian (now Shenyang) in 1907.

[5] That same year he was assigned to Italy, and in 1912, he was posted to Andong in Japanese-ruled Korea, where he served concurrently as secretary to the Governor General Masatake Terauchi.

He returned to Japan in 1932 and, after having turned down the ambassadorship to the United States, for which he considered himself unsuitable, held a nebulous role as an ambassador-in-waiting.

He undertook some foreign tours on behalf of the ministry and notably developed a warm relationship with the American ambassador Joseph Grew.

[8] In the aftermath of the February 26 incident of 1936, Prince Fumimaro Konoe contacted Yoshida to request that he'd help persuade Koki Hirota accept the premiership.

Yoshida was brought out of retirement to serve as foreign minister in the cabinet of Prince Higashikuni after the resignation of Mamoru Shigemitsu in September 1945.

At that point, the main function of the foreign minister was to liaise with the occupation authority: the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.

When Prince Higashikuni resigned Yoshida was approached by the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Koichi Kido to become prime minister, but he turned him down and suggested Kijuro Shidehara for the post, who was duly appointed.

[11] The first post-war election in April 1946 brought a plurality of the seats in the Diet to the Liberal Party led by Yoshida's old friend Ichirō Hatoyama.

Hatoyama was expected to become prime minister, but was abruptly purged by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers on the eve of his appointment.

The cabinet implemented several reforms based on occupation directives, the scope of which Yoshida personally resisted.

Yoshida, a warm supporter of the imperial institution, did not believe that the revised constitution fundamentally changed the kokutai.

Yoshida himself stood for election for the first time, choosing for his constituency Kochi Prefecture, where his family originated.

In order to fill the places left by purged politicians, Yoshida had recruited a large number of former bureaucrats to serve as candidates for the party, including Hayato Ikeda, Eisaku Sato and Katsuo Okazaki.

"[21] In February after the election, Joseph Dodge arrived in Japan as financial adviser to SCAP with a mission to stabilize the Japanese economy, which was suffering from rampant inflation and other problems.

The war led to an economic boom stimulated by demand for goods and services from Japan by the American forces in Korea.

On the pretext of an economic mission, Ikeda conveyed the message that the Japanese government would accept a continued U. S. military presence after the occupation in order to ensure Japan’s security and make an early peace treaty possible.

Dulles met with Yoshida in Tokyo for the first time in June 1950, only days before the outbreak of the Korean War.

Yoshida also signed the Security Treaty, which inaugurated the post-war military alliance between Japan and the United States.

[32] According to CIA files that were declassified in 2005, there was a 1952 plot to assassinate Yoshida and replace him with Ichirō Hatoyama as prime minister.

Under Yoshida's leadership, Japan began to rebuild its lost industrial infrastructure and placed a premium on unrestrained economic growth.