During the period between World War I and World War II, when Japan embarked on the reckless path of engaging in a series of wars starting with the Sino-Japanese War, liberal journalist Tanzan Ishibashi vocally objected to the nation taking such a path — by advocating the "small Japan" principle.
After World War II ended, Ishibashi turned himself into a conservative politician. After grappling with the nation's postwar reconstruction as finance minister in the first Cabinet of Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, Ishibashi was appointed the first prime minister following the 1955 establishment of the Liberal Democratic Party through the union of main conservative forces. However, he succumbed to illness and his administration ended in just 65 days on Feb. 25, 1957.
It was Nobusuke Kishi, the grandfather of today's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took over from Ishibashi. In the years before World War II, Kishi, as a young career bureaucrat, pushed forward Japan's policy in Manchuria, which earned him the charge of a Class-A war criminal after Japan's defeat in the war. Ishibashi's decision to retire from office over his illness was lauded at the time as a rational move that followed the proper behavior required in constitutional politics. However, the shift in power from Ishibashi, who survived the prewar to postwar years as a liberalist, to Kishi, who was seeking a strategic revision to Japan's security treaty with the United States, marked a transition between administrations of diametrically different guiding principles.
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