was a Japanese politician who served as the
governor
A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...
of
Fukushima Prefecture
is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Fukushima Prefecture has a population of 1,771,100 () and has a geographic area of . Fukushima Prefecture borders Miyagi Prefecture and Yamagata Prefecture ...
of
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
from 1988 to 2006.
Life and career
Sato was initially an enthusiastic supporter of
nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...
. Like his predecessors he appreciated the jobs and subsidies associated with the nuclear plants in the prefecture. He believed it was part of
Fukushima playing a role in the Japanese nation as a whole. In 1998, he conditionally agreed the controversial use of mixed oxide plutonium uranium fuel (
MOX
Mox or MOX may refer to:
People
* Jon Moxley (born 1985), American professional wrestler
* Mox McQuery (1861–1900), American baseball player
Technology
* Mac OS X, a computer operating system
* Microsoft Open XML, a file format
* Mixed ox ...
) at the
Fukushima plant. He subsequently withdrew his support after discovering a cover-up of reactor malfunctions and cracks.
Between 2002 and 2006, twenty-one problems at the Fukushima plant were reported to his office. The
whistleblower
Whistleblowing (also whistle-blowing or whistle blowing) is the activity of a person, often an employee, revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe, unethical or ...
s, including some employees at the plant, bypassed both
Tepco
is a Japanese electric utility holding company servicing Japan's Kantō region, Yamanashi Prefecture, and the eastern portion of Shizuoka Prefecture. This area includes Tokyo. Its headquarters are located in Uchisaiwaicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, and ...
and Japan's
Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency because they feared that their information would go straight to Tepco. This was later shown to be a very justified fear. Sato became an increasingly bitter critic of the plant and Japan's entire energy policy as directed by NISA's powerful government overseer, the
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
The , METI for short, is a ministry of the Government of Japan. It was created by the 2001 Central Government Reform when the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) merged with agencies from other ministries related to economic acti ...
.
In 2006, Sato was forced to step down and in 2008 was prosecuted and convicted on bribery charges. He claimed the charges were politically motivated. Following his conviction, he wrote a book of his experiences called ''Annihilating a Governor'' explaining his concerns about nuclear power and how he was set up and wrongfully convicted. The book was largely ignored until the events of the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which r ...
sent it rocketing up the bestseller list.
Satō died on 19 March 2025, at the age of 85 at a nursing home in Koriyama City, due to old age.
References
External Links
*
*
*https://web.archive.org/web/20110427022229/http://www.fccj.or.jp/node/6542
David McNeill: Warnings of nuclear disaster not heeded, claims former governor-
Der Spiegel
(, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
23. May 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sato, Eisaku
1939 births
2025 deaths
Members of the House of Councillors (Japan)
Politicians from Fukushima Prefecture
Governors of Fukushima Prefecture
University of Tokyo alumni
20th-century Japanese politicians
21st-century Japanese politicians