TSGT Michael E. Danick/U.S. Department of Defense

(1911–2004). As prime minister of Japan in 1980–82, Suzuki Zenko worked closely with the United States and other Western countries. Before that, he had long served in the Japanese Diet, or parliament. His abilities as a mediator brought him a record 10 terms as chairman of the executive council of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s dominant political party. Despite his long political career, he was virtually unknown abroad when he was elected to serve as prime minister.

Suzuki was born on January 11, 1911, in Yamada, Iwate prefecture, Japan. The son of a fisherman, he attended the former Imperial Fisheries Institute and joined the Japan Fisheries Association. In the second postwar general election, in 1947, Suzuki won a seat in the lower house of the Diet as a Socialist. Two years later, he switched to the conservative Liberal Party, forerunner of the LDP. He won reelection 12 times, during which period he held several cabinet posts.

Ten days before the 1980 elections were to be held, Prime Minister Ohira Masayoshi died suddenly. A three-week battle for succession within the LDP ensued. Suzuki, a loyal and longtime party worker, was the unexpected winner of the LDP presidency, which assured him the prime ministership. In office Suzuki upheld his political slogan, “politics of harmony,” while stressing moderate internationalism. He drew criticism, however, for Japan’s struggling economy and his handling of a controversy involving Japanese textbooks. The textbooks had been revised to downplay the country’s aggression against China during World War II.

In 1982 Suzuki decided not to seek reelection as leader of the LDP, thereby relinquishing the post of prime minister. He retained his seat in the Diet, however, and continued to lead a sizable faction of the LDP. Suzuki retired from politics in 1990. He died on July 19, 2004, in Tokyo, Japan.