Товч агуулга:Sasakawa Ryoichi (1899-1995) was a remarkable man. Born in Kansai in the late years of Japan's great Meiji Era. His long life spanned almost an entire century of tumultuous change. Any appraisal of his career must take into account the drastic, almost seismic transformations that befell Japan and the entire world within that time...
Jailed with other Party members in 1935 for extortion (an action instigated by political enemies), he was acquitted by an appeals court in 1938, just in time to be elected to the Lower House of the Diet. There he served throughout the war period. A firm if highly critical supporter of Japan's World War II war effort, he voluntarily entered Sugamo prison in 1945 as a suspected war criminal under the American Occupation; his book Sugamo Diary, published after his release, was an impassioned defense of Japan's wartime leaders...
Looking back from a foreigner's perspective at the biography of Sasakawa Ryoichi, his lifetime transition from a right-wing pre-war nationalist to a world-class philanthropist seems like an extraordinary achievement in human chemistry. But for Sasakawa, a man who lived with his times, it seemed very natural.
