Propped up in bed in a Tokyo hospital, retiring Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda, recovering from a throat tumor, took up writing brush and rice paper. At the plea of his hopelessly deadlocked party, he stroked off a note choosing his own successor. Two hours later, Eisako Sato, 63, the dynamo of five former Cabinets, became the tenth Prime Minister of postwar Japan—and, all but inevitably, a man destined to guide his nation along a new course, for, after 19 years of penance, Asia's only fully industrialized country seems about to reclaim its place as a world power. Said Sato...
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