1921 (Taisho 10) Saturday, July 9: Sadanori YAMANAKA, a statesman, was born. He was born in Soogun Sueyoshi Village, Kagoshima Prefecture (present Soo City). After graduating from former Miyakonojo Junior High School (present-day Miyazaki Prefectural Miyakonojo Izumigaoka High School), Oshima moved to Taiwan and attended Taipei Second Normal School. While studying at Taipei Second Normal School, he met Tomonao YARA, who was a teacher at the school and later became a politician from Okinawa, which later became Yamanaka’s major political asset.
After graduating from the school, Yamanaka worked as a teacher at a national school in Takaosu, but after serving in the Pacific War, he left for the front, and after being demobilized, he became a reporter for the Southern Japan newspaper, a local newspaper in Kagoshima. Before long, he became a member of Kagoshima Prefectural Assembly, and in 1953, at the age of 32, he ran for the first time in the 26 Lower House election from the former Kagoshima 3rd district, endorsed by the Liberal Party.
At the time of the merger of conservatives in 1955, that is, the establishment of the Liberal Democratic Party, he belonged to the Kono faction led by Ichiro Kono. In 1958, he was appointed Vice-Minister of Finance in the Kishi cabinet and had the opportunity to become a tax expert and policy expert. In 1961, he made steady progress with the vice-secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party and the chairman of the Finance Committee of the House of Representatives in 1963.
In 1970, he joined the 3rd Cabinet of Eisaku Sato as General Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office for the first time. After demonstrating his skills in the secret negotiations with the United States for the return of Okinawa, he became the first Director-General of Okinawa Development Agency in 1972. In 1973, he was the Minister of Defense in the second Tanaka Kakuei Cabinet.
In 1979, Yamanaka became chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party’s Research Commission on the Tax System. Since then, he has been called the “Don of the Tax Commission,” “Mr. Tax Commission,” and “God of Tax,” and has dominated the LDP’s Research Commission on the Tax System for a long time. We actively promoted the introduction of the consumption tax in 1990. He was elected to the 43 Lower House in 2003, becoming the oldest and most elected member of the Diet, but died of pneumonia on February 20, 2004, only 3 months later. He was 82 years old.
Leave a Reply