was a Japanese politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1978 until his death in 1980.
Born in Kagawa Prefecture, à Âhira worked in the Ministry of Finance from 1936, and served as the private secretary to Hayato Ikeda, finance minister from 1949 to 1952. à Âhira was first elected to the Diet in 1952, and served as foreign minister in Ikeda's cabinet from 1962 to 1964 and as international trade and industry minister from 1968 to 1970 under Eisaku Satà Â. He took over Ikeda's faction of the Liberal Democratic Party and later served as foreign minister from 1972 to 1974 under Kakuei Tanaka and as finance minister from 1974 to 1976 under Takeo Miki. He succeeded Takeo Fukuda as LDP president and prime minister in 1978. After his government was defeated in a no-confidence vote, à Âhira decided to call the 1980 election rather than resign, but died suddenly of a heart attack. He is the most recent Japanese premier to die in office.
Masayoshi à Âhira was born on 12 March 1910, in Wada, Kagawa Prefecture (present-day Kan'onji, Kagawa), the third son of farmer Toshiyoshi à Âhira and his wife Saku. His father was a representative of the village council and the irrigation union although he had not received any education. He had eight siblings (two elder brothers, three elder sisters, a younger brother and a younger sister) but the eldest of the sisters had died before her first birthday and one of his elder brothers had died at age two. à Âhira referred to himself as "the son of an impoverished farmer of Sanuki" but in reality his family was middle-class. But even then, the parents had a hard time supporting their six children, and à Âhira assisted their side job from a young age.
In 1926, when he was 16 years old, Ã Âhira contracted typhoid fever and nearly died. This near death experience contributed to his conversion to Christianity around that time.
In 1933, when he was 23, à Âhira won two scholarships and was able to belatedly attend university at the Tokyo University of Commerce (present-day Hitotsubashi University), where he studied economics. In 1936, he entered the Ministry of Finance, where he became a protégé of Hayato Ikeda.
à Âhira worked in the Ministry of Finance throughout World War II. In the postwar period, when Ikeda became Minister of Finance from 1949 to 1952, à Âhira served as his private secretary.
In 1952, at Ikeda's urging, Ã Âhira ran for and won the first of 10 terms in the House of Representatives of the Japanese National Diet, first representing the Liberal Party, and later its successor party the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
In 1957, as Ikeda prepared a push to try to become prime minister, Ã Âhira became a founding member of Ikeda's "KÃ Âchikai" think tank, and was widely viewed as Ikeda's "right-hand man". He helped Ikeda write speeches and election manifestos.
Ikeda became prime minister in 1960, when Nobusuke Kishi resigned following the disastrous 1960 Anpo Protests. As a trained economist and trusted member of Ikeda's "brain trust", Ã Âhira helped design and implement Ikeda's famed Income Doubling Plan, which helped turn the attention of the Japanese people away from contentious political struggles to a nationwide drive for economic growth.
From 1962âÂÂ1964, à Âhira served as Ikeda's Foreign Minister. In this role, he conducted the delicate negotiations which paved the way for Japan's normalization of relations with South Korea in 1965. When Ikeda died in 1964, à Âhira inherited control of his faction.
At the apex of his political life, à Âhira came to represent what were known as the "mainstream factions" within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which put him at odds with Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, who led what were known as the "anti-mainstream" factions. From 1968 to 1970, à Âhira served as Minister of International Trade and Industry under Ikeda's successor Eisaku Satà Â. In 1972, à Âhira unsuccessfully competed for the party leadership before throwing his support to ultimate winner Kakuei Tanaka. à Âhira was then rewarded for his support with a post as Tanaka's first Foreign Minister, which he held until mid-July 1974. In a cabinet reshuffle in July 1974, he was replaced by Toshio Kimura as Foreign Minister but then immediately appointed Finance Minister, replacing Takeo Fukuda.
à Âhira was elected to the presidency of the LDP in late 1978. On 7 December 1978, he was appointed 68th Prime Minister, successfully pushing longtime rival Takeo Fukuda from his position.
à Âhira was the sixth Christian to hold this office after Hara Takashi, Takahashi Korekiyo, Ichirà  Hatoyama, Tetsu Katayama, and Shigeru Yoshida.
In the general election of 1979, the LDP narrowly failed to win an outright majority, but enough independent members of the Diet joined the party to enable à Âhira to remain in office, and he was duly reappointed on 9 November of that year. On 16 May 1980, a vote of no confidence was held in the Diet.
à Âhira expected the motion to fail, and was visibly shaken when it passed 243âÂÂ187. 69 members of his own LDP, including Fukuda, abstained. Given the choice of resigning or calling new elections, à Âhira chose the latter and began campaigning for LDP candidates.
à Âhira advocated for Modified capitalism and social corporatism.
à Âhira's health started to deteriorate in his 60s. During the 1980 election campaign, he was hospitalized for exhaustion on 31 May 1980 and died of a massive heart attack on 12 June, ten days before the general elections.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Ito acted in à Âhira's place as deputy after his death. Yoshio Sakurauchi, the Secretary General of LDP, led the LDP to its greatest victory in fifteen years, capitalizing on the "sympathy vote" generated by à Âhira's death. Zenkà  Suzuki became à Âhira's successor as prime minister following the election.
à Âhira converted to Christianity during his time at the Takamatsu Higher School of Commerce (now the Takamatsu College of Economics), though without becoming a member of any formal Christian denomination. However, others have stated that he was a member of the Anglican Church in Japan during the 1970s.
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