This article, dated April 29, 2020, looks back on the life of Kiichi Aichi, a bureaucrat-politician who supported postwar Japan’s finance, politics, and diplomacy. In the Ministry of Finance, he mainly handled fiscal affairs and international finance, and after the war he struggled to protect Japan’s financial world amid GHQ’s dissolution of the zaibatsu. As foreign minister, he played a role in the Okinawa reversion negotiations, and as finance minister, he faced the shift to floating exchange rates and the first oil shock.

April 29, 2020
He mainly handled fiscal affairs and international finance.
After the war, he successively served as chief of the Minister’s Secretariat and director-general of the Banking Bureau, in 1947, and amid GHQ’s dissolution of the zaibatsu, he devoted great effort to protecting Japan’s financial world.
Kiichi Aichi
Source: The Free Encyclopedia Wikipedia
Kiichi Aichi, October 10, 1907―November 23, 1973, was a Japanese Ministry of Finance bureaucrat and politician.
He first served as a member of the House of Councillors, later moved to the House of Representatives, and held posts including Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance.
Life and career
He was born in Kojimachi Ward, Tokyo City, as the eldest son of Keiichi and Sachi Aichi.
His father, Keiichi, was a physicist, and in 1911, Meiji 44, he was appointed professor in the Department of Physics, College of Science, Tohoku Imperial University, so the family moved to Sendai.
His mother Sachi’s family was also said to be a family line of Chinese classics scholars for generations, and the entire household was an academic family.
Aichi attended the old-system Miyagi Prefectural Second Middle School, now Sendai Second High School, and the old-system Second Higher School, and then entered the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Tokyo Imperial University, graduating in 1931, Showa 6.
During his years at Second Middle School, he belonged to the judo club.
In his student days, he was known as a brilliant student.
In middle school, he constantly competed for the top academic position with his classmate Masao Okahara, who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
During his time at the Faculty of Law of Tokyo Imperial University, he studied under great authorities such as Eiichi Makino in criminal law and Sakae Wagatsuma in civil law.
There is also an anecdote conveying his brilliance: at a time when obtaining ten “excellent” grades was said to mark a brilliant student, he obtained as many as fifteen.
When he was in his third year of middle school, his father Keiichi died suddenly at the age of 42 from food poisoning caused by pufferfish toxin.
After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University, he entered the Ministry of Finance, served overseas in Britain and France as a financial secretary, and also served as an attendant at the London Economic Conference, secretary to the finance minister, and director of the Documents Division, in 1945.
He mainly handled fiscal affairs and international finance.
After the war, he successively served as chief of the Minister’s Secretariat and director-general of the Banking Bureau, in 1947, and amid GHQ’s dissolution of the zaibatsu, he devoted great effort to protecting Japan’s financial world.
In 1950, Showa 25, he resigned from the Ministry of Finance, and in the second ordinary election for the House of Councillors held that same year, he ran as an official Liberal Party candidate from the national constituency and was elected for the first time, becoming a member of the House of Councillors.
His experience and policy ability up to that point were highly valued by Hayato Ikeda, who had also come from the Ministry of Finance and was then serving as Minister of Finance.
At the Ikeda-Robertson talks in 1952, Showa 27, Aichi accompanied Ikeda as a government representative.
He was also counted as one of the “Thirteen Yoshida Men” as a close aide of then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida.
In the Fifth Yoshida Cabinet formed in 1952, Showa 27, he was appointed Minister of International Trade and Industry and Director-General of the Economic Deliberation Agency.
In 1955, Showa 30, he ran from Miyagi Prefecture’s First District in the 27th general election for the House of Representatives and was elected, moving to the House of Representatives.
Those elected in the same class included Hajime Tamura, Etsusaburo Shiina, Toshiki Karasawa, Sakahiko Komura, Motosaburo Tokai, and Hyosuke Niwa.
That same year, with the conservative merger, he joined the Liberal Democratic Party.
In the Nobusuke Kishi administration that began in 1957, Showa 32, he became Chief Cabinet Secretary in the First Kishi Reshuffled Cabinet, and in the Second Kishi Cabinet he became Minister of Justice and Director-General of the Autonomy Agency.
