User:SkyGazer 512/Eishiro Saito

Eishiro Saito (died April 22, 2002) was a Japanese steel industry executive who was the president of Nippon Steel and chairman of the Japan Business Federation.

Saito was born in Niigata in Niigata Prefecture, Chūbu region, Japan. He went to college at the University of Tokyo, which at the time was known as Tokyo Imperial University and became a part of Mitsubishi Materials Corporation in 1935. He was a part of a mission led by Robert Menzies in which a number of industrialists from Japan were taken to Australia, in the early 1950s. According to John Button, after speaking to Saito about the mission in 1991, "He (Menzies) regarded it as a seminal point in the relationship between Australia and Japan. And indeed it was. It was the starting point from which Australian exports to Japan of coal, iron ore and other mineral resources began a steady climb to the point where Japan became our largest trading partner."

Saito served as the president of Nippon Steel from 1977 – 1981 and became the chairman of the organization in 1981. In 1986, he became chairman of the Japan Business Federation and the following year was an honorary chairman of Nippon Steel after retiring from his chairman position. As chairman of the Japan Business Federation he assisted with settling disputes relating to exportation in Japan and discussed and encouraged trading method. His time as chairman of the federation ended in 1990; the same year, he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government for his work.

In 1998, Saito was a part of the organizing committee for the Winter Olympics Games in Japan for the year. He died on April 22, 2002 at St. Luke's International Hospital due to heart failure, when he was 90 years old.