Assistance Association and supreme Economic Adviser to the Nanking Government. He is relatively young (54) and, until 1939, had spent his whole career in the Ministry of Finance. His first appointment as Minister in January, 1939 came after the resignation of Mr. Seihin Ikeda, an orthodox and moderate financier who disapproved of the Army's adventures on the Continent, but there are grounds for belief that Ishiwata's acceptance of office sprang rather from motives of personal ambition than from sympathy for the Army's cause.