Masanosuke Ikeda

{{nihongo|Masanosuke Ikeda|池田 正之輔}|Ikeda Masanosuke|12 January 1898 – 27 March 1986}} was a Japanese politician who served as Director of the Science and Technology Agency during the Second Ikeda Cabinet from 1960 to 1961. He also served in the Japanese House of Representatives, being elected as a non recommended independent in the 1942 Japanese general election, and again in the 1949 Japanese general election. He would then go on to serve in the House for 24 years, before refusing to run for re-election after a corruption conviction.

Early life
Ikeda was born in Yamagata Prefecture on January 12, 1898. He began to attend Nihon University in 1922, and would go on to graduate from the university's Department of Political Science in 1926, shortly thereafter becoming a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun.

Career
After working as an editorial writer for the Yomiuri Shimbun, he gained the acquaintance of Bukichi Miki, and would join the Hochi Shimbun. After serving in management roles inside the newspaper, he became Director of the Federated News Agency.

He was first elected to the National Diet in the 1942 election, and, towards the end of the war, joined the Kokoku Doshikai, a group of politicians centered around Nobusuke Kishi which planned to force the resignation of the Kantarō Suzuki Cabinet for its unwillingness to commit to war on the mainland. He also served as secretary to Suehiko Shiono during his stint as Minister of Justice. After the war, he served as a founding member of the Japan Cooperative Party along with other past members of the Kokoku Doshikai.

He ran again for the Diet in 1949, and won election as a member of the Democratic Liberal Party. After Bukichi Miki was allowed to take office again after being unpurged by American authorities, he worked with Miki and Ichirō Hatoyama's group to form the Japan Democratic Party. He was then named as Secretary-General of the party.

Following the merger of conservative groups into the Liberal Democratic Party, he joined the new organization. He served as members of the Sunada group, Kishi faction, and the Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyūkai. He joined the Second Ikeda Cabinet as Director of the Science and Technology Agency and Japanese Atomic Energy Commission, and served in the roles until the first reshuffle in July 1961. He continued to serve as an LDP backbencher afterwards. He was charged with bribery and sentenced to house arrest in relation to the Nippon Express Incident in 1968. In 1977, the Supreme Court of Japan sentenced him to a year and a half of prison, on top of a three million yen fine for the corruption scandal. While he was eventually spared from prison due to his health, he retired from politics. During investigation into the case, a dinner between Ikeda, Takeo Fukuda, and Prosecutor General Daikichi Imoto had a dinner together which was soon viewed as problematic for Imoto.

During his time in office, he worked hard for trade negotiations with China, even before the normalization of relations. After 1953, he traveled several times to China in an attempt to work out a solution, and helped negotiate the Fourth Trade Agreement in 1958.

He died on March 27, 1986, at a hospital in Tokyo due to renal failure. He was 88.

Personal life
He had a short build and rough nose, but was considered to have been strong-willed. When he joined the Japan Liberal Party instead of Shigeru Yoshida's own party, it was alleged he got into a fight with Ichirō Kōno. A similar incident occurred when he got into a fight with party comrade Masuo Araki and called him an "idiot", and was alleged to have gotten into a physical confrontation with Kakuei Tanaka in which Tanaka taunted him.