Takeo Miki

Takeo Miki (三木 武夫, Miki Takeo; 17 March 1907 – 14 November 1988) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1974 to 1976.

A native of Tokushima Prefecture, Miki was educated at Meiji University and the University of Southern California. He was first elected to the National Diet in 1937, and after the war was leader of the National Cooperative Party, serving as communications minister from 1947 to 1948 under Tetsu Katayama. Miki later joined the Liberal Democratic Party and served as transportation minister under Ichirō Hatoyama, held posts in the cabinets of Nobusuke Kishi and Hayato Ikeda, and served as international trade and industry minister in 1965–1966 and foreign minister in 1966–1968 under Eisaku Satō. Miki became prime minister in 1974 upon the resignation of Kakuei Tanaka, who had faced allegations of corruption, but his attempts to pass anti-monopoly legislation and political funding laws failed amid opposition from within his party. Miki announced a "1 percent of GDP" guideline for defense spending, thus setting a precedent for the next two decades. The LDP was damaged by the Lockheed scandal in 1976, and lost its majority in the that year's election. Miki was embarrassed by this result, resigned as premier, and was succeeded by Takeo Fukuda.

Takeo Miki was born on 17 March 1907, in Gosho, Tokushima Prefecture (present-day Awa, Tokushima), the only child of farmer-merchant Hisayoshi Miki and his wife Takano. Aside from farming, his father traded fertilizers, sake, rice and general goods, though he was not a wealthy farmer (gōnō) or from a family of pedigree (kyūke). Hisayoshi was born in Kakihara, near Gosho, to farmer Rokusaburō Ino'o, and after briefly working in Osaka, he returned and began working for the Shibata family, the largest landowner in Gosho. He met Takano Miki, the daughter of farmer Tokitarō Miki, when the two were working for the Shibata family. Hisayoshi took Takano's surname after marriage, and the newlywed were given a house by the Shibata family.

When Miki was born, Hisayoshi was 33 and Takano was 38 years old, and Miki was raised with much love as he was the only child. His mother was particularly careful about his healthcare.

While enrolled at Meiji University's Faculty of Law, Miki was able to spend four years from 1932 to 1936 traveling around the United States, where he saw firsthand both Anglo-American liberal society as well as that society's aversion towards totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union. He attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and was later awarded an honorary doctorate in law from the institution in 1966.

During 1937, Miki was elected to the Imperial Diet; he remained there for the rest of his life, winning re-election no fewer than 19 times over 51 years. In the 1942 general election he openly voiced opposition to the military government under Hideki Tojo and still managed to win a seat; his efforts at this time were assisted by Kan Abe, the grandfather of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

In the earlier post-war period, Miki led the centrist National Cooperative Party in the 1947 and 1949 general elections, to limited success. In the early 1950s, Miki joined Ichirō Hatoyama's Democratic Party, which was one of the two main conservative factions of the time and took a stance that was critical of Shigeru Yoshida and his Liberal Party. These two factions eventually merged in 1955 to form the modern-day Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which Miki joined as well.

As the head of an LDP faction, Miki held cabinet posts in the administrations of Ichirō Hatoyama, Nobusuke Kishi, Hayato Ikeda, and Eisaku Satō. However, he was especially critical of the Kishi administration, and was strongly opposed to Kishi's handling of the massive 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. When Kishi railroaded the treaty through the Diet on May 19, 1960, Miki's faction absented itself from the vote in protest of Kishi's heavy-handed approach. On May 28, Miki and fellow faction leader Kenzō Matsumura issued a public call for Kishi's resignation, and Kishi was ultimately forced to resign in July. However, when Ichirō Kōno floated a plan later that summer to split up the LDP, Miki and Matsumura ultimately declined to support him. As punishment for taking part in the anti-Kishi rebellion, Miki was initially excluded from the cabinet of Kishi's successor Hayato Ikeda. However by the following year, Ikeda had cemented his power enough to overcome the objections of the Kishi faction and bring Miki back into the cabinet as Head of the Science and Technology Agency.