Nobusuke Kishi was a Japanese accused war criminal and politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. He is the maternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe, twice prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and 2012 to 2020.
Known for his brutal rule of the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo in Northeast China in the 1930s, Kishi was nicknamed the "Monster of the Shōwa era". Kishi later served in the wartime cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō as Minister of Commerce and Vice Minister of Munitions, and co-signed the declaration of war against the United States on December 7, 1941.
After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a suspected Class A war criminal. However, the U.S. government did not charge, try, or convict him, and eventually released him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction. With U.S. support, he went on to consolidate the Japanese conservative camp against perceived threats from the Japan Socialist Party in the 1950s.