Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 442, The Transistor Salesman.

I've intended this to be the first in a series, a three episodes, on the transformation

of Japanese politics and society after 1960, based on Nick Kapoor's excellent book,

Japan at the Crossroads, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in modern

Japanese history. The name of this little episode comes from one of those fun historical

anecdotes that may or may not be true, but which is just too good to pass up. The story goes that

sometime in the 1960s, I've seen either 1962 or 1964 given as potential

years and nobody seems to agree, the Prime Minister of Japan went on a goodwill tour of Europe.

Along the way, he met with the French president Charles de Gaulle, veteran of the Second World War,

the man who rebuilt France and saved it from the

crises of the Algerian War and the faltering of the Fourth Republic. And after the two met,

De Gaul supposedly turned to an aide and jokingly asked, who was that transistor salesman?

That transistor salesman was Ikeda Hayato, and while the sheer number of variations on this story

make it likely to be apocryphal, it does a good job of capturing Iqaeda's image outside of

Japan.

And yet that transistor salesman is arguably one of the most important figures in Japan's post-war history.

He was only in office as prime minister for four short years, but during that time, he arguably did more than anyone else to cement the post-war system that largely dominates Japan today.

So today, it is time to give the transistor salesman his due.

Ikeda Hayato was born on December 3, 1890 in Hiroshima. He was the youngest of seven siblings

born to Ikeda Goichiro and Ikeda Umay.

The Ikeda family was prosperous and middle class. They made their money as sake brewers and able to afford a good education even for their youngest child. He eventually tried to

test into the Rikugun Yonen Gakko or Army Youth Academy, essentially a feeder school for the Army's

...