Bukichi Miki  Despite being a powerful conservative politician in the Taishō and Shōwa eras, Miki remarkably never held any cabinet post. He still has a high reputation as the archetype of a behind-the-scenes power broker, and at the zenith of their power there were times when both Kanemaru Shin and Hiromu Nonaka were openly complimented by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone for having "surpassed Bukichi Miki". Miki's nicknames included "the heckling general", "the wily schemer", and "the great tanuki of Japanese politics". He was born in Takamatsu, then in Ehime Prefecture but now in Kagawa Prefecture, as the first son of Komon Miki, an antiques dealer. His family was not related to that of Takeo Miki. In his second year at Takamatsu Secondary, now Kagawa Prefectural Takamatsu High School, he walked out on his bill at an udon restaurant and encouraged others to do the same, and thus was expelled from school. He transferred to Doshisha Secondary in Kyoto, now Doshisha Junior and Senior High School, but was expelled again for getting into a fight. He went to Tokyo with the help of the politician Tooru Hoshi but on 21 June 1901, the day on which Miki would go to work as a live-in student at his law office, Hoshi was assassinated. Miki was admitted into Tokyo Vocational School, called Waseda University from 1902 and on, where he counted among his classmates future politicians Ryutaro Nagai and Ikuo Oyama and baseball player Shin Hashido. While spending much of his time chasing women in Shinjuku, he earnestly studied law and practiced baseball. Although he even joined the Waseda Baseball Club at its inception, it was said that he exhibited little talent. However, his name does not appear in Bushi, the official records of the club, and he was also not a member of the Tomon Club, composed of the Waseda Baseball Club's alumni. This was also the time of his budding romance with Kaneko Amano, a woman known as "the beauty of Waseda" who was popular among the students and would go on to become Miki's wife. He graduated in 1904. Miki worked for a brief time as a scribe at Waseda University Library. The next year in 1905 he went to work with the Bank of Japan attached to their Moji branch.