Editing Nobusuke Kishi (section)

== Early life and career ==
Kishi was born Nobusuke Satō in [[Tabuse]], [[Yamaguchi Prefecture]], the son of a sake brewer from a once illustrious [[samurai]] family that had recently fallen on hard times.{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|pp=98-99}} His older brother, [[Ichirō Satō]], would go on to become a Vice Admiral in the [[Imperial Japanese Navy]], and his younger brother, [[Eisaku Satō]], would also go on to become a prime minister.{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=98}} Nobusuke attended an elementary school and middle school in [[Okayama]], and then transferred to another middle school in [[Yamaguchi, Yamaguchi|Yamaguchi]].{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=99}} When he was about to graduate from middle school, Nobusuke was adopted by his father's older brother, Nobumasa Kishi, adopting their family name.{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=98}} The Kishi family lacked a male heir, so they adopted Nobusuke in order to continue the family line.{{sfn|Haberman|1987}}

Kishi passed the difficult entrance examination to enter [[First Higher School]] in Tokyo, the most prestigious preparatory school in the country, and then attended the [[Graduate Schools for Law and Politics and Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo|Faculty of Law]] of [[Tokyo Imperial University]].{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=100}}{{sfn|Mimura|2011|p=33}} While at the university, Kishi became a protégé of the right-wing ultranationalist legal scholar [[Shinkichi Uesugi]].{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=100}}{{sfn|Mimura|2011|p=34}} Because he studied German law under Uesugi, Kishi's views tended toward German-style statism, compared to the more progressive approaches favored by some of his classmates who studied English law.{{sfn|Mimura|2011|p=34}} Kishi graduated in 1920 at the top of his class.{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=100}} Uesugi sought recruit him for an academic career, promising to make Kishi his successor as a professor in the future, but Kishi declined.{{sfn|Hattori|2021|p=14}} Instead he entered the [[Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce]].{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=100}} This was an unusual choice, because at the time, the most brilliant aspiring bureaucrats typically sought to enter the [[Home Ministry]] and eventually gain appointment as a prefectural governor.{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=100}} Several of Kishi's mentors even criticized his choice.{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=100}} However, Kishi was uninterested in administrative work, and aimed to be directly involved in Japan's economic development.{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=101}}

In 1925, the Ministry was split into the [[Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Japan)|Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry]] and the [[Ministry of Commerce and Industry (Japan)|Ministry of Commerce and Industry]], with Kishi becoming part of the latter.{{sfn|Kitaoka|2016|p=101}} In 1926–27, Kishi traveled around the world to study industry and industrial policy in various industrialised states around the world, such as the [[United States]], [[Germany]], and the [[Soviet Union]].{{sfn|Maiolo|2010|pp=29-30}} Besides the Soviet Five-Year Plan, which left Kishi with an obsession with economic planning, Kishi was also greatly impressed with the labor management theories of [[Frederick Winslow Taylor]] in the United States, the German policy of industrial [[cartels]], and the high status of German technological engineers within the German business world.{{sfn|Driscoll|2010|pp=267-268}}{{sfn|Maiolo|2010|pp=29-30}} Kishi became known as one of the more prominent members of a group of "[[reform bureaucrats]]" within the Japanese government who favored a statist model of economic development with the state guiding and directing the economy.{{sfn|Maiolo|2010|p=29}}

Kishi was a trusted subordinate of [[Shinji Yoshino]], his senior in the ministry. Following Yoshino's appointment as vice minister in December 1931, Kishi steadily rose to prominence. He was named chief of the industrial policy section in January 1932, chief of the documents section in December 1933, and ultimately chief of the Industrial Affairs Bureau in April 1935.{{sfn|Johnson|1982|p=112}} In March 1936, [[Gōtarō Ogawa]] became the Minister of Commerce and Industry. Ogawa was opposed to the faction within the Ministry represented by Yoshino and Kishi. Seeking to remove them from their positions, he pressured Kishi to accept a post in [[Manchukuo]], where the [[Kwangtung Army]] were requesting his services, while Yoshino was offered the presidency of a public corporation in Tohoku. Both Kishi and Yoshino left the Ministry in September 1936.{{sfn|Johnson|1982|pp=127-128}}