page_title: Sōsuke Uno
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Sōsuke Uno / Political career
caption_attribution_description: 77-392 DOE photo by Frank Hoffman Japanese visit to ERDA ( Energy Research and Development Administration) Oak Ridge Tennessee 9-14-1977
context_page_description: Sōsuke Uno was a Japanese politician who was briefly Prime Minister of Japan in 1989. A scandal exposed by the geisha Mitsuko Nakanishi contributed to his premature resignation from office after just sixty-eight days.
context_section_description: In 1960 he entered politics, winning election to the Diet of Japan. Six years later he was promoted to Vice-Minister at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, then similar positions with the Science and Technology Agency, then the Administrative Agency until earning his place in Cabinet as Minister for Trade and Industry and then Foreign Secretary until he was Prime Minister. Whilst Foreign Secretary (in what were conflicted times) he was applauded for his tact as foreign secretary, navigating international demands for increased Japanese contributions to international commerce with stern loyalty to his own nation's interests.
  In 1974 he served briefly as Director General of the Japan Defense Agency.
  Uno's career reached a peak in the most fraught times his party had seen, as he took the reigns of his party after the Recruit Scandal, when 47 Japanese MPs (including mostly other members from his own Liberal Democrat Party) were found guilty of taking bribes and unfair trading. Of all prime-ministerial candidates, only Uno was free of blame from them, and he was given charge over the party, the government, and Japan. By this stage he had served his country for almost fifty years, and was placed in office on 3 June 1989.
caption: Sōsuke Uno (at the Energy Research and Development Administration on September 14, 1977)
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "7815", "Image ImageLength": "6271", "Image BitsPerSample": "16", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "80", "Image YResolution": "80", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:04:11 10:01:50", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "386", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8777", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "7520", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5929"}