Yasuhiro Nakasone

In about 1590, the samurai Nakasone Sōemon Mitsunaga settled in the town of in Kōzuke Province.

His descendants became silk merchants and pawnbrokers.

Nakasone's father, originally born Nakasone Kanichi, settled in Takasaki in 1912 and established a Timber business and lumberyard which had success as a result of the post-WWI building boom.

Nakasone described his early childhood and youth as a happy one, and himself as a "quiet, easy-going child" nicknamed "Yat-chan".

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.

Nakasone was born in Takasaki in Gunma, a prefecture northwest of Tokyo, on 27 May 1918.

He was the second son of Nakasone Matsugoro II, a lumber dealer, and Nakamura Yuku.

He had five siblings: an elder brother named Kichitaro, an elder sister named Shoko, a younger brother named Ryosuke and another younger brother and younger sister who both died in childhood.

The Nakasone family had been of the samurai class during the Edo period, and claimed direct descent from the Minamoto clan through the famous Minamoto no Yoshimitsu and through his son Minamoto no Yoshikiyo (d. 1149).

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

In the autumn of 1938, Nakasone entered the Faculty of Law of the Imperial University of Tokyo.

During World War II, he was commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Navy as a paymaster.

As a lieutenant, he was stationed at Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, to build an airfield.

There, he realized that the construction of the airfield had been stalled due to the prevalence of sexual crimes, gambling, and other problems among his men, so he gathered comfort women and organized a brothel called “comfort station” as a solution.

He managed to procure four Indonesian women, and a Navy report praised him for having “mitigated the mood of the his troops". His decision to provide comfort women to his troops was replicated by thousands of Imperial Japanese Army and Navy officers across the Indo-Pacific both before and during World War II, as a matter of policy. From Nauru to Vietnam, from Burma to Timor, women were treated as the first reward of conquest."

He later wrote of his return to Tokyo in August 1945 after Japan's surrender: "I stood vacantly amid the ruins of Tokyo, after discarding my officer's short sword and removing the epaulettes of my uniform. As I looked around me, I swore to resurrect my homeland from the ashes of defeat".

In 1947, he gave up a promising career in an elite government ministry to run for Parliament with the belief that in its postwar remorse, Japan was in danger of discarding its traditional values.

He campaigned on a nationalist platform, arguing for an enlarged Self-Defence Force, to amend Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution (which outlawed war as a means to settling international disputes), and to revive Japanese patriotism, especially in reverence for the Emperor.

He entered the Japanese Diet as a member of the House of Representatives for the Democratic Party.

"As a freshman lawmaker in 1951, he delivered a 28-page letter to General MacArthur criticising the occupation, a brazen move. The General angrily threw the letter in [the] bin, Yasuhiro was later told. This stand established [Yasuhiro Nakasone's] credentials as a right-wing politician."

He gained brief notoriety in 1952 for blaming Emperor Hirohito for Japan's defeat in the war.

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.

Nakasone rose through the LDP's ranks, becoming Minister of Science in 1959 under the government of Nobusuke Kishi, then Minister of Transport in 1967, Director General of the Japan Defense Agency from 1970 to 1971, Minister of International Trade and Industry in 1972 and Minister of Administration in 1981.

As the head of the Self-Defence Force, Nakasone argued for an increase in defence spending from less than 1% GDP to 3% of GDP.

He was also in favour of Japan having tactical nuclear weapons.

He was labelled "the weathervane" in 1972 because he switched his support from Takeo Fukuda to Kakuei Tanaka in the leadership election, ensuring Tanaka's victory.

In turn, Tanaka would give his powerful support to Nakasone against Fukuda a decade later in the fight for the premiership.

Yasuhiro Nakasone (中曽根 康弘) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party from 1982 to 1987.

He was a member of the House of Representatives for more than 50 years.

His political term was best known for pushing through the privatization of state-owned companies and pursuing a hawkish and pro-U.S. foreign policy.

In 1982, Nakasone became prime minister.

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

Nakasone was best known for his close relationship with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, popularly called the "Ron-Yasu" friendship.

Nakasone sought a more equal relationship with the United States, and said: "President Reagan is the pitcher and I'm the catcher. When the pitcher gives the signs, I'll co-operate unsparingly, but if he doesn't sometimes follow the catcher's signs, the game can't be won".

Nakasone said Japan would be "America's unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Pacific and that Japan would "keep complete control of the four straits that go through to Japanese islands, to prevent the passage of Soviet submarines".

He was attacked by political opponents as a reactionary and a "dangerous militarist".

Nakasone responded by saying: "A nation must shed any sense of ignominy and move forward seeking glory".

However his attempt to amend Article 9 failed.

In 1984, Nakasone visited China on the twelfth anniversary of Japan's diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic, for which the Chinese government arranged tours of China for 3,000 Japanese youths.