Japan In This Corner: Miyazawa

Kiichi Miyazawa was 19 when he made his first trip to America. It was 1939, and tensions between Japan and the U.S. were running high, but the traveler liked what he saw. "My first impression of my American friends was that they were so free, so dynamic, so spontaneous," recalls Miyazawa. "The American boys and girls were their own masters. I was so impressed."

As a young official in the Ministry of Finance after the war, Miyazawa often negotiated with American occupation forces, and during his next four decades of government service, he befriended a string of prominent Americans such as...