Shigeru Yoshida

(22 September 1878 – 20 October 1967) was a Japanese diplomat and politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1946 to 1947 and from 1948 to 1954. Yoshida was one of the longest-serving Japanese prime ministers, and is the third-longest serving prime minister of post-occupation Japan. Early life and education Yoshida was born on 22 September 1878, in Kanda-Surugadai, Tokyo, the fifth son of political activist and former samurai Tsuna Takeuchi. Tsuna was a devout supporter of Itagaki Taisuke and would later serve in the first National Diet in 1890. Yoshida's biological mother's identity is not known. Shortly before his birth, his biological father was arrested for anti-government conspiracy, and his mother gave birth to him at the house of Kenzō Yoshida, a friend of his father. As young samurai, Tsuna and Kenzō had made a name amidst the decades of unrest around the time of Meiji Restoration. In August 1881, Yoshida was adopted by Kenzō Yoshida and his wife Kotoko. Kenzō was a wealthy trade merchant, former Jardine Matheson Yokohama branch manager and former samurai, and Kotoko was the daughter of an Edo period Confucian scholar. Yoshida began his education in a rural boarding school. He graduated elementary school in 1889. That same year, Kenzō Yoshida died, and Shigeru inherited a substantial fortune from him. Kotoko subsequently raised Shigeru on the family's estate in Ōiso. Shigeru finished secondary school in 1894, and attended junior high school until 1895, after which he briefly attended business school. He attended an academy run by the crown prince's ethics tutor in Tokyo, and briefly studied at Keio University and the Tokyo Physics School (now the Tokyo University of Science). He also spent a year ill at home in Ōiso. In 1897, he entered the prestigious Peers' School, which prepared members of the elite for the public service, and was run by Duke Konoe Atsumaro. After completing his education there, Yoshida attended a college for diplomats also run by Duke Atsumaro. Shortly after Atsumaro's death in 1904, the college became defunct, and Yoshida then studied law at Tokyo Imperial University, graduating with a law degree in 1906. He passed the Foreign Service Entry Exam and entered Japan's diplomatic corps that same year, shortly after Japan's victory against Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. He has long been regarded as prioritising the economy over defense, but recent years have seen a reevaluation of this viewpoint.