Foreign News: HARD MAN

SQUARE-JAWED Hayato Ikeda, 60, is a hard man with a yen and a free man with his tongue. Back in 1951, as Finance Minister under Premier Shigeru Yoshida, he stirred up a storm by suggesting that if peasants could not afford rice under his austerity program, “then let them eat barley.” A year later, while waging war on the black market, he lost his post as Trade Minister for remarking that “if black marketeers are driven to suicide by my methods, it can’t be helped.”

Ikeda was born in Hiroshima prefecture, is descended from six generations of wealthy sake makers. In early deference to the family business, he developed a prodigious capacity for the native drink (the Tokyo newspaper Mainichi noted candidly last week that “he has been on the wagon now for one month”). He became a hard-working government tax expert. In World War II, he bossed the tax bureau’s head office in Tokyo, raising revenues for the Imperial armies. During the U.S. occupation of Japan, he proved to be U.S. Economic Adviser Joseph Dodge’s most stubborn and effective aide in holding the line against postwar inflation.

Ikeda’s political power grew rapidly after he came to know Araki Kondo, often called Japan’s biggest moneylender, whose private fortune tops 20 million. In 1957 Ikeda’s oldest daughter married Kondo’s oldest son. Through Kondo, Ikeda came to know many of Japan’s top businessmen, who admired not only his administrative ability but ,.also the $280 million tax cut he pushed through while

Finance Minister again in 1956.

Deeply rooted in old Japan, Ikeda is a vegetarian who takes two hot baths a day and wanders in his rock garden “to clear my head.” Back in 1930, he was attacked by a skin disease that doctors pronounced incurable. After five years of suffering, Ikeda listened to his mother’s urging and set out on a pilgrimage. Swathed in bandages, he dragged himself painfully around Osaki Island to 88 of Buddhism’s holy places. The disease disappeared, and

Ikeda has been a convinced Buddhist ever since, still prays daily at an altar in his home. Last week he accepted the party presidency with profuse apologies for “the disgraceful persistence and unworthy stubbornness” with which he had pursued the post.

“I have always enjoyed golf and geishas,” said Ikeda. “But they are far from the life of Japan’s common people, and I am now going to live like a common man.” He emphasized his friendship for the U.S. (two of his daughters are currently college shopping in California), setting as his prime policy goal “restoring America’s confidence in Japan.”