Kakuei Tanaka - Early Life

Early Life

Tanaka was born into a rural family with seven children in Nishiyama, Niigata Prefecture. His father was involved with a disastrous venture to start Niigata's first dairy farm, and so the family scraped by in abject poverty. Kakuei left school after the equivalent of the eighth grade and went to work in the construction business, and soon moved to Tokyo.

In 1937, while running errands for a construction firm, Tanaka ran into an elevator occupied by the Viscount Okochi Masatoshi, head of the Riken corporation. Okochi, apparently impressed with Tanaka's energy and ambition, agreed to help the young man start a drafting office in Tokyo.

The drafting office only kept Tanaka busy for two years: he was drafted into the army in 1939 and sent to Manchuria, where he served as a clerk in the Morioka Cavalry. After two years in the military, he contracted pneumonia and was returned to Tokyo to recover; he never re-enlisted.

Back in Japan, Tanaka ended up at the Sakamoto Civil Engineering firm, looking for office space to restart his drafting business. There, he met the late company president's widow, who not only gave him the real estate he needed, but also asked him to marry her daughter, Sakamoto Hana. Tanaka accepted, and married his way into the upper class.