Shigeru Yoshida

Shigeru Yoshida (Japanese: Yoshida Shigeru/Good. Shigeru, Romanized: Yoshida Shigeru, September 22, 1878 - October 20, 1967), a Japanese politician. Son-in-law of Japanese political veteran, former Foreign Ministry bureaucrat, and elder Nobuhiro Makino. In 1946, shortly after the end of World War II, he became the Prime Minister of the Cabinet (Prime Minister) and was the last Prime Minister under the Constitution of the Empire of Japan. He became Prime Minister again in 1948 and was in power until 1954. During this period, he led Japan's national policy of light armed forces and economic development, which has influenced Japan to this day. He led Japan through the period of the Allied military occupation of Japan, and had a harmonious relationship with Marshal MacArthur, the commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces in Japan. From October 1950 to August 1952, due to the outbreak of the Korean War, the Japanese government gave up its military and war rights, and after confirming the support of the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces in Japan (GHQ), the Yoshida Shigeru government successively lifted the "purge" of 180,000 old Japanese militarists and returned to Japanese politics as civil servants to solve the problem of insufficient talents. In December 1954, his authoritarian style and national policy of "leaving national defense to the US military", which he had been in power for seven years, were attacked by party factions such as Hatoyama Ichiro. In addition, Ogata Taketora and other cabinet members insisted on resigning as president and refused to dissolve the Diet, which put him under great pressure. Although he stepped down, the bureaucracy of his Yoshida School still influenced Japan. Later, his most protégés Ikeda Yugi and Sato Eisaku served as Prime Ministers of Japan throughout the 1960s. They laid the foundation for Japan's post-war economic miracle and made Japan the economic power it is today. At the same time, the extremely pro-American and domestic development-focused line created by Yoshida still affects Japan to this day.