was a Japanese politician who served as the 77th

Prime Minister of Japan The prime minister of Japan (Japanese: 内閣総理大臣, Hepburn: ''Naikaku Sōri-Daijin'') is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its Ministers of Stat ...

from 1989 to 1991.

Early life and education

Kaifu was born on 2 January 1931, in

Nagoya City is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most pop ...

, the eldest of six brothers. His family's business Nakamura Photo Studio was established by his grandfather in the

Meiji era The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...

, and was situated next to the

Matsuzakaya ( TYO: 8235, delisted) is a major Japanese department store chain operated by Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores, a subsidiary of J. Front Retailing. When the chain was an independent company, , it had its headquarters in Naka-ku, Nagoya. ...

flagship department store. Kaifu took the exam to the

Aichi Prefectural Asahigaoka Senior High School Aichi Prefectural Asahigaoka Senior High School (Japanese: 愛知県立旭丘高等学校) is a public coeducational senior high school located in Nagoya city, Aichi prefecture, Japan. It was originally established in 1870, having a long history ...

, and while of the eleven students who took the test from the same school, nine were accepted and two, including Kaifu, were not. As part of the student labor mobilization during the war, he was placed in a Mitsui Heavy Industry factory where he assembled airplane engine parts day and night. In 1945, he was accepted in the Youth Airman Academy of the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

, but the war ended before his planned enrolment in October. He was then educated at

Chuo University , commonly referred to as or , is a private flagship research university in Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1885 as Igirisu Hōritsu Gakkō (the English Law School), Chuo is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the country. The univer ...

and

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

. On 17 November 1957 Kaifu married Saburō Yanagihara, a female assistant to Member of the House of Representatives.

Career

A member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Kaifu ran successfully for the 1960 Japanese general election and took office as the youngest member of the

National Diet The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (Japan), House of Councillors (, ...

. He served for sixteen terms, totaling 49 years. Kaifu was education minister before rising to lead the party after the resignations of Takeshita Noboru and

Sōsuke Uno was a Japanese politician who was briefly Prime Minister of Japan in 1989, the first Prime Minister who came from Shiga Prefecture. A scandal exposed by the geisha Mitsuko Nakanishi contributed to his premature resignation from office after just ...

. Facing Yoshiro Hayashi and

Shintaro Ishihara was a Japanese politician and writer who was Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to 2012. Being the former leader of the radical right Japan Restoration Party, he was one of the most prominent ultranationalists in modern Japanese politics. An ultra ...

, Kaifu was elected on the platform of clean leadership. He became the 76th

in August 1989. On 10 August 1991, Kaifu became the first leader of a major country to make an official visit to China and break China's diplomatic isolation after the

1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...

. Kaifu ended Japan's participation in economic sanctions against China and offered $949.9 million in loans and an additional $1.5 million in emergency aid following flood damage in southern China in June and July. In 1991 he sent the

Maritime Self-Defense Force , abbreviated , also simply known as the Japanese Navy, is the maritime warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, tasked with the naval defense of Japan. The JMSDF was formed following the dissolution of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) ...

to the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Persis, Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a Mediterranean sea (oceanography), me ...

in the wake of the

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

. Throughout his two Cabinets, Kaifu's faction was too small to push through the reforms he sought, and the continuing repercussions of the

Sagawa Express is a major transportation company in Japan. Its headquarters are in Minami-ku, Kyoto. It competes with Yamato Transport, Nippon Express, and other major logistics companies. Its total sales for the year ending March 2005 were ¥728,000,000,0 ...

scandal caused problems. He resigned in November 1991 and was replaced by

Kiichi Miyazawa was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1991 to 1993. He was a member of the National Diet of Japan for over 50 years. Early life and education Miyazawa was born into a wealthy, politically active family in Fukuyama ...

. In 1994, he left the LDP to become head of the newly-founded New Frontier Party. He supported Ichirō Ozawa's party until he returned to LDP in 2003. He was defeated in the election of 2009 by DPJ candidate Mitsunori Okamoto, which witnessed the end of almost uninterrupted LDP dominance since 1955. At the time of his defeat, he was the longest-serving member of the lower house of the

Diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

, and he was also the first former prime minister to be defeated at a re-election since 1963.

Death

Kaifu was the last surviving former Japanese prime minister who had served in the 1980s. He died from

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

on 9 January 2022 at a Tokyo hospital, at the age of 91. The announcement of his death to the media was delayed until 14 January.

References

External links

KAIFU, Toshiki
International Who's Who. Retrieved 3 September 2006. * , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Kaifu, Toshiki 1931 births 2022 deaths Deaths from pneumonia in Japan 20th-century Japanese politicians 20th-century prime ministers of Japan 21st-century Japanese politicians Chuo University alumni Waseda University alumni Prime Ministers of Japan Ministers of Finance of Japan People from Nagoya New Frontier Party (Japan) politicians Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) politicians Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun Politicians from Aichi Prefecture