SASAKAWA RYOICHI:
A Life
Sato Seizaburo
"Judged by any standards, Sasakawa Ryoichi was a remarkable man. Born in Kansai in the late years of Japan’s great Meiji Era, his long life spanned almost an entire century of tumultuous change. Any appraisal of his career must take into account the drastic, almost seismic transformations that befell Japan – and the entire world - within that time.
He grew up while his country, self-liberated from Tokugawa isolation, was speedily converting itself into a world power. He began his political life as a local legislator and, at 17, he learned to fly and later distinguished himself as one of his country’s first private aviators. Early in the Showa Era, he entered national politics. The small but highly vociferous National Peoples Party which he founded in 1931 played its part in the expansionist nationalism of Japan’s militarist ‘thirties. Already rich, he built his own airport, which he presented to the Army as a patriotic gift in 1934.
Jailed with other Party members in 1935 in an action instigated by political enemies, he was acquitted and released by an appeals court – in time to be elected as an independent candidate for the Lower House of the Diet. There he served throughout the war period. A firm if highly critical supporter of Japan’s World War II war effort, he voluntarily entered Sugamo prison in 1945 as a suspected war criminal under the American Occupation; his book Sugamo Diary, published after his release, was an impassioned defense of Japan’s wartime leaders.
After his release in 1949, he played a significant role in back-room politics. Relieved that post-war Japan was rescued from the Communism that so many had feared, he made his peace with the U.S. Occupation and gave his support to Japan’s alliance with the United States. An entrepreneur by instinct and experience, he invested in motor-boating racing – both as a sport and as to restore Japan’s maritime reputation. With motorboating increasingly popular, he was able to secure a rare government permission to allow gambling on the races.
In 1962, with revenues from the races increasing exponentially, he established a foundation to support Japan’s recovering maritime industry: the Japan Shipbuilding Foundation – Nihon Senpaku Shinko-Kai. The Foundation quite quickly grew into a sponsor of international philanthropy, supporting a wide variety of public affairs and scholarly activities. In 1984 he established the United States/Japan Foundation, designed to support a variety of American educational and research projects. Not long afterward came the Sasakawa Peace Foundation to do work in eastern Europe, the United States and various Asian and African nations. By 1996 the parent non-profit’s name was formally changed to the Nippon Foundation, as it remains today. All these Sasakawa foundations, taken together, are world-class non-governmental organizations, ranking with American foundations like Ford, MacArthur and Rockefeller. Like their counterparts in the United States and Europe, Sasakawa and Nippon have a global reach, supporting and engaged in a huge variety of philanthropic activities thoughout the world.
Looking back from a foreigner’s perspective back at the biography of Sasakawa Ryoichi, his lifetime transition from a right-wing pre-war nationalist to a world-class philanthropist seems like an extraordinary achievement in human chemistry. But for Sasakawa, a man who lived with his times, it seemed very natural. Gifted with a strong will and an independent social conscience all his own, he followed his instincts to make the best of situations as they changed. A man of strong convictions – and never loath to express them, he was a lightning rod of controversy during the leftist-rightist arguments of the post-war period. Yet in a way, his political evoltion tells the story of his century – and it highlights the changing and expanding role of his country, from beleaguered, nervous island country to peaceful economic super-power.
Sasakawa was not given to easy compromise; many of the stands he took throughout his life were inescapably controversial. His post-war anti-Communism was rigid and doctrinaire. And personally, as an American who spent two long war years in the Pacific, I can only find his blanket defense of his Sugamo colleagues and other Japanese militarists as “heroes” unacceptable and at variance with the facts. Too many bad deeds to ignore took place. Yet in some cases, like that of General Yamashita’s all too hasty trial and conviction, he had a point; and one could appreciate the courage with which he argued for better treatment in the prison. By the end of the day, he had turned his indignation and sense of justice to good purpose, with his large and generous benefactions as a world citizen.
-- from the Introduction by Frank Gibney
EastBridge Signature Books
ISBN 1-891936-96-4 (hb) $49.95