Under the Hayato Ikeda administration, which began after Kishi’s resignation, he served as Minister of Education and Director-General of the Science and Technology Agency in the Third Ikeda Reshuffled Cabinet, formed in 1964, Showa 39.
Around this time, Aichi gradually came to criticize Ikeda’s high economic growth policy, approached Kishi instead, and belonged to the Sato faction, the faction of Eisaku Sato, Kishi’s younger brother.
Within that faction, together with Kakuei Tanaka, Shigeru Hori, Raizo Matsuno, and Tomisaburo Hashimoto, he was called one of the “Five Magistrates of the Sato Faction.”
As one of the brains behind the birth of the Sato administration, he compiled the slogans of “social development” and “respect for humanity.”
In November 1964, Showa 39, when the Sato administration was launched after Ikeda resigned due to illness, Aichi served successively as Minister of Education and Director-General of the Science and Technology Agency in the First Sato Cabinet, Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Second Reshuffled First Sato Cabinet, and Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Second Reshuffled Second Sato Cabinet and the following Third Sato Cabinet.
As Minister for Foreign Affairs, he was in charge of the Japan-U.S. negotiations toward the reversion of Okinawa, and in 1972, Showa 47, the Okinawa Reversion Agreement was concluded.
When Sato, whose administration had become long-lasting, stepped down, Aichi supported Kakuei Tanaka rather than Takeo Fukuda, whom Sato had considered as his successor, and he carried out policy planning for Tanaka when Tanaka ran in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election.
In July 1972, Showa 47, Tanaka was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party and became Prime Minister.
On December 22, 1972, Showa 47, when the Second Kakuei Tanaka Cabinet was formed after the 33rd general election for the House of Representatives, Aichi was appointed Minister of Finance.
The fact that Tanaka appointed Aichi, an advocate of active fiscal policy, as Minister of Finance at this most difficult time as the “trump card” of his administration shows that Tanaka highly valued Aichi’s ability.
In February 1973, Showa 48, as the Smithsonian system was showing complete collapse, Aichi’s decision led to Japan’s shift to a floating exchange rate system, causing a major transformation in foreign exchange transactions.
Furthermore, the “Plan for Remodeling the Japanese Archipelago” had caused extreme shortages of goods and inflation due to overheating of the economy.
Then the first oil shock, triggered by the Fourth Middle East War from early October of that year, became apparent.
As oil supplies from oil-producing countries were reduced, inflation and shortages accelerated at a full gallop.
In the midst of this, Aichi actively visited various countries and promoted economic diplomacy.
Under such circumstances, as emergency oil measures and the compilation of the supplementary budget for fiscal 1973 were being carried out, Aichi, exhausted to the limit by intense work, aggravated a cold.
Late at night on November 22, he complained of a high fever.
On the evening of the following day, the 23rd, he was transported by ambulance from his home in Yushima, Bunkyo Ward, to Keio Hospital in Shinanomachi, but by the time he arrived at the hospital he had already lost consciousness.
Without regaining consciousness, he died at 9:50 p.m. that same day, shortly after hospitalization.
He was only 66 years old.
Aichi, who was scheduled to depart for Paris on the 25th to attend a meeting of finance ministers, is said to have cried out in the ambulance, as if squeezing out his voice, “I, I will not die from something like this,” and as his consciousness gradually became clouded, he muttered in French as if in delirium.
The transport to Keio Hospital took 25 minutes, but in Hongo, very close to his home, said to have been about five minutes away, there was the University of Tokyo Hospital.
It was later regretted that he might have been saved if he had been transported there.
Tanaka, who heard the news of his death and rushed to the hospital, stood dumbfounded before Aichi’s body, unable to form words.
All he could manage to murmur was, “A giant star has fallen……to lose Aichi at this time is painful……”
Tanaka, grieving the death of his right-hand man, decided to reshuffle the cabinet, and Takeo Fukuda, an advocate of balanced fiscal policy, became the succeeding Minister of Finance.