When Japan set out a generation ago to bribe and bayonet its way to domination over what Tokyo's propagandists called the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," an ambitious civil servant named Nobusuke Kishi became an economic administrator in Manchukuo, then Minister of Commerce and Industry in the Tojo Cabinet, and finally wound up in jail for three years after World War II as a war-criminal suspect. He emerged convinced that though the means had been inept, the aim remained the only solution of Japan's pressing economic problems.
Three months ago, at 60, Kishi became his country's Premier. Last week he...
